Category: Roman Catholic Church

February 11, 2016 Eastern Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox Church, Roman Catholic Church

Francis/Kirill Meeting – Commentary Roundup

I doubt I will have much time to write on the upcoming meeting between Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow until after it happens. Not surprisingly, there is a small flood of commentary out there already. I have linked to some of it here and here. The following links are also worth checking out (all from a Catholic perspective). If anyone knows any solid Orthodox commentary, please feel free to post links in the combox or send them to me on Twitter (@opuspublicum).

February 7, 2016 Church, Eastern Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox Church, Roman Catholic Church

Brief Thoughts on the SSPX’s Position Regarding the Francis/Kirill Meeting

The Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) has started to weigh-in on the upcoming meeting between Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow (more here). Using excerpts from several sources, including John Allen’s thoughtful editorial at Crux, the Society appears concerned that the meeting will sow confusion in the Catholic Church and intentionally blur the lines about which way is the true path to Salvation. In particular, the SSPX objects to how “[p]ast ecumenical gestures with Orthodox have weakened not only the image of the Pope but his very function as defined by Christ Himself” and the Catholic Church’s de facto policy of not seeking to convert the Orthodox (more on this below). With respect to the first charge, the function of the papacy has been a hot-button issue for decades, not only among those concerned with keeping up good ties with the Orthodox, but among Latin traditionalists as well. Traditional Catholics have loudly condemned the “papalotry” which has emerged during the modern era of the “celebrity pope” and the idea that the pope is unlimited in what he can do with respect to faith, morals, liturgy, and so forth. I don’t think the Orthodox (particularly the Russian Orthodox Church) would disagree with this in the slightest. Where the SSPX and the Orthodox likely disagree is how far the pope can reach into the affairs of other patriarchal churches. In lamenting the Catholic Church’s rejection of two Orthodox bishops which wished to enter into communion with her in 1989, the Society decries this as false ecumenism while saying nothing about the fact that it’s just such an apparent overreach of authority which the Orthodox abhor. Had the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church had its rights as a sui iuris church respected, the two aforementioned Orthodox bishops could have been received without incident. It’s somewhat ironic to think that the SSPX would likely defend the right of the pope to freely make such a flagrant incursion into the affairs of the UGCC even if it leads to very troubling results.

As for the Balamand Declaration—which the SSPX is, understandably, unhappy with—it’s, well, complicated. As Fr. Aidan Nichols discusses in his excellent book Rome and the Eastern Churches, Balamand “was well intentioned but underwent the unfortunate fate of pleasing no one.” The Eastern Catholic churches were not unanimous in celebrating Balamand, and the hardline Orthodox were wrong to think that the outcome of the statement would be the abolition of the so-called “Uniate” (Greek Catholic) churches. Whatever politics Rome has tried to play with the Orthodox East has not gotten in the way of Orthodox faithful converting to the Catholic Church. Both the Code of Canon Law of the Oriental Churches and the particular law of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church contain specific provisions for the reception of non-Catholic Eastern Christians into the Catholic Church. Although some Catholic ecumenists may have hoped that Balamand would result in a “live and let live” approach to relations with the Orthodox, that hasn’t exactly been the case, as evidenced, for instance, by recent events in Ukraine. Moreover, the SSPX may, in its zeal, fail to see that the self-guided mission of the Eastern churches is not to simply “cherry pick” individual Orthodox from their confession, but to serve as a bridge to full ecclesiastical communion between East and West.

Although now is not the place to get into the “dirty details,” it is worth noting that “Uniatism,” as a practical policy, has left behind a mixed legacy which some argue has had more to do with East/West estrangement today than anything else. (Others argue that’s nonsense, but again, I leave that debate to another time and place.) That the Catholic Church has decided to step away from it is not surprising, particularly since very little good will come from Catholics attempting to setup “parallel churches” to those already established in the East. The “game plan” now, for better or worse, is to dialogue with those already established churches with an eye towards full ecclesiastical communion. It is unfair to the hopes and intentions of both John Paul II and Benedict XVI to say that they simply were looking for an “I’m ok, you’re ok” approach to the Christian East; they desired for the wound of schism to be healed. While the SSPX is entitled to its own opinion on how to treat that injury, it would perhaps be best if it wrote with more circumspection on the matter and with a wider understanding of the historical and political problems which have kept Christendom tragically split for centuries.

