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A couple of questions. Are the "Byzantine" clergy still trained in Econe? How can a community effectively train priests in the authentic tradition of Eastern Christianity in Econe? They have no experts in Eastern liturgy and Greek Fathers at Econe.

That clearly goes against the wishes of our holy Father Leo XIII who decreed that places of study should be established within the tradition for those aspiring to Holy Orders. The Union of Brest itself says in the first article: "...we ask that we should not be compelled to any other creed but that we should remain with that which was handed down to us in the Holy Scriptures, in the Gospel, and in the writings of the holy Greek Doctors...".

If there is no one fitting to teach them those Greek Doctors who know their business, with an authentic Eastern basis, you are not teaching at all - but distorting, propagandizing - and clearly disregarging the counsel of the Pope who also warned against the Masons.

Regarding your affiliation with the SSPX, it is quite well known their bishops are schismatic per Ecclesia Dei. The specific determination of the visible Rome, the Magesterium, was ipso facto excommunication, which is in writing for all to see. Bishop Rifan of Campos made a brave and saintly move by reconciling his status, and entirely keeping his flock in the Traditional Mass.

What is most interesting, and perhaps most contradictory, is that for years the Transalpines have been railing against Balamand and "dialogue" with the Orthodox. Now it is different - and you are talking with those you have demonized and polemicized against for years. Let those who have eyes, see.

From the old website: Courageous Patriarch Josyp stayed in communion with Rome to his death, actually dying IN ROME, and secretly consecrated Patriarch Lubomyr. He died in the 1980s, well after the implementation of VII. And never did he renounce his communion with Rome. Patriarch Lubomyr represents a direct and visible line of authority of the UGCC which you are clearly disregarding - and he was consecrated by the hands of Patriarch Josyp.

What about our saintly bishops who endured the gulags, like Bl. Vasyl Velychkovsky, Pavlo Vasylyk and others who went to their death in direct and filial communion with the UGCC of Patriarch Josyp? Were they simply deluded?

How many of your priests were martyred? How many spent time in the gulag? Let me answer - zero (including "Fr. Basil"), and while perhaps several of your disgruntled flock may have that experience, you and the rest of your clergy have absolutely no relevant experience of that. So who paid the price of martyrdom? Clearly those clergy who remained faithful to Patriarch Josyp - and Rome.

Why haven't the remaining UGCC clergy who were imprisoned and tortured in the gulags joined you instead of remaining with Patriarch Josyp and his episcopal descendents such as Patriarch Lubomyr?

Vatican II has nothing to do with the availability of books in Old Slavonic - that is crazy. They are available from a variety of sources, including, yes, Rome. It seems a bit schizophrenic - on one hand you revile Rome since VII, and on the other hand you talk about canonizations by John Paul II.

I would guess the source of the books you were given by the UOC were from larger MP printhouses like Pochaiv or Kyiv. So you are now using some of the same books that not only Orthodox but those that I and others in communion with Rome use. This seems rather Machiavellian - do you only want to meet with the Orthodox because you want something they have? Or is it genuine "dialgoue" which you have railed against? I would surmise there is some other underlying reason for this contact.

It also seems strange you have purged all references to Fr. Kathrein on the new site - after all he founded the original house and didn't you profess under him? Quite strange, indeed. You don't even mention the old monastery at all on the new site.
Diak

That is my impression as well.

Andrew

Dear Father DIAKon,

Yes, indeed!

Fr Michael Mary should not even be taking the names of those Holy New Martyrs of the Soviet Yoke who died for union with Rome onto his lips!

They would have shed tears of blood at seeing this man's movement of disobedience to Rome - oh, yes, there's always a way to rationalize it such as "loyal opposition" or what-not.

As for fasting, the Ukrainian people know what that is all about - the Soviets taught them well, especially during the Holodomor . . .

Alex

Dear Mr. MacNabb,

I sometimes wonder where Latin Catholics have been hiding when it comes to things like calling Orthodox Christians "schismatic."

Rome doesn't use that terminology and not only because of the sake of "political correctness."

Traditional Roman Catholics, whether they're in union with Rome or outside of it, maintain a church history that sees the entire Church from the very beginning as being somehow "under the universal jurisdiction" of the Pope of Rome.

When? How?

Yes, the unity of the Church was ruptured sometime between 1054 AD (that act was a personal, not an ecclesial, rupture at first) and the Sack of Constantinople in 1204.

