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#76145 12/26/98 05:30 AM
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Today, I saw a baby.
He was wrapped up in bands of cloth.
He nursed at his mom's breast.
The hotel was full, so his parents camped out in a barn.
The animals' breath and bodies helped to keep him warm.
He is said to have come here to let me know that to be human is OK in God's eyes.
We humans do a lot of stupid things; we're not perfect. We argue and fight with each other about our own perspectives on the world and the way it should be organized and run. We ignore the needs of the people next door and the folks down the street. And we know that we should really take care of them, but so many times, things get in the way. We're so busy doing the things that we need to do, that our families bid us do, and especially the things that our social circles demand of us, that we forget that God exists, and that God TOLD us through Christ, that we have to love Him, and the folks around us.

This seems to me to be the biggest temptation that confronts us human beings in the present age. And so many of us succumb to the temptation.

While I myself, as a child of the Gospel as prayed over and lived out by the Greek speaking Fathers and Mothers of the Church, naturally want to adhere to the practices, beliefs and doctrines of my community, while adhering to the dogmas of the Universal Christian Community (i.e., the Church) I have to keep in mind that the Gospel of Christ bids me overcome some of the 'jurisdictional' elements of my community and recognize that other Christians do things differently.

But to keep to my own traditions (as long as they lead me to God--which is what my/our ancestors were trying to do) is OK. And to suggest to other Christians, who do things 'differently', that they seek out their salvation in a community of like minded people, is perfectly fine.

Byzantine Catholics have received their theology, spirituality, fasting rules, marriage customs, sacrament customs, bell-ringing rules, vestments, funeral traditions, liturgies, saint-veneration traditions, etc. from the Church of the East; but the community also values its privilege of maintaining communion with the See of Peter. But Peter's successor has told us (as have the councils of the Church) to absolutely maintain our theology and all ancillary practices that we have inherited from our ancestors.

So those folks who tell us that we 'have to' go along with alien principles and practices for the sake of unity with the See of Peter in Rome, are actually in conflict with the express will of the Church (as expressed in the Conciliar Documents) and the will of the Holy Father (as expressed in Encyclicals, i.e., 'Ut Unum Sint').

So please, Latin Brothers and Sisters, let us Greek-Catholics continue to study and discover our legitimate traditions under the guidance of our Bishops, and let us attempt to grow in the 'pathway' that the Byzantine Church gave to us. If someone is a Byzantine Catholic whose background includes the mixture of both Eastern and Western traditions, let him/her continue to use both until the day of his/her death; but please respect those who wish to follow either the Eastern or the Western pathway to salvation ('work out your salvation in fear and trembling', St. Paul) and let them do what they need to do without resorting to legalism or local Church doctrine to sow confusion or fright among those who are trying to find God.

And dear Sister Judith, don't you DARE withdraw from the discussions of the community. If Christ thought enough of YOUR soul to give His life to sanctify it, then you certainly have the right (nay, obligation) to be here among the rest of us who are doing our damndest to find God and His will for us. And I thank you for your thoughts, ideas and prayers.

#76146 12/26/98 04:41 PM
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Returning to the subject of whether Purgatory is a dogmatic teaching of the Catholic Church.

Dogmas are proprosed "truths contained in divine Revelation or having a nessary connection with them, in a form obliging the Christian people to an irrevocable adherence of faith." (CCC 88)

Now if you look back at the decree from Trent on Purgatory you will see that it has all the necessary elements of a dogma.

"The Catholic Church, instructed by the Holy Spirit and in accordance with sacred Scripture and the ancient Tradition of the Fathers, has taught in the holy Councils and most recently in this ecumenical Council that there is a purgatory and that the souls detained there are helped by the acts of intercession of the faithful and especially by the acceptable sacrifice of the altar. Therefore this holy Council commands the bishops to strive diligently that the sound doctrine of purgatory, handed down by the Holy Fathers and the sacred Councils, be believed by the faithful and that it be adhered to, taught, and preached everywhere."

Here an Ecumenical Council states that:

1) Purgatory is a truth contained in Scripture and Tradition and previous councils.

2) That the doctrine of Purgatory is to "be believed by the faithful and that it be adhered to, taught, and preached everywhere."

Rarely will a dogma have the label "dogma" on it. But it is a dogma if 1)It is a truth proposed by an ecumenical council which is contained in divine revelation. 2)It is stated in a form that obliges Christians to an adherence of faith.

#76147 12/27/98 07:19 AM
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Perpetua: You have completely ignored the previous posting about the will of the Church.

