The Synod of Bishops of the UGCC in Ukraine gathered in Zarvanytsia to unite with His Holiness, Pope Francis, in consecrating Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Sad to say, but my eparchy completely mishandled this to the point of embarassment . . .
However, our Roman Catholic parishes (God bless them) led the way!
RC churches were filled with people and in one, the parish priest gave such a resounding sermon during their penitential service that brought tears to my eyes. He suggested that World War III has already begun by proxy and that "bombs could fall here too."
May I ask you - could you explain the Penitential Service that our Latin brothers and sisters hold on Fridays of Lent? What is its structure, was it always a part of the Latin Church's Lenten practice?
The Penitential Service is a new thing in the past years since the Vatican Council. It brings people together with a large group of priests from a number of different parishes We are having one this afternoon at my parish.
The idea is to bring people in who might not go to confession for any number of reasons. It allows parishioners to confess to a priest from another parish in the event one is not comfortable with one's pastor. It also helps priests because they do not have long lines to attend to by themselves, nor do they sit in the confessional waiting for no one to come. The priests in our deanery move from parish to parish during the Sundays and week days (when necessary) and many people attend.
We have an Examination of Conscience read slowly before individual confessions are heard. We say an Act of Contrition together. It usually begins with a reading from Sacred Scripture with a penitential theme and a short homily exhorting us to repentance.
In my parish we usually have eight to ten priests spread out around the church--both in and out of the confessional, but far enough away that one one can hear another's confession. usually in an hour we can have up to 200 people receive the sacrament.
I'd also add that a lot of parishes have extremely limited time windows for Confession. Offering Confession during a single 30 minute window on Saturday only is the norm in my area, which makes it impossible to actually get to go unless you're the first or second person in line. The Penitential Service is a way for people to actually get a chance to go to confession due to the extended time and number of priests available.
My local RC parish recently got a new administrator and he immediately implemented daily Confession, and twice daily on Tuesdays and Thursdays (morning and evening). I am incredibly grateful for this. When I thanked him for that (and essentially repeated my complaint above), he agreed and said that they were already seeing how overdue and necessary it was, as the lines are packed the whole time, every time.
Some of the extremists would argue that a comma or an exclamation point was left out of the consecration done by Pope john Paul II, or something equally silly. I have met some who were not willing to accept that consecration. Go figure. Pope Francis doing it again certainly did no harm, but did it make any difference? I don't know.
Actually, the fact is that no pope before Pope Francis fulfilled the revelation of the Mother of God of Fatima as she recounted. The consecrations by previous popes did not overtly mention "Russia" and were done in the name of the bishops only. Pope Francis invited the Catholic bishops of the world to join him in specifically consecrating RUSSIA. And the bishops responded as one body to the pope and said they would join him. Pope Francis then explicitly mentioned RUSSIA twice during the prayer, including Ukraine and the world.
As a life-long devotee of Our Lady of Fatima spanning half a century now, my many colleagues and I are very happy that the full letter of Our Lady's request for Russia's consecration was at last fulfilled.
Other popes balked at mentioning Russia overtly as part of the Vatican's illusory, eschatological dream that its contacts with Moscow would one day bear "fruit" in a church union.
That was always a silly idea. Throughout my own relationships with Orthodox Christians and clergy, I came to learn that they only saw me as a potential Orthodox convert which is why they entertained my interest in all things Eastern Orthodox. That is not ecumenical respect and it is not Christian in the least. What we have seen coming out of the mouth of the current and formal head of the Moscow patriarchate is despicable and not Christian in the least. With all the heavy incense smoke, lovely chanting and beautiful icons - there is a big emptiness where there should be the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
I agree with the illustrious hymnographer on this point of the Consecration, that this one fits the bill of what was asked for. Presvytaja Bohoroditsa, spasi nas!
As far Orthodox, my experience has been a mixed bag, though mostly positive, probably a side effect of being extreme tiny minorities here (Iowa and Missouri). I have only had one priest bash Catholicism (he thought I was Orthdodox, to be sure). Some priests wish we would convert (because we actually show up for feasts, you can see it in their eyes), but there are some that have never indicated or pressured us. Laity have been better. You get converts that are zealous (although i have met plenty that find Greek Catholics fascinating because we challenge the perception of what the Catholic Church is). Cradles tend to be pretty cool with us. One Yiayia even shrugged her shoulders and said, "Eh, Greek is Greek". We were active in a GOA mission two years, and five in a GOA parish (where we still have many life-long friends).
There was a fellow, Fr. Nicholas Gruner, who made a career out of preaching that previous consecrations were not valid and did not meet what Our Lady required. I found it hard to imagine Fr. Nicholas had a communication line to her and received information not available to the church or its leaders.
I agree on the the Orthodox being wonderful people, at least where I live. They couldn't be any nicer to us eastern Catholics. I have a number of friends who have left eastern Catholicism and have become Orthodox as the only way to get away from Latinizations.
