 Dr. Adam A. J. DeVille |
Dr. DeVille's arrogance shines forth right from the beginning of the article:
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"Nearly three years ago now, I published a book on Orthodoxy and papal primacy and, at risk of being immodest, have since felt more and more that I had said everything that needed to be said on the topic."- - - - - - - - - - - - -
(That is the first time I ever heard ANY writer say anything like that about ANY subject they wrote about. I don't believe even St. Augustine or St. Thomas Aquinas ever made any such puffed up claims about any of the subjects they wrote about.)
As a Catholic, I have to say that I hope Pope Francis has and will exhibit a lot more sensitivity than Dr. DeVille has here to the massive and horrendous sacrifices our brothers and sisters in the Russian Orthodox Church have had to endure for their faith, especially during recent centuries.
And the way Dr. DeVille casts sarcastic aspersions on the use of the nebulous term "primacy in honour" by the Russian Orthodox leaders, he seems to be oblivious and blissfully unaware of the way a number of murky and uncertain forms of terminology have severely limited the clarity of many recent statements made by the leader of our western Catholic Church, relating to multiple current controversial moral issues and questions, which I would argue are even more important in the scheme of things than reunification issues, and deserve even greater clarity.
And the phraseology used here "...the kind of thing that makes knowledgeable people resort to laughter, mockery, and sarcasm" sounds more like something that B-O and his ilk would say about conservatives and faithful orthodox Catholics, and one would have to be filled with a truckload of chutzpah to try to claim that that was a Christian way of expressing anything.
Somehow, I believe we are going to have to find better ways than this to reach out to each other, if our goal truly is reunification and not further alienation from each other.