Posted on 09/22/2004 11:38:26 AM PDT by Vicomte13
Christ prayed for the unity of His Church. Collectively, we have made quite a hash of it. What divides us? How far are we apart, really? Is reconciliation and reunification really impossible? I don't think so.
Doctrinally, there is more that separates the liberal and conservative wings of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches than separates Catholicism and Orthodoxy. Many of the doctrinal differences that there are date back to the early centuries, but were not a bar to us all being One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church for more than half of the history of Christianity.
Historical missteps, and more than a little stubbornness, divide us, but this division is unnatural and indeed unholy. We cannot simply ACCEPT it as a given. It is not what Jesus wanted of us, and we have a duty to try and put back together what He made whole but what we have sundered.
But how?
For starters, look at how very much unites us still. The Orthodox Church is Holy. The Catholic Church is Holy. Both are apostolic, in unbroken lineage back to the apostles. We share the same sacraments. We believe the same things about those sacraments. In extremis, we can give confession too and take extreme unction or viaticum from one another's priests. Because somewhere, at the bottom of it, we each really do know that it's the Latin, Russian, Greek, Syrian and Coptic rites of the same Holy catholic Church.
Indeed, within the Catholic Church proper, in union with Rome, are Byzantine and other Eastern Rite churches that are for all appearances Orthodox. That the Orthodox Liturgy of St. John Chysostom is beautiful, and sonorous, and long, should be no barrier. There is no reason that the Orthodox rite should not remain exactly as it is. Indeed, there is a very good reason to revive, in the West, the old Latin Rite of the Catholic Church: many people want it back. Why should they be denied it? The Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and the Liturgy of the Tridentine Mass were Holy and are Holy. There is no reason at all they they cannot all be practiced within a reunited Church. There is no reason for Russian Orthodoxy to cease using Slavonic, and Greek Orthodoxy to cease using Greek, just as there is no reason that Latin Rite Churches should not be able to reassume Latin if their parishoners desire it. For over a thousand years the different parts of the Church used different languages, and yet we were all one Church. Today, with the vernacular, the Catholic and Orthodox Churches use many, many, many languages. None of this diminishes their Holiness. Latin, Greek and Slavonic are not holy, they are old. And there is nothing wrong with old.
So again I ask: what really divides us? There is nothing of the liturgy of either Latin or Greek or Russian rite that would need to change were the Churches to come back into unity.
All that divides us, really, is the question of authority. It is a political question, about the office of the Pope. Cut through it all, and that is what is at the heart of it.
And this can be resolved. Indeed, the tension ALWAYS existed, and flared up at different times during the long millennium of Church unity. Our spiritual ancestors had the wisdom to settle for an arrangement of metropolitans and patriarchs, with the Bishop of Rome considered one of them, but primus inter pares at the "round table". Like the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, he sets the agenda and "assigns cases", but each preserves his dignity as a co-equal justice. In order to maintain Christian unity, it was necessary for the Pope to exercise discretion in this role. And most handled it well. It also required discretion on the part of the Eastern Patriarchs. And most handled it well. It is the contrivance of the Devil that the time arose whereby stubborn (and corrupt) Pope encountered stubborn (and beleaguered, by the Muslim invasion) eastern Patriarch, and the Schism erupted.
Surely we can repair this wound in the visible Body of Christ on Earth. Indeed, it is not really optional. It is our DUTY to attempt it.
What is it that the East wants? Surely it is not to compel the Cathedral of Notre Dame to start conducting masses in Slavonic! No. It is to be recognized in its liturgy and in its territorial area. Should Latin Rite missionaries be attempting to sieze Russia for Catholicism? No. Russia should be under the Russian Rite, subject to the Metropolitan of Moscow, sovereign in his sphere, who is in union with the Bishop of Rome. I should be able to give confession and take absolution in a seamless Church from Gibraltar to Vladivostok.
What is it that the West wants? Too much, probably. At the Council of Florence, the last moment of unity in the Church, the West acknowledged the customs of the East, and the East acknowledged "the traditional privileges of the Bishop of Rome", which is to say, primus inter pares.
Now, if there were deep and abiding spiritual and doctrinal divides, such as there are between the Catholic Church and, say, the Anglican Communion or the various Protestant Churches, reunification would be out of sight. Primus inter pares would lead directly to Papal interference. But the Orthodox and the Catholic are each so doctrinally close that there need not be ANY real interference in the West by the East, or the East by the West. Indeed, it would immeasurably help the post-Vatican II Western Church to have a Vatican III at which the Metropolitan of Moscow and the Patriarch of Constatinople and their affiliated Bishops, and the Eastern Cardinals, sat, spoke, voted. The Church needs the counterweight of Orthodox Tradition to offset some of the less propitious "modernizing" elements that have run unchecked in parts of the West.
For its part, much of Eastern Orthodoxy is subject to, and under the thumb of, Islam. And abused. We see this right now even in secular Turkey. There is no religious voice on earth more powerful than Rome. And no other religion has its own seat in the United Nations. The lot of Eastern Christians would be bettered by having the full weight of Western Christianity brought to bear within the Church.
I do not believe that this is a pipe dream. Reuniting the Pentecostals and Rome might be, but bringing Moscow, Constantinople and Rome together again at the same round table should not be. It is what Jesus intended from the beginning. What God has joined, let no man sunder. With God, everything is possible. There is nothing that goes on in Orthodox Churches that would not be able to continue in unity with the West, and nothing that goes on in Latin Churches that would have to stop to be in Union with the East.
Perhaps the fears of the East would be quelled if the Patriarchs were favored for election to the Papacy.
Just a thought.
"Combined with the description posted earlier of the priest's actions during the Commixture, would you then say this prayer (which, of course, is chanted), exemplifies phronema?"
I'm not a theologian, but it smells Orthodox to me. I think the answer is yes.
"The Pope does also have another title, "Vicar of Christ" wherein he stands in Christ's place here on earth, over Christ's Church."
There's the rub. I agree with the rest of the comment.
