Being true to our Eastern identity

[ciero]

The other day I posted a link to a talk Abbot Nicholas of Holy Resurrection Monastery gave at an Orientale Lumen conference a few years ago. He says a good deal about how we as Greek Catholics should hold fast to our traditions and how to live an authentic Eastern Catholic life in communion with Rome. I post the link here again and look forward to your comments.

hrmonline.org/PDFs/Abbot_Nicholas’_paper_at_Orientale_Lumen_Conference_V,_2001.pdf

Christ is Risen!

 

[Volodymyr]

Your Greek Grekocatholic priest does not asjk his friend what is problem with Catholicism! Thst is as problem with catholics - they have no sense that there is problem not in primacy but universal control of bishop of Rome so that bishops are mot his brothers but his servants. It is such problem of pope who takes place of somehow missing or absent Christ becoming in their mind vicar of exact person who said he was always with us. Was not Ivan Karamazov right?? Christ is bother to Cstholics and their universal
busybody and ruler!

 

[Vico]

The other day I posted a link to a talk Abbot Nicholas of Holy Resurrection Monastery gave at an Orientale Lumen conference a few years ago. He says a good deal about how we as Greek Catholics should hold fast to our traditions and how to live an authentic Eastern Catholic life in communion with Rome. I post the link here again and look forward to your comments.

hrmonline.org/PDFs/Abbot_Nicholas’_paper_at_Orientale_Lumen_Conference_V,_2001.pdf

Christ is Risen!

He makes an interesting point that the Byzantine Metropolitan can be helpful in facilitation and common activity the various eastern and Latin bishops in the USA. This year in Roswell Georgia at Saint Andrew Catholic Church, there was began an annual concelebration on the Divine Liturgy on the Sunday of Orthodoxy (named the Sunday of the Universal Church) with representative priests of the eastern Catholic and Latin Churches there, also with Byzantine Eparch of Passaic William Skurla concelebrating. (Byzantine, Latin, Maronite, Melkite, Syro-Malabar, Ukrainian).

One of the common traditions mentioned is fast and abstinance. And the author Hugumen Nicholas Zachariadis, believes that this is a different purpose for the practice between the east and west, which seems so untrue to me. He states that east emphasizes ascesis and the west penance. I wonder that he does not know that penance and ascesis are the same, and that the teaching in the west and east is renewal.

From 1967, Apostolic Constitution Paenitemini Of The Supreme Pontiff Paul Vi On Fast And Abstinence:

The kingdom of God announced by Christ can be entered only by a “change of heart” (“metanoia”) that is to say through that intimate and total change and renewal of the entire man—of all his opinions, judgments and decisions—which takes place in him in the light of the sanctity and charity of God, the sanctity and charity which were manifested to us in the Son and communicated fully.(34)

The invitation of the Son to “metanoia” becomes all the more inescapable inasmuch as He not only preaches it but Himself offers an example. Christ, in fact, is the supreme model for those doing penance. He willed to suffer punishment for sins which were not His but those of others.(35)

vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_p-vi_apc_19660217_paenitemini_en.html

We see also in the Cathoic Church the four general indulgence grants, available to all Catholics of any Church sui iuris, are: prayer, service, abstention, and witness to Catholic faith before others.

All of the above are metanoia and particularly abstention is also known as ascesis.

 

[ciero]

He makes an interesting point that the Byzantine Metropolitan can be helpful in facilitation and common activity the various eastern and Latin bishops in the USA. This year in Roswell Georgia at Saint Andrew Catholic Church, there was began an annual concelebration on the Divine Liturgy on the Sunday of Orthodoxy (named the Sunday of the Universal Church) with representative priests of the eastern Catholic and Latin Churches there, also with Byzantine Eparch of Passaic William Skurla concelebrating. (Byzantine, Latin, Maronite, Melkite, Syro-Malabar, Ukrainian).

