Dionysius Petavius: Dogmata Theologica
September 30, 2021
I have on my bookshelves at home a multi-volume work which I purchased many years ago, the Opus de Theologicis Dogmatibus of Dionysius Petavius, S.J. (Denis Pétau, 1583-1652). This monumental work has been described as “the first systematic attempt ever made to treat the development of Christian doctrine from the historical point of view.” It is the size of moderately large encyclopedia, and, indeed, if one takes the word “encyclopedia” in its root sense to mean a complete course of studies, that is exactly what it is, a complete course of studies in dogmatic theology. Unlike the medieval summae, however, this is not a work of speculation; Petavius’s main concern is to make clear what was the authoritative teaching of the Fathers of the Church, both Greek and Latin. Because it is such a huge work, and because it is written in fairly elaborate Latin, it is not easy to read; so far as I know, it has never been translated into English. But it occurred to me today that it can be found these days on Google Books, and that it might be useful to provide links to it. So that is what I am doing here; it would have been possible to go into even greater detail, linking to the various chapters of the work, but that would have been a much larger labor; for the present, I think it sufficient to link to the six tomes and the various books into which those tomes are divided. These links, I know, will help me to navigate this work, and allow me to consult it when I am not at home; perhaps they may be of use also to others.
Tomus Primus: In quo de Deo Deique proprietatibus agitur
- Prolegomena: In quibus de theologia ipsa eiusque principiis atque natura disputatur.
- Liber Primus: In quo de Dei essentia eiusque proprietatibus generatim agitur.
- Liber Secundus: In quo de attributis quae negativa dicuntur singillatim agi incipit ac nominatim de iis quae ad ipsam Dei substantiam pertinent.
- Liber Tertius: Qui proprietates Dei negantes explicare pergit.
- Liber Quartus: In quo de divinis proprietatibus agitur quae affirmantes vocantur et ad Dei scientiam spectant.
- Liber Quintus: In quo de voluntate Dei, potentia et operatione agitur.
- Liber Sextus: In quo de Dei bonitate, deque summo bono agitur : necnon de malo : tum de Dei impeccabilitate: deque eius perfectione ac pulchritudine.
- Liber Septimus: In quo de Dei visione agitur.
- Liber Octavus: In quo de providentia et Dei nominibus agitur.
Tomus Secundus: In quo, primum de praedestinatione, post[ea] de Trinitate agitur
- Liber Nonus: Qui est primus de praedestinatione ac reprobatione.
- Liber Decimus: Qui est de praedestinatione secundus.
- In tomum secundum operis Theologicorum dogmatum Praefatio.
- Liber Primus: In quo mysterii illius, hoc est opinionem de eo τὰ ἱστορούμενα traduntur.
- Liber Secundus. [Haereticorum argumenta … et catholicorum ad ea responsa….]
- Liber Tertius.
- Liber Quartus: In quo communes personis tribus notiones propriatetesque declarantur.
- Index.
Tomus Tertius: In quo primum de Trinitate, postea de angelis agitur
- Liber Quartus (sequentia).
- Liber Quintus: In quo personae primae, id est, Patris, propriae notiones et vocabula declarantur.
- Liber Sextus: In quo secundae personae Trinitatis, qui est Filius, propriae notiones ac vocabula declarantur.
- Liber Septimus: In quo de processione sancti Spiritus agitur.
- Liber Octavus: Qui est de missione personarum.
- De Photino haeretico eiusque damnatione in quinque synodis facta … dissertatio.
- Jacobi Sirmondi … diatriba secunda Sirmitana.
- Elenchus diatribae utriusque de Photino et Sirmiensi synodo.
- Dissertatio de commentitio liberii lapsu, auctore F.-A. Zacharia, S.I.
- Appendix seu Diatriba in qua nonnulla Petavianarum de Sirmiensi synodo dissertationum loca emendantur, illustrantur, vindicantur.
- Liber Primus de Angelis: In quo universe de angelorum natura, et proprietatibus, ac praesertim de bonis agitur.
- Index.
Tomus Quartus: In quo rursum de angelis, de sex priorum mundi dierum opificio, de Pelagianorum Semipelagianorumque haeresi et quibusdam aliis agitur
- Liber Secundus: In quo de ordinibus, et officiis bonorum angelorum agitur.
- Liber Tertius: Qui est de diabolo, et angelis eius.
- Liber Primus de sex primorum mundi dierum opificio.
- Prooemium.
- Liber Secundus: Qui est de hominis opificio.
- Liber Tertius: In quo de libero arbitrio agitur.
- Liber Quartus: In quo ex Augustini sententia liberi arbitrii natura constituitur.
- Liber Quintus: In quo libertatis vera ratio ex latinis Augustino posterioribus expenditur.
- Appendix ad Librum II de opificio sex dierum, seu R. P. Antonii Casini e Societate Jesu controversia de statu purae naturae.
- Liber Unus de Pelagianorum et Semipelagianorum dogmatum historia.
- Liber Unus de Tridentini Concilii interpretatione, et S. Augustini doctrina.
- Index.
Tomus Quintus: In quo rursum de lege et gratia, postea de incarnatione agitur
- Liber Primus de lege et gratia.
- Liber Secundus de lege et gratia.
- Elenchus Theriacae Vincentii Lenis.
- De Incarnatione Praefatio.
- Liber Primus: In quo haeresum omnium, quae catholicae de incarnatione fidei adversatae sunt, historia describitur.
- Liber Secundus: Qui est de causis incarnati Verbi, maxime de ea quam finalem vocant.
- Liber Tertius: In quo de naturarum duarum conjunctione, sive unitione agitur.
- Liber Quartus: In quo de generalibus naturarum in Christo duarum affectionibus agitur, quae ex unitione consequuntur.
- Liber Quintus: In quo de naturis Christi duabus separatim agitur.
- Index.
Tomus Sextus: In quo rursum de incarnatione Verbi agitur
- Liber Sextus: In quo ab haeretici nuperi calumniis, Cyrilli, et Ephesinae synodi integritas fidei, et auctoritas defenditur; ac Nestorius, quem ille catholicum fuisse dicit, recte pro haeretico damnatus ostenditur.
- Liber Septimus: In quo de eo genere dignitatis, et ornamenti agitur, quod absolutum, et οὐσιῶδες id est substantivum, in humanam Christi naturam fluxit et divinae conjunctione.
- Liber Octavus: In quo de ἐνεργείᾳ, id est operatione Christi, agitur.
- Liber Nonus: In quo de voluntate Christi disseritur.
- Liber Decimus: In quo humanae in Christo naturae proprietates explicantur, quas ἐπιγεννηματικὰς Graeci, Latini accidentes, et consectarias vocant : et imprimis eae quae ad corpus propius attinent.
- Liber Undecimus: Qui est de animi Christi propriis ornamentis.
- Liber Duodecimus: In quo de eo genere accidentium proprietatum dissertitur, quae morales appellantur.
- Liber Decimus Tertius: In quo de officio Christi mediatoris, sive salvatoris erga homines potissimum agitur: hoc est quatenus ad omnes vis illius benefica pertineat.
- Index.
Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique
August 31, 2016
The Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique is a massive and invaluable theological reference work, which was begun in 1898 under the editorial direction of Jean Michel Alfred Vacant and continued to appear under successive editors (E. Mangenot, E. Amann) and with various revisions until work on it ended in 1950. Much of it is now in the public domain; the complete text of at least an early version of it is available online, on Internet Archive. Below I provide links to these volumes, and to a few articles from them.
Mother Agnes Mariam of the Cross speaks in Cleveland
November 15, 2013
Mother Agnes-Mariam de la Croix, prioress of the Monastery of St. James the Mangled in Qâra, Syria, gave a talk yesterday evening at St. George’s Antiochian Orthodox Church in Cleveland, titled What is Really Happening in Syria Today? I made a point of attending, having first heard about Mother Agnes-Mariam and her work a couple of months ago. In September, in the aftermath of the chemical weapons attack on East Ghouta, an eastern suburb of Damascus, she presented a report to the United Nations in Geneva, pointing out that some of the children who were shown as victims in the amateur videos that began circulating on the internet on the morning of the attack had been kidnapped by rebels two weeks earlier after a massacre by rebel forces in the town of Latakia; also, in different videos, purportedly filmed at different locations, the same dead children reappear. In brief, the children were cynically used as props. (A brief summary of the report, written by Mother Agnes-Mariam herself, along with a link to the PDF of the full report, will be found here.)
Most of Mother Agnes-Mariam’s talk yesterday centered upon the work of the organization she heads, Mussalaha (“Reconciliation”), described as “a popular movement in Syria that mediates disputes and organizes ceasefires between opposing forces.” It became clear to me, in hearing her speak, that her peace activism in Syria long preceded the incident in August that nearly brought about US airstrikes; in her talk, she described some of the more memorable incidents in which she and her organization had made a difference. She seems to have a rare ability to maintain communications with all the different sides in this war, not excluding the Al Nusra Front. (I should qualify that: she explicitly stated that the aim of her organization is to promote reconciliation among the various Syrian parties in this war; she does not negotiate with the foreign jihadists who have flocked to the country.) One of her most moving stories concerned a local meeting in (I think) Aleppo between opposing political forces; the meeting was full of mutual recriminations, and nothing was getting done. Then a man, attending the meeting, related the story of the kidnapping of his only son, named Fayyad, 20-years-old. He and his wife tried for months to secure his release. One day, he received a phone call; the voice asked, “would you like to see your son?” The father replied, “Of course, we are ready to do whatever you ask.” The voice replied that, okay, they would bring him. The father and mother were overjoyed, and anticipated meeting their son. Two days later a car drove by their house, very fast; when the parents opened the door, they found a bag containing the remains of their son Fayyad, who had been hacked into pieces. But the point of the story, as Mother Agnes-Mariam told it, was not the heinous crime as such. The man who told the story said to the warring factions that, although the death of his son was a crime without justification, a loss that had taken away his reason for living, and that, if there was anyone there who had good reason for wanting to seek revenge, it was him, he was, nevertheless, there and then, forgiving his enemies, and beseeching them all, for the good of Syria, to forgive each other. This man, as Mother Agnes-Mariam pointed out, was a Sunni Muslim. She said this, pointing out that this kind of reconciliation is open to all, and is the only way forward if Syria is to have a future.
