www.byzcath.org Forums News & Events Church News SCOBA STATEMENT ON MORAL CRISIS IN OUR NATION

Dear Admin:

I don't know under which Department of the USCCB but I believe the Eastern Catholic Bishops have an entire Committee, or at least a Subcommittee, of their own.

At any rate, the Catholic Church in the U.S. speaks on matters such as the present thread through the USCCB.

Who knows, its next President could be an Eastern hierarch, like what happened in India, where a Syro-Malankar Archbishop was elected President of the CCBI, the majority members of which being Latin.

AmdG

Yes, they are oganized both as part of the USCCB (there is also a group just for the Latins) and separately from the USCCB. In recent years they tend to meet at the same time as the USCCB since everyone is there anyway. Occasionally they will even gather a day or two early, or stay a day or two longer. Then again, sometimes the various councils of hierarchs do the same.

Amado,

Here is something I thought you might like to read. I offer two quotes that I hope clarifies some things regarding how �authoritative� a national conference of bishops really is in regard to the Eastern Catholics:

�(Pope John Paul II makes it clear at the outset that AN EPISCOPAL CONFERENCE CANNOT BE CONFUSED WITH THE SYNODS WHICH GOVERN SOME EASTERN CATHOLIC CHURCHES [emphasis mine]; these synods play a completely different role, which is spelled out by the Eastern Code of Canon Law.)�

�Each individual bishop is the sole authoritative teacher in his own diocese, Pope John Paul observes, and THE EPISCOPAL CONFERENCE CANNOT REPLACE HIM IN THAT ROLE [emphasis mine]. He stresses that bishops "cannot limit their own sacred power in favor of the episcopal conference." Thus THE FAITHFUL IN ANY GIVEN DIOCESE ARE CALLED TO FOLLOW THEIR OWN BISHOP, NOT TO LOOK TO THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE AS A HIGHER AUTHORITY.� [emphasis mine]

The rest of the article can be read here:

http://www.catholic.org/cathcom/article.php?article_id=52

Diak writes:

"I have seen nothing of the sort in any recent Greek Catholic eparchial paper (I get four of them), only some updated guidelines on procedures for response and handling of clerical abuse situations."

We need to know where our bishops stand on the issues confronting us today. 'Guidelines' are for after-the-fact. 'Teachings' on the particular issue confronting us is something totally different. We need to hear from the pulpits of our churches where our Church stands on homosexuality, pedophilia and same-sex marriages. We need to move on once we know where we stand.

Will our bishops make an official statement akin to one issued by SCOBA?

Joe Thur

Dear Joe:

I know what you are driving at.

But in this case, the legislation/legalization of a homosexual union into a "marriage," which involves not only the U.S. but, also, some other countries internationally, a document "in response" to such a secular move should emanate from the highest ecclesial authority.

In our case, do you think the CDF, under the authority and approval of the Pope himself, is not equipped or "weighty" enough to issue and release such a "response?"

I submit that the Holy See was the proper body to answer this affront on the Church's moral values.

An individual Bishop's moral teaching on this subject could be dismissed by secular authorities as a "mere fly" to be swatted away into oblivion!

Further, the document issued by the Vatican is indirectly addressed to the civilian governments of the world's nations/states.

Amado

I guess our Greek Catholic bishops just don't rank up there with yours, Amado?

Dear Diak:

I did not mean for the statement to be derogatory to an Eastern Catholic bishop's authority, or for any bishop for that matter.

Reality demands that the Pope, being internationally recognized as the Church's pre-eminent leader, has to come into play.

Preference for a "leading" Church spokesperson becomes myopic at best.

Amado

The "teaching responsibility" was for the benefit of his people, not the civies. Are you comparing the teaching authority of a bishop with a fly? Must our bishops take a back seat to everything and not have a word to share with us on issues? Do they no have competence?

What you want and what the Pope actually says are two different things. Let me repeat what the Pope DID say. He stated that bishops, "... cannot limit their own sacred power in favor of the episcopal conference." What part of that papal statement didn't you understand? Why are YOU trying to limit the teaching authority and responsibility of the bishops?