One of the common traditions mentioned is fast and abstinance. And the author Hugumen Nicholas Zachariadis, believes that this is a different purpose for the practice between the east and west, which seems so untrue to me. He states that east emphasizes ascesis and the west penance. I wonder that he does not know that penance and ascesis are the same, and that the teaching in the west and east is renewal.

From 1967, Apostolic Constitution Paenitemini Of The Supreme Pontiff Paul Vi On Fast And Abstinence:

The kingdom of God announced by Christ can be entered only by a “change of heart” (“metanoia”) that is to say through that intimate and total change and renewal of the entire man—of all his opinions, judgments and decisions—which takes place in him in the light of the sanctity and charity of God, the sanctity and charity which were manifested to us in the Son and communicated fully.(34)

The invitation of the Son to “metanoia” becomes all the more inescapable inasmuch as He not only preaches it but Himself offers an example. Christ, in fact, is the supreme model for those doing penance. He willed to suffer punishment for sins which were not His but those of others.(35)

vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_p-vi_apc_19660217_paenitemini_en.html

We see also in the Cathoic Church the four general indulgence grants, available to all Catholics of any Church sui iuris, are: prayer, service, abstention, and witness to Catholic faith before others.

All of the above are metanoia and particularly abstention is also known as ascesis.

Penance is a part of ascesis…everything ascetical is NOT necessarily penitential. There is a difference in the way of looking at both these things as well…In the West for instance ascesis is looked at as something for the monks and nuns…not something for the everyday person…whereas in the East ascesis IS seen as living the Christian life for everyone.

 

[Vico]

Penance is a part of ascesis…everything ascetical is NOT necessarily penitential. There is a difference in the way of looking at both these things as well…In the West for instance ascesis is looked at as something for the monks and nuns…not something for the everyday person…whereas in the East ascesis IS seen as living the Christian life for everyone.

But it is for the layperson as you can read in the documents I posted, and also by the fact that ascesis is a partial indulgence action, and indulgences are for general use not specific to the religious orders. And it has been such for very many years in the west.

 

[ciero]

But it is for the layperson as you can read in the documents I posted, and also by the fact that ascesis is a partial indulgence action, and indulgences are for general use not specific to the religious orders. And it has been such for very many years in the west.

Vico…no offence here…I’m trying to chat about keeping our Eastern identity…and you advocate another Latinization (indulgences), I don’t get it!

 

[Vico]

Vico…no offence here…I’m trying to chat about keeping our Eastern identity…and you advocate another Latinization (indulgences), I don’t get it!

I am responding to your remark which is clearly wrong is light of the indulgence norms: “In the West for instance ascesis is looked at as something for the monks and nuns…not something for the everyday person”

 

[5Loaves]

The other day I posted a link to a talk Abbot Nicholas of Holy Resurrection Monastery gave at an Orientale Lumen conference a few years ago. He says a good deal about how we as Greek Catholics should hold fast to our traditions and how to live an authentic Eastern Catholic life in communion with Rome. I post the link here again and look forward to your comments.

hrmonline.org/PDFs/Abbot_Nicholas’_paper_at_Orientale_Lumen_Conference_V,_2001.pdf

Christ is Risen!

Thanks for posting this again. I printed it out last night and got through about two pages before I feel asleep… super tired, not bored. I’m really looking forward to getting further into it.

I’m sitting in a Latin church this morning waiting for ordinations of local Dominicans to begin and I look around … and there is Abbot Nicholas! :yup: I went over and got his blessing and then things were going to start and he said see you later. I just had time to tell him I’d been reading about his childhood in Egypt, thanks to you! He took off after the Mass, didn’t come to the reception. :sad_yes: I hope to see him tomorrow when he said Fr. Maximos would be joining him for the first Masses. (The ordaining bishop was from Australia, and the two of them were in seminary together there the bishop told me later.)

 

[dvdjs]

The other day I posted a link to a talk Abbot Nicholas of Holy Resurrection Monastery gave at an Orientale Lumen conference a few years ago.
hrmonline.org/PDFs/Abbot_Nicholas’_paper_at_Orientale_Lumen_Conference_V,_2001.pdf

First let me say that I don’t know the monks of HRM - I met Monk Maximos once, very briefly. But many people that I admire think very highly of these men. And so, I do too, even as I take a very mixed view of this piece.

