Among the Greek Catholics, Melkites, Ruthenians, and Ukrainians all have at one point or another had an office of adoration. Most no long practice such, which is fine, but your contradistinctive anti-adoration opinions can’t rightly be said to be in unison with them. They don’t practice it (much) anymore, but they don’t speak out against it.
There’s obviously a reason why they don’t pracitise it anymore.
To go from having to not having is a step taken
with initiative, not with apathy.
The pious tradition of Saint Luke as icongrapher is one I am not interested in disecting on this thread, we can start another if you like. But for being of apostolic origin, it is an oddity to me that in the Greek world alone did it develop in the trajectory it had. Schools of iconography were to be found elsewhere, to be sure, but certain novel approaches to meaning and styling is unique to Byzantium.
There are Arabic, Russian, Byzantine and even Latin schools of iconography. Going Oriental, one finds the Copts and others with their own schools, too. It is a practise that was both universal and inculturated.
+KALISTOS is a venerable soul who has done a yeoman’s work in making much of the east accesible to readers throughout the English speaking world. That as the case may be, we would do well to know that his summaries of Byzantine thought are just those his and summaries.
They are rather moderate summaries. Just as you would not go to Fish Eaters for mainstream Catholic opinion, you would not go to the latinised or the Old-Calendarists for mainstream Eastern opinions.
Bishop +KALISTOS (yes, your citation of his name is better) is a fine representative of the middle of the road.
But appeal to +KALISTOS, being all well and good, if it is done with a view of refuting a belief legitimately held by Catholics, and if in fact you are “quickly headed East” (as in leaving the Catholic Church to go Orthodox) it is time we move the thread to apologetics or even non-Catholic forum for the simple matter that this is no longer an inter-Catholic discussion. Catholics of good will aren’t going to bemoan and denounce the ritual practices of others in the Universal Church on a matter like this. I certainly would NOT be interested in a Latin coming in here and explaining to us “how we do things wrong.”
Think about what I typed. If I am Latin Catholic, heading East, East is surely meant to modify Catholic.
Therefore, it only reflects the sad fact that I am stuck in the Western Church due to a marked absence of Eastern Catholic Churches in my area.
That is all, no more and no less, for the moment.
Such magnanimous certitude in how very wrong the Latins are to ascribe pride of place to prayerful postures done in different contexts! I don’t know how it so escapes you, when certainly the very positioning of the tabernacle where the Sacrament is reserved and how it is done so must strike you as being more than an expedience (“They had to put it somewhere, but its for eating…”)
You love inflating my arguments to a wholesale condemnation of Latin Christianity. Very presumptuous on your part.
The placement of the tabernacle has more to do with the theological symbolism of the church building than it has to do with any 13th century Latin private devotions.
Priestless old believers have in some cases managed to preserve particles for their tabernacles for centuries now. Why don’t they just commune already?
You cite schismatics from ‘schismatics’ to justify Catholic practice? All I cited was a mainstream Orthodox bishop who put a thought succinctly which I could not!
Good heavens! One could use the priestless Old Believers to justify a doomsday eschatology, amongst other very un-Catholic things.
This is a remarkably cheap shot. Not to metion the fallacy of questionable cause, reductio ad Hitlerum. Popes who are the spiritual leaders and teaching authority on matters of faith and morals teaching on this matter is a little different than the crusades. You can, I pray, grant that.
My point was extreme to make one thing quite clear: just because a thing was at one point lauded by men who are and were genuinely holy does not necessarily mean that it will be vindicated in the end.
So are you crediting yourself with being on the vanguard of parties having “bouts of arrogance” on the matter of Eucharistic Adoration? with being like those Catholics that have spoken up against different aspects of the Crusades?
I credit myself with nothing.
Could you please explain how the Latin practice of Eucharistic Adoration is “doctrinally sound” but not “liturgically sensical”?
Yes, the Sacrament is worthy of worship (latria). Yes, the Sacrament is truly and in all instances, consumed or reserved, the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ.
Liturgically, however, it ignores the fact that the Eucharist has a purpose.
You’re being influenced by the uniformity and exclusivity of the Eastern Orthodox mindset, that is, if a popular practice is not found in Eastern Orthodoxy (which hails from the Constantinopolitan or Greek tradition), then it is somehow deficient and should not be allowed among Apostolic Christians.
Wrong on both counts. Have I yet to complain about azymes?
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