Josephus at Byzantine, TX has the story. This is not at all surprising. What Catholics need to understand is that this all has to do with old intra-Orthodox squabbles and major tensions within Orthodox ecclesiology. Which, I suppose, means that Orthodoxy should get on to the same ecclesiological page before adding Rome’s particular ecclesiological vision to the mix (although it’s hard to envision any mechanism by which contemporary Orthodoxy could come to any such universal agreement).
The text of the Ravenna Document can be found at the old blog, Cathedra Unitatis.
On the internal squabbling… That is exactly what both the Orthodox and Catholic ecumenists have been saying. Moscow wants to maintain its hold even as the devolution to national churches continues and the bickering with his All Holiness persists for all to see. One group within Orthodoxy is actively participating with the Catholics on a regular basis while the other forbids even praying with them. While one arm is embracing and the other shoving away can anything go forward?
I wonder now about the value of points of communion where no complete unification seems possible. It was talked about between the Melkites and the Antiochian Orthodox as well as the Ukrainian Churches.
I have a question.
First, let me preface by saying that I realize that squabbles within Orthodoxy are historically common. However, it seems to me that this “squabble” is or could potentially be different. The apparently desperate position of the Ecumenical Patriarch, his continual friendliness to Rome in spite of the Russian’s complaints, and the stubborn Russian opposition to his view of his “primacy” could sign a growing and possibly permanent rift in Orthodoxy.
Watching over the past year, it seems to me that there are two roads I can see for the future. The first road is the Ecumenical Patriarch, his position declining, eventually becomes extinct or folds into the authority of Moscow. This, in my mind, would make the Russian church the dominant and unifying Orthodox presence in the world.
The second road leads to a permanent rift between the EP and Moscow. Since his position is declining, I can see the MP ostracizing him and dismissing him increasingly. (Here is the actual question) If his position becomes more ostracized in this way, do you think that he might make a move to open communion/unification with Rome without the Russians?
I’m only asking because I haven’t seen it asked anywhere else. Perhaps I’m exaggerating the rift between the two in my mind, but it does seem like an extraordinary time in Orthodox ecclesial structuring.
I should add that I don’t wish for either path and pray eagerly for a third. A Moscow-dominated Orthodoxy is a scary thing – they’re downright ornery, but I wouldn’t wish for a new “Uniate” movement, and I doubt Rome would even go for it.
The bottom line is this: Both Rome and Orthodoxy have their individual problems with variant points of view. Finger pointing serves no purpose whatsoever. Attempts to understand the divergent ecclesiolgies between the churches, and the eventual resolutions within each church is going to be a long and tedious path. But the journey will be well worth it in the long run. Let us continue to beseech the Lord that we may do His Holy Will.
Archbishop to visit Moscow.
What great news! Maybe there’s not as much tension between the Ecumenical Patriarch and the Church of Russia as so many list members lead one to believe. This will be the first visit of an Archbishop of America, the Exarch of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, to the sister Church of Russia. I found this bit of news on another site. Archbishop Demetrios is very fine hierarch, theologion, and peace maker. Glory to God!
See the link. Is this what you are expecting us to unite with? The church of the horrific puppet show? You are really out of touch with reality. Over a thousand years after St. Vladimir sent his emissaries to Byzantium, it’s still heaven to be in an Orthodox Divine Liturgy. What is going on in many of these RC churches seems to be a foretaste of something else quite a bit lower in the cosmic geography.
As well, you aren’t impressing any real Orthodox believers with a quote from Fr. Sergius Bulgakov on your sidebar.
The Russians have an inflated sense of national destiny, and many of them really believe in that Third Rome nonsense. Meanwhile, they have not really accepted the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and they continue trying to exercise hegemony over Russia’s smaller neighbors. The Moscow Patriarchate is on board with the nationalist agenda.
As an Antiochian, I will admit to feeling greater kinship with the Melkites than with the Russians.
“As an Antiochian, I will admit to feeling greater kinship with the Melkites than with the Russians.”
You sound like a man after my own heart, Roland! :-)
Hieromonk Alexander: Call to Action folks are NOT Catholics. They reject fundamental Church Teaching, so they are self-excommunicated (latae something-or-other). In at least one archdiocese, they have also been formally excommunicated (by the archbishop).
