Posted on 05/21/2014 6:29:11 AM PDT by NYer
This coming Sunday, May 25, Pope Francis is scheduled to meet the Eastern Orthodox Church’s Ecumenical Patriarch (EP) Bartholomew at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem in order to commemorate the golden jubilee of the historic meeting between their respective predecessors, Paul VI and Athenagoras. According to the EP’s official website for the event, the occasion is “expected to be a strong symbolic confirmation of the commitment and determination to continue the path which the two great Church leaders inaugurated half a century ago.” Whether it will amount to anything more than that remains to be seen. In the interim, Orthodox Christians, including its minority contingent in America, are eyeing the event nervously.
Patrick Barnes, an Orthodox convert, author, and maintainer of the polemical website The Orthodox Information Center has come out swinging against the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America for promoting the meeting. Additionally, Barnes is directing his readers to a series of links condemning “false union” with Rome despite the fact Francis and Bartholomew’s get together won’t do anything of the sort. Don’t tell that to certain pockets of the online Orthodox community, however. A cursory Google or Bing search quickly reveals panicked blog and message board comments, many of which assume that “Black Bart” (the reactionaries’ uncharitable name for their spiritual leader) is going to “sellout” world Orthodoxy with a stroke of his pen. If only. More likely than not this Sunday will be the occasion for the issuing of some hortatory statements by both leaders about their shared patrimony; the crisis facing Christians worldwide; the need for peace; and so on, and so forth. In other words, it will be the same old positive claptrap that typically emanates from official Catholic/Orthodox engagements which, for better or worse, leads nowhere on the practical front. The Great Schism, much to the delight of many in the East, isn’t at risk of being mended anytime soon.
Of course, one can—and should—hope and pray that both Francis and Bartholomew might have some strong words for Western powers—including the United States—which have failed to properly support the Middle East’s historic Christian populations while sitting on the sidelines as the region descends into further turmoil. Then there is also the messy matter of Ukraine and the future of its four Apostolic churches—one Catholic and three Orthodox—which currently find themselves caught up in a showdown between a resurgent Russia and an understandably nervous Europe. The Moscow Patriarchate (MP) of the Russian Orthodox Church, which controls the largest body of Ukrainian Orthodox believers, has not been shy about blaming the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) for Ukraine’s woes. In a recent interview, the MP’s Chairman for External Relations and potential heir apparent to the Patriarchal throne, Metropolitan Hilarion Alfayev, had this to say:
The main problem that remains in our bilateral relations is the situation in Western Ukraine, relations between the Orthodox and Greek Catholics. These relations soured at the end of the 1980s, when Greek Catholics seized Orthodox churches. I do not want to get into the history now: views of history always differ between conflicting parties. But the conflict has not been overcome: in Western Ukraine there are many places where the Orthodox, as before, have been deprived of their churches, as we regularly remind our partners in the Roman Catholic Church.
What Alfayev omits from his narrative is any mention of the Soviet-backed MP’s seizure of UGCC properties in the 1940s and the fact that “good relations” with Ukrainian Catholics ended in the late 1980s only after Gorbachev, following a meeting with Pope St. John Paul II, agreed to let Catholics practice their faith without fear of violent persecution. In an earlier interview, Alfayev blasted the UGCC (“Uniates”) for being “people who wear Orthodox clothes, observe Orthodox rites while remaining Catholic,” as if holding fast to the Slavo-Byzantine Rite and the East’s spiritual and theological patrimony is somehow the exclusive province of the Orthodox, specifically the Russian Orthodox. These statements were issued against the backdrop of Catholics being persecuted in the recently annexed Crimea.
