Fortescue’s Major Work on Eastern Orthodoxy Republished in a New Edition

As booklovers know from repeated experience, acquiring a long out-of-print classic can be a chore. Old copies, if they are not prohibitively expensive, are often beaten up and malodorous; and newer “reprint” companies seem to take no pains either with their facsimiles or with their OCR’d products.

I was therefore delighted when Peter Day-Milne, one of the best writers at Adoremus (see his archive of articles here), suggested to me that it was high time to bring out a newly typeset edition of Adrian Fortescue’s superb work The Orthodox Eastern Church. This is now available from Os Justi Press (here) and from every Amazon site in the world (paperback, hardcover, ebook). (Just a word of warning: there are several crummy editions of this work in various forms, so if you want to find the new Os Justi edition in particular, use the above links, visit the OJP site, or search by ISBNs, which you will find below.)

First published in 1907 and revised in 1911, The Orthodox Eastern Church quickly established itself as a classic in the field, thanks to Fr. Fortescue’s masterful grasp of the doctrinal disputes that divide East and West, his narration of the intricate historical factors that played an outsized role, and his identification of attitudes and conditionings that block the reunion of the Churches so ardently desired by all Christians of good will.

At a time when rose-colored portraits of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy are flourishing thanks to tribalist internet apologetics, Fortescue—not sparing East or West in his portrait of their disintegration—offers us a more realistic account of what happened. Fortescue’s is not the last word on this topic, by any means; but his analysis remains compelling, and his lively wit gives pleasure to readers. The first hundred pages of the work contain so many testimonies of the Church Fathers to the necessity for union with the bishop of Rome, and the remainder of the work so many illustrations of Eastern misgovernance and error, that any modern-day Roman Catholic tempted to swim the Bosphorus in search of greener fields will quickly be cured of his temptation.

NLM readers in particular will enjoy the author’s erudite (and often quite entertaining) descriptions of Eastern liturgical rites, chants, vestments, implements, and clerical titles.

This newly typeset edition does aesthetic justice to the quality of the content. Peter Day-Milne, in particular, outdid himself by reviewing every line of the page proofs, ensuring that the many words and phrases in Greek were exactly right, and revamping all internal references and the index to ensure accuracy. The ebook, based on the printed edition, reflects this quality as well. All the original illustrations are present, such as these:

 

Here is the table of contents together with a sample page: 

Endorsements of this new edition:

Fr. Aidan Nichols, author of The Latin Clerk (a biography of Fortescue) and Rome and the Eastern Churches:

“Adrian Fortescue brought to the subject of this book not only a wealth of knowledge but an unusual combination of attitudes: waspish wit along with deep religious feeling. The present-day reader will find here colourful vignettes of the churches of the Orthodox world before the massive changes of twentieth-century politics transformed them utterly. But they will also have the benefit of a broad historical panorama, an in-depth encounter with some theological dividing issues, and an account of the liturgical life which—typical of the man—waxes eloquent on such matters as music and vesture. Though there is fun here, there is also deadly seriousness. Fortescue knew the weaknesses, as well as the strengths, of the Latin church of his day. He saw the wisdom of Unionist endeavours, if also, alas, the improbability of their success.”

Erick Ybarra, author of The Papacy: Revisiting the Debate Between Catholics and Orthodox:

“At a time when the powers of this age are working within the bounds of the visible Church to attack her foundations to the core, more and more Catholics are reconsidering their belief in the truth claims of the Catholic Church and are inquiring into Eastern Orthodoxy. Many have taken up the task of investigating Byzantine claims against Catholicism; yet how many have traveled far-distant lands, learned Oriental languages, spent their entire lives studying the Eastern Churches? Fr. Fortescue did just these things, making him a scholar on whom we can rely. For Catholics curiously gazing to the East, Fortescue’s The Orthodox Eastern Church will be a welcome accompaniment.”

Joshua Charles, President of Eternal Christendom:

“The republication of this classic work by a great scholar comes at an auspicious time. As some are allured by the East under the pretext of problems in the West, Fr. Fortescue’s book will provide a learned, joyful, and direct reminder of inconvenient facts. As much as there is to admire among our separated brethren in the East, this book is a reminder of why we embrace the Catholic communion of our shared Fathers, and urge them to return to the same—without prejudice to the liturgy, spirituality, and theological culture that is their legitimate boast.”

If you are looking for an invigorating study of the Eastern Orthodox, this is a book not to be missed.

Adrian Fortescue, Ph.D., D.D. The Orthodox Eastern Church. Based on the third edition from 1911, with a new Publisher's Note. xx + 427 pp. Os Justi Press, 2024. ISBN 978-1-960711-92-2 (paperback); ISBN 978-1-960711-93-9 (hardcover); ISBN 978-1-960711-94-6 (ebook).

Review of Harry Crocker, Triumph: The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church - A 2,000 Year History (Regnery, 2023)

Siege of Constantinople, Chronique de Charles VII by Jean Chartier

Harry W. Crocker III is no stranger to traditionalist debates and The Latin Mass magazine. In the 2002 Summer issue, Thomas Woods robustly endorsed his monograph Triumph: The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church - A 2,000 Year History. In the next issue, he wrote a review of Vladimir Soloviev’s The Russian Church and the Papacy, which argues that Eastern Orthodox churches desperately need the papacy. His positive review drew the vehement ire of TLM’s few Eastern Orthodox readers and led to a lively exchange in the Winter 2003 issue between him and his critics. One can see why Orthodox feathers were ruffled. Crocker begins his review with: “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.” [1]

Twenty years later, Crocker has published an updated and expanded edition of Triumph, with additions that cover the Francis pontificate. And the controversy continues.

In order to appreciate Triumph, one must understand what kind of book it is and is not. Harry Crocker is not a professional historian but an amateur (in the best sense of the word) who has deeply imbibed 2,000 years of Church history, ruminated on it, and summarized it for the general reader in light of his own judgment. For a history book that is replete with empirical facts and strives for impartiality, look elsewhere; for a history book that is unabashedly opinionated and never boring, look no further.

Every author must assume a certain persona, and Crocker’s is that of a stalwart Catholic and a somewhat aristocratic snob. He is willing to forgive popes with mistresses so long as they defend Church doctrine and attack the Church’s enemies. “On matters of sex,” he opines, “one can say that some of the Renaissance popes simply surrendered to their Mediterranean temperament or were premature Protestants” (258). And if selling indulgences is what it takes to cover Michelangelo’s salary, Crocker avers, it is money well extorted (258).

He also betrays an old-school belief that every ethnicity has its own distinctive character. Rather than shy from stereotypes, he indulges in them. After describing medieval tumult in the lands surrounding the Black Sea, Crocker quotes with approval Ambrose Bierce’s aphorism: “All languages are spoken in Hell, but chiefly those of Southeastern Europe” (224). And when commenting on the Franks’ attempt to control parts of Byzantium, he writes: “The French, however, continued to be hampered by there being too few of them—a crying need that the world has not often recognized” (180). Pope Paul II is described as “handsome and concomitantly vain” because “he was Italian, after all” (266).

And as one might expect from the 2002 Latin Mass magazine debate, Crocker saves his best zingers for our separated Eastern brethren. Before its conversion to Christianity, the Eastern Roman Empire was prone “to extremism and emperor worship” (40); afterwards, it was filled bishops who “bowed to imperial demands like reeds beaten by the winds” (106) and monks “prone to almost absurd acts of mortification” (112). Already in the early centuries of the Christian era, the Eastern churches had “febrile, hate-filled fissiparous tendencies” (119) that were only held in check when they were tethered to Rome. From the fourth to the ninth century, the East was in schism one third of the time; since it was but “a footstool for the Byzantine emperor,” it often followed the emperor’s heretical bent. The Crusaders were not impressed with the Byzantines when they first met them, regarding them “as gay Greeks—effeminate, scheming, and bitchy” (175). The sacking of Constantinople was not a travesty but condign punishment for the Byzantine court’s intrigue and backstabbing.

Crocker’s criticism of the schismatic East, incidentally, has new relevance today. Recent years have witnessed the rise of the so-called “Orthobro,” a single, usually bearded male from the Millennial or Generation Z generation who is a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy and who spends most of his time trolling the internet and excoriating the Filioque rather than asking a girl out on a date. If you have an Orthobro in your life, I highly recommend that you give him a copy of Triumph and then sit back and enjoy the fireworks. Schadenfreude is not a sin when the suffering that you delight in observing is for their own spiritual good.

