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Hesychios
Guest
I only wish you were less insulting.
I can see that you don’t like what I have to say, that doesn’t necessitate acting as you have.
Michael
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I can see that you don’t like what I have to say, that doesn’t necessitate acting as you have.
Michael
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Hesychios
Guest
You have got be kidding me.
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dvdjs
Guest
Hesychios,
I wrote two posts in which I pointed out specific aspects of your posts that I found doubtful or off the mark, and asked for support of certain claims. Your response addressed nothing that I mentioned; it only made the peculiar complaint that I don’t like your trying to be factually accurate.
Well, that response did not change my perspective; I still think that specific aspects of your posts are doubtful and unsupported; they are not, IMO, factually accurate. There was no insult, just a succint restatement that I find your comments dubious, off-base, and/or unsupported.
djs
I wrote two posts in which I pointed out specific aspects of your posts that I found doubtful or off the mark, and asked for support of certain claims. Your response addressed nothing that I mentioned; it only made the peculiar complaint that I don’t like your trying to be factually accurate.
Well, that response did not change my perspective; I still think that specific aspects of your posts are doubtful and unsupported; they are not, IMO, factually accurate. There was no insult, just a succint restatement that I find your comments dubious, off-base, and/or unsupported.
djs
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dvdjs
Guest
I am not sure what your point is, but mine is simply this:You have got be kidding me.
If you look at the locus of union in Europe, it is - as one might expect - at the interface of regions of Western and Eastern Christian populations, and often in regions with heavily mixed populations. There were plenty of opportunities for cultural contact between Eastern and Western Christians, opportunities for picking up ideas and practices from each other, etc.
All churches are different, of course, but in the case of my own Ruthenian church, this opportunity for contact was especially substantial as, we were projecting along the Carpathian ridge into territories that were substantially Western Catholic - Poles, Hungarians, Slovaks. Even in the more eastern regions of the union, those looking for an education would necessarily be finding their way west.
So your suggestions about people knowing nothing about Western ideas cannot be so casually asserted.
In fact, if you look at Orthodox thinking of that time and region, you would have to accept the fact that if people were formally catechized (e.g. from St Peter Mohila’s Orthodox catechism) they would probably have strongly westernized ideas of original sin, purgatory, etc. This was after all the time (and place) of the so-called Western captivity.
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ASimpleSinner
Guest
Michael I beg and entreat you forego playing the “is outrage” card.
DVDJS has patiently explained his thinking in the sometimes seemingly passive-aggressive charges you level that often simply come accross as a kinder gentler version of proselitizng.
Perhaps, it appears, that by casting soft and subtle aspersions on the unions as acts of coercion against seemingly feckless & ignorant simple Orthodox people while at the same time playing up the breaking of the unias as “a return to Orthodoxy” (which was in turn not coerced?) you are of the thinking that your way of thinking on the matter is entirely self evident. Well, we just don’t agree.
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ASimpleSinner
Guest
That sir is the height of arrogance.
If you are of the thinking that brother Anthony is errant in his understanding, it is incumbant upon you to make an argument for your thinking.
Even adding the magic word (“please”) does not preclude your statement from coming across as elitist and condescending.
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jimmy
Guest
St. Ephrem is used often to support doctrines that he never supported. For example he is used to support the Immaculate Conception when the fact is that he believed that Mary was made immaculate at the Annunciation.
Atleast if you are going to use his quotes give the reference so that people can check it.
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Friar_David_O.Carm
Guest
Then the way to go about this is to actually show this from the writings of St Ephrem. Making the claim just does not provide the support especially when the Anthony gave us actual things from the Saint that appear to support it.
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Peter_J
Guest
You never responded, per se, to my question; but I take it that your answer is in the negative, seeing as you’ve again referred to someone “playing the ‘is outrage’ card”.Peter_J said:
Suit yourself, then. I was only asking.
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yeshua
Guest
St. Ephrem, as Jimmy said, is grossly misquoted on what seems a daily basis. His words are often completely removed from the theological and cultural context that they are found in—it happens in discussions about grace, the Assumption/Immaculate conception, Petrine Primacy etc.