Like a lot of people, I have been much preoccupied over the past year by what is going on in Syria; in general, I see my own government’s policies there as shameful, duplicitous, and motivated more by calculations of geopolitics than by any genuine concern for the people in that country who are suffering and dying. It is easy to become cynical about what is going on, both in Washington and in Syria itself. It is easy to despair, or to be critical. Mother Agnes-Mariam is one courageous woman who, instead of despairing about the situation, is there on the ground actively doing something about it. She is certainly critical about lies that are told to perpetuate the war; yet the focus of her effort is not there, but on the process of reconciliation which is necessary if all the various parties are to live in peace. She is going to be in the United States for the next month, raising support for her ministry; if she plans to speak in your town, I would urge you to go and hear what she has to say.
Lyceum choir to sing on EWTN
April 24, 2013
The Lyceum School Choir — or, to give it its more proper title, the “Lyceum Schola Cantorum” — will be singing this Thursday, April 25th, at a televised mass on EWTN. I will be among them, in the bass section. The mass will be televised at 8:00 a.m. Eastern Daylight Savings time, and will be rebroadcast at 12 noon and 7 p.m. We will be singing parts of Palestrina’s Missa Brevis, among other things. A live stream of the mass can be watched, at the aforementioned times, at the link below.
http://www.ewtn.com/multimedia/live_player.asp?satname=domenglp&telrad=t001&servertime=20134221732
Happy Easter
March 31, 2013
I have not written anything on this blog for a long time; indeed, some readers (if this blog still has readers) may wonder to find me still among the living. But I would like, first, to wish those who celebrated today Christ’s resurrection a Happy Easter. For myself, due to an unusually long gap this year between the dates of Orthodox Easter (or Pascha, if you prefer*) on the one hand and Catholic and Protestant Easter on the other, I shall not be celebrating the paschal feast until May 5th, along with the rest of the Orthodox world. (This discrepancy is rooted in a difference between the Julian and Gregorian calendars; more precisely, it arises from the fact that the Orthodox churches, or most of them, use the date of the vernal equinox on the Julian calendar — March 21st Julian = April 3rd Gregorian — to calculate the feast day, even though this date now falls 13 or 14 days later than the actual, astronomical vernal equinox. The Orthodox calculation of Easter — first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox — also requires that the feast come after Passover: that is, after the whole seven days of that feast are concluded. But there are so many minutiae involved in the calculation of Easter that even the above description is doubtless only partially complete; for instance, there is a full moon this year on April 25th, so why isn’t Orthodox Easter celebrated on the Sunday immediately following this, April 28th? I don’t know, and I despair of knowing.) Most Orthodox I speak with feel the discrepancy between Easter dates is silly and scandalous, and wish that a common date could be arrived at. It won’t be, mainly because the bishops know that any further changes to the calendar would only exacerbate existing divisions amongst the Orthodox — it would further aggravate and complicate the New Calendar / Old Calendar split that already plagues us.
The month of March 2013 has been a bitter one for me and my family. My sister died on March 6th, a cousin’s wife drowned on March 12th, an uncle died today of old age. My address list is slowly being transformed into a necrology, as I write the dates of death next to the names of the people I know. My sister, Ann Gilbert Ortiz, would have been 60 years old in May; she died of cancer, which she had fought for some twenty years. She was a gentle, decent person, loving towards her family, kind to friends and strangers. Human beings are unique and irreplaceable. I console myself sometimes with the thought that, if God took my sister away at this time, it was perhaps because there are miseries in store that he didn’t want her to have to see. I’m glad that my mother didn’t have to witness 9/11 and all the hysteria that followed it.
I like Pope Francis. I particularly like his economics. As for those who grumble because he does not countenance blessing homosexual unions as holy matrimony, well, neither does the New Testament (see Romans ch. 1, if you are in any doubt concerning this). He is simply doing his job, which is to defend the moral and doctrinal teaching of the Catholic Church.
I suppose I have said enough. Again, Happy Easter.
_________
*Some Orthodox boldly assert that “we don’t celebrate Easter — we celebrate Pascha.” See, for instance, an article from the Orthodox Information Center — which also makes the ingenious excuse for ignoring the astronomical date of the vernal equinox, that to observe it would require that the feast be celebrated on different dates in the northern and southern hemispheres. As though the fathers of the Nicene Council, when they laid down canons for a common celebration for the paschal feast, and tied it to the date of the vernal equinox, left it equivocal which hemisphere’s vernal equinox they meant — or else did not mean to speak of the astronomical vernal equinox, but instead meant to fix a particular date on the Julian calendar in perpetuum, however far that calendar might diverge from astronomical reality. Thus, we “observe days, and months, and times, and years” (Gal 4:10). And we are proud of this, as it shows us how deeply spiritual we are.
New Maronite Patriarch
March 16, 2011
Below is a quick, unofficial translation of an article that was published today on the website of the French journal, Le Point.
A new Maronite Patriarch in Lebanon
Bechara Rai, 71, succeeds Nasrallah Sfeir, 91, head of the Maronite community for 25 years.
LePoint.fr – Posted on 16/03/2011 at 09:53 – Edited on 16/03/2011 at 11:20
From OUR CORRESPONDENT IN BEIRUT, EMILIE SUEUR
The Lebanese Maronite bishops, gathered in synod since last Wednesday, elected on Tuesday morning their new patriarch: Bechara Rai, previously Bishop of Byblos. Bishop Rai, 71, takes over from Cardinal Nasrallah Sfeir, who led the Maronite Church for 25 years. In January, Cardinal Sfeir, aged 91, had tendered his resignation to the Vatican, which accepted it late in February.
After the election was announced, church bells began ringing, while the faithful, some in tears, arrived at Bkirki, seat of the patriarchate, to celebrate the new patriarch.
“Love and Partnership”
In Lebanon, the patriarch is not only a religious authority. In this country made up of many communities, a country which takes for granted the principle of political sectarianism, the Maronite Patriarch is also a political figure. In 2000 the Maronite Council of Bishops, chaired by Nasrallah Sfeir, issued a call for the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon. It would take another five years before Syrian troops would actually leave the land of the Cedars. Cardinal Sfeir did not hold aloof from tensions on the local political scene, either. In recent years, relations have deteriorated between the cardinal, on the one hand, and Michel Aoun and Suleiman Franjieh, on the other, two Maronite leaders allied to the Hezbollah-led “March 8” party.
After his election, Bechara Rai, 77th patriarch since the arrival of the first disciples of St. Maron in Lebanon over 1500 years ago, declared that he intends to follow in his predecessor’s footsteps. “I have chosen the motto for my journey, and it is ‘Love and Partnership,'” he added.
The Christian camp divided
While some view Bechara Rai as a moderate figure, others point out that he may be radical and combative, that the man does not mince words and has not always been a model of diplomacy. The new patriarch is, moreover, very committed to Lebanon’s sovereignty and rejects foreign interference. According to a Lebanese expert on religious affairs, Monseigneur Rai, whose surname means “shepherd” in Arabic, is a very learned man who does not compromise on principles, a man committed to Christian-Muslim dialogue, but also to the defense of the Christians of the East. Earlier this year, after the attack against a Coptic church in Alexandria in Egypt, Archbishop Rai had called for holding an Islamic summit aimed at “clarifying the real position of the Muslim world against fundamentalist currents which attack Christians under the guise of Islam.” Stressing that Eastern Christians are in danger, he called upon “Arab regimes to assume their responsibilities” in this regard.
Bechara Rai’s election also comes at a critical moment for the Lebanese scene in general and the Maronite community in particular. The “March 8” party, led by Hezbollah, and the “March 14” party led by Saad Hariri, a Sunni, have been at loggerheads since this past January 12 when the national unity government led by Hariri fell apart after the resignation of the “March 8” ministers. Appointed Prime Minister on January 25, Najib Mikati has still failed to form a new government. The backdrop to this crisis is the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, charged with trying the assassins of Rafiq Hariri. This is an international tribunal which, according to several international media reports, was prepared to point the finger at members of Hezbollah. In this crisis, the Maronite community is divided between the two sides, “March 8” and “March 14.”
Two other links on the same subject:
Rocco Palma: “At Bkirki, Black Smoke” (from the blog, Whispers in the Loggia)
Marie Dumières: “Bkirki joyful after the election of a new patriarch” (from Lebanon’s The Daily Star)
Pope Benedict’s speech before Parliament
September 17, 2010
Below is the text of the address Pope Benedict XVI delivered earlier today before members of both Houses of the British Parliament, assembled at Westminster Hall. The text of the address is taken from the site http://www.thepapalvisit.org.uk/, where other information about the Pope’s visit to the UK will be found.
