[This is a really old post, but I just ran across the article referenced. I found what I thought there were a lot of deliberate distortions in the article. This is the only place on the Internet where I could see any place to comment online (the OP is on catholic.com but they don't allow comments or responses). I prepared this letter to Fr. Brian, but don't have anywhere to send it.]
Dear Fr. Brian,
I read with great interest your article, “Why I didn’t Convert to Eastern Orthodoxy”.
I myself am a former Roman Catholic. I was raised as a very traditional Polish Roman Catholic; attended a parochial school run by Canadian and American nuns; served as an altar boy in my local parish; and graduated from a high school that was part of and run by a Benedictine Monastery.
Obviously, as a former Roman Catholic convert to Orthodoxy, an article by a Roman Catholic priest who rejected Orthodoxy was bound to catch my attention.
I would like to comment on a few items that you stated in your article, hopefully in a spirit of love and truth. I would preface all this with the statement that I am a simple Orthodox layman, with only tentative knowledge of Orthodox dogmatic theology and Church history. I welcome any corrections to what are perceived as errors in anything I am writing.
You wrote that based on your experience with one Greek Orthodox parish in Sydney, Australia, you concluded that Orthodoxy is not catholic. I would point out that according to the website orthodoxyinaustralia.com there are over 60 Orthodox parishes in the Sydney area, along with two monasteries and one convent. While it is true that the Greek Orthodox jurisdiction parish services are overwhelmingly in Greek (i.e. only four out of the 27 Greek parishes I saw listed held services in English), this is not the case with the other jurisdictions:
· There are four English-language only parishes from different jurisdictions
· All seven of the Antiochian parishes hold English-language services
· One of the four Ukranian parishes hold English-language services
· Five of the nine Russian parishes hold English-language services
· One of the four Serbian parishes held English-language services
In short, over one-third of the Orthodox churches in the Syndey area offers English-language services. If someone wanted to attend an Orthodox service in English in Sydney, the opportunity is definitely there. They would not, contrary to what you write, “have to become a Greek.”
If one argues that the presence of any ethno-centric parishes whatsoever is an indicator of non-catholicity, I would argue that the situation was no different in the United States a few decades ago when there were large first-generation Roman Catholic immigrant populations. In the area where I grew up there was a Polish-only parish, a French-only parish, a Portuguese-only parish, and a Ukranian-only (Catholic) parish. Today, due to assimilation and lower immigration rates from these countries, these parishes either no longer exist or have none or limited services in the original native language. As I understand, tolerance of ethno-centric parishes was widespread in the pre-schism Church. As you probably know, St. John Chrysostom himself founded a special church in Constantinople for the Goths so that they could worship in their own language.
You state in your article that “Eastern Orthodoxy’s account of how the Church transmits revelation” is untrue because it is based on a circular argument.
First, I would say that describing the Church as something that “transmits revelation” is a strange way of putting it. It implies that the Church is more of a kind of medium between God and His people and not a single Body of believers with Christ at its head.
Second, your entire argument is based on the development of the proposition that the Orthodox Church maintains that the Church’s “infallibility is to be recognized in the solemn doctrinal decisions of the ecumenical councils.”
This is at best incomplete and at worst incorrect.
Consider what St. Basil the Great wrote:
Of the dogmas and sermons preserved in the Church, certain ones we have from written instruction, and certain ones we have received from the Apostolic Tradition, handed down in secret. Both the one and the other have one and the same authority for piety, and no one who is even the least informed in the decrees of the Church will contradict this. For if we dare to overthrow the unwritten customs as if they did not have great importance, we shall thereby imperceptively do harm to the Gospel in its most important points. And even more, we shall be left with the empty name of the Apostolic preaching without content (On the Holy Spirit, ch. 27)
I think that the way you state Proposition 1 implies that the Ecumenical Councils were some sort of crucible wherein dogma could be proposed and then either up- or down-voted by the participants. In fact, each Ecumenical Council was called reactively, rather than proactively, called to refute some new prevailing heresy. The Church’s “infallibility” rests on the teaching of the Apostles (of which Scripture is the most important body), the Apostolic Fathers and the earliest post-Apostolic Fathers – in short, Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture.
