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June 23, 2016 Church, Eastern Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox Church, Roman Catholic Church

A Few Comments on “Life in the Orthodox Church”

V., the anonymous writer who runs the Perceptio web-log, has finally followed through on the time-honored tradition of Orthodox converts writing about . . . their conversion. In a post entitled “Lessons Learned from Rocky One to Rocky Three (Life in the Orthodox Church),” V. provides his own spiritual-psychological account of why other people enter Orthodoxy before briefly touching on his own reasons (theology, ecclesiology, liturgy, and so on and so forth). It’s not particularly persuasive, at least not when it comes to accounting for the myriad of reasons people leave some form of Protestantism (and occasionally Catholicism) for the Eastern Orthodox Church. With respect to ex-Catholics, while it is true that some are looking for a safe haven from the turmoils of contemporary Catholicism (heck, even Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei, is rumored to have entertained becoming Greek Orthodox following the Second Vatican Council), a good number of ex-Catholic Orthodox I have met over the years either married into Orthodoxy or weren’t strong churchgoers prior to finding the Christian East. Of course some certainly made their choice for concrete intellectual and/or aesthetic reasons, but they were not “traditionalists” in any strong sense of the word. Most traditional Catholics, for better or worse, take a fairly low view of the Orthodox, regarding them as “schismatics” or “heretics”; they are not inclined to convert, no matter how rotten things get in Rome. The few exceptions I have known to this rule (all priests and monks) did wind up in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR), but less out of a desire for “exclusivism” and more because ROCOR, when compared to some other Orthodox jurisdictions in North America, is relatively “safe” in its conservatism. (Also, if you happen to appreciate the Byzantine-Slavic liturgy done well, there’s no better place to go than a ROCOR parish.)

June 21, 2016 Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, Roman Catholic Church

On the Pan-Orthodox Council – Followup

For reasons which should be obvious to most, the “Great and Holy Council,” which is currently underway in Crete, has been on my mind quite a bit. Last Friday, over at First Things, I gave a sobering account of where matters stood on the eve of the Council without wishing to get bogged down with predictions (most of which probably wouldn’t come to pass anyway).

On Sunday, Pope Francis sent out the following tweet.

Let us join in prayer with our Orthodox brothers and sisters for the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church opening today in Crete.

— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) June 19, 2016

No doubt the Holy Father meant well, but Catholics should not forget the extent to which anti-Catholic animus coupled with ecclesiastical chauvinism have conspired to derail the Council. Now with word getting out that the Council is considering a draft document which would, in effect, “elevate” four Orthodox councils/synods to “ecumenical” status, a new line is being drawn in the sand between East and West — and to what end? The Orthodox world is splintering in profound ways along national and ethnic lines. Some are even predicting an eventual schism between the Ecumenical and Moscow patriarchates. How does it make sense, at this late stage in the game, to go beating the anti-Scholastic/anti-Papal war drums? Or perhaps this is a necessary growing pain which both Catholics and Orthodox must endure on the fraught path to unity. Now may be a good time to wonder if the oft-derided project of “Uniatism” isn’t the way to proceed, at least with respect to those parts of the Eastern Orthodox Church who are willing to prioritize both unity and truth without fictitiously shrinking the Body of Christ down to a ghetto.

In closing, let me call your attention to a quote by the Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov which Pater Edmind Waldstein recently posted up on his web-log, Sancrucensis. Maybe this says it all?

Otherwise, if apart from Peter the universal Church can expressly declare the truth, how are we to explain the remarkable silence of the Eastern episcopate (notwithstanding that they have kept the apostolic succession) since their separation from the Chair of St. Peter? Can it be merely an accident? An accident lasting for a thousand years! To those anti-Catholics who will not see that their particularism cuts them off from the life of the universal Church, we have only one suggestion to make: Let them summon, without the concurrence of the successor of St. Peter, a council which they themselves can recognize as œcumenical! Then only will there be an opportunity of discovering whether they are right.

June 17, 2016 Church, Eastern Orthodox Church

On the Pan-Orthodox Council

For those interested, my new piece on the forthcoming “Great and Holy Council” in Crete can be read over at First Things. Here’s an excerpt.