Mr Speaker,
Thank you for your words of welcome on behalf of this distinguished gathering. As I address you, I am conscious of the privilege afforded me to speak to the British people and their representatives in Westminster Hall, a building of unique significance in the civil and political history of the people of these islands. Allow me also to express my esteem for the Parliament which has existed on this site for centuries and which has had such a profound influence on the development of participative government among the nations, especially in the Commonwealth and the English-speaking world at large. Your common law tradition serves as the basis of legal systems in many parts of the world, and your particular vision of the respective rights and duties of the state and the individual, and of the separation of powers, remains an inspiration to many across the globe.
As I speak to you in this historic setting, I think of the countless men and women down the centuries who have played their part in the momentous events that have taken place within these walls and have shaped the lives of many generations of Britons, and others besides. In particular, I recall the figure of Saint Thomas More, the great English scholar and statesman, who is admired by believers and non-believers alike for the integrity with which he followed his conscience, even at the cost of displeasing the sovereign whose “good servant” he was, because he chose to serve God first. The dilemma which faced More in those difficult times, the perennial question of the relationship between what is owed to Caesar and what is owed to God, allows me the opportunity to reflect with you briefly on the proper place of religious belief within the political process.
This country’s Parliamentary tradition owes much to the national instinct for moderation, to the desire to achieve a genuine balance between the legitimate claims of government and the rights of those subject to it. While decisive steps have been taken at several points in your history to place limits on the exercise of power, the nation’s political institutions have been able to evolve with a remarkable degree of stability. In the process, Britain has emerged as a pluralist democracy which places great value on freedom of speech, freedom of political affiliation and respect for the rule of law, with a strong sense of the individual’s rights and duties, and of the equality of all citizens before the law. While couched in different language, Catholic social teaching has much in common with this approach, in its overriding concern to safeguard the unique dignity of every human person, created in the image and likeness of God, and in its emphasis on the duty of civil authority to foster the common good.
And yet the fundamental questions at stake in Thomas More’s trial continue to present themselves in ever-changing terms as new social conditions emerge. Each generation, as it seeks to advance the common good, must ask anew: what are the requirements that governments may reasonably impose upon citizens, and how far do they extend? By appeal to what authority can moral dilemmas be resolved? These questions take us directly to the ethical foundations of civil discourse. If the moral principles underpinning the democratic process are themselves determined by nothing more solid than social consensus, then the fragility of the process becomes all too evident — herein lies the real challenge for democracy.
The inadequacy of pragmatic, short-term solutions to complex social and ethical problems has been illustrated all too clearly by the recent global financial crisis. There is widespread agreement that the lack of a solid ethical foundation for economic activity has contributed to the grave difficulties now being experienced by millions of people throughout the world. Just as “every economic decision has a moral consequence” (Caritas in Veritate, 37), so too in the political field, the ethical dimension of policy has far-reaching consequences that no government can afford to ignore. A positive illustration of this is found in one of the British Parliament’s particularly notable achievements — the abolition of the slave trade. The campaign that led to this landmark legislation was built upon firm ethical principles, rooted in the natural law, and it has made a contribution to civilization of which this nation may be justly proud.
The central question at issue, then, is this: where is the ethical foundation for political choices to be found? The Catholic tradition maintains that the objective norms governing right action are accessible to reason, prescinding from the content of revelation. According to this understanding, the role of religion in political debate is not so much to supply these norms, as if they could not be known by non-believers — still less to propose concrete political solutions, which would lie altogether outside the competence of religion — but rather to help purify and shed light upon the application of reason to the discovery of objective moral principles. This “corrective” role of religion vis-à-vis reason is not always welcomed, though, partly because distorted forms of religion, such as sectarianism and fundamentalism, can be seen to create serious social problems themselves. And in their turn, these distortions of religion arise when insufficient attention is given to the purifying and structuring role of reason within religion. It is a two-way process. Without the corrective supplied by religion, though, reason too can fall prey to distortions, as when it is manipulated by ideology, or applied in a partial way that fails to take full account of the dignity of the human person. Such misuse of reason, after all, was what gave rise to the slave trade in the first place and to many other social evils, not least the totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century. This is why I would suggest that the world of reason and the world of faith — the world of secular rationality and the world of religious belief — need one another and should not be afraid to enter into a profound and ongoing dialogue, for the good of our civilization.
Religion, in other words, is not a problem for legislators to solve, but a vital contributor to the national conversation. In this light, I cannot but voice my concern at the increasing marginalization of religion, particularly of Christianity, that is taking place in some quarters, even in nations which place a great emphasis on tolerance. There are those who would advocate that the voice of religion be silenced, or at least relegated to the purely private sphere. There are those who argue that the public celebration of festivals such as Christmas should be discouraged, in the questionable belief that it might somehow offend those of other religions or none. And there are those who argue — paradoxically with the intention of eliminating discrimination — that Christians in public roles should be required at times to act against their conscience. These are worrying signs of a failure to appreciate not only the rights of believers to freedom of conscience and freedom of religion, but also the legitimate role of religion in the public square. I would invite all of you, therefore, within your respective spheres of influence, to seek ways of promoting and encouraging dialogue between faith and reason at every level of national life.
Your readiness to do so is already implied in the unprecedented invitation extended to me today. And it finds expression in the fields of concern in which your Government has been engaged with the Holy See. In the area of peace, there have been exchanges regarding the elaboration of an international arms trade treaty; regarding human rights, the Holy See and the United Kingdom have welcomed the spread of democracy, especially in the last sixty-five years; in the field of development, there has been collaboration on debt relief, fair trade and financing for development, particularly through the International Finance Facility, the International Immunization Bond, and the Advanced Market Commitment. The Holy See also looks forward to exploring with the United Kingdom new ways to promote environmental responsibility, to the benefit of all.
I also note that the present Government has committed the United Kingdom to devoting 0.7% of national income to development aid by 2013. In recent years it has been encouraging to witness the positive signs of a worldwide growth in solidarity towards the poor. But to turn this solidarity into effective action calls for fresh thinking that will improve life conditions in many important areas, such as food production, clean water, job creation, education, support to families, especially migrants, and basic healthcare. Where human lives are concerned, time is always short: yet the world has witnessed the vast resources that governments can draw upon to rescue financial institutions deemed “too big to fail”. Surely the integral human development of the world’s peoples is no less important: here is an enterprise, worthy of the world’s attention, that is truly “too big to fail”.
This overview of recent cooperation between the United Kingdom and the Holy See illustrates well how much progress has been made, in the years that have passed since the establishment of bilateral diplomatic relations, in promoting throughout the world the many core values that we share. I hope and pray that this relationship will continue to bear fruit, and that it will be mirrored in a growing acceptance of the need for dialogue and respect at every level of society between the world of reason and the world of faith. I am convinced that, within this country too, there are many areas in which the Church and the public authorities can work together for the good of citizens, in harmony with Britain’s long-standing tradition. For such cooperation to be possible, religious bodies — including institutions linked to the Catholic Church — need to be free to act in accordance with their own principles and specific convictions based upon the faith and the official teaching of the Church. In this way, such basic rights as religious freedom, freedom of conscience and freedom of association are guaranteed. The angels looking down on us from the magnificent ceiling of this ancient Hall remind us of the long tradition from which British Parliamentary democracy has evolved. They remind us that God is constantly watching over us to guide and protect us. And they summon us to acknowledge the vital contribution that religious belief has made and can continue to make to the life of the nation.
Mr Speaker, I thank you once again for this opportunity briefly to address this distinguished audience. Let me assure you and the Lord Speaker of my continued good wishes and prayers for you and for the fruitful work of both Houses of this ancient Parliament. Thank you and God bless you all!
Notes from the Fordham Conference, Part Two
July 15, 2010
The second day of the conference, Tuesday, June 29th, fell upon the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul. Before the conference, I had written to one of the organizers to ask if there were plans to celebrate an Orthodox liturgy on campus on that day, and offering to help with the singing if necessary; I was told that, because the Orthodox chaplain of Fordham would be out of town, there would be no liturgy. Nevertheless, because Fr. Paul, who was staying at my house, wanted to attend mass that morning, I drove in early, and arrived at the Fordham campus about a half an hour before the conference was to begin. As it turned out, the 8:30 mass did not take place where I had assumed it would (namely, in the University Chapel), so neither of us attended liturgy that morning. Given the coinciding of the conference with the feast day of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and the importance of those apostles for the theme of Orthodoxy’s relationship with the West, it seems a little odd that more was not done to give the conference a liturgical setting; it suggests that scholarship and piety are, in the minds of some, things best kept in separate boxes. Fortunately, the presentations themselves did not encourage the idea of such a separation.