"Schism" would be when a group separates from the lawful authority of their Church i.e. when traditional RC's affirm they know better than the Popes and go on to do their own thing while still commemorating the Pope anyway. They disobey their lawful authority.

The role of the Popes of Rome with respect to the East was hardly that of "immediate jurisdiction" over the Churches.

Popes, over time, were even corrected by the Eastern Churches, such as when Rome moved the fast from Wednesday over to Saturday, or when Pope Honorius I was implicated in the Monothelite heresy - and was anathematized by his successors in Rome until the 12th century.

The "schism" was a separation of both East and West - both had a hand in the estrangement that led to that separation.

But for RC's to suggest that the Orthodox East was ever, prior to 1054 AD, "under Rome" jurisdictionally as the EC Chuches are today and that they therefore went into schism by separating themselves from "their Pope" - is simply a Western take on history.

As Aleksandr (beautiful icon of St Job of Pochayiv, by the way!) has said, the Orthodox Church affirms itself to be the true, original Church of Christ from which Rome fell through a number of Latin innovations.

From the Orthodox POV, when we see the state the Latin Church is in today - if the Orthodox tell us, "See, what did we tell you? This is a judgement of God against this Church!" this gives one cause to stop and wonder.

The fact that Fr. Michael Mary and his group oppose Vatican II while maintaining that they can so do and still be Catholics in good standing is already an ecclesial anomaly that should raise issues in their own minds - but it does not.

Alex

Dear Andrew,

Yes, I was most surprised to see that on Fr. Fox's site!

The Fatima groups in the West have always had a strong following predicated on the idea that we must pray for the "conversion of Russia."

And I agree that we must.

In my earlier days, I agreed that we must pray for Russia to become Catholic - that is what the "conversion of Russia " truly meant along with the downfall of communism.

We know a bit more about church history today than we did and we are less triumphalistic than we were - or at least some of us are.

Rome is not only not saying anything to those missionaries in Russia who are out to convert Russians (Orthodox or unchurched), they are allowing the promotion of the Latin Rite in a country that has historically always been Byzantine.

And Byzantine Russian Catholics have no rights to govern themselves - this might offend the Orthodox, Rome believes . . . (!)

Rome needs to clean its own ecclesial house and ecumenical policies before all else.

I agree with Fr. Michael Mary, in fact, that Rome's ecumenical positions are based on rather silly assumptions.

They wind up offending the Orthodox more than anything (Fr. Michael Mary's discussion of fasting is, in fact, a good point).

What Rome says about Orthodoxy and what it does to Orthodoxy are two different things.

Unfortunately, the devotion of Our Lady of Fatima has become, for Orthodox Christians and others who understand and appreciate this, a banner of "convert the Orthodox schismatics!"

That term "schismatic" is a deeply offensive term to the Orthodox, not only on religious grounds, but also because historically political/national oppression by Western Catholic countries was done against the Orthodox in accordance with this battle-cry used as religious justification for it.

And Fr. Michael Mary, and his ilk, have no idea about this aspect of historic Roman Catholic oppression - Eastern Slavs do, however.

That is why for many Orthodox, in Eastern Europe and in Greece, the figure of the Pope of Rome is a suspicious one to this day and why many Orthodox have quite the hatred for all things Roman Catholic.

It has precious little to do with spiritual things, but the more material, mundane matters of politics that the RC Popes were involved in as part of Western European geopolitical expansion of yesteryear.

This is also why the devotion to Our Lady of Fatima has likewise become not simply a Western devotion that doesn't exist in the East.

It has become yet another Western banner/war cry against the patrimony of Eastern Orthodox nations and their spiritual culture.

Alex

Yes, indeed. When Metropolitan Sheptytsky embraced his ancestral church, he was nearly disowned by his Polonized family. Bl. Exarch Leonid endured as much derision from the ultra-montane Polish RCs (sometimes more) during his ministry as the ultra-nationalistic Orthodox.
FDD

Father Michael Mary,

Thank you for coming to this forum. Although I do disagree with your position I respect you and pray for you as a priest.

Many years!

Dearest in Christ Diak
You speak under a false name I speak and you know who I am and where I live and what I stand for.
In haste a reply to your letter asking for some answers:
1. Training of priests: We use the same justification as would be given for the lack of Greek Doctors in the training of Fr Delaere. He first called Ukrainians 'Russians' and then began to learn. What of the 'underground training' of present Archbishop of Lviv Ihor Vosniak... how many Greek Doctors etc? Or is he and were they 'distorting, propagandizing' as you would have it?