You want the "highest authority" of the Church to play a definitive role, but ignore what that authority DOES say regarding episcopal conferences limiting a bishop's sacred power. You can't appeal to the highest authority in one breath and then disregard what that authority has to say as you exhale.

Joe

Many Orthodox Christians in the Americas view the multi-jurisdictional SCOBA as the predecessor to an autocephalous holy synod that will include all canonical jurisdictions in the Americas. St. Tikhon, 100 years ago, in fact, envisioned a North American synod that would have looked much like SCOBA, preserving ethnic diocesan structures as appropriate while bringing all to the same conciliar table.

The "go-slow" approach at granting that autocephaly by the Patriarchs in the old world has been justified, in my opinion, by a certain lack of piety and maturity (in general) in the churches in the Americas. However, SCOBA has been "stepping up to the plate" more and more with statements such as these, and by sponsoring excellent charitable organizations such as IOCC and OCMC. Many predict that the time will come within the next 25 years when the autocephaly will be joyously granted and received.

This future SCOBA-based synod will face a uniquely hostile environment with rabid secularism on the one side and the immaturity of fundamentalism on the other side. Allies will be few. Perhaps only the Catholic (Communion of) Churches will speak with a similar voice. SCOBA will need every bit of the wisdom that they are now voiceing in statements, such as their most recent one being discussed here, in order to protect the flock from the wolves around us.

With love in Christ,
Andrew

Dear Orthodox Brother in Christ, Andrew,

This is starting to scare me!

I agree wholeheartedly with your statements!

We actually see eye to eye on something controversial!

All the best...hope that you don't mind my teasing! It is alot more pleasant agreeing than sparring, no?

Respectfully in Christ,
Alice

Dear Joe and Theophilus

I want to ask a few questions.

Here's why

A fellow poster, Dr. John, has been charged with espousing relativism.

This has been said about him:

"It is clear that Dr. John, for all of his pious nonjudgmentalism, simply refuses to accept that the Church has not only the right but the obligation (1) to articulate Her divinely-inspired conception of moral virtue and (2) to propose to the secular polity that this conception ought to form the basis, in whole or part, of the common good that the polity legislates and enforces."

I have read what Dr. John has written and I cannot find in it either relativism or the refusal mentioned above.

What I have read is a consistant stress on the rights of even sinners to freedom from persecution. I have found in his writings a carefully nuanced approach to treatment of persons who are sinners that is reflective of the Churches' pastoral approach to sinners.

Perhaps I missed something.

So, here're the questions:

Could you point out where in his writings in his own words here Dr. John has done either of the above?

If not, is the proper observation that this is personal conclusion about our brother? Could there not be another conclusion?

Thanks for hearing me out.

Steve

By the way, if I remember correctly the term jesuitical was evolved by protestants and those in the Catholic Church who opposed the Jesuits approach to interpreting moral teaching. Their teaching was more liberal than that of the Jansenist approach to interpreting morality.

It is a backhanded compliment to the ability of the Jesuits to use reason to debate and to win arguements against opponents who were, many times protestants and their proponents.

In that sense, in my opinion, the use of carefully nuanced reason to interpret moral teaching, it is quite appropriate to use "jesuitical" in this context as a compliment and not as it is used here as a negative criticism.

As used here, it calls to mind for me the old canard that the Jesuits taught that the end justifies the means.

I'm sorry that I have apparently shaken a hornet's nest and I fear that my two postings above were not clear. For this I apologize.

I intended not to disparage the SCOBA statement, nor do I disagree with the contents.

I am only pointing out that the Church is called to work for Social Justice for all God's children, so that there is no persecution or condemnation of people whatever their perceived status may be. And that while statements are useful tools to present the Church's position, unless the whole Church is mandated to carry them out, following the examples given by the hierarchy, they remain merely words on paper.

John Paul II and Archbishop Iakovos are heroic precisely because they go beyond the words. They reach out with kindness and 'walk the walk'.

Blessings!