February 6, 2016 Church, Eastern Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox Church, Roman Catholic Church

Two Paragraphs on Frank and Kirill in Cuba

Despite the fact the always-correct and never-hyperbolic traditional Catholic website Rorate Caeli said it would never, ever happen, Pope Francis is set to make history on February 12 when he meets with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow. Two essential pieces of Catholic commentary on the event are Adam DeVille’s article from Our Sunday Visitor, “When Pope Meets Patriarch,” and the statement released by the Metropolitan Andrey Skeptytsky Institute, housed at St. Paul University in Ottawa, Ontario. So far I have not been able to find (in English) any concentrated Orthodox commentary on the upcoming meeting, though a recent press conference held by Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev) seems to downplay the ecumenical significance of the event while reminding everyone that Moscow still has a beef with the “Unia” (that is, the Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine). No soberminded person—Catholic or Orthodox—should look on the meeting as much more than a small, but significant, step in warming relations between the two largest Christian confessions in the world and, hopefully, opening a pathway to establishing greater cooperation on issues of common interest in the future. The central (advertised) point of the February 12 meeting will be the persecution of Christians in the Middle East with a joint declaration expected to be signed.

Although the apparent aims and intents of Francis and Kirill’s meeting are quite modest, that doesn’t mean there aren’t nervous observers on both sides of the confessional divide. Some Ukrainian Greek Catholics are understandably worried that Francis will throw their interests under the bus in order to appease Kirill, a real (though hopefully unlikely) possibility given the Moscow Patriarchate’s decades-long insistence that the very existence of the UGCC was a barrier to any meeting between pope and patriarch. Francis—the “pope of surprises”—could cut the other way, of course, stating in clear terms that the violence in Ukraine must stop and the freedom of the UGCC be respected. Orthodox observers, particularly those who buy into the Moscow Patriarchate’s “Russian World” ideology, will not be happy if Kirill appears to budge on the (problematic) idea that Ukraine, by right, belongs to Moscow. End of story. At the same time, non-Russian Orthodox may find it disconcerting that the Moscow Patriarchate appears to be drawing closer to Rome (at least strategically) and surmise that it is little more than a power play on the Russian Church’s part. Arguably the best possible outcome—at least at this stage in the game—is for both men to build enough trust in each other that they can move forward on a number of prickly issues in the near future. For now, Catholics and Orthodox should be pleased if the two sides can speak with one voice on the atrocious violence in the Middle East and the fate of the region’s historic Christian populations.

January 17, 2016 Liturgy, Roman Catholic Church, Uncategorized

Some Thoughts on the Recent Tridentine Mass Dustup

Traditional Catholics have been weeping and gnashing their teeth since the appearance of Msgr. Charles Pope’s National Catholic Register blog post, “An Urgent Warning About the Future of the Traditional Latin Mass.” I confess I don’t know why. Though Pope relies largely on anecdotal evidence and some odd comparisons to the tragic decline of Catholic schools, his main point about the need for traditionalists to engage in more evangelization is sound. Joseph Shaw, the former head of the Latin Mass Society, disagrees. Writing over at Rorate Caeli, Shaw takes umbrage with Pope’s analysis, pointing out that the numbers don’t lie: the number of traditional Masses around the world is growing; traditional Catholic communities foster vocations to the priesthood and religious life; and traditional Catholics can’t be blamed for the fact their non-traditional brethren of the past two generations or so have been grossly under-catechized and are thus not in a position to truly experience – or have “fruitful participation” in – the Tridentine Mass. I don’t disagree necessarily with Shaw’s first two observations; the last comes a bit too close to cheap blame-shifting for my tastes. I always thought one of the central “points” of the traditional Catholic movement was to correct the catechetical problems introduced by bishops and priests over the past 50 years and that promoting the Tridentine Mass came hand-in-hand with delivering orthodoxy Catholicism. Why does Shaw seem to be disavowing this element of the traditionalist apostolate?

