www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Marriage, Science, and Birth Control

Which patriarch would that be, Daniel?

Who do you think is the Byzantine Ruthenian Patriarch?

Sviatoslav. Obviously.

Unlike some Eastern Catholic Church we have one Patriarch and he lives in Rome. I think we should united with the Ukies so we can have another but for now we have one Patriarch.

Unfortunately, Daniel, your patriarch ditched his patriarchal title, and with it, one would assume, his patriarchal responsibilities.

Your post is very interesting to me Stuart. There seems to be a lot of people saying things are different in the East, but little discussion or, frankly, realization how. I suppose this has to do largely with the fact most of us, that as citizens of a secularized West, struggle to think like Christians at all. Anyway I appreciate your articulation of the points.

Something about your post strikes me though, and I wish you would address this.

You mention fasting. More than once on this forum, I have read surprise at the laxity of Western asceticism. Someone will point out that avoiding meat on a Friday isn't much. Someone else will rightly point out that Romans tend to prescribe the bare minimum, on pain of sin, and people are free to do better (where the East proposes not a minimum but an ideal).

This makes sense to me.

You point out that the ideal (the "faith of the Fathers") allows for "no interventions, natural or unnatural".

Meanwhile Rome, prescribing the bare minimum, on pain of sin, allows for intervention, provided unnatural acts and unnatural means are not used. Compared to the ideal, it's not much - like avoiding meat on Friday.

On the other side I see Eastern Christians, and far from proposing and encouraging others to engage ascetical practice in their marriages (the family-planning equivalent of the Great Lenten fast) they seem instead to be suggesting going even lower than the bare minimum of the "Roman mindset".

I see no other examples like this.

Does this condescension, which apparently amounts at least in practice to disregarding the ideal entirely, result from a genuinely Eastern theology, or is it rather a bit of sophistry motivated by a very ordinary human preference for ease?

Excellent question.

Who would this patriarch be?

If you believe that the vast majority of Christians ever did more than the bare minimum, or that legalism and sophistry have not always been used to circumvent the spirit of Christian faith, then you haven't read the Fathers, or Church history. Human nature is immutable, and the vast majority of people have always chosen the easy path.

That may be true enough but why would you defend such behavior with such dogmatic certainty?

Who is this mysterious patriarch who ditched his patriarchal duties?

The Fathers or Church history? How about just meeting, I dunno, a person, like, ever?

Anyway, shall I take this to mean that in your opinion writing off the condemnations of artificial contraception as a uniquely Western excess and enthusiastically embracing it on the grounds of one's Eastern Christianity represents sophistry, and not a genuinely Christian effort?

Not to de-rail this interesting discussion, but I've wondered myself, "Who is the Patriarch of Byzantine(Ruthenian) Catholics?

It's not the Patriarch of the Ukrainians...it can't be the the Patriarch of Constantinople (although he was before the Union)... I've come up with the conclusion that the Pope of Rome is our Foster-Patriarch or Step-Patriarch.

And as the Most Pure One called Jesus's stepfather, Joseph, "Father" (Lk 2:48), we may call the Pope of Rome our Patriarch.

He means the Pope of Rome who has abandoned titles like "Patriarch of the West" and a lot of other trappings likely to irritate the Orthodox. Stop quibbling. The pope isn't rightly your patriarch. You're kind of orphaned. It's part of the problem.

It's not, but for just about any reason you can think of except politics, shouldn't it be?

Since the seventeenth century he's the one.