2 Excommunication form the Catholic Church: According to the head of Ecclesia Dei, Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos the traditional Catholics and members of the SSPX are NOT excommunicated.

The supposed excommunication of the four bishops was for the same thing that Patriarch Josyf did: consecrate bishops. If an SSPX bishop should be excommunicated for being consecrated without the Papal Mandate so too should H.B. Husar who was consecrated against the will of Pope Paul VI.

So if I'm excommunicated you should be excommunicated if you are a member of the UGCC.

3. Patriarch Joseyf died in Rome: Yes, I concelebrated the Divine Liturgy at his funeral.

4. Church books: Of course we use the Old Church Slavonic liturgical books from Rome! But they haven't produced a pocket sized psalm book that is 3 inches by 4 inches, they are very handy to write in for study purposes.

5. Fr Kathrein: Surely he is still on the old web site. He did not found the original house of Transalpine Redemptorists and he never lived with us. But he was a saintly Redemptorist all the same.
I hope this answers your questions.

Having shared some of the discussion with Monk Nicodemus he has asked me to post his thoughts on this discussion. He is an Oriental Monk. Here is his statement:
So many so-called �Byzantine Catholics� live today with a mentality which is one step away from, if not actual, apostasy. (Perhaps this is why the use of the term apostate and schismatic are so odious to them?) They, without any substantial research, feel themselves empowered to write all kinds of fantasies. But, there is only one Catholic Faith. There are not various forms of the Faith. No Byzantine Rite faith and Latin Rite faith. There is not �what you or I think� about the Faith. There is One Faith. If you look at history you will find that what those such as Fr Michael believe is in fact what Catholics believed 60, 80, 100, 1000 and 2000 years ago. It is one consistent Faith. It does not change. Because modernism and ecumenism have so perverted the minds of even the well-informed they feel that they are empowered to give out whatever opinion they like. That is not the Catholic Faith. Don�t take my word for it�read some objective Catholic source from 100 years ago.
For the good soul who wrote about how a Redemptorist such as Fr Michael should think twice about speaking before dishonouring his forefathers in the Congregation: Dear soul, you may do well to study the history of the Oriental Redemptorist Congregation in which you will see the term �schismatic� used time and again. The martyrs themselves would have used it. BUT it is another question as to whether one is obliged to be rude in the face of somebody who is Orthodox and call them all kinds of rude names. That is called having good manners.
In the same way, somebody who has AIDS would be spoken about as having AIDS. That referral is objective. The person has AIDS. One�s statement does not mean to condemn the person for how they contracted the disease. In this regard they may be morally blameless or blameworthy. I do not have to go up to the person and say: �Yes, �AIDS-nik�, how can I help you?� Anybody with a bit of common sense can understand this and this is what Bishop Velychkovsky was speaking about is his article about working for re-union of the �Orthodox�.
It is the same with the word SCHISM or APOSTACY. I do not need to insult somebody every time I address them or speak about them but I am still allowed, in fact I am obliged in some cases, to use the term in order to be clear. Bishop Velychkovsky did so too, see below. In the same way if I kept on referring to my AIDS sufferer as simply a �patient� nobody would be able to help or even have a normal conversation with the man about his health for lack of knowledge. Say I am the man�s doctor. I tell him that he is suffering from a very serious illness but I refrain from naming it in order not to offend. What use is that? I am bound at least once to tell him plainly that he has AIDS. Now all this is the same with religion. If I am a Catholic, our Religion believes, and has believed from time immemorial that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church. If I am speaking about religion with somebody and I at least once do not clearly tell that person, if he is �Orthodox� that he is factually in a schismatic organization, what is the use of that? He is no more aware of the tenants of my Faith than he was to start with. Reality is reality. We don�t have to wrap everybody in cotton wool. That does not mean we have to insult them and of course you could also tell them that they are �disunited� which perhaps through circumstances they are. But schismatic only has negative connotations from firstly what it is, that is to say a sin and thus obviously negative, and secondly being flung around by people with no charity or missionary zeal at all. It is only the negative assertion of the positive �disunited�. If you are dealing with simple people of good will who are wanting to be Catholics anyway you do not have to bombard them with the negative term, but in today�s world of confusion, and institutionalized confusion, i.e. Vatican II, we need to be clear of the terms. Positive terms too can be insulting. I grew up in South Africa where black people were referred to as �non-whites�. Which is worse, being called �black� or being called �non-white�? Let us also remember that Metropolitan Andrew also wrote, among many other things, that we should not call the Orthodox �Orthodox� because they were not orthodox. How many of you have read that one?
