I am dumbstruck by this - worse than
New Oxford Review's attack nearly two years ago.
That a traditional liturgical Christian in the Catholic Church would attack other Christians with the same core orthodox beliefs and a similar commitment to a traditional rite seems to me the height of bloody-mindedness.
"The Russian Church and the Papacy" by Vladimir Soloviev
Soloviev got some of his ideas from Jacob Boehme — an unlikely hero for Catholics.
"...As Newman might have said, but didn't, 'To be deep in history is to realize that the Eastern Orthodox are crazy'. They are now, they were then, and they always have been."
Uncharity/defamation aside, this can't be the position of the Catholic Church because all of Eastern Orthodoxy's positive doctrinal statements are completely Catholic. IOW, to Catholics, Orthodoxy IS Catholicism circa 1000 in Greek theological language. So to attack Eastern Orthodoxy is to attack the foundational beliefs of their own church.
"...wherever you find the Eastern Orthodox, there you will find people who live not by the words of Jesus- 'forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us'- ... but by the grudge and the 'narcissism of small differences', in Freud's apposite phrase (sic). In their surly defensiveness, hatred, and envy of the West, the Eastern Orthodox are the Islamicists of the Christian world. The West offers the hand of friendship, the East responds with intemperance, abuse and fear."
Has this person never read Dostoevsky? He went over my head (I admit I don't get
The Brothers Karamazov) but the simple Christianity - humility, forgiveness - of Russian Orthodoxy is obvious.
However, the charges of uncharity and the narcissism of small diferences do apply to people in the East as well as the West, inventing differences where there really aren't any. Every time when in English I hear '
The-o-TO-kos!' where 'Mother of God' will work, I think of this.
"...but while the Orthodox surrendered the secular realm to the emperor or the czar- wanting nothing more than to assert their nationalistic, ecclesiastical independence from Rome-
What 'surrender'? The emperor and czar were Orthodox too. Did Catholics 'surrender' the secular realm to the Hapsburgs?
and retreated to their monasteries, 'the Western Church, faithful to the apostolic mission, has not been afraid to plunge into the mires of history'. "
OMG. Ironically he sounds just like a liberal church-worker -¦-+-+-¦-Ç-¦-é-ç-+-¦ in his own church making fun of people like him — Tridentine people. 'Give up that artsy-fartsy old-fashioned stuff and live in the modern world — give up those silly devotions and work for PEACE and JUSTICE, man.' I have had something a lot like this thrown in my face, to my face, by an angry Catholic of the conservative persuasion. Makes Khomiakov and Popovich look right — that for all their complaints these people really are part of the same entity as Amchurch and even the Protestants. All on the same team.
"...to the additional horror of his Eastern Orthodox readers- and to the horror of Protestants who have fled into the Orthodox fold seeking tradition and a defense against liberalism-
Aha. The writer hates the Orthodox because he sees them as competition.
Soloviev says flatly that the Orthodox churches are Protestant.
Like the Protestants, the Orthodox churches reduce the fullness of the Christian vision.
Too true in practice - I find it hard to believe that God meant for the one true Church to be several jurisdictions trying to blackguard each other. And while too often Catholics like this fellow reduce Catholicity to Romanness, there exists Byzantine Rite chauvinism as well.
In the Orthodox case, a sort of 'sola pietas' boxed within 'past history, dogmatic formula, and a liturgical ceremonial’. "
The same thing
Novus Ordo types say about the writer of this screed and his kind, and the same thing liberal, feminist, homosexualist, etc. Episcopalians say about those Episcopalians who stick to historic liturgies, the Bible and the creeds. Again, bitterly ironic, like this guy is inadvertently sawing off the branch he is sitting on.
"... for readers who take no interest in the East, it is still worth reading for the light it shines on our own Catholic faith. For readers who are dyspeptic, antiquarian, nationalist, cranky, bearded fanatics, it might even offer inspiration to join the Eastern Orthodox.
Again, this writer sounds just like his enemies in the Catholic Church.
But if you, like me, yearn for the Sack of Byzantium to become a feast day of the Church, and feel wistful when you muse on that one shining moment when there was a French speaking Crusader kingdom there, this book will be a pleasure and a confirmation.
One wishes the writer is visited by apparitions of Leonid Feodorov and Metropolitans Andrew (Sheptytsky) and Joseph (Slipyj), who can take turns whacking him upside the head.
I wonder if he hates Eastern Catholics too.
It's a shame that this guy feels such hatred towards a group of people who are probably the closest to himself
Exactly.
