‘Not an Anthologist: John Bekkos as a Reader of the Fathers’

From my favorite Orthodox blog, Prof. Peter Gilbert’s De Unione Ecclesiarum –
I finally have some good news to report. Today I received an e-mail from the Managing Editor of the journal Communio, informing me that the Summer 2009 issue is now, at last, in print, and that they have decided to feature my article on [...]

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The Pope on Symeon the New Theologian

September 16, 2009
Dear brothers and sisters,
Today we pause to reflect on the figure of the Eastern monk Symeon the New Theologian, whose writings exercised a noteworthy influence on the theology and spirituality of the East, in particular, regarding the experience of mystical union with God.
Symeon the New Theologian was born in 949 in Galatia, in [...]

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Fr Reardon on “Anselmian soteriology”

From Fr Pat’s Pastoral Ponderings, June 28, 2009:

Saint Anselm, as we have seen, begins his reflections on soteriology—the theology of salvation—by addressing the question: What is sin? This he identifies as the affront to the honor of God. He then goes on to inquire: What is required to satisfy the offended honor of God. This [...]

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St Clement and the Corinthians

A reader sent me this very interesting question for discussion (and, by the way, you can now send questions or comments to eirenikonblog at me.com):
… I was hoping to use this forum to moot an issue that has troubled me relating to the transmission of the Petrine function in the early Church.  It involves Clement’s [...]

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When theology becomes ideology

… [T]he reading of history that you have taken on from Joseph Farrell, that I think constitutes an ideology, in fact resembles, theoretically and rhetorically, the ideology of those who gave fuel to the Bosnian war. It presents a discourse wherein the West is conceived to have fallen from divine grace, and the chief villain [...]

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Filioquextravaganza

(Apologies for the cheesy title.)
Recently on some of my favorite blogs, there have been some excellent rebuttals to Orthodox contentions about the Filioque clause and the Procession of the Holy Spirit.
First, Sacramentum Vitae’s Dr Michael Liccione (a veteran of irenic, scholarly, substantive online Catholic-Orthodox debate) has added a new installment to an ever-growing series of posts [...]

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“The Fathers Gave Rome the Primacy”

A. St. Leger Westall, “The Fathers Gave Rome the Primacy”, The Dublin Review, CXXXII (January-April 1903), pp. 101-114.
The famous xxviii. Canon of Chalcedon has been for many centuries a favourite authority among all those who, whether in the East or in England, are anxious to find support in primitive times for their rejection of the Petrine [...]

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Canon 28 redux

I have just begun listening to Bishop Hilarion’s talk at the recent SVS conference. He makes reference to the (in)famous Canon 28 of Chalcedon, and gives the standard Orthodox (and generally non-/anti-Roman) interpretation of it: that it ascribes the origin of Old Rome’s primacy not to the will of Christ or succession from the Apostle [...]

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“A Latin’s Lamentation over Gennadios Scholarios”

The Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies

“Overcoming the Schism,” Chicago, May 8-10, 1998

THE SCHISM: GROUNDS FOR DIVISION, GROUNDS FOR UNITY
“A LATIN’S LAMENTATION OVER GENNADIOS SCHOLARIOS”
Fr. Hugh Barbour, O. Praem.
In August of 1994, I was happy to be one of the many Latin clerics who over the years, in divisa or in borghese, have [...]

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More on Church Unity and Legitimate Variance

From Wei-Hsein Wan of Torn Notebook, chock full of brilliant quotes from great lights of the Church, both Eastern and Western, ancient and contemporary:
Church Unity and Legitimate Variance, Part II: Two Other Voices
For as, in the case of one and the same quantity of water, there is separated from it, not only the residue which is [...]

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