October, 2015 - Opus Publicum

October 8, 2015 Eastern Catholicism

Andrew Has Spoken Through Sviatoslav

As we witness the fruits of the Extraordinary Synod on the Family blossom, fertilized in no small part by the dung of neo-Ultramonantism, let us not forget that the Church of Christ has been provided with more than just one successor to the Apostles.

Today I have to affirm that, in the past, the family defended and preserved the Church. Today the Church has a sacred duty to protect and preserve the family; the family as the faithful, fruitful, and indissoluble union between a man and a woman.

My faithful asked me to appeal to the Synod Fathers to remember that we, the bishops are not the masters of the revealed truth about the family, but rather its’ servants. Today, our people expect from us to confirm and emphasize the Church’s teaching on the family, clarified and summarized by blessed Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II.

Holy and devout families, strengthened in faith, find, on their own, the most creative ways to answer the challenges of modern society and teach us how to show mercy to those who are experiencing difficulties. We can not solve all the problems with which the world is trying the family, but we can preach the Gospel Truth about the family and help the next generation, with God’s help to go forth along the path to holiness.

– His Beatitude Sviatoslav Shevchuck, Patriarch of Kyiv-Halych and All Rus, Remarks to the Synod Oct. 6, 2015

October 6, 2015 Eastern Orthodox Church, Roman Catholic Church

Two on Orthodoxy and Catholicism

Two fresh items on Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy recently caught my eye, so I thought I might call attention to them both.

The first, Fr. Mark Drew’s Catholic Herald article “What Catholics Can Learn From Orthodox Synods,” covers in detail a topic I dealt with in Crisis last year, namely synodality. Fr. Drew is less skeptical toward the synodal model than I, though my position on the matter has softened due to current events. Some disparage the Orthodox synodal model as too decentralized, limited in scope, and ineffective. However, in the light of ongoing Extraordinary Synod on the Family in Rome, there are no doubt more than a few Catholics praying for a muted outcome to the proceedings. Where I disagree with Fr. Drew is how much Orthodoxy—or, for that matter, Catholicism—really needs centralization, at least in its current Roman manifestation. It is far from clear that Pope Francis truly believes in synodality, and his role as the guardian of the Faith has come under scrutiny in light of numerous statements (some, admittedly, off-the-cuff) which seem freighted with doctrinal confusion. Moreover, given the vast number of bishops in the Roman Church who routinely fail to uphold the Church’s indefectible teachings, providing them with greater doctrinal authority would be highly imprudent at this juncture. Of course, the Orthodox have largely left doctrine alone for the past millennium, which has not been an entirely bad thing at all.

Second, my friend Elliot Milco has written a thoughtful reply to my recent tweet asking why Catholics choose not to convert to Eastern Orthodoxy. I should note that the point of my tweet was not to challenge Catholics on this, but rather to gain a better understanding of the matter. Not too long ago many Catholics I knew who had seriously contemplated Orthodoxy claimed that the absence of a central authority figure (the pope) and Orthodoxy’s approach to remarriage compelled them not to leave. Now, however, Pope Francis has cleared the way for what some are calling “Catholic divorce” with a process which appears to be less exacting than what certain Orthodox jurisdictions follow when granting marriage dissolutions. As for the papacy, it’s hardly breaking news to point out that many conservative and traditional Catholics are less than thrilled with Francis’s pontificate and the new style of Ultramontanism which accompanies it. Milco addresses these matters and more, and I thank him for taking the time to do so.