If you are going to attack us as the Beast or whatever, please at least try to get your facts straight.
We are not responsible for our kook vagantes any more than y’all are responsible for yours.
Diane
Thanks, Diane. I was waiting for a Catholic to answer Hieromonk Alexander’s comment.
Of course, no Orthodox or Catholic in his right mind would want to be in communion with that. That sort of nonsense is unacceptable according to Orthodox or Catholic standards.
With all due respect to the Hieromonk, he’s using the tactic of opposing the best of one communion with the very worst of another. A Catholic could, for instance, compare the very holiest of Catholic bishops and most wonderful of dioceses with, say, the current chaos in the OCA.
I am reminded of this excellent post by Paul Hamilton, the seminarian who used to comment on Cathedra Unitatis:
Wow, that post Pal Hamilton is right on ther money. Thanks, O Irenic One!
Here is another way to put it: If you found all the faithful, orthodox Catholic parishes in America — assuming they all also had reverent, beautiful liturgies — and added up all the members of all these parishes, you’d probably get a number greater than the entire membership roll of, say, the OCA. Far greater, in fact. Yes, we Catholics are a very mixed bag. But we’re a BIG mixed bag. And, in a big mixed bag, you’ll find a whole lot of good along with the bad. So, in numerical terms, while you’ll have more tares, you’ll also have more wheat. The OCA might have 45,000 faithful, fervent members participating in reverent liturgies. Well, so do we–and then some! It’s just that out faitfhul, fervent, reverent congregations are spread around a bit more. :)
At OCANews.org recently, the moderator mentioned that his OCA parish was very vibrant–it even had (IIRC) 180 members! Well, in Catholic-Land 180 members = a pretty puny parish. That’s the whole point–the point Paul Hamilton was making and the point Fr. Longenecker made in his “Size Matters” post. Getting 45,000 people to be faithful and fervent may be difficult, but it’s doable. Getting 65 million–or 1.31 billion–people to be faithful and fervent is like herding cats. But how can one convincingly make the case that the 45,000-member church is more vibrant than the 65-million member one? Raw numbers are not everything, but they do say something about missiology and vibrancy.
Man, I really need to spell-check before I post. That first paragraph is unintelligible. Sorry!
Joseph and Fr. Gregory,
Yes, there are significant “squabbles” among the Orthodox which can be more honestly characterized as real theological divides. As Fr. Gregory indicates, there are theological divides among Catholics, to be sure. But, the Orthodox problems are far more serious in that there are real divides not only between schools of thought but between rivaling jurisdictions. There is no such parallel in Catholicism which is amazingly united in its governance by any measure of comparison.
Kellen,
It is of course far too early to guess what may become of the EP-MP divide which does appear to be widening at this time. If the EP has to move to Switzerland or the US, it is hard to imagine whether it will flourish or flounder. He may flourish like the Dalai Lama in exile or flounder like the pope in Avignon. Given the fact that his exile would symbolize the persecution of Christians by Muslims in an era of increasing tensions, he might just flourish. It is all up to the will of the Holy Spirit, anyway.
But, it does appear that the relations between Rome and the Orthodox may eventually have to become two tracked–and that time might actually come very soon. Holding the position that the Orthodox should settle their squabbles before approaching Rome is simply to defer to Moscow, whose claims in the eyes of Rome are specious to say the least. Moscow may yet prove to be the Anglicanism of the East.
Should Rome continue to pursue talks with Constantinople and her allied Churches without regard to the MP? A year ago I would have regarded this as far fetched, but as we Westerners learn more of the complicated state of Orthodoxy and its inability to resolve its internal conflicts, it is appearing that just such a scenario could develop. Of course, such an arrangement is up to the EP. Moscow now having denounced Ravenna, and given every indication that it has the ecclesiastical version of the imperialist ambitions of the Russian State, what will the EP do?
I, for one, am glad you brought up the question as it was gradually taking shape in my mind as well.
Stepping in very late in this discussion, I find that perhaps more should be said from a Catholic perspective in favour of Moscow’s concerns in its difficulties with the EP. The single thing that bothers me most about Orthodoxy is this sacramentalization of “national Churches”.