Kolokotronis wrote: "The Roman fascination with miracles and visions has always puzzled me, though. In the East, these things happen all the time and while we think of them as a wonderful blessing, the fact that God, through the intercession of Panagia or a saint would heal a Christian doesn't surprise us particularly"
The West is extremely scientific and rationalistic in its belief system and thinking. The struggle in the West is not between various flavors of Christianity, or between Christianity and Islam. That goes on, but only in the subset of religious holdouts. Outside of America, the West is secular and scientific. And even in America, there is neat distinction between the hard-core committed religious, and the bulk of the population who are scientifically minded but still believe in God.
The main issue in the West is not the flavor of religion, but whether religious belief is itself anything other than a comforting traditional fairy tale held over from a superstitious age.
The West is the land of Newton and Descartes, of Kepler and Galileo, Faraday and Franklin, Heinsenberg, Einstein and Darwin and Pasteur. Indeed, the Western Church had a distinctly rationalist bent long before Galileo peered through a telescope: back in the Middle Ages Thomas Acquinas reposed the whole natural and spiritual world on a chain of causes and necessary effects going back to the uncaused first cause, which is God. His was a Christian Aristotelianism, and it reflects the very pragmatic, rationalistic, mercilessly mathematical quantity of the Western mind.
Faced with a cause and effect world that has been proven, as far as the popular imagination goes, to scientifically apply to everything except subatomic particles...which themselves in their utter randomness also show no indications of any intelligent control, the Western mind tends not towards religious rationalism, but scientific atheism.
Jesus used miracles done by himself and the apostles - practical miracles: healings, resurrections, casting out of demons (this latter part is hard for the modern Western mind to swallow: epilepsy is a demon?) The Western mind is particularly attuned to miracles, to reports of near-death experiences and the like, because they are impossible. Scientific minds use the noncontradiction principle. If something impossible happens, then the theory that said it was impossible is wrong. To most Westerners, the problem is not the flavor of faith, it is that scientific rationalism blocks the capacity for faith by a thick, heavy incrustation of skepticism. Miracles violate the established order, and open individuals to the possibility that there is God after all. Again: for most Westerners the debate is not HOW to worship God (which we've been discussing here in the Orthodox/Catholic thread, where even nuances in language can result in hard-minded positions being taken), but whether there IS a God at all.
Lourdes as a fountain of medical miracles, with its own International Scientific Committee that collects hard data and analyzes it, is a challenge and an affront to godless secular scientific skepticism. The International Scientific Committee is a product of that skepticism. But their reports, which find many things "not medically explicable" end up using science to prove that what happened is truly miraculous. This is the sort of thing that forces open the Western mind. Some earnest guy with relatively low education banging on my door and wanting to read to me out of a book of ancient Jewish fables that says the world is 6000 years old and there really was a Flood does not advance the faith among most Westerners, but retards it. It is a reminder of the superstitious darkness of our past. But real medical miracles at Lourdes, and real scientific studies that indicate life after death...this is what forces open the mind of Western man a crack to consider that maybe there is, after all, something to this God stuff.
But not everyone. Anatole France, on visiting Lourdes and seeing the stacks and stacks of crutches from the healed there, famously commented: "What?!, No wooden legs?!" That is the Western mind par excellence. Rational, skeptical, scientific and cynical. It takes miracles to jar this mind, because miracles become part of the database of facts, and if they cannot be explained away (that's the purpose of the International Scientific Committee at Lourdes), then the theories must expand to make room for the facts.
That's why the West focuses on miracles. Miracles are facts. Western belief is based on facts. If Jesus didn't really walk out of the tomb alive on the resurrection, then he was a charlatan and his religion is worse than useless: it is a cloud of superstition that makes people stupid. If the Red Sea didn't really part for Moses and the Jews, then the Old Testament is a lie, and the religion is worse than useless - it is ethnocentric, superstitious claptrap that will turn the mind away from the truth: the world is 4 billion years old, there was never Noah's Ark, etc.
We cannot go back in time to verify those things.
But in the here and now, we can look at what is done in the name of religion, and this too can be pretty damning, from the perspective of the hard, rational, skeptical Western mind. After all, we have all of these raped little boys. If there was no Church at all, there would not be so many boys trusting in figures who are spiritual counsellors who then turn and rape them. The only excuse for Christianity to exist is if it is actually TRUE. We do not need belief in a God who doesn't really exist. Indeed, such a belief is a waste of human intelligence and tends to make people behave stupidly and meanly. Christianity is only worth anything if there really was Christ, he really walked out of the tomb, there really is God in heaven watching us all, and there really is an afterlife. Otherwise, it is a complete waste of time, effort and money, and we would be better off ending it. The best proof that all of that is ultimately true is when God reaches down to earth and breaks all the laws of physics. Miracles tend to prove God, who is otherwise rendered moot by science in the minds of most Westerners. That is why miracles are so important to the Western mind.
""The Pope does also have another title, "Vicar of Christ" wherein he stands in Christ's place here on earth, over Christ's Church."
There's the rub. I agree with the rest of the comment."
It is a little misleading when we Catholics ascribe the title "Vicar of Christ" uniquely to the Pope. The Catholic tradition is that every bishop is a Vicar of Christ for his flock - not just the Pope.
Neither does a bishop receive his munera from the Pope, but directly from Christ to whom he is configured as an ikon.
"It is a little misleading when we Catholics ascribe the title "Vicar of Christ" uniquely to the Pope. The Catholic tradition is that every bishop is a Vicar of Christ for his flock - not just the Pope.
Neither does a bishop receive his munera from the Pope, but directly from Christ to whom he is configured as an ikon"
Ah, well, that makes all the difference, doesn't it? The loose use of the term, however, conjures up a monarch and that causes problems.
"The loose use of the term, however, conjures up a monarch and that causes problems."
Exactly. If people only imbibe half the piture rather than the full picture then this also distorts their own relationship and attitude towards the hierarchy of the Church.
