Russian Orthodox Patriarch refuses to recognise Catholic diocese in Russia

[Isa_Almisry]

As I understand it, the Latins in Russia are mostly expats. But I am not sure it is relevant what particular history got them there. They are Latins and the MP is not competent to care for them pastorally. They need and deserve pastoral care from their church as much as any Orthodox anywhere in the world.

I would tend to agree, but I don’t see how the insistence on a bishop is a necessary part of that (how often do you deal with your bishop?), and causes valid concerns by the PoM.

 

[Arthur22124]

I would tend to agree, but I don’t see how the insistence on a bishop is a necessary part of that (how often do you deal with your bishop?), and causes valid concerns by the PoM.

I am not sure you nor I nor the PM are in a position to make a judgment about whether there is a need for a Catholic bishop in Russia. Nor is any of our opinions relevant to whether there is one.

Have a blessed Christmas.

 

[Alexius]

Does the Patriach who claims Poland, then, claim exclusive canonical jurisdiction, then, as the PoM apparently does of Japan, Ukraine, Latvia, Belarus, Moldove, Hungary and Estonia?

And does the Orthodox Patriarch of Poland claim there should be no Catholic bishops in Poland, as does the PoM in the areas in which he claims canonical jurisdiction?

There is no “Patriarch” in Poland, rather he is called a Metropolitan. The current Metropolitan of Warsaw and All Poland is Metropolitan Sawa. He is in charge of Poland in the same way the Patriarch of Moscow is in charge of Russia. As for current Catholic-Orthodox relations in Poland, they are quite good. They have co-existed together for very long, albeit not without issues.

Prayers and petitions,
Alexius

 

[Ridgerunner]

The responses are all very interesting, and I’ll research them all if the thread doesn’t disappear. Right now, I don’t have time. Many, of course, of the bases for Orthodox jurisdiction, are from a time when there was no schism. So I don’t see any of that as a claim to exclusivity.

Nor does it make any sense to me that ancient convoluted claims in any way justify one Church’s saying another ought not to be afforded full religious freedom in areas where the first predominates, let alone in which it doesn’t now and never did.

I’m not the quickest minded fellow. It only now dawned on me why some EO keep talking about ancient, unforgiven affronts, both real and unreal, as if they happened yesterday. It provides an excuse for religious intolerance in a place like Russia, where oppression of every kind is always blamed on the victims. I realize, Isa Almistry, that you are not saying this exclusive “canonical jurisdiction” is something you, yourself, favor.

 

[Irish_Melkite]

Meanwhile, the Orthodox have established their own Bishop of Rome. This double standard reveals the nature of Orthodoxy. Duplicity.

There is no Orthodox bishop of Rome; there is an Orthodox bishop of Ravenna.

Please do not use the term Uniate. It is offensive.

Then Rome should cease using it in public documents. Neither I, nor most Eastern Catholics of my acquaintance, find it offensive.

And so, we must still pray for the conversion of Russia.

The conversion of Russia should be understood as the end to a rule of athiestic communism - which has happened.

The Russian Catholics have always been there for crying out loud. They been for a long time even long before the East West Schism.

As someone has already pointed out, Christianity was introduced to Russia less than a century before the date popularly ascribed to the Great Schism and, with Russia firmly ensconced in the liturgical and spiritual sphere of Constantinople virtually from the time of its conversion, it was among the churches deemed to have separated from Rome.

I look at Wikipedia, and many of the Catholic Church in Russia are Byzantine Catholic. Note I said Catholic, no where did I mention Roman Rite. I did write, Russian Catholics. Where did you get the general idea where I implied Roman Rite Catholic?

That is even less accurate. The first documented instance of a Russian Orthodox cleric seeking union with Rome occurred in 1896, when Father Nicholas Tolstoy was incardinated into the Melkite Church. The actual date ordinarily deemed as the beginning of the Russian Greek-Catholic Church is 1905.

Not quite. There has always been a Latin Church presence in Russia.

Hardly. Throughout most of Russian history, the only Latin Catholics to be found were foreign diplomats, etc. A few appeared among the nobility from time to time - chiefly as a result of having spent time in Western countries. These were principally aristocrats who found their own country too provincial and and adopted a “West is best” attitude.

Many years,

Neil

 

[Alexius]

Thank you Neil for further explaining all of this…

 

[Ridgerunner]

When it comes to the specific topic, it hardly matters whether the ROP refuses to recognize a Catholic diocese in Russia. It shouldn’t be expected. The real question is to what length he will go to impede it, and what allies he might have in doing so. In Russia, it’s the intervention of the state one has to worry about.