(3) Symposium II: Russian Thinkers of the 19th and 20th Centuries
The morning’s proceedings got underway promptly at 9 a.m., moderated by Dr. Mary-Jane Rubenstein of Wesleyan University, who introduced the first speaker, Dr. Vera Shevzov of Smith College. Dr. Shevzov’s lecture was titled “The Burdens of Tradition: Russia’s Orthodox Academic Theologians and ‘the West’ (late XIX-early XX cc).” As I do not read Russian, and am not particularly well versed in Russian Orthodox theology, much of the morning’s discussions concerned matters with which I am relatively unfamiliar. This was especially true of the first presentation, which dealt with the Slavophile movement and with Russian academic theology in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
Dr. Shevzov began her presentation by noting that a negative view of the West was inculcated in Russia from very early times. She cited the account of Great Prince Vladimir’s baptism from the twelfth century Russian primary chronicle: the priest who baptized Vladimir is there represented as telling him: “Do not accept the teachings of the Latins, whose instruction is vicious. Avoid their doctrine. God guard you from this evil, O Prince!” (Of course, the baptism of Rus’ occurred in the year 988, at a time when the churches of Rome and Constantinople were still nominally in communion, so the historicity of this narrative may be doubted.) This inheritance of Byzantine distrust was noted in 1906 by the religious thinker Vassily Roznov: “It was as if decaying and dying Byzantium whispered to Russia all of its vexations and bequeathed [them to] Russia to guard them. Russia, at the bedside of the departing one, gave its word, mortal enmity towards the Western tribes.”
But, Dr. Shevzov pointed out, Russian attitudes towards the West were complicated; religious enmity was not the whole story. At least from the time of Peter the Great, another attitude had also been fostered, that of admiration for the West’s material accomplishments. Nineteenth century Russian religious thinkers knew that the West was a fact that had to be faced if they were to give an account of Christian Orthodoxy that related it to the realities of modern life. Their various assessments of the West, in keeping with their commitment to Orthodox faith, constituted the theme of Dr. Shevzov’s presentation. “How,” she asked, “did Russia’s academic theologians conceptualize the West during these critical decades before Russia’s 1917 Bolshevik revolution?”
From 1855, during a period of “glasnost” that occurred during the reign of Tsar Alexander II, “many Orthodox academics embarked on a conscious mission to make Orthodoxy relevant to the modern world.” In this attempt, much use was made of the writings of Aleksei Khomiakov. Some nineteenth century writers credited him with framing the subject of Orthodoxy’s relationship with the West in new terms. Shevzov summed up Khomiakov’s teaching in the following way:
“Khomiakov conceived of the religious West, not as two separate and opposed confessions of faith, Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, but as a single phenomenon that, culturally and historically, could be traced to the civilization of the Roman Empire and the rise of the Roman Catholic Church through the Germanic tribes and the appearance of Protestants and beyond to the emergence of the modern culture of unbelief.”
Unlike previous writers, Shevzov noted, Khomiakov did not see doctrinal issues as the primary grounds for the split, but traced it back to “relational, dispositional, and ultimately experiential” causes, to a fundamentally different way of understanding ecclesial communion.
“‘Romanism began,’ wrote Khomiakov, ‘at the moment when Christians in the West placed personal independence and regional opinions over and above a universal unity of faith.’ By its act of unilaterally changing the Creed, the Roman world, he argued, implicitly declared that in its eyes the entire East was nothing but a world of bondsmen in matters of faith and teaching. And, with it, the ecclesial life ended for an entire half of the Church. The act of inserting the Filioque into the Creed, for Khomiakov, therefore, was more significant than the meaning of that clause. Its insertion was no less than what he called ‘an act of moral fratricide in the life of the Church.’”
“The propensity for unilateral thinking and action” resulted in what Khomiakov saw as “the unavoidable decline of faith in the West.” It “deprived faith of its moral foundation, thereby making authentic faith impossible.”
Even for Khomiakov, however, this characterization of the West as the scene of a religious decline does not tell the whole story. It is significant that Khomiakov’s most influential work, the essay “The Church is One,” had to be translated into Russian out of French.
In the latter part of her lecture, Dr. Shevzov surveyed some of the responses to Khomiakov among Russian academic theologians, responses which feature as one aspect of the nineteenth century Russian debate between Slavophiles and Westernizers. Not all academic theologians agreed with Khomiakov’s account of the West and of Orthodox Christianity. While some criticized his views about the Orthodox Church, many of them criticized his identification of Christianity with “national or cultural types.” A certain Professor Tsernovsky, from Kiev, argued against drawing sharp lines between Western and Eastern spiritual dispositions. He pointed out that many religious stereotypes (the organic, spiritual-minded East; the fragmented, legal-minded West) do not hold up upon close scrutiny; he asked why, if Russia represents a spiritually higher type, is the West so successful? In 1885, one Aleksandr Lupokhin wrote of Petrine, Pauline, and Johannine types; he thought only the Johannine type fully captured the essence of Christianity. (This motif was later taken up by Vladimir Soloviev, who drew from it a somewhat different conclusion.)
Dr. Shevzov ended her lecture by noting that, by the early twentieth century, Khomiakov and his views on the West were already coming to be regarded as “tradition,” and that this “tradition,” although never accepted completely uncritically (Fr. Pavel Florensky was cited as one author who saw it as raising a host of problems), continues to pose important challenges for us at the present time.
At the risk of sounding overly critical, I will add one further word. The impression was occasionally given, in the course of Dr. Shevzov’s lecture, that the necessity for her to read her paper within the allotted time overruled, in her own mind, the necessity for her audience to understand what she was saying. If (as is most unlikely) she should ever read this account of her lecture, I would urge her, in future presentations, to make a greater concession to human frailty, and speak more slowly.
Next, Professor Antoine Arjakovsky, a Russian Orthodox Christian who is Director of the Institute of Ecumenical Studies at the Ukrainian Catholic University at Lviv, spoke on “The Russian Religious Thinkers of the 20th Century and the Rediscovery of the West.” Dr. Rubenstein, the moderator, noted that Dr. Arjakovsky is a leader in ecumenical discussions, someone who has consistently advocated closer contacts and cooperation between Orthodox living in the West and Eastern-rite Catholics living in the East. A book of his essays has been translated into English, Church, Culture, and Identity: Reflections on Orthodoxy in the Modern World.
Dr. Arjakovsky stated at the outset of his lecture that this conference is important, not only for Orthodox identity, but for Christian identity as such. Orthodox have come to define themselves against the West; in response, Westerners have come to define themselves as not Orthodox. “But, if the consciousness of the universal Church succeeded in not opposing these two notions of West and Christian Orthodoxy, a new world,” he said, “would be outlined.” This remark was echoed again at the very end of his lecture, where he mentioned his hope for seeing the beginnings of “a post-secular world.”
Most of Dr. Arjakovsky’s lecture was organized into two parts. The first part treated of “critics of the West among Russian philosophers”; the second, longer part examined “the reversal of this criticism.”
Dr. Arjakovsky pointed out that, in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, many members of the Russian emigration viewed the West as responsible for the human disaster that had just taken place. Men like Florovsky, Berdyaev, Zinkovsky, Trubetskoi, Bulgakov and others were vocal in their criticisms of the West, with its rationalism and individualism; some of them shared Oswald Spengler’s views about an inevitable decline in the civilization of Europe. Berdyaev, in an essay written in 1926 about Konstantin Leontiev, acknowledged Leontiev as one of the first to recognize the multifarious nature of Western bourgeois culture and agreed with him in looking towards the Russian soul as a source of revival for all humanity. The linguist Nikolai Trubetskoi, who had settled in Berlin in 1925, wrote of the Russian soul’s having become contaminated by the Western enlightenment, and needing to look eastward towards the Mongolian tribes of Ural and Altai; his theories became the source of something called “the Eurasian movement,” which, before this conference, I had never heard of, but which, apparently, is the source of some important currents of political thought in contemporary Russia; mention was made of a certain Aleksandr Dugin, a contemporary writer of this school who has been influential on Vladimir Putin. In the 1920’s, members of the Eurasian movement included the writers Bitsili, Savitsky, Florovsky, Zuvchinsky, and Zinkovsky (note: this is from audio transcription; it is quite possible that some of these names are misspelled).
“For these thinkers, the crisis of the West was bound to a metaphysical problem,” a problem traced to a deviation from Orthodox faith. Like the later Yannaras, Sergei Bulgakov wrote at this time of Thomas Aquinas as beginning, not from the personal, trihypostatic God, but from Aristotle’s impersonal divinity. This metaphysical analysis led, in the second generation of the Russian Orthodox diaspora, to a new self-definition as Orthodox (rather than as Russian, Serb, etc.) among men like Lossky, Schmemann, Meyendorff, and Evdokimov. An insistence upon Orthodoxy as the heart of their Christian identity, which they defined in a universal, not nationalistic, way.
At this point, Dr. Arjakovsky moved on to the second part of his lecture, his consideration of the reversal of the criticism of the West. He first pointed out that Russian thought in the twentieth century was not static or monolithic. Through their bonds of friendship with Western Christians in Germany, France, and Great Britain, many members of the Russian diaspora, in the 1920’s and 30’s, came to a new discovery of the complexity of the West, and, with that, came to reexamine certain ways of understanding the Christian East. Notions of a “Holy Russia” (Sviataya Rus’) opposed to a heretical West were seen as partaking of a certain mythologizing tendency, bordering on Manichaeism. Fedotov wrote, in 1926 in the journal Put’ (“the Way”), of his friendship with Benedictines; Bulgakov wrote in his memoir of his friendship with a Greek Catholic priest from Lithuania; likewise, there was his friendship with Bp. Gore, in connection with the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius. One landmark discussion at this time was a conference held in Paris on May 27, 1930, on the subject of East and West, attended by such men as Malraux, Maritain, Berdyaev; the “East,” for the French at that time, meant, more particularly, Germany. Berdyaev was convinced that notions of “East” and “West” are “myths”: we are always to the East of somebody else. At this conference Berdyaev asserted, carelessly, that “Russia is the country of revelation; Russia will one day save the West.” To which a friend of Malraux’s, Jean Absence [?], replied: “That Christianity comes from Jerusalem does not mean that the West was not baptized.” (I would note, in passing, that this reply recalls the response given by St. Gregory the Theologian in the fourth century to those, at the Second Ecumenical Council, who were claiming that the East enjoys primacy or spiritual seniority, because that is where Christ was made man, and that is where the sun rises; St. Gregory replied that, if Christ became incarnate in the East, it was very possibly because he knew that, to work human salvation, he had also to die, and it was easier for him to get killed there.)
