While it is not a popular position for an Orthodox Christian, much less a priest, when I reflect on the history of uniatism—of those communities who left the Orthodox Church and joined themselves to Catholic Church—I am struck less by the machinations of Rome and more the failing of Orthodox Christians. Much of what we call uniatism is the fruit of our failure to be reconciled to each other, to support and encourage each other. How different would events then, and now, have unfolded if the actors had seen each other as the precious, irreplaceable gifts from God that each of us is to the other?
What concerns me as well is that even among those Orthodox Christians who left and joined themselves to Rome the same divisions still exist among Eastern Catholics. Forgive me for speaking so plainly, but I cannot help wonder at times at the tribalism that seems so deeply rooted in Eastern Christianity. Whether we are Orthodox or Catholic, we seem to prefer to be with “our people” rather than “those people.” This preference for our own comes at the expense of the Gospel and is in stark contrast to the beauty and wisdom I have found in Eastern Christianity.
The documents of the Second Vatican Council figured prominently in my own journey to the Orthodox Church. Not, as some might imagine, in a negative way, but in positive way. Reading the Council Fathers, looking at the reforms that they struggled to articulate and implement, was struck by the the prominence of the Christian East. To take but two examples, Vatican II’s emphasizes the conciliar nature of the Church on the universal level and the celebration of the Eucharist in the vernacular on the parochial level. I could add to this the renewed emphasis on the Liturgy of the Hours (or the daily cycle of services) and the universal call to holiness as the foundation of the life of the Church. Granted these elements were not always embodied with equal success, but the attempt was made and I saw in the attempt a turn to the East that lead me naturally to the Byzantine Catholic Church and ultimately to the Orthodox Church.
The Church of Rome looked to renew herself by looking East to re-appropriate for her own life the importance of the local Church. I wonder if it isn’t necessary for the Orthodox Church to look West and re-appropriate for ourselves the importance of the universal Church? Part of this process would , I think, require from us a sober reflection on the failures of uniatism not simple in the pejorative sense of the term, but also at the failure of Orthodox Christians then (and also now) to be true to our own ecclesiological vision. It is this failure I would suggest that failure that made reasonable the departure of some of us to Rome.
Let me be clear, I do not think that re-union with Rome is the answer. Yes, there must be reconciliation between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches and I hope for this in my lifetime.
But while reconciliation with the Church of Rome is essential, there is another, internal reconciliation that must happen as well. If it doesn’t then I am afraid we will see deeper divisions not only within the Church but from the Church as well. Even during the relative calm of recent years some 60% of those who join the Orthodox Church as adults leave us. Add to this the young people who leave as adults and the number of adults whose participation in the life of the Church is nominal at best, and the need for renewal and reconciliation on all levels of the Church becomes painful obvious.
Fr Gregory Jensen (Orthodox Church in America)
Thanks for the cross post!
In Christ,
+FrG
Please elaborate on what you mean when you refer to the Eastern Orthodox ecclesiastical vision.
Off topic…
Eirenikon,
Are you resurrecting your blog? Just wondering.
In ICXC
John
John,
Yes, I’m back. Oh, and now my screen name is Irenaeus. :-)
I was hoping to begin again with some additional contributors, and God willing, that may still happen.
Thanks for your interest!
Irenaeus,
Great news! I have advertised your resurrection.
In ICXC
John
Gil,
Thank you for your question–what I mean by “Orthodox ecclesiastical vision,” is our emphasis on the priority of local Church rather than (though not necessarily in opposition to) the Roman Catholic emphasis of the priority of the universal Church. In the Orthodox Church, the each local Church (i.e., the diocese) is catholic (and Catholic). Where I think there has been some historical differences between East and West on the issue of the local Church is that Orthodox Christians has generally understood that the local Church for all that it is Catholic in faith and practice is also unique in language, culture and a fairly broad range of customs. Unlike the Catholic Church were the general thrust has been towards uniformity, when we are at are best (which we weren’t in the time and circumstances immediately prior to the creation of the Greek Catholic Churches) the move has been toward a marked diversification of the local Church relative to other local Churches.
So, while Greek and Russian Orthodox are one Church, they are also unique local Catholic Churches with their own customs and practices. In my reading of the history of the Churches that eventually joined with Rome, there was an unjust suppression of their legitimate uniqueness as a local Catholic Church and an attempt to treat them as essential a colony of an elder sister Church. We still see these tension in the Orthodox Church today in the attempted Russification of the Church in the Ukraine and the dominance by Greek speaking hiearchs (actually from Greece) of the Arab speaking Church in the Middle East.