 

[ASimpleSinner]

Interesting to note the Orthodoxchristian.net policy

In this spirit of fostering healthy debate, I would like to inform you that it is a policy here at OCnet not to refer to Eastern Rite Catholics as “Uniates”. The word “Uniate” is very often used as pejorative to insult Eastern Rite Catholics and Eastern Rite Catholicism, and indeed, I have just had to moderate a recent pejorative use of the word in a recent post. One can make one’s point without using pejorative. A point that depends on derision is in reality pointless anyway.
I therefore ask you all to please refrain from referring to Eastern Rite Catholics as “Uniates” on OCnet.

It is a term whose time in polite company - given the mixed sensibilities on its usage - seems to have come and gone. I, and most Eastern Catholics of my acquaintance, do find it offensive.

 

[Isa_Almisry]

Interesting to note the Orthodoxchristian.net policy

It is a term whose time in polite company - given the mixed sensibilities on its usage - seems to have come and gone. I, and most Eastern Catholics of my acquaintance, do find it offensive.

Excellent document !!!, this shows that the maronite church has always saw the Pope as the Head of the Church and was always in communion with him.

Yes, later on it would be in communion with Pope Honorius.

Of course, that caused a problem with Popes Leo, which still had to be addressed at Florence:

Then our beloved son in Christ Isaac, envoy of our venerable brother Elias, bishop of the Maronites, on his behalf and in his name, rejecting the heresy of Macarius about one will in Christ, made with great veneration a profession that was similar in all details.

as long as they viewed the Pope of Rome as head of the Church on earth, their’s no difference, the EO should start accepting this also.

Soooo viewing a heretic as Pope Honorius as head of the Church on earth no difference from a defender of Orthodoxy like Pope St. Leo?

No, we will never accept this.

did pope honorius declared a heresy? Nope he did not, He still the head of the church in his time. No worries, your loss.

He was condemned by an ecumenical council as a heretic. The bishops of Rome called him a heretic. The council called him ‘honorius the heretic’. Here is what Constantinople III says of Honorius [omitted from length-Isa]
He was condemned as a heretic.

Justly so?

THE TRUTH ABOUT POPE HONORIUS

So a thousand years latter we can judge better than the Fathers of the Sixth Ecumenical Council, Honorius’ contemporaries?

Would that it were an article affirming your view, 1000 years later, Isa you would pounce on it like a hungry cat on a fat field mouse…

As enthusiasticly as certain apologists and polemicists want to point to this situation - a curious incident that conspiculously stands out, that has to be returned to regularly given its notable uniqueness… One wonders where are all the other examples. All things being equal, it is funny what a stunning exception this situation seems to be from the rule.

Isa if you want to, I would be happy to see this dicussed in Apologetics forum where it would be more appropriate betwen Catholics and non-Catholics. Since the ECF changed formats, this is, you will recall, a place for Eastern Catholics to discuss Eastern Christian issues with any wishing to ask about their particular churches. The issue of the papacy would fall under apologetics.

There are plenty of such articles. I don’t depend on them.

There are plenty, it is just that the example of the Sixth Ecumenical Council and Pope Leo anathamatizing Honorius should be clear.

As you indicate that this not the place where to discuss it, well…

Not so exceptional.

I remember a story in a paper about how Utah is the only place in the world where Jews are gentiles.

Feel free. There or Non Catholic religion. I spend more time there.

Given the OP was on the letter of a Pope to the ProtoMaronites, and the claim (how I got in) was the claim that they were in continoous communion with the Popes at Rome. And the fact is that Honorius was one of their Popes (at least some of them: anti-Maximus writings among the Maronites survive), and hence the post on the Maronite’s profession at your council of Florence. That’s an issue in a particular church’s history, and one that doesn’t have a corresponding Orthodox one (a loss I’m afraid on our side).

Maybe you also recall the rules for this forum?

Isa I would welcome you to bring these claims up in the non-Catholics forum, the Utah forum, or apologetics. Please don’t insinuate your partisan thinking into this intra-Eastern Catholic discussion. It was made pretty clear immediately after the change-over to this new format what the purpose of it was.

 

[Isa_Almisry]

jj2011;3113494:

After viewing the debates on this subject I thought it might be useful to post documents about the Roman primacy as it relates to the Christian East.

The first entry is the correspondence between the monks of Syria Secunda and Pope St. Hormisdas in the early sixth century. The context is the severe persecution of the Orthodox during the period of the Henoticon of 482. Rome then acted to depose Acacius, the patriarch of Constantinople.