Crocker’s tendentiousness (much of which is deliberately provocatory and, he admits, satirical) [2] all but guarantees that the reader will sooner or later be offended (for me it was his line that Henry II’s conquest of Ireland was a “necessary project of civilization that remains uncompleted even a thousand years later” [192]). The overall effect of Triumph, however, is—at least for orthodox Catholics—quite satisfying. Although Crocker is imprecise at times and impolitic at all times, he almost always lands in the right place. The Renaissance, he charges, was not the rejection but the fulfillment of the Middle Ages, which also revered the classical world (259). His explanations of controversial topics such as the Crusades, the Babylonian Captivity, the Inquisition, the Protestant Reformation, the American Founding, and the Napoleonic era are excellent, and he is a fine raconteur, often weaving together different threads of a story out of their chronological sequence in order to tell a more vivid tale.

Crocker’s treatment of the twentieth century is also good. After summarizing the great works of the early- and mid-twentieth-century Popes (including Pius XII’s heroic actions to save Jews from the Holocaust), he moves on to the organizers of Vatican II, whom he characterizes as misguidedly optimistic. Oddly, he spends more time on Humanae Vitae than the Second Vatican Council, and he does not address at length the liturgical revolution that ensued except to lament illicit and unwelcomes innovations such as

hand-holding during the Our Father and cupping one’s hands in imitation of the priest—offenses that should have been dealt with under sharia law, adopting the Islamic punishment for thievery, as part of the Church’s new openness to other religions (516).

As for the Francis pontificate, he is surprisingly restrained. The author who lets loose the haymaker that the Sack of Byzantium should be made a feast day puts on kid gloves to describe Pope Francis “as a sometimes charismatic, generally well-meaning, but occasionally spiteful and authoritarian man of muddle, vulnerable to liberal flattery” (535-36). Not bad, but H. J. A. Sire’s 2018 The Dictator Pope, which Crocker did not consult, paints a darker but well-documented picture. Similarly, regarding the doctrinal controversies surrounding this Pontiff, he dances like a butterfly but forgets to sting like a bee, perhaps because he published this new edition before the promulgation of Fiducia Supplicans, which in the eyes of many is when the gloves of the current pontificate have finally come off.

That said, Crocker draws a wise conclusion from the bizarre chapter of Church history in which we find ourselves:

But if Francis’s pontificate made anything clear, it was that the Church needed to move on from the liberal platitudes about the spirit of Vatican II, platitudes that would (even if this was not his intention) have the Church conform to the liberalism of the world, the dictatorship of relativism, as the only acceptable dogma (536-37).

Not all of Crocker’s facts are straight. On page 330, he states Pope Paul IV excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I, but ten pages later he states that it was Pope St. Pius V (the correct answer is Pius V). He also claims that the Church celebrates the Battle of Lepanto every year as the feast of the Holy Rosary on the first Sunday after October. In fact, the feast has been celebrated on October 7 since Pope St. Pius X changed the date in 1913. And his claim that Calvinism today is either moribund or dead is proof that he has never visited the campus of Baylor University or Wheaton College.

But overall, Triumph is an impressive achievement: a well-written, judicious, and entertaining presentation of 2,000 years of tumultuous Church history. I strongly recommend it to all faithful Catholics and sincere truth-seekers, especially those who feel embarrassed by the Church’s historical record or are disheartened by the Church’s current state of affairs. Triumph does not whitewash, but it puts the black marks in their proper perspective. Moreover, it cogently defends its main thesis, which is expressed in the final paragraph:

The triumph of the Catholic Church, from its beginnings with the Apostles filing out from the Holy Land, to its rising to be monarch over kings, to its continued survival and worldwide development against every conceivable persecution, is the most extraordinary story in the world (541).

“La Jérusalem céleste“, extraite de la Tapisserie de l'Apocalypse du Château d'Angers, France

This review first appeared in The Latin Mass magazine 33:1 (Spring 2024), pp. 60-22. Many thanks to its editors for allowing its publication here.

Notes

[1] “To Russia with Love,” TLM 11:4 (Fall 2002), 63.

[2] TLM [Winter 2003], 5.

A Film of Mt Athos More Than A Century Ago

Just a few days ago, a YouTube channel posted this video, containing footage taken on the Holy Mountain of Mt Athos, the famous “monastic republic” on the peninsula of Thessaloniki in northern Greece, more than a century ago. The opening title is in French, and just says “Mt Athos, 1918. Hermitages and Monasteries.” At 8:40, a second title appears, also in French, “Easter procession, Iviron and Vatopedi”. (Iviron is the monastery of the Georgians, founded in the 980s; Vatopedi was founded slightly earlier, by disciples of the founder of monastic life on the peninsula, St Athanasius the Athonite.) The soundtrack, which is liturgical singing in Church Slavonic, is clearly not original, since pictures with sound were not invented until 9 years later. 

We have previously shared a few films which show what life is like in modern times on Mt Athos, to whatever small degree the words “modern times” can be applied to it. One of these was originally broadcast on the CBS program 60 Minutes in 2011, but the post by which we shared it is now functionally useless, since the videos were embedded with the now-defunct Adobe Flash player. Happily, 60 Minutes reposted the piece to their YouTube channel just a couple of months ago, along with others covering Lourdes, the Ethiopian monastic complex at Lalibela, as well as the Vatican Library. Where the 1918 film shows nothing inside the churches of Mt Athos, (which I suspect the makers were formally prohibited from doing), 60 Minutes were allowed to bring their cameras inside and film the liturgy, giving us a very rare close look at the whole monastic life of the Orthodox Church, the liturgy, the buildings, the artistic treasures, and the tremendous natural beauty of the Athos peninsula.

“Where to look for genuine ecumenism?” — Guest Article by Eastern Orthodox Theologian

NLM is grateful to Bishop Athanasius Schneider for giving us permission to publish this English translation of the following essay, written by a theologian with whom he is in friendly contact. It goes without saying that we do not endorse some of the ecclesiological claims contained herein, but the perspective is one that NLM is broadly sympathetic with. —PAK

“Where to look for genuine ecumenism?”

A reflection on the Roman Catholic Church’s liturgical reforms in an ecumenical perspective

Alexander Adomenas, Master of Theology

“That they may all be one” (John 17, 21)—these words of our Divine Teacher have been resounding with pain in the hearts of Christians for many centuries. Unfortunately, we did not fulfill the commandment of our Lord and were divided. The twentieth century showed that it is now the time, according to the word of Ecclesiastes, to “gather stones” (3, 5), the stones we Christians have scattered for twenty centuries. The holy Pope Gregory the Great (who in the East bears the name Dialogos) explains these words as follows: “The more the end of the world approaches, the more necessary it is that living stones be gathered for a heavenly building, until the building of our Jerusalem reaches its measure.” [1] For St. Gregory, “gathering stones” means gathering the people into the one Church of Christ.

However, we are well aware that one can “gather stones” in different ways, and, by trying to take up everything, one can be overburdened by their weight and lose even what one has collected. This article in the form of a reflection is a modest attempt by an Orthodox theologian to think about what path can be chosen for this “gathering of stones.”

The history of relations between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, unfortunately, is very sad. Mutual accusations, divergence at times in petty issues—all this happened. I will not give a theological assessment of these disagreements and centuries-old disputes. Let me just say that what unites us is much more than what divides us. And now is precisely the time when, in the face of the ever-increasing secularization of mankind and the challenges the modern world poses to believers, we must find common ground so that everyone knows that we are disciples of Christ—Love Incarnate (cf. John 13, 35).

Over the past one hundred years, this attempt to reconcile Orthodoxy and Catholicism has received the name of the “ecumenical movement.” Many models of dialogue within this movement have been proposed, but all of them, unfortunately, have either reached or are reaching a dead end. The problem, in my opinion, is the wrong approach to the problem as such. Or rather, there is no core around which a dialogue can be built. And it seems to me that the ideal solution here is to appeal to a common heritage: the living history of the Church in the Holy Spirit.

Both Catholicism and Orthodoxy have a common root: the teaching of Christ and the Apostles. We have preserved the image of the Church established by the Apostles and their successors: the apostolic succession in the priesthood, the hierarchical structure of the Church, the holy sacraments, our way of church life. That is exactly what can and should unite us; it is not for nothing that we recognize almost all of each other’s sacraments, [2] including the sacrament of the priesthood, which also speaks of the recognition of each other’s hierarchy.