Does this answer your question?
AndIrenaeus good to have you back among the virtual living which iis blogdom! :)
In Christ,
+FrG
Delighted to learn that this blog is back!
Fr. Gregory,
Thank you for your thoughtful clarification.
I wouldn’t characterize the emphasis of the Catholic Church to be one of a priority of the universal Church over that of the local Church. Yves Congar describes the “mutual interiority” between the universal Church and the local Church (Collegiality and the Episcopate, chp 1). Joseph Ratzinger described each as the living cell “in which the whole vital mystery is open on all sides through the bonds of communion and preserves her existence as Church only through openness (Concilium, 37-38).”
Indeed this “mutual interiority” between the universal Church and the local Church is present in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church at Vatican 2 (Lumen Gentium, 23), in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (830-835), and in the Code of Canons of the Eastern (Catholic) Churches (Can. 177). I will recommend Henri De Lubac’s, The Motherhood of the Church (Part 2 Particular Churches in the Universal Church) for an extensive treatment. I also like Pedro Rodriguez, Particular Churches and Personal Prelatures (particularly Ch 5, The Universal Church and Particular Churches). Of course, Joseph Ratzinger wrote, Called to Communion, to address these very issues.
You mention the importance of the plurality of customs and practices. Karol Wojtyla expressed similar sentiments at the Roman Synod of 1969 when he said, “Communion in fact designates unity that is obtained between diverse members by a communication that tends always to be more profound and abundant. Consequently, plurality, even diversity itself, is to be understood in relation to communion, with the tendency toward unity.
De Lubac and Ratzinger identify two areas of concern where modern Eastern Orthodox ecclesiology is concerned. De Lubac calls to mind the warnings of Alexander Schmemann who contrasts the modern ecclesiastical knot with that of the primitive Church. The introduction of the “customs of autocephalous churches” introduces an ecclesiastical nationalism that reduces, at the very least the sense of catholicity (Motherhood of the Church, pg 230).
Ratzinger points out that modern Eastern Orthodox theologians such as Afanasieff, Zizioulas and Papandreou have placed a strong emphasis on the principle of the local Church to which they contrast the centralistic ecclesiology of Rome. These modern Eastern Orthodox theologians maintain that in the local Church, when the Eucharist is celebrated, because Christ is wholly present, nothing more is to be added. The inference is that the Petrine office is contradictory. The flaw in this modern construction is that while it is true that the local bishop by himself and with his presbyters who celebrates the Eucharist does indeed express the universal Church but he by himself needs a complementary principle. Ratzinger says, “if the Church becomes a group held together [merely] by her internal agreement, …her catholic dimension crumbles away.” If the Church comes together “from below and constitutes herself by the assembly of local Churches then her public nature is destroyed along with her all-embracing reconciliatory character.” Rather, from the earliest time of the Church, the figure of the apostle is the strongest refutation of every purely local conception of the Church. “He expresses in his person the universal Church; he is her representative, and no local Church can claim him for herself alone (Called to Communion pgs 81-83).” The apostle was the guardian of the universal Church because the Church was constituted as universal from her sending at Pentecost.
What are your thoughts?
Gil,
Thank you for your comment and reading suggestions. They are all excellent and things I read over the years or as a graduate student in theology, well, a long time ago.
The argument you outline above is interesting and has much to recommend it as a basis of discussion between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches as we work toward an eventual reconciliation. As I mentioned above, I do not see the local and universal levels as necessarily in opposition. One reason I wrote the post was to in fact make the argument for which you have cited the above sources.
All that said, and this is simply my own view and carries no dogmatic weight, my concern is that (in both Churches) the balance between local and universal is not as well lived out in practice as it is in theory. So for example, the unwillingness by Greek and Russian Orthodox churchman to embrace and foster legitimate diversity in matters of language and local control (to name but two) contributed to the creation of various Greek Catholic communities. Likewise, Rome’s unwillingness to embrace and foster legitimate diversity (for example the celibacy controversy in the US during the late 19th and early 20 th centuries when Rome forbid marriage clergy among Byzantine Catholics) contributed to the creation of what today are the Orthodox Church in America and the Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Church in America under the Ecumenical Throne.
My point here is that while both Churches argue for the legitimacy, even the centrality, of diversity within the limits of the dogmatic tradition, this diversity is honored more in theory than practice. Again, while I appreciate the sources you cite, I am afraid they do not convince me that the Catholic Church has done a particularly better god then the Orthodox Church.