The Vatican Council II documents COMMAND that the Eastern Churches rediscover the legitimate sources of their theology.

The Holy Father, himself, has ordered in "Ut Unum Sint" that all the Eastern Churches study and examine their historical traditions in order to restore them. The document also MANDATES that we look to our Orthodox brethern to determine where these legitimate traditions have developed.

You should also be aware of the fact that the Canon Law of the Church (both Western Canon Law, as well as Eastern) imposes serious sanctions upon Latin Rite Catholics who attempt to 'induce members of the Eastern Churches to abandon their legitimate traditions" so as to make them into Latin Christians. And this issue is SO SERIOUS, that absolution is reserved to the Holy See. (In simple terms, that means that your parish priest CANNOT absolve your from this sin, but he must approach the Bishop who then appeals to Rome for your absolution.)

So, I suggest strongly that you peddle your petty theology elsewhere. It is clear that you have NO IDEA about the complexities of the theology involved nor any respect whatsoever for Byzantine Christians and our legitimate ecclesiology.

Having just read some of these documents from the Church, I am just angry enough at you and your diatribes that I personally would file canonical charges for excommunication against you with your bishop for violations of the canons. Should I discover who you are, and the diocese of which you are a member, I will do so. And this is no idle threat. You are exactly the impediment within the Church which the Council Fathers feared and exactly the person for whom they set up the canonical excommunications.

Your misinformed accusations, your incredibly arrogant stipulations about the 'Council of Trent' and its decretals, and your incredibly unkind accusations against Byzantine Christians having to submit to Western Theology, have absolutely ruined my Christmas. If your 'Christian charity' is the hallmark of what Christ teaches us to do, then it's no wonder that the unchurched run screaming away from the Church, believing Christians to be dogmatic, judgemental and petty-Nazi types who care more for snipptes of written theology gleaned from ecclesiastical documents than for the real needs of living people or the totality of Christan theology.based upon the teachings of Christ.

If you have ANY elements of Christian kindness, please leave us alone and go to some "Mother, may I..." or 'legalistic' message board. We need to deal with the real needs of our brethren in America who face hunger, poverty, sickness, and materialistic problems, or our brethren in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe who are facing floods, destruction of crops, Protestant missionaries, abject poverty, theft of historical treasures (incluiding the holy icons), onslaughts of militant Moslems, closings of theological academies and seminaries, and even abductions or Christian children (i.e., Ethiopia), and death of the baptized.

I wish you many graces in a loving and kind Christian community, but may this community be as far away from us as possible.

#76148 12/27/98 07:55 AM
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Were Florence and Trent truly "Ecumenical" Councils? Did our hierarchs participate in them? Should they be binding on our Churches when we were not consulted or represented? Florence was a so called "reunion" Council and there were Eastern Hierarchs in attendence but were the decrees of reunion received by the Eastern Churches after the Councils ended? Trent responded to the Reformation, an issue which did not effect most of the homelands of the Eastern Churches. It responded in a Western way, with Western words and Western mind set. Is Purgatory, defined as a place of purging fires part of the Tradition both East and West received from Christ through the Church? I can't find any reference to it or a concept like it before the early eighth century. We have always prayed for the dead, this implies there is a "state" of existence between hell and Paradise. Our prayers can help those in this state of existence. The West decided to make a theological speculation a required belief. The true presence of Christ our God in the Eucharist is another example. Obviously there is a change or transformation that takes place after the Words of the Lord and the Epiclesis but do we have to believe it is by the philosophical construct of "transubstantiation?" The Gospels and Sacred Tradition teach that bread and wine become the Lord's Body and Blood in the Eucharist. Do we need to define how this happens? The Orthodox speak of a "change" in and of the Gifts. Following the early (and undivided) Church they do not try to explain how this change takes place. It is a divine mystery, and unearned gift from God. This is the true Eastern Christian Tradition which we share with the Orthodox. Do we need to follow the Roman Church which has had the need to explain everything, including how Christ becomes present in the Eucharist? We live Sacred Tradition in our own unique way, as we have received it from Christ and the Apostles. The Roman Church has received these same truths and chooses to explain them and live them in a different way. We are not Roman Catholics, we have the right and obligation to live the Faith as we have been given it.

[This message has been edited by Batushka (edited 12-27-98).]