Thus, the way to “gather stones” can and should be our connection with what, in both the Orthodox Church and in the Catholic Church, is called Sacred Tradition. The age-old heritage, the heritage of the Church, is really what unites us and makes it possible to realize unity. The Second Vatican Council emphasized: “The teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on.…  It is clear, therefore, that sacred tradition, Sacred Scripture and the teaching authority of the Church, in accord with God’s most wise design, are so linked and joined together that one cannot stand without the others.” [3]

However, my many years of acquaintance with Catholicism, with the current situation in the Catholic Church, suggests that, unfortunately, the Catholicism of our day does not want to choose the path of following the Sacred Tradition. I don’t mean to say that the Catholic Church does this deliberately. Not at all. But by many of her actions, she really pushes away a possible unity with the Orthodox churches. For some reason, dialogue with various Protestant denominations is more important for the Catholic Church, although they deliberately oppose themselves to the historical Churches that have preserved the Sacred Tradition. In no way do I want to offend Protestants, but both Orthodox and Catholic teachings say that Orthodoxy and Catholicism are much closer to each other than either is to Protestantism. Moreover, we must state that most Protestant denominations consciously oppose themselves to the historic churches with apostolic succession; they say that their theology is different from ours in everything, and our adherence to Sacred Tradition often becomes the subject of at least a condescending smile, if not derision and contempt on the part of Protestants. [4]

From that premise, the attempt to unite Orthodox and Catholics would seem to have been the ideal way forward. Yet Catholicism, it seems to me, went the opposite way. And this is visible in everything. However, to explain my thoughts, I would like to consider several aspects. And among them the main one is the liturgical aspect.

The sacred Liturgy, divine worship, is the foundation of the Church. Without worship, without the Eucharist, the Church cannot exist. In fact, throughout history, the Church has gathered around the Eucharistic sacrifice. Of course, all historical churches with apostolic succession have created their own liturgical rites around the Eucharist, on the compilation of which the Church has worked through its members for many centuries, organically accepting the sound new aspects and discarding what is foreign. The liturgy is the appearance, the manifestation, of the Church, its visible incarnation in the world.

Any forcible, inorganic change can lead to very large upheavals. The Russian Orthodox Church had a tragic experience of this. In the seventeenth century, the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Nikon decided to break the Russian liturgical tradition that had developed over 500 years, forcibly imposing a Greek one that was similar but formed in a different historical context. The state and church authorities of those times carried out these reforms by force, arresting and killing all those who disagreed. This led to one third of the Russian Church going into schism—a schism that has still not been healed to this day. Moreover, since there were few bishops in the Russian church at that moment—only one did not agree with the reform, and eventually separated—the Old Believers were marginalized, and some of them lost the priesthood and the sacraments. [5]

The bitter experience of the Russian Orthodox Church was either unknown or ignored by the Catholic Church in the twentieth century. For some reason, the Catholic Church authorities of our time decided to change the liturgy. There is nothing wrong with making some changes in a rite. Those who are more or less familiar with the principles of Anton Baumstark’s comparative liturgy [6] know that changes in any rite are the norm of the life of the Church. But ritual change only works well when, firstly, it is necessary, that is, when these changes are called upon to more fully illuminate one or another aspect of the life of the Church, and secondly, and most importantly, when this happens within the framework of the teaching of the Church and the existing valid liturgical rite.

The goal of the liturgical reforms of the 1960s was lofty: to revive the participation of the people of God in the Holy Eucharist. The purpose is good and, indeed, necessary. Yet instead of attracting the people of God to a more lively and active participation in the Eucharist—through common singing, responses to the exclamations of the priest, even slightly and organically changing the Order of the Holy Mass—the ecclesiastical authority of the Catholic Church decided to radically change both the Order of the Mass and the Latin rite altogether. This, in spite of the fact that the decisions of the Second Vatican Council themselves indicated that the changes must be very balanced and deliberate: “That sound tradition may be retained, and yet the way remain open to legitimate progress, careful investigation is always to be made into each part of the liturgy which is to be revised. This investigation should be theological, historical, and pastoral… There must be no innovations unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires them; and care must be taken that any new forms adopted should in some way grow organically from forms already existing.” [7]

Has this norm of the Conciliar Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium been carried out correctly? The facts themselves say otherwise. Take, for example, the Offertory (a part of the Order of the Mass during which bread and wine are brought to the altar with prayers in view of the consecration). It has been completely reformed. I still can’t imagine why it had to be done. Looking at the new Offertory rite, it is not at all clear what kind of “theological, historical and pastoral research” was carried out on the direct instructions of the Council to introduce that change. Why not turn to the ancient Roman missals, where there are various ancient forms practiced in the Latin Rite? Why compose new prayers, obviously borrowed from Jewish Berakhot? To show the connection between the Old and New Testaments? I’m sure that every priest who celebrates the liturgy knows about this connection. To revive the elements of Jewish worship? Except for the elements brought over in the first generations after the apostles, the Church never in her history had such a Judaizing tendency. [8] To recognize the importance of Judaism and begin to honor the Jews as their “elder brothers”? I fear that 99.9% of the Jews have no idea that there is this element in the Catholic Mass. That is to say, we simply do not see any pastoral, theological, or historical basis for this change in the Offertory rite; nor did it emerge organically from something already there; nor was it genuinely and certainly required.

Further, the central prayer of the Mass is the Eucharistic Canon. In the Byzantine rite, two Eucharistic canons are used as the standard—that of St. Basil the Great and that of St. John Chrysostom. These Eucharistic Canons have been used by the Church for over 1,500 years. The West had the Roman Canon, of similar antiquity and centrality. The Catholic Church took now in our day a completely different path—the path of composing new texts for the Eucharistic Canon. At the same time, supporters of the New Rite point out that the new Eucharistic Prayers were written on the basis of ancient Eastern texts. [9] But any person who is more or less versed in liturgical science will see that this similarity is in fact quite distant and that the new Eucharistic Prayers in the Roman Rite are new texts that are not sanctified either by having been used in tradition or by the teaching of the Church, and sometimes even seem to go against it. [10] Why was this done? I remain silent about the completely redrawn Lectionary and liturgical calendar and the changed system of the Divine Office and the Propers—texts to some extent written by Saints and sanctified by time, yet ceasing to sound during the Catholic liturgy. They simply did not find a place in the New Rite.

Why was it done? Why was the reform so radical? We will find the answer if we look at the authors of the reform and to what inspired them. In executing the reform of the liturgical books, the Commission openly relied on the experience of Protestant worship, drawing inspiration from the Protestant theology of the Eucharist (Last Supper, meal, community…) for introducing changes. The Catholic Church thereby deliberately rejected its own experience, its heritage, rejected the experience of the Eastern Churches wherein a living understanding of the Eucharist as the liturgy of the Body and Blood of the Savior was preserved, and instead went along the Protestant theological path, the followers of which not only do not believe in the true and real Eucharistic Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ, but even created their own worship rites in opposition to the Catholic Mass.

Often this shift is explained by the idea of ecumenism, saying: “Behold, our liturgy has become more like that of the Protestants and now we are closer to them.” Is it really so? Do Protestants believe that Catholics have now become closer to them because of the similar outward approach to the Liturgy? Hardly. Thank God, despite the deficient outward form, the essence of the Eucharist as the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ in the sacrament has remained firm in the official doctrine of the Catholic Church. For a Protestant, the Eucharistic celebration is just a memorial of the Last Supper, in contrast to the Eastern Churches, where there has always been a belief that we really partake of the Body and Blood of Christ. Every Orthodox priest and faithful says before Holy Communion: “I believe that what is in the Chalice is your true Blood.” [11] And the Protestants understand this difference, so the liturgical reform of the Catholic Church did not bring any real rapprochement. That is to say, the Catholics did not gain anything, but they lost a lot.

Not only did the authorities of the Catholic Church create a new rite of the Mass, but they immediately and incredibly banned the use of the old, time-honored Rite. Indeed, the last fifty years have been a struggle of people who want to use the old rite, which originates from before the time of St. Gregory the Great, which was lived and experienced by nearly all the Saints in the West since then. It had been a struggle for achieving the right to be faithful to this rite of the Saints. Fifty years of humiliation, derision, and attempts to somehow stay afloat. The current pontificate basically stated that the Old Rite has no right to exist, and the fact that it is now allowed to be used is but a temporary measure. How, conceptually, are the authorities in the Catholic Church in our day any different from those who forced the marginalization of the Old Believers in Russia?