The Eastern Orthodox Church’s “Great and Holy Council,” which is set to begin in Crete on Sunday, June 19 (Eastern Pentecost), has been touted as Orthodoxy’s first “ecumenical council” in over a millennium. The facts on the ground are less grand. Despite nearly a century of on-and-off preparation, the Council has been at risk of derailment this month, as several members of Orthodoxy’s worldwide ecclesiastical confederacy have, for varying reasons, pulled out. The most striking defector is the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), the largest Orthodox jurisdiction in the world. But the absence of other historic churches, such as those of Antioch and Bulgaria, has left many asking whether the Council should proceed.

What is all the fuss about? There are several agenda items covering intra-Orthodox ecclesiastical governance that in theory should not be terribly concerning, but that nevertheless reveal deep divisions within Orthodoxy along ethnic and national lines.

June 15, 2016 Catholic Social Thought, Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, Orthodox Social Thought

A Quick Word on #ActonU

Some of this is repeat from earlier web-log posts, and for that I apologize. However, the launching of “Acton University” (AU) 2016 compels me to remind Christians of good will (Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant) that AU, despite its name, is not a credible academic endeavor on any level. Rather, it is a four-day indoctrination session which, inter alia, seeks to graft free-market ideology onto Christianity. And although the Acton Institute (AU’s chief sponsor) disclaims being a “Catholic organization,” the truth is that its chief operators are Catholic; a majority of its programs and publications are directed toward Catholics; and a great deal of energy is placed behind drawing both Catholic instructors and students to AU each year. In theory, this should mean that serious attention be put into making sure AU conforms with what is generally referred to as the “Catholic social tradition” or “Catholic social teaching” (or, as I prefer, the Church’s social magisterium) rather than worrying about making sure AU’s “message” coheres with the tenets of liberalism and capitalism. Moreover, AU should also endeavor to make sure that it presents Catholic teaching is a clear, open, and charitable manner rather than, say, offer a hit job course on Distributism taught by a free-market ideologue.

The problems with AU don’t end there, however. As a brief perusal of AU’s course list reveals, considerable emphasis is placed on economics and economic questions, and yet there is no evidence that the courses offered by AU are sufficient in scope and depth to both properly introduce a neophyte to the economics discipline and convey the considerable internal disputes which have animated economic research for decades. Rather, AU attempts to present the heterodox “Austrian School” of economics as normative while quietly setting aside the mountain of intra-disciplinary criticism of “Austrianism” (including its links to libertinism, materialism, and hedonism). Further, AU is geared toward promoting both liberalism and Americanism despite the fact the Catholic Church has routinely condemned both for nearly two centuries. Is any mention made of this during the AU lectures? Are those who attend AU even made aware that these ideological cancers are two of the chief culprits in the degradation of both society and the Church for more than a century? It would seem not.

Beyond just “Catholic matters,” AU should raise red flags for Eastern Orthodox Christians as well. Despite bringing on Orthodox priests and laity claiming to offer up authentic “Orthodox social teaching,” not a single course takes into account Orthodoxy’s strong anti-liberal tradition, a tradition recently reaffirmed by the Moscow Patriarchate in its statement, “Economy in the Context of Globalization.” While credit should be given to Dylan Pahman (a former Calvinist convert to Orthodoxy) for at least recommending students read “The Bases of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church,” Chapters VI and VII of that document (on labor and property) does not endorse AU’s pro-market views. Given what Pahman has written before on “Orthodox social thought,” one has to wonder how open he truly is to conveying what the Eastern Church, including its Fathers and spiritual luminaries, has had to say about political and economic liberalism.

As we enter a point in history where it has become abundantly clear that the so-called “promise of liberalism” has failed both Church and society, the existence of ideological black boxes such as the Acton Institute and its AU program should be a source of deep sorrow for all Christians. Instead of trying to impress the princes of this world and genuflect before Mammon, Christians should be preparing for the great struggle which is to come, the struggle to maintain our Faith, our families, and our Christ-centered way of being. AU promotes the falsehood that Christians can, nay, should be both in the world and of it. It is that very falsehood which has helped usher in an age of rapid, even militant, secularization and, in the process, placed millions of souls in peril.

