www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Discerning what to accept from the Pope

Are you a former protestant? You seem to frame everything in comparison to the protestant churches.

You asked your priest the wrong question, unfortunately. We have stated over and over that the East, to your apparent confusion, is not dogmatic about this point. What that means, as I said, is that there are indeed some Eastern Catholics and Orthodox who "accept" HV. This is not news to anybody. The Greek Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras I of Constantinople welcomed HV as good.

What the East has not done, Catholic or Orthodox, however, is make this teaching mandatory with the understanding that one goes to hell if one practices "artificial" birth control, as does the Roman Catholic Church. It is fine if one chooses to believe that, but it is not mandatory in our Church. There are countless quotes of esteemed and honorable Easten Catholic voices that have been quoted here attesting to this, we didn't make it up.

It has nothing to do with protestantism, despite how much it seems to for you.

While we do not demand that you live outside the specific teachings of the Roman Catholic Church if you insist to practice your faith within it, we will not accept demands that we leave the Church if we do not do the same.

Especially when much of the Roman Catholic Church happens to agree with us on this point.

Douglas MacArthur, when asked to impose an anti-fraternization order for the U.S. occupation forces in Japan, steadfastly refused to do so. When asked why, he replied, "I would never give an order I could not enforce".

HV was not declared infallible to my knowledge, it isn't dogma, so it can't really effect a person's salvation if one accepts or rejects it..can it?

This gets tiresome.

Humanae Vitae simply restated what had been taught previously, lots of times, by lots of bishops, over centuries. Instead of looking for loopholes, why not aspire to holiness?

In aspiring to holiness, one should not resort to mindless legalism.

Certainly not. And yet what is all this endless looking for loopholes? As you said earlier on, I think, this thread, the faith of the Fathers did not permit for any action undertaken to prevent the natural course of marital life. It's a bit of ironic legalism that allows an Eastern Catholic today to pretend otherwise on the basis of the fact that a legalistic and dogmatic Roman Pope recently restated what always was so.

Anyway I wish you'd answered my earlier query on the matter of low Western bars and high Eastern ideals, and the way the pastoral Eastern approach on the matter of birth control serves mainly to pervert this dynamic.

I agree. In fact I wish that my fellow Eastern Catholics would quit claiming that Eastern Catholicism sets a higher bar than the RCs when they so easily dismiss the call to holiness in their sexual lives.

I agree, just don't know what you mean re the hypocrisy of their sexual lives. Me, I sure wish some of my fellow ER Catholics would stop with the holier than thou boorishness and stop wagging their self perceived superior Catholic fingers at all things Western. To ER is Humanae Vitae, too. Ouch.

Considering that studies show Roman Catholics committing the mortal sin of contraception at the same rate as the general population, perhaps the ire should not be so accutely directed at the Catholics here with a patrimonial history of tolerating it to begin with.

Friend, speaking as a nut-job traditionalist ossified Roman kook fully lacking in both historical perspective and Christian charity, I want to assure you that we hate those guys way, way more. I can't speak for my Eastern brothers.

jjp, Although I ignore most of your posts I would ask that you prove your assertion that Eastern Catholics have a patrimonial history of tolerating Artificial Birth Control.

I think JPP and Stuartk have already outlined the Traditional view of the Eastern Church on this issue in this thread. Also the Thrice Blessed Bishop Raya quote sums up the issue very nicely.

I think that part of the problem is the lack of understanding of the Eastern concept of oikonomia by the West. This idea is not something know in the Latin Tradition, as far as I know.

My question is this,

In an eventual reunion of the Churches will the Eastern Orthodox Churches be forced to stop the practice of oikonomia in regards to certain types of artificial birth Control and also divorce and remarriage?

If the answer is no, then why is it wrong that some Eastern Catholics choose to practice or agree with the Tradition of the Eastern Orthodox whom share the SAME patrimony as we do?

My understanding as an Eastern Rite Catholic is that I am supposed to be orthodox (like Orthodox) as much as possible.

That we must live as Eastern Orthodox AND be in union with the Pope to show that it can be done in harmony= (as an example to the Eastern Orthodox)

Therefore I am trying as hard as I can to praotice the Eastern Traditions as much as is possible (in by broken, sinful state)

The Union of the churches sadly probably won't be in my lifetime - and I can see why - neither side can relate to each other (or seem not to)

I never practiced birth control with my wife - unfortunately she was unable to concieve before a mandatory hysterectomy.

I was flippant about birth control or pre martial sex - in my youth -- a position I regret

it is as if the pressure on women to have abotions is exponentially increased with premarital sex and birth control
(birth control can and does fail)

in my old age it seems like there may be more harmony if both marriage partners are virgins and do HV

It is as if premarital sex and the culture we live that promotes it) - degrades the culture and the marital bonds that exists (look at the divorce rate)

Our abortion culture is also increased as the use of birth contol ( abortifactants - are in pill form too) ramps up.

I actually just finished reading Fr. John Meyendorff of blessed memory's book Marriage: An Orthodox Perspective a while ago and he notes that the Augustinian teaching of the sinfulness of sex did not take hold in the East to nearly the degree that it did in the West, and that this understanding of sex and sin, while massively influential in the West (Roman Catholic and Protestant) did not influence the theology of the East to anywhere near the same degree.

That is but one small example, and there are many here who can provide an exhaustive bibliography on the matter if the spirit moves them to.

The true answer to your question is that the proof is in the pudding: the Eastern Churches do not have and never have had a universally dogmatic stance on the issue. Unless you can articulate how Eastern Christianity has betrayed its own patrimony in this regard, there is nothing that need be demonstrated.

The original question posed in this thread is how to discern what to accept from the Pope. If you now want to assert that what the Pope says about birth control is entirely consistent with the ancient history of Eastern Christian understanding on the matter, that is a claim you are free to make, but let's not confuse the two.

In doing so, remember to account for the influence that Augustine had in the formation of Western thought and his lack of traction on the matter in the East.

What we all must remember is that Romans are free to view marriage as they will, and if the East has developed a different understanding of the matter, they are free to see it that way as well. Nobody is arguing that you are wrong in your belief, only that we reject the assertion that we are wrong in ours.

Let's also not turn this discussion into a flogging of the straw man of abortion. We are speaking strictly of non-abortifacient contraception, and are all united in condemning the sin of abortion.

oikononmia is a big part of who we are and how we understand ecclesiology and the role of the Bishop, I don't see us being willing to change that for any reason. Some things we would be willing to change (and probably should!) but something like that is a big part of what we believe.