These contacts and experiences of life in the West, Dr. Arjakovsky noted, led some of these Russian thinkers to rethink Orthodox history, a rethinking that was connected with their involvement in the ecumenical movement. He gave three concrete examples:
- Berdyaev’s critique of Florovsky’s voluntarist historiography;
- Bulgakov’s critique of the Orthodox historiography of the Council of Florence; and
- Nikolai Zernov’s and Mira Lot-Borodine’s criticism of the myth of Holy Rus’.
I will speak mostly about the first two of these. Berdyaev, in an article that appeared in the journal Put’ in 1937, criticized Florovsky’s Ways of Russian Theology, with its story of the fall of Russian theology from the standards of Byzantine perfection, as romanticized nostalgia for a mythical, lost paradise. Florovsky, Berdyaev wrote, “does not admit that Byzantinism either fell into decline or died by virtue of its own actions.” He saw him as uncritically accepting anti-Western Slavophile theories. According to Berdyaev, Florovsky’s failure to engage with philosophical categories of thought prevented him from appreciating many Russian authors, including Tolstoy. (Dr. Arjakovsky noted that, in a recent book on Orthodoxy, Archbishop Hilarion Alfeyev tries to rehabilitate Tolstoy, but he doesn’t address Tolstoy’s reasons for being dissatisfied with the Russian Orthodox culture of his day.) Moreover, Florovsky rejects Peter Moghila as a latinizer, although he can find in his works not one theological proposition that he can positively dismiss as unorthodox; in a similar vein, the Council of Jassy, which accepted Moghila’s statement of faith, was accepted by the four Eastern patriarchates, yet Christos Yannaras describes it as a “Latin council.”
In moving on to his second point, Bulgakov’s critique of the Orthodox historiography of the Council of Florence, Dr. Arjakovsky noted that, although Bulgakov later rejected “the temptation to accept papal infallibility,” he never went back on his acceptance of the ecumenicity of the Council of Florence, an acceptance first stated in 1922; even in his memoir, Quiet Thoughts, written late in his life, he still maintains this point. Bulgakov thinks that many of the problems faced by the Russian Church in its history could have been avoided if the Council of Florence had been accepted by the Orthodox people. (Among these problems: its paralysis, its support for Caesaropapism, its incapacity to set up a doctrinal authority that protects the truth of the faith….) He throws out the historiography that rejects Florence as a “pseudo-council.” All the local Churches participated in this council; all approved it. The Patriarch, the Emperor, sixteen metropolitans, signed the Decree of Union. True, Mark of Ephesus refused to sign. But never, at any previous ecumenical council, had there been total unanimity. Bulgakov did not accept the claim that “pressures” on the Greek delgation to accept union constitute sufficient grounds for rejecting the council as invalid. No previous council had allowed its delegates so much time to make up their minds (that they were not forced to stay is shown by the fact that some of the Greeks left of their own free will). No previous council had occasioned greater expenses than the pope had incurred at this council to maintain the large Greek delegation. Bulgakov questions whether a local council (Constantinople 1484) has the right to revoke the decisions of what he calls “the Eighth Ecumenical Council.” Only a new ecumenical council would possess such a right, and a new ecumenical council hasn’t occurred.
It is not only Bulgakov, among Orthodox theologians, who saw Florence as a true and canonically-valid council. Arjakovsky notes that Olivier Clément also shared this view.
Clément wrote an essay on Francis of Assisi, which, said Dr. Arjakovsky, is about to appear in print in about a month; he read a rather lengthy passage from it. The passage noted that, whereas Western (Franciscan) spirituality is commonly thought to stress the stigmata and Good Friday, Orthodox spirituality, by contrast, is seen as stressing the Taboric Light and the resurrection. But Francis’s stigmata are a reply to the glorified Lord, who, in his resurrected body, retains the marks of his crucifixion. For Clément, the holiness of St. Francis is a revelation of the Church. If Francis is a saint, it is because “the eucharist (in the West, after 1054) kept all its power of life.” This presence of holiness means, for Clément, that, in the East and in the West, there is one single eucharist, hence, one single Church. In responding to the lives of the saints, who reveal the divine-human reality of Christ in both East and West, we must not be confined to the surface level of things, but dig towards the center.
Professor Arjakovsky concluded his lecture by asking whether, if Orthodoxy is in fact, as Florovsky and Yannaras have stated, a “life-style,” and not a religion (“the transformation of the mortal individuality into the personal relation,” as Yannaras says), it is genuinely possible to confine this experience within the boundaries of Hellenic and Russian civilization. As Sergei Bulgakov wrote in 1932, “Orthodoxy is not an institution. Orthodoxy is the Church of Christ on the Earth. It is the New Life, with and in the Christ, moved by the Holy Spirit.” Thanks to this definition, Arjakovsky said, “Eastern Churches can open to Western Churches in a new and more reconciled way, and vice versa. This is, for me, the beginning of a post-secular world.”
The third lecturer that morning was Dr. Paul Gavrilyuk, associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas and an author whose recent works include The Suffering of the Impassible God: The Dialectics of Patristic Thought (Oxford 2004) and Histoire du catéchuménat dans l’Église ancienne [A history of the catechumenate in the ancient Church] (Paris: Cerf, 2007). He spoke on the theme, “The Case of ‘Westernization’ vs. Hellenization: the Methodological Limitations of Georges Florovsky’s ‘Neopatristic Synthesis.’”
Dr. Gavrilyuk wished participants at the conference a happy feast day of Sts. Peter and Paul, thanked Professors Demacopoulos and Papanikolaou for organizing the event, and noted his sense that, at this conference, “we are witnessing something new, perhaps a new trend, perhaps a new school of Orthodox theology” (the “Fordham school”?).
He added, “it is very common among us Orthodox to use the category of the West as a blanket for everything that is wrong with the world in general, and with theology in particular.” He expressed his hope that the main contribution of this conference would be to deconstruct and question “this rather facile, cavalier, and rather obviously false assertion,” together with his hope that the results of this conference (and of recent, similar conferences at St. Vladimir’s Seminary and the Volos Academy in Greece) would be disseminated among the Orthodox faithful, that we would not merely be talking amongst ourselves.
After these preliminaries, Dr. Gavrilyuk summed up the approach he would be taking to his subject. Having reminded his audience that the late Archpriest Georges Florovsky is credited with initiating a “return to the fathers” in twentieth century Orthodox theology, that Florovsky viewed Christian Hellenism as “the norm by which all modern theological proposals were to be judged,” believed Western influences had led to the “Babylonian captivity” of Eastern Orthodox thought, and offered a “Neo-Patristic synthesis” as a reform program, Dr. Gavrilyuk stated three things that he proposed to do:
”In this paper, I will discuss the polemical motivations and the constructive aspirations of Florovsky’s retrieval of the fathers.
“I will discuss how his engagement with the Eurasian movement influenced his thinking about the Ways of Russian Theology….
“I will also consider the methodological parallels between Adolph von Harnack’s view of the ‘Hellenization’ of early Christian theology and Florovsky’s account of the ‘Westernization’ of Russian theology.”
On the whole, that was a very accurate synopsis of what Dr. Gavrilyuk proceeded to speak about in the course of his lecture. Rather than recount in detail what was said in it (which would carry this already-long blog post to extraordinary lengths), I will content myself here with noting some of the main things I learned.
As a young man, Florovsky lived through a time of political crisis (a world war, two Russian revolutions, the exiling of the religious intelligentsia, the rise of Hitler in Germany), and the sense of crisis never left him. One of the ways the Russian emigrés responded to their new immersion in a foreign society was to turn their attention towards the nineteenth century Russian debate between Westernizers and Slavophiles. In the early 1920’s, Florovsky (whose family left Russia in 1920) participated in the “Eurasian movement,” a kind of updated Slavophilism, about which something already was said above. It was a movement which aimed at becoming the ideological future of Russia (and which, Dr. Gavrilyuk noted, now appears to be succeeding in the persons of Putin and Medvedev). Between the years 1921 and 1923, the Eurasians produced three volumes of collected essays, The Exodus to the East (1921), The Ways [?] (1922), and Russia and Latinity (1923); Florovsky was one of the contributors to these volumes. The Eurasians were relentless critics of “the rotten, decaying West” (an expression borrowed from the Slavophile Nikolai Danievski, later to be echoed by Nikita Khrushchev). Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West had begun to appear in the year 1918, and was read by the Eurasians and other Russian emigrés; it is from this work that Florovsky borrows his term “pseudomorphosis.”
The Eurasians were strongly critical of Roman Catholicism, to which they referred using the term “Latinity.” The harshest statements occur in their third volume of essays, Russia and Latinity, in the introduction to which it is claimed that, “for a Russian Orthodox believer in France to be converted to Roman Catholicism is worse than to be killed by the Bolsheviks in Communist Russia: the former leads to the eternal perdition of the soul, the latter, merely to the temporal destruction of the body.” When this assertion was criticized by Prince Trubetskoi in the pages of the journal Put’, the Eurasians promptly responded by publishing an open letter in defense of their comparison of Bolshevism and Catholicism, an open letter which Florovsky signed. Although Florovsky later claimed that he had never completely shared in the Eurasians’ political agenda, it seems fairly clear that, at this stage in his career, he must have shared to some extent in their anti-Western, anti-Catholic sentiments. (The charge came rather quickly from Berdyaev that the Eurasian movement had fascist tendencies.)