The current authorities in the Catholic Church say that Catholics have only one Mass, only one rite. They are trying even to pervert and “diversify” this one rite to please the current age. Often one can see that many priests in the Catholic Church celebrate the new rite of the Mass ad libitum, inserting changes and additions on their own initiative, appealing to alleged pastoral goals; they can change the Mass in one way or another, not to mention the liturgy in the Neocatechumenal Way and the Charismatic Movement, or the proposed inculturations. [12]

What do we have, all in all? Liturgically, Catholicism has gone astray. It went to meet the Protestants, stretching out its arms towards them, and the Protestants turned away and went further—towards female priesthood and, in general, diluting the very idea of Christianity. And Catholicism was left with outstretched empty arms. It did not come close to the Protestants (although even from the start, it should have been clear that this approach was unrealistic). Simultaneously, Catholicism moved far away from the East, which relies on Tradition; indeed, it went so far that the red line between Protestantism and Catholicism is in our day diluted in the minds of the Orthodox, both theologians and ordinary believers.

Of course, I do not call for any specific action; that would be too presumptuous. I simply wished to share the pain that an Orthodox believer whose faith is based on Sacred Tradition experiences when he looks at the Catholic Church today. Yet, I want to believe that Christ, who desires the unity of His disciples, will bring back into communion the historical churches of the East and West with Apostolic succession, will unite them with the love that the Saints had who created this treasury of faith and liturgy—the eternal and imperishable life of the Church, based on Sacred Tradition in the Holy Spirit. 

[1] Dial., 37.

[2] In Orthodoxy there are two divergent approaches to this problem, but recognizing the sacraments of the Catholic Church, is much more rooted in the tradition, which is also reflected in the liturgical texts.

[3] Dei Verbum, 10.

[4] In order not to be unfounded, it is enough to remember that the first Protestants immediately began to call the Catholic Church "The Whore of Babylon", see J. Pelikan/H. Lehmann, Luther’s Works 39:102.

[5] One can read about this in detail: P. Meyendorff Russia, Ritual and Reform: The Liturgical Reforms of Nikon in the 17th Century. St Vladimir’s Press (1991), and Russian: Каптерев Н.Ф.: Патриарх Никон и его противники в деле исправления церковныx обрядов, Москва, 1913

[6] Baumstark А. On the historical development of the liturgy (Vom geschichtlichen Werden der Liturgie, 1923); intr., transl. by Fritz West; foreword by Robert F. Taft. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press 2011.

[7] Sacrosanctum Concilium, 23

[8] Even in these first two Christian generations, there are very few parallels with the synagogue worship, except that the Didache bears some traces.

[9] Although any mixing of rituals looks very ugly.

[10] The Latin Rite throughout history has emphasized the Eucharist-sacrifice connection, and this in fact forms the basis of the understanding of the Eucharist in the West.

[11] The rite of the Byzantine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. Prayer before Holy Communion.

[12] The charismatic movement, speaking in tongues in the Church, died in the 2nd century, we don’t even know what type of speaking it was. And what do we see now in our day? A group of people are convinced that they speak in tongues, and the Catholic hierarchs are not afraid to sin against the Holy Spirit (see Mark 3, 22-30) supporting such a practice. I have not come across a single serious theological work that, based on the history of the Church, the consensus Patrum in favor of supporting the possibility of speaking in tongues in the Church. The extreme caution against such charismatic practices is also confirmed by many Saints in the Church.

Byzantine Ressourcement? Liturgical Reform in the Orthodox Churches as a Model for the Roman Rite

You would have to be a liturgical ostrich not to be aware that the Roman Rite has been a battleground for the last 70 years or so. At times I have been tempted to look wistfully over the garden fence at the Eastern Rite churches, and wish we had it like them. They have been sailing along steadily and peacefully, as far as I was aware, in an unchanging bubble of serene mysticism, apparently untouched by any of the controversy that is ripping the institutional Roman Church apart. Ever since St John Chrysostom and St Basil put stylus to diptych and composed their liturgies, all has been sweetness and uncreated light. I thought.

Now I am not so sure.

I have recently been working my way through some books on the liturgy by the Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World; Of Water and Spirit - A Liturgical Study of Baptism, An Introduction to Liturgical Theology, and Great Lent - Journey to Pascha.

These books paint a beautiful picture of how our worship ought to relate to the Christian life, which is also applicable in general terms, I would say, to participation in Roman Rite. What is surprising to me, however, is how critical he is of the Eastern Rite that he saw in his day, and the reforms he suggests to counter problems within it. It became apparent to me that the Eastern liturgies I had been attending, and assumed had been unchanged since their inception, were in fact recently reformed. And, what was even more surprising to me, that reform was in accordance with the principles by which the Roman Liturgical Reform movement of the 19th and 20th centuries had proposed to change the Latin Mass, and for the most part, failed.

A Melkite liturgy in the USA

Alexander Schmemann was born of Russian parents in Estonia in 1921, and grew up primarily in France as part of the thriving Russian expatriate community of Paris. In 1951, he moved to the United States, where he was a member of the Orthodox Church of America. The books named above were written in the period between the mid-1960s and his death in 1983.

In his writing, he makes the occasional passing reference to the Roman Rite (which for him is just beyond the pale) and then addresses his concerns with the Orthodox liturgy of his day. As mentioned, these criticisms of the Divine Liturgy are strikingly similar to those that the liturgical reformers of the 19th and 20th centuries made of the Tridentine Mass. Indeed, Schmemann cites the familiar names of this movement as authorities, and like them, looks to the early Church for a model of how the liturgy ought to be. He quotes, for example, Dom Gregory Dix, Oscar Cullmann, Joachim Jeremias, Jean Danielou, Romano Guardini, Louis Bouyer, and even Yves Congar.

His specific worries about the Orthodox liturgy will sound familiar to us even if some of the specifics are different: the laity have become detached from the clergy in their worship, and so are not participating actively, and they are more likely to be engaged in devotional prayer than in the worship of God; the detachment has occurred in part because the profusion of secret prayers said by the clergy and the physical barrier of the iconostasis which all but hides the activity of the priest. This detachment has led also to clericalism, in which the importance of the role of the laity in worship is diminished, while that of the priest is exaggerated relative to it.

A iconostasis in Moscow, dating from 1693

He tells us that the chanting of the propers has become too ornate and melismatic so that it cannot be understood by those who hear and is too difficult for the laity to sing. And he complains of the profusion of an artificial symbolism that hides the true meaning of the liturgy, “not the symbolism as the sacramentality of all God’s creation,” he says, “but that allegorical symbolism that confers on each part of the sacred rite a special meaning, making it a representation of something that is not.”

Furthermore, somehow Eastern Rite Churches, both Orthodox and Catholic, have managed to varying degrees, to implement his recommended changes. I say this based upon personal experience of attending Divine Liturgy in the UK and the US and so, admittedly, it is anecdotal.

Contrast this to what has happened in the Roman Rite. If I was to characterize the broad pattern of the response to the impetus for reform in the Roman Rite, it is characterized by two poles - complete resistance to any change on the part of those who attend the Traditional Latin Mass on the one hand, and radical and misdirected change in the Novus Ordo on the other.

When we look at Eastern Churches we see something different. The liturgies have been translated into the vernacular; in the ones I have attended, into understandable but elegant English. The laity sing the chants along with the ordained ministers. The iconostases are open and lower than the ‘traditional’ ‘image-wall’ iconostasis seen above - sometimes more like an English medieval rood screen, and the Royal Doors at least are made in such a way as to to allow the altar to be seen during the whole Liturgy. The prayers of the clergy can be heard and understood. The “spirit” of these changes, if I can use that phrase, is therefore closer to those which the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council hoped for in the Roman Mass. Furthermore, these have been implemented by Orthodox Churches that do not consider themselves bound by the Council (and very likely in most cases by people who have never read it or even thought about doing so).

A modern Greek Orthodox church in Shrewsbury, England.

A modern iconostasis at the Russian Orthodox church of St Nicholas in Amsterdam.

The effect of Schmemann on the Eastern Catholic Churches is just as notable. I am told that if you had gone into a Byzantine Catholic church in the 1950s, you would have seen something different from the Orthodox liturgies that Schmemann was criticizing. It would most likely have been a highly Romanized version of the Divine Liturgy, very close in style and content to a Roman Mass. Now, you are more likely to see a reformed Divine Liturgy which is purged of its Roman influence and reflects the ‘Eastern Ressourcement’ influence of Schmemann. These Churches do recognize Vatican II, but in this case the Council had very little to say about them (although what was said was very positive). The changes in the liturgy conform to an instruction that was part of a single sentence in Orientalium Ecclesiarum, the decree of the Council, promulgated in 1964 to the Eastern Church. It declared:

...it is the mind of the Catholic Church that each individual Church or Rite should retain its traditions whole and entire and likewise that it should adapt its way of life to the different needs of time and place. (2).

