Recently I was listening to Basque Celtic music–a hauntingly beautiful piece called “The Joyful Mysteries.” Who knew there was such a thing as Basque Celtic music? Or a Basque Celtic spirituality?

Only in the Catholic Church can you find such a rich, rich diversity of cultural expressions…and such a rich variety of spiritualities. I would miss that terribly if I had to embrace any other communion. Which is one reason why I never could or would.

An extremely attractive thing about the Roman Communion, IMHO: what I’ve heard described as legitimate theological diversity within a common dogmatic framework.

Duns Scotus, Patristics of the Ethiopian Church, Gregory Palamas, Hahn’s Covenant Theology, Augustine, Chrysostom, Anselm, Lombard, Abelard, Aquinas, Meyendorff, Bernard of Cl., Von Balthazar, Rahner, Kung, Wojtyla, Soloviev, Ratzinger, Gilson, Mauritain, Lonergan, de Lubac, MacIntyre, Courtney Murray, Dulles, Chardin, Chesterton, Newman, Ligori, Hippolytus of Rome, Schmemann, Loyola, Irenaeus, Bonaventure, Cyprian, Cyril of Alexandria, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, Pachomius, Origen, Justin Martyr, Ignatius of Antioch, Olivier Clément….

All of these folks and so many more are on their plate and part of the legitimate cafeteria they can use to fill their plates and write an African theology in a new key with the voices of people who have come to calvary in their history of colonialism and poverty.

I don’t want to belabor a point or be accused of being triumphal, but in the bossom of Holy Mother Church they find a wealth and teasury of the voices of Church that are cruciform in their transcendence of time and geography. We have the East, West, North, and South, we have the Early Church, the Middle ages, the modern era. The voice of the East IS part of the chorus of theological voices that from age to age in every time and place have assented to TRUTH.

Orthodoxy being blessed with the beauty and truth of the Greek East (forgive my boldness) needs to consider that it isn’t their witness (which we already have thanks to unias from all particular churches) that they alone bring to the altar so much as it is the case that Rome, appreciating (even sometimes slowly) the gold of the East counts it already as part of her patrimony and DOES defend it fiercly. The polemics of “You need us lest you just wallow in your own scholasticism” is as shallow as it is Hollow – from the Russicum to the Greek College and further East still to the Assyrian College the voices of the East Resonate in the Eternal City itself.

It should be noted that the Patriarch of Constantinople was not only educated in Rome but was experienced firsthand the largess of the Papal charity of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association which stridently works to allocate funds donated from the world over to the support of the East – including Orthodox Churches. Go to their website and you will find solicitation for the financing of the construction and support of Greek Orthodox Churches in the mid-east.

On a local level my parish is one of three in Ohio that is home to ORTHODOX missions. That is right, when our 9:30 DL is done and I am in the sacristy removing my server’s vestments I am greeted by the smiling face of an Antiochian Orthodox priest who is preparing to celebrate DL for his flock – we have (as have several other parishes) opened the doors and provided our altars for the succor and support of Orthodox faithful (another Ruthenian parish does so for the Antiochians, the Melkites do so for the Ethiopians) in pure love and caritas for our brothers and sisters in need of a holy place and holy table.

The weekend after the Holy Father was in the US he was back in Rome to ordain 29 men from around the world to the Holy Priesthood. One of whom was an Iraqi, and one of his guests was an Assyrian bishop that within two weeks would we welcomed to the altar via unia at Pentecost along with his clergy and faithful. The message was as strong and clear as on Easter when one of 7 initiaited into the Church at Saint Peter’s was an Egyptian born Muslim, Maghdi Allam; we are universal, we will stand in the gap and gloriously proclaim truth, and we will gather those who have been baptized into Christ in our folds, protect them, strengthen them, and support them.

So for all the talk of “Rome needs the east” this Greek Catholic responds simply: We agree, we have them, and we support them. A question that many of us have been otherwise far to humble to ask is simply this: honestly, how might you need us?

I would also like to clarify my own comments somewhat. When I suggested that the Christian explosion in the Global South may be rendering much of the East-West fracas irrelevant, I did not thereby mean to denigrate the concerns of Eastern Christians. Nor did I at all mean to imply that Eastern insights are not extremely valuable and necessary.