October 6, 2015 Eastern Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox Church

Bishop Ambrose Moran – The Plot Thickens

I apologize (slightly), but I’ve become intrigued by the case of one Bishop Ambrose Moran whose murky background and somewhat preposterous story of being consecrated a bishop by Patriarch Josyf Slipyj has sent several persons — myself included — digging into the complicated history of late-20th Century Eastern Christianity. As I stated in my previous post on the matter, it appears that Ambrose was never a member of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), either as a priest or a bishop. This has not stopped Ambrose from trying to shore up his tale, however. A new web-log, presumably run by the good bishop, has now popped up with photos and documents which superficially appear to support his claim to both UGCC incardination and episcopal consecration. It has been noted, however, that the “William Moran” whose name appears on some of the documents and whose pictures have been used may not in fact be Ambrose Moran, but rather a brother or some other relative. How that all shakes out remains to be seen.

What can be seen right now, however, is Bishop Ambrose (Amvrosij)’s website for the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church in the USA, which seems to have been his “ecclesiastical home” prior to aligning himself with the Roman Catholic traditionalist movement known as the “Resistance.” Three quick points need to be made here.

First, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church in the USA is not the same as either the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) or the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA (UOC-USA). The UAOC is an independent Orthodox church without canonical recognition while the UOC-USA is under the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. Although there are some who believe Ambrose was, for a time, associated with the UAOC, this information cannot be verified with any certainty at this point.

Second, the mailing address for Ambrose’s Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church in the USA is a PO Box located in Buena Vista, Colorado. Buena Vista is the home of the so-called Genuine Orthodox Church of America (GOCA), a hub for vagante Orthodox bishops. Ambrose was at one time received into the GOCA, though it appears he has parted company with them.

And last, no member of the UGCC I have contacted has ever met Bishop Ambrose, and only one had any knowledge of him period. As more concrete information comes to light, I will be sure to post it in due course.

October 5, 2015 Law, Politics

Augustus Sol Invictus

For a variety of reasons I miss teaching, and not just because I think young and impressionable minds ought to be subjected to my every intellectual whim and fancy. (That’s what blogs are for.) I miss it because teaching provided me with both the chance to sharpen my thinking on the subjects I taught (primarily aviation and trade law) and to interact with a fairly diverse group of students who routinely brought a surprising amount of intellectual energy to the classroom. I know not every professor, former or current, can say that, even at the law school level. Having had the luxury of teaching niche international-law classes which, generally speaking, attracted students with a genuine enthusiasm for the material, I doubt that my five years as a faculty fellow at DePaul University College of Law were in any sense typical. Adding to the atypical dynamic of my time at DePaul were the personalities of certain students, perhaps none more fascinating and offsetting than that of Augustus Sol Invictus. Yes, you read his name right, and if you have been following the news, then you know he is not only running for Marco Rubio’s former U.S. Senate seat, but apparently sacrificed a goat and drank its blood, too.

It is not my intention to speak in any depth on the personality or academic performance of Augustus. The former is apparent enough from his various YouTube videos, interviews, and Internet scribblings; the latter is nobody’s business. What fascinates me is what his “political orientation”—a strange brew of libertarianism and neo-paganism—says about the failure of American political ideology, one which historically took the liberal ethos and attempted to fuse it with Christianity (or, at least, Christian religious symbolism). Based on a perusal of Augustus’s writings, housed at his law firm’s website, it seems he is attaining to libertarianism’s apotheosis, namely the freedom from all reasonable constraint without any horizon or vision. Of course, there exists a tension between Augustus’s libertarian politics and neo-paganism. For while the libertarian wants a life free of demands and full of entertainment—the very thing which nauseated Carl Schmitt enough to come out swinging against liberalism in his seminal work The Concept of the Political (a book Augustus has perhaps read)—the pagan’s (though perhaps not the neo-pagan?) existence has cosmological meaning, albeit of a fated variety. Augustus, the good libertarian, doesn’t want fate; he just wants Lebensraum for guns and narcotics.

