www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West The Union with Rome reconsidered

Dear Joe --

But it is not a divorce. That implies that "both sides" are wrong; and hence, the is no Church. The Church cannot be broken. The Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church together do not make up the Church: only the Orthodox Church is the Church.

Also, by you view of a "divorce", you contradict Catholic teaching (which, BTW, includes Latins, EC's, etc): the Catholic Church teaches that she alone is the Church. Hence, by your opinions, you are in no-mans land.

The Catholic Church believes she is the Church.
The Orthodox Church believes she is the Church.
Neither believe both churches, although separated, complete the Church.

So, the question is to you. Are you Catholic or are you Orthodox? You can't be and you are not a child in the middle of a fight between parents. Stop pretending that Eastern Catholics are innocent children caught in between fighting parents...it is simply not true.

The Church is not broken. It is simply the case that some churches have strayed away from the Church. The Catholic Church (RC's and EC's) just happens to be the largest group of churches that have strayed from the Church.

Bottom line: if you want to participate in the fullness of Christianity, then become Orthodox. Everything else, in due proportion, reflects and contains and shares only a portion of the fullness.

I am not trying to be polemical and I realize this is a Catholic forum. However, the Truth ought to be defended.

Greg

Dear Greg,
With all due respect. It is because of your type of thinking that many Byzantine or Greek Catholics don't become Orthodox. I believe that the Catholic and Orthodox churches are the true churches (I don't like to admit it but,yes, even our neighbors north of Ukraine).
Lauro

Dear Greg:

And to us, the TRUTH subsists in the Catholic Church.

And the Orthodox Churches are just "estranged" from the Catholic Church! The Protestant ecclesial communities are, of course, farther away!

Which is the "trunk" and which are the "branches"?

I am not being polemical either!

AmdG

No. Nobody would want to suggest that. :rolleyes:

Joe

But Lauro, you are not even in agreement with the Catholic Church! Show me where the Catholic Church states this. This is simply your opinion.

Thanks Amado. At least this is the correct Catholic position.

Okay, it is polemical, but not in an uncharitable way. I am simply stating the truth. If you have a problem with my comments, offer a response as to why I am wrong. This is a discussion forum. I am open to criticism...are you?

Greg

This sweeping statement calls for an omniscience that you undoubtedly lack. It is breath-takingly uncharitable to proclaim the lack of spritual fruition of the participants on this forum. And it is wrong. Please spare us your arrogant claims to be speaking the Truth when you talk such prelest nonsense.

Dear Friends,

I really don't know what any of this has to do with the Ukrainians!

Suffice it to say that both Catholics and Orthodox believe each is alone the true Church.

The Catholic view today is that the Catholic Church possesses the "fullness" of the Apostolic Faith.

It considers the Orthodox Church to be "almost full," but not quite.

And the Ukrainians, when they look at both Rome and Moscow, consider BOTH to be FULL OF IT!

I've yet to hear the theologians of any Catholic/Orthodox ecumenical commission say to each other: If you want to belong to the true Faith, then join us!

Since I've yet to see anyone with the credentials of a theologian on this thread (it could be, but then make yourself known!), perhaps we should refrain from doing what the theologians of our respective Churches will not say to each other out of due courtesy et al.?

I won't say any more lest the Administrator write to beg me to become a moderator here . . . I guess there's no fear of that . . .

Alex

thank u :-) yes a little abt me...i am Polish-American family came from Poland. one of my aunt's say my grandmother was actually Ukrainian(her maiden name was Pruska) lol but i was baptized in the roman catholic church more so because its a cultural thing, than religious for my family. i am a very strong catholic or i try my best atleast and i believe all the catholic church teaches, however i felt i fit more in the byzantine rite specifically the ukrainian church being it that it was very slavic in heritage and i consider myself slavic, however the spirituality of the byzantine rite fits me perfectly. but i am catholic first and always thats why i never considered joining an orthodox church, tho i have the deepest greatest respect for the orthodox faith and our orthodox brethren in christ.

Forgive me, djs. I did not mean to imply that all have hit a brick wall. However, I do believe that, within the Catholic Church, ones does hit a "brick wall" at some point because the Catholic Church does not contain the fullness of Truth.

This is my belief and this is a forum. Am I allowed to express my beliefs? I am trying to generate discussion: if you (plural) disagree with what I am saying, please offer a constructive defense. That's all I am saying.

Please defend your faith.

Exactly! This is the Catholic position. And I believe the opposite. Thanks for being honest, Alex.

Greg

Dear Alex:

His Beatitude has put it to Rome, and Rome (in a rather back-handed way, it seems) has clearly said "no." You seem to say that the proverbial cross-roads has been reached, and I agree with you.

Pretending that we are still in need of further development or that certain political, adminstrative and/or financial dealings within our own Church need to be sorted out before Rome recognizes our rights as a sui juris Church is playing strus' and putting your head in the sand.

Others see this in light of theological beliefs as to Roman primacy and I, for one, understand where they are coming from. There will be those within our own Church who will feel the same way. Lauro jokingly mentions the Basilians, but "u kozhnomu zharti zerno pravdy."

However, the fact that most of us are UKRAINIAN Catholics must mean something. If we did not care about our traditions or sharing God's gift of our rich language and culture with the rest of the world, we would have taken the easy road out and become RC's or some other ethnophobic denomination.