You state that Orthodox theologians would say that “for a thousand years we have had a situation of interrupted infallibility.” I don’t know of any Orthodox theologian who would say that the infallibility of the Church has been interrupted. They would say, on the other hand, that the Roman Catholic Church, being in schism, is removed from and no longer part of the One, True, Church.
You also state that the later rejection of the Council of Florence by the Orthodox was due to “an attitude of deep suspicion and even passionate hostility toward the Latin ‘enemies’. Such suspicion and hostility may, in fact, have existed on the part of some or even most Byzantine citizens, but this was not the reason why the Council of Florence was rejected. Furthermore, Byzantium was desperate for military aid against the Turks at the time. It was rejected because it demanded unacceptable compromises in matters of the Orthodox Faith. It should be noted that the initial protagonist of this rejection was Mark Eugenikos, who was Metropolitan of Ephesus and initially an enthusiastic supporter of the council. He urged rejection of the agenda over four issues: (1) the modification undertaken by Rome of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed; (2) the Roman Catholic profession of the existence of purgatory; (3) how the Eucharist was celebrated in the Roman Catholic rite; and (4) how the primacy of the Pope was understood.
You also state that the Orthodox “have had to nuance their position” on the infallibility of the ecumenical councils by maintaining “that the participation in a given council of bishops representing the whole Church and the confirmation of their decrees by the pope, while undoubtedly necessary, is still not sufficient …”
As far as I know, the Church never maintained that the decrees of an Ecumenical Council had to be confirmed by the Pope. The Pope had a purely administrative role in facilitating the Ecumenical Councils. He never had any kind of “veto power” over the Council’s decisions. This, I think, is a projection of how the role of the Pope was viewed by the post-schism Roman Church back onto the earlier pre-Schism Church. I do not believe the role you are suggesting ever existed for the Pope when the East and West were in communion.
Since the remainder of your argument relies on what I believe is a flawed initial proposition, I did not examine it that closely. There are however, some statements you make that I believe are either untrue or misleading.
In Proposition 2 you argue that “deciding whether a given council’s teaching is infallible or not depends on how it is received by the rank-and-file membership of ‘the whole Church’.” I assume you are basing this statement on the fact that the Council of Florence was rejected by the “rank-and-file” despite having been accepted by the Orthodox delegates to the Council. I would suggest that there is another way to view this event altogether – namely, that the Church truly is guided and guarded by the Holy Spirit and not simply its hierarchs. Hierarchs are fallible, but the Church is not. When the Church hierarchs failed in their discernment, the gates of hell did not, in fact, prevail, and the people themselves – supported by a few staunch hierarchs such as Mark of Ephesus – take up its cause. One might even view the fall of Constantinople a few years later – which the schismatic hierarchs tried to stave off by subscribing to the Council of Florence – was a sign of God’s displeasure. You also fail to note that later hierarchs of the Orthodox Church did, in fact, come around to reject the Council of Florence. To say, however, that presuming that the laity of the Church are able to take up defense of the Faith when their hierarchs fall short implies that heresies like Arianism wouldn’t have been condemned exhibits to me a lack of faith in the Church.
You also make the statement that the “whole Church” is defined as “all those Christians who are in communion with Rome, the See of Peter, the ‘Rock’.” Near the end of your essay you also write of the Orthodox Church’s “fateful and medieval decision to repudiate the full primacy and authority of that rock established by Christ in the person of Peter.” First, most Church histories indicate that Linus and not Peter was the first bishop of Rome and that St. Peter never even served as bishop of Rome. Second, the early Church Fathers never understood the Lord to mean Peter himself when He refers to the rock upon which He will build His Church (Matthew 16:18). He meant, rather, Saint Peter’s profession of faith that Jesus was the Christ and the Son of the Living God (Matthew 16:16). If any Roman Catholic doubts this, I would invite them to read either John Chrysostom’s homily on these passages or Augustine’s commentary on the Chapter 4 of the 1st Epistle of St. John. Both are Roman Catholic (as well as Orthodox) saints and Doctors of the Roman Catholic Church.
In your conclusion you make the statement, without explanation, that the Orthodox Church is being prodded toward “doctrinal pluralism and disintegration.” Can you cite specific examples of this “doctrinal pluralism” and “disintegration”?
Yours in Christ,
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