The Church before the Great Schism had no “national” franchises: it had regional primacies. The Patriarch of Moscow is the direct linear episcopal descendent of the Patriarch of Kiev recognized as autocephalous by Constantinople (the Patriarch moved to Moscow later in the Middle Ages).
Once Constantinople recognized Kiev as exercising its own autocephalous primacy, the EP ceased to have jurisdiction over the area covered by this primacy. It is thus, from the Catholic point of view, rather improper for the EP to now carve out new autocephalous jurisdictions out of the local churches forming part of this primacy. That he should be doing do in defence of an implied right to “national” authocephalous Churches betrays a “Galllican” ecclesiology most Catholics should find highly questionable if not outright distasteful.
I don’t mean to gloss over the excessive Russian nationalism that currently characterizes the Moscow Patriarchate (a term I would much prefer to “the Russian Orthodox Church”). This obviously tends to make Moscow’s jurisdiction irksome to a number of non-Russian local churches. Nevertheless, and while I recognize that this is not a matter for Catholics to decide or arbitrate, I also don’t feel it’s appropriate for Catholics to reflexively make out Moscow as the bad guy in this dispute.
I think it’s also fair to note that theologically and liturgically, Moscow is as close to, or even closer to, Rome than many of the other Orthodox Churches (including Constantinople itself). Moscow is also more open to productive ecumenical dialogue with Rome than, for example, the Orthodox Churches of Greece and Jerusalem, and great strides could probably be made in a bilateral Moscow-Rome dialogue once both sides got past the “Uniate” issue.
So I would strongly suggest Catholic participants keep the Moscow bashing to a minimum.
Well, I’m not sure we’re bashing Moscow. ;-) And I don’t understand all the intricacies of the history you describe. But I do know one thing: When someone behaves irenically toward me and extends the olive branch, that warms the cockles of my little heart, and I respond in kind. When someone, on the other hand, tells me I’m a graceless heretic and that ecumenism is essentially a waste of time, then I’m somewhat less favorably disposed. Not that the latter fairly or accurately describes Moscow’s stance. But it’s certainly true that there have been many more rebuffs from Moscow and many more overtures from the EP. So, all in all, I think I’ll stick with the EP. ;)
This is rather awkward.
What I really want to do is comment on an observation made by Richard Barrett in the “Rome, Constantinople and Canterbury” thread, but that thread is closed.
I think it may still be relevant here, however, so at the risk of being slapped down by the site’s kind editor…
“2) One place that the conference never quite went was establishing a working difference between primacy and supremacy. As I recall, however, a relevant point which Bp. Hilarion made here was that as it stands right now, Rome has two definitions of primacy — the one it uses for the Roman Catholics, and the one it uses for the Uniates. This is, effectively, an “invented ecclesiology” which would be unacceptable to the Orthodox.”
Frankly, I was slack-jawed after reading this and astonished that no Catholic commenter chose to state the obvious: there are two definitions of primacy because one is a dominical, universal, Petrine one and the other is a regional one of strictly human origin.
The primacy the Pope exercises over the Latin Church is admitedly a fused one. But anything above and beyond how the Pope behaves towards the Eastern Catholic Churches is merely how his *regional* primacy is exercised in the West. Certainly it is more centralized, some might say authoritarian, than that currently exercised by Eastern Patriarchs in their own regional primacies. But is it noticeably more centralized than that of say 3rd century Alexandria?
The further distinction is that while the universal primacy is of dominical origin (or so Catholics believe), regional primacy and the various specific forms it might take are entirely human constructs. The Papacy’s *regional* primacy in the West is authoritarian because that is the way the Western bishops decided they wanted it.
It wasn’t always what it is now, but it has always reflected the needs and expectations of the Western episcopate at any given time. In this sense it has been profoundly and perhaps ironically collegially determined. No Papal army ever went out and subdued manu militari a recalcitrant Western episcopate. Concilliarism and later Gallicanism failed to get traction because the majority of bishops wanted a strong and supportive primacy.
