Posted on 12/09/2008 5:52:09 AM PST by TexConfederate1861
The quote was from Patriarch Gennadios II of Constantinople, known at the time as Scholarios.
And his reasons for feeling that way are certainly still valid today.
The Sultan had no desire to interfere in Orthodox matters of faith. The Popes tried everything they could to do JUST THAT. Under those circumstances, it wasn’t insanity, but survival.
If certain Popes didn’t interfere in Eastern matters of faith in the first millenium, there would only be no Orthodox — only heretics.
It was a "pastoral" council on paper but dogmatic in application
Hm. It sure all but suppressed the Trindentine Mass, something that has now been corrected. Remember, I am not defending the crop of faithless priests and laity that hijacked Vatican II. I am not even defending the entirety of it (nor the entirety of Renaissance art). What was positive about it, I outlined in my posts on this thread. What did it do dogmatically "in application"?
What do you see as interference?
The hoped-for reunification is not going to change any Orthodox local doctrines or liturgy, or practices.
I am speaking of the Popes pushing their primacy, etc. from 800 A.D. on......starting with the issue concerning St. Photius.
“Do the Orthodox think for one second that the reason why heresy has not slipped into the Roman Church is based upon the Pope’s own abilities???”
The Orthodox don’t believe for a minute that the Roman Church isn’t riddled with heresy.
“One enables the other to take place, doesn’t it?”
No, indeed one is quite the opposite of the other.
“...the REAL cause of mistrust is NOT the “theological lay experts of the East who misunderstand the Western infallible doctrines”, but the mistrust caused by poor liturgical movements in the West.”
I think you are right. While the laity are certainly concerned about what they see as unOrthodox dogmas, innovations, I believe there is sufficient knowledge, among the laity who care, to understand and assess whatever explanations of those innovations might be presented to them. The only one, in all honesty, that I wonder about the resolvability of are the Vatican I proclamations. I sincerely believe those will be difficult to resolve. The real problem, Jo, is our inability to trust that Rome can be consistent in much of anything and since with Orthodoxy, what you see (and hear and smell) is exactly what you get, when we see what you have done in the West and when we understand why you did it, well, its “Katie bar the door!” That’s why I say that it will take at least 100 years of liturgical “orthodoxy” in the West before we are ready to even consider taking a chance with trusting you in a reunion. I do not believe, and I may be alone here among the Orthodox on this thread, is that we need 100 years before we have intercommunion under economia de jure. We don’t need to trust you for that and because under economia intercommunion will not be common, in the West, except perhaps in rural areas, there’s no need to be concerned that a bunch of rainbow sash types might try to move in on one of our little parishes and take it over.
“Do you see some hope now with the motu proprio of last year?”
Of course I do, P. But you and I both know that the next pope could be a modernizing showboater. +BXVI has to reestablish liturgical, and I’d say theological, orthodoxy to the Roman Church. He’s an old man, P. He’ll need to establish a bulwark against another pope who is more concerned with presiding over liturgical circuses and making grand gestures than steering the Bark of Peter through a particularly stormy temporal sea. That’s why you’ve seen me pray that “God gives him the years”!
“If certain Popes didn’t interfere in Eastern matters of faith in the first millenium, there would only be no Orthodox — only heretics.”
He’s absolutely right, Tex!
When there is a reunification, — in 100 years or 1000 years, — obviously, both sides will have to come to common terms on the papacy, the Creed, and maybe original sin, but there is no desire at this point on the part of the Western Church to influence any doctrines, liturgy or practices in the East. Rome is VERY comfortable with multiplicity of rites, local disciplines, local pieties, and compatible local doctrines, such as Hesychast.
Well, I owe you some of the credit for your history lessons. You are the Master, and I am the Grasshopper, after all. ;-)
:)
I think if they look at the relatio, the underlying desire of the Council can be ascertained and there would be room to clarify the doctrine of infallibility. I think the East's thinking has changed somewhat from the 1800's on this issue!
The real problem, Jo, is our inability to trust that Rome can be consistent in much of anything and since with Orthodoxy, what you see (and hear and smell) is exactly what you get, when we see what you have done in the West and when we understand why you did it, well, its “Katie bar the door!”
Understood. Thanks for taking the time to explain things. The consistency problem deals with the Liturgy, not infallible doctrine, so it is fixable.
Regards
I am sorry, "sacred" art aside (more like religious art), you said it, is not the same as icons, and icons are the only pictures that are fit to be in the church. No nude pictures, nude statues or nude dancers. That's how the Orthodox see it. When they see what I showed you, we run away.
If this happened in an Orthodox church, the priest or the monks would be scrubbing the ground and everything in the vicinity the way they did in Mt. Athos when former Serbian president Slobodan Miloshevich made an unexpected helicopter visit to the Serbian monastery there.
First the monks scattered behind the hills until he left then they returned and scrubbed everywhere where Miloshevich walked or touched. And he wasn't even naked!
I know this is alien to the Catholic mind but this is real to us, which is why our realities are incompatible and that is a problem with reunion on the lay or low clergy level.
Kolo is right: we are horrified. And I can not apologize for that. I tried several Orthodox sites with search engines and they all returned "0" hits on "nudity."