What I did mean is this: In the areas in which Christianity is currently exploding, the issues that exercise Internet polemicists scarcely even register. African Christians, for instance, are wrestling with the HUGE threat of militant Islam. Does anyone really think they are twisted into a pretzel over Palamism vs. Thomism? Does anyone imagine that they are ready to fall on their swords in defense of a dogmatic rejection of the Filioque? Certain Internet polemicists who shall be nameless–and whom we all know well–may have the luxury of drawing lines in the sand over such questions. But Christians in the Global South–where Christianity’s center of gravity is shifting–have far more pressing concerns to attend to.

The Church’s future lies with these Global South Christians, not with the polemicists of medieval Byzantium and their Internet proteges.

Diane

That is polemic or simply rhetoric, it is an honest question. As popular in the Anglo-phone world as folks like the late Father John Romanides’ view of the “graceless” west has become… And as much as such personal speculations are enshrined in the mind of some as the definative and de fide understandings of what it is to be Orthodox…. Well the fact of the matter is that the world is far bigger than that and those pet opinions and theological speculation – by nature of the lack of councils in a conciliar church or an organ with final authority to step forward and say “This is in fact what we definatively teach” – they are just speculation. When it comes to asessing the writings of Fr. Romanaides versus the writings and theologies of Saint Peter Moghyla, whose opinion is definative?

It is imperative to examine a few things in understanding what the venerable bishop of blessed memory was working towards. Not the least of which is comparing the voice of Antiochian Orthodoxy and the situation (already existing) of intercommunion among the Greek Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and Catholics in places like Lebanon and Syria. Some here would be shocked and scandalized to visit and see who exactly has concelebrated DL at the Antiochian Greek Orthodox Patriarch’s own altar. Who approaches the chalice in Catholic, Oriental and Orthodox altars would positively give (some here) fits.

Sadly too many on either side of the debate are thinking that when Bishop Elias was offering his initiative he was saying “We believe all that Father Romanides (or some such) teaches.” When in fact that simply does not ring true. What is taught and practiced there is more than an ocean apart from the mileu we deal with here.

As to: “Putting in my 2 cents. Whether one like it or not, the “west” needs the Orthodox insights. Without them it becomes a one armed paper hanger. It may be true that the Roman Catholic Church is growing in the Global South but, unless it resolves the East-West difference, it won’t be able to resolve what will become a North-Sout difference.”

This is fair enough, but in a sense – depending upon what you are meaning – what the west needs in the East the Catholic Church does today have, however imperfectly. Go to Rome and you will see kamilavkas swirling in the wind and Catholic bishops, priests, deacons, writers and theologians from every corner of the east. We are the Eastern Catholics, we do bring – however imperfectly – voices of the East to the chorus of Catholic thought and theology. At Roman altars Christians from Eastern Europe, the Middle East, India and further gather. Through union with the Holy See, Armenian Catholic priests concelebrate with Greek Catholics, and may on occasion be joined by Anglican converts, Assyrian priests or Copts. As a function of being only a small percentage of a Church of 1.3B believers, they will be represented in proportions relative to their percentage of membership, but we are there.

It would be unsatisfying to say that we alone are enough – that the unias have yielded “enough of the east” – I don’t beleive that. But, and I think the Melkites are a good case in point – voices of Orthodoxy already exist in the Catholic Church from the mouths of those in unimpeded union with the Holy See.

To be truly Catholic, Rome needs the Greeks, and the Syrians and Assyrians and more. We do have them. We are there.

Thanks for calling my attention to this. I’ve been thinking a lot about these words of Patriarch Gregorios III, and am glad that the “prophetic vision” of Archbishop Elias still lives!

W.H.

Well, I’m not sure that’s true at all. ;)

I’m also not sure what you mean by “Orthodox insights.” Do they differ from Eastern Catholic insights? I thoroughly agree that the Church breathes with both lungs. But the late great Holy Father said this of the ECs, not of the EOs. This is not *at all* to disparage the latter. But where the Orthodox explicitly differ from us–e.g., in rejecting papal jurisdictional primacy, the Immaculate Conception, etc.–they cannot be said to constitute our other lung. There is no such thing as a double (contradictory) truth: one for East, one for West. The Theotokos does not cease to be the Immaculate Coneption when she crosses some geographical line. Either she is the Immaculata or she isn’t, period. Sure, the dogma can be explicated in terms the East would find more congenial. But that’s not the same thing as saying that the dogma can be dispensed with…or that it obtains only for the West. Both of these latter positions are illogical and ridiculous, as I’m sure you would agree.

That is why Pope Benedict, when he was Cardinal Ratzinger, told the Zoghbyites that they had to choose. They could not be Orthodox in the sense of rejecting papal primacy and the IC yet still remain Catholic. Truth does not contradict itself.