For example, in this instance brother Anthony gives us another of his signature drive-by barrages of quotations with no commentary, no discussion, and zero lack of history surrounding Syriac trinitarianism, just the assumption that because the English translation of Mor Ephrem’s words fits his point that it speaks for itself.
It is a tireless exercise on the part of Syriac Christians to address these abuses.
As for brother Jimmy, arrogance rather is the gall to selectively take the words of one of our patron saints and post them into a polemical exercise of zero discussion, all the while assuming that this snippet is enough to prove to everyone brother Anthony’s argument.
Peace and God Bless.
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ASimpleSinner
Guest
I likely will.
If you wish to come up with another turn of phrase for this sort of debate closing sentiment - one that tries to inflict shame or embarassment with hypersensitivity, suit yourself.
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ASimpleSinner
Guest
All well and good.
Better still that time and effort gets taken to show why these understandings are errant rather then telling someone “Please don’t quote St. Ephrem. You will only distort his teachings.”
It rather seems, the teachings are up for understanding. If a party feels they know so much better, let them speak and disabuse all of any ignorance some may have.
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Hesychios
Guest
dvdjs,
I have been traveling and have not much time to address your complaint.
However in few days I will do so.
Anyway, your writing style is kind of rambling, so if you would like to line item your contentions, that would help me address them.
*
Michael*
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jimmy
Guest
Well if we are going to discuss the words of Ephrem it would be good to have the reference to the hymn or treatise it comes from so that we could see what Ephrem is saying.
J
jimmy
Guest
I have done a search online for the quote and the only reference I have found is in a catholicculture.com article which does not give the reference or any commentary or anything. I don’t even know what hymn or treatise it is from. You can’t address a statement when you don’t even know the context of the statement.
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Hesychios
Guest
I don’t expect you to agree.
Anyone who knows me knows that I have been posting in this same line of thinking for many years, long before I became Orthodox. Since sometime in 1998 on newsgroups and forums across the internet.
I think that your trying to paint me with some kind of stereotype is ridiculous. It is a cheap tactic to make my posts seems somehow marginal or dismissable.
You and dvdjs ignore my main point and attack me on incidental points, like the so-called “is outrage” baloney. You are the one pulling the “is outrage” now, and it is a silly point to make because it does not address the facts.
The fact is, although you and dvdjs choose to dance around it, is that the model of Brest did not require the Catholics of Belarus and Ukraine (and those regions of present day Russia which were under Polish control at the time) to believe in the Latin doctrines of Papal Universal Jurisdiction, Papal Infallibility or Purgatory; nor Latin Original Sin nor Latin-style Immaculate Conception, even though they were “in communion” with the Pope of Rome. They were not therefore Eastern Catholics in your sense because today that would be demanded of them, according to your opinion. There are still Eastern Catholics who disagree with you after all of this time! Four to five centuries!
But what were they then? What are the present Eastern Catholics who don’t believe those things?
I have seen people like you a dvdjs imply that they are not true Catholics, yet they are just like their own (and your own) predecessors in the Faith.
Michael
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Hesychios
Guest
The fact is, the homelands of the Ruthenians south of the Carpathians, as well as the Red Ruthenians and White Ruthenians were not projecting into the west. Sorry, but you made that up.
The political power of the Hungarian kingdom and the Polish kingdom was projecting into the east. Funny that the Latins who migrated eastward did not pick up a few things too, like Palamite theology, or an understanding of Theosis, or devotional practices like the Akathist and the Jesus Prayer, or Orthros before Mass.
No, this cultural interchange was one-way. It was the eastern church that suffered the damage.
Actually, these lands (Poles, Hungarians, Slovaks) were originally evangelized into the eastern church through the work of Cyril and Methodius (co-Patrons of Europe along with Saint Benedict, according to Pope John Paul II). That effort was undone even before the great schism Southern Poland practiced the “Methodian Rite” until the eleventh century. After the Magyars accepted Christianity from the west, the native eastern rite christians were by and large pushed into the Latin church.
Frankly, they could have known as much about Islam, or even Buddhism, but that is not the same as actually being taught it as truth by the village priest.
Now don’t go off on a tangent here, I am not equating Islam and Latin theology. The point is, eastern Christians might have heard of western theological ideas, but they did not believe them, they believe the theology expressed in their liturgy and preached by their priest.