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December 29, 2015 Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, Roman Catholic Church, Spirituality, Theology

Disconnected Thoughts on “Holy Rus,” Revival, and Current Conditions

19th C. Russian Orthodoxy—Holy Rus!—is often romanticized by contemporary American Orthodox Christians suffering from an inferiority complex, triumphalism, or both. Even so, it would be unfair to dismiss the genuine religious revival which took place in Russia leading up to the Soviet Revolution, a revival which was as spiritual as it was intellectual. Although it would take some decades before their presence was truly appreciated by the institutional Russian church, the 1800s housed the Optina Elders, St. Theophan the Recluse, St. Philaret of Moscow, and Bishop Ignatius Bryanchaninov. Ss. Seraphim of Sarov and John of Kronstadt serve as spiritual bookends for the century while the ecclesial careers of Metropolitans Evlogy (Georgiyevsky) and Anthony (Kraphavitsky)—two of the most important figures in the history of diaspora Russian Orthodoxy—began. Theologically, most know the 19th C. as a time when “Russian Scholasticism” (for lack of a better term) began to yield some turf to such different currents as a nascent Patristic revival and, much more controversially, German Idealism-inspired mysticism such as Sophiology. Much of this good work would be either destroyed or dispersed during the first half of the 20th C. and arguably it failed to fully refresh the present-day Russian church despite the heroic attempts of some churchmen to reconnect 21st C. Russian Orthodoxy with the possibilities present in the 19th.

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December 22, 2015 Church, Eastern Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox Church, Roman Catholic Church

Edward Peters contra the East: A Reply

Edward Peters, who runs the popular canon-law blog In the Light of the Law, is on a crusade for clerical celibacy, and he’s not confining it to the Latin Church alone. Here is what he wrote about the Christian East:

Eastern approaches to married clergy. I say Eastern “approaches” to married clergy because there is not, contrary to popular impression, just one approach among Eastern Catholics. Not all Eastern Churches allow married clergy, and among those that do permit it, not all clerics marry. Still, Eastern Catholic Churches generally accept married men into holy Orders and allow those men to live more conjugato. Now, for reasons that go beyond canonical, Rome has long steered clear of directly addressing how a married, and essentially non-continent, clergy took hold in the East (though most eyes look back to the controversial Synod of Trullo) and asking, in that light, whether this practice should be merely tolerated, mutually respected, or positively protected. A synod purporting to treat of clerical celibacy in the Catholic Church must honestly address the divergence between East and West in this regard.

There are some puzzling remarks made in this paragraph. Let’s go through them.

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December 21, 2015 Eastern Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox Church, Roman Catholic Church

The Ways of Greek Catholicism in the West – Latin Relations

Note: This post is the overdue third part of a “series” of posts on Greek Catholicism in the West. The first two installments are available here and here.

The centuries-old relationship between Latin and Greek Catholics has been a tumultuous one. Although this is not the place to get into the fraught history of Latin interventionism in Greek—indeed all Eastern—Catholic affairs, most are now aware of the gross injustices suffered by Greek Catholics in the West, particularly in the United States at the hands of Bishop Ireland, Rome’s greatest gift to the Eastern Orthodox Church. Since at least the time of the Second Vatican Council, Latin/Greek relations have improved significantly, though most contemporary Catholics, if they know anything of the Christian East at all, remain content to view Greek Catholicism (Ukrainian, Ruthenian, Melkite, etc.) as little more than an “exotic attraction,” something “interesting” to pay notice to now and again, but not much else. Traditional Latin Catholics have a more complicated relationship with the Greeks. Although there often exists a surface admiration for the East’s liturgical ethos, traditionalists are largely dismissive of, if not directly hostile toward, Greek Catholic traditions such as married clergy or the East’s cool reception of certain Western theological and spiritual currents. What this means in practice is that while there have been a number of conservative Latin Catholics who have made a new home in Greek Catholicism as a way of escaping the liturgical, spiritual, and moral rot which has beset much of contemporary Latin Catholicism, Latin traditionalists have often found it hard to accept Greek Catholicism as anything more than a second-best option in the midst of a first-rate crisis.