This rather tacky image of the Pope as some kind of international megastar is largely the result of an inadequate understanding of their own faith on the part of many Catholics.
Well, in fairness, there was a time when Popes issued Bulls and Commands to princes, ordering them to war and peace, and very much acting the part of "international megastar" and, indeed, bully. But that time is long past. The Pope no longer commands legions, and no longer can bring down a government with a targeted excommunication.
This is not to say that in those days the Pope was always wrong in his exercise of monarchic authority. Sometimes he was dead on right. Henry VIII had no right at all to divorce his faithful wife in order to remarry some hottie, and the Pope was right to refuse it, just as he would refuse any other divorce in similar circumstances to this day.
It is to say that the Popes once had great temporal as well as spiritual power, and were not shy about using it. Today, they do not have temporal power, and their spiritual power comes more by example and by loving persuasion than command. Consider - in the past, were a Pope to excommunicate a man, not only would he be in peril for his soul, but also for his liberty and his life from the civil authorities. This is no longer the case. Our ancestors could not leave the Church if they wanted to, and even if they were personally abused, or raped, by priests, the door was not an option: to leave the Church meant ecclesial trial and violent death.
Now that the Church no longer has any power whatsoever to compel, but has only the residual power to persuade, she is a better place. And it is not valid to conflate the real power to command and to KILL that the popes of old had, with the power to admonish and to persuade that remains to the modern papacy.
I wrote: "Miracles are facts."
Kolokotronis responded: "Interesting comment; I guess I would never have put it that way, though I suppose its true. Its a fact that I am sitting at a key board, but that doesn't really say much. What I mean is, in the East, miracles are real events that happen at a place where the divine and the mundane meet for the benefit of the mundane. Like the Liturgy or the Mass, they occur "off the timeline" and somewhere that isn't really here. Miracles are not mundane at all but occurrences of divine connectedness with us. Why would we even imagine that "fact" as defined by the world, would have anything to say about the divine?
I do accept your premise about the Western mentality and suppose that the media hype atmosphere surrounding so many miracles may be a necessary tool to get the secular, Western "rational" world to at least look at these divine instances. It does, however, speak volumes about how far Western, secular society has fallen away from the True Faith."
I would respond thus: the West had not really "fallen" very far. It was never all that different. Think about the history. As barbarians, we were not very "otherworldly" about our various forms of paganism, but focused on practical supplications and sacrifices for practical benefits. There were readily identifiable Celtic and Teutonic religious patterns, despite the wide variations, and while they were mystical, they were very, very pragmatic. THIS stone is sacred, because if you sit on it, you will win battles. THIS combination of mistletoe and hawthorne is sacred, because if you keep it about you, it will ward off that form of evil. THIS form of human sacrifice is sacred because it appeases the gods...and also lets us have the entertainment of burning, drowning and cutting our enemies to pieces. There was plenty of religion in the pagan West, but it was a religion aimed at results. Appease the gods...so you can WIN! Sacrifice the foes to appease the gods...and to get rid of them and have some fun in the process. Christianity was not a hard-sell in the pagan West, but think about why: because the reward/punishment gradient was very appealing. Here was a religion that offered the promise of eternal life - a good deal in a world where life was nasty, wicked, brutish and short - and which had very mild sacrifices and costs in return. Of course, the punishment of eternal damnation was also hanging out there to worry the barbarian mind, but it was a particular practice in the early Christian West, often, to delay baptism until terminal illness, specifically in order to be able to wash off all the sins at once, and not have to stop sinning completely. Westerners were never mystic and humble Easterners. They always calculated costs and benefits. They did it in pagan times. They did it at the time of their conversions - the Celts converted practically without firing an arrow, and the Teutons with only slightly greater force. And they continued to do it in the Middle Ages (think the mathematical precision of indulgences). The Protestant Reformation is the perfect incarnation of the Western mind. Think about it: thoroughgoing monarchic power is avoided, all of salvation is kept, and the old grace/works equation is discarded for "grace alone", even as the Church is discarded for "Scripture alone". All the payoff, with less and less cost and effort.
Paschal was an intensely devout Catholic mystic. But the mathematical mind of the West came through him. This passionate mystic could not resist the urge to reduce religious conversion to his famous four-box "Paschal's Wager".
(I am certain that everyone here knows what that was, but for the benefit of those just reading who may not be familiar, the great mathematician drew four-box rectangular grid. At the left side he labelled the two rows: "Don't Believe in God" and "Believe in God". At the top, he labelled the two columns "God Does Not Exist" and "God Exists". He then proceeded to go through the grid this. In the first row, first box, if you Don't believe in God, and God Does Not Exist...if you put your spiritual capital there...you win nothing. Because when you live, your lack of belief gets you nothing good, and when you die there is nothing. On the other hand, in the first row, second box, if you don't believe in God, and God exists, you gain nothing good in this life from your unbelief (and you may suffer the effects of divine displeasure in this life), but when you die, you go to Hell. That's a losing bet.
On the other hand, if you do believe in God, but there is no God, you lose nothing in this life due to your belief, and you lose nothing when you die, because there is nothing. But in that fourth grid spot, if you believe in God, and God exists, here you go to Heaven. Therefore, no matter what the reality of the God is, the only possible winning bet is to believe in God.
There is a relentless logic to this.
I would imagine that Easterners would find it shocking and ugly...belief based on calculation.
Westerners have always found this to be a pretty persuasive argument.
I will take it even further. How much hell fire and brimstone is preached in the East? How much has ever been preached in the East? Does the East use the fear of loss and eternal torture as an argument for faith very much?
In the West, this has been an important part of the argument. Westerners have always presented Hell as a very strong reason to worship God: worship God so that He does not cast you into the fires of Hell when you die for your sins, and for not worshipping Him. This is by no means the sole basis of Western faith, but it is one of two pillars. Worship God because you should love God, and if you love God, He will bless you in this life and the next -that is the carrot that draws in the more mystic and "Eastern" of the Western calculating, barbaric mind. Worship God because if you don't, you will be tortured for eternity in Hell and will never get out - this is the stick that drew, and still draws, the more calculating Western barbarian into the Church who otherwise wants to rob, revel, feast and fornicate himself into an early grave.