In 1926, Florovsky began to distance himself from the other Eurasians, and his final break with the movement came with his publication of an article, “The Eurasian Delusion” (1928). It seems that it was the political side of the movement with which he chiefly disagreed.
Dr. Gavrilyuk believes that “there is a connection between the anti-Western impulse of Eurasianism and the fundamental methodological assumption of The Ways of Russian Theology.” Any rapprochement with the West, the Eurasians held, would distort Russia’s historical destiny. Similarly, in his preface to The Ways of Russian Theology, Florovsky expressed his conviction that “all interruptions and spiritual failures in Russian development” had occurred on account of Russia’s “intellectual separation from Patristics and Byzantinism,” and his intention to narrate the history of those failures in that volume.
Prof. Gavrilyuk described Florovsky’s Ways of Russian Theology as a drama in three acts, with a significant prelude. The prelude is Medieval Russia’s fateful decision to embrace Byzantine Christianity, but, together with this, its inadequate appropriation of the Byzantine heritage. Liturgy, iconography, and asceticism were taken on; theology, as such, was not. The enormous richness of cultural material was, Florovsky stated, a heritage “too heavy and too perfect” to be absorbed.
The first act of the drama shows a Latin pseudomorphosis. It is the period of the Kievan academy, under Peter Moghila. Florovsky acknowledges that, under Moghila, the Russian Church emerged from the disorganization it had experienced in the aftermath of the Synod of Brest-Litovsk (1596). But, he said, “everything was suffused with an alien spirit,” a Latin spirit. “The very soul of the people comes to be latinized.” Gavrilyuk noted the connection of this description with the rhetoric of the Eurasian pamphlets, and the use made by Florovsky of Spengler’s notion of “pseudomorphosis.”
The second act showed a Protestantizing pseudomorphosis. It was the period of Peter the Great’s reforms, his abrogating of the Patriarchate, his instituting of the office of Prokurator in the person of Theophan Prokopovich. Everything was to be fitted to Protestant standards. The theological effect of this was a divorce between school theology and popular piety, a divorce not overcome until the nineteenth century.
The third act was seen in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with a pseudomorphic transformation of Orthodox theology under the influence of German philosophical idealism. In this case, Florovsky’s polemics were directed chiefly against the Orthodox Sophiologists: Soloviev, Florensky, Bulgakov, and others. He considered them as exhibiting an even greater estrangement from patristic theology than the previous aberrations — a claim which Dr. Gavrilyuk stated was quite unfair.
Later in his lecture, Prof. Gavrilyuk drew a detailed comparison between the functional role played by the idea of “westernization” in Florovsky’s thought and the idea of “hellenization” as found in the writings of the historian Adoph von Harnack (1851-1930). Both authors see an originally pure Christian state to have been corrupted: Harnack sees “hellenization” as having corrupted the primitive Christian message; Florovsky sees “westernization,” in its various manifestations, as the recurrent bane of Russian Christianity, and that from which it must be cured by a heavy dose of the fathers — for Florovsky, indeed, Russian Christianity needs to be “re-hellenized.” Although Florovsky strongly disagrees with Harnack in his assessment of the appropriateness of Greek, ontological modes of thought as applied to the Christian Gospel, he resembles him in terms of his methodology; Gavrilyuk describes him as Harnack’s “theological antidote.”
Some of the most interesting reflections in the lecture occurred towards the end, when Professor Gavrilyuk raised questions about how far Florovsky’s attitudes towards Western Christianity may have been modified by the fact of his living in the West for most of his life. He was certainly not unsensible of the virtues of the Christians among whom he lived. In a speech given at the opening of St. Vladimir’s Seminary, at a time when he had become a notable and respected figure in the ecumenical movement, Florovsky said the following:
“Orthodoxy theology has, in recent decades, been speedily recovering from the unhappy pseudomorphosis by which it was paralyzed for too long. But to regain once more its own Eastern style and temper must mean for Orthodox theology no detachment from the rest of the Christian world. What is to be rejected and repudiated, in the Westernizing school of Orthodox theology, is its blind subservience to the foreign traditions of the schools, and not its response to the challenges of other traditions, not the fraternal appreciation of what has been achieved by others. All riches of the Orthodox tradition can be disclosed and consummated only in a standing intercourse with the whole of the Christian world. The East must face and meet the challenge of the West, and the West, perhaps, has to pay more attention to the legacy of the East….”
Professor Gavrilyuk concluded his lecture with a theological meditation, which I hope I may be allowed to quote:
“The difference of the theological grammars of East and West is not a sufficient ground for guarding our theology forever against all Western influences. The distinctly Western theological beliefs are often assumed to be false merely on the grounds that they are Western. This genetic fallacy has poisoned our theological thinking for too long. Yet it is precisely the staunchly anti-Western Orthodox thinkers who end up being utterly dependent upon the West, even if this dependence is expressed in the form of a reflective rejection. If we reject the Western Other, without making an effort to understand the Other, paradoxically we are letting ourselves be more dependent on the Other. The search for truth cannot be limited by geography. It is not the cultural uniqueness of Eastern Orthodoxy, but the divine revelation, appropriated by the mind of the Church, that should serve as the main criterion of Orthodoxy. Thus, in order to fulfill Florovsky’s inspiring vision, we need to move beyond the limitations of his historiography.”
All in all, a remarkable lecture, and a remarkable session of the conference, one that I am grateful that I was able to attend.
Notes from the Fordham Conference, Part One
July 6, 2010
Last week I attended a conference at Fordham University on the theme of “Orthodox Constructions of the West.” The conference took place at Fordham’s Rose Hill campus in the Bronx, and lasted for three days, Monday through Wednesday, June 28-30. I drove in each day from my home in Northern New Jersey, and acted as a driver for two other scholars, one of whom lives in New Jersey, another of whom was visiting from Greece and stayed at my home during the conference. Because I woke up around 5:00-5:30 a.m. on the days of the conference, and nevertheless went to bed at my usual hour (midnight – 1:00), by the end of it I was thoroughly exhausted. But the conference was well worth the effort made to attend it.
The organizers, Drs. Aristotle Papanikolaou and George Demacopoulos, professors of theology at Fordham University, have managed to turn Fordham into a thriving center for Orthodox studies. Both of them are relatively young, probably not much past their mid-30’s. They are a dynamic pair of scholars, all evidence suggests that they strongly support Orthodox-Catholic ecumenism, and one can only expect further good things from them in the years to come. The themes of the two conferences they have hosted so far — Orthodox Readings of Augustine in 2007 and Orthodox Constructions of the West this year — point to a settled desire to foster a more positive Orthodox reception of the West and its theology, or at least, a more critical stance toward standard Orthodox portrayals of the West as irredeemably Other.
I took many notes at the conference, and made use of a small digital recording device, which will allow me to provide some extended, verbatim quotations. (I hope that that will not involve me in any legal difficulties.) At present, I expect to follow up this present post with at least one or two more on the conference’s proceedings.
(1) Fr. Taft’s address
The tone of the conference was ably set by the first speaker, Fr. Robert F. Taft, SJ, the world’s foremost living scholar on the Byzantine liturgy. (Dr. Demacopoulos, in introducing him, noted with amazement that he has over 800 publications to his name.) His keynote address, delivered on Monday morning, was titled, “Perceptions and Realities in Orthodox-Catholic Relations Today: Reflections on the Past, Prospects for the Future.” The title, phrased in such general terms, does not do his talk justice. It was, in fact, a passionately argued plea to both sides for historical objectivity and fairness when dealing with the problem of the continuing breach of communion between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches. Near the beginning of his talk, Fr. Taft stated the following:
I have on more than one occasion made clear in print the positions I am happy to repeat here: that I consider the Orthodox Churches the historic, apostolic Christianity of the East, and sister Churches of the Catholic Church; that I recognize and rejoice in the fact that Orthodox peoples remain Orthodox, that the Catholic Church should support and collaborate with the Orthodox Churches in every way, foster the most cordial relations with them, earnestly work to restore communion with them, recognize their legitimate interests, especially on their own ground, avoid all proselytism among their flocks there or elsewhere, not seek in any way to undercut them, nor rejoice in or exploit their weaknesses, nor fish in their pond, nor seek to convert their faithful to the Catholic Church. But I espouse with equal explicitness the view that it is counterproductive for the cause of Christian unity and ecumenism to roll over and play dead in the face of any Catholic or Orthodox misbehavior, misinformation, or outright lying with regard to our dolorous past or to the problems that exist between us in the present. On these issues I speak from a lifetime of personal experience and proven love for Orthodoxy and its tradition, as clearly demonstrated by over half a century of studies, scholarship, and innumerable publications, both scholarly and popular.
