www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Eastern Catholics - why are you in union with Rome?

If Rome told you to jump off a bridge ,would you? I think the original question was asked for a more specific answer as to why the EC's are in communion with Rome. Not just a pat answer such as believing everything Rome says.

Drop the snyde attitude please. Comments like "would you jump off a bridge" and charicatures of "believing everything Rome says" - you may mean them to be pithy (like how I presume you mean to be when you list your location as "Where we say men and mankind") but it just comes off as rude.

As your quoted comments can show - I was ansawering Slavipodvizhnik's remark. (Might I ask what Vatican I has to do with Eastern Catholicism?)

It wasn't a direct answer to the OP, just as your remarks were not either.

Catholig - the reasons are many and varied. Some Greek Catholics may never have considered it much, having been brought up Catholic to begin with, and may find your question as odd or challenging as some Latins would. (My grandmother growing up in a Hungarian Greek Catholic community, probably never much considered arguments against what she was taught...)

Others may in fact have professed Catholicism from an Orthodox background, while others may have converted or reverted to the practice of faith, without much reference to the Petrine ministry, or thought of why it would be otherwise.

Still other Greek Catholic confronted with discontent, politics, apologists for leaving the unia or various and sundry other reasons may have come to a point where they did stop and consider "Why NOT go Orthodox?/Why STAY Catholic?" I was one of these.

For a whole host of reasons I generally found the common arguments of apologists such as might be found here [google.com] to satisfy questions and confirm me then in my thinking on where I should be.

Many of us - not biblical, lingusitics or patristics scholars did not go straight to original sources in original languages either, but if and when the time came to consider these claims, most of us evaluated the arguments of scholars and apologists available to us.

To be clear, and perhaps Fr. Serge can vouch, I am unaware of any specific Greek Catholic defence of the papacy unique or different from what would generally be advanced by apologists for the papacy from the Catholic West.

It's not so much a question of "apologists" or polemics, but of grasping how we understand the ecclesiological situation. I might suggest Bishop Basil of Stamford's excellent paper on the matter presented at the first (Oxford) Consultation of the Kievan Church Study Group (August 1992, I think) and then published in Logos, Sheptytsky Institute, St Paul University, Ottawa.

Fr. Serge

The thing that was hard for me was trying to explain to Latins what the Eastern Catholic churches are. No amount of explaining seemed to convince them that I was Catholic. To be Catholic is to be a Roman, "regular Catholic", etc.

It's obvious that Latins have had virtually zero education on the East, despite the Vatican calling for it otherwise. I always felt like I was in the middle of a tug of war.

Likewise I have run in to a few Orthodox who didn't know the BCs existed. They thought they were Orthodox churches.

The Eastern Catholic churches seem to be in an unfortunate position. Defending themselves as Catholics, when virtually no one in the west knows what they are, while most of the Orthodox world abhors their very existence. It can be a very uncomfortable place to be.

Well Etnick, believe it or not, some of us somehow muddle through despite Latins not knowing about us and all the East - to hear you tell it - "abhors our existence". On that latter point, I suspect there is some hyperbole there, as I hve managed to find more than a few Orthodox who don't seem to find us abhorrent - I am not of course privy to thier innermost thoughts... I digress...

Mostly I self-identify in the "public square" as "Catholic" plain and simple. When further explination is warranted I offer as I guage necessary. Honestly I am trying to imagine how it came to be that you were so hard pressed to satisfy others that you were Catholic. What sorts of instances or interactions did you have where you not only had to convince someone that you in fact were Catholic, but then fell short of the mark leaving them unsatisfied & unconvinced???

I used to try to give everyone the 5 min history lecture on liturgical ritual differences, or try to get every one of my Latin pals to DL at least once.

I used to be hyper-sensitive to the "regular Catholic" thing too - but honestly, over time and experience, I have come to see and understand that this is a far more parochial local concept than even "Latin = regular"... Everyone tends to think what is done in THEIR parish in their neighborhood is "regular"... From "Hottenany Mass" to the Tridentine Mass with everything in between.

Etnick;

It has its occasional inconveniencies,but I don't find it
uncomfortable at all myself.You are quite right about a great many Latins having little or no knowledge of Eastern Catholic
Churchs. I am an ex-Latin in my 60's and I seem always to
have known about the Eastern and Orthodox Churches. I am entirely
western Euopean by blood and there is no Eastern Catholic
church very near me, so somebody taught me. I think the
lamentable ignorance you speak of is a by-product of the
general failure of religious education in this country over
the last forty years. I must say I have never found much
difficulty explaining Eastern Catholicism to Latins and have
never had to defend myself against anyone (not there are not
such people wandering around).