Putting aside the polemic of latinization of the Eastern rites (there are examples of latinizations or westernization among the Orthodox as well), I think that the loss even within the Western Catholic Church of the various other, non-Rome Latin liturgical traditions is an indication that diversity is easier in theory than practice. I would add to this as well the effective suppression of the diversity of canonical traditions by the imposition of a single code of canon law for ALL Eastern Catholic Churches. Don’t mistake me here, I am not being polemical I am painfully aware of things like the Byzantinization of Western liturgical practices in those Orthodox communities that use some form of the Western rite. My point is only that diversity is something we embrace more readily as topic for conversation than we do as a practical matter.
Finally, Cardinal Ratzinger’s criticisms of the various proponents of Eucharistic ecclesiology have great merit. At the same time Orthodox theologians, for example Fr Lawerence Cleenewerck’s work as well as document produced by the Catholic/Orthodox commission meeting in the Ravenna have argued that Eucharistic ecclesiology also lends itself to the notion of some type of universal primacy. (I say “some type” simply to hold open the exact form and content of primacy. That there is to be a first among equals is clear–how that office is exercised is the real question.) So while I appreciate the Cardinal’s argument, I also think it shows (in his case at least) a tendency to give a priority to the universal level of the Church over the local. (And again, I am only responding to the criticism as you quoted it–not the whole book which I haven’t read since I first read it when it came out in, what, 1986? eeekkk!)
Well, anyway, them’s my thoughts on the matter. Thanks for askin’!
In Christ,
+FrG
Gil,
I was wondering if you would be so kind as to post your comment above on my blog as well? I think the folks who read it there would also be interested in what we are discussing. The url for the post is http://palamas.info/?p=601
Thanks!
+FrG
Fr. Gregory,
Thank you for your gracious and considerate reply.
I do appreciate that you do argue for “mutual interiority” of universal Church and local Church. Some of the examples that you give regarding closing the gate on diversity in the local Church require a bit more unpacking.
Regarding the establishment of the OCA and Byzantine Catholics it is important to place these event within the greater context of the National or Ethnic Church controversy that American Roman Catholic bishops were trying to untangle during the waves of European migration to the US in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Roman bishops in America foresaw the complication that would ensue should multiple jurisdictions compete for clear lines of hierarchy in the US. They fought the creation of National (so-called Ethnic) Parishes whose lines of jurisdiction reported to Eastern bishops or to Roman bishops in Europe. Additionally, they feared that these National Parishes would create ethnic ghettos in American cities that would be perceived as a threat to the American way of life in an age of severe racial and ethnic intolerance.
In their efforts to forestall this perceived disaster, Roman bishops in America petitioned the Vatican for a prohibition of married Eastern Catholic priests in an effort to bolster their efforts (a petition which was eventually granted in 1929, Cum Data Fuerit). They also insisted that bishops be the sole, personal owner of all diocesan property (in a clear violation of Canon Law) in an effort to inhibit the growth of National Parishes (a poison pill not realized until the multimillion dollar judgments of the modern child molestation crisis). Many bishops sought the total elimination of any Eastern Catholic hierarchy or clergy perceiving it to be a further threat to American enculturation and hegemony.
The result of these policies based on fear and intimidation was the mass exodus of Eastern and Roman Catholic communities with long standing traditions of Papal communion. Long before the prohibition of married Eastern Catholic clergy in America, Fr. Alexis Tóth, an unmarried widower and pastor of a Ruthenian Catholic Church was refused faculties by the Roman bishop of St. Paul, John Ireland. Fr. Tóth left Roman communion for the Russian jurisdiction in America and brought 17 Ruthenian parishes with him in 1891.
Fr. Franciszek Hodur, a Polish pastor in Scranton left the Roman diocese of Scranton in 1897 and took many Polish and Lithuanian parishes and formed what would become the Polish National Catholic Church.
In 1929, Ukrainian Greek Catholic parishes in Pennsylvania left Roman communion and created the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the jurisdiction of Constantinople. At issue was the chokehold that Pennsylvania bishops had on Eastern Catholic clergy. None were granted faculties. Soon Eastern Catholic parishes were given to Roman clergy, who, knowing nothing of Eastern Traditions, quickly introduced Latinizations. Additionally, Roman bishops began to insist on owning all Eastern parish property, contrary to existing Canon Law, threatening their very existence.
Additional Ruthenians left Roman communion in Pennsylvania in 1937 seeking communion this time with Constantinople and forming the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Diocese for the same reasons that Pennsylvania Ukrainians had left less than a decade before.