A large portion of Fr. Taft’s talk was devoted to showing that “misbehavior” in the dolorous past — the use of secular force in support of religious objectives, the suppression of ancient Christian traditions foreign to one’s own — had been a practice common to all sides, and no one, certainly not the Jesuits, and certainly not the Orthodox, could pretend that their own Church had not engaged in it. From listening to him, one gets the sense that Fr. Taft, in his long and distinguished academic and ecumenical career, has had considerable experience of Orthodox selective memory — the sort of mentality that recalls the Fourth Crusade as though it had happened yesterday, but completely blocks out other significant historical facts, e.g., the fact that, not many years before the Fourth Crusade, some thousands of Latins were slaughtered in Constantinople in cold blood, and the papal delegate’s severed head was tied to a dog’s tail and dragged through the streets. For Fr. Taft, the lies we tell about our own and each other’s histories are a more important source of estrangement than theological ideas as such. By uncovering those lies, genuine scholarship forces us to question our demonizing of the Other, our self-representation as mere victims of history and persons needing no repentance.
My overall thesis is quite simple. Contrary to what one might think, the main problem we Catholics and Orthodox face in our ecumenical dialogue is not doctrine, but behavior. The issue is not that Catholics and Orthodox do not know how to pray and believe and live Christianity in the right and true apostolic way; the problem is that we do not know how to act. Learning to do so will mean adopting what I call “ecumenical scholarship and theology.” Ecumenical scholarship is not content with the purely natural virtues of honesty and fairness, virtues one should be able to expect from any true scholar. Ecumenical scholarship is a new and specifically Christian way of studying Christian tradition in order to reconcile and unite, rather than to confute and dominate. Its deliberate intention is to emphasize the common tradition underlying our differences, which, though real, are usually the accidental product of history, culture, language, rather than essential differences in the doctrine of the common, apostolic faith. Of course, to remain scholarly this effort must be carried out realistically, without glossing over real differences. But even in recognizing differences, this ecumenical effort must remain a two-way street, with each side judging itself and its tradition by the exact same criteria and standards with which it judges the other. Eschewing all scapegoating and a double-standard, ecumenical scholarship seeks to describe the beliefs, traditions, and usages of other confessions in ways their own, objective spokespersons recognize as reliable and fair. So ecumenical scholarship seeks not confrontation, but agreement and understanding; it tries to enter into the other’s point of view, to understand it, in so far as possible, with sympathy and agreement. It takes seriously the other’s critique of one’s own tradition, seeking to incorporate its positive contributions into one’s own thinking. It is a contest in reverse, a contest of Christian love, one in which the parties seek to understand and justify not their own point of view, but that of their interlocutors. Such an effort and method is not baseless romanticism; its theological foundation is our common faith, and God’s Holy Spirit is always with his Church, protecting the integrity of its witness, especially in the millennium of its undivided unity. Since some of the issues that divide us go right back to the first millennium, one must ineluctably conclude that these differences do not affect the substance of the apostolic faith, for, if they did, then, contrary to Jesus’ promise in Matthew 16, the gates of hell would indeed have prevailed against his Church.
As for myself, I am not sure that I agree with Fr. Taft’s assessment, that behavior and not doctrine is the chief impediment to Christian unity. But I accept his fundamental claim, that a conversion of hearts is necessary, and that ecumenical scholarship, in the sense that he uses the term, must play an important role in any such a conversion. I hope that my own work on John Bekkos will eventually deserve to be seen as one manifestation of what he calls “a contest of Christian love.”
(2) Symposium I: Byzantium and Beyond
Before going on, I should mention that much of my own interest in the conference centered upon meeting various of the participants. One of them was an Englishman, a Catholic priest, who goes by the internet name of “Fr. Paul,” with whom I had in fact corresponded for two or three years, since both of us are currently working on John Bekkos. He was the scholar, mentioned above, who was visiting from Greece and who stayed at my house in New Jersey for the duration of the conference. I met him for the first time last Monday, after Fr. Taft’s address, and had lunch with him. On Thursday, after the conference was over, I brought him into New York City, and, after taking him to see the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the World Trade Center site, and the Strand Bookstore, put him onto a subway train headed for Grand Central Station. As I have not heard back from him yet, I hope he reached his intended destination.
When the conference reconvened after lunch, Aristotle Papanikolaou introduced Dr. Demetrios Katos of Hellenic College, who chaired the first symposium, devoted to readings of the West in Byzantium and afterwards.
Dr. Tia M. Kolbaba of Rutgers gave the first lecture of the symposium, titled “The Tenth Century: Orthodox Constructions of the West in the Golden Age of Byzantium.” She noted that she approaches this subject of Byzantium primarily as a historian, not as a theologian, and that her lecture would be chiefly historical in nature. The chief things I learned from hearing it are, first, that a concern with the question of “azymes” (i.e., the use of unleavened bread in the eucharist) formed no part of the Byzantine critique of the West prior to the eleventh century, and that it first occurred in polemics, not against the West, but against the Armenian Church. Secondly, I learned that certain scholars now believe that the quarrel on the Mount of Olives in the early ninth century between Greek and Latin monks that is usually seen as a significant milestone in the history of the Filioque controversy actually never took place, that it is the fabrication of a later Latin author. I asked Dr. Kolbaba about this later, and she referred me to two works:
- Claudia Sode, Jerusalem, Konstantinopel, Rom. Die Viten des Michael Synkellos und der Brüder Theodoros und Theophanes Graptoi (Stuttgart 2001), esp. pp. 171-187, “Excursus: Der sogenante Jerusalem Filioquestreit.”
- Daniel Callahan, “The Problem of the ‘Filioque’ and the letter from the Pilgrim Monks of the Mount of Olives to Pope Leo III and Charlemagne. Is the Letter another Forgery by Adhemar of Chabannes?” Revue bénédictine 102 (1992), 75-134.
Thirdly, I learned that Dr. Kolbaba thinks that the Mystagogy of St. Photius is not one work, and that at least part of it, or perhaps even the whole of it, is not by St. Photius himself. She argues this point in a new book of hers, Inventing Latin Heretics: Byzantines and the Filioque in the Ninth Century, which I have not yet seen. I am interested to read the book and assess her argument, but I confess that, until I am persuaded by evidence, I remain skeptical.
The next lecturer was Dr. Marcus Plested, Vice Principal of the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies at Cambridge University, who will be spending the next year at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton here in New Jersey; he gave a talk titled, “‘Light from the West’: Byzantine Readings of Aquinas.” As a Greek Orthodox Christian who, in my undergraduate work and afterwards, has spent much time reading St. Thomas and who has a real admiration for him, I was predisposed to hear the lecture with great interest.
Perhaps the high point of the lecture, for me, was when Dr. Plested quoted, in translation, a Byzantine canon in honor of Aquinas, written by one Joseph of Methone. (Dr. Plested unfortunately neglected to mention that Joseph of Methone was a fifteenth-century Greek bishop who supported the Union of Florence.) The passage went something like this:
As a light from the West, he has illumined the Church of Christ,
the musical swan and subtle teacher, Thomas the All-Blessed,
Aquinas by name (Ἀκῖνος τῇ κλήσει), to whom, gathered together, we cry,
“Hail, O universal Teacher!”
If I were to sum up the theme of Dr. Plested’s lecture, it would be that the usual assumption that East and West operate with fundamentally different theological methodologies is “an assumption of relatively recent provenance”; it was by no means taken for granted in the late Byzantine empire that the kind of systematic analysis of theological questions displayed by Thomas in his writings is a form of theological reasoning that should be off-limits to Greek theologians. Not only was it emulated by the Kydones brothers, Demetrios and Prochoros, who translated numerous of Aquinas’s works into Greek, but it was also emulated by such Palamite, anti-unionist writers as Nilos Kabasilas and, later, George Gennadios Scholarios.
If I have a criticism of Dr. Plested’s lecture, it would chiefly be that his account of Thomas’s influence on the East was confined almost exclusively to questions of methodology, leaving out most questions of theological substance. It is all very well that a writer like Nilos Kabasilas (not to be confused with his nephew, Nicholas Kabasilas, who, though also a Palamite, eschewed theological controversy) uses scholastic method to undermine Thomas’s own postulates. From my own point of view, it is equally important to note that some Byzantines, like Manuel Kalekas and John Kyparissiotes, thought that Kabasilas was wrong, and they thought he was wrong, not on the basis of some abstract philosophical principles, but on the grounds that his theological postulates (e.g., the existence of four really existent “natures” in God) disagreed with the unanimous testimony of the fathers. In other words, a case could be made that Aquinas is himself a patristic theologian, and that that is how at least some of the Byzantines read him.
The next speaker was Dr. Norman Russell, now of London University. He gave a talk titled, “From the Shield of Orthodoxy to the Tome of Joy: the Anti-Western Stance of Dositheos II of Jerusalem (1641-1707).”
I had some slight acquaintance with Dr. Russell many years ago when I was a student at Oxford and he was living nearby at Campion Hall, and I confess that my first impressions centered less on the substance of his talk than on his marked change in appearance. His hair has gone mostly white, he now wears a close-cropped white beard that reminded me of someone I couldn’t quite place, probably some major literary figure from the late nineteenth century. But what most impressed me was his distinctly Orthodox appearance, Orthodox of a certain definite school or type. It would not surprise one, seeing him for the first time, to learn that this was a man who had written a major contemporary study of deification in the Greek fathers. When, at length, I spoke with him, he was very gracious to me; and, throughout the conference, he carried himself with a certain quiet dignity.
Near the beginning of his talk, Dr. Russell summed up the chief point of his argument in the following words:
What I wish to do in this paper is to suggest reasons why we should see Dositheos, not merely as an accomplished apologist, bound by the confessional mentality that characterized so many of his contemporaries, but as a man fired by a vision of Orthodoxy’s ecumenicity.