Again, I would imagine that the Eastern mind finds this, if technically true, rather barbaric, and the wrong emphasis. But one cannot deny that this is the tone of the Western mind. Dante wrote three books: the Paradiso, the Purgatorio, and the Inferno. Nobody in the West ever reads anything but the Inferno, because Hell and its pains are more interesting to the Western mind than Heaven and its pleasures (which apparently are not fleshly, and therefore not of direct interest to the living pragmatic Westerner - reading about the ethereal pleasures of heaven is boring...sure, we'll like it when we get there, no doubt, but for the moment it's not interesting.) Reading about lakes of fire and captives in eternal torment without death as a relief: THAT is exciting. The East, recall, never devised anything like the Roman Colosseum, where mass torture and death was THE national spectator sport!
As disturbing and disgusting as it may be to the subtle and civilized Eastern mind, this is what Peter and Paul had to contend with when they came this far West...and remember that it was in the West that both were finally killed.
If we look even at secular military history in the time of the Romans we see the pragmatic difference between East and West. With all of the tens of millions of people in the East, the Romans regularly stationed only 7 of their 36 legions in the East: 1 in Asia [Minor], 4 in Syria (includes Palestine), and 2 in Egypt. The other 29 were parked in Gaul or Illyria or Britain, massed against the barbarians within and without.
Why?
Because in the East, the subtle mind of the Easterner could spin out the consequences. Yes, a revolt could probably smash THIS Roman legion or THAT Roman cohort, but there were always more troops, always more legions that Rome could send. And if there was any attack on Rome, the Romans certainly WOULD send those legions. It might take a year, or even two, but at the end of the day, the legions would certainly come, they would certainly invest every town in rebellion, and capture every place in rebellion. Every male rebel would be crucified or sent to the colosseum to die for entertainment, or sent in chains to the fields and mines to die in the hot sun, and every woman would be reduced to a slave for the pleasure of the Roman conqueror. That happened in the initial Roman conquest, and it happened to the Jews when they revolted. The Romans even parked two legions, at enormous expense, in the Judaean desert for two long years, and built a three mile long siege rampart to take out a mere 600 defenders of the last Jewish fortress at Masada. The Eastern mind understood this, and could envision the future, and the East did not rebel. But the Western barbarians, they did not calculate like this. If they did not SEE the pragmatic power of Rome sitting there, in the form of legion after legion on all the walls, they poured in and ravaged the countryside. That the Romans would eventually come and counterattack was not in their calculations. Wherever there was a gap, they plunged through. One sees this in the middle ages too. Drive about France or England. Every village has its castle or keep. Perhaps they are in ruins. But the truth always was that there was no rule or order at all anywhere the armed lords were not physically present...EXCEPT out of fear of God. The Church could administer lands without having to have an armored warrior in every hamlet.
In an earlier post, I admitted that this is a flaw of the Western mindset: I said "We were too violent." But in the violence there was a relentless pragmatism - if there is no lord to see me and stop me, I can better myself by taking that thing over there. And only a belief in the Lord, above, was historically sufficient to bring an imperfect sense of law and order to the West, as barbarians self-restrained out of fear.
There was no "Golden Age" of the West when Westerners did not think like this. We did when we worshipped Odin and the gods of the Druids. We did when we converted to Catholicism. We did under the Protestant lords. And it is through police power and surveillance that the authority of the State is maintained to this day. Things in the West are taken relentlessly to their logical conclusions.
And that happened with science too, which explains why "Miracles are facts", which you find so unpalatable and even religiously degrading, is an operating root of Western thinking.
The birth of science is often presented, by people who don't really know the history, as a reaction to and opposition to the Church. But that is completely false. Science was born primarily as a PROOF of religion, in Western minds that relentlessly need concrete indicators to believe in anything...be it Roman military might or God above.
Start with Acquinas. What was really his point? That there is a fundamental unity between spiritual realities of men and observed nature, because nature is an emanation of the mind of God. THEREFORE (and the THEREFORE is important to understand the root of science in the West), nature MUST be organized, rational and logical. That follows relentlessly from the truth that God is reason and God is law. Love, yes, but also reason and law. Since God made nature, THEREFORE, nature must be completely rationally organized according to divine law, and that divine law must be discoverable by man if we only look. And by looking, we will discover those laws, and thereby prove by empirical fact the truth that we know by faith as well.
Don't bolt from this logic, because this is PRECISELY what Bacon, Galileo, Newton and Kepler, and all of the other pioneers of Western Natural science believed in their very souls. They believed there was God, and because they believed that, they KNEW that if they looked long and hard enough, they would find that nature is organized with mathematical precision and economy - and here is the payoff: and by proving this in nature, the truth of Christian religion would be EMPIRICALLY proven by VISIBLE nature, thereby revealing the hand of God DIRECTLY to the eyes, and proving the faith. That was why they were so persistent.
And, of course, they were RIGHT. God did in fact design nature rationally, and he designed humans by the same law, and humans, therefore, have been able to find the patterns of God's mind in nature, and to prove the existence of God via nature. There was no greater proof of rational religion that Newton's great Principia. HIS reaction to his study was to devote himself utterly to theological studies for the rest of his life. As far as he was concerned, he had proven the existence of God beyond a reasonable doubt. And that was the whole purpose of Western science in its first 200 years.
Now, with the bust-up of Catholicism and the bloodiness of Christian war, and then the age of Revolution and nationalism, and especially the rise of commerce (reason applied to money), new structures of thought arose that gave even greater potential power over THIS Earth and THIS life to participants than Christianity ever could.
Consider the once-universal ban on loaning money at interest. In a non-capital society, this was not an onerous rule. But once real advantage and comfort could be gained in THIS life by lending money at interest, the religion came under stress and had to be modified to allow people to charge interest on money. Westerners were not going to sacrifice pragmatic advantages in THIS life based on the claim that interest would deprive them of paradise in the next. And being rational souls, they found biblical passages to justify Christians' charging interest and got over the matter.
