Great point Brother JR. I have to admit that is why I have been attracted to the SSPX and Orthodox faith lately because they seem to have no problems, at least to the magnitude in the Catholic Church.
The Orthodox Christians have been very blessed. These are Churches that have been persecuted. Stop and think about the history of the Eastern World. Like the Oriental Catholics, they remain very cohesive and they have not grown as the Latin Church. The Orthodox and the Oriental Catholics are less than 10 million compared to a billion Latin Catholics. They had no room for expansion and growth, not through any fault of their own, just because of the political world in which they live. Whereas the Latin Church has spread so far and wide that it has become multicultural and a plurality of thoughts and ideas. This can be good and bad. Plurality always has issues.
I believe that these small Churches that have been under the gun by so many opposing forces: Islam, Communism, Nazism, Czars and monarchies have had their hands full with other issues. They tried very hard to preserve the things that unified them, not only as a Church, but also as a culture. This is not to say that they have not had real problems. They have, but they are not as observable.
Their problems have been in the areas of theology, inter-religious dialogue with each other, not just with Catholics. Until recently, they could not stand each other, because each Church was closely identified with a national or ethnic identity. Their vocation crisis is more severe than that of Latin Catholics, Protestants and Jews. They have been unable to respond to the corporal needs of their people, because they have been impaired by their situation, the shortage of manpower and the shortage of religious.
In most countries where Oriental Christians and Latin Catholics co-exist, it’s the Latin Catholics who care for the poor, the sick, the immigrant, the orphans, the dying, the victims of war. It’s the Latin Catholics who have provided education and healthcare when the state destroyed the local infrastructure It’s the Latin Catholics who have brought in millions of dollars to feed the hungry. The Orthodox have limited themselves to worship. It’s not that they don’t care. It’s that they have a critical shortage of religious and a critical shortage of lay missionaries, whereas we have a very rich tradition of diverse forms of religious life and diverse apostolic works.
I remember visiting Israel. All of the corporal works of mercy aer attended to by join teams of Latin Catholic religious, Jews and Muslims working together. When there is a bombing and people are left homeless, these interfaith teams go out to bring Christ’s love and healing to the victims. The Orthodox watch, but don’t get involved. They are still in conflict with the Jews, Muslims and Catholics. They will not cooperate in joint missionary activity on behalf of the poorest of the poor. They turned down Mother Teresa’s offer to found houses in their territories for two reasons. First, their women religious are nuns. They don’t have sisters. The idea of a sister, such as Mother Teresa, is foreign to them and they will not entertain it. Second, they are afraid of doing anything with anyone outside of their Church, because they are so small, that they can’t take the chance of losing people to the Catholics, Jews, Protestants, or Muslims.
To many Traditionalists,
not all, outreach to the poorest of the poor is not important as long as you have good liturgy. These few who think this way, are not going to see this serious problem in the Eastern Churches. Those of us who realize that Christ thirsts for souls and for food, have a very different view of things. We approach this as a call to bring Christ to the poor and to go out and find him in the poor. To us, it’s an extension of the Eucharist. You cannot bring you gifts to the altar if your brother or sister has something against you.
If your brother or sister has been hungry and you have not attended to his or her needs, he has every reason to have something against you.
You cannot tune in to the sacrifice of Calvary and tune out human suffering. At Calvary, Christ unites all suffering to himself and he restores all things to order. Is now our job to use the flood of graces that Christ has made available to resote the order that Christ made possible. We celebrate the sacrifice of the mass with full knowledge that it brings consequences and demands. Christ does not invite us to go to Calvary and then go home, just the opposite. He goes to Calvary and then rises. He goes on mission. He spends 40 days with the Church getting her ready to go out to proclaim the Gospel. The Gospel is not simply words. It’s a way of life, a worldview, a journey. That’s why I have a special devotion to St. Francis and Bl. Teresa of Calcutta. They didn’t preach the mass. They lived it. They didn’t talk about love, they loved. They didn’t talk about orthodoxy, they were orthodox. They didn’t argue or debate about ecumenism, they were brother and sister to every man and woman of every faith and they saw the good in every faith without compromising their faith. They refrained from attacking the weaknesses of those faiths. Yet, they made more converts than most of us. How? Because they loved and gained the trust of others. When others trust you, they will watch you closely and eventually they begin to ask questions.
We don’t see a lot of this outside of our Catholic faith. The grass may look greener on the other side, until you cross the fence. Then you find that the issues that they have are different from our won, but serious issues nonetheless.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
They probably never dreamed that they would be followed by some very angry and hostile people. I’m sure that they expected the lay faithful to be like them. I remember this movement. They were very gentle and not antagonistic at all. Unfortunately, many of the people who joined them were cut from a different bolt of cloth. These include lay and clerics.