www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology St Seraphim of Sarov Catholic Church for Alex

Dear Alex,

I pray that you will stay.

I understand the reasons why you might want to go, but yours is a voice of reason. Your insights into the Eastern Catholic Churches, their realtionships with Rome and with the Orthodox is invaluable to those of us who have limited knowledge in those areas.

Your anecdotes are legend and you are quite focused in what you say. You are an example of charity to all. I have never seen you belittle someone, mock someone, treat another Church or Faith with disrespect.

That is an example sorely needed on the Forum. I find it incredible that anyone so orthodox and Orthodox could be thought of as anything but Catholic in the best and widest sense of that word.

So, stay. Return. Walk with us as we try to restore civility to the Forum!

Steve
JOY!

[ 01-18-2002: Message edited by: Inawe ]

Above it is written by Kurt: "On the point of the Russian chapel of the Latin Archdiocese of New York, (or the Russian chapel of the Latin Particular Church of San Francisco) one can look at their practices and make assumptions, but it would be a stretch to say this is a definitive and universal statement by the Catholic Church rather than a tiny, individual community applying economy. K."

As an erstwhile seminarian, I worshipped (and sometimes served)at the "Russian" churches in Boston, the chapel in New York and the small chapel in San Francisco. (Oh yeah, and at the Russicum in Rome too.)

Each parish had a couple of "Russians". The rest were hangers-on for one reason or another (no judgement, just reality). Russian Byzantine Catholics? Not really a significant element and not really Russian.

Serge responded: "Your description of the Russian Catholic churches is damnable — dripping with contempt for these Orthodox-oriented people who, while they are administratively under the Latin ordinaries, as are small non-Byzantine Eastern Catholic congregations in America, canonically are not Latin.

It's really not clear to me why you have not been reprimanded more, or even suspended or ejected from this forum. Your behavior has been consistently outrageous and is nothing new, and yet you keep right on trucking, insulting Orthodox, "transritualists' and, in general, everyone who doesn't agree with your New Deal liberal agenda. You go along your merry way, firing off pointed zingers in a true troll fashion."

As a linguist, and erstwhile English composition teacher, I have a serious problem understanding how the response post relates to the original one.

"New Deal"? "Liberal Agenda"? "Firing off pointed zingers in true troll fashion"? "Insulting Orthodox 'transritualists'"?

I just don't see it. I am really uncomfortable with these responses. And I am hoping that these responses are not merely a theological/sociological/psychological condemnation, rather than a Christian response to true issues.

But as an erstwhile priesthood candidate (and fully trained), I am coming to the conclusion that the agenda is not a personal response to the Gospel mandate to love one another, and the human avocation to uncover the "truth", but rather a personal mandate to preserve the 'tradition' of immutability in spite of the real, contemporary needs of God's people.

As y'all know, I don't worry about the canonical divisions; I accept the lifting of the canonical excommunications by our holy father Pope Paul VI and our sainted father Athenagoras; I think that we Cathodox Christians have just to go forward and do what the Lord demands of us. Let the lawyers do their lawyerly thing and tell 'em: "Yes, Massa! Of course, Massa! Whatever you say, Massa." And then do what the Holy Spirit inspires. I'm sure that the Ecclesio-Mafia will show up at my door; but then again, Christ is my judge, not them. And I'm just tickled to death that many (most?) of my Orthodox brethren have received the same graces that I have.

We just can't allow all this historical BS to keep us 'divided' when we KNOW for certain that Christ wants us together, One, in Him.

As the man in the terrorist plane in Penna said to his compatriots: "Let's roll!!!"

Blessings!

It might interest you that Uspenskij Monastery in Rome has in the chapel a small pen and ink framed portrait-ikon of St Seraphim, done by Mother Irene I think, with a relic of his moanstic veil. The relic was brought as a gift to Mother Maria Donadeo by Metropolitan Nikodim (Rotov), hence sometime in the 1970s I suppose.

I don't know whether this point has already been aired; forgive me if it has. Surely there is no more definitive word on this matter of commemorating post-(what? disunion? I don't find the term schism helpful or necessarily accurate) Saints than that, at the insistence of the Melkite Patriarch, the Roman edition of the Triodion included the service to St Gregory Palamas for the second Sunday of Great Tesserakost (albeit as an appendix, but still it's there to be used).