Interview with Archimandrite Robert Taft, SJ

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UncleBill said:
I wouldn’t consider St. JOhn Maximovich an Anglican…he was a big proponent of the Western Rite.
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Current proponents, I should say. Orthodoxy in the West has changed a lot since St. John Maximovich died. I did say most outspoken proponents, not all. There are some who are definitely supportive of it that are cradles and other converts, but I don’t believe they are nearly as numerous in terms of being outspoken.
 
neokarny said:
Current proponents, I should say. Orthodoxy in the West has changed a lot since St. John Maximovich died. I did say most outspoken proponents, not all. There are some who are definitely supportive of it that are cradles and other converts, but I don’t believe they are nearly as numerous in terms of being outspoken.
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I think everyone would be in agreement that the model of Uniatism is dead. And Western Rite Orthodoxy is Uniatism just as the Eastern Catholics are…its time all of us “Uniates” are reabsorbed into our Mother Churches and be done with it!
 
UncleBill said:
I think everyone would be in agreement that the model of Uniatism is dead. And Western Rite Orthodoxy is Uniatism just as the Eastern Catholics are…its time all of us “Uniates” are reabsorbed into our Mother Churches and be done with it!
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I don’t think Western Rite is perfectly analogous to the Eastern Catholic model, since the Western Rite is not made up of independent or alternative churches/hierarchies. If one is an Antiochian Western Rite in Huntington, WV for example, you are still under Bishop Thomas alongside Eastern Rite churches.
 
neokarny said:
I don’t think Western Rite is perfectly analogous to the Eastern Catholic model, since the Western Rite is not made up of independent or alternative churches/hierarchies. If one is an Antiochian Western Rite in Huntington, WV for example, you are still under Bishop Thomas alongside Eastern Rite churches.
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Which I find even worse…kind off like the Eastern Catholics were in the US before we had our own bishops…a bishop who really doesn’t understand the spiritually or liturgy of your parish. Not really the best of situations.

We need unity and we need it now!
 
UncleBill said:
Which I find even worse…kind off like the Eastern Catholics were in the US before we had our own bishops…a bishop who really doesn’t understand the spiritually or liturgy of your parish. Not really the best of situations.

We need unity and we need it now!
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I think that speaks more of a problem with properly preparing bishops. To have overlapping bishops/jurisdictions goes against, in Orthodoxy at least, canonical and traditional norms - the same exact reason why so many detest the current overlapping jursidictionalism in the West today. We don’t want to make the problem worse by throwing Rites into the fray to create even more jurisdictional overlap than we already uncanonically have as a “quick fix” to ignorant and prejudiced bishops.
 
UncleBill said:
Which I find even worse…kind off like the Eastern Catholics were in the US before we had our own bishops…a bishop who really doesn’t understand the spiritually or liturgy of your parish. Not really the best of situations.

We need unity and we need it now!
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Except the Western Rite was set up for no reason other than to give converts the ability to worship in the manner that they were previously accustomed to. Which is a completely different reason than why the Eastern Catholic Churches were set up (or brought over, as the case may be).

The Orthodox Western Rite is closer to the Roman Catholic Anglican Ordinate, which allows sanitized Anglican style worship and practice within the confines of the Church of Rome.

The Western Rite was never meant to be analogous to the Catholic Eastern Rite, which is why no attempt has been made to grant them any sort of autonomy (or autocephaly).
 
Aramis said:
Several falsehoods there, intentional or otherwise. Otherwise, there would be no OCA and no HOCNA. No Russian Orthodox in Rome, London, or Paris.

The Orthodox Churches did use the sword in the 19th and 20th centuries… In Poland, the Ukraine, and other Eastern European areas of long mixed Catholic and Orthodox. Sure, it wasn’t in crusades… it was in accepting a protected place while the Tsars and later the Communists used military force against the Catholics.

