March 23, 2015 Liturgy, Spirituality

Sancti Gabrielis Archangeli

Annunciation_Icon_1

Tomorrow, March 24, should be the decorated feast of my namesake St. Gabriel the Archangel. After having his feast extended to the universal Church by Pope Benedict XV in 1921, it lasted for a mere four decades; then the liturgical reformers, in their “wisdom,” knocked St. Gabriel’s Day down to a mere commemoration. By the time the Novus Ordo Missae was promulgated by Paul VI, he was practically pushed off the calendar altogether, forced to share space with his fellow archangels on the day once known as Michaelmas. Apparently declaring the coming of our Lord and, later, authoring Axion Estin doesn’t cut the mustard anymore in our modern, enlightened, and thoroughly de-mythologized Roman Church. The Christian East, in its actual wisdom, not only retains the Feast of St. Gabriel on November 28, but gives him two additional commemorations on March 26 (for his role in the Annunciation) and July 13 (in honor of his many miracles).

If you get the chance, you might recite this hymn to St. Gabriel from the old Dominican breviary tomorrow. Given the many graces St. Gabriel has bestowed upon the Christians of the East throughout the centuries, perhaps a good intention would be for this Holy Archangel, and all his compatriots in Heaven, to bestow protection on our brothers and sisters in Christ who have been left to suffer unspeakable persecution at the hands of men driven mad by a false religion.

Gabriel, Angel of light, and strength of God! whom our Emmanuel
selected from the rest of the heavenly princes,
that thou shouldst expound
unto Daniel the mystery of the savage goat.
Thou didst joyfully hasten to the prophet as he prayed,
and didst tell him of the sacred weeks,
which were to give us the birth of the King of Heaven,
and enrich us with plenteous joy.
‘Tis thou didst bring to
the parents of the Baptist the wondrous and gladsome
tidings that Elizabeth, though barren, and Zachary,
though old, should have a son.
What the prophets had foretold from the beginning of the world,
this thou didst announce in all the fullness of the
mystery to the holy virgin,
telling her that she was to be the true Mother of God.
Thou, fair spirit, didst fill the Bethlehem shepherds with joy,
when thou didst tell them the heavenly tidings;
and with thee a host of Angels sang the praises of the newborn God.

As Jesus was in prayer on that last night, when a bloody sweat bathed His limbs,
thou didst leave Heaven to be near Him, and offer Him the chalice
that His Father willed Him to drink.

O blessed Trinity! strengthen Catholic hearts with the heavenly gift of faith. Give us grace, as we to thee give glory for ever. Amen.

March 22, 2015 Eastern Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox Church, Politics

Sunday Remarks on “Ukrainian Fascism,” Catholicism, and Russian Orthodoxy

Put “Ukraine” and “fascist” into Google (or Bing) and prepare for a torrent of hyperbolic hits, and a few sane ones as well. There is no shortage of “well-sourced stories” from mainstream news sites, Leftist rags, and, of course, Eastern Orthodox web-logs claiming that Ukraine, or at least all of Ukraine except the “Holy Russian” eastern portion of the country, is in the hands of fascists. Take for instance Alex Gordon’s latest contribution to the socialist news source The Morning Star. Although the headline indicates that the article concerns NATO’s role in fostering Ukrainian fascism, the actual product amounts to little more than smear journalism that fails to make elemental distinctions between far-right, fascist, and Neo-Nazi political movements and positions. Granted, in the murky world of Eastern European politics the lines sometimes blur easily, but not so easily that movements which are consciously nationalistic are automatically racist or genocidal. Gordon’s article also contains manifest untruths, such as claiming that Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian nationalist hero and Greek Catholic, “murdered thousands of Ukrainian Jews and Poles during World War II.” He did nothing of the sort and was, in fact, interned in a Nazi concentration camp when Ukrainian-backed atrocities took place in the country.

