Healing misunderstandings and wounds through charitable dialogue

  • Thread starter Thread starter lssanjose
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
ConstantineTG said:
As Catholics when we say “Eastern” faith, we think “Orthodox”. But the Orthodox just see their faith as “orthodox”, in the true meaning of the word. There is nothing “eastern” about their faith, though admittedly because of how the terminology has been used for quite some time, some of them use it. Kind of like how some First Nations/Native Americans do actually refer to themselves as “Indians” even though we sort of treat it as non-PC these days. It is not an admission that they are Indians but that it has been used for a while and it stuck and they just don’t take offense to it.
Click to expand...
There’s plenty of Eastern, brother :). As my friend prefaced my reading Webber’s book: It’ll help you get into the Eastern ethos.
  • Learn by doing (like in Schmemann’s book)
  • having a stillness of heart
  • paradox
  • having a perceived vagueness to the presentation. I should just say, mysticism.
Some of these tenets come to me right away. I guess this is why I’ve been more quickly inclined to Eastern Christianity, because I’ve embraced paradox, from the time I looked into Far Eastern thought, scuba diving through Taoism, Zen, Martial Arts Philosophy
 
ConstantineTG said:
As Catholics when we say “Eastern” faith, we think “Orthodox”. But the Orthodox just see their faith as “orthodox”, in the true meaning of the word. There is nothing “eastern” about their faith, though admittedly because of how the terminology has been used for quite some time, some of them use it. Kind of like how some First Nations/Native Americans do actually refer to themselves as “Indians” even though we sort of treat it as non-PC these days. It is not an admission that they are Indians but that it has been used for a while and it stuck and they just don’t take offense to it.
Click to expand...
So why do the Eastern Orthodox make the “Western Orthodox” distinction? It is better to say the distinction is real, but it is not enough to merit division.

Blessings,
Marduk
 
ConstantineTG said:
Eastern Catholics too is a bit of a misnomer, one reason why many do not subscribe to the “two lung” theory. Does it mean a Ukrainian Catholic is the same as an Ethiopian Catholic? Or a Maronite? Or a Chaldean?
Click to expand...
Based on this, I’d revise the two lung idea, and just have the body of Christ??? We all each have a part in the greater body, don’t we?
 
mardukm said:
So why do the Eastern Orthodox make the “Western Orthodox” distinction? It is better to say the distinction is real, but it is not enough to merit division.

Blessings,
Marduk
Click to expand...
I think the term is Western Rite Orthodox. Although, there is some dispute as to where they should be properly placed, within Orthodoxy. I say this, because my friend discussed with me how liturgy informs the faith, which is why there are some issues with WRO. There are some jurisdictions who support their presence: Antiochian Orthodox (same jurisdiction who took in the Evangelical Orthodox Church), ROCOR, to name a couple.
 
mardukm said:
And there’s a great big difference between saying “this is how Westerns do it, and this is how Easterns do it” and “What the Westerns are doing is wrong.”

Which statement most accurately reflects your pov on this matter?

Blessings,
Marduk
Click to expand...
Brother, I think brother CTG’s contention was with the picture how Eastern Catholics, namely Ukrainian Greek Catholic, or those in relation (like Rusyn Greek Catholic); and other Byzantine Catholics are presented. There are things within the respective traditions, of East AND West, causing a wider gap than what people want to believe. Some of this attempt at narrowing the gap, is at the expense of the aforementioned group’s proper presentation of their tradition(s).
 
Oh, and I was going to respond to this from before (but I’m going to keep it short, at least for now):
ConstantineTG said:
As Catholics when we say “Eastern” faith, we think “Orthodox”. But the Orthodox just see their faith as “orthodox”, in the true meaning of the word. There is nothing “eastern” about their faith, though admittedly because of how the terminology has been used for quite some time, some of them use it.
Click to expand...
I don’t believe that’s true. Or rather, it is true that the Orthodox in principle don’t see Orthodoxy as being Eastern, intrinsically. But they can’t deny that the vast majority of Orthodox are Eastern – or more-Eastern-than-Western if you like. (In much the same way, we can’t deny that the vast majority of Catholics are Western.)

Have a good night, everyone. 🙂
 
ConstantineTG said:
Although you can say the Eastern/Byzantine faith is closer to the Oriental faith than either are to the Latin.
Click to expand...
“The Eastern/Byzantine faith” is a misnomer. We can speak of “the Eastern Orthodox faith”; but like I was saying before “(Byzantine) Eastern Orthodox” and “Byzantine/Eastern” aren’t synonymous. (Although, as I’ve also said before, I have no problem saying that the East “belongs more properly”, if you will, to the Eastern Orthodox.)

Or, as you said on another thread (I forget which one), we shouldn’t pretend that Eastern Catholics are Orthodox when they aren’t.
 
Peter_J said:
“The Eastern/Byzantine faith” is a misnomer. We can speak of “the Eastern Orthodox faith”; but like I was saying before “(Byzantine) Eastern Orthodox” and “Byzantine/Eastern” aren’t synonymous. (Although, as I’ve also said before, I have no problem saying that the East “belongs more properly”, if you will, to the Eastern Orthodox.)

Or, as you said on another thread (I forget which one), we shouldn’t pretend that Eastern Catholics are Orthodox when they aren’t.
Click to expand...
Honestly I myself am struggling with all the verbal gymnastics on this forum. It would be nice if we can stick to certain terms that can easily identify a group.
 
ConstantineTG said:
Honestly I myself am struggling with all the verbal gymnastics on this forum.
Click to expand...
Well there’s that too. *(insert chuckle) *I can’t remember the last time that I wrote “(Byzantine) Eastern Orthodox”, like I did in that last post, rather than simply “Eastern Orthodox”. :cool:
ConstantineTG said:
It would be nice if we can stick to certain terms that can easily identify a group.
Click to expand...
I like “Catholic”. 🙂
 
Peter_J said:
I like “Catholic”. 🙂
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, that is a bit vague too. That is why we have this long thread here. Does being Catholic means one is beholden to the praxis of the greater Roman Church?
 
Peter_J said:
Catholic = “in full communion with the pope” (well, in the current context anyhow).
Click to expand...
It is okay if this is all what it means. But obviously, again I point to the 40+ pages of this thread, many think otherwise.
 
ByzCathCantor said:
Sorry, I couldn’t resist 😊
Click to expand...
😃
ConstantineTG said:
It is okay if this is all what it means. But obviously, again I point to the 40+ pages of this thread, many think otherwise.
Click to expand...
Well, of course, saying Catholic = “in full communion with the pope” (in the current context) leaves room for discussing what “in full communion with the pope” implies. Mostly it’s just helpful in terms of distinguishing it from completely separate uses of “Catholic”, e.g. when the Orthodox called themselves “the Catholic Church”.
 
ConstantineTG said:
It is okay if this is all what it means. But obviously, again I point to the 40+ pages of this thread, many think otherwise.
Click to expand...
This thread focuses on many small details, but sometimes it might be better to focus on just a few big things. For one, consider these words from the Balamand Statement: “Pastoral activity in the Catholic Church, Latin as well as Oriental, no longer aims at having the faithful of one Church pass over to the other”.

That is simple, yet also huge. For example, consider how it impacts one of our most popular topics (on this thread and elsewhere), namely Latinizations. The above quote doesn’t mean that we should stop de-latinizing – definitely we should de-latinize, but the thing is that now we can confidently say that reason for de-latinizing is not to try to get Orthodox to become Eastern Catholic.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top