The fact that a single sentence of instruction can bear such fruit undermines the argument of some critics of the Council, that it was deliberately written in a tone of aggressive ambiguity in order to sow confusion. It suggests, on the contrary, that there was more than sufficient detail addressed to the Roman Church, if one accepts and genuinely takes the trouble to try to understand what was said. No matter how clearly articulated, and detailed the language of the Constitutions, if on the other hand, people are disposed willfully to misinterpret or ignore the text, they will do so. And this, I suggest, is what has happened.

A number of thoughts arise from this. First, Schmemann was part of the expatriate community in Paris in the mid-20th century that included the great figures that re-established the traditional forms of the iconographic tradition, such as Ouspensky, Kroug, Lossky, and Evdokimov. It strikes me as no accident that a reform of the liturgy and a reform of the culture of faith go hand in hand. The approach to tradition and its relation to modernity is driven by the same principle, which is exactly what I learned in my icon painting classes with Aidan Hart. There has been a similar flourishing of Orthodox architecture and music. All of this is still largely absent in the Western Church, where we swing between the poles of historicism and liberalism. If we are to evangelize the culture of the West, we still need, I believe, that liturgical reform. Neither the Tridentine Mass circa 1955 nor the standard suburban rite, circa 1970 can drive it, in my opinion.

Second, it does beg the question: why have Eastern Churches reformed their liturgies successfully with little or no input from the Council, while the Roman Church, to which most of what the Council had to say was directed, has failed so spectacularly?

I have some thoughts on this, which I will address in a future blog post. (However, I would say that one factor is the difference in governance as highlighted in Everything Hidden Shall Be Revealed, Ridding the Church of Abuses of Sex and Power by Adam DeVille, published by Angelico Press.)

Counterpoints to the Hieromonk’s Letter

My publication earlier this week of a letter written by a Greek Orthodox monk to a Benedictine monk concerning the plight of the Catholic Church was meant to stimulate thought and conversation. Dr. Pepino and I felt that this anonymous heir of the East made a number of valid points, eloquently and persuasively. We also saw that he indulged in some of the all-too-familiar Orthodox gibes and generalities that gloss over a much more complicated picture for the convenience of those who are settled in mind.

I posted the letter in the spirit of “if the shoe fits, wear it,” taking from the monk his good points — above all, that the West has a solemn obligation to reconnect with and restore its own tradition — and rolling eyes at his unfair points. But I see now that I should engage it in greater detail, indicating where I agree and where I disagree. Indeed, I must engage it, because at least one reader was prompted by the post to ask me: “Are you planning to convert to Orthodoxy?”

I will begin with two reactions that were sent to me privately, which I share here with permission, because I find them expressive of my own view:

There are three kinds of ecumenism.
       1. Stupid Ecumenism, which is what Roman Catholics do: all the worst of us compared to all the best of you.
       2. Mean Ecumenism, which is what Orthodox do: all the best of us compared to all the worst of you.
       3. Real Ecumenism, of which the sole known practitioner among Christian prelates was Pope Benedict XVI: the whole of us, the best, the worst, and everything in-between, compared to the whole of you, the best, the worst, and everything in-between.
       Our Orthodox monk friend from yesterday proved to be no exception to this assessment. “Your roots go no further back than the 12th century.” This is a gross and grotesque exaggeration, as if people like St Theresa of Jesus or St John of the Cross brought nothing to the table; as if the Orthodox had none of their own fashionable spiritual gurus; as if every word spoken by every Orthodox priest or monk were drawn straight and solely from the Holy Fathers; as if pure stasis in the 5th or 6th or 7th or 8th century would be a good thing, a guarantee of fidelity. It is painfully easy to point out that the West has its lunatics like Chardin and Rahner, as if there were none to be found in the East. It is painfully easy to point out that the West will tolerate any amount of heresy, but no schism, while ignoring the fact that the East will tolerate any amount of schism, but no heresy. The former is without question a very bad thing, but the latter is certainly not a sign of “a rather incredible period of spiritual renewal.” Both churches have beams in their eyes.

Another similar reaction, though more mildly stated:

Interesting letter from the Orthodox monk, but I am always a bit leery of their heavy-handed apologetics (which, to be fair, we can be guilty of, too). While a calm person can see that the grass isn’t greener on the other side, there is a certain kind of nervous Trad — beaten down for years by the establishment, reading too many sensationalist blogs, and sick of gay clergy — who wants to live in a holistically solid Church now rather than take the long, less rewarding task of building the blocks of reform. In other words, jump on board an apparently tidy trireme in the bright blue Aegean rather than bail water and repair sails on the barque of Peter. I’ve witnessed two defections in my time to Orthodoxy (though I have also sponsored two Orthodox to come into the Catholic Church), and in both cases they were highly discouraged Trads who weren’t interested in waiting things out past their own life times; of course there were other issues at hand (they lived in places where traditional Catholicism was more or less non-existent), but the highly distilled brand of Orthodoxy touted in the West — devoid of all their liturgical development, medieval and dogmatic theology, and history of caesaropapism by emperors and dictators — greatly appeals to these vulnerable people.
       Like you, I pray for the reunion of the Churches. I believe we are the answer to each other’s shortcomings and that we need to be honest with ourselves about what they are. I disabuse Catholics who speak ill of the Orthodox in public and happily rebuke Orthodox when they do the same to us. It’s an all-round sticky situation. We have until eternity to figure it out though.

Now for my own observations.

Like the West, the East has its “black boxes” into which people are not supposed to look too closely, lest they find tensions, contradictions, reversals, laxities, and other odds and ends. Above all, their systematic theology and moral theology are a mess, because they have no authoritative framework for interpreting the Fathers. Their own version of scholasticism, a bit like Islam’s, imploded and fell apart, unlike the West’s, which with figures like Bonaventure and Thomas attained a rare perfection and magnificence. Above all, there is no one in the East who is as biblical, patristic, ecumenical, synthetic, broad-minded, and comprehensive as the Angelic Doctor. Aquinas makes frequent, sympathetic, incisive use of dozens of Western and Eastern Fathers — indeed, more Eastern authors than Western — so it’s a bit silly to say our theology starts in the 12th century. It would be just as silly to say that the theology of the East stops after the Seventh Ecumenical Council.

Moreover, what the hieromonk doesn’t seem to grasp, or perhaps doesn’t wish to acknowledge, is the many great spiritual figures the West has always had, and still has. He does not mention figures like St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Bd. Charles de Foucauld, St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, St. Maximilian Kolbe, and Bd. Columba Marmion, let alone countless martyrs and saints of every state in life. He mentions St. Pio of Pietrelcina only to suggest that he was opposed by the Church, which is only partially true. The writings of Fr. Jacques Philippe are every bit the equal of many contemporary books published by the Orthodox. One might also take a look at the pre-Reformation volumes of the Classics of Western Spirituality series from Paulist Press to get a rough sense of the richness of our mystical tradition.

Perhaps it is felt on the Eastern side that elders or spiritual guides must be distinguished by the length of their beards. We have some impressive “graybeards” on our side, as well, as one can experience by visiting places in the West where the Catholic faith is still believed and lived in its integrity — places like Le Barroux, Fontgombault, Clear Creek, Silverstream, or Norcia. (I privilege Benedictine monasteries only because, as a Benedictine oblate, I know them well.) I have heard or spoken with monks at nearly all of these houses whose wisdom reminds me of the spirit I encounter when reading the lives of the desert fathers. Anyone from the East would fit right in, liturgically and spiritually.

Admittedly, the number of such islands of sanity, outposts of civilization, is not huge; but they do exist and are attracting vocations — they are not in danger of disappearing altogether. Yes, theoretically, popes can try to crush all of this under foot, but popes have limited lifespans, and so do their plans and projects. “Man proposes, God disposes.” The pope can stack the deck all he wants, but God will have the last laugh. There is no chance, for example, that the old Roman liturgy will ever disappear. There are still priests, more with each passing decade, who are willing to risk everything and suffer anything rather than give up the traditional rite. When you have a handful of people like this, you have permanence. Progressivism will die the first and the second death. It has no intrinsic principle of life; it lives as a parasite on the scraps of tradition it still retains.