Persecution of the Orthodox continued throughout the East, but ended at Constantinople with the imposition of the formula of Pope Hormisdas in 519. This correspondence is between Pope Hormisdas and monks of Syria Secunda, of the Syro-Maronite tradition.

mari.org/JMS/october97/The_Correspondence_Between.htm

 

[ASimpleSinner]

Are you just really bored and need a place to have a clip and paste pastiche of quotes, Isa?

It does, I imagine, help to keep up that average of 27.60 posts per day. (What happened? - you were almost at 50 ppd a few months ago!)

 

[Isa_Almisry]

Are you just really bored and need a place to have a clip and paste pastiche of quotes, Isa?

It does, I imagine, help to keep up that average of 27.60 posts per day. (What happened? - you were almost at 50 ppd a few months ago!)

There is a message in it just being cut and pasted.

So, I’ve moved the discussion per your request (and my whole string on that thread). Your reponse?

I don’t pay attention to the number of posts. I’ve got nothing to prove here. (I posted what happened).

 

[ASimpleSinner]

There is a message in it just being cut and pasted.

So, I’ve moved the discussion per your request (and my whole string on that thread). Your reponse?

I don’t pay attention to the number of posts. I’ve got nothing to prove here.

I agree with and affirm the last sentiment.

So you moved the discussion by tacking clipped and pasted quotes from two different threads and tack them on to an altogether third post?

My response? Here.

 

[Isa_Almisry]

I agree with and affirm the last sentiment.

So you moved the discussion by tacking clipped and pasted quotes from two different threads and tack them on to an altogether third post?

They were all the same thread, to which you objected to my presence, as quoted. I checked your latest post, thought your complaint about the term uniate was rather apropos to your complaint about a “non-Catholic” commenting on said thread, and since this is the NonCatholic Forum, I thought it appropriate.

If you want (and it was your complaint), you can post a seperate thread. Please link, so we don’t miss it.

My response? Here.

Nothing comes up “here” or is that the point?

 

[ASimpleSinner]

They were all the same thread, to which you objected to my presence, as quoted. I checked your latest post, thought your complaint about the term uniate was rather apropos to your complaint about a “non-Catholic” commenting on said thread, and since this is the NonCatholic Forum, I thought it appropriate.

If you want (and it was your complaint), you can post a seperate thread. Please link, so we don’t miss it.

Nothing comes up “here” or is that the point?

They were from two seperate threads.

Start a new thread if you wish

The ironic reference to the pejorative “uniate” is hardly comparable. One distinction is a pejorative, the other is for the benifit of a common parlance.

When you can show non-Catholic is a slur, I will roll with that.

Isa start a new thread if you wish, tacking on a pastiche of quotes from two different threads at the end of a pre-exisiting and unrelated thread is odd.

Then make clear which of the half-dozen (at least) points you want to discuss.

And truly, Apologetics would be the more appropriate forum, if you are framing a question about the Catholic Church.

 

[Isa_Almisry]

They were from two seperate threads.

I went through the tedious exercise of pressin on all the blue arrows in my posts. They all come up on the same thread: Papal primacy and the East.

Start a new thread if you wish

I was quite content on the original thread, and evidently so were the mods (qui tacit consentit). You, howeve, objected. I just accommodated your objection, though not agreeing with it.

The ironic reference to the pejorative “uniate” is hardly comparable. One distinction is a pejorative, the other is for the benifit of a common parlance.

It is evident that the term doesn’t have a common definition. In the languages of the East, there are two different terms for Catholic (sic) Latin, and Catholic Universal.

When you can show non-Catholic is a slur, I will roll with that.

You think union with Rome is the be and end all, so why is uniate a slur?

Isa start a new thread if you wish, tacking on a pastiche of quotes from two different threads at the end of a pre-exisiting and unrelated thread is odd.

I was quite content on the original thread.

Then make clear which of the half-dozen (at least) points you want to discuss.

Points: 1) The maronites had a monothelete past, 2) which they shared with Pope Honorius 3) over which they lost communion when Rome condemned Honorius with the rest of the Catholic church, 4) communion was restored by repudiating their monotheletism, 5) which shows that the OP document “shows that the maronite church has always saw the Pope as the Head of the Church and was always in communion with him” is contracted by points 1-4.

And truly, Apologetics would be the more appropriate forum, if you are framing a question about the Catholic Church.

I don’t know how appropriate. I’m answering from a perspective of the Catholic Church against a Latin claim.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I think it’s pretty well established in here that the Russian Patriarch is not likely to “recognize” or accept Catholic diocese in Russia. Certainly, he views with hostility any attempt on the part of the Catholic Church to proselytize any of the unchurched in Russia. I think we can all stipulate to that and move on.

