Moscow to Rome: Yes to cooperation, no to communion

[dzheremi]

Do your own five second search lest we feel bad for you.

Problems with the text I brought have been dealt with in discussion with KyivAndrew (and you; thank you). I recognize the mistake I made and apologize for it, but it still does not change the fact that the text even as you quoted it with “sobornuyu” is correct. I am not disputing that the word carries other meanings (though I don’t see why that’s a problem in this case), but without some sort of clue of what I’m supposed to be looking for it makes it a little difficult to do a search.

So what did you have in mind?

 

[gurneyhalleck1]

Why am I suddenly in the mood to watch “Firefox,” “The Hunt for Red October,” and “Rocky IV?”

 

[KyivAndrew]

Yes. I must apologize for having scanned it a bit too quickly.

OK. It is Lent so I feel like apologizing now for making you apologize. Apologies. At least I can go to bed in peace then.

 

[gurneyhalleck1]

I feel like apologizing and I didn’t even do anything after reading this?

OK. It is Lent so I feel like apologizing now for making you apologize. Apologies. At least I can go to bed in peace then.

 

[dzheremi]

But I should apologize! I was lazy and rude and I’m sorry. But yes, let’s not waste time in making peace so that no one goes to bed upset or otherwise disturbed.

And since it’s still early here on the West Coast, Gurney, I am up for “Rocky IV”!

 

[KyivAndrew]

Great post and fascinating insights, Kyiv, thanks!

Thanks ! You West Coast Guys can go back I guess to Rocky then, but please don’t tell me if Rocky wins. No spoiler.

 

[dvdjs]

The correct part of the Symbol of Faith is “и во единую святую, соборно-вселенскую и апостольскую Церковь” in Russian I believe .

There is a good article on the Symbol of Faith in ru.wikipedia.org/wiki.

It gives the Slavonic as: Во едину Святую, Соборную и Апостольскую Церковь.; and the Russian as: И во единую, Святую, Вселенскую и Апостольскую Церковь. The cognate of “Вселенскую” is used in the Slavonic liturgy to commemorate the Ecumenical Patriarch/Pontiff. And as Dzheremi has pointed out there also is the perfect word кафолическая in Slavonic (and Russian).

So we have Concilar, Ecumenical, and Catholic.

While Metropolitan Hilarion’s interest in branding speaks for itself, and while my original post was a bit tongue in cheek, I am interested in the (real) history of when, why, and how these various words were used, perhaps interchangably, in the Slavonic/Russian creed. And whether the theologizing about the words motivated the use of certain words or developed post facto - perhaps like the discussion of whether the Spirit is Lord or “true” Lord.

 

[dvdjs]

… the UOCMP is autonomous, and I’ll be surprised if the upcoming council doesn’t grant it autocephalous status.

We will take note.

While Roman treatment of Eastern Catholics has greatly improved since Vat II, we saw how they were treated before, anyone who suggests we must negotiate on the basis of that religion may as well walk away. Just because things are good now doesn’t mean much to us when the instruments of oppression are still in force - just because Rome takes a hands off approach now doesn’t mean it has to forever.

This posturing may be convenient, but it flies in the face of history. You may like to make a big deal about how Rome has treated us, but is seems disingenuous is you also, like Metropolitan Hilarion, overlook that the fact that Orthodoxy has treated us with excommunication, mayhem, and murder. And does not seem to be able to apologize for its sins. Worse you overlook the fact that Orthodox Patriarchs often throughout history have taken a very hand-on approach to affairs in other patriarchates - far more intrusive anything done by Rome. There may be a hands off approach now, but that doesn’t mean it has to forever. A blind eye is turned to Orthodox history, while the Catholic church is placed under the microscope. Fascinating. What does it mean?

Those who think it is wrong that Orthodox don’t take into account Eastern Catholics, you need to take that up with Rome. These are discussions between Communions…

Actually we do participate in North America. Check out the rosters of the Joint theological Conferences. In Europe we do not as some Orthodox have promised to walk out if we are seated.

 

[dzheremi]

While Metropolitan Hilarion’s interest in branding speaks for itself, and while my original post was a bit tongue in cheek, I am interested in the (real) history of when, why, and how these various words were used, perhaps interchangably, in the Slavonic/Russian creed.

This is my issue with understanding the problem you are having, dvdjs. And I do apologize for having been so rude earlier. That was terrible of me, and very un-Christian. Still I must maintain that in all that I have seen and heard, it seems that the words are being used interchangeably. So I don’t understand why “sobornuyu” is a problem in the clause. I understand it and “vselenskuyu” as being synonyms, in so far as how they are used in the Creed.

 

[gurneyhalleck1]

I’ll watch Eastwood in “Firefox” first!!