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December 7, 2015 Eastern Orthodox Church, Roman Catholic Church

Hart, American Catholicism, and Francis

Who knows? America is such an odd combination of Christian pieties and post-Christian habits of thought. What other country could produce persons, for instance, who believe it possible to be both Christian and libertarian (which makes me think of Enoch Soames, the “Catholic diabolist”)? With our occult belief in the possibility of limitless “wealth creation,” how do we dare acknowledge the limits of nature, human or cosmic? But Francis cannot ­really concern himself with our peculiarities and perversities. For all its economic power, American Catholicism is only one minor and rather aberrant party within the worldwide communion; and Francis is writing for his Church, not for America. Of course, it is possible that one day a Christian view of reality will take root even here, in this the first constitutionally and culturally post-Christian land in Western history. But—and, again, not being a Roman Catholic, I may have no right to say this—I do not think it is incumbent on the pope to hold his tongue until it does.

– David Bentley Hart, “Habetis Papam,” First Things

I confess that I am still in shock that David Bentley Hart’s simultaneous critique of American Catholicism and praise of Pope Francis wasn’t met with more commentary (just lots of Facebook shares). Hart, undoubtedly the finest Christian blowhard pontificating today, has a funny way of irritating Catholics almost as much as he vexes his Eastern Orthodox coreligionists. Whether he is flubbing the basics of natural-law teaching or childishly mocking natura pura, Hart just can’t seem to help himself, though in this instance at least he is right on the money when it comes to Americanist Catholic ideology. What he doesn’t seem to understand is why so many Catholics are truly frustrated with Francis. Yes, the peculiarities of American movement conservatism have something to do with it; but the core problem is that so many of Francis’s words and actions appear to be out-of-sync with the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Some like to hold to the childish belief that Orthodox should not “meddle with” the affairs of the Catholic Church and instead tend to their own disheveled ecclesiastical nest. I disagree. While Hart perplexes me at times with the clumsy way he handles Catholic teaching, there can be little doubt that he is far more sympathetic toward Western Christianity than most Orthodox writers. More importantly, however, Hart (and other Orthodox observers of “things Catholic”) brings an outsider’s perspective to the table which — in a perfect world — could help temper Catholic chauvinism. The problem with Hart in particular is that his track record up to this time hasn’t been particularly good since he successfully needled a certain brand of American Catholics for their puerile dismissals of Terrence Malick’s film, The Tree of Life.

As for Francis, it might behoove Hart to reflect on what his fellow Orthodox think of the man as well and what, if any, positive ecumenical fruits can come from his papacy. As I have written elsewhere, while I do believe that Papa Frank sincerely desires East/West reunion, he fails to understand how his rhetoric, liturgical style, and seeming blindness to the problem of “papalotry” militate against positive relations with the Orthodox East.  It will take a far more broad-minded and circumspect pope (or series of popes) to make the possibility of reunion even remotely plausible. As it stands, world Orthodoxy is a mess, with patriarchates and autocephalous churches remaining at each other’s throats. It also doesn’t help that there is a contingent of neo-Orthodox out there who have basically adopted a Jansenist position with regards to grace outside of their narrow, heavily policed, borders. Francis cannot transcend those difficulties, and I have my doubts that he is even fully aware of them. 