Of course science, which was Western Christianity's baby, grew up to be THE chief challenge to Christianity in the West (not so much the East).
And that is why, today, the most powerfully persuasive thing to the Western mind - ever pragmatic and ever focused on facts - are the eruptions of miracles which break the steady laws of nature which have become the "god" of many, many Westerners outright, and the furtive object of worship to many more Westerners who still consider themselves Christians.
Now, that was long, and I apologize for it. But it links straight back into a recurring theme on our thread. The West really is not the East. We are as different from you in the interior makeup of our minds as the Chinese or Japanese. Indeed, in some ways, the pragmatic-but-superstitious Chinese are much more the Western "type" than the Eastern Orthodox with his phromenas (-ae?) and his mystic and loving approach.
This difference in mindset is so profound, that I don't think it would work to try to make the Orthodox Latins, or the Latins Orthodox. You would bore us. We would revolt you. Always have, and probably always will. The different ethnic Churches, Latin and Eastern, really do fill the cultural niche of their people. Of course that means that the Latin Church has always been very pragmatic in ways that worry the traditionalist East. The Teutons have sacred trees? Put a star on top and say it commemorates Christmas. The Celts have riotous rituals on Walpurgisnacht to appeal to the dead? Remind everyone that ghosts are spirits who go to heaven, call it all soul's eve, and let them keep their carved gourds (later pumpkins). In the new lands, the captive Indians want to pray to idols? Teach them to put candles at the feet of images of Mary and Jesus and pray about them. (And if they pray TO the statues...well...who can really be sure of that? Tell them not to once in awhile, and if they keep paying the tithe, their alms and good deeds with cover the multitude of their sins, including idolatry).
In our thread, what some of you have been trying to say is that we need to become more like you. I don't think most of us could become Easterners even if we wanted to. I don't think there are any Easterners who have ever wanted to become Westerners, other than in matching the power and wealth of the West. It is like an Frenchman becoming Chinese, or vice versa. It's a bridge too far.
What is not a bridge too far is to settle back in wonder at how really DIFFERENT God has, in His wisdom, seen fit to allow the Western and Eastern mind to be. The dispersion from Babel was not just linguistic, but even more fundamental than that, I suspect. Just as men and women really do think DIFFERENTLY, I think that there are broad cultural groups on the world, that identifiably have different modes of mental operation, and these are so old and ingrained that they are not any less determinative than language differences. We were NEVER Easterner. You were NEVER Westerners. Once we supped at the Lord's table anyway, when we had a great Roman Empire banging our heads together and enforcing discipline. When that collapsed in part and nobody was there to link us, we fell away from each other too.
The challenge God has placed before us is to figure out how to recognize each others' distinctive style of worship and be able to respect both in sacramental fellowship.
This is very different from the Latin West mentally becoming the East. We CAN'T. We are not wired that way by God.
What we can do is wonder at the difference, and import a bit MORE of Eastern mysticism and Western pragmatism, and share the same sacraments. And if we leave it at that, we will have done enough to consider each other real family, without having to move into the same apartment.
Miracles are very impressive facts to the Western mind. Rather than be revulsed that the Western mind thinks like that, and thinking that needs to change, see if you can imagine tolerating that Westerners are just "that way", but that it doesn't really make an ultimate difference in the faith we share so long as they don't try to make YOU be that way too. And then reverse the argument East and West, and see if it's not just possible to imagine a world where we can take communion in each other's Churches.
That was WAY too long for the little content it contains. Having written it, it seems a pity to destroy it. So I'll send it in the understanding that if anyone really reads all the way to this sentence, if I were God, I would grant him an indulgence for having indulged me.
The discussion proceeds in a civil manner and I am most consoled by nature with which it has progressed (like any one of could actually resolve 1000 years of separation). However, in keeping with this positive mood, I would like to toss a new 'bone' on which all may chew, if that is okay with this group of stalwart christians ;-D
The Catechism of the Catholic Church is the depository of our faith. Is there an equivalent in the Orthodox church? I recently came across an article entitled: "An Eastern Catholic View of the Catechism", written by a Byzantine Catholic Rite catholic priest.(link below). In it, Msgr. John Sekellick writes:
"Because the majority of Catholics reading this article belong to the Roman (or Latin) Rite of the Church, let me begin by explaining what the Eastern Catholic Churches are. Eastern Catholic Churches consist mainly of those Churches which came back into communion with Rome after the Schism of 1054 (the split between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches). Among these are the Ukrainian, Ruthenian, Melkite, Romanian, Bulgarian and Greek Catholic Churches. Often referred to generically as Byzantine Catholic, these Churches maintain their own liturgical and theological traditions and are nearly identical to their Orthodox counterparts. One of the documents of the Second Vatican Council, Orientalium Ecclesiarum (Decree on Eastern Catholic Churches), dealt with the Catholic Churches of the East. It affirmed their equality with the Western (Roman or Latin Church), and called upon Eastern Catholics to rediscover their authentic traditions."
Two years before issuing the Catechism, Pope John Paul promulgated the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, which governs the Eastern Catholic Churches. "The Church itself," the Pontiff stated, "gathered as in the one Spirit breathes as though with two lungs of the East and of the West and it burns with the love of Christ in one heart having two ventricles."
Eastern Catholic and Orthodox Christians share a common liturgical, spiritual and theological heritage that long predates the definitive split between Rome and Constantinople in the year 1054. Many, but not all, Eastern Christians celebrate the Divine Liturgy (the Eucharist or Mass) according to the Constantinopolitan or Byzantine Rite. In addition to the Byzantine Rite, there are four other major Eastern liturgical rites, used primarily in the Near East, India and North Africa: the Alexandrian (or Coptic) Rite, the Antiochene Rite, the Chaldean Rite and the Armenian Rite.
