We pray for the day when the East and the West will be reunified. 1000 years of division is long enough don't you think? In the mean time, some of you have many complaints about your church. I won't list them here. You know what your concerns are. What we all agree on is that we love God and want to live our lives for Him. If it weren't for people this world would be a great place to live. Thus the dilemma. So you have left the Roman Church or at least you call yourself Catholic with gritted teeth. Let me ask you to consider something. Even the Roman Church acknowledges the Orthodox as their brothers. The RCC acknowledges that the Orthodox have true succession. The RCC acknowledges the authenticity of the Eucharist in the Orthodox Church. Rather than wait out the needed changes in the RCC which may or may not happen in your lifetime, at least on the North American Continent, why don't you travel East? Worship with us. Become a part of the Orthodox Church. Though it may be somewhat culturally different, it will still be familiar to you and it is the faith of our fathers. Although you will discover that we too have our issues (there are people in the Orthodox Church also), you will find that we have remained relatively free from a Church-wide moral scandal. You may also be delighted to know that our priests may marry and most are. You will also find that we have not altered or added any doctrines or creeds and our worship will look to you much like pre-Vatican 2 RCC worship. Best of all you will find that the Orthodox ethos is centered around building relationship with the Holy Trinity rather than obeying rules of heavy traditions. Rather than staying outside the community of faith, step back in via the Orthodox Church. You are welcome.
Catholicism also centers around building relationship with the Holy Trinity. You are speaking to a cartoon caricature of Catholicism in this post. I don't know whether to be upset that you believe such a caricature, or to suspect you of speaking to those who do think that caricature is the Catholic Church, willing to make use of their ignorance, while you yourself know it is ignorance.
ReplyDeleteI think it is certainly fair to argue and to preach Orthodoxy's understanding of the issues disputed between us. But it is not right to appeal to ignorance, to outrage about the scandal, to people's dislike of rules per se, to people's frustration with whatever they don't like in the church. If you think the scandal means the Catholic church is not The Church, argue that, but I doubt that you would dare to do so. You might really think our liturgical problems mean we are not The Church...argue that then.
Argue the truth, argue that Orthodoxy is The Church. But don't pander to the shallow ideas of disaffected Catholics. It isn't worthy of you. And you won't get those folks anyway....unless you preach that you have the truth...then maybe those who cannot see it in Catholicism will see it in Orthodoxy, and that's fine with me. (I have a son who is Orthodox, by the way.) Just do it on the up and up, not in this lowdown way, ok?
Susan F. Peterson
Susan, Thanks for your very measured comments and for signing your name. My message to my "catholic brothers and sisters" was not presented as a doctrinal "argument" at all. Rather it was a direct response to specific concerns that I have personally heard from many catholics whose faith is shattered and who have left the church for the reasons stated, i.e. doctrinal additions, stringent rules of legalism and immoral leaders. Surely you would not rather have them remain as bitter pagans outside of any Church. I am not in a position to make an argument to my friends as to why they should return to the Catholic Church. Its seems you may be better at that than I and I would support you in it. What I can do is introduce wounded individuals that I meet to the Orthodox faith where they may once again find faith, hope, and salvation. I have great respect for the Catholic Church and considered it on my Journey To Orthodoxy, however, moral scandals, added doctrines, and rules of heavy traditions in the RCC also steered me away. I am opened to any suggestions from you which I might use in speaking to these Catholics. What would you tell them to make them want to return to the RCC?
ReplyDeleteI am sorry I didn't answer this earlier. I checked back once or twice and as my comment had not appeared, I assumed you had not let it go through.
ReplyDeleteI actually didn't think my comments were very measured, and when I wrote a comment over at Western Rite Orthodoxy, moderated my tone considerably. (But they didn't print it anyway.)
"Surely you would not have them remain as bitter pagans, outside of any church." Of course not. My son (my 4th son and 7th child of 9) was not practicing his Catholicism and when he became Orthodox I was extremely happy and feel closer to him in faith than to most of the rest of my children. His Orthodox wedding was one of the happiest days of my life. Whenever I visit him I attend Divine Liturgy with him, and even without him, when I visit my college I attend Divine Liturgy at the parish there he introduced me to (after first going to mass at the local Catholic parish.) In fact, because I was so moved by Orthodox liturgy but could not stop being Catholic, I began to attend a Byzantine rite Catholic Church and joined that parish. So that should tell you a bit about where I am coming from.