November 30, 2015 Eastern Orthodox Church, Roman Catholic Church

A Followup Comment on the Neo-Orthodox

Is it possible that the American neo-Orthodox attack on Catholic sacraments is simply a manifestation of the same inferiority complex which has haunted other parts of world Orthodoxy for centuries? That question was proposed to me in a recent chat and I was simply unsure how to answer. It is important always to bear in mind how many Anglophone neo-Orthodox polemicists are either converts or, now, the children of converts. Having drunk the dregs of Protestantism for many years, many of these folks still can’t shake the idea that Rome is the “Great Satan” which has arbitrarily imposed its will on Western Christendom for a millennium, distorting doctrine and obscuring truth all along the way. Of course, these are the same folk who believe that the “Uniates” represent a class of duped-and-deluded wannabes who kneel before their king on the Tiber while liturgically play-acting with stolen rites. Far be it for the neo-Orthodox to take a frank look at history—including their own tumultuous history—before drawing radical conclusions about the spiritual state of millions of fellow Christians.

Catholics should keep in mind that the neo-Orthodox do not represent world Orthodoxy. In fact, they do not even represent American Orthodoxy despite the latter’s annoying penchant for repacking shopworn Protestant polemics and calling them “apologias” for the East. Some of the neo-Orthodox will parade about claiming that their “theological critiques” of, say, Roman ecclesiology or Latin sacramental theology have “never been answered.” The truth is that they are largely ignored. Why? Because all of this “stuff” has already been hashed out in respectable theological circles. Moreover, neo-Orthodox ignorance of what the Catholic Church actually believes and professes can be downright painful. As Fr. Robert Taft has stated numerous times, if you want to know what the Catholic Church actually holds to, Google it. The Catholic Church does not hide its doctrines or praxis; they are contained in numerous documentary sources for all to read. I know some Orthodox have an exaggerated interest in “mystery.” Well, I hate to break it to them, but Catholic teaching is not mysterious; it is right there, out there, and in the open for all to see, if they are so inclined.

This doesn’t mean that Catholicism is not riddled with its fair amount of theological disputes and hermeneutical quarrels. Drop by Google Scholar sometime and type in “Second Vatican Council” or, heck, “Dignitatis humanae” and you will quickly find yourself drowning in a sea of scholarship. What is wonderful today is how many of these disputes are carried out with an “Eastern perspective” as well. It is simply not possible to make absolute statements on what the Church has “always believed” without incorporating what the Eastern churches have also “always believed.” Is it neat and clean? No. Is it messy and divisive? Sometimes. But is it necessary? Absolutely. If the neo-Orthodox think for one second that the Catholic Church and her theologians have not seriously considered the Eastern perspective on sacraments, ecclesiology, liturgy, and spirituality, they are simply kidding themselves (or are woefully ignorant). Maybe the neo-Orthodox won’t always be pleased with the conclusions Catholic theologians draw, but those conclusions are not produced in ignorance of the Church’s universal intellectual patrimony. In other words, the neo-Orthodox are not sitting on a legitimate treasure chest of “secret knowledge” (Patristic consensus!) into which they can freely dip to trump Catholic doctrinal claims.

There’s always room for improvement, of course. Although the last half-century of Catholic thought has been something of a mixed bag, the introduction of Eastern sources, including contemporary Eastern theologians, into Catholicism’s theological discussion has been a great boon for the Church. I see no reason why Catholics should not take Orthodox claims seriously, at least so long as those claims are coming from individuals who are interested in doing more than grinding axes and spouting triumphalist rhetoric. As I have stated many times before, the Orthodox Church does not possess a greener pasture for any Christian to run to. Orthodoxy does have certain comparative advantages over present-day Catholicism, but it is also riddled with internal problems (not to mention doctrinal confusion) that no Catholic should envy (or mock for that matter). Most are well aware of Catholicism’s problems. They are advertised daily. Orthodoxy, for better or worse, skates by criticism in the West because it is largely an unknown quantity. That is its triumph and its tragedy.