#76149 12/27/98 08:03 PM
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To Dr John:

I have no desire to induce you to abandon your legitimate traditions. Please continue in them. They are very excellent and a wonderful expression of the Catholic faith. The purpose of my post simply to defend the doctrine of purgatory as a dogma of the (neither Roman nor Byzantine nor Antiochene) Catholic faith.


To Batushka:

A council does not have to have a certain type of representation to be ecumenical. The First Council of Constantinople had no Latin representatives, but nevertheless it has been recognized as an Ecumenical Council. It seems reasonable that an Ecumenical Council could be composed entirely of Latin bishops.


You ask: "Is Purgatory, defined as a place of purging fires part of the Tradition both East and West received from Christ through the Church? I can't find any reference to it or a concept like it before the early eighth century." Actually there are quite a number of them, mostly from the Latin Fathers. These include St. Augustine, Pope St. Gregory the Great and Tertullian. Among the Greek Fathers who taught of Purgatory were St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory of Nyssa.

St. Gregory of Nyssa says in his Sermon On The Dead: "If a man distinguish in himself what is peculiarly human from that which is irrational, and if he be on the watch for a life of greater urbanity for himself, in this present life he will purify himself of any evil contracted, overcoming the irrational by reason. And if he have inclined to the irrational pressure of the passions, using for the passions the cooperating hide of things irrational, he may afterwards in a quite different manner be very much interested in what is better, when, after his departure out of the body, he gains knowledge of the difference between virtue and vice, and finds that he is not able to partake of divinity until he has been purged of the filthy contagion in his soul by the purifying fire."

St. Basil says in his commentary on Psalm 7: "A man who is under sentence of death, knowing that there is One who saves, One who delivers, says: 'In You I have hoped, save me' from my inability 'and deliver me' from captivity. I think that the noble athletes of God, who have wrestled all their lives with the invisible enemies, after they have escaped all of their persecutions and have come to the end of life, are examined by the prince of this world; and if they are found to have any wounds from their wrestling, any stains of effects of sin, they are detained. If, however, they are found unwounded and without stain, they are, as unconquered, brought by Christ into their rest."


[This message has been edited by Perpetua (edited 12-27-98).]

#76150 12/28/98 04:52 AM
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Perpetua, your quote from the Eastern Fathers are quite appropriate and while I was not aware of the quote from St. Gregory, I and many others believe that it is a theological speculation as opposed to something that can and should be binding on all the faithful. There is no need for "a purging fire" or a suffering when one has made it to that state that is like a waiting room for Paradise. These souls know that they will eventually look upon God face to face. Again, quoting the Western Fathers only expresses how the Faith is interpreted and expressed in the West. In the East devotion to the souls who have died but have not been completely reconciled is expressed in the prayers for the dead found in all Eastern Liturgies. We do not need to explain something that is a mystery. Regarding who attended which Councils (Eastern Hierarchs or Western ones) the canons or decrees had to be received by the Churches these bishops served. In the East the typical way they received was not to cram them down the people's throats. How could Trent be totally binding on Churches that were not represented let alone aware of the problems that were being addressed by that Council. The Patriarch and Hierarchs of the Melkite Churches have expressed this same view and see many of the "Ecumenical Councils" as "Councils of the West." There was representation at Vatican I we kow since documented history tells us the then Patriarch of Antioch of the Melkites was humiliated by Pius IX, ie, forced to prostrate and literally stepped on by Pius. This took place because of the Patriarch's questioning of the Infallibility declaration. By Vatican II things were better and the Melkite Patriarch was a voice for real collegiality. I certainly commend you on your knowledge of the writings of the Fathers. God bless you, pray for me.

[This message has been edited by Batushka (edited 12-28-98).]

#76151 12/28/98 06:10 AM
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Batushka is absolutely on target with the response.

Ecumenical Councils, by virtue of the word "oikumene" (='all') need to include all the Churches. If any Churches are impeded from participation, then the Council is not truly ecumenical, but rather a local Council of one or more patriarchates. If, however, the Churches that were impeded accept the decretals as valid, then the acceptance validates the decretals of the Council, but it DOESN'T render the Council ecumenical in itself.

It is clear that there are going to be various theologies present in the Church(es) at any given time. The Ethopians have accepted Judas Iscariot as a saint--because they cannot believe that one who was so close to Christ could have died without repentance. So they have Churches dedicated to St. Judas. For most in the Western Church, they'd have a cow trying to accept this. But the Ethoipian Christians have a right to understand this situation as they do. And other Christians don't have the right to say 'anathema' to them on this. The true 'dogma' of the Christian church is contained in the 4 Creeds that have been promulgated by the Universal Church. Beyond the credal statements, the theologies of the individual Churches obtain, and guide the spirituality of the individiual communities.