Will Francis or, more importantly, Bartholomew have anything to say about the MP’s ethno-nationalistic outlook concerning Ukrainian Catholics? Although he didn’t identify the MP by name, Bartholomew has recently gone on record criticizing what he sees as nationalist and racialist tendencies in some segments of the Orthodox Church. It’s important to bear in mind that the MP’s uncharitable attitude toward the UGCC—a body which has existed for more than 400 years—is not dissimilar to its negative appraisal of Ukraine’s two independent Orthodox churches, neither of which wants to find itself under the thumb of the Russian Orthodox Church nor part of a geographical-political “buffer zone” between Russia and the West. It is for the sake of both Catholics and Orthodox then that Francis and Bartholomew should consider speaking out against the aggression of the Russian state and its vassal church.
Beyond present political difficulties, it is hard to see what else might come out of the Jerusalem meeting. With the Orthodox in the midst of planning for a “Great and Holy Council” scheduled to take place in 2016, the EP knows that it cannot appear to draw too close to Rome without compromising its stature among the more insular regions of the Orthodox ecclesial confederacy. At the same time, Rome should be leery of taking any action, or issuing any statement, which would appear to “play favorites” among the Orthodox. The last time that happened, which occurred during the run-up to the Second Vatican Council when certain Catholic prelates wanted to secure limited participation from representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church, the EP and other local Orthodox churches refused to participate. As Roberto de Mattei recounts in his The Second Vatican Council: An Unwritten Story, it was only the 1964 Paul VI/Athenagoras Jerusalem summit which ultimately smoothed the matter over.
At some point, of course, Rome will have to reach a decision about how it wishes to proceed in its relations with the Orthodox. Ever since the 1993 Balamand Declaration, the Catholic Church has steered clear of “Uniatism,” the often pejorative term used to describe the localized reunification efforts which began at the Union of Brest in 1596—the agreement which established both the UGCC and the Belarusian Greek Catholic Church. The Balamand Declaration was aspirational, not binding, and the present realities of world Orthodoxy ought to give even the most ecumenically minded Catholic pause concerning the prospects of “big bang” reunification. If the East/West rift is to be corrected, it will more likely than not have to be done stich by stich. We just shouldn’t expect the sewing to begin this Sunday.
Ping!
From the web site:
“His see, the Ecumenical Patriarchate, which was established in the fourth century and once possessed holdings as vast as the Vatican, has been reduced to a small, besieged enclave in a decaying corner of Istanbul called the Phanar (Lighthouse). Almost all of its property has been seized by successive Turkish governments, its schools have been closed and its prelates are taunted by extremists who demonstrate almost daily outside the Patriarchate, calling for its ouster from Turkey.”
I’m surprised Bartholomew would leave Istanbul for fear he wouldn’t be allowed to return!
Islam is a disease. The mutterings and jockeying of old pagans in a dispute over “church” issues is an abomination.
I cannot believe how angry I am today.
How I hate the “mega-churches”, the moribund catholic church, the moronic nature of their papal bulls and hypocritical admonitions.
Jesus Christ is Lord. Period. His apostles were simple men, however Luke was a physician (for what passed for medical knowledge of the day), Paul was a Pharisee and prior to his Damascus Road conversion, a murderer and a terrorist.
Peter never established the Catholic Church. John died of old age, the only apostle to not meet with a violent death.
So many words, so many interpretations, so many doctrines. They all weary me.
Try reading the Bible and thinking for yourself! It will liberate you from the stupid group-think crap that has been promulgated since the first century AD.
Or not. Good Lord, I am a cranky, fed-up old bastard. Please give me grace and forgiveness. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
Pope’s next stop—Moscow to meet with the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church. Christians need to get their ducks in a row before the confrontation that is coming—with Islam and its bloody sword of Jihad. We will have to face this someday—sooner than we think.
Read John 17, the prayer on the night before Jesus died on the cross, for all who follower Him, be they Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant, that all His followers will be ONE.
This is what the Pope and Patrarch is doing, honoring John 17.
Islam is like cancer, in its stage 4, coming to its end.
Remember the Holy Bible as we know of is a gift from the RCC.
