www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West New Curial Document on Nature of the Church

UPDATE

All my email to the Vatican about this publication - have bounced.

But now .. it just may be - that I have the email address of the Holy Father himself (I am sure that secretaries read it and not him personally)

I just need the guts - and so say things well.

I will do it.

-ray

Here is a draft of what I will be sending to the Holy Father's email address. Any comments? any improvements before I send it? Keep it short.

=====================
I am assuming that this email address is read by a secretary and not by the Holy Father himself ... and so I will address my letter to the secretary reading this.

Dear Pontifical Secretary;

I have tried to contact via email - official of the Vatican Publishing House - but all the contact email addresses, posted on the vatican.va pages, that I tried are not working. They bounce as 'host not found'.

I am writing in deep concern for how, world wide, our Orthodox brothers are misunderstanding and misinterpreting the contents and purpose of the recently posted publication titled...

RESPONSES TO SOME QUESTIONS REGARDING CERTAIN ASPECTS
OF THE DOCTRINE ON THE CHURCH
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/c...oc_20070629_responsa-quaestiones_en.html

Due to the wording and content of this publication which does contain several misquotes of past important documents ... and due to the unclear statues of the publication (is it a pronouncement? a declaration? an infallible definition??) and due to the reality that readers must already be familiar with the several documents quoted (and many are not) - what is happening is that far too many readers (Orthodox and Catholic alike - laity and bishops alike) are arriving at a sense of the publication which, has no context, and I believe was not intended. At least it is not consistent with the meaning and understanding contained in a continuity with the past landmark documents that it is misquoting.

Please do not dismiss this as trivial. I assure you - it is VERY important and has cause much harm to the image of our Pontiff AND much pain to our Orthodox brothers - as well as Eastern Catholics.

You MUST already be aware of the negative responses from the Eastern churches. You should also be aware of the disappointment and shock to many Catholics who had previously understood Lumen Gentium in a good way - and now think that the Roman Catholic church has officially given a pronouncement that re-defines and changes what the faithful must believe.

If you treat this lightly or put it to the shelf for in-action ... you do a great dis-service and harm.

Please find attached, a text of a post I made at a Byzantine forum in defense of the original meaning of Lumen Gentium. In my post I point out several misquotes and the fact that in one place ... what should have been a small 'c' ('catholic unity') had been misquoted as a capital 'C' ('Catholic unity') changing the entire sense and direction of the original meaning of this line in Lumen Gentium.

Please respond as many Roman Catholic and Eastern Catholics (and Orthodox) priests, laity, and even bishops .. are very concerned. If you need examples of how this 'new position' of the Roman Church is being perceived - and the negative responses .. I can provide these example.

Please tell us what the purpose of this publication is?

Please tell us if its meaning, irregardless of Lumen Gentium, has re-defined these terms in an official way?

Please tell us if this publication is an informative publication only and not of the statues of Lumen Gentium?

Please, in the very least .. give me an email address where I might get answers.

Thank you.

Peace to you and to your Holy Church.
Ray Kaliss
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? comments?

-ray

Dear Andrew,

Each Church makes contrary claims to the same nature, but somehow I really don't think that God cares. His concern is that someone opens their heart to Him, and then He will fill it with His Grace. How they open their hearts, and the words they use, should mean nothing. That they open it, should mean everything.

If each little theological utterance were to be of utmost importance in order for one to achieve eventual unity with God, then surely an education would be the highest thing one must obtain for theosis. I think though that the heresy that Saint Gregory Palamas was fighting was exactly that. He insisted that one cannot attain God through their intellect. Only through their heart.

I again, have known of people that achieved sanctity and yet were totally illiterate. The sanctity was achieved through the purity of their hearts. So! So much for words, and so much for the thoughts that correspond to them, unless they are words and thoughts of repentance, forgivness and love

Now I'm not denying that there are differences in our approach. Our approach, and by that I mean the words used in order to soften and open our hearts and reasoning to God's Grace, might be better and able to accomodate more towards the achievement of theosis than that of the Latin Church and/or the Protestants. Yet, I believe that it has come about because of the flexibility of Greek, allowing them to go into spiritual flights of fancy, while the structural intensity of Latin formed the opposite. What Latin seems to have been able to do, is construct a Church with the organizational abilities to relieve some of the suffering in this world.

I think I have heard Bishop Ware mention something to the effect that the problems is semantics, so I'm probably not that way off...and he's a saint you know?

God Bless,

Zenovia

Ray,

So far, I've only read one negative response from an Orthodox prelate to the CDF document. That was the response of his grace, the Patriarch of Romania. I actually think that most Orthodox respect Pope Benedict greatly and are pleased with this document. By the way, how are we misinterpreting it?

Joe

I found an article by John Garvey, which touches upon issues within this thread, interesting, and so I thought I would post a link to it here:

What the Orthodox say: is Rome list...holic Church and Eastern Orthodox Church [findarticles.com]

Outstanding article.

Joe

That's a measured and carefully written piece.

Terry

Well written.

I must confess that this whole matter is really perplexing to me.

-ray

Ya know what Joe ... I am no longer even sure. I am not even sure that I know what Rome is saying. Maybe you guys are right in what it is saying. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe I just want it to say what I am trying to get from it.

Maybe this while thing is way over my head.

-ray

Ray Kaliss,

I don't think that there is a misinterpretation here, but there is disagreement. The disagreement is in how Rome approaches authority and understands herself as a Church. The Orthodox cannot agree with this document and remain Orthodox.

Many in the media have misinterpreted the document, but others have not.

This document is tightly theological, its purpose is to clarify the statement that the Catholic Church "subsists in" the Church of Christ. There have been Catholic theologians who have directed the flexibility of their minds to interpreting that phrase, or dogma. What Cardinal Levada wrote, as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is not new. And his claims can be supported by the Vatican II decrees. The clarification he made is conservative.

What the Orthodox must disagree with is the nature of Church. Cardinal Levada defines his term for Church and then the controversial argument must be understood as bracketed within those terms. Here is how he delimits Church:

The Orthodox cannot agree with this definition of Church. That is where the controversy lies. Personally, I agree with that definition of Church, but I am not Orthodox.

I hope I have clarified some of this.

In Christ,

Terry

Ray,

I do think that a big problem is that the typical Vatican document is very unclear and I also think that Rome, in its diplomatic gestures, has been ambiguous about what it teaches. Whether this is intentional or not, I don't know. Sometimes I get the feeling that Roman theologians think every problem boils down to semantics and that they just need to figure out a way to phrase things that sound good to everyone involved. That way, they can think one thing and we can think another but we can agree on the words to be used. Frankly, I think that is self-deception.

Joe

Joe,

Another aspect to this is how Western Catholics and Eastern Orthodox perceive theology. Western Catholics tend to be scholastic and heavily influenced by Thomism in their approach to categorizing and communicating points of theology. The Eastern Orthodox do not share this approach to theology. They do not have the same values for the importance of words, as their approach to theology is by prayerful meditation rather than by reason and will. Some find it rather arrogant to approach matters of God by the way of scholasticism, as it can reduce the majesty and wonder of God to a logical point.

This difference is significant, especially if the document being written from the former and interpreted from the latter point of view.

Correct me if I'm wrong on any point.

Terry