May 23, 2016 Church, Eastern Catholicism, Roman Catholic Church

A Remark on Traditionalists and Collegiality

Rorate Caeli ran an odd post (for a traditionalist website) on Saturday decrying “false collegiality.” Why? Because the Holy See is now demanding that it must be consulted in advance of bishops establishing new institutes of consecrated life with their respective dioceses. While this move—which could have negative consequences for conservative and traditional institutes—does indeed appear to be a slap in the face to the idea of collegiality in the Church, since when have traditional Latin Catholics cared about such a thing? For nearly fifty years traditionalists have been attacking the very idea of collegiality since the promulgation of Lumen Gentium at the Second Vatican Council. Generally stated, traditionalists worry that collegiality undermines the authority of the pope by disrupting its inherent monarchical structure (assuming the Church has ever truly had such a structure as many traditionalists conceive of it today). Even during the days of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, when my traditionalists felt alienated from the Church and unhappy with various decrees emanating from the Vatican, they continued to call for an end to collegiality, or at least a reformulation of the concept along papal-monarchical lines. So what has changed? Has Francis’s pontificate become so nauseating to their ecclesiastical tastes that they are now willing to flip on collegiality, desiring for its full return rather than suffer from the apparent horrors of centralization?

Granted, there is plenty of room offered up by this recent move concerning institutes of consecrated life to wonder about the intentions and motives of Pope Francis. Francis, who has never been shy about speaking on the need for great collegiality and doctrinal decentralization in the Church, doesn’t seem to be following his own mind, at least not on this matter. Moreover, there have been plenty of points during Francis’s pontificate where it appears that he wants his own personal form of piety and idiosyncratic understandings of Catholic teaching to become normative for the universal Church without regard to the Church’s rich history of diversity. And he has certainly had no problem preempting the heads of particular churches in dealing with non-Catholic Christians, such as failing to invite Patriarch Sviatoslav of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (or any official UGCC representatives) to his historic meeting with Moscow Patriarch Kirill.

As I have written about elsewhere, there is a concerning inconsistently among some traditional Catholics when it comes to how the Church should be organized and governed. During this period of crisis when it seems that many popes and bishops have failed in their duty toward Christ and the Church, traditionalists long for decentralization, autonomy, and the right to follow their own consciences. But assuming things take a turn for the traditional, then many of these Catholics will no doubt agitate for a return to a strict monarchical model where the pope behaves more like the President of the United States and less like the Supreme Court. If anything now is the time for traditionalists, in concert with other serious Catholic thinkers, to reflect long and hard about the nature of the papacy, particularly as that nature is distorted or enhanced by the era of the “celebrity pope” and the ubiquity of modern media. If traditionalists desire neither collegiality nor centralization

May 16, 2016 Church, Politics

The Clickbait Option Continues

I am deeply wounded that Peter Wolfgang, author of last week’s misguided critique of the so-called “Benedict Option,” bypasses my own critical remarks on his article in his latest piece (ok, not really). It matters not, for the same problems present in his original article are alive and kicking in this one, specifically not knowing what the “Benedict Option” is and, more critically, offering neither empirical evidence nor even a plausible research model which could in some way, shape, or form show that the “Benedict Option” caused Donald Trump. Where I do find myself agreeing with Wolfgang is with respect to his assertion that the “Benedict Option” can have real-world effects. The problem is that it’s far from clear that it has had any effect thus far — a problem Wolfgang chooses to ignore.

As for the rest of Wolfgang’s article, it’s a meandering mess of anecdotes blended with confusing claims about elementary terminology. So I am left wondering why Wolfgang is still going on about this topic. Could it be that the “Benedict Option,” despite its limited circulation in the winder world, is still a “hot property” among religious writers and thus an easy draw for clicks? That was the hunch which closed-out my initial post on this matter, and Wolfgang’s latest provides me with no reason to revise it.

To close on a positive note, let me say this. Wolfgang is right to decry retreatism even if he does it in the context of an ill-fitting critique of an idea he doesn’t seem to grasp in full. If the “Benedict Option” is nothing more than a bald call for retreat, then it seems patently obvious to this Christian that it is impossible to support it. It seems, however, that there is a bit more to the “Benedict Option” than this, but it will probably take some time before Rod Dreher (and others who support it) fully articulates what the term means in full.

May 13, 2016 Church, Eastern Catholicism, Roman Catholic Church

Cons and Trads

Fr. Chad Ripperger (formerly) of the Fraternity of St. Peter has an excellent article up over at Faithful Answers discussing the differences between traditional and conservative (or what he calls “neoconservative”) Catholics. Here’s an excerpt:

Furthermore, neoconservatives’ very love for the Church and strong emotional attachment to the Magisterium cause them to find it unimaginable that the Church could ever falter, even with regard to matters of discipline. Like the father who loves his daughter and therefore has a hard time imagining her doing anything wrong, neoconservatives have a hard time conceiving that the Holy Ghost does not guarantee infallibility in matters of discipline or non-infallible ordinary magisterial teaching. Traditionalists, confronted by a Church in crisis, know that something has gone wrong somewhere. As a result, they are, I believe, more sober in assessing whether or not the Church exercises infallibility in a given case. That, allied to their looking at the present through the eyes of the past, helps traditionalists to see that the onus is on the present, not the past, to justify itself.