And Russian priests have been attempting to preach to Roman Catholics in Rome itself. And in Paris. And in Germany. Since the 1600’s, the Orthodox have decided systematically that Catholics are heretics and to be converted by any means that doesn’t directly put blood on the hands of the ordained.
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Again, I never said the Orthodox side was all innocent. If we’re going to go and dig each other’s dirt up, we’ll be here for a long time and we’ll realize how horrible people we really are. Like I said, there are no “innocent” sides here. Someone from each side has did something wrong. Otherwise, we’d have much more saints from both sides given how holy we are. But overall, we’re not. Only a few from every generation actually attain that holiness here on earth.

Anyway, my original point was that every side needs to stop acting like they are the victim and never the aggressor. We can use the past to learn from it and move on, or wallow in it in self-pity.
 
ConstantineTG said:
Again, I never said the Orthodox side was all innocent. If we’re going to go and dig each other’s dirt up, we’ll be here for a long time and we’ll realize how horrible people we really are. Like I said, there are no “innocent” sides here. Someone from each side has did something wrong. Otherwise, we’d have much more saints from both sides given how holy we are. But overall, we’re not. Only a few from every generation actually attain that holiness here on earth.

Anyway, my original point was that every side needs to stop acting like they are the victim and never the aggressor. We can use the past to learn from it and move on, or wallow in it in self-pity.
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Good point Constantine! Happy feast of St. Constantine and Helena!
 
Nine_Two said:
Except the Western Rite was set up for no reason other than to give converts the ability to worship in the manner that they were previously accustomed to. Which is a completely different reason than why the Eastern Catholic Churches were set up (or brought over, as the case may be).
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Definitely.

I’d like to add that it would be unthinkable for there to be another Union-of-Brest nowadays, in view of the good relations that Catholics and Orthodox have. (Even the situation with Bishop Soro and some others from the ACoE a few years back wasn’t at all like the Union of Brest, in my opinion.)
 
neokarny said:
I’m not necessarily saying Orthodoxy engages Protestants or not, but I don’t think the Western Rite is necessarily a tool primarily for that end. It seems to me more of a way to receive those mostly Anglican parishes that are already interested in converting, and not a tool to pull Anglicans out. WR was, and I believe still is, completely absent in the UK because of the hierarchy’s refusal to even appear to be directly competing with the Church of England. Further, most outspoken proponents of the Western Rite are by far the ex-Anglicans themselves.

Similarly, is the Anglican Ordinariate (not perfectly analogous to WR since it includes church structure and not just a Rite) primarily a tool for receiving Anglican converts, or is it a tool to actively engage Anglicans?
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To quote Cardinal Kasper “We are not fishing in the Anglican pond." 👍
 
neokarny said:
I’m not necessarily saying Orthodoxy engages Protestants or not, but I don’t think the Western Rite is necessarily a tool primarily for that end. It seems to me more of a way to receive those mostly Anglican parishes that are already interested in converting, and not a tool to pull Anglicans out. WR was, and I believe still is, completely absent in the UK because of the hierarchy’s refusal to even appear to be directly competing with the Church of England. Further, most outspoken proponents of the Western Rite are by far the ex-Anglicans themselves.
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I engage with some Orthodox Christians on another forum and they happened to post these two links recently:
westernriteorthodoxuk.org.uk/
sarisburium.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/reminiscences-of-hierarch-regarding.html

+Pax
 
neokarny said:
I just recently saw a reference to ROCORWRV in in UK, but thanks for the info! It seems like it’s a pretty recent development, especially considering they’re still just “missions and study groups.”
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You’re welcome.

I’m really not that up on the situation, I just happened to come across it and remembered this thread.

