Glory to Jesus Christ!

News from Parma:

PARMA -- The city has two connections to the cause of possibly making the late TV evangelist, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, a saint of the Catholic Church.

Sheen's cause is being promoted during the month of February by the Byzantine Catholic Eparchy (Diocese) of Parma, which is putting the finishing touches on a Sheen exhibit and will host a special meeting of Bishops and clergy this week.

"We're hoping that people will realize that sainthood is not just for people of the early centuries," says Bishop John Kudrick, of the Eparch of Parma, "but, indeed, each of us is called to that as well."

The Most Rev. Kudrick will host dozens of clergy and bishops from around the country on Wednesday, just prior to the public opening of an exhibit that chronicles the life and groundbreaking media evangelism of Fulton J. Sheen.

Full article at
http://www.wkyc.com/news/local/news_article.aspx?storyid=129990&catid=45

Be sure to click the video for more of His Grace, Bishop John.

Deacon El

I could say something snippy, but I won't. Enough to note that nobody seems very interested in the cause of such holy men as Metropolitan Andrij Sheptytsky, Patriarch Maximos IV, or Patriarch Josef the Confessor. Instead, we are promoting the cause of an American Catholic televangelist of the Latin persuasion.

And I still have problems with the entire canonization process, particularly the forensic aspects.

Stuart,

Allow me...

Simply put this shows the depth and breadth of our identity crisis. This really cuts to the Question of what and who we are.

Are we a Church in Union or are we RCs who happen to use a different Mass.

I think that Bishop John has answered that question for me now.

This was my experience (unfortunately) while I was attending a Byzantine Catholic Church.

It really puzzles me why this should be so, when that attitude is mostly lacking in the Melkite Church.

This information was also included in the article.

This is the kind of stuff that sets my teeth on edge.

I think it is wonderful that Bishop John was called on by his fellow Bishops to be a part of this process. To me, it speaks to the credit of Eastern Catholic churches and our relevancy, especially since some Eastern Christian media is being featured in the exhibit.

Archbishop Sheen may be of the "Latin Persuasion" but he did great things for the advancement of Catholic media. I can say from personal experience that because of the work of Archbishop Sheen I am able to be a proud part of an Eastern Catholic radio program today. He very much paved the way for all kinds of Catholic media, not just that of the Latin Persuasion.

Dear Stuart,

I am "very interested in the cause of such holy men as Metropolitan Andrij Sheptytsky, Patriarch Maximos IV, or Patriarch Josef the Confessor." I'm also keenly interested in the cause of Archbishop Fulton Sheen; he did a good deal for us.

Fr. Serge

Stuart,

Your comments are extraordinarily inappropriate, demonstrating a peculiarly parochial attitude that would have Eastern Catholics remain an insular community within the very Communion of which our Churches are part and parcel.

As one who resents to no end the oftimes destructive attitude that the Western Church has evinced toward us and who desires nothing more than the reunion of our Churches with their Orthodox counterparts, I still cannot countenance your thinly-veiled hostility toward those who, in their time, gave of themselves for the advancement of our Churches - of whom Archbishop Sheen is but one.

Whatever fuels your angst and your anger, I fail to understand why the community as a whole has to suffer until it is resolved. It is, I suggest, time that you look inside yourself and wonder what you contribute to the Eastern Christian community, Catholic or Orthodox, by your negativity and your hostility - as often directed at us as to the broader Christian community.

Fulton Sheen was, as Katie observed, a pioneer in the use of public media to promote Catholicism, a force for evangelization the value of which we are only now beginning to appreciate. By the strength of his own personality and notoriety, he assisted in giving visibility to our Churches at a time and in an era when we were little known, appreciated, or accepted outside our communities.

I'm uncertain what the point was of your comment about the Melkite Church. It seems to be some sort of approbation that our Eparchy was not involved in any such promotion of a Latin bishop who sometimes vested as a Byzantine and served our Liturgy? If so, I hope sincerely that whatever misguided pleasure you're taking in that regard is blighted by the participation of one or more of our hierarchs at the event.

and,



With no intent to disrespect or diminish the tenets on which Yad Vashem is built, men like Fulton Sheen, Richard Cushing, and others of their ilk, priests and hierarchs, can rightly be seen by Eastern Christians as Righteous Among the Latins.

Neil

Somehow I knew you would say that. Nonetheless, i stand by my words. The Eparchy of Parma should be focusing on recovering the patrimony of the Byzantine Ruthenian Church, which has more than enough saints and martyrs unrecognized. The same goes for the Ukrainian and Melkite Catholic Churches, as I pointed out with my examples of Patriarchs Maximos IV and Josef the Confessor--not that, in my opinion, we need bother ask Rome to glorify either of them, because they are our saints.

Fulton Sheen was a lot of things. He may have been a saintly man, for all that I know (though reports on him are mixed). But I wasn't aware that media savviness was listed in the Beatitudes.

As to what I see among the Melkites, it's comfort in their own skin, a recognition of their kinship with their Orthodox brethren, a desire to live in accordance with Tradition and (though unrelated to the topic at hand), a blessed freedom from the whole issue of "nationalities".

When I joined the Ruthenian Church, my understanding through all my catechesis was we would be Orthodox Christians in communion with the Church of Rome. That sounded ideal to me, since I wanted very much to be an Orthodox Christian, but very much felt the need for a universal primacy as the focus of faith and unity.

In my eyes, the Ruthenian Church not only failed to live up to its end of the deal, but never had any intention of doing so. Regardless of repeated injunctions by the Holy See, and a plethora of encyclicals and pastoral letters, latinization is unabated and in fact getting worse--since it is fundamentally a latinization of the mind. It is pretty clear that the clergy of the Ruthenian Church in aggregate, and a majority of the faithful, enjoy very much being uniates and have no desire to cease.

Their envy of all things Latin, their manifest inferiority complex, their desire to be something in between--none of these bode well for their long term survival as a Church. It is merely a matter of time before the walls fall in on them.

Fr. Serge Keleher informs me that Archbishop Fulton Sheen had been granted a bi-ritual faculty, and thus was within liturgical propriety when he vested in Byzantine episcopal vestments, and celebrated our Hierarchical Liturgy.

The way His Grace exercised that faculty was, shall we say, ideosyncratic?

Media savviness may not be preached in the Gospels, but I'm sure one can find something in there about Evangelizing, which is exactly what Bishop Sheen did.

Yes, Stuart, I really think the good bishop should have had a beard to be Liturgically Correct. Just not orthodox enough. In any case, I think faculties exercised idiosyncratically are rather interesting.