The only quibble I have with Fr. Ripperger’s piece — and it is a minor one — is that it doesn’t account for the experiences of Eastern Catholics, most of whom do not fit neatly into either the traditionalist or conservative category. While there is what I would call a “natural conservatism” among the Eastern churches, centuries of living in a de facto ecclesiastical ghetto coupled with various influxes of “Latinization” have compelled contemporary Easterners to recover their respective traditions. This is all fine and good, but as most Latins know by now, the process of “recovery” is often fraught with difficulties and subject to being hijacked by renovationists.

May 12, 2016 Church, Politics

A Little More on Trump and the Benedict Option

After yesterday’s minor scuffle over Peter Wolfgang’s dubious suggestion that the so-called “Benedict Option” dumped Donald Trump on our doorsteps, Andrew Haines — editor of Ethika Politika — is stepping into the mix with “The Benediction Option is No Match for Trump, And That’s the Point.” It’s not my business to defend the “Benedict Option”; that gig belongs primarily to Rod Dreher. As indicated in yesterday’s post, I have been critical of the “Benedict Option” in the past, though I believe Dreher’s instincts are in the right place when it comes to the gravity of our present situation and the need for Christians to have some meaningful response to it. As for Haines’s brief defense of the “Benedict Option,” which rests largely on the idea that it represents an intellectual, moral, and spiritual turn rather than a social movement with measurable effects, I am not entirely convinced. Yes, Haines is right to highlight that the “Benedict Option” is in no way, shape, or form intended to stop the political ascendancy of someone as noxious as Donald Trump (or Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders for that matter), but if the thinking behind the “Benedict Option” is ever internalized by a sizable portion of American Christians, it most certainly will produce what Haines calls “real-world effects.” But will those effects be salutary? How one answers that question no doubt depends on how one understands being in the world but not of it (or, as is increasingly commonplace among contemporary Christians, being both in and of the world).

May 10, 2016 Church

Tuesday Tumblings

Without pretending to give the topic the full treatment it is due, permit me to make the off-the-cuff observation that “aesthetic Catholicism,” a semi-intellectual posture predicated upon making the Faith a lifestyle choice, is now in full swing among certain circles of young(ish) Christians who think posting selfies which look like they were lifted from a Terrence Malick film and quoting Chesterton sets them apart. Granted, this “brand” of contemporary Catholic posturing is exponentially less noxious than the “bourgeois Catholicism” which is normative in most parts of the Western Catholic world today. If there an ideological glue binding both camps together it is papalotry, or a certain type of papalotry where the “Pope is the Faith; the Faith is the Pope.” Make any mention that Christ had 12 Apostles rather than one and all of these well-intentioned, well-meaning Catholics will start murmuring about your “crypto-Protestantism” and “lack of obedience” to the Holy Father. (And what of God the Father? He’s secondary.) What splits these two camps is how they internalize the magisterium, or a certain reading of the magisterium. The “bourgeois Catholic” believes that the Church provides a pathway to being both in the world and of it with nary a second thought. Liberalism can and will save us. The “aesthetic Catholic” thinks salvation comes from Bernie Sanders and microbreweries.

All of these nonsense abides above and beyond classic distinctions between conservative and traditional Catholics. As mind-boggling as it may be, many a “bourgeois Catholic” positively embraces the Tridentine Mass and may have even read an article or two from the Summa one time. The “aesthetic Catholic” likes the Tridentine Mass, too, because it is (superficially) counter-cultural, “beautiful,” and all that jazz. What both groups seem to be missing is an eschatological horizon, a sense that Christ came to lead all souls to Heaven not make the historical conditions ripe for alt-country music or golf courses. On a lower level, one might suspect there is a general lack of seriousness among both camps — the same lack of seriousness one finds among all liberals. (And do not get me wrong, dear reader: “aesthetic” and “bourgeois Catholics” are both thoroughly liberal in orientation.)