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| The View from the Window |
| His Eminence, the Most Reverend Metropolitan Nicholas, Titular Metropolitan of Amissos, to the Orientale Lumen VI Conference held at Catholic University, Washington, DC, on June 5, 2002. (Metropolitan Nicholas is the hierarch of the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese ) |
| Your Eminences and Graces, Beloved Brothers in the Lord, Very Reverend and Reverend Fathers, Beloved Brothers and Sisters in the Risen Christ, Christos Voskrese! Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed! And I take this opportunity to salute this Conference in the knowledge and light of the miracle of our Lord's Three-Day Resurrection. It occurs to me that so much of what we have said to one another through the years of our dialogue, what we continue to say and whatever we shall say pale in significance, if we simply gaze upon the empty Tomb of our Savior. I have chosen to call my presentation this morning, "The View From the Window." In doing so, I suppose I have already answered the question posed by the title of this conference. Indeed, I do believe that the Eastern Catholic Churches are an aperture of sorts between the Western and Eastern Christianity. From time to time this window opens, and there is movement between the two realities. We rarely discuss this openly, but the comings and goings through the window are manifest. Most of the parishes of my own God-protected Diocese were part of the Unia only a few short generations ago. I do not know how many Orthodox Christian clergy were born in the Eastern Rite, but there are more than two hierarchs currently serving in the United States who were baptized as Eastern Rite Catholics. This should not be a cause of scandal to anybody. Rather, it reflects the consanguinity of our communities. This is an issue to which I shall return, but for the moment, I should like to take a different kind of look at the "Window Between East and West." Like any window, it is not always open, and when closed shut - like any window - it can become soiled and smudged with the exigencies of human history and human frailty. As such, the vision of the, if you will, "other side," becomes obscured, blurred and distorted. In fact, I believe that the window of the Eastern Rite accounts for the views that dominate the interaction of the Western and Eastern Churches. The "window" of the Eastern Rite has become the principle optic by which we behold each other. >From the Orthodox Christian perspective, this singular lens creates multiple problems. We hear the following words of the Second Vatican Council as a threat to our own integrity, rather than as the invitation to dialogue: "The Eastern Churches in communion with the Apostolic See of Rome have a special duty of promoting the unity of all Christians, especially Eastern Christians...." (Decree on the Catholic Churches of the Eastern Rite, paragraph 24.) You see, for Orthodox Christians, the Unia is seen as a means, a method for absorbing the Eastern Orthodox Church, not as a self-sustaining, ongoing ecclesial reality that stands on its own. Now, from a historical perspective, this is plainly true. But I think it is vital to remember that as we look back on the creation of the Unia - in all its manifestations - it is fair to say that the political, cultural, and social upheavals that caused the emergence of the Eastern Catholic churches no longer exist. Orthodox peoples are not being subsumed beneath Latin empires. Political systems are not creating religious identities; rather it is the other way around. It matters not how much the Second Vatican Council praises the East - to wit: "The Catholic Church holds in high esteem the institutions, liturgical rites, ecclesiastical traditions and the established standards of the Christian life of the Eastern Churches, for in them, distinguished as they are for their venerable antiquity, there remains conspicuous the tradition that has been handed down from the Apostles through the Fathers and that forms part of the divinely revealed and undivided heritage of the universal Church." (Decree on the Catholic Churches of the Eastern Rite, Preamble.) No Orthodox could agree more, but nevertheless, we are left with a contradiction between historical antecedents and current circumstances. And the contradiction masks what is too often perceived as an insidious purpose. Subsequently, instead of the Eastern Rite being a window that offers insight into the world of the "other," it is seen as an opening though which to draw the one into the other. And this is unfortunate indeed. It makes no difference if this is in fact the case or not. As long as it is perceived as the case, the Unia will be viewed with suspicion by the Orthodox. Now, perhaps someone will protest that I would make an assessment of the view from the Catholic side of the window, but I would do so only in the same vein as I have for the Orthodox, by using the official statements of the Roman Church. One such statement shall suffice: "These individual Churches, whether of the East or the West, although they differ somewhat among themselves in rite (to use the current phrase), that is, in liturgy, ecclesiastical discipline, and spiritual heritage, are, nevertheless, each as much as the others, entrusted to the pastoral government of the Roman Pontiff, the divinely