Peter Mohila came after the Union of Brest and the Latin missionaries having worked in K’yiv, not before, and he had nothing to do with your Carpathian predecessors.
His catechism was corrected later.
Michael
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johnnykins
Guest
There certainly is plenty of baloney going around.
- ALL Eastern Catholic CHURCHES are certainly CATHOLIC and anyone who says differently is full of Baloney.
- Brest took place in 1595-96 while the “Latin doctrines” of Papal Universal Jurisdiction, Papal Infallibility and Immaculate Conception were proclaimed as dogma only in the 19th CENTURY - to say the belief “was not required” at the time of Brest is Baloney - because it was not yet declared dogma.
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ASimpleSinner
Guest
I am not trying to paint you in any way shape or form. I am just calling out what I see as a tendancy to provcatively deconstruct the validity of our unions and communion with the Catholic Church through what seems so much like subtle inference of duplicity. Help to disabuse me of this impression if it is wrongful. As yet, I have seen no evidence that it is.
Show me where we are attacking the incidentals? Maybe you missed the arguments DVDJS pretty clearly made as in your mind his writing is “rambling” (your description, not mine.) Irony of ironies, you now are outraged and focusing on that with the “Is baloney!” arguments here.
We state pretty clearly our defense of the unions and our status of unity. If you would like to line item your contentions, that would help me address them.
Show me where we are dancing.
With respect to the Union or Brest not compelling our forebearers to adopt the laundry list you put out, ¶ 5 comes to mind: We shall not debate about purgatory, but we entrust ourselves to the teaching of the Holy Church. If you are looking for the lack of more explicit explination in this singular (albeit foundational) document, I don’t know much what to tell you. Silence no more makes your argument than mine. But I would have an exceedingly difficult time garnering from the silence of the document on these matters a justification for rejecting them. To be in communion with broad rejection of what is believed by those you are in communion with seems - at best - rather pedantic and out of sorts. We weren’t all Anglicans back in the 16th century.
Show me where these implications are made and do you rbest (if possible) to avoid “weasel words” like “I have seen people like yuo and x imply”. Getting into broad and vague generalities about what one has seen “people like you imply” serves little purpose. Either I have, or have not. What other people you judge to be “like me” say or do, I cannot answer for.
What were they? What were whom? That folks in the last 5 centuries who are in the Catholic communion can be found to reject tenants of Catholicism. I am not sure what you feel that proves.
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dvdjs
Guest
You bring me into this, so I will respond. You may think that your main point is clear and that my response is to incidental points. OK. But I will disagree with or seek clarification or support for those points that bother me. IMO, you often are very short on facts and long on interpretations. And the interpretations seem to have a common theme that I find patronizing to Greek Catholics and poorly supported by history. That may not be your main point but it is what I want to and shall respond to.
Please, I am not a dancer. I think that you are off on the “terms” of union (see Taft, for example). But of course what you say about what people knew is not incorrect - for a variety of reasons, as I already stated above.
But I also noted what I think is the point that you are missing. And that is the real indifference that we had and largely have to theological esoterica. A dobry rusyn finds God by experience of beauty and grace. Not by pondering angels on the head of a pin. This procession or that? Dirty until when? Who is that other hierarch to tell me what is right? I can hear my grandmother’s tsk’s.
So to the extent that I understand your main point correctly, I think it misses the real point about who we are and what we believe, and quibbles over things that we don’t care about in the same way that you do.
Nope, you don’t get my sense of Eastern Catholics at all. And I will readily admit that my sense might not apply to all Churches or even all parishes of my Church, but it is an opinion formed from a lifetime of direct experience of, and love and deep respect for, the people of my Church. That, I belive is what makes our senses different.
To the best of my knowledge I have made no comments on matters of who is Catholic. I honestly don’t have strong opinions on who must believe what to be what. (Perhaps you are misinterpreting something unrelated???) Eventually I will get around to a post that I think may be useful on that point.
With very limited time on my hands, I post only to correct the misinformation that gets posted here that I find patronizing to the people of my church. I regret that I am very much behind on these corrections.
djs
Michael
- Status