This confusion of the spheres is not entirely Augustus’s fault. Having been subjected to a run-of-the-mill undergraduate experience coupled with a “legal education” (I use that expression lightly given the current orientation of most law schools), he’s no doubt been taught how to huff hard the paint-thinner of secular-liberal ideology while embracing his “individuality.” That stab at individualism seems to have decayed ironically into an unspectacular internalization of the worst aspirations of American culture. Many may be nauseated by some of Augustus’s extracurricular activities, to say nothing of his personal beliefs, but he is fighting—or grandstanding—to defend them. He’s doing the same for society’s intermundane desire for six figures, semi-automatic rifles, good coke, 1.3 kids, and a porn-packed iCloud as well. Who are we to judge? We deserve him representing us.

October 5, 2015 Church, Philosophy, Theology

Remarks on Dialogue, Engagement, and Aquinas

There is a certain line of contemporary Catholic apologetic, more superficial than substantive, which has become fashionable in recent decades and runs generally like this: Because the Fathers of the Church, and later medieval giants such as St. Thomas Aquinas, drank from the wells of pagan philosophy, it is permissible, indeed laudable, for today’s Catholics to “engage” or “dialogue” with non-Catholic—even non-Christian or secular—“thought.” I use the term “thought” here loosely because oftentimes the “engagement” or “dialogue” being encouraged has more to do with religious-cultural traditions rather than any product of natural reason. That fact alone is more than sufficient to distinguish what St. Thomas was doing with the Corpus Aristotelicum from what certain fashionable Catholics have tried to do with, say, Buddhism or Vodun. Sticking with the realm of thought for a moment, it is necessary to note that even up until relatively recent times the Catholic “engagement” (or one might say “critique”) with non-Catholic (atheistic) philosophy was carried out in defense of the Faith and the Catholic intellectual tradition rather than a questionable attempt to artificially graft on some “alien wisdom.” Fr. Erich Przywara’s complex, and still widely misunderstood (or perhaps just underappreciated), critical engagement with Martin Heidegger comes quickly to mind. The Scholastic pushback against Modernism, which at best is only superficially Christian, is another example.

October 5, 2015 Church

Contrasts

Life, including time spent in West Michigan’s largest corn maze, has given me little time to write, which may be for the best given current events in Rome. Now comes the time when the contrasts between the “Optimists” and the “Realists” concerning Pope Francis’s reign will become even more apparent. The “Optimists,” well-intentioned though they may be, appear to lack the sobriety and historical vision of the “Realists.” A striking example of “Optimism” can be found over at Ethika Politika today where Audra Nakas writes:

At the end of the day, I trust Pope Francis because I trust that the Holy Spirit guides the Church and listens to our prayers. Whatever his weaknesses as a human being or as a leader, Francis is the Vicar of Christ leading us in this particular time and moment. He takes us out of our comfort zones because it’s his job to challenge us to live the Gospel; a person who doesn’t find him or herself challenged by Francis’ words and example isn’t listening.

For the “Realist” camp, I have been particularly impressed by the commentary of Elliot Milco whose recent blog series, “A Critique of Contemporary Ultramonantism” (now in four parts), is essential reading for those who wish to understand — and overcome — the contemporary pathology of papal maximalism. As the following extended quote shows, Milco has never been afraid to call balls and strikes when it comes to Francis’s pontificate. Perhaps we shouldn’t be either.

From an address given today by Francis to an inter-religious assembly gathered at the World Trade Center Memorial.

For all our differences and disagreements, we can live in a world of peace. In opposing every attempt to create a rigid uniformity, we can and must build unity on the basis of our diversity of languages, cultures and religions, and lift our voices against everything which would stand in the way of such unity. Together we are called to say “no” to every attempt to impose uniformity and “yes” to a diversity accepted and reconciled.

There have been a few moments during this pontificate when I’ve simply balked at Francis. His apology to a group of pentecostal protestants in Italy because in past years the Church had obstructed the growth of their denomination. His insistence in a speech after last year’s Robber Synod that doctrine had not been called into question, despite the overtly heretical implications of Walter Kasper’s proposal. But to date the above takes the cake. The man occupying the See of Peter is publicly preaching indifferentism. What a disgrace.