The failure of Orthodox (and a good number of Catholics) to see this distinction between the two primacies is perhaps not altogether surprising as quite a few Popes seem to have missed out on the nuance as well. Nevertheless, I think it is central to any hope of returning to a somewhat more functional version of the ecclesial structure of the Church before the schism.
The authority the Pope exercises in the West is not and never has been an appropriate model for the Petrine primacy he enjoys over the Church as a whole. To pretend otherwise is an exercise in unwittingly setting up straw men by Orthodox and at pushing a silly and subliminal super ultramontanism by Catholics. It is entirely proper that Western bishops should kiss the Pope’s ring as it affirms the authority they themselves have over the centuries chosen to vest in him in the governance of their affairs. Eastern bishops are in a significantly different relationship with him, however, and with them different ritual greetings are correspondingly appropriate.
“I think it may still be relevant here, however, so at the risk of being slapped down by the site’s kind editor…”
No way, Michaël! You are quite welcome to comment here. I appreciate your insights.
Normally I only have to approve the very first comment of a new poster, and then he’s able to post unmoderated … so I’m not quite sure why WordPress is making me approve your later comments.
Michaël
an extremely important point and very cogently put. Thank you for this very timely reminder. It is clear that the present holder of the Petrine office appreciates the distinction you have made, and clear that many of those who count themselves his devoted “footsoldiers” have not. Mor power to your pen.
Hear hear, Father Paul and Michaël!
Michaël, speaking for myself, I didn’t respond to Richard’s slack-jaw-inducing comment becaue I didn’t see it. But you have responded a gazillion times better than I could have, so…as Father Paul put it, more power to your pen. :-) Or, rather, to your keyboard.
The authority the Pope exercises in the West is not and never has been an appropriate model for the Petrine primacy he enjoys over the Church as a whole.
I believe this is precisely what Pope John Paul II was getting at, in Ut Unum Sint, when he invited ecumenical reassessment of the praxis (but not the esse) of papal primacy.
Re the more authoritarian model of papal primacy exercised in the West: At the risk of sounding like one of those dread ultramontanists, I rather wih the pope would behave in a tad more authoritarian manner toward certain bishops in certain advanced English-speaking countries. E.g., a smackdown of Cardinal Mahony and Bishop Trautman might be nice. But then…I’m not in the catbird seat, as they say. And a good thing, too.
I will add, that the extent and breadth of the authority of the Catholicos-Patriarch of the Church of the East(aka, “Nestorian”) has been far wider than that of any of the Orthodox patriarchs — more or less “papal” in its practical scope. I have read that the same was true of the authority of the Coptic Patriarch of Alexandria, until his authority was greatly circumscribed by a “committee” set up under the aegis of the British authorities in the late 19th Century, one of the first actions of which was to remove an unsatisfatory patriarch.
In the late 19th Century some Assyrian Christians actually began to claim that St. Peter had gone to Babylon, rather than to Rome, and that the Assyrian patriarch was the true “successor of Peter.” This is actually highly comic, as the ancient Church of the East, after suffering several splits (and reunions) between the 1680s and the 1780s, had all united with Rome by 1805, and is known today as the Chaldean Catholic Church. The present-day “Holy Catholic Orthodox Apostolic Church of the East and of the Assyrians” originated as a “uniate” split from the Church of the East in 1553. Its successive patriarchs kept up relations with Rome until the 1590s, when its patriarchate became hereditary in the Shimun family (uncle-to-nephew). Relations were renewed in the 1660s, but these Assyrians repudiated communion with Rome in 1673, inresponse to a Roman demand that they strike Nestorius and Theodore of Mopsuestia from their calendar of saints. So the ancient “Church of the East” is now in peace and communion with Rome as the “Chaldean Catholic Church” while the present-day Assyrian Church stems from a temporary union with Rome some centuries ago.
Dr. Tighe, that is fascinating indeed…and, as you say, deliciously ironical.
Continuing in this off-topic vein, may I make a related point re Orthodox fear of the Great Papal Bogeyman?