So SCOBA and her affiliated jurisdictions have shown that they know how the Gospel (the statement posted on this thread), have made some efforts toward living it out (various, relatively recent charitable works), but need to do more.

It sounds like most of us.

With love in Christ,
Andrew

Steve;

Glory to Jesus Christ!

Posted by Dr. John on 4/23/03 in the thread "Where are the Bishops?":

Ouch.

The problem is not with Sen. Santorum's decision to take a stand against homosexuality (or sexuality in general). The problem is with his lack of logic.

His major premise is: if we allow people to do things in their homes that we don't like , then they will do them. If, however, we determine that certain things should NOT be do-able in the home, then we can provide strictures that will jail them for violating the 'common good' as interpreted by x, y or z persons.

The problem is twofold: who decides what is acceptable PRIVATE behavior? And, secondly: is there a framework for determining which 'private behavior' should be hunted down by the authorities?

By deciding that 'someone' (like Mr. Santorum) should determine what one can or cannot do in the privacy of one's own home, we destroy utterly the freedoms that the US Constitution has provided to all citizens. Unless there are 'victims', who are coerced or forced against their will, then there is no justification for allowing others to decide to intervene. Under Mr. Santorum's theory, the same used by J. Stalin against Christians, and Hitler against the Jews, gypsies and Slavs, and the Chinese Communist party against the Falun Gong, the government gets to decide what the citizens can do of their own free choice. Let's not forget the persecution and jailing of Roman Catholics in Ireland by the "Crown" for practicing sedition by praying the rosary. In the name of social regimentation, the citizens are supposed to acquiesce to the will of whoever is "in power" at a given time. Dangerous. And clearly 'un-American'.

As to the framework that decides what is acceptable or not: our Constitution and legal system state clearly that there must be a victim, a person who is clearly forced to do something that he/she would not want to do. In terms of 'civil liberties', if people are coerced, then they have the full weight of the law behind them. If people are NOT coerced, and do things of their own free will (like smoking, or drinking or getting fat and taking up two seats on the bus or airplane)- and there are no further victims - then the state must back off. It's called 'freedom'.

Santorum's linking of homosexuality with incest and other things is clearly off the mark. It's purely a political ploy since there is no substantiated linking of these issues except in the mind of the scared Senator.

Whether I agree with him or not on this particular issue, my experience in dictator-Greece (in the 70s), in Hungary under the communists, and getting 'searched' at the Berlin border crossing has made it very clear to me that if you truly value freedom, you've got to fight any and all attempts to quash the rights of individuals. It may not make for the cleanest or most upright of societies, but the alternative is potentially devasting both for the rights of the individual and the concept that like-minded people should be free enough to associate with each other, freely.

If this is not going to be the case, then any and all groups that do not toe-the-line of the prevailing power cadre will be potential victims. If fundamentalist Protestants and evangelicals get the power to rule the roost, we Catholics and especially we "freakin' foreigner Catholics" will be more than marginalized. Our icon-venerating 'idolatry' can be determined to be 'illegal' (cf. Ireland, Indonesia, the communist-dominated Slavonia, etc.) and our ability to come together to worship freely will be determined to be 'against the common good'.

My suspicion is that Johan is under 40, and perhaps under 30, and that he has not been 'overseas' to personally experience what government can do to Christians, and especially to those Christians who are not part of the kow-towing element. It's easy to stand for "morality" as one understands it; but one must be aware that standing for morality doesn't necessarily guarantee rights for marginal/minority Christians like us. Because our 'morality' may offend the majority and turn us into victims too.

So, I stand for political freedom for every person in the US to live as he/she deems right. And unless there is clearly a coerced victim, then the government should stay out of our homes and churches and let us decide how we live.

Christ is Risen!!

To which I responded on 4/24/03 as follows:

Christos Anesti!

I don�t want you to think that I am picking on you, but your original post in this thread is filled with so many questionable assertions that I cannot let it pass in silence...