This pattern of the suppression of legitimate diversity on the part of Roman bishops in America continues today in many dioceses that unfairly limit (or prohibit) the Traditional Roman Liturgy, the Anglican Use or Personal Prelatures. I would argue that this kind of intolerance of legitimate diversity is rooted in human fear and sinfulness and not in any institutional shortcoming either Catholic or Orthodox.
I’ll address the Eastern Catholic Church Law and the notion of universal primacy in a subsequent post.
Fr. Gregory,
I’d like to continue the conversation regarding Latinizations, the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches and the notion of universal primacy.
The subject of Latinizations in the Eastern Catholic Churches is vast and rather touchy with some. Some practices were adopted because they seemed like a good idea at the time. There is quite a lot of this business going around these days in both East and West. However, the great bulk of the Latinizations adopted on the part of Eastern Catholic Churches were the result of civil legislation on the part of governments or regimes that prevented the Eastern Catholic Churches from looking or sounding just like their Orthodox counterparts. A well-known example of this may be found within the Ottoman Empire. The Caliph legislated the public dress of all Christian clergy (i.e., outlawing colorful dress or any use of the traditional turban mitre). Eastern Catholic clergy were prevented from looking like their Orthodox counterparts. As a result, Eastern Catholic Churches adopted the look and feel of the Roman Church. These phenomena took place anywhere there was a state religion and there were Catholic and Orthodox counterparts.
The first comprehensive and systematic codification of Roman Church Law was published in 1917. Of greatest influence both East and West was the Code Napoleon in 1804 and the Austrian General Citizens Law Code that provided a model for subsequent civil and religious systematic legal coda. Perhaps the most influential Eastern presentation was published by Serbian Orthodox bishop of Dalmatia, Nikodim Milas, who published, Orthodox Church Law in 1897 (Pravoslavno Crkveno Pravo) based upon his systematic and scientific system. It was quickly translated into German, Russian, Greek, Romanian, and Bulgarian and is still in print in Greek. Many Greeks canonists continue to publish collections but remain largely unknown outside the Greek world in part because they ignore publications of other Orthodox canonists in other languages. Indeed, canon law is only a discipline taught at the doctoral level in any systematic way by Catholic institutions.
Eastern Catholic codification of laws began in 1919, shortly after the first Latin code was published. It was decided for economical reasons to have one common code for all Eastern Catholic Churches leaving certain parts of law to be legislated as particular law by each Church for their own faithful only. The core of the present Eastern code came when Near Eastern governments asked the Church for legal norms. Vatican II produced an important fundamental legislative guideline with the Decree for the Eastern Catholic Churches in 1965. Codification of the present code began in 1972.
The present Eastern Catholic code is but a core. Guidelines published in 1974 stated that particular law enacted by each Church would accommodate differences in law of the Churches. This particular law, since it dwells on details, could be larger than the code itself. The Codification Commission was comprised of Eastern Patriarchs and Eastern bishops. Renowned Eastern canonist Fr. Ivan Zuzek; Syrian bishop Clement I. Mansourati and, later, Maronite bishop Emile Eid undertook the bulk of the work. All Eastern Patriarchs and bishops were invited to nominate canonists from their Churches who would join the undertaking as consultors.
The Commission began to publish drafts in Nuntia in 1975. Critiques or proposed revisions began based on the published drafts. The code is a thoroughly a product of the Eastern Churches using Eastern sources. The final draft was submitted to the Pope in 1989. It was decided for pragmatic reasons to have the code promulgated by Rome instead of an Eastern Synod. Should the code need future revision, corrections, deletions or additions, changes can be quickly carried out with minimal expense. The code provides the needed practical legal framework for the Eastern Churches while giving them the freedom and responsibility to enact particular law to govern their own faithful.
Since the length of this reply tests the readers’ patience, I will leave the topic of universal primacy for another post.
Gil,
Thank you! You are the first person I have spoken with (face to face or electronically) who has offered a sound and non polemical, historical analysis of Latinizations! Again, thank you! If you have any bibliographic references I would be grateful (I could use them for an article I’m writing).
Your comments about the codification of canon law in the Catholic Church are also very helpful. I think that whether we are Orthodox or Catholic, we tend to think that how we do things today is how things have always been done. Clearly this isn’t true and (in my case anyway) reflects my own egoism.
The notion that until the early 20th century the was no “comprehensive and systematic codification of Roman Church Law,” is a case in point. Whether we take it as a good thing or ill, I suspect (as with canon law) much of what we understand to be the uniformity of the Catholic Church is founded on half truths, a poor sense of history, prejudice and/or wishful thinking.