appointed successor of St. Peter in primacy over the universal Church. They are consequently of equal dignity, so that none of them is superior to the others as regards rite and they enjoy the same rights and are under the same obligations, also in respect of preaching the Gospel, to the whole world(cf. Mark 16, 15) under the guidance of the Roman Pontiff." (Decree on the Catholic Churches of the Eastern Rite, paragraph 3.) Now to whom does this refer? If only to Eastern Catholic Christians, then well and good, but if to all Eastern Christians - including the so-called "separated brethren" - then we see in what kind of focus Eastern Catholicism puts Eastern Orthodoxy in the eyes of the Roman Church. There is a blur that give the impression that the only thing missing from the Orthodox is a relationship with the primacy of Peter. Well then, am I not saying that the Eastern and Western Churches are seeing the same thing through the window of Eastern Catholicism? In fact, we are looking at the same thing, but we are not seeing the same thing. And we are missing an even more interesting view. Again and again in all our fraternal, ecumenical rapprochement, we always seem to end up at the same place, the place of Peter. Forgive me for repeating myself, but as I said last year at this same Conference: "For too long Peter has been content to live without his brethren and his brethren have been content to live without Peter." This is the crux, if you will, of all our dialogue. And it is the object that both West and East view through the prism of the Unia. On the one hand, why cannot the separated Eastern Brethren live in communion with Rome, as do the Eastern Catholics? And on the other hand, those same separated Brethren do not wish to be subsumed underneath Rome, as are the Uniate cousins. Through the Eastern Catholic window, both sides see the same object as a different reality. So what can be done? Where do we go from this point forward? Do we merely agree to disagree about the meaning of the object in our line of sight? Do we argue about who has the clearer view, the cleaner side of the pane of glass that constitutes our window? Do we break the window, destroy the Unia, or simply open the window and pretend that it doesn't exist? I suppose that there are as many answers to these questions as there are opinions in both our Churches. But I would propose another way. I understand the chief problem of treating the Unia as a window as this: precisely the one-dimensionality that is guaranteed by such a view. If we continue to see in the Unia only a means to another end, then I believe we deny the intrinsic integrity of the ecclesial experience, and I fear we shall be missing themuch greater lessons that God has for us. I said before that the causes that created the Unia no longer exist. I do not think anyone would dispute that. So then, we are left trying to understand why it continues to exist. If it is only a window, a bridge, a fiber between East and West, we shall never escape the arguments that constitute the history. But if we accept its current reality - the genuine ecclesial body with a valid life of its own, we may learn more than we anticipated and less than we feared. The Eastern Catholic communities are a spiritual part of the Western Church, and yet a temporal part of the Eastern Church. This may sound the opposite of what is usually claimed, but if one's spiritual center is to be found in one's spiritual community, then it is true. The communion of the Eastern Catholics is the Roman Catholic Church. As a spiritual reality, we Orthodox have no more of a right to deny Uniates their spiritual integrity than we have to deny Roman Catholics - or for that matter - anybody in the world. We are not your judge. And if there truly is "high esteem" in the West for the traditions of the East, then likewise, Eastern Catholics should never be viewed - as they have been in the past - as "second class" Catholics, a temporary aberration occasioned by the exigencies of history. And as for the temporal reality of the Unia, the consanguinity that I mentioned before points - with an absolute certainty - to the cultural, ethnic, and linguistic ties between Eastern Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. In fact, the Orthodox are happy to share in the natural affinities that characterize our communities. Cultural and linguistic exchanges are commonplace cause scandal to no one. So it seems that no one minds if we dance together, as long as we do not worship together- at least not in the Divine Liturgy. Because "communion in sacris" the sharing of the Holy Mysteries - implies a deeper relationship than just cousins - then we are in the truest sense brothers. And even though I am proud to address the esteemed clergy and laity here assembled as 'Brothers and Sisters,' yet is there a blurring of distinctions. I feel for you as Christian Brothers and Sisters, yet I cannot share in the deepest mysteries of the Christian family with you. Nowhere is this felt more painfully than in the lives of our parishioners, who, with our blessing and at our instruction, intermarry and retain two allegiances in one household. I often wonder whether it is possible for the celibate hierarchy of both Churches to understand how we have confused and blurred the home-church reality in the lives of real men and women, by the pastoral decisions