Thanks ! You West Coast Guys can go back I guess to Rocky then, but please don’t tell me if Rocky wins. No spoiler.

 

[Ignatius]

“the challenges of a godless world, which is equally hostile today to Orthodox believers and Catholics, the challenge of the aggressive Islamic movement, the challenge of moral corruption, family decay, the abandonment by many people in traditionally Christian countries of the traditional family structure, liberalism in theology and morals”

That much I certainly agree with, problems with the treatment of the UGCC notwithstanding. Also, he is wrong with respect to the Eastern Catholic Churches SUI Juris.

 

[gurneyhalleck1]

Ivan Drago! “If he dies, he dies” and “I must break you!”

But I should apologize! I was lazy and rude and I’m sorry. But yes, let’s not waste time in making peace so that no one goes to bed upset or otherwise disturbed.

And since it’s still early here on the West Coast, Gurney, I am up for “Rocky IV”!

 

[Nine_Two]

Just my opinion, and I feel uncomfortable anyway overly engaging in such polemics in Lent.

Then why are you?

 

[Nine_Two]

Sort of - among other things.

I see your the expert. The Greek word then, it only has one possible meaning?

 

[Nine_Two]

This posturing may be convenient, but it flies in the face of history. You may like to make a big deal about how Rome has treated us, but is seems disingenuous is you also, like Metropolitan Hilarion, overlook that the fact that Orthodoxy has treated us with excommunication, mayhem, and murder. And does not seem to be able to apologize for its sins. Worse you overlook the fact that Orthodox Patriarchs often throughout history have taken a very hand-on approach to affairs in other patriarchates - far more intrusive anything done by Rome. There may be a hands off approach now, but that doesn’t mean it has to forever. A blind eye is turned to Orthodox history, while the Catholic church is placed under the microscope. Fascinating. What does it mean?

What was it the Lord said about taking the plank out of your own eye before telling your brother about the spec in his?

Yes, Orthodox Christians have treated Eastern Catholics badly. Some are certainly guilty of murder, and of going along with murder. But Eastern Catholics are guilty of the very same things against us. Your religion did not come to dominance in Western Ukraine overnight, nor did it do it by methods we would consider legitimate today.

Perhaps before you decide to hold it against us - and demand an apology - perhaps you should look at yourself, and ask if there has been apologizing on your side?

Of course no one in this thread is qualified to do such, and no one in this thread has defended the evil actions of their own side. Therefore is seems both pointless and foolish to bring this up.

If it is your desire to libel us with accusations that “Catholic” has been taken out of the creed, that is your business. You will answer to the Almighty for your libel of his Church. If you truly believe us heathen, as your posturing seems to indicate (though you have not said it), then I assume this will be of no worry to you, but if you believe, as your church teaches, that we are the “other lung”, then you might have some issues.

You are correct that at times certain Churches have been overly invasive in the affairs of others - I disagree that it is anywhere near the level Rome has shown in the past - going so far for a time to name its own Patriarch of Constantinople - but the difference is that we do have methods of dealing with that intrusivness. You are an anomaly among Eastern Catholics in that you are an ultramontanist, but many of your brothers seem quite uncomfortable with the fact that they don’t have that method of redress that we do.

Now this thread is about the prospect of cooperation. Am I to take it that you believe us so below your station as to render cooperation impossible?

 

[KyivAndrew]

Then why are you?

Because the article linked to in the first post was polemical in and of itself and I started off responding to who the author of the article - Metropolitan Hilarion - was as there was some misunderstanding. I also was surprised that no Orthodox posters on here openly disagreed with Metropolitan Hilarion’s view of the 1946 KGB enforced synod liquidating the Ukrainian Catholic Church. I can condemn the Soviets’ repression of the Orthodox.

My main point is that I personally find a fallacious belief by some in the West, sometimes by those in the West who convert to Orthodoxy or love Eastern Christianity, that Russia or Ukraine, for instance, do not have the same problems with morality that we do in the West. Some see the beauty of Orthodoxy and automatically assume that over there religion is more powerful and the people more moral than in the West. My point is that religiously I believe the US and Canada have the same if not more church going faithful than in Russia. According to Paul Goble, a reputable scholar on Eurasia:

“…this Christmas, which took place yesterday according to the Eastern calendar, the numbers of Russian Orthodox were both low and if anything smaller than in earlier years.
According to interior ministry sources, approximately 2.5 million people took part in the celebration of Orthodox Christmas this year, attending services in approximately 8500 churches. The attendees constitute fewer than two percent of the country’s population, and the number of Orthodox churches conducting Christmas services about two-thirds of all Orthodox churches.”

windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/2011/01/window-on-eurasia-church-attendance-at.html

This idea that here the West is all immoral and decrepit, as is implied in some of the posts posted on this very thread, and that there Christian morality reigns supreme over in Russia is fallacious. Both West and East suffer from societal problems. The problems there are different than here, and maybe even worse. I wished to point this out but am not going to belabour the point.