As a Greek Catholic, I pray for the dead at every liturgy and at Souls Saturdays. I don't know where they are, but it is my prayer that God will bring these departed souls to Himself. And I have every hope that He will do so, because I, as a praying, fasting, hard-working member of my parish community, ask it in prayer. And I have confidence that my Christ and my beloved will respond to my earnest entreaties. Is there a limbo; is there a purgatory; is there a hierarchy of honor in heaven, or a hierarchy of pain in hell? I don't know; but I pray for those who have gone before us and I beg God's mercy upon myself and upon those for whom I pray.

I cannot believe that an unbaptized 'pagan baby' will be forced to sit in some place of pain because he/she was unfortuntate enough to have been born in an area where no priest, deacon or layperson was present to baptize that child. Jesus, our Lord and Savior, was the absolute embodiment of LOVE for God and for mankind. And I cannot find any smidgen of evidence that He would condemn a human being to pain for human reasons. The only time He vented His anger was the cleansing of the temple, when He drove out the folks who defiled it through money connected to the Jewish liturgical worship services. Everybody else, He forgave on the spot, and told them to go forth and sin no more.

I see no evidence at all that God is going to punish people for being human and for making mistakes that don't get 'absolved' prior to death. Do you seriously think that God would condemn a Mother Teresa to eternal 'fire' if she should have committed a 'venial' sin or some such, immediately prior to death? That's not the Christ of the Gospels. That's the Christ of the Holy Inquisition. And that Christ simply doesn't exist except in the minds of the sado-masochistic folks who enjoy inflicting pain on others. And we Byzantine/Greek Christians have never degenerated to the level of establishing a sado-masochistic Inquisitiion. Ever.

So what need do we Greek Christians have of a construct for an imagined 'pain-inflicting place of purification'? We simply throw ourselves upon the mercy of God for our sins and for the sins of others. Because Christ HImself told us to do so. And He also told us that He would forgive us, if only we would ask. And we do.

So, what's more important: Christ's promise to heed our prayers, or the decrees of the Latin Council of Trent? I side with Christ.

#76152 12/28/98 05:45 PM
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To Batushka and Dr John:

I think you are making a mistake, if you are Catholics, to limit yourselves only to the Greek Fathers. The Latin Fathers are a very rich resource if you desire to know the fullness of the Catholic Faith. St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, St. Leo the Great, St. Gregory the Great, St. Jerome are all wonderful teachers of the Catholic faith.

The Ecumenical Councils held in the west are also a good and reliable source of Catholic teaching even if they do not always directly relate to the Eastern Churches at the time they were held.

Now since you have both referred to the Second Vatican Council as an authoritative council for the East, I thought I would include a quote from it. The Dogmatic Constitution On The Church, at 49, states: �When the Lord will come in glory, and all his angels with him (cf. Mt. 25:31), death will be no more and all things will be subject to him (cf. 1 Cor. 15:26-27). But at the present time some of his disciples are pilgrims on earth others have died and are being purified, while still others are in glory, contemplating "in full light, God himself triune and one, exactly as he is."�

Then later at 51 the Council endorses the previous teachings of Florence and Trent when it states: �This sacred council accepts loyally the venerable faith of our ancestors in the living communion which exists between us and our brothers who are in the glory of heaven or who are yet being purified after their death- and it proposes again the decrees of the Second Council of Nicea, of the Council of Florence, and of the Council of Trent.�

Dominus vobiscum.

[This message has been edited by Perpetua (edited 12-28-98).]

#76153 12/28/98 09:19 PM
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To Dr. John who wrote:
"And we Byzantine/Greek Christians have never degenerated to the level of establishing a sado-masochistic Inquisitiion. Ever."

I would remind him that the sado-masochistic Inquisition was an arm of the Spanish Crown. The byzantine xian Czar of Russia certainly engaged in similiar practices. Greek Catholics have been saved from this sin either due to their superior virtue or the fact they have not had a greek catholic state.

As an aside, again as proof that religious oppression has little to do with religion, the Polish and Austrian monarchies were considered "liberal" because they gave the right to the Jewish community to punish (even to death) its heretics.

#76154 12/29/98 04:03 PM
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Due to the length of this topic (20+ pages printed) and the lengthy download times for some surfers this topic is now closed and has been retitled "Question? - Part I". Please continue this discussion under the topic "Question? - Part II".

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