text: I would not call the Eastern Orthodox faith a rigid faith. In fact, a lot of the recent scholarship on orders for women in the early church was done by Orthodox scholars, many of them women, and resulted in the restoration of the diaconate for women. This is lightning speed compared to the RC's. Are you Orthodox? I am. I fully accept that we are shrinking in parts of the world but I've read quite a bit on this subject and things look healthier in some places than in others. Russia, for example, is said to be bleeding members but that isn't entirely true and once you get out of the big cities, things look pretty vibrant. We also have quite a few converts. Orthodoxy is a faith many are attracted to because it doesn't have a 900-pound catechism and observes a long tradition of mysticism. By the way, if you are quoting the Pew study, it had a very small representation of Orthodox compared to the total number of participants. Small enough to introduce error.