The article linked to in this thread was polemical to the nth degree in my opinion, and I responded in one evening, yesterday. That’s it. It’s hard to respond to a polemical argument which calls your church a failure with positive feedback.

So I’ll ask you Nine, were the Ukrainian Catholic priests, bishops, nuns, laity, families repressed and/or killed by Stalin’s KGB during and after 1946 martyrs for Christ or not?

 

[Nine_Two]

Because the article linked to in the first post was polemical in and of itself and I started off responding to who the author of the article - Metropolitan Hilarion - was as there was some misunderstanding. I also was surprised that no Orthodox posters on here openly disagreed with Metropolitan Hilarion’s view of the 1946 KGB enforced synod liquidating the Ukrainian Catholic Church. I can condemn the Soviets’ repression of the Orthodox.

My main point is that I personally find a fallacious belief by some in the West, sometimes by those in the West who convert to Orthodoxy or love Eastern Christianity, that Russia or Ukraine, for instance, do not have the same problems with morality that we do in the West. Some see the beauty of Orthodoxy and automatically assume that over there religion is more powerful and the people more moral than in the West. My point is that religiously I believe the US and Canada have the same if not more church going faithful than in Russia. According to Paul Goble, a reputable scholar on Eurasia:

“…this Christmas, which took place yesterday according to the Eastern calendar, the numbers of Russian Orthodox were both low and if anything smaller than in earlier years.
According to interior ministry sources, approximately 2.5 million people took part in the celebration of Orthodox Christmas this year, attending services in approximately 8500 churches. The attendees constitute fewer than two percent of the country’s population, and the number of Orthodox churches conducting Christmas services about two-thirds of all Orthodox churches.”

windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/2011/01/window-on-eurasia-church-attendance-at.html

This idea that here the West is all immoral and decrepit, as is implied in some of the posts posted on this very thread, and that there Christian morality reigns supreme over in Russia is fallacious. Both West and East suffer from societal problems. The problems there are different than here, and maybe even worse. I wished to point this out but am not going to belabour the point.

The article linked to in this thread was polemical to the nth degree in my opinion, and I responded in one evening, yesterday. That’s it. It’s hard to respond to a polemical argument which calls your church a failure with positive feedback.

So I’ll ask you Nine, were the Ukrainian Catholic priests, bishops, nuns, laity, families repressed and/or killed by Stalin’s KGB during and after 1946 martyrs for Christ or not?

In answer to your question, I know nothing of the Synod in question. I do not have knowledge of the conditions under which it was conducted, how representative it was of the Church. A martyr is one who, without seeking it, dies in witness to their faith. Any who died under such conditions are certainly martyrs.

However that was not part of the article in question. Eastern Catholics were only mentioned briefly, and what was said at that point is essentially the universal opinion of the church - that the path of the Eastern Catholics is not a path we wish to follow. While you may be content with the place of your church in communion with Rome, it is not where we want to be, and for this reason cannot serve as an example to us. As that is what the Eastern Catholics were supposed to function as - a gateway for complete Orthodox reunion with Rome - they have failed. As he said
“Not only did it not bring the Orthodox Christians and Catholics closer together, it actually distanced them”

I don’t see any mention in here about one area of the world being more moral than another, in fact he outright calls it a “godless world” “equally hostile today to Orthodox believers and Catholics.” He goes on to talk about moral corruption in traditionally Christian countries, that would be places like Russia, Ukraine, and Canada. He isn’t making a statement about anyone being more morally corrupt than anyone else.

At any rate I think this thread speaks volumes about the prospects of unity between Catholics and Orthodox, and as much as Catholics want to say we’re the ones who are getting in the way, this thread seems to have a different story.

 

[KyivAndrew]

Nine. O.K. I noticed you deleted your post addressed to me, after I had already posted an answer to your post! So in reality I kind of responded to a non-existent post from you. and I wasn’t going to post on this thread further until you brought me back in.

In any event, I’m out. It’s Sunday. I don’t terribly feel like going on about this further, as sometimes it can bring out resentment where there shouldn’t be. As I said, I wrote all I really wanted to say yesterday, in one evening when this thread first showed up, and attempted to respond to several posters generically, not just the article in question.

 

[dvdjs]

What was it the Lord said about taking the plank out of your own eye before telling your brother about the spec in his?

Yes, Orthodox Christians have treated Eastern Catholics badly. Some are certainly guilty of murder, and of going along with murder. But Eastern Catholics are guilty of the very same things against us. Your religion did not come to dominance in Western Ukraine overnight, nor did it do it by methods we would consider legitimate today.