I understand that the Russian Orthodox address their hierarchs as “Vladyka”–“Master”–and that some Orthodox hierarchs behave in a very Vladyka-esque manner toward their flocks. I have also been told–by Orthodox and ex-Orthodox–that the extreme reverence some Orthodox laity show their clergy and hierarchs can sometimes lead to cases of spiritual abuse. I will not go into detail, but I have heard some rather hair-raising stories from Orthodox (and ex-Orthodox) laypeople whose spiritual fathers have attempted to control every aspect of their (the laypeople’s) lives to an extent that can only be described as abusive.
Yet these same people object to the pope on the grounds that he is (they believe) a tyrant, an autocrat, an overbearing dishpot. They imagine that the pope controls us Catholic laypeople the way a puppeteer manipulates his puppets. They think we are mindless thralls of the pope, oppressed and beaten down beneath the papal yoke, and so on.
We Catholics find this laughable. We cannot imagine where people get such silly ideas. (And, of course, these silly ideas are not confined to the Orthodox; our Protestant brethren often harbor similar notions.)
But here’s the deal. We Catholics do not call our bishops “Master,” nor do we let our parish priests control every aspect of our private lives (including innocuous areas such as childrearing style). Yet the people who consider the pope a tyrant often show this sort of extreme, exaggerated deference toward their own clergy / hierarchs. IOW, they relate to their spiritual fathers the way a thrall relates to a tyrant.
I admit that my evidence is anecdotal. I concede, also, that it’s confined to convert Orthodox whom I have known over the Internet. (In Real Life I know ethnic Greek Orthodox who seem to have a much healthier attitude toward their clergy and hierarchs — an attitude much closer to the insouciance of us lay Catholics.)
But, OK, if people will accept the spiritual tyranny of an overbearing-dishpot Vladyka or spiritual father or monastic elder, why do they balk at the much LESS inrusive, much LESS micro-managerial, much LESS controlling, much LESS tyrannical authority of the pope?
(For the record, I wonder this WRT some of my Protestant friends as well. I know several folks in Real Life who have been through a veritable hell of spiritual abuse at the hands of their micro-church fundamentalist pastors. I know people whose manipulative pastor told them that, if they left that particular congregation, they’d lose the protective “cover” of the pastor’s authority and incur the punishment of terminal illness. I am not making this up. Yet these same people think the pope is s tyrant? The pope is a pussycat compared with these abusive pastors. I don’t get it. I really don’t.)
OK, end of off-topic beeble. Sorry, y’all…Dr. Tighe’s allusion to the “papal” (or perhaps super-papal?) powers of the Catholicos spurred me to ruminate on stuff that has been bewildering me for a while now.
Diane,
I have never met an Orthodox who held such a belief of the papacy who wasn’t a convert from Protestantism. I think the bulk of Orthodox have a fairly healthy understanding of the role the Pope plays in the daily lives of Catholics.
As to the specific cases of personalized spiritual abuse you mention, I would point to one specific psychological factor. I don’t think they fear the Pope’s “tyranny” with respect to *you* (who voluntarily submit to his rule); I think they probably see him as a potential tyrant for *them*, i.e. one to which they have not voluntary chosen to submit but who through political or ecclesial machinations might gain control of their parish or congregation or country (e.g. Catholic Supreme Court justices, politicians, etc.). Conversely, their own spiritual abuser is not a tyrant to them (in their view) because they have chosen to submit to him.
I am not, of course, trying to suggest that their relationship to their abuser is the same as yours to the Pope. I am merely pointing out that if they thought the Pope was theologically and morally bang on, they wouldn’t see the prospect of being ruled (abused?) by him as tyranny.
I hope this makes sense.
Actually, as the question was addressed to Fr. Tighe, I should have let him answer first. Sorry.
Michaël, I think you are probably correct that the phenomenon I have described is largely (though not exclusively) confined to converts from Protestantism. Certainly all of the people who told me these horror stories were converts from Protestantism. I confess I really don’t know very much about how the cradle sensibility differs from the convert sensibility, nor about differences among Greek, Russian, and Antiochian expressions of Orthodox life. The cases I know about involved converts to the OCA, but I understand there have also been cases involving the followers of an Athonite monk named Elder Ephraim. And some of these latter cases did involve cradle Greek Orthodox.