There are indeed some Orthodox who abhor our existence, but that
is their problem. We don't abhor them; quite the contrary.And if
some American Orthodox don't know we exist, I suspect that
there are a vast number of Americans who don't know that they
exist. Is that a reason for abandoning Orthodoxy?

I am Catholic because I belive that it is God's will that
all Christians be in communion with the See of Peter and
that the Pope is the guarantor of Orthodoxy. Consider the
Iconoclast Heresy. Looking at the chaos of Protestantism,
I have often thought that if God had not given us the papacy,
we would have to invent it.

Mir,

Edmac

Simple Sinner, I suggest you read

HASLER, August Bernhard. HOW THE POPE BECAME INFALLIBLE; Pius IX and the Politics of Persuasion. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1981.

If you take the time to read the book, you would find the politics at the Council were nasty and entirely human. I would say that the Holy Spirit was on vacation, but I will be honest and admit that is my opinion. If I remember correctly (its been 20 years since I read the book), Pius treated the Melkite patriarch in a rather shabby fashion and Hasler recounts in in detail if my memory serves me right. Although Pio the Nino started out with great deal of potential of modernizing the RCC, some stupid anarchist attempted to blow up the pontiff in his carrage and the RCC was left the man who brought it Vatican I and all its ensuing problems. Although some would not find fault with the concept of infallibility and a monarchical papacy, the EOC does and that is why I chose the word problem as opposed to issue.

I was not "hard pressed" to convince anyone I was Catholic. It always came up in casual conversation over the years. The conversations always ended up seeming like I was nuts, Catholics are Roman. Period. Can't convince them let alone get them to attend a Divine Liturgy.

I'm also referring to the major Orthodox churches when I say they find the mere existence of the ECCs as a stumbling block to reunion.

Hasler, btw, is a Swiss Roman Catholic priest. Below I reprint some of Hans Kung's reflections in the introduction to the book.

"One cannot help but be struck by the astounding difference between the controlling ...actions of Pius IX and his attack dog, Joseph de Maistre, and the servant leadership of John XXIII.

John XXIII had, from the start, no ambition whatever of proclaiming an infallible definition. On the contrary, he contunally stressed inthe most varied ways his own humanity, his limitations, and now and again even his fallibility. He lack the aura of infallibility. And yet none of thepoes in this century had as great an influence on the course of Catholic history and of Christianity itself as this pope who put no stock in infallibility ... he succeeded in getting the church to listen to the gospel of Jesus Christ once more.
He demonstrated in rough outline how the pope could be pope without claiming infallibilty: no jealous insistence on full power and prerogatives, no exercise of authority after the fashion of the ancien regime, but an authority of service, in the spirit of the New Testament, with a view to the needs of today - fraternal partnership and cooperation, dialogue, consultation and collaboration ... In other words, even when teaching and proclaiming the faith, the pope is most emphatically to see his function as in the Church, with the church, for the Church, but not over or outside the Church.
- from the introduction by Hans Kung to August Bernhard Hasler, How the Pope Became Infallible, 19.


In fact, Hasler wrote an article that appeared in Time Magazine in 1977, which attempted to show a way to get around the issues raised by Vatican I. You can get it on line from the Time archives. Just do a search on Hasler. The Url I have is http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,912037,00.html?promoid=googlep

Who cares what Hans Kung has to say about anything?

Edmac

Hans Kung is not my favorite theologian and I often disagree with his conclusions, but he is just as much a serious scholar as anyone and I find his analysis of Vatican I to be quite astute.

Joe

I quoted Hans Kung and last time I checked Kung is a respected theologian, although he obviously has his detractors. We have a difference of opinion because I do care about what he has to say! Some consider him too liberal, but he is spot on as far as i am concerned. I quoted his comments from the Hasler text.

In answer to the op's question though: when I was a Melkite, I was so because I believed that divine providence had guided the Church to set up the Pope as the guide and coordinator of the Churches. I accepted papal infallibility and universal jurisdiction with some doubt and hesitation but I was assured by my spiritual father at the time that this was something in a state of flux and that one could work through it in good faith as a "difficulty." I became an ardent supporter of the Zogbhy Initiative and yet I found that not only was the patristic evidence inadequate to establish such a strong and important idea as universal and supreme papal jurisdiction, but that I was already anathematized by the Vatican because I had held that the papacy was an "office of inspection." Now that I think about it, I think I never unconditionally subscribed to what Rome would have expected me to and so perhaps I might be able to legitimately claim that I was never Catholic in the sense that Rome understands Catholic. If so, I was Orthodox at the time, I just didn't know exactly what that was. Finally, after 12 years of intense theological study, I recognized that for me (personally, not necessarily for anyone else) I could not be in communion with Rome and so I finally became Orthodox in the official sense of the word, joining the Antiochian Church.

Joe