Vetus Ordo

On the subject of liturgy: I have joyfully participated in many Byzantine Divine Liturgies celebrated by Greek Catholics — offered in Slavonic, Ukrainian, Romanian, German, and English. I learned to cantor and have done it frequently. I’ve prepared choirs to sing the congregational prayers in three-part harmony. I have studied and continue to study the Eastern Fathers, including Athanasius, the Cappadocians, Dionysius, and St. Maximus the Confessor. But . . . I am Roman to the core. There is nothing I love more than a solemn High Mass in the Roman Rite (obviously the Vetus Ordo — there is no other Roman rite worthy of the name, as the hieromonk recognizes). For sheer melodic beauty and variety, the Gregorian chant is a musical form unequaled by any chant in the East. On weekdays, I will take a quiet Low Mass at a side altar over any Divine Liturgy. Again, there is no doubt that the East has preserved its liturgical tradition well, whereas the West has squandered it like Esau selling his birthright for a mess of pottage. But the West has a liturgical tradition that is profound and beautiful, and those of us who have delved deeply into it are nourished by it, “fed with the fat of wheat, and filled with honey out of the rock” (cf. Ps 80:17).

The most important and seductive error of proponents of Orthodoxy is their claim, which we may assume is made more in ignorance than in malice, to be believing and doing only what is ancient. A little study of history handily dispenses with that myth. While there isn’t as much theological diversification and liturgical pluralism, there is still a process of development over the centuries that continues past the first half-millennium, past the first millennium, down to the present. In fact, the almost hyperventilating insistence on “fidelity to the early Church” is more a feature of Orthodoxy from the early 20th century onwards, especially as one finds it among the Russian émigrés in Paris who gave us such dreadful pseudo-scholarship as Lossky’s The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, which is a masterpiece of imaginary polemics or polemical imagination.

There is genuine growth in doctrine, liturgy, and devotion, for all Churches that remain alive. We see this across the entire Christian spectrum, East and West. There should be growth, amplification, variation, as long as it is not deviation or corruption. How do we know the difference? Not by a mathematical formula, that’s for sure, or a Geiger counter. It will often end up being a messy question of how something is received, perceived, accepted. Sometimes devotions come in and they are taken up right away with joy; other times, things sputter out and disappear. History is not tidy, but it’s not completely chaotic, either. There are patterns. One can see the difference between wheat and weeds if one has enough distance and perspective. On this point, the East will have to say the same thing as the West: much of what we do is not from the apostolic period, or even from the patristic golden age, but from the Middle Ages, or in the case of the Slavic tradition, even later.

Female acolytes: an example of corruption entering into the East

At the NLM post last week, there was an interesting exchange along these lines. One commenter objected that “the current Eastern iconostasis (or ‘holy wall’) . . . is not very traditional.” A hieromonk responded:

The point of tradition is that it develops and praxis changes over the centuries. We do not indulge in liturgical archeology, but are part of a continuum as the Holy Spirit guides the Church (though Catholic and Orthodox renovationists love doing this in a Protestant critical manner, believing they are scraping away centuries of accretion to find a somehow pristine and pure practice — of their own making!)
       In the early Church, communion was given in the hands and the Holy Gifts reserved in domestic settings. As Byzantines, we do not do this today, nor do we seek to do so, as tradition has developed so that things are now done differently.
       The services have grown in richness and solemnity as tradition unfolds. The development of Byzantine hymnography has brought new textual layers and features to the Liturgy and offices; the musical tradition has also seen great growth, with new genres of hymns over the millenia; the development of iconography has seen the portrayal of new themes and the development of the ikonstas; the arrangement of the temple has developed to what we see and know today.
       So... we need to be cautious about saying things are not traditional if they were not earlier practices.

He is right. We are not antiquarians, but at the same time, we will not assume that any and every possible change will be a good one. Growth is inevitable, as Newman says, but we still have to compare any new practice or idea against the background out of which it emerged to ensure that it is moving in a straight line rather than off at some bizarre angle. Plenty of examples come to mind, such as we discuss here regularly at NLM. To take only a most obvious one: communion on the tongue to people kneeling is a development that comes straight out of increasing awareness of the adorable mystery of Our Lord’s presence in the Eucharist and of the special consecration of His ministers at the altar. It is just not hard to see that this development is a deepening expression of what the Church already believed, but of which it had not yet found the fullest or most emphatic expression. Many more examples can be given in the realms of clerical vestments, church architecture, and liturgical hymns and orations. And then there will be simply issues of pluralism: some churches give the sacraments of initiation all at once to infants, while others spread them out in acknowledgment of the role of reason and free will. Is one necessarily right and the other wrong? Couldn’t they both be right, because they’re looking from different legitimate angles?

Thus, it stretches credulity for any Orthodox to claim “we’re doing things just like they were done in the ancient Church.” No, you’re not. All legitimate living churches show development; indeed, all must struggle with and against corruption — liturgical, theological, ethical, political, or what have you. All must welcome reform movements and distinguish them from revolutions. All must pray for conversion, personal and institutional. The moment we stop doing these things, on any side, in any community, we have truly give up the Holy Ghost.

The Holy Ghost has not abandoned any of the apostolic-sacramental churches, since all of them give abundant evidence of the operations of the Spirit: faith, hope, charity, the gifts and fruits, miracles. But I do think that (1) there has been a widespread deliberate rejection of charismatic graces on the part of the Church’s hierarchy; (2) God in His Providence has permitted this period of hard and soft apostasy to test, purify, and animate us, without reneging on His promise that the gates of hell will not prevail; (3) we will see either a dramatic restoration of Catholicism or the end of the world — one or the other.

Of all apocalyptic fiction I have read, the most convincing to me is the “Short Story of the Antichrist” by Vladimir Soloviev. At the end of time, in the face of mass defection of Christians, the last pope, the last patriarch, and the last pastor come together in the Catholic Church to face the enemy and to welcome the King.

Let us pray and pray often for the reunion of the churches in truth and in charity.

“Holy Father, I know you want to breathe with both lungs, but surely…”

Visit www.peterkwasniewski.com for articles, sacred music, and classics reprinted by Os Justi Press (e.g., Benson, Scheeben, Parsch, Guardini, Chaignon, Leen).

An Orthodox Monk on the Modern Catholic Church: “Busy Dissolving All Memory of the Past”

Thanks to John Pepino, whom readers will recognize as the translator both of Louis Bouyer’s Memoirs and of Yves Chiron’s Bugnini, NLM is pleased to present a translation from French of a recent letter addressed by an Eastern Orthodox monk to a Benedictine monk who had presented him with a lengthy apologia for the papacy and for the necessity of returning to Rome. Neither monk is named. (The original document may be found at Le Salon Beige, where one can also find other pertinent articles.)

The thoughtful and, at times, poignant reply of the Orthodox monk will surely be of interest. Although one might question the absoluteness or sharpness of some of his criticisms, it seems to me that he lucidly identifies major issues that stand in the way not only of reunion between East and West but, more basically, of the continued existence of any sort of recognizable confessional Catholicism.

As a Roman Catholic, I believe that the Church’s existence is guaranteed by God; at the same time, I believe that God requires of the Church a profound repentance for sins against tradition and a no less profound conversion to Christ whom we have scorned. It is, to me, not false ecumenism but a salutary humiliation to receive the charitable chastening of an Eastern brother. I find it striking that the monk does not even mention the abuse crisis, which is an obvious big stick that even the superficial can use to beat the Church. Instead, he looks at the deeper currents that explain why we have a global crisis in Roman Catholicism to begin with.

UPDATE: Since some readers took my publication of this letter to be an indication that I agree with it completely, I have published a full response here at NLM, indicating especially where I disagree with the author.

*          *          *

Dear Father, Son of Saint Benedict, I thank you for your words and for your attention to Orthodoxy.

Know that we Orthodox are currently living through a rather incredible period of spiritual renewal. The search for and experience of God are at the heart of our concerns. Of course, God is unknowable, but the experience of the Transfiguration and of the uncreated Light is at the heart of our spiritual progress. You are aware of the Russian figure, Saint Seraphim of Sarov, who tells of the acquisition of the Holy Ghost. Perhaps you have heard of those Elders of Athos, such as Joseph the Hesychast, whose current spiritual fruitfulness is extraordinary. Among the Egyptians too, you may have heard the name of Matthew the Poor, former abbot and restorer of the monastery of Saint Macarius. These Orthodox worlds, be they Russian, Greek, Coptic, or Egyptian are today being visited by the mighty light of God, God made accessible thanks to the strength of the New Testament, faithfulness to the teaching of the Fathers of the Church, our divine liturgies in all points conformed to the received tradition — all of this leads us to breathe spiritually as never before. The Virgin of Zeitoun, not so long ago, honoured our Coptic brethren with her presence, visible to all.