Perhaps before you decide to hold it against us - and demand an apology - perhaps you should look at yourself, and ask if there has been apologizing on your side?

You appear to be either grossly unaware of history or deliberately waxing ironic about the speck and plank. My religion is not and has never been dominant in my homeland of Prjashevschina. And tell me what methods in Zakarpatskaya are you talking about? Or are you talking about Galicia? Please be advised that things that happened centuries ago were far more benign than things that happened 60 years ago. (Please note: there evidently was a real choice in 1595; totally different in the 1940’s). You have a long way to go to catch up on reality. But I am glad to see some progress: you admit that Orthodox Christians have treated ECs badly; Met. Hilarion, however, is still in denial, as are most EO’s on the subject.

Of course no one in this thread is qualified to do such, and no one in this thread has defended the evil actions of their own side. Therefore is seems both pointless and foolish to bring this up.

Huh? Met. Hilarion slanders the E. Catholic churches in the quoted article; that slander is reinforced by other comments he has made that were quoted on this thread. He has defended evil. But I don’t think the discussion has been foolish or pointless. It has elicited the first admission, to my recollection, of bad treatment by EOs of ECs, at CAF. I have asked several posters directly in the past, but to no avail. Great progress has been made here.

If it is your desire to libel us with accusations that “Catholic” has been taken out of the creed, that is your business. You will answer to the Almighty for your libel of his Church. If you truly believe us heathen, as your posturing seems to indicate (though you have not said it), then I assume this will be of no worry to you, but if you believe, as your church teaches, that we are the “other lung”, then you might have some issues.

Fascinating. I may have actually done more in the service of the Orthodox church than you, having given a great deal to help build an Orthodox mission in my town for the past ten years. I haven’t a problem with Orthodoxy. I do take issue with some Orthodox, who seem to know so little of the history or theology of their religion, but want to preach to the world all the things they are misinformed about.

And so with the creed. Have there been changes to the Creed in Rus’ - changes that have been considered sufficient for schism and even martyrdom? Yes. Is the circumlocution about “Catholic” one of them - or is it more akin to “Creator” versus “Maker” - for which one could easily do some deep theologizing, even though it is really no big deal? I don’t know. But as I have said - I would like to know the history and theologizing on the matter. Why and when “sobornuju” vs “vselenskuju” in Slavonic, why that appears to have changed in modern Russian, and why “kataolicheskuju” was not used in either situation.

Of course I won’t get that from the EOs here. Instead I will get: we’ve never changed anything, and it’s libel to suggest that we did, and if we did, then it doesn’t matter; and you must be joking. Frankly, it is the responses, especially the hysterical charges that are comical.

You are correct that at times certain Churches have been overly invasive in the affairs of others - I disagree that it is anywhere near the level Rome has shown in the past - going so far for a time to name its own Patriarch of Constantinople - but the difference is that we do have methods of dealing with that intrusivness.

We will disagree, then, but I am willing to bet that your disagreement is largely based on a lack of awareness of Orthodox history. As to the methods, I am curious what you have in mind - are you seriously going to point somewhere among the Orthodox jurisdictions in America to give a great example of Orthodox ecclesiology and administration?

 

[dvdjs]

You are an anomaly among Eastern Catholics in that you are an ultramontanist, but many of your brothers seem quite uncomfortable with the fact that they don’t have that method of redress that we do.

You are wrong to think that I am anomalous among Greek Catholics. Do you have contact with Greek Catholics and parishes or are you extrapolating from the net? And your calling me ultramontanist is a bit of joke. Perhaps there are Greek Catholics on the net who give the impression of seeing every problem as something done to us by Rome. Perhaps they even feel more “orthodox” that way. I am more willing to say that are problems are not in our stars but in ourselves - and so are the solutions to our problems. We should not have unrealistic expectations about what Rome will or will not do, nor should we let that stand as an excuse for the lack of taking matters into our own hands and shaping our own destiny. Blaming Rome looks to me like a cop out for those who like to play a melodramatic role of victim. Off the net, such folks a decided minority.

Now this thread is about the prospect of cooperation. Am I to take it that you believe us so below your station as to render cooperation impossible?

As I’ve mentioned here, and many times before at CAF, I enjoy cooperating with EOs, even when I know that it will be a one-way street. We had a Greek Catholic monk visiting here last week; after long travels, I was happy to get home and chant the akathist to the Theotokos with him on Friday. I was reluctant to mention to the people I sing with at the EO mission, because I knew that it would put them in an awkward position. However, I have a limit. And that limit aggression against Greek Catholics. I will not compromise on that. Met. Hilarion went over the line.