You said: �His major premise is: if we allow people to do things in their homes that we don't like, then they will do them. If, however, we determine that certain things should NOT be do-able in the home, then we can provide strictures that will jail them for violating the 'common good' as interpreted by x, y or z persons.�

Why put the �common good� in quotes, as if it doesn�t or can�t exist? Are you suggesting this? If so, I wonder how you are able to criticize anything any government does. Does not your demand for greater personal freedom (�freedom from,� which Isaiah Berlin called �negative liberty� and Constant �the liberty of the moderns�) stand on a particular understanding of the common good, albeit one that is fairly thin?

You then state: �The problem is twofold: who decides what is acceptable PRIVATE behavior? And, secondly: is there a framework for determining which 'private behavior' should be hunted down by the authorities?�

Please define �private� behavior. And please help me understand how what we think, say, and do in our own homes or bedrooms does not have some impact on what we think, say, and do in our so-called �public� lives. The fact of intersubjectivity � that we are born into a world inhabited by others and have continual contact and interaction with those others � would seem to suggest that nothing I ever do simply affects me.

Who decides what is acceptable? In a constitutional representative democracy, the �who� is the people through their representatives, within the parameters sent by the fundamental law.

More important is your question of �how,� i.e. the framework for decision-making. There are three separate considerations: whether an action or behavior is immoral and therefore proscribable; whether it can legally be proscribed given the constitution and other positive laws; and, if these conditions be met, whether it makes for good public policy to proscribe such an action.

For example, the issue of homosexuality: Is it immoral behavior? Yes. How do we know and � this is key since we live in a multicultural, multireligious society � can we justify our conception of its immorality to others. This means that appeals to Leviticus or Romans are not sufficient. One can appeal to revelation (see the civil rights struggle, the debate over slavery), but ultimately we need to make our case in an idiom that non-Christians can understand. We thus fall back on the natural law, and attempt to make our case through appeals rooted in reason and experience.

Assuming the case can be made � I�m a bit agnostic as to whether it can � we then turn to whether the immoral action or behavior can legally be proscribed. You say it cannot, and assert the following: �our Constitution and legal system state clearly that there must be a victim, a person who is clearly forced to do something that he/she would not want to do. In terms of 'civil liberties', if people are coerced, then they have the full weight of the law behind them. If people are NOT coerced, and do things of their own free will (like smoking, or drinking or getting fat and taking up two seats on the bus or airplane)- and there are no further victims - then the state must back off. It's called 'freedom'.�

Of course, you fail to mention here that there is no right to privacy in the Constitution as amended, no right to do whatever we want so long as it doesn�t harm others (whatever �harm� means � and certainly there is nothing self-evident or axiomatic about limiting it to physical harm or harm to other people), and that Bowers v. Hardwick upheld the constitutionality of anti-sodomy laws. May I also remind you that the 10th Amendment � which states that "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively or to the people" � has always been interpreted to mean that states have the inherent right to exercise police power, which is authority to preserve the public health, safety, MORALS, and general welfare.

Your conception of civil liberties is a neat libertarian trick, but it does NOT represent what the Constitution actually says. You seem to think that the U.S. was established as a purely liberal-libertarian polity, along the lines of Locke�s umpire state. Needless to say, though liberalism was an important ingredient in the making of our constitution, it wasn�t the only one, as Bernard Bailyn, Gordon Wood, and others have shown. The participatory republican tradition of politics and the Puritan conception of government, community, and freedom also played central roles.

Given that there is nothing in our public law that would prevent us from making homosexual activity a crime, the third step is the prudential question: does it make sense, from a public policy perspective, to outlaw such behavior? Here, politicians are charged with deciding whether the immorality of homosexual behavior impacts the common good to such an extent that it should be proscribed. As with all prudential judgments, there is usually no clear-cut answer � hence the need for POLITICS, the collective search to determine the best way to maintain the common good.

Your equation of this process with Stalinism, Nazism, and Maoism is laughable and exceedingly difficult to comprehend. Are you saying that any and all restrictions on what you call �freedom� � a definition much in doubt, I must reiterate � necessarily leads down the slippery slope to totalitarianism? The rest of your argument assumes this slippery slope, eventually leading to the absurd, relativist claim that all should be free to live �as he/she deems right.� I�m sorry, but that�s a major cop-out and hardly consonant with the fact that the world in which we live has been created and ordered by God.