The actual theme is a vision for primacy and conciliarity. The idea is that to make a positive ecumenical contribution we must:

1. interiorize the ecclesiological connection between primacy and conciliarity.
2. order its ecclesiastical life so as to fulfill this mission

I found the idea of linking of this vision to ecclesiastical life to be deeply thoughtful adn thought provoking. On the the other hand, the suggestions for ordering the ecclesiastical were, well, the usual suspects. Some of the suggestions were being implemented well before this talk, far beyond what one would gather from reading the talk, and have continued to grow. Progress on others have been slow. Others ISTM are viewed as untimely or just imprudent – for reasons that seem to have entirely escaped the authors. That is the risk that one runs when, a year after canonical establishment, and quite clearly before developing a real understanding of the people, history, and the state of a church, one undertakes to give a manifesto to its bishops - and those of other particular churches as well.

I would be happy to elaborate on and specify the problems with the mistaken ideas and the approach taken in this talk - which I think is what ciero was looking for - but that may be a moot point. It seems that co-author of the piece, Monk Maximos agrees that this could have done much better (hrmonline.org/?p=896) - perhaps in a manner that would have helped rather than impeded spiritual progress in our church. In fact, it would have been great if the same Monk who wrote this thoughtful and sensitive piece (hrmonline.org/?p=337) would also have tempered the OLC talk. There is a profoundly different tone, which clearly shows love for a people with a complex history, and the willingness to let that love, rather than preconceived idea ritual propriety, drive the interaction - even while hopefully adhering to the same goal. Curiously enough, this piece was posted, just a month before a first installment (hrmonline.org/?p=830) of an article on neo-iconoclasm in the Western church - which produced a firestorm of criticism (eirenikon.wordpress.com/2010/10/06/a-new-iconoclasm/) - was posted.

 

[Alexander_Roman]

Your Greek Grekocatholic priest does not asjk his friend what is problem with Catholicism! Thst is as problem with catholics - they have no sense that there is problem not in primacy but universal control of bishop of Rome so that bishops are mot his brothers but his servants. It is such problem of pope who takes place of somehow missing or absent Christ becoming in their mind vicar of exact person who said he was always with us. Was not Ivan Karamazov right?? Christ is bother to Cstholics and their universal
busybody and ruler!

No sir, I don’t believe Karamazov was right. He knew nothing about the Catholic Church and tended to be blind to the problems in this regard that exist within the Orthodox Church, especially the caesaro-papist Russian Orthodox Church.

There are many Ukrainian Orthodox, even within the UOC-MP, would dearly love to curtail the power of the Moscow Patriarchate over their Church as a “busybody ruler” of imperial Russian hegemony,

If you cannot post in a courteous way here, I would suggest there are plenty of Orthodox websites that would eagerly invite your commentary about the Catholic Church!

Alex

 

[Vico]

Your Greek Grekocatholic priest does not asjk his friend what is problem with Catholicism! Thst is as problem with catholics - they have no sense that there is problem not in primacy but universal control of bishop of Rome so that bishops are mot his brothers but his servants. It is such problem of pope who takes place of somehow missing or absent Christ becoming in their mind vicar of exact person who said he was always with us. Was not Ivan Karamazov right?? Christ is bother to Cstholics and their universal
busybody and ruler!

You are referring to Catholic belief in the Orthodoxy of Vicar of Christ, from Fr. John Hardon, S.J.:

VICAR OF CHRIST. The Pope, visible head of the Church on earth, acting for and in the place of Christ. He possesses supreme ecclesiastical authority in the Catholic Church. This title for the Pope dates from at least the eighth century and gradually replaced the former title, “Vicar of St. Peter.” Its biblical basis is Christ’s commission of Peter to “feed my lambs, feed my sheep” (John 21:15-17).