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March 17, 2015 Politics, World

Mark Lilla’s Tragic Trilogy on Islam and France

Mark Lilla has done little to endear himself to Christians, specifically Catholics, over the past decade, but that doesn’t mean he should be ignored. The Stillborn God, Lilla’s less-than-complete account of the role of religion and politics in modernity which largely failed to include Catholic thinkers, earned him some chastising words from George Weigel: “[W]riting any part of the history of the Western debate over religion and politics without a serious wrestling with Catholic sources is a bit like writing the history of baseball without mentioning the National League.” More recently, Lilla’s polemical review of Brad Gregory’s The Unintended Reformation was unsurprisingly ill-received despite having a few insightful words to offer on meta-narratives of spiritual-intellectual decline. Lilla, for reasons which remain foggy, hasn’t done much in the academic sphere since transferring from Chicago to Columbia. Happily, however, that has left him with sufficient time to keep running reviews and commentaries in various publications, including The New York Review of Books which just published Lilla’s three-part series covering, inter alia, France, Islam, and the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attacks. Comprised of two book reviews and an independent reflection, Lilla’s “trilogy” deserves to be read in full, not because everything he says is spot-on, but because unlike most commentators on “things political and religious,” Lilla has a surprising, even enchanting, way of detaching himself from secular-liberal commitments even if, at the end of the day, he appears dedicated to holding on to them.

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March 17, 2015 Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, Liturgy

Russian Orthodoxy and the SSPX

Ross Douthat’s recent New York Times blog post on Pope Francis’s critics contained an unfortunate but all-too-common mischaracterization of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) as “schismatic.” Like many who suggest that charge, Douthat backed it up with neither an argument nor a citation to an official decree. Both Frs. John Zuhlsdorf and John Hunwicke—two canonically regular priests in good standing with the Catholic Church—have explained why the “schismatic” label is improper; so, too, has the Society. The thing is, if the SSPX were truly schismatic, Catholics like Douthat (and countless others) would likely have no problem with Rome playing nice, as evidenced by the adulation and cheers which accompanies the brief, insubstantial, and soon-forgotten meetings between a pope and hierarchs of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Never mind of course that unlike the SSPX, the Orthodox do not accept concrete tenets of the Catholic Faith such as Papal Primacy and appear hostile (though not absolutely so) toward others (e.g., Immaculate Conception, Purgatory, and the Filioque). The Society’s “crimes,” according to its critics, are threefold: rejecting modern liturgical reform; criticizing Vatican II’s teaching on religious liberty; and opposing ecumenism. But where does Eastern Orthodoxy come down on these three issues? A brief, but informative, glance at Orthodoxy’s largest canonical body, the Russian Orthodox Church, reveals no measurable deviation from the Society’s positions.

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March 13, 2015 Eastern Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox Church

On Owen White to Orthodoxy

Despite many requests, I have never finished drafting a piece concentrating on why I chose to leave Eastern Orthodoxy for the Catholic Church four years ago. Some of my reasons have been woven into various blog posts, comboxes, e-mail exchanges, and Facebook threads, though I have kept several things to myself. When asked, either in person or privately online, to say a few words on the topic, I am usually willing to do so unless I get the sense that it’s nothing more than an invitation to a pointless back-and-forth. There may come a time when it is appropriate to write in more detail on what happened during Lent 2011, just as there may come a time to engage the more complicated questions about why I fell away from Catholicism in college, how I came back to Christianity, and what brought me to the Orthodox Church in the first place. The only reason to discuss those matters at all is if it might be of benefit to someone who is struggling to hold on to their faith amidst a storm of understandable, though ultimately unpersuasive, doubts. As for the question of choosing Rome over Constantinople (or Moscow), that’s harder to engage in a fair-minded manner. Most conversions occur for reasons which are neither easily explained nor objectively clear. Some compensate by peppering their tales with store-bought piety. Others opt for boldness, claiming that their intellectual rigor has brought them to the indisputable truth of Catholicism (or Orthodoxy). Maybe that’s happened a few times since the Great Schism, but I have my doubts.

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