Among the Protestants I know, the folks who have told me about their experiences of spiritual abuse were all from the Pentecostal wing of evangelicalism. No, I take that back…there was at least one case where the spiritual abuse occurred in a non-Pentecostal fundamentalist context.
What struck me about all these cases–both the Protestant cases and the Orthodox ones–was that the spiritually abusive clergy were apparently behaving in a sort of “super-papal” manner, with a sort of sweeping, intrusive authority that went far beyond anything the real pope would ever presume to exercise. One example: A woman I know belonged to a multi-denominational parachurch “charismatic covenant community,” ruled by authoritarian “elders.” When she complained to the local Catholic priest about some of the controlling tactics employed by these “elders” via their elaborate hierarchy of “heads,” the priest exclaimed, “The bishop would never exact that kind of obedience!” IOW, the authoritarian elders were “more papal than the pope.” If that makes any sense!
Anyway….I’m not sure I agree 100% with your analysis of the reasons why some people fear the Great Papal Bogeyman yet seem quite willing to submit to their own churches’ bogeymen. I don’t necessarily disagree…I’m just not sure. I do think that centuries of anti-papal polemics have also helped to build up this irrational, exaggerated fear of papal “tyranny.” That’s certainly true, I think, in the case of those Protestant fundamentalists who are heirs of the English “No Popery” ethos.
But it’s very complex, and who knows? Anyway, for the record, I certainly did not mind your responding to my question, which was not addressed exclusively to Dr. Tighe. I always appreciate your posts!
Diane
Thanks. Just to clarify, I meant that Orthodox who see the Pope as “tyrant” in the sense you describe have exclusively (in my experience) been converts. My assumption is that they carried this stereotype over from Protestantism. Cradle Orthodox tend to complain about the Pope’s doctrinal authority, but I have never heard one suggest that he micro-manages the daily lives of Catholics.
Interesting points.
My experience living as I do in the Orthodox heartlands is that Orthodox laity have at best a healthy scepticism about their clergy, which at worst becomes an undifferentiated contempt, grossly unfair to those clergy who are hard working and honest. What is interesting is that, despite the scandals (which keep on coming and anecdotal experience suggests that only the barest tip of the iceberg appears above the surface), Orthodox people I meet do not “take it out” on the Faith itself. That is a refreshing contrast with many Catholics who abandon the Faith when confronted with evidence of clerical mediocrity, or indeed sometimes clerical wickedness. This suggests to me that ordinary Orthodox are generally better than Catholics at distinguishing between the Church as institution and the Church as mystery. Some Catholics (maybe mostly priests – I wonder why…) chide me for making this distinction but I think it is essential. You cannot divide the two (the parable of the wheat and the tares…) but we need to distinguish them.
Apologies again if it seems off topic but i think there is a link between the high theological topics we discuss here and the life of our comunities. I do not think, pace Lossky, that the filioque accounts for western clericalism and authoritarianism, and I know from experience that these faults are far from lacking in the Churches which reject the filioque. But it is for each of us to attend to our own dirty linen and not to protest against the odours coming from across the garden fence. And I do think that authority at all levels in the Church could be exercised and appreciated better if we bore in mind and understood properly the distinction I outlined above: the Church needs to function institutionally – that is part of the logic of the Incarnation – but the institution needs to be transparently at the service of the mystery. Alas, not only is it not always so but sometimes – in all Churches and ecclesial communions – it looks like the opposite is what is happening.
I have written before here about what I regard as an infantile attitude to authority in the Catholic laity in some Catholic cultures in the past. The fact is that some Catholic parents handed their children over to some extremely wicked maltreatment in the extraordinarily naïve belief that “father” could do no wrong. This is an example we should learn lessons from, however much we are in a hurry to forget the unpleasant facts of recent history. Of course, these days we have gone from infantilism to adolescence with regard to authority. Some Catholics think that they are being ever so grown up by contesting the most fundamental doctrines of the Faith; There is already reaction to this underway, but I am now afraid that some young Catholics seem nostalgic for the “good old days” between the two Vatican Councils – days which were neither so good nor so old as they seem to many.
After adolescence one usually becomes adult. I think that if Catholics were to adopt a more mature attitude to authority in our Church, it would seem less frightening to other Christians.