But we didn't. We felt that it was our sacred duty to maintain the cultural gifts that were bestowed upon us by God long ago and passed down to us through our antcestors. The fact that there continue to be those who would destroy this God-given gift has prevented us, in the far reaches of the globe far away from the motherland, from letting it get away from us.

Side note - don't any of you go on about hopak and food, eiether. There is a ton of Ukrainian high culture out there. But even beyond that, though it is a method of thinking and concisouness that goes back to pre-Christian mythology that is engrained in our minds and our souls.

It is, dare I say, unique view of the world that permeates every one of our instutions, inlcuding our Church. This is not to say we cannot learn from other cultures, but know all ye non-Ukrainians that we, too, have experiences that we can share with and positively influence global society.

Give us up to Muscovy or further domination from Rome, and that perspective will be slowly lost (even more that it already has). Every culture on Earth is a gift from God and every culture, even though it may borrow from others, glorifies God in its own unique way.

For us to exist without a titular Patriarch any longer will endanger our contribution to the world. If first, second or third Rome find it in their interests not to agree, then we must assert it ouselves.

Yours,


hal

Hey Alex! How about a whole new version of that old philosophical question --

"Is your Church half-empty or half-full?"

Gregory:


You make a specific claim that is in the realm of observation - not Faith or belief - that there is an lack of spritual blossoming by members of the forum, and assert that this lack is caused by the "yoke of Rome".

I find such a claim to be ridiculous. It is vitiated by simple observation of the gamut of posts here. There is plenty of fruit observable, notwithstanding the plenty of trials also evident. And if you look on the Prayer forum at some of the crushing trials that are being faced by stalwart faithful here, you might realize that the "yoke of Rome" is not exactly the biggest challenge faced by most of us. How lucky we would be if that were the biggest threat to our theosis. Or perhaps, not: how deeply into prelest would we have sunk were we to be imagining that!

Thank you for now limiting your remark
to "some" members of the forum. Who, in your "belief", btw?

Too much devotion, too much fruit, too many saints to accept this remark. If you wish to say that you hit a wall, that this wall was Rome's fault not yours, that now you are holier than when with Rome, fine. Who could know your heart and soul enough to dispute this with you? Conversely, whose heart and soul do you know enough to project onto them these views - which are so obvioulsy lacking in generality?

Oh, what a load. The arrogance of some Orthodox is on a par with fundamentalists.

Orthodoxy is the Church - says who?
The MP?
Bartholomew?
You? Who are YOU to make the claim?

My late greatgrandfather, who fled Poland when it was partitioned by, among others, Orthodox Russians, would smack people in the head with such a comment.

Christ came to preach forgiveness. All of us are full of pride in ourselves.

The UGCC should have its own Patriarch - now if not sooner. Rome is wrong in this case - and it isn't the first time Rome has been wrong.

The UGCC will have its Patriarch - when the Good Lord wants it to happen and not one minute before.

I have a question - how many in Ukraine actually attend church? I know that in Poland, church attendance has dropped off since the fall of Communism.

"The Church cannot be broken. The Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church together do not make up the Church: only the Orthodox Church is the Church." Yeah, right. Is it necessary to point to specific divisions within Eastern Orthodoxy? I lack the patience to compile a complete list. The Old Ritualists may consider me an unbaptized heathen, but I respectfully decline to return the insult. [I hasten to add that no Old Ritualist has ever said any such thing to me, nor treated me in any such way.]
Incognitus

Dear Alex,

I think I understand where these anguished questions come from, but I must say with some vigour that the language of "return" has long since been abandoned as it rightfully ought to have been. Rome is not expecting Orthodoxy to return to it; Orthodoxy is not expecting Rome to return to it. Each has officially recognized the other as a "SISTER Church" (rather than contumacious, prodigal daughter and expectant mother, as the language of "return" suggests) and the only return sisters can undertake is a common, shared journey to the house of their one Father.

Which raises the question of the nature of the unity we seek and the models thereof. Are we looking at corporate re-integration, one hierarchy, etc? No, I think clearly we are not. As Taft said in his brilliant interview, communion between Catholicism and Orthodoxy is 'all we are going to get.' How that manifests itself more particularly is not clear to anybody at this point it seems to me--except the Holy Spirit, and He doesn't seem to have told us because I don't think we have grown up enough to receive His gift of unity yet.

It is useless--nay, worse than useless: it is pernicious--for us to think that because Rome is mistreating one of the Churches in the Catholic communion then that Church should go and seek a better arrangement elsewhere.
(That being said, nothing should prevent us from shaming Rome into realizing that all its sucking up to Moscow over the last 20-odd years has gotten it a big fat NOTHING and that its treatment of the UGCC has been highly unjust. As the Pope said in June 2001, the "land of Ukraine" is "drenched with the blood of martyrs," most of whom were killed at least in part for their fidelity to Rome--and this is what it gets us?? Rome spits on their memory by treating us thus!)

What, then, should we do in this present unhappy mess? I think Rome should be chastised fiercely and frankly--but without anger or rancor--by the UGCC. I think Moscow and every other Orthodox Church that signed that "letter of hate" (as I call it) should also be chastised with equal vigor: both have failed in elementary Christian virtues--Rome failing at justice, Moscow et al failing at charity.

And then what? Aside from the usual antidotes--prayer, humility, fasting, prayer, and more prayer--I think we should not do anything for a time. Given the heated emotions on all sides, action any time soon in any direction would probably be rash and therefore destructive. Let us wait on the Lord and see where He is leading us.