that we reach - all in good faith and for the good of our respective flocks. Take, for example, the situation of a couple -one Eastern Orthodox and the other Uniate - who want to baptize their first child in a joint ceremony. From a liturgical point of view, this is the easiest ecumenical problem in the world to solve. The rite is the same. But that is about as far as the rite can take us. As you all know, we do not concelebrate the Sacraments, at least officially. We speak of valid ordinations and Sacraments and traditions and all the like, but when it comes to meeting the needs of our own parishioners, we are at a loss. I find this situation truly remarkable. We allow - we even encourage the people of our respective flocks to unite in a marriage, to create a family - but then deny them the ability to actualize the house-church that we encouraged them to create. No wonder our people cannot understand our position, because it does appear arcane and ultimately unimportant. I ask you: What is greater, Christ into Whom we are baptized, or the respective Church authority that signs the baptismal document? I seem to recall a saying of our Lord: "Indeed, which is greater? The gold or the Temple that sanctifies the gold...the offering, or the Altar that sanctifies the offering?"(Matthew 23:17, 19) Do not be concerned. I am not proposing anarchy. But I am asking that we take a serious and considered look at how we interpret the Message of the Gospel that has been entrusted to us. As long as we place our own tightly held perspective of reality above the possibilities that we can imagine, when we admit that we do not enclose every understanding of the reality, the we shall continue to make limiting decisions for our flocks, limited by our own needs - not theirs. This is precisely why the Eastern Catholic experience today can be instructive for all of us. Their reasons to exist no long exist. The purpose for which they were created no longer apply. But the needs of their people are just as real today as they were five centuries ago. In meeting the needs of their own flocks, the Uniate communities are not serving as a window for the East and West to consider each other, but as a window into the things of God. As long as this is the case, neither East nor West should compromise the integrity of the Uniate experience. What concerns the Orthodox is if the Eastern Catholic experience be used to try and superimpose Roman hegemony over an already committed Orthodox people. And one cannot say that this has never happened. If the Unia is to have its integrity, it must never be used as methodology - the very methodology that Orthodox Christians often fear that it is. In allowing Eastern Catholic experience to flourish, the Roman Church confirms that it stands by the integrity of the Eastern Christian experience. And this could have sanguine consequences for all. First, it allows Eastern Catholics to be whom they are - without fear of being 'latinized' or denied the patrimony that they have inherited. Second, it allows the natural affinities between he Orthodox and Eastern Catholics to develop in an atmosphere of trust, so that joint activities can be cultivated wherever possible. Third, and at this moment in the American Catholic Church it may be more important than ever, it allows for the fullness of the universal Christian - the highest sense of Catholic - to be considered as to is applicability in the modern world. The mere possibility of married clergy in the American Catholic community though the precedent of the Eastern Catholic experience may prove to be extraordinarily helpful during the difficult days ahead. In short, my friends - and I hope that I am safe in calling all of you my friends - the Unia can and must be more than a window. It is an edifice unto itself and must be accounted for as such. A "tertium quid" if you will, that fits neither the purposes that the Roman church proposes nor the Orthodox Church fears. As it seeks to minister to the needs of its people, let us pray that we shall find insights into how we are to understand the diversity that the Unia represents to both East and West. Perhaps we shall find ourselves more in agreement than disagreement with Saint Photios, Patriarch of Constantinople, who said: "In cases where the thing disregarded is not the faith, and is not falling away from any general and catholic decree, different rites and customs being observed among different people, a man who knows how to judge rightly would decide that neither do those who observe them act wrongly, nor do those who have not received them break the law." Saint Paul stated it with far greater simplicity: "Now, there are distinctions of spiritual gifts, but it is the same Spirit. Likewise, there are distinctions of ministries, but the same Lord. And there are distinctions of energies, but it is the same God Who energizes all by all. Now, the manifestation of the Spirit is granted to each person to be beneficial." (I Corinthians 12:4-7) Let us learn to recognize the manifestation of the Spirit. And let us pray that the differences between us always reflect the diversity of His precious gifts, and not the limitations and barriers that we would impose. Perhaps then, the view from the window will improve considerably. Christ is Risen! Christos Anesti! Christos Voskrese |
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