It is from my perspective as a Byzantine Rite Catholic that I offer this brief tour through the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The Catechism is divided into four major parts or "pillars": the Profession of Faith, the Celebration of the Christian Mystery (Sacraments), Life in Christ and Christian Prayer. Numbers below refer to the Catechism.
An Eastern Catholic View of the Catechism
I would be most humbled if you read this article and value your feedback on its contents.
To you, O Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, be glory, for ever.
"I will take it even further. How much hell fire and brimstone is preached in the East? How much has ever been preached in the East? Does the East use the fear of loss and eternal torture as an argument for faith very much?"
Not very much. We don't have a "Sinners in the hands of an angry God" phronema (it is phronemas in English, phronemata in Greek). We really talk much more about theosis. This is not to say that Hell doesn't have a role. It pops up all over the place as a location of torment by demons for unrepentant sinners. There is a great icon called the Ladder of Divine Ascent. The following on that icon and the book of the same name by St. John Climacos will tell you quite a bit about the Orthodox view in this area:
"The icon is connected with the famous spiritual classic entitled The Ladder of Divine Ascent of Saint John Climacos, who flourished in the seventh century. His memory is celebrated by the Orthodox on March 30 and on the Fourth Sunday of the Great Lent.
In this book, he describes thirty stages of spiritual development, which he likens to thirty steps upward on a ladder. The steps lead the spiritual striver to theosis, divinization, salvation—the ultimate goal of askesis or spiritual struggle.
In the icon which is inspired by this book, the ladder stands on the earth and reaches Heaven, symbolized by a vault from which emerges Christ. The ladder stands at an angle. Sometimes, the lower half of it is at a forty five degree angle, while the upper half stands upright. This is done in order to convey the idea that more effort is required for rising to the highest levels of spiritual development.
At the right side of the scene is shown a building, symbolizing a monastery, and outside its entrance stands Saint John Climacos. With his right hand he points at the ladder for the monks who stand behind him, while in his left hand he holds a scroll on which is written: "Ascend, ascend, Brethren."
Over the top of the ladder is Christ, emerging from Heaven. With His right hand He blesses the monk who has climbed to the top of the ladder, or holds the monk’s hand. In His left hand He holds a scroll, symbolic of His Gospel, or a crown which He is about to place on the head of the victorious monk. Below, there are other monks at various stages of ascent. Some stand on the ladder firmly, and are about to rise to the next rung. Others, however, are barely retaining their hold, as they are drawn by demons. The latter are flying at the left of the ladder. One of the monks has fallen off the ladder and is being swallowed below by a great dragon with wide open jaws. The dragon is used as a symbol of Hell.
Near the right side of the ladder are portrayed holy Angels encouraging and helping the ascending monks. This is in accord with the statement made by Saint John and other Eastern Church Fathers, that those persons who struggle for the acquisition of the virtues are helped both by God and by His Angels.
The Angels are shown with halos, clothed with light-colored garments and large, strong wings. The demons, on the other hand, are depicted without halos, without garments, with small, weak wings. Their bodies are of dark, dull colors, and have something that the bodies of the holy Angels do not have: tails. The latter symbolize the fallen state of the demons, their animalistic state. For the rational faculty, with which God endowed them when He created them—and which distinguishes both the angelic nature and human nature from that of the beasts of the field—has been corrupted by their rebellion against God.
The demons are depicted in order to remind the beholder that there exist such evil incorporeal beings, who act upon us through mental suggestion and assaults, and also to symbolize various "passions" (negative emotions and desires) in us. Saint John describes and minutely analyzes the nature of the passions, namely, pride, gluttony, lust, anger, despondency, malice, and so on. Positive qualities—the opposites of the "passions"—e.g., humility, temperance, chastity, gentleness, hope, love, etc.—are symbolized by the holy Angels, who are also to be viewed as real beings.
The statement on the open scroll held by Saint John Climacos is taken from the concluding exhortation of his book. It begins thus: "Ascend, ascend, brethren, ascend with eagerness and resolve in your hearts, listening to him who says: ‘Let us go up to the mountain of the Lord and to the house of our God, Who maketh our feet like those of the deer, and setteth us on high places, that we may be victorious with His song.’"
The Ladder of Saint John Climacos, which the icon depicts, is inspired by the Ladder which the righteous Jacob saw in a dream. Jacob saw a ladder which rose from earth to Heaven, on which some Angels were ascending and others were descending. His dream—or, better, his vision—is described in the book of Genesis as follows: "Jacob dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to Heaven, and the Angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And the Lord leaned upon it and said: I am the God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac; be not afraid.... And behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places wither thou goest" (28:12-13, 15—Septuagint).
Saint John’s Ladder expresses the Orthodox view that spiritual perfection, theosis, salvation is not something attained all at once, as by a leap, but comes after a long arduous process of spiritual striving or askesis. In this process, with sustained effort one rises gradually from lower to higher and higher levels of spiritual development. Thus, in the ninth step, Saint John remarks: "The holy virtues are like Jacob’s Ladder. For the virtues, leading from one to another, bear him who chooses them to Heaven." Later, in the discussion of the fourteenth step, he observes that "no one can climb a ladder in one stride."
Commenting on this, Saint Symeon the New Theologian says: "Those who want to climb these steps climb the first rung of the Ladder, then the second, then the third, and so on.... In this way one can rise from earth to Heaven" (Tou Hosiou Symeon tou Neou Theologou ta Heuriskomena Panta, p. 368). The first step of spiritual ascent, says Climacos, consists in these three virtues: guilelessness (or truthfulness), fasting, and temperance. "All babes in Christ begin with these virtues, taking as their model natural babes. For in these you will never find anything sly or deceitful. And they have no insatiate appetite, no insatiable stomach, no body that is on fire or bestialized." These three virtues will serve, he says, as a secure foundation for the rest."
This mentality is very real and pervasive in Eastern Christianity. Can it become part of a Westerner's mindset? Absolutely. I've seen it hundreds of times myself. My own dear wife is an example. I don't believe that we are entirely captives of our history, especially when it comes to God.