It's not that we are prudish; it's just the conviction that God's house is heaven on earth and nothing carnal no matter how veiled belongs in it.
But it's like killing a body and then saying "it's free to get up now." The TLM will linger on for another decade or two before the pre-Vatican II generation disappears and then it will be extinct.
Save for a few nostalgic members of the post-Vatican II generation, the TLM will be a museum piece. I don't see it being corrected. Perhaps the obstacles that killed it have now been removed but it's a little too late, imo.
Just as you can find '50s style diners in Epcot center as a historical curiosity, the TLM is no longer the "reality of the Church" so to say.
There are bu about 15 parishes in all of Florida, for example, where the TLM is given optionally The one in Jacksonville, for example, has TLM at 8 AM! You can imagine how many people show up for that Mass! So, yes, on paper, it's "corrected," but in reality it is not.
Out of those 15 parishes, only 5 are SSPX and other TLM-only Latin parishes that offer only TLM.
There is also a problem with ordination of post-Vatican II priests celebrating the TLM. Their orders are disputed by traditionalist Catholic sources.
They also dispute the English translation of the Ordinary vis-a-vis "for many" (pro multis) which is now said 'for all" and which the Vatican insists is the same as pro multis! They insist that the incorrect words make the sacraments invalid.
Of course neither side can admit to being wrong! But how will the Catolics feel if one day the consensus of the Church decides that the trads were right?! All these generations of Catholics invalidly baptized and installed? Invalid clergy, invalid sacraments, etc.
If you think the Maddoff victims feel slighted, can you imagine Ctaholics who'd discover their loved one were not properly sent of or baptized or their sacraments were for naught!?
Paul Paul VI, with one stroke of a pen, changed the Eucharistic fast from the midnight before communion to 1 hour before communion! It's like that verse in Matthew 5 "what effort is it for you" to love those who love you?"
They were other dogmatic changed made by the Pope (John XXIII removed the word "faithless" from the Good Friday Easter prayer about the Jews by fiat). The original Vatican committee on the liturgical reform kept Latin and the form of the TLM with some changes to eliminate repetitions. This took on a life of its own and was turned into using Latin at the discretion of the priest if he wanted it. With he growing number of priests how didn't understand Latin, the use of Latin was "dogmatically" suppressed by a conciliar decision intended to be "pastoral."
I could go on, and on.
“It’s not that we are prudish; it’s just the conviction that God’s house is heaven on earth and nothing carnal no matter how veiled belongs in it.”
I’ll go even further. The temple, whether the liturgy is taking place or not, is where heaven and earth intersect. Its simply not “here” just as the liturgy doesn’t “happen here and now”. I suspect I have posted this before, but for all, especially you Alex, here’s the report of the emissaries of Prince +Vladimir upon their return from Constantinople in 987:
“When we journeyed among the Bulgars, we beheld how they worship in their temple, called a mosque, while they stand ungirt. The Bulgarian bows, sits down, looks hither and thither like one possessed, and there is no happiness among them, but instead only sorrow and a dreadful stench. Their religion is not good. Then we went among the Germans, and saw them performing many ceremonies in their temples; but we beheld no glory there. Then we went on to Greece, and the Greeks led us to the edifices where they worship their God, and we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendour or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it. We know only that God dwells there among men, and their service is fairer than the ceremonies of other nations. For we cannot forget that beauty. Every man, after tasting something sweet, is afterward unwilling to accept that which is bitter, and therefore we cannot dwell longer here.” Then the vassals spoke and said, “If the Greek faith were evil, it would not have been adopted by your grandmother Olga, who was wiser than all other men.”
Guys, I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me to post this before because it completely explains what Kosta and Tex and I have been saying.
Maybe, maybe not. Several problems with that evidence, at least for the point you are making:
The Catholic mind is not horrified by nudity per se: we see it in our museums all the time. That is what my discourse on religious art meant to illustrate. The issue is piety, but we need to know if in African culture a bare breast is impious. So far as I know it is not. The woman does not appear to be flashing the pope or taunting him; she seems to be addressing the audience. She is dressed, for all we know, in her Sunday best.
The table in front of the praesidium is not the altar. It is just that, a table. It looks like a portable table. When the Mass is served there would be no one sitting down. We cannot be sure if it is the sanctuary or some satellite facility for social events. I don't see the sacred vessels or a crucifix.
We don't know what the reaction to that event was.
I understand how you might be horrified by it. There are other examples of a pope, especially JPII, in compromising suituations like that: sitting in a synagogue, praying in a mosque, kissing the Koran etc. I'd much rather they did not do any of that multicultural stuff. But it does not strike me as a height of scandal. I am more with you when the Catholic Liturgy is compromised. This, I can live with.
What are your thoughts on Colonel Drozdov, a.k.a. Patriarch Alexey II, snitching on his flock to the KGB, by the way?
As could I. I completely agree that unless liturgical propriety is restored, we in the West should be crazy to think of a reunification.
I am very familiar with this passage and cite it myself often; what makes you think my understanding of what the Mass is, is at odds with it?
“What are your thoughts on Colonel Drozdov, a.k.a. Patriarch Alexey II, snitching on his flock to the KGB, by the way?”
Alex...what do you think a Greek would say about a KBG hierarch? Do you think he would be surprised at much of anything a hierarch does or did? :)
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