Despite the Turkish peril, despite the barbarity of Communism, despite an Islam gone mad, we have preserved the inheritance of our fathers faithfully.

You who belong to that so-called free world, what have you done with it? Who among Catholics knows Saint John Climacus, whose Holy Ladder surpasses in wisdom the Imitation of Christ? Who has read Saint Maximus the Confessor, the Thomas Aquinas of the first millennium? Who is aware of Ephrem and Isaac the Syrian, those great Masters of the spiritual life? Besides Saint Augustine, your roots go no further back than the twelfth century. Each one of your generations gives itself its own masters, its own fashionable references. Some time ago it was Pascal. Yesterday it was Father Teilhard de Chardin, today fashion changes so fast that the names don’t even stick, except perhaps Rahner, Küng, and Boff. It seems to me that all those people are interested in constructing an anthropology in their own image and likeness, and conformed to the doxa of the moment, rather than in receiving the presence of God within themselves. As we see things, those whom you consider as guides and theologians are often intellectuals less advanced than the youngest of our monks performing their metanies and relentlessly uttering the Jesus Prayer in order to establish within themselves, and with the help of the Blessed Trinity, the custody of the heart. Your thinkers know nothing of praxis or of theoria. The wisdom of the humble is foreign to them.

Even you, dear Father, son of Saint Benedict and of Saint John Cassian, have you tasted of their common source, Evagrius Ponticus? Many of your monastic gift shops are filled with the commerce of worldly goods, and the room left for the Fathers is often slender indeed.

Catholic bookstore window in Buenos Aires (courtesy of George Neumayr)

Our spiritual tradition was seared by the Iconoclasm controversy, the solution of which was reached at the second Council of Nicaea. The distinction between icon, idol, and image is very important to us. But you, after having abandoned the icon with and after Fra Angelico, you threw yourselves headlong into the cult of images with realist painting, which emphasised the talent of artists and human emotions and sentiments. At long last you grew tired of these anthropomorphic visions. Now you have reached a subtle form of iconoclasm centred on man’s self-celebration. Your churches are stripped of all sign, but you have placed yourselves at the centre.

This brings me to the dreadful liturgical desert where you now find yourselves. You have abandoned the Roman liturgy of Saint Gregory. You have more or less chased out of your churches those who wished to remain faithful to it. Even though you have lost the tradition which amongst us is called Iconostasis/Royal Door and amongst you Rood Screen, there were great similarities between your ancient liturgy and our divine liturgies of Saint John Chrysostom and Saint Basil. You have an urgent task of restoration to carry out, because as long as that is not done, you will not be able to welcome other traditions, as busy as you are dissolving all memory of the past.

Speaking of liturgy, I am saddened to see how far the Holy Trinity has vanished from the landscape amongst you. [1] Yet It is the sole subject of the Faith. While the procession of the Holy Ghost led to so much turmoil between us historically, as far as I can tell the contemplation of the Trinity no longer seems to be at the heart of the liturgy for you. A little like in the Old Testament, you are community, People of God, face to face with the One God, yet quite discreet regarding the individual who is fundamentally unworthy before the Blessed Trinity. Your lack of reverence before the Holy Gifts, the Communion that the believer gives to himself, [2] without any recourse to Confession, seem to us to be serious anomalies.

Let us now come to obedience and to the primacy of the pope of Rome. To deal with this topic one has to understand our historic traditions. We are the heirs to the Eastern Roman Empire. Amongst us, the imperial power has always counted for something at the time of the Holy Councils. It is normal and natural that temporal princes should be associated, in one way or another, with the life of the Church. It is natural that the borders of the State should enter into the definition of Patriarchates, and that these patriarchs should have their own authority before the government. On your side, in the West, you have known a vacancy of the temporal power very early. Ambrose of Milan, Augustine of Hippo, are at the end of the Western Roman Empire. This situation led to an important role for bishops in the governance of nations. They and the pope have often held both the spiritual and the temporal jurisdiction at once. Circumstances have led us to have a different approach to governance within the Church. This past is neither good nor evil; it just is. The question before us, therefore, is how to respect these different historical traditions.

Without question the Communist era showed us the limits of national patriarchates, so often oppressed by the political power. The tragedy of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia is still fresh in our minds. On your side, the centralisation and purge that followed Vatican II, subordination to the bishops without the counterweight of pastors because of their short terms of appointment, the trials and tribulations of spiritual men like Padre Pio at the hands of the hierarchy, Pope Francis’s brutality against those bishops who are simply faithful to the teachings of his immediate predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI — all of this raises questions.

So acknowledge that you have a manifest problem of authority in the Latin Church. The Western Councils of the Carolingian era brought out the existence of checks and balances within your Church. Today all of that has disappeared, and the word of one man, the bishop of Rome, must impose itself on all men about all things, well beyond the tradition of the Fathers. This is in conformity neither with your tradition nor ours. You are now at an impasse. Perhaps you will be able to take a step back, taking into account our respective impasses as we experienced them in the twentieth century, so that we may find a solution in the light of the Trinity, without triumphalism or enslavement.

Dear Father, to end these words I would like to share with you this hope I have and which guides my steps every day. Already now every moment is a gift for me to advance in the knowledge of the Triune God. In keeping with my masters, Macarius of Egypt and Hesychius of Batos, I aspire to nothing but to empty myself of myself to let the Blessed Trinity dwell in me more at every instant, here and now. I wish to share with you this treasury of prayer that unites us, so that the Charity of God, acting in us, may be fruitful through us.

A Hieromonk.


NOTES

[1] The monk could be thinking here of something like this: the two explicit mentions of the Blessed Trinity in the old Roman liturgy, the Suscipe, Sancta Trinitas and the Placeat tibi, were both removed in the liturgical reform, together with nearly all of the Trinitarian doxologies that had been present (e.g., the Gloria Patri of the Introit; the conclusions to all of the prayers, not merely the Collect; and so forth).

[2] The monk is referring to the practice of communion in the hand, which of course is totally foreign to Eastern practice, as it had been to Western for over a millennium.

Visit www.peterkwasniewski.com for articles, sacred music, and classics reprinted by Os Justi Press (e.g., Benson, Scheeben, Parsch, Guardini, Chaignon, Leen).

For Whom and For What Are We Praying at the Beginning of the Roman Canon?

The great Canon of the Mass — the one and only Anaphora traditionally found in the Roman Rite from before the time of Pope St. Gregory the Great (d. 604) down to the revolutionary year of 1968 — has long fascinated Catholic authors, who have written many commentaries on it. There is much to take note of, much to wonder about and ponder.

I have often been struck by the opening of the Canon:

Te ígitur, clementíssime Pater, per Iesum Christum, Fílium tuum, Dóminum nostrum, súpplices rogámus ac pétimus: uti accépta hábeas, et benedícas hæc + dona, hæc + múnera, hæc sancta + sacrifícia illibáta: in primis quæ tibi offérimus pro Ecclésia tua sancta cathólica; quam pacificáre, custodíre, adunáre, et régere dignéris toto orbe terrárum… 

We humbly pray and beseech Thee, most merciful Father, through Jesus Christ Thy Son, Our Lord, to receive and to bless these gifts, these presents, these holy unspotted sacrifices, which we offer up to Thee, in the first place, for Thy holy Catholic Church, that it may please Thee to grant her peace, to guard, unite, and guide her, throughout the world…

In these first lines, we find a combination of profound humility and earnest pleading that the Father would receive this most solemn offering of the Church and would make it, by His almighty paternal command, the unspotted sacrifices of Christ. (One notes the plural “sacrifices,” a sign of this prayer’s great antiquity, for the early Christians when referring to the Mass spoke of “the mysteries,” “the sacrifices,” and “the sacraments,” whereas later authors tend to speak of the mystery, the sacrifice, and the sacrament.)