Bishop Velychkovsky himself says we should be careful about using the words �schismatic, heretic, be converted, faith of the devil� in his methodology for work in Volhynia . He also says that the person coming into unity is not a heretic or a schismatic because of the special circumstances of the Ukrainians of Volhynia. Does this mean that this practice applies across the board to every �Orthodox�? Is this what he meant? Of course not. The people he was working with had special circumstances. The words, as is well know, �roskol� and/or �conversion� have far stronger meanings in areas where physical violence had been used to �convert�. Does this mean that one may never use the word? Bishop Velychkovsky in the very same article speaks of the person wishing to be united to the Catholic Church. During confession, �[�] he expresses his rejection of the error of schism and his acceptance of the apostolic power of the Holy Father[..]�
The so called Greek-Catholic Church today is hanging onto its union with Catholicism by a thread. The ideas held by a great number of its adherents are simply not Catholic. You can jump up and down as much as you like but that is a fact. This warm-fuzzy ecumenical zombie land that many of us live in is simply not real. If you want to preach about history, study it�don�t just share your feelings.
So many of these ideas that �Byzcaths� out there so despise were held by the very people you now idolize and whom you hold as a standard against Catholics. It is crazy. Fr Joseph Schrijvers, Fr Emile Vanderstratten, Fr Achiel Delaere, Fr Hendrik Boels all the early Oriental Redemptorists repeat this idea over and over again: �Orthodoxy� is a false and schismatic religion, the mission in Galicia is an end with a wider end of preparing the way for the conversion of Russia; There is no salvation outside the Catholic Church. Do I hear screams? Calm down, think about it. Does anybody go to the lengths that those men went, in the face of the blackest ingratitude, in order to make ecumenical niceties with Orthodoxy? Be serious?
No, the warm-fuzzy, huggy-huggy ecumenist is the lazy modernist who has nothing better to do than wander around the world giving lecture tours about his particular brand of apostasy, or his particular ideas about how to apostatize; not our Redemptorist Missioners.
The martyrs were given the choice: apostatize or die, apostatize or Siberia. Do you think the KGB/NKVD wanted to hear modernist platitudes about how we are all fraternally united and how we should discus more what divides us than what separates us. When somebody is bludgeoning you to death in a labour camp are you doing it for the warm-fuzzy reasons of �all Ukrainian Christians� when your signing a decree of apostasy would put you straight back on the streets of Lviv? If apostasy is no sin, if it is not even a word which should exist in our vocabulary, then why did they not just give up. Why did the martyrs not just become Orthodox? Was it for reasons of nationalism? And what about those who were ethnically Russians? No, I am afraid false ecumenism is for fatcats who live in banquet after banquet, lecture after lecture, symposium after symposium, let�s be frank rave after rave, lifestyles saying nothing at all of any consequence. The proof of there insincerity is that it has produced not one martyr. There are no heroic martyrs of ecumenism, just fatcats.
Is Catholic tradition divisive in Ukraine? No. What was Blessed Nicholas Charnetsky working for if not the union of Ukraine with the Catholic Church, a Church with one Faith and many rites: Latin, Ruthenian, pre-Nikonian Russian, Nikonian Russian, Armenian and etc, etc. A Church above nationalism and ritualism. Now tell me please, does: Filaret Denisenko, Petro Petrus and his Autonoumous Ukrainian Orthodox Church (by the way probably the church with the least faithful in Lviv), Vladimir Sabodan in his Ukrainian Russian Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian Counciliar Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian Belaya Krinnitsa Old Believers, the bez-popovtsi, the True Orthodox, the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, the Ukrainian Pokutniki, the Armenian �Orthodox� or the other plethora of sects, charlatans and other false religions have the answer in their self-proclaimed organizations? Are they not a threat to national unity in Ukraine? How are they going to please all the ethnic groups of Ukraine and help them save their souls? The only answer is the One True Catholic Faith.
This is why the Transalpine Redemptorists keep on going to Ukraine. For love of all of Ukraine�s people, Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, Armenians, Gypsies, Tartars. They could all children of Christ and thus children of His One True Church as Our Lady Herself told us at Fatima. There is no subterfuge in what she said: �Russia will be converted� means �Russia will be converted.� If you asked Lucia dos Santos in 1917 what Our Lady had meant, she would have told you: Russia will be converted, Russia will become Catholic. Period. Sweet Heart of Mary, be our salvation!