I actually knew Fr Gruner and an elderly German couple who raised me were among his closest friends. What I know of him is that he was pious to a fault and the people he inspired around him were converted from lives of spiritual indifference to committed, traditional Christian lives. The contemporary Catholic administrators tend to be very hard on traditionalists who push back against the liberalism I agree is rampant in the Latin Catholic Church. It deserves to be opposed. I, for one, have had it up to here with Catholic free-for-all attitudes and undisciplined spirituality bereft of liturgical beauty and mystery. So I'm with Fr Gruner. And, yes, as Akemner (God bless you!) said - only Pope Francis is on record as having made the Consecration in exactly the way our Lady of Fatima asked. If you would like to debate the Fatima point - I'm game.
With respect to Orthodoxy - it has many Latinizations within its varied historical tradition. St Vladimir Seminary published St Dimitri's book of devotions to illustrate that point. The entire Kyivan Baroque era was replete with Orthodox saints who LOVED Western devotions and promoted them within Eastern liturgical frameworks. Everything from venerating Christ's "Body parts" to borrowing from the West St Bonaventure's Psalter of the Virgin Mary (which St Dimitri put to music and which is sung in Orthodox Churches today, to the Passia devotion (the Akathist to the Passion of Christ followed by the reading of two chapters of the Passion from one of the Gospels) to a number of other devotions (including your favourite, the Rosary or Rule of the Theotokos which St Seraphim of Sarov said the Virgin Mary told him was the 'most important prayer, more important than Akathists or Canons).
For me, being in communion with Rome, and why I could never be "Orthodox not in communion with Rome" has to do with having a centre of unity that, ideally, allows for spiritual and liturgical diversity that brings it all into a mutual fellowship where we can learn about each other, and even adopt and borrow what we like from each other. For Ukrainian Catholics who have historically been in between East and West, being pulled in either direction -having Latinizations along with Easternizations is something of an historical survival necessity. I'm just content with all my devotions, wherever they are from and no longer feel the need to justify where I got them from. You are a great man, Sir. Thank you for this conversation!
I'm not kidding about the number of ECs we have lost to Orthodoxy because of Latinizations. Since our eastern congregations are rather small, I question whether we can sustain such losses. I would rather lose the Latinizations than people.
Fatima consecration: We'll have to see what happens as a result. We have been told the consecration was already settled fact and everything about Fatima is getting a bit old by now. The results will either prove Fatima true, or false.
I never knew Gruner, but did attend a conference with Cardinal Gagnon, who was pretty high up in the Vatican organization at the time. He stated that Gruner was misguided.
As a sociologist, I'm naturally suspicious of explaining events like people changing churches based on only one causality, namely, "Latinizations." There must be some other reasons that would be worth studying and delving into. Personally, take it for what it's worth, those EC's who are the loudest about Latinizations, when queried about them, really have little idea as to what they are. If one would give them a book by St Dimitri of Rostov and blot out the name of the author, I'm sure they would feel disgust for the MANY Latinizations to be found there. Wouldn't they be surprised? (Sounds like the beginnings of a religious game show, doesn't it?)
As for Fatima, the recent Papal Consecration has revivified the Fatima devotion, in Eastern Europe and throughout the world. That is because Her message truly does resonate loudly today. The Most Holy Mother of God does make her Presence known as well as felt in quite tangible ways. There is a shrine here where all sorts of "miraculous events" are occurring, miracles of healing, and church authorities seem to be bent on selling the property while the laity oppose this. I told my Catholic pharmacist (yes, she is Latinized . . . but she is ok nevertheless) to take her husband to the shrine. He had been suffering from terrible back pain that no drugs could assist with. He went there and knelt in great pain before the image of the Mother of God and prayed for half an hour. He got up without any pain, no restriction of movement . . . and he danced wildly for the first time in years. My pharmacist tells me he can't stop talking about the Mother of God, just wants to visit the shrine all the time and wears a large rosary on his belt in full view of everyone (more Latinizations!). I told her there are worse things that can happen to a husband . . .
Whether at Fatima or elsewhere, the Most Holy Mother of the Divine Word Incarnate appears to remind us, who are members of the Body of Her Son, to live faithfully as befits Christians, praying and meditating on the Life of Her Son, placing ourselves under the Mantle of her Protection (which the scapular can be a symbol of in any Ritual Church), promotes the Rosary which several Russian saints have urged their spiritual children to recite daily, and which has always been prayed on Mount Athos, with a prostration to the floor at the end of each "Rejoice Theotokos Virgin, Hail Mary" and frequent, well-prepared for Holy Communion. If that is what is on the wane today, I would say thatChristian life as a whole is on the wane and we really do have a crisis in terms of the failure of the Church's evangelization witness.
As for Fr. Gruner, only God can, and will, have the final word about his ministry. There is no use invoking a cleric who is highly placed in the church administration as some sort of arbiter in the matter. I've seen many laity critique Pope Francis when they feel he doesn't mesh with their view of how things should be taught . . . And there have been misguided popes in history, like Pope Honorius I who, until the 12th century, was condemned as an heretic by his successors. St Maximos the Confessor opposed the "union" that pope and all the patriarchs of Christendom at the time agreed to as heretical. As we know, he had his tongue cut out. Yet the Church, in time, exonerated him and also canonized him.
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