Another example, of where wishful thinking and/or prejudice runs a head of the facts is papal infallibility. In his review of Papal Infallibility: A Protestant Evaluation of an Ecumenical Issue
by Mark E. Powell, Edward Oakes, quotes from Avery Dulles’s A Resilient Church: “Infallibility does not demand that a given formulation of the truth be always and everywhere imposed, but only that it be not directly contradicted. It means that when the Church, through its highest teaching office, defines a truth pertaining to revelation, divine providence, working through a multiplicity of channels, will preserve the Church from error. But it may well be necessary, as generations pass, to reinterpret the defined dogma in accordance with the presuppositions, thought categories, concerns, and vocabulary of a later age.” This is a different, and I suspect more accurate, view of papal infallibility then the one presented by many Orthodox (and no doubt some Catholic) apologists.
In any case, let me say how much I appreciate your thoughtful, and irenic, comments here. Let me ask you, and forgive me for asking publicly but I think doing so is appropriate for my request, would you be interested in working with me to develop a Catholic/Orthodox blog devoted to finding common ground between our two Churches? I think we could work well together for the cause of mutual understanding and reconciliation.
In Christ,
+FrG
Fr. Gregory,
Thank you for your kind comments.
Regarding references concerning the legislation of Christian dress (and plenty else) under Islamic rule, I would recommend 2 books by Bat Ye’or, “The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam,” Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2008, and, “The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude,” Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2006. Both books have very large appendices devoted to primary source documents such as jurists’ texts and letters from the various periods she describes.
I agree with you that there is a perceived uniformity or rather a perceived rigid conformity where internal church matters are concerned by those on the outside of church. I think this is a very human way of trying to come to grips with the unfamiliar. In regards to Eastern Catholic canon law, I would recommend, “Eastern Catholic Church Law,” by Victor Pospishil, St. Maron Pubs, 1993. I borrow heavily on his general and historical overview found in chapters 1-7.
To take your quote concerning infallibility a bit further, Dulles wrote, “[infallible] statements may, however, require completion, refinement, reinterpretation, and restatement in accordance with new conditions, which raise new questions and provide new information, new conceptual categories, new methods and new vocabulary (Magisterium: Teacher and Guardian of the Faith, Sapientia Press, 2007, pg. 66).” Furthermore, Sacred Scripture and Holy Tradition bind the charism of infallibility. Popes or Councils may not contradict anything found there. Infallibility is also limited by previous definitions of the teaching ministry of the Church and by the faith of the whole Church.
Teaching statements from the ordinary or extraordinary ministries of the Church are like sure riverbanks needed for the river of faith to run deep and true. Without these sure riverbanks the river of faith quickly becomes a murky swamp, devoid of any clear boundaries at all.
Regarding your gracious request, I am hardly qualified for such an endeavor as you describe and although it sounds extremely interesting, I have such limited time (as you may gather from reading my own blog). Perhaps, we may talk further by email.
Well… I don’t know anything about ‘machinations’… but in Transylvania, for instance, where the majority of the population were Romanian Orthodox serfs, and had no rights, they promissed them … well, they promissed them practically normality if they would convert to Catholicism. [There were three recognized nations (Hungarians, German Shwabs, and Szecklers) ; and four recognized religions (Hungarian and German Catholics, Hungarian Reformed, German Lutherans, and Unitarians)]. There was also a strong policy of enforced Hungarization, not only on the former Romanian nobility, but also on German-speaking Catholic Shwabs.
Gil,
Your observation that “Teaching statements from the ordinary or extraordinary ministries of the Church are like sure riverbanks needed for the river of faith to run deep and true. Without these sure riverbanks the river of faith quickly becomes a murky swamp, devoid of any clear boundaries at all” reminds me of something in Fr Georges Florovoksy. I do not have the passage at hand (we are getting ready to move and each day more and more of our possessions go into boxes!), but he said in effect that the Church provides us with the Keys to the Kingdom of God and it is up to each of us to enter or not. If we do enter we find ourselves in a City without a map–we may get lost, but what we see, we see directly of ourselves in an unmediated fashion.
I think in both the East & the West, and putting to aside for the moment who and how its taught definitively, dogmatic teaching provides us with the limits within which orthodoxy is to be found. if we stray outside those limits we have left the Church even if we have not (necessarily) left God.
Lucian,
Thank you for your comment about the peasants of Transylvania. I don’t doubt the history you relate, but I think we would be less than honest if we did not also acknowledge that the events you relate are common throughout the history of the Christianity–East and West, Orthodox, Catholic, and Reformed. As long as we bless so close an alliance between Church and State (to use the modern turn of phrase) we open the door to just such abuses.
In Christ,
+FrG