I like the analogy of speaking with Orthodox Christians as one would with somebody who has AIDS.

Touching.

Andrew

Dear Father Michael Mary,

If, '�Orthodoxy� is a false and schismatic religion' Then why do you use and trust their Liturgical books?

Thank you for your reply, Father. If you will re-read my post, I carefully indicated Ecclesia Dei only applied to the four bishops. Only God can judge those who willingly support bishops who are ipso facto excommunicated. I will no longer.

I think we may be comparing apples and oranges, Father. Indeed, as you cite in the example of Vladyka Ihor, there was an exigency of the time. God did indeed provide. During those underground times, there was a necessity determined by the time. I would posit even then his foundation was much more solid, yes solid, in the Greek Fathers and traditional Byzantine liturgy than you are able to provide.

But even then some of our priests were able to escape and study at St. Sophia, the Orientalium, and even clandestinely in some Orthodox seminaries. There was not an overt refusal, as you maintain, to study in Catholic or Orthodox institutions. In fact Patriarch Josyp farmed out many clergy knowingly to both RC and Orthodox universities/seminaries. You alone have set yourself up as the judge of what is appropriate for your clergy.

One even in Ukraine can now study openly at the Ukrainian Catholic University, which I would like to say Fr. Borys Gudziak is doing an admirable job of recruting faculty well grounded in the Greek Doctors and traditional liturgy, not a latinized hybrid that you attempt to propagate which did not exist prior to the pseudo-synods of Zamosc and L'viv. Those, rather, are the innovations.

I do not see you embracing any of those possibilities for instructing your clergy with those who are credible teachers of Byzantine liturgy and the Greek Fathers. This seems to be in direct opposition to the mandates of Leo XIII of blessed memory. And it may even border on an insult to Patriarch Josyp, who labored long for the restoration of those institutions.

Those dark times are over, and credible and experienced teachers of Byzantine liturgy and the Greek Fathers are readily available in Catholic and Orthodox institutions. Why do you not take advantage of those?

As I pointed out, the episcopal descendents of those who perished and suffered in the gulag are with Patriarch Lubomyr, and not your group. Nor do you even have one UGCC bishop, even those retired living saints who endured terrible sufferings under the godless Communists, who are willing to support you. None.

It is clear for the UGCC as a whole who is faithful to Patriarch Josyp - those who had hands laid upon by him, the great majority of the faithful and not a few disgruntled clergy who wish to cling to modern latinizations and hybridizations. Old Slavonic doesn't define one as a traditionalist, as even the Protestants made translations into Old Slavonic.

Who were you were professed by, Father? Of what Redemptorist house and province? In what diocese are you incardinated in? All of those are quite publically verifiable for Bishop Ihor.

My name is not "false", but an old nickname. Anyone who has been around Ukrainian or Rusyn parishes for any length of time knows the significance of the term "diak". I was a cantor for many years prior to being ordained to minor orders and finally ordained deacon in communion with the visible Rome and Magesterium - by the episcopal line of Rus' that includes Patriarch Josyp.
Fr. Deacon Randolph L. Brown

I think this thread needs to be closed...because "Fr." Michael "Mary" (as its weird having a female name)...proves that his thinking is fruitless and vile.

I am also disappointed at Teen Logo...a "Catholic Wanna-Be".

These two guys, in my own thoughts are anathamized...schismatic.

I am thoroughly disgusted with these two guys...and I'm trying very hard not to puke here...in this stench of evil-thinking that these guys have.

SPDundas
Deaf Byzantine

Agreed.

Let's close this one down.

-uc

Dear Friends,

There is not one rule of this forum, as I understand them, that Fr. Michael Mary has not broken.

But that's up to the Administrator!

And, SPDundas, Father Michael Mary is following an old Latin tradition in taking for his own the name of the Virgin Mary. In the Slavic East, it is actually forbidden for even women to take the name of "Mary" from the Virgin Mary - it must be the name of another saint.

Alex