I still have the same reaction to your post, though. I think scandalous things, and even that particular type of scandalous things, happen in all churches, including Orthodoxy. The Catholic church is the largest in the country and very high profile; scandals there attract lots of media attention. Some people in my home town left the Catholic church after a publicized scandal in the parish, and moved to the Episcopal church down the street, only to find that that church had its own, hushed up, scandal of a similar sort. Thus I would expect you to tell people that the sins of individual priests are not a good way to judge which is the true church. If they nevertheless had been too hurt by someone in authority in Catholicism, I wouldn't object to your giving them a home in Orthodoxy, but I don't think you should "advertise" on that basis.
I really don't know what you mean by the phrase "the rules of heavy traditions." I only wish we Catholics had held on to our liturgical tradition as well as you Orthodox held on to yours!
Tradition is not heavy, it is a joy, as I am sure you will agree.
So aparently it is the "rules" part you are talking about. Which rules? ...You must know that some people leave the church because they don't want to be contstrained by Christian morality, and put this to themselves in terms of "rules." They would find the same morality in Orthodoxy. So what do you mean? The marriage rules? We use annulment, you have penitential second and third, but not fourth, marriages. I am not sure there winds up being much practical difference. Perhaps for some, having to go through the annulment process is a difficulty which would cause them to switch churches. Is that what you mean? Do you mean contraception? Somehow I doubt that you want to attract converts just because they want a church that allows this, since Orthodoxy does not really recommend it, or think the use of contraception is found on the path to real holiness, but only finds economia for it in certain circumstances. So I don't know what you really mean. Our fasting rules are far less stringent than yours. What rules do you mean?
If you have really found disaffected Catholics who say, "I would be Catholic except that I don't believe in the Immaculate Conception"..or "I believe everything the church teaches except the Infallibility of the Pope, but that's a tiebreaker for me" by all means invite them to Orthodoxy. You find Protestants looking for the apsotolic church who say these things, but seldom disaffected Catholics. If there are disaffected Catholics on that level, they will easily find their way to Orthodoxy, I think.
What upset me most about your comment was the implication that Catholicism is about "rules" whereas Orthodoxy is about "building relationship" with the Holy Trinity. Read St. Teresa of Avila or her friend St. John of the Cross. In many ways their stories would fit right in with the stories about Orthodox monastic saints. They are certainly about love of God and union with God, not about "rules."
If you are meeting up with exCatholics who sincerely believe Catholicism is all about rules (and they don't mean that they find the ten commandments oppressive) it would be only honest to tell them that this is no more true of Catholicism than of Orthodoxy, and point them to the saints of their own tradition. For both traditions have saints, many in common and many on either side after the schism, and the saints show us what each tradition is really about, and all of them show us love of God and desire for union with the Trinity, not concern with "rules."
They are about to kick me out of here; I am at work and not allowed to remain past 7 and it is 7:06, so I will close now.
In Christ,
Susan Peterson
I would agree that the sins of individual priests are not a good way to judge what the true church is. Nothing in my BLOG spoke of criteria for what the true church is. I have made no judgment in that area in this article. You have read that in. Rather, I was addressing what had been addressed to me by these Catholic friends. You have missed heart of the issue for which they are concerned. This obviously is not about individual priests, as you say, but hundreds of them for hundreds of years protected by the Catholic Church. A system that has allowed such grievous sins not only to crop up but to remain unabated in an environment which provides for the routine reassignment of a sinful priest rather than having him defrocked or arrested. The same issue is raised by my catholic friends when it comes to use and abuse of money and the fact that if divorced they are never totally forgiven by the RCC even to the exclusion from the Holy Eucharist. Keep in mind that I have not addressed this issue anywhere on my BLOG and do so now with you with great reticence, for I am not anti-catholic. The fact remains that the Catholic Church is in moral disarray and many Catholics are leaving the Church and thus their faith in God is shattered. It is to these that I am speaking and to these I offer a place of haven and worship within the walls of the Orthodox faith. Yes individuals in the Orthodox faith sin, but any comparison between the on-going corporate sin of the RCC and the Orthodox Church is weak indeed. In regards to your concern over my use of the word “rules” I would encourage you to study the doctrine of the RCC concerning Original Sin. It varies vastly from the Orthodox Faith. From this RCC doctrine has come the doctrine and abuse of indulgences, the tainting of the doctrine of grace, and the skewing of the role of Priests and Bishops in our lives. The Orthodox believes in the original sin of Adam but does not believe that we inherited his sin. What we did inherit is a tainted world that ends in death. The world and everyone in it was tainted but man is not totally depraved as the RCC and the west suggest. How can we be totally depraved, for we are made in His image? We are made in His image and the role of the Church is to restore us to the image and likeness of God in communion through the sacraments. There is a stark difference between the RCC and the Orthodox in how this is achieved. My Catholic friends are tired, weary, discouraged and walking around in a hopeless state of perpetual degradation of their person. Again I ask you, “What would you say to them to encourage them to come back to the Catholic Church?” If you cannot speak to that need, then to disparage my offering them hope within the church that your own RCC considers valid, is unconscionable.