+Pax
 
neokarny said:
I don’t think Western Rite is perfectly analogous to the Eastern Catholic model, since the Western Rite is not made up of independent or alternative churches/hierarchies. If one is an Antiochian Western Rite in Huntington, WV for example, you are still under Bishop Thomas alongside Eastern Rite churches.
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There is a non-territorial Vricariate for the WR in the Antiochian Orthodox in the US. It is almost exactly parallel to the Uniate model… especially since the vicar is an auxiliary bishop.

antiochian.org/western-rite

Try again.
 
Aramis said:
There is a non-territorial Vricariate for the WR in the Antiochian Orthodox in the US. It is almost exactly parallel to the Uniate model… especially since the vicar is an auxiliary bishop.

antiochian.org/western-rite
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All Antiochian bishops in the US are auxillary bishops AFAIK, so I’m not sure how that makes a difference.

Further, it merely says he “oversees” the Vicariate, which is vague as he is still under Metropolitan Phillip and WR parishes are still part of the same diocese (i.e. under the same bishop) as a neighboring Eastern Rite parish. Take the Antiochian parishes near St. Louis for example: Christ the Good Shepherd (WR), and All Saints of North America (ER). They are both in the Diocese of Toledo and the Midwest under Bishop Anthony.

So, with my understanding as to how the Eastern Catholic model operates, there is not a direct parallel. It seems the AWRV is more of an extra-ecclesial organization with no real administrative or ecclesial authority.
Try again.
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Excuse me? I don’t recall saying anything to warrant such negativity.
 
UncleBill said:
I think everyone would be in agreement that the model of Uniatism is dead. And Western Rite Orthodoxy is Uniatism just as the Eastern Catholics are…its time all of us “Uniates” are reabsorbed into our Mother Churches and be done with it!
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Have fun convincing the Ukrainian Catholics and Maronites. 🙂
 
Aramis said:
There is a non-territorial Vricariate for the WR in the Antiochian Orthodox in the US. It is almost exactly parallel to the Uniate model… especially since the vicar is an auxiliary bishop.
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I can see a certain similarity, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say “almost exactly parallel”. I think it’s more similar to the “Anglican Ordinariate” model, which as Cardinal Kasper said isn’t “uniatism” …
In this regard, Kasper says in the interview:
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“In Cyprus, in order to avoid misunderstandings, I immediately told our Orthodox counterparts that this is not a matter of proselytism or a new Uniatism. …] Uniatism is an historical phenomenon involving the Eastern Churches, while the Anglicans are from the Latin tradition. The Balamand document of 1993 is still valid, according to which this is a phenomenon of the past that took place in unrepeatable circumstances. It is not a method for the present or the future. The Orthodox were mainly interested in understanding the nature of the personal ordinariates for the Anglicans, and I clarified that this is not a matter of a Church ‘sui iuris’, and therefore there will not be the head of a Church, but an ordinary with delegated powers.”
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In simpler terms: while a “Uniate” Church has its own structured hierarchy, with a patriarch and territorial dioceses, none of this will apply to the former Anglican “personal ordinariates,” which will provide pastoral care for the faithful but without their own ecclesiastical territory, a little bit like the military ordinariates.
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The new ordinariates will be characterized by the preservation of the Anglican rite for the Mass and the other sacraments – with liturgical books that were approved for the United States in the 1980’s by the Vatican congregation for divine worship – and by the possibility of having married priests.
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neokarny said:
Originally Posted by Aramis
There is a non-territorial Vricariate for the WR in the Antiochian Orthodox in the US. It is almost exactly parallel to the Uniate model… especially since the vicar is an auxiliary bishop.
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I think he meant, as opposed to being a bishop at all. That’s how I read it anyhow.
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Exactly.

On a side note, the other day I started listening to the Orientale Lumen XV Conference. (I think this will be my second time through it, or possibly third.) When I got up to the talk by Fr. Taft, I remembered a comment someone (I don’t remember who) made earlier: that there may have been some critical-of-Catholics statements in the interview that didn’t make it into the article. My point being that his OL talk might be of interest to some of the posters/readers of this thread, given that it’s available in its entirety.
 
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