The Canon thus gives a certain priority to the fact that this offering of the Mystical Body is being offered for the Mystical Body, and not in a vague way, but with respect to its hierarchical structure — something lacking in the newly-fashioned anaphoras that hold off on the ecclesial purpose of the offering until after the consecration. Indeed, the pseudoscholarly critics of the Roman Canon in the middle of the twentieth century complained that it began with the Church and her structure, rather than starting with something “more theological” like the Trinity, or “grander” like the plan of salvation, or “historically germane,” like the Last Supper. These criticisms show scant regard for the centrality of the Church as the very Body that is offering and is offered, in union with her Head and Lord, Jesus Christ, who became man in order to pour forth the Church from His wounded side; scant regard for the Church as the locus in which the mystery of the Trinity is revealed and glorified; scant regard for the Church as the underlying principle of continuity in salvation history, as St. Augustine demonstrated in The City of God. 

The scholarly balderdash from the late phase of the Liturgical Movement found its custom-made expression in the Cartesian clarity and distinctness of Eucharistic Prayers II, III, and IV. But I’d like to get back to the really interesting anaphora, which is intricate, difficult, mysterious, beautiful, and powerful, as archaic works of art tend to be.

The Roman Canon calls the Church “Thy holy Catholic Church.” She is the one and only Bride of the Lord — and yet the priest pleads with the Father to unite her, to guard and guide her, and to grant her peace. One would have thought that such petitions would not be necessary. Is she not already indestructibly one? Is she not perpetually guarded from harm and guided safely by Divine Providence? Could He ever abandon her? These are serious questions to ask at a time like this, when the unity of the Church on earth appears more shattered than ever, when harm to the People of God is widespread and obvious, and when the captaining of Peter’s barque seems scarcely better than that of the Exxon Valdez, with similar catastrophic results impending.

The Canon transmits a sobering doctrine here. It is not to be “taken for granted” that the Church will be well-governed on earth; that she will follow peacefully in the right path; that she will remain safe from the evils of ignorance, error, and sin; even that she will remain in visible unity — as if saying that “the Church is indefectible” means that your soul, your local church, or your regional anything is indefectible. Your soul and mine can be lost forever; your local church and mine can be swallowed up by Moslems, militant atheists, homosexual activists, or crippling civil action; your episcopal conference can fall off the cliff into open heresy. All this is well within the realm of possibility, just as branches can be lopped off of trees without the tree itself dying. The Canon says to us that peace, protection, unity, and wise governance are goods to be impetrated, petitioned and obtained from the Lord in His mercy, and by means of the Cross — not only by the Sacrifice of the Cross objectively represented in the Mass, but also by taking this Cross upon ourselves in our prayer, penance, conversion, and fidelity.

All of these goods are gifts from God, who may, in His wisdom and justice, deprive the Church on earth of the enjoyment of these goods if the faithful or their rulers should be so unfortunate as to be lukewarm in performing the opus Dei, or worldly in their attitudes, or cowardly in their preaching. The Church will always have real existence in this world until the end of time, but she may disappear from my life or yours, in my country or yours, in my national hierarchy or yours. Think of the bishops under Henry VIII who fell like bowling pins before his threats. In a matter of years, the hierarchy had essentially vanished.

As with ancient Christianity in general, so here in this Anaphora, there is an utter absence of presumption. The members of the Church on earth do not presume that they are already the perfect, spotless Bride of Christ; rather, they beg to have those qualities. (The same sort of prayer recurs in the “Domine, Jesu Christe” after the Agnus Dei: “Look not upon my sins, but upon the faith of Thy Church, and vouchsafe to grant her peace and unity according to Thy will.”)

The next thing we learn from the Canon is that the Sacrifice is offered for Catholics who hold the true faith, and that they are its beneficiaries:

…una cum fámulo tuo Papa nostro N., et Antístite nostro N., et ómnibus orthodóxis, atque cathólicæ et apostólicæ fídei cultóribus.

…in union with Thy servant N., our Pope, and N., our Bishop, and with all orthodox men: indeed, with those who cultivate [foster, promote, support] the Catholic and apostolic faith. [1]

Continuing the same petition, the priest states that he is offering up the sacrifice for the hierarchs of the Church, and, indeed, for all orthodox Catholics — an implicit prayer that we may always be and remain such.

Noteworthy here is the emphasis on doctrinal orthodoxy, which, for the ancient Christians who first prayed this prayer, was incomparably the first and most important thing you had to know about someone: Does he adhere to the true faith? Not: Is he a nice person, does he pay his bills and volunteer to coach football teams and recycle his garbage, but: Does he profess the universal faith that comes to us from the Apostles? Even the question of charity is secondary to this one, since true charity, the infused theological virtue, requires the infused virtue of faith as a foundation. Otherwise it is mere philanthropy, do-goodism, niceness, or pagan virtue, none of which inherits the kingdom of heaven. You cannot love what you do not know; you cannot love the only God that exists—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — if you do not believe in the Most Holy Trinity.

Hence the Roman Canon refreshingly places emphasis on orthodoxy as the basic condition of Church membership, instead of the diffuse semi-moral quasi-virtues that are substituted for it today. This part of the Canon teaches that the Holy Sacrifice is offered not vaguely for a universal brotherhood of mankind or an ecumenical smorgasbord, but for right-believing Catholics who profess the faith handed down to us. It challenges us to take dogmatic truth as seriously as all the saints have taken it, being willing to lay down our very lives rather than dissent from one jot or tittle of the depositum fidei. No sacrifice can be offered for our salvation, and we will not in fact be saved, if we are dissenters, heretics, schismatics, apostates, or infidels.

An archdeacon reading the diptych at Divine Liturgy

There is a further implication, one especially pertinent to our times. The Canon is not saying that the pope and the local bishop are orthodox, as if pronouncing these words of the Canon magically meant they could never fall away. Rather, it is praying for them as long as they are orthodox. That is, we offer the sacrifice “for all who are orthodox in belief and who profess the Catholic and apostolic faith.” If there were a bishop or even a pope who was not orthodox in belief and did not profess the Catholic and apostolic faith, this sacrifice would not be offered for him.

This is why, as we know, in the ancient Church it was common practice for bishops to strike off the names of other bishops who, in their judgment, had fallen away from the Faith into heresy. A bishop who had excommunicated another bishop would drop his name off of the diptychs, as if to say: We are not praying for you, and we will not pray for you until you repent and return to orthodoxy. This is the “tough love” practiced by the early Church, the heroic age of the martyrs, the greatest theologians, and the monks of the desert.

I am not sure exactly how bishops today could put into practice this supernatural common sense that regarded public prayer as offered only for the orthodox and not for heretics or schismatics, but it is certainly getting to be the case, more and more, that we can no longer assume that when we pray the Roman Canon, we are actually praying for the man who is occupying the chair of Peter or the man who is occupying the local see. We may dare to hope, but we may not assume.

Of course, until there is an ecclesiastical decision of some sort, such as the judgment of an ecumenical or even an imperfect council, God alone would know whether the Mass is able to be offered for the named figures, or whether they are outside of the Church that prays and is benefited by the prayers. The benefit of the doubt is always to be given to the recognized incumbent, until and unless he has been deposed or replaced.

The reader may be asking himself: What is the spiritual benefit of thinking about these things? The benefit is simply this. We must recognize, with full seriousness and sobriety, that the Church in her public prayer does not presume that she will be at peace, united, under good leadership, and heading in the right direction. She begs for it. And we must imitate her, we must internalize the same attitude. We are repeatedly and earnestly seeking these goods from the Lord in His mercy, and His answer partly depends on the faith and fervor with which we ask Him for them. We are warned by the Canon that without holding fast to the Catholic and orthodox faith, entire and inviolate, we cannot be saved, nor can our shepherds.

ADDENDUM

This morning during the chanting of the (traditional) Litany of Saints at the blessing of Mother Cecilia as the first abbess of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, I noticed these petitions, which confirm the interpretation offered above of the Roman Canon:

That thou wouldst deign to rule and preserve Thy holy Church, we beseech thee, hear us.
That thou wouldst deign to preserve the Pope and all the ecclesiastical orders in holy religion...
That thou wouldst deign to grant peace and unity to all Christian people..

The second of these petitions is especially interesting: we are asking God to preserve the Pope in the virtue of religion, or in keeping the Catholic faith. There would be no point in asking for this, if it were not the kind of thing that could be absent or lost due to men’s sins and God’s just judgment.

NOTE

[1] As John Pepino pointed out to me, the atque is a strong conjunction that adds something (often a greater specificity) to what came before; it isn’t just a synonym for et. It’s as though the text says that we are in communion with all who hold the correct faith, and moreover, with those who actively promote the correct faith. This could well be an echo of the Arian crisis.