Living in the great state of Michigan has many benefits, but also some costs. One such cost is that you have to prepare for Arctic-like conditions moving in before Advent. For those of you stuck inside today, along with everyone else, I present some productive ways to use your time:
- Adam DeVille, “Christian Unity Cannot Be Built on Lies,” Catholic World Report – The Catholic pushback against the calumnies, obfuscations, and deceptions of Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Hilarion Alfayev is in full swing. After spending the past year slandering the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Hilarion has “graduated” to promoting a dubious ecclesiology in what appears to be an attempt to assert the Moscow Patriarchate’s practical centrality in world Orthodox affairs. With his customary erudition, DeVille takes apart Hilarion’s recent talk on primacy in the Orthodox Church (discussed briefly here) while calling on Western Christians to no longer extend invitations which, at this juncture, provide little more than occasions for Hilarion to sin.
- Joseph Shaw, “FIUV Position Paper 21: The Extraordinary Form and the Eastern Churches,” Rorate Caeli – Several months ago I wrote an article for The Angelus magazine, “Roman Liturgy in the Light of the East,” in which I opined that Roman Catholics had a great deal to learn about the liturgical ethos of the Christian East, including the Orthodox. In this paper, Shaw goes a step further, arguing that “[r]espect for and continued usage of the Extraordinary Form is a necessary practical corollary of the long-standing official policy of the Holy See, of respect for the traditions of the Eastern Churches.” I couldn’t agree more.
