www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West The Ratzinger Proposal: (a clarification by... Ratzinger)

I was reading this blog entry, and thought this would be worth discussing here.

http://saintjamesprayforme.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/something-to-think-about/

Ratzinger's clarification has me highly confused as it seems to totally contradict the many who consider themselves Orthodox in Communion with Rome, and who cite the Ratzinger Proposal in defense of their position. I had been convinced that those positions were completely in line with the direction the Church is headed, but now I am doubting. To be honest I'm a bit disturbed by all this and don't know what to think. Help me out here!

Actually, the clarification makes a lot of sense to me.

But then again, I am Latin.

Shalom,
Memo

Those who change the rules have to justify not merely the changes, but the authority under which they have changed the rules. A tautological approach will not, in the end, satisfy anybody.

Ummmm, and what is "tautological"?

So am I.

But I've been discerning a call Eastward for a couple of years. I've also over the past year become very sympathetic toward the OiCwR crowd and felt myself becoming more and more drawn to that notion of praxis.

I guess what surprised me about the article was that I had become convinced that as an Eastern Catholic, one could be Orthodox in all things with the exception of communion with the Pope. After all, that is the position of many EC's. But Ratzinger says here that all the post-schism Councils were truly Ecumenical and universally binding (including EC) and were not merely local (Latin) Councils. So for the many Eastern Catholics who claim they only hold to seven, according to Pope Benedict they are mistaken. Unless he has changed his mind in recent years?

I don't quite follow you here. Could you elaborate?

Pertaining to my post above, these words in particular struck me:

"...but meanwhile they have grown out of hand to the point at which councils and the dogmatic decisions of the second millennium are supposed not to be regarded as ecumenical but as particular developments in the Latin Church, constituting its private property in the sense of “our two traditions”...
this way of looking at it actually implies a denial of the existence of the Universal Church in the second millennium, while tradition as a living, truth-giving power is frozen at the end of the first...
"

Very simple: a several points over the last thousand years, the Latin Church changed its conception of both the Church and the Petrine ministry in a unilateral and arbitrary manner, assuming that, as the Church of Rome, it had every right to do so, because, well, it's the Church of Rome.

That nobody other than the Church of Rome accepted these changes seems not to have impinged on the consciousness of the Latin Church. It's thinking is both solipsistic and tautological (We made these changes because we are the Church of Rome, which gives us the authority to make these changes, which give us the authority to change what we want, because we are the Church of Rome).

You can sense the frustration in those who have held to the Tradition they received from the Fathers, without any of the radical discontinuities that were promulgated by the Roman Church in the 11th, 16th and 19th centuries.

My own impression of Rome's self-absorption is typified by a classic Beetle Bailey cartoon, in which Beetle complains to Sgt. Snorkel "All the other guys in the platoon are out of step".

Stuart, this is not the case and you know it. There are now and have been many ECs who have accepted all such changes, and that you disagree with them is not sufficient reason for you to ignore their existence as here or (as is your alternative strategy, such as in threads discussing the Melkite bishop John Elya) dismiss them all as "nice men" (the somewhat patronising tone suggesting perhaps that they aren't that bright and shouldn't be listened to).

The many ECs who accepted them did so because they were, over a period of four hundred years, brainwashed into believing that Latin theology, Latin spirituality, Latin discipline and even Latin liturgy, were normative for the whole Church. This is the crime and tragedy of uniatism as described by Cyril Korolevsky in his book by the same name, a mode of reunion that has been renounced by the Catholic Church, but whose tentacles retain their grip on both the Latin and Eastern Catholic Churches. Uniatism of the mind is even more insidious than uniatism of form.

"Uniatism of the mind is even more insidious than uniatism of form."

Nice. I plan on stealing that line!

That again is insulting to anybody who has the temerity to disagree with you. You should seriously consider the possibility that an intelligent person could come to a different conclusion, not because they are brainwashed or dumb, but because every source has multiple interpretations and that the interpretations of others are just as valid as yours and at a minimum need to be considered in any serious dialogue about these issues.

Not least should you consider this because at no time have you ever provided any document, official, signed by the Vatican, that says that ROman dogma (as opposed to discipline) became optional for the entire Catholic Church, indeed B16 affirms that this is the case.

This is one thing that suggests that as a minimum those who suggest it is not optional should be considered seriously and not insulted or relegated to some corner of the eastern Church you reserve for dimwits and those who don't even exist for consideration in your posts until someone speaks up for them.

The other thing that suggests that you should consider the point of view of such people is that by and large, the people who don't care about pews, lack of orthros, papal primacy , or whatever else you are worried about, are born and bred ECs. It strikes me as somewhat arrogant when people who adopt a rite come in and set it as their task to constantly criticise what the born and bred silent majority actually wants and believes. One reason I moved on from the Russian Catholics was that as someone who was actually born Russian I took some degree of umbrage at having my own tradition "corrected" and explained by converts to the east, on the run from Rome, more focused on their own problems, arguments and grudges with Rome than learning what average easterners in the pews really cared about, who given that they have been eastern for life, might have something decent to say about being EC.

That is their problem, not mine.


What makes you think I did not?



What makes you think every issue has two valid arguments? And, for that matter, aren't you saying the Catholic Church is wrong in its condemnation of uniatism and its insistence that the Eastern Catholic Churches restore the fullness of their Traditions, jettisoning all latinizations? So who are you to tell the Catholic Church what it should demand of its own adherents?


I suppose you have the same attitude towards the Russian Russians who have done exactly the same thing? You know, all those guys like Schmemann, Meyendorff, Bulgakov, Florovsky, and so on, who had so much to say about the state of Orthodoxy in the Russian Church?

It's not a problem to be unkind and uncharitable to people who disagree with you?

I think the nature of any hermeneutical question is that it does have multiple interpretations. What I am saying (and I believe what B16 is saying, to remain on topic) is that it was never suggested that matters of dogma should be considered latinizations.


I hardly think I would be the only Russian Orthodox Christian who does not agree with everything that Bulgakov (!), Florovsky, Meyendorff or Schmemann has said.

It is not my responsibility to lie in order to validate people in opinions which, objectively, are wrong.


This one doesn't. More than a century of Catholic decrees, encyclicals, pastoral letters and other documents lays out what is respected in no uncertain terms. Eastern Catholic hierarchs are quite aware of this, having been reamed out for ignoring this on several occasions, including Boston in 1999.


The true question is, "What constitutes dogma?" The Latin Church has been exceedingly sloppy and careless in its use of the term over the past thousand years, consistently applying it not to essential elements of faith, but to the doctrinal expression and proper usage of the Latin Church. Such statements are not dogmatic, no matter how they are labeled.


Bulgakov recanted his sophiology, and died in good standing with the Orthodox Church. As for the others, their critiques of Orthodoxy mirror those made by many Greek Catholics, who, striving to become more authentically Orthodox in their belief and praxis, aren't as wedded to defining Tradition as "that which we did on the day I was baptized". It's interesting that Metropolitan Hilarion now echoes the same criticisms for which the horrible, terrible, too-awful for words Paris School was making more than half a century ago. Of course, Father Vasily Vasilevich says "Is outrage!"