I resent the implication that I have somehow attacked Dr. John personally. What I have done is questioned and criticized what he has written.

If Dr. John has not "refuse[d] to accept that the Church has not only the right but the obligation (1) to articulate Her divinely-inspired conception of moral virtue and (2) to propose to the secular polity that this conception ought to form the basis, in whole or part, of the common good that the polity legislates and enforces," then I would like to know exactly WHY he bothered to criticize -- if only implicitly -- the SCOBA statement.

In Christ,
Theophilos

//I intended not to disparage the SCOBA statement, nor do I disagree with the contents.//

OK.


//I am only pointing out that the Church is called to work for Social Justice for all God's children, so that there is no persecution or condemnation of people whatever their perceived status may be.//

I don�t think anything in the SCOBA statement was implying a green light to persecute. No crusades to kill sinners, otherwise we�d all be killed. Homosexuality, in addition to adultery and fornication, IS condemned and the bishops remind us of our moral tradition. They state:

�Like adultery and fornication, homosexual acts are condemned by Scripture (Romans 1:24-27; 1 Corinthians 6:10; 1 Timothy 1:10).//

The authors of the SCOBA statement DO stress mercy and love for those of a homosexual orientation:

��we must stress that persons with a homosexual orientation are to be cared for with the same mercy and love that is bestowed by our Lord Jesus Christ upon all of humanity.�

Why? Because �All persons are called by God to grow spiritually and morally toward holiness.� We�re all in the same boat.

The issue that brought the bishops to respond was the �recent developments regarding �same sex unions�.� It wasn�t the bishops who are on a war-path to single out a particular group of people, but instead, a particular group of people who are seeking to make legitimate an immoral form of union between people � same sex unions. The bishops only exercised their obligation to teach. And teach they did.

The bishop�s response, which is almost prophetic in nature, had nothing to do with a union�s perceived understanding that Native Alaskans are now being persecuted by the government. If anyone is being persecuted or hurt, someone should know. Why your union buddies just stand around and not do anything when they know people are being hurt is almost a silent permission slip to allow such things to happen. Don�t worry about the bishops; worry about those who silently approve. But if what you and they see is a �perception� only and not reality, then nobody can respond to it unless there is evidence of persecution. Maybe you should have helped that Native Alaskan woman with her bags. Why you didn�t bothers me.


//And that while statements are useful tools to present the Church's position, unless the whole Church is mandated to carry them out, following the examples given by the hierarchy, they remain merely words on paper.//

So, what you are saying is that the worthiness of the Gospel is solely dependent on whether the messengers are living it themselves. I really don�t know where you are going to find a sinless person to fly the banner of Christianity. We pray during the commemorations:

�Moreover, we pray You, O Lord, remember the entire episcopate of the true believers, who faithfully dispense the word of your truth, the entire priesthood, the diaconate in Christ, and all others in holy orders.�

Of course, it is quite unclear whether we don�t ask the Lord to remember those who DON�T faithfully dispense the word of your truth. Some priests have commented years ago that it would be much clearer if the commemoration would read:

�Moreover, we pray You, O Lord, remember the entire episcopate of the true believers, IF [emphasis mine] they faithfully dispense the word of your truth, the entire priesthood, the diaconate in Christ, and all others in holy orders.�

We always pray for a faithful dispensing of the word of God�s truth. But it is NOT a prerequisite for the work of the Holy Spirit. God can still work whether we are willing to respond or not.

Joe Thur

I'm going to chime in here. (Theophilos will probably dig up a six month-old post of mine to attack me with, but why not. :p )

I love the statement. It is brief, to the point, and does not blast anybody. All it does is gently, very gently in fact, voice a concern.

I makes the theological point it nees to make but says that all of God's children are to be afforded the ultimate in spiritual care.

The only thing I find interesting (not per se objectionable, but interesting) is that they cited only to the letters of Paul when saying that "homosexual acts are condemned by Scripture."

Yours,

kl