Despite early hopes that Russia would join the family of democratic nations, those hopes seem quite distant. That the KGB, now called the FSB runs the place from top to bottom, can hardly be questioned. That Russia never had the “Nuremberg”-style trials that might have purged it, is troubling. That it still maintains the “shrine to Lenin” in Moscow is a powerful symbol that it has not changed. Can one imagine a “shrine to Hitler” remaining in Germany without seriously questioning the reality of its abandonment of Nazism?

In 1997, Russia enacted, with the support of the Patriarch of Moscow, a religion law, which outlaws some religious organizations and limits many. It is sufficiently vague as to allow oppression of almost any religion other than the Russian Orthodox Church. And the potential bases upon which the state may clamp down on one religion or another are the very kind of historical justifications and arguments we see on this thread. Presently, the Jesuits are not allowed to function in Russia under its religion law, for “historical reasons”. During the Soviet era, the KGB definitely oppressed the ROC, but not nearly to the extent it oppressed others, and collaboration became, and remained pervasive right to the end of the Soviet era.

As one who advanced rapidly under Soviet rule; something that could not have happened had he been a known enemy of the Soviet system, the Russian Patriarch’s relationship with the power that rules Russia is a cause for concern. Some dissidents, who claim to have read KGB archives, express grave reservations. One may say what one wants about, e.g., Polish clerics who cooperated with the KGB, the KGB is not in power in Poland any longer. It is in power in Russia, and one cannot assume old relationships have died. Clearly, the PoM and Putin are on cordial terms, if only pretending them.

The PoM can have whatever friends he wants, and he can believe whatever he wants. What Catholics need to be concerned about, though, is the extent to which a church/state consortium in Russia, to whatever extent it may exist, (and given the nature of the Russian state, it’s not likely to be visible on the surface) may intend to suppress Catholicism in Russia through political means. If the current Russian state is anything like its Soviet progenitor (and its intervention into the politics of its neighbors suggests that it is) only major adverse publicity in the West is likely to have any effect on its actions at all.

Therefore, rather than worry about whether the PoM accepts the validity of Catholic sacraments or “recognizes”, in a canonical sense, Catholic dioceses in Russia, Catholics need to be on the alert to publicize as much as possible, and loudly protest, any and all Russian state intervention into the operation of the Church in Russia. Given the availability of Russian oil money to the circle of elites who govern Russia, one can also expect an upsurge of propaganda designed to discredit anything the Russian oligarchy considers “foreign”, or a threat to its absolute rule. As a former KGB colonel, Putin knows the effect Pope John Paul II had in aiding the collapse of the Soviet Union; the empire Putin served loyally, and without known complaint. It’s unlikely he has forgotten. Certainly, Vatican diplomats are capable people, and it is worth noting that the Pope and Putin met. Still, it is also important for Catholics to realize that “shining the light” on adverse Russian actions is part of that diplomatic effort.

The EO are right about one thing. The Catholic Church considers the whole world its rightful place to be, and it isn’t going to accept any religion’s claim to “exclusivity” within any geographical boundary. Given the nature of the Catholic Church, it shouldn’t, if it wishes to remain true to itself. That being the case, it is pointless to think about territorial claims and the historical basis for them, other than to realize and understand that some religions do make such claims and may act upon them forcibly; something that requires watchfulness, exposure and, to the extent possible, resistance.

 

[Isa_Almisry]

The EO are right about one thing. The Catholic Church considers the whole world its rightful place to be, and it isn’t going to accept any religion’s claim to “exclusivity” within any geographical boundary. Given the nature of the Catholic Church, it shouldn’t, if it wishes to remain true to itself. That being the case, it is pointless to think about territorial claims and the historical basis for them, other than to realize and understand that some religions do make such claims and may act upon them forcibly; something that requires watchfulness, exposure and, to the extent possible, resistance.

I can’t tell.

Are you including the Latin church among those “some religions”?

 

[Alexius]

Interesting to note the Orthodoxchristian.net policy

It is a term whose time in polite company - given the mixed sensibilities on its usage - seems to have come and gone. I, and most Eastern Catholics of my acquaintance, do find it offensive.

I don’t find it offensive, but rather a good term. Why? Because terms like Eastern Catholic are also used by Orthodox, so Uniate is a term which explains itself. Besides, no one wants to fight to claim that term. It is exclusive…

Prayers and petitions,
Alexius

 

[ASimpleSinner]

I don’t find it offensive, but rather a good term. Why? Because terms like Eastern Catholic are also used by Orthodox, so Uniate is a term which explains itself. Besides, no one wants to fight to claim that term. It is exclusive…

Prayers and petitions,
Alexius

I can think of any number of ethnic slurs that carry the same distinction - no one wants to fight to claim them.