" Is there an equivalent in the Orthodox church?"
Not that I am aware of. Kosta?
I am a terrible person to ask about the contents of the article, because I have absolutely no formal religious training at all. So many of the words are terribly big and mysterious, that they make my mind hurt.
The author, to an even greater extent than the Catechism, really drills down into very complex theological concepts. I am sure they are important to those educated in those things. My view is much more the 85,000 foot view, so to speak, because I really don't understand about half of what I just read on your request.
Here is what I took out of it: the Eastern Rites of the Catholic Church are very, very theologically sophisticated, and seem to be very Orthodox. They don't admit to papal infallibility, and they administer the sacraments very differently in many cases. Their concept of what it is that they are doing is quite different from the concept in the Latin Rite.
But we are in full communion anyway, because Rome is not the Rome of 1400, and does not seek to "resolve the issue" of papal infallibility by bringing it to a head and issuing commands. Rather, if the Pope is infallible on matters of faith and doctrine, and any of these differences in Eastern practice are matters of faith and doctrine, the Pope has CONFIRMED their validity, and thereby bound his successors to not disturb the differences. If the differences are merely disciplinary matters, the Pope has nevertheless set such a high precedential standards that the Eastern Rites are EQUALLY VALID, that in this modern day, no Supreme Pontiff is ever going to disturb this settlement.
In other words, the West says that the Pope is infallible, the East says that it does not agree that the Pope is infallible, and the subject never comes up again, because no issue ever presents itself in a test case.
This sort of thing comes up in law all the time. Laws are on the books that make it an ordinance violation to talk in a New York City elevator. That law has been there since 1918 or so. So, is that still really a law? Well, in theory, yes, because it was never repealed. And presumably if someone became a nuisance by yelling obscenities or protesting on an elevator, that law is out there as sort of a "gotcha" (although it probably wouldn't be used even then, since "disturbing the peace" will do). But then the law would be tested, and a higher court might refuse to apply it as invalid, either through desuetude or, more likely, because it violates some constitutional principle or other. No cop or prosecutor is likely to ever use that law as a basis of prosecution, because the outcome would be uncertain, and it would be a waste of resources. Likewise, I expect, any temptation to ever again attempt to use papal infallibility on any issue that has already been vetted and discussed over the years. Precisely because the papacy and Church Councils have NOT spoken infallibly before, the presumption would be strongly against doing so now. Some NEW thing could come up, like the deliberate creation of human clones, for example, that the Pope might pronounce to be infallibly a violation for all time of the moral law of God, but a Church Council of East and West, with the Orthodox Present, would certainly come to the identical conclusion, so it would merely be a matter of bad form for the Pope to do it that way...and therefore, he wouldn't.
The only issue that divides East and West we've seriously discussed on this board is "filioque", and try as I might to really figure out what the man was saying in paragraph after paragraph on the subject, I could not understand one in every ten words, and don't know where the Eastern Rite stands based on this. I will hazard a guess: he is being obscure for diplomatic reasons. Probably, wrapped in all of those terribly long Greek words, there is the meaning that the East doesn't say "filioque" and thinks like the Orthodox, but the East doesn't express this in a way that provokes a confrontation with the West. In other words, Latin and Byzantine live and let live in their slightly different theological outlooks, and share communion, and do not consider their different outlooks to mean they aren't in full communion.
The great thing about the article is that it tells ME that the full reunion with Orthodoxy is possible. If Orthodoxy is as much like the Byzantine Rite as I suspect, from reading this, that it is, then reunification of the Church so that we can share communion truly is a diplomatic matter.
Thank you for posting the article. It gives me great hope.
And it makes me retract my comment about sending missionaries East. We mustn't do that. We do need Latin Rite priests in Russia to serve the Roman Catholics, until we can share communion, but not to compete for proselytes with the native Patriarchate. That would be divisive and ultimately stupid. I was wrong.
What the Msgr. has written is very, very Orthodox. I take some issue with the final section, though. Uniatism is a very sore subject with the Orthodox. The truth of the matter is that Rome, traditionally, hasn't really left the Byzantine Catholics alone. The past 250 years abound with examples, but most recently there was quite an uproar in this country about married Uniate priests, with Rome trying to outlaw married Ukranian Catholic priests. There is a whole diocese of Ukranians in the GOA which was once in communion with Rome but left claiming unwarranted interference from Rome many, many years ago. There is a similar Carpatho-Russian diocese, with a similar history. Imes of course, may have changed, I don't know. NYer?
What a great and enlightening read. I'm really glad to see this thread is still alive and kicking.
"There is a whole diocese of Ukranians in the GOA which was once in communion with Rome but left claiming unwarranted interference from Rome many, many years ago. There is a similar Carpatho-Russian diocese, with a similar history."
It was the Latin bishops in North America that were the cause of the problem here. They did not want married Catholic priests on their canonical territory as they were worried that they would lose a lot of vocations to the Eastern Churches. The American bishops prevailed on Rome to interfere, and unfortunately Rome obliged by disallowing married Eastern priests on Latin canonical territory.
"(T)Imes of course, may have changed, I don't know"
The Ukrainian seminary in Ottawa is now ordaining married men, and the Melkites in North America are also ordaining married men. There may be some in Rome who don't like this, but as the Pope has said that these Churches must be faithful to their own Tradition, then how can anyone object? Certainly the Pope won't object because he would lose all credibility with the Orthodox Churches!
Some of these Churches are now actively de-Latinizing where Latinisms have crept in. Rome has actually listened to Orthodoxy's criticisms of uniatism and things are a-changing. (Though I am fairly sure that some situations will arise that make the problems worse before they get better.)
Like you, I have no 'formal' religious training; I have 12 years of catholic school education, followed by full exposure to the 'real world'. As far as the words making your 'mind' hurt, these words are spoken to the heart, not the mind.
Here is what I took out of it: the Eastern Rites of the Catholic Church are very, very theologically sophisticated, and seem to be very Orthodox. They don't admit to papal infallibility, and they administer the sacraments very differently in many cases.