John, chapter 17
CHAPTER 17
The Prayer of Jesus.*
1When Jesus had said this, he raised his eyes to heaven* and said, “Father, the hour has come. Give glory to your son, so that your son may glorify you,a
2* just as you gave him authority over all people,b so that he may give eternal life to all you gave him.
3* Now this is eternal life,c that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ.
4I glorified you on earth by accomplishing the work that you gave me to do.
5Now glorify me, Father, with you, with the glory that I had with you before the world began.d
6“I revealed your name* to those whom you gave me out of the world. They belonged to you, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.
7Now they know that everything you gave me is from you,
8because the words you gave to me I have given to them, and they accepted them and truly understood that I came from you, and they have believed that you sent me.
9I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for the ones you have given me, because they are yours,e
10and everything of mine is yours and everything of yours is mine, and I have been glorified in them.f
11And now I will no longer be in the world, but they are in the world, while I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are.
12When I was with them I protected them in your name that you gave me, and I guarded them, and none of them was lost except the son of destruction, in order that the scripture might be fulfilled.g
13But now I am coming to you. I speak this in the world so that they may share my joy completely.h
14I gave them your word, and the world hated them, because they do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world.i
15* I do not ask that you take them out of the worldj but that you keep them from the evil one.
16They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world.
17Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth.k
18As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world.l
19And I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in truth.
20“I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word,
21so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me.m
22And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one,
23I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me.
24Father, they are your gift to me. I wish that where I am* they also may be with me, that they may see my glory that you gave me, because you loved me before the foundation of the world.n
25Righteous Father, the world also does not know you, but I know you, and they know that you sent me.o 26I made known to them your name and I will make it known,* that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them.”
* [17:1–26] Climax of the last discourse(s). Since the sixteenth century, this chapter has been called the “high priestly prayer” of Jesus. He speaks as intercessor, with words addressed directly to the Father and not to the disciples, who supposedly only overhear. Yet the prayer is one of petition, for immediate (Jn 17:6–19) and future (Jn 17:20–21) disciples. Many phrases reminiscent of the Lord’s Prayer occur. Although still in the world (Jn 17:13), Jesus looks on his earthly ministry as a thing of the past (Jn 17:4, 12). Whereas Jesus has up to this time stated that the disciples could follow him (Jn 13:33, 36), now he wishes them to be with him in union with the Father (Jn 17:12–14).
* [17:1] The action of looking up to heaven and the address Father are typical of Jesus at prayer; cf. Jn 11:41 and Lk 11:2.
* [17:2] Another possible interpretation is to treat the first line of the verse as parenthetical and the second as an appositive to the clause that ends v 1: so that your son may glorify you (just as…all people), so that he may give eternal life….
* [17:3] This verse was clearly added in the editing of the gospel as a reflection on the preceding verse; Jesus nowhere else refers to himself as Jesus Christ.
* [17:6] I revealed your name: perhaps the name I AM; cf. Jn 8:24, 28, 58; 13:19.
* [17:15] Note the resemblance to the petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “deliver us from the evil one.” Both probably refer to the devil rather than to abstract evil.
* [17:24] Where I am: Jesus prays for the believers ultimately to join him in heaven. Then they will not see his glory as in a mirror but clearly (2 Cor 3:18; 1 Jn 3:2).
* [17:26] I will make it known: through the Advocate.
c. [17:3] 1:17; Wis 14:7; 15:3; 1 Jn 5:20.
d. [17:5] 1:1, 2; 12:28; Phil 2:6, 9–11.
f. [17:10] 16:15; 2 Thes 1:10, 12.
g. [17:12] 13:18; 18:9; Ps 41:10; Mt 26:24; Acts 1:16.
j. [17:15] Mt 6:13; 2 Thes 3:3; 1 Jn 5:18.
m. [17:21] 10:30; 14:10–11, 20.
n. [17:24] 14:3; 1 Thes 4:17.
Mortalium Animos, Pope Pius XI, 1928
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