ReplyDeleteDear Sir,
ReplyDeleteYou could be accused of hanging around too many disaffected Catholics. How nice of you to lie in waiting for them to fall. You sound very much like the Baptists and Church of Christ people I knew as a young Catholic in N. Mississippi and West Tennessee.
As for your comment that the Catholic Church teaches that human beings are depraved you reveal your lack of knowledge about what the RCC teaches. The teaching that we are good because God created us, but are prone to sin goes all the way back to the Church fathers when there was no distinction between the Roman Rite and the Orthodox Rite.
I recognize that the division of Christians is a scandal, but your tone and your condescension I find quite insulting.
Father Bittle, (mentioned in another blog of yours) by the way, is a good friend of ours and he would never misrepresent Catholic teaching for his own agenda as you do having been a Roman Catholic himself at one time. I would venture to guess he became Orthodox for positive reasons rather than as a protest or negative reaction against Roman Catholic Church.
I would think that arguing from the truths and beauty of Orthodoxy with sincere love of your fellow man rather than thinly veiled hostility toward the Roman Catholic Church would be infinitely more effective.
I wish you well in your ministry, but please reflect a bit more thoroughly on your words and how generally happy Roman Catholics who might happen upon your blog will receive what you have to say. I would guess there aren't many, but if your aim is to attract people to the truth of Christ's teachings, you might try a less smarmy method.
Margaret Hunt
Knoxville, TN
Wow, in an effort to reach out to lost and wandering ex-catholics (They come to me. I don't seek them out), I have been drawn into a debate on the validity of Catholicism to the extent that you have accused me of being, "condescending", "insulting", that I lie in wait, "waiting for them to fall", I have a "lack of knowledge", I am "insulting", that I "misrepresent catholic teaching for[my]own agenda", that I have "thinly veiled hostility", and that I am "swarmy". Wow, all of this and we haven't even had coffee!
ReplyDeleteYour reading of what you call my "tone" obliviously comes not so much from what I have said but from what you have personally endured in your life as evidence by your reference to your childhood in the deep anti-catholic South at the hands of the the Baptists and Church of Christ. I am not them and I am not anti-catholic.
However the ex-catholics I am meeting certainly are anti-catholic and vehemently so. I understand the Catholic church is under scrutiny and critism at this moment in history and your defense is quite understandable. However to ignore the validity of these ex-catholics complaints, to fail to offer them a reason to return to the RCC, and then to condemn me for offering them hope in the Orthodox Church church which the RCC considers valid, seems a questionable position and your own agenda may be imbalanced. My "agenda", to which you so critically refer, is for the souls of individuals with names and faces. Yours seems to be to fight for the reputation of a religion under fire. I can respect your agenda, for there is much good in the RCC to fight for, but I am ministering to those who have no desire nor strength left to fight that battle.(Re-read my original article to them. You will see that what you deem to be my criticisms of the RCC, were echoes of their concerns not criticisms of my heart.) Don't confuse the two on this BLOG. I give you the same opportunity as I did another concerned Blogger. Give these lost Catholics a good reason to return to the RCC. I will gladly post it as an article. Also, it is a fact that the RCC believes, teaches, and has integrated into their ethos the ideology of the TOTAL DEPRAVITY OF MAN. This is verifiable both doctrinally and historically. This is not a misrepresentation of Catholic teaching. Perhaps you might find a greater understanding of your own Church by delving deeper into this subject and a greater understanding of the hurting ex-catholic souls to which I am ministering. Your contributions on this BLOG are greatly appreciated.
I have decided to write a retort to those that have left comments in this blog. I am a former catholic and while some of those comments are in fact, those like anonymous miss the point of what this blog was about. My retort can be read at my blog: http://strangerinlove.blogspot.com/
ReplyDeleteJames