Ahhhh .. now we are making progress! "the Eastern Rites of the Catholic Church are very, very theologically sophisticated"
This is precisely what Kolokotronis and Kosta50 have attempted to emphasize, though the word 'sophisticated' is not what I believe they had in mind (please correct me if I am wrong). It is indeed a very different 'mindset'. The Western mind probes and analyzes each word within the context with which it is used. The Eastern Rites appeal to the soul, whereas the Western Rites appeal to rationale. They must 'prove' everything through inquiry; whereas the Eastern Rites view certain aspects of Christ's message as a mystery that must be accepted on faith alone.
Rather, if the Pope is infallible on matters of faith and doctrine, and any of these differences in Eastern practice are matters of faith and doctrine, the Pope has CONFIRMED their validity, and thereby bound his successors to not disturb the differences.
Precisely! Like the CEO of a company, or the Governor of a state, or the President of a nation, there must be one person who shepherds and that function was entrusted by Christ to St. Peter. He is the Vicar of Christ.
The only issue that divides East and West we've seriously discussed on this board is "filioque", and try as I might to really figure out what the man was saying in paragraph after paragraph on the subject, I could not understand one in every ten words, and don't know where the Eastern Rite stands based on this.
As a Roman Catholic attending a Maronite (Eastern) Catholic Rite, I can definitely address that question. The very same creed that is professed each week in the Latin (Novus Ordo) Mass, is the same one that we Maronites profess. There is FULL communion.
And it makes me retract my comment about sending missionaries East. We mustn't do that.
Thank you! This missionary work has already taken place, and here is one of the results (from the History of the Maronite Caholic Church).
" In 1578 Papal legates John Baptist Eliano, S.J. and Thomas Raggio, S.J. were sent to the Maronites. They brought with them a Papal Bull addressed to the Maronite Patriarch. After acknowledging the faith of the Maronites, Pope Gregory XIII requests that the Maronites should follow the Roman tradition in not adding references to Christ in theTrisagion, in having only Bishops administer the sacrament of Confirmation, and in not giving the Eucharist to children under the age of reason. The Holy Father closes by saying that he is going to send Arabic translations of the decrees and canons of the Council of Trent, and a catechism for use of pastors. We might note that the changes advocated by the Holy Father were of longstanding liturgical practice in the Maronite tradition.
After meeting with the Maronite Patriarch, the Papal legates sought to examine the liturgical, canonical and theological books used by the Maronites. Father Eliano proceeded to censor and burn the books he considered contained errors. He has been accused by the Maronites of destroying many precious manuscripts important for the history of the nation. In fact, Patriarch Stephen Douaihi, noting that Arabic words often have many meanings difficult to understand, claims that Eliano was not a scholar in Arabic. Douaihi further observes that Eliano did not distinguish books accepted by the Maronites as contrasted to those of the Roman rite.
The Maronite position regarding the first visit of Papal legates Eliano and Raggio can be summarized best by citing the letter written by Patriarch Michael Ruzzi to Cardinal Caraffa, the Cardinal-Protector of the Maronites, dated August 25, 1678: "Since, my brother, there may be someone who will write to you that there are some words found in our books opposed to the holy Church, we accept only what the holy Church accepts, and whatever errors are found in some copies would have crept in and been inserted in them from the books of nations which are near us and from a long time ago. My brother, remove all suspicion concerning our rectitude; we were founded from antiquity in the faith of the Holy Apostolic Roman Church which we have always embraced; and we do not speak to you merely with our lips, but with our lips and hearts, may God be our witness."
Essentially, the Maronites have retained their fidelity to the Magisterium and the Holy See, from the very beginning, even at the risk of losing some Anaphoras written by the apostles who walked with Christ.
Please forgive me for interjecting this thought. I am a middle aged woman, raised as a Roman Catolic from birth. It NEVER occured to me to question, much less explore any other aspect of Holy Mother church until I arrived in this forum. When the situation in my parish breached abuse, I knew in my heart and soul that I had to find a new home in which to worship my beloved Savior. I sent a fervent prayer to Him and asked that He lead me to a holy man, a valid liturgy and a welcoming community. The response was swift. In compiling a list of Catholic Churches within a certain radius of my home, at the suggestion of a fellow freeper, I included two Eastern Catholic Rite Churches.
Week three brought me to the Maronite Catholic Church. There, I lost my heart and soul to a liturgy which is Christ centered. The chant that connects the celebrant to the congregation captivated me. Throughout the liturgy, incense rose heavenward as the priest incensed the Book of the Gospels, the altar, the offerings and the congregation.
My heart stood still when the priest said the words of consecration in the language and with the words of our Lord at the Last Supper. When I presented myself for communion, the priest (and ONLY the priest) placed the consecrated host on my tongue (no communion in the hands) with the words: "Receive the Body and Blood of our Lord, Jesus Christ, for the remission of sin and eternal salvation".
As he placed the consecrated host on my tongue, my soul literally jumped within me. This was an experience unlike anything else I have ever known. It was like a starving person receiving food. My natural inclination was to disregard it but one week later, I chose to return to the same church. As had happened the previous week, on presenting myself for communion, my soul soared so much that I had to grab onto the edge of the first pew.
I am no religious fanatic. This reaction defies description or explanation, other than to affirm the validity of the transformed host. How else to explain it? It never occured again; there was no need for that as I understood God's message to me and joined the parish. This has proven to be such a tremendous blessing in my life and opened up a world to the Eastern philosophy, that has only grown my devotion to our Lord and broadened my understanding of Catholic faith.
If you have not yet experienced an Eastern Catholic liturgy, I would strongly urge you to find a church in your communty and attend their Divine Liturgy 3 times. Yes, it takes 3 visits to begin to understand the rich contribution from our Eastern members.
Until you have experienced the Eastern contributions to the Catholic faith, you cannot begin to fully appreciate the richness that they contribute to the faith.
God bless you on your journey!
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