I will have to listen to the lecture again, to see if I can discern that point as emerging out of Dr. Russell’s narrative. Most of the actual notes I jotted down were more pedestrian in nature; I had known very little about Patriarch Dositheos II of Jerusalem before hearing this lecture, and so I wrote down whatever intriguing facts seemed to me worth remembering. I learned, for instance, that Dositheos wrote against one of my favorite authors, Leo Allatius, the original editor of most of Bekkos’s works, depicting him as someone who “uttered extreme blasphemies against the Eastern Church.” I learned that Dositheos’s Tome of Reconciliation was written against the Council of Florence, that his Tome of Love was written against Baronius, Bellarmine, and others, and that his Tome of Joy took a yet “more shrill” tone, in inveighing against Uniatism as the supreme danger for the Orthodox Church (this at a time when the Ottoman Turks had finally been turned back at the Battle of Vienna, and Western forces, having managed to take back some of Southeastern Europe, were imposing Western ecclesiastical jurisdiction in these territories, e.g., in Transylvania). He wrote a work against papal primacy, which was rebutted by the historian Le Quien (best known as the author of the work Oriens Christianus). He published a number of Palamite texts for the first time. He was pro-Russian, but disapproved of Peter the Great’s ecclesiastical policy. He was ordained a deacon at the age of eleven, and was raised to the office of Patriarch of Jerusalem at the age of 28. Finally, Dr. Russell said, Dositheos should be seen as standing in continuity with the Palamite, anti-unionist writers of the last Byzantine centuries. I suppose that that is a recommendation, though I cannot help thinking that the assessment given by Gerhard Podskalsky, cited by Dr. Russell early in his lecture, remains accurate: “Dositheos is remembered chiefly as a church politician of a high order, and an organizer and patron of Orthodox apologetics against the West.”
Because this is the hottest day New Jersey has seen in nearly a decade, with temperatures approaching 100º Fahrenheit, and there is no air conditioner in my home, I will now leave off reporting the proceedings from last week’s Fordham Conference, and will go seek shelter from the heat wave at the public library.
Pope Benedict’s letter to the Church in Ireland
March 22, 2010
The following letter of Pope Benedict XVI to the Catholic Church of Ireland, issued this past weekend, addresses the much-publicized scandals in that country involving clerical sexual abuse of children and allegations of official cover-up. The text is given below as found on the Vatican website.
Pastoral Letter of the Holy Father Benedict XVI to the Catholics of Ireland
1. Dear Brothers and Sisters of the Church in Ireland, it is with great concern that I write to you as Pastor of the universal Church. Like yourselves, I have been deeply disturbed by the information which has come to light regarding the abuse of children and vulnerable young people by members of the Church in Ireland, particularly by priests and religious. I can only share in the dismay and the sense of betrayal that so many of you have experienced on learning of these sinful and criminal acts and the way Church authorities in Ireland dealt with them.
As you know, I recently invited the Irish bishops to a meeting here in Rome to give an account of their handling of these matters in the past and to outline the steps they have taken to respond to this grave situation. Together with senior officials of the Roman Curia, I listened to what they had to say, both individually and as a group, as they offered an analysis of mistakes made and lessons learned, and a description of the programmes and protocols now in place. Our discussions were frank and constructive. I am confident that, as a result, the bishops will now be in a stronger position to carry forward the work of repairing past injustices and confronting the broader issues associated with the abuse of minors in a way consonant with the demands of justice and the teachings of the Gospel.
2. For my part, considering the gravity of these offences, and the often inadequate response to them on the part of the ecclesiastical authorities in your country, I have decided to write this Pastoral Letter to express my closeness to you and to propose a path of healing, renewal and reparation.
It is true, as many in your country have pointed out, that the problem of child abuse is peculiar neither to Ireland nor to the Church. Nevertheless, the task you now face is to address the problem of abuse that has occurred within the Irish Catholic community, and to do so with courage and determination. No one imagines that this painful situation will be resolved swiftly. Real progress has been made, yet much more remains to be done. Perseverance and prayer are needed, with great trust in the healing power of God’s grace.
At the same time, I must also express my conviction that, in order to recover from this grievous wound, the Church in Ireland must first acknowledge before the Lord and before others the serious sins committed against defenceless children. Such an acknowledgement, accompanied by sincere sorrow for the damage caused to these victims and their families, must lead to a concerted effort to ensure the protection of children from similar crimes in the future.
As you take up the challenges of this hour, I ask you to remember “the rock from which you were hewn” (Is 51:1). Reflect upon the generous, often heroic, contributions made by past generations of Irish men and women to the Church and to humanity as a whole, and let this provide the impetus for honest self-examination and a committed programme of ecclesial and individual renewal. It is my prayer that, assisted by the intercession of her many saints and purified through penance, the Church in Ireland will overcome the present crisis and become once more a convincing witness to the truth and the goodness of Almighty God, made manifest in his Son Jesus Christ.
3. Historically, the Catholics of Ireland have proved an enormous force for good at home and abroad. Celtic monks like Saint Columbanus spread the Gospel in Western Europe and laid the foundations of medieval monastic culture. The ideals of holiness, charity and transcendent wisdom born of the Christian faith found expression in the building of churches and monasteries and the establishment of schools, libraries and hospitals, all of which helped to consolidate the spiritual identity of Europe. Those Irish missionaries drew their strength and inspiration from the firm faith, strong leadership and upright morals of the Church in their native land.
From the sixteenth century on, Catholics in Ireland endured a long period of persecution, during which they struggled to keep the flame of faith alive in dangerous and difficult circumstances. Saint Oliver Plunkett, the martyred Archbishop of Armagh, is the most famous example of a host of courageous sons and daughters of Ireland who were willing to lay down their lives out of fidelity to the Gospel. After Catholic Emancipation, the Church was free to grow once more. Families and countless individuals who had preserved the faith in times of trial became the catalyst for the great resurgence of Irish Catholicism in the nineteenth century. The Church provided education, especially for the poor, and this was to make a major contribution to Irish society. Among the fruits of the new Catholic schools was a rise in vocations: generations of missionary priests, sisters and brothers left their homeland to serve in every continent, especially in the English-speaking world. They were remarkable not only for their great numbers, but for the strength of their faith and the steadfastness of their pastoral commitment. Many dioceses, especially in Africa, America and Australia, benefited from the presence of Irish clergy and religious who preached the Gospel and established parishes, schools and universities, clinics and hospitals that served both Catholics and the community at large, with particular attention to the needs of the poor.
In almost every family in Ireland, there has been someone – a son or a daughter, an aunt or an uncle – who has given his or her life to the Church. Irish families rightly esteem and cherish their loved ones who have dedicated their lives to Christ, sharing the gift of faith with others, and putting that faith into action in loving service of God and neighbour.
4. In recent decades, however, the Church in your country has had to confront new and serious challenges to the faith arising from the rapid transformation and secularization of Irish society. Fast-paced social change has occurred, often adversely affecting people’s traditional adherence to Catholic teaching and values. All too often, the sacramental and devotional practices that sustain faith and enable it to grow, such as frequent confession, daily prayer and annual retreats, were neglected. Significant too was the tendency during this period, also on the part of priests and religious, to adopt ways of thinking and assessing secular realities without sufficient reference to the Gospel. The programme of renewal proposed by the Second Vatican Council was sometimes misinterpreted and indeed, in the light of the profound social changes that were taking place, it was far from easy to know how best to implement it. In particular, there was a well-intentioned but misguided tendency to avoid penal approaches to canonically irregular situations. It is in this overall context that we must try to understand the disturbing problem of child sexual abuse, which has contributed in no small measure to the weakening of faith and the loss of respect for the Church and her teachings.
Only by examining carefully the many elements that gave rise to the present crisis can a clear-sighted diagnosis of its causes be undertaken and effective remedies be found. Certainly, among the contributing factors we can include: inadequate procedures for determining the suitability of candidates for the priesthood and the religious life; insufficient human, moral, intellectual and spiritual formation in seminaries and novitiates; a tendency in society to favour the clergy and other authority figures; and a misplaced concern for the reputation of the Church and the avoidance of scandal, resulting in failure to apply existing canonical penalties and to safeguard the dignity of every person. Urgent action is needed to address these factors, which have had such tragic consequences in the lives of victims and their families, and have obscured the light of the Gospel to a degree that not even centuries of persecution succeeded in doing.
5. On several occasions since my election to the See of Peter, I have met with victims of sexual abuse, as indeed I am ready to do in the future. I have sat with them, I have listened to their stories, I have acknowledged their suffering, and I have prayed with them and for them. Earlier in my pontificate, in my concern to address this matter, I asked the bishops of Ireland, “to establish the truth of what happened in the past, to take whatever steps are necessary to prevent it from occurring again, to ensure that the principles of justice are fully respected, and above all, to bring healing to the victims and to all those affected by these egregious crimes” (Address to the Bishops of Ireland, 28 October 2006).
With this Letter, I wish to exhort all of you, as God’s people in Ireland, to reflect on the wounds inflicted on Christ’s body, the sometimes painful remedies needed to bind and heal them, and the need for unity, charity and mutual support in the long-term process of restoration and ecclesial renewal. I now turn to you with words that come from my heart, and I wish to speak to each of you individually and to all of you as brothers and sisters in the Lord.
6. To the victims of abuse and their families
You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry. I know that nothing can undo the wrong you have endured. Your trust has been betrayed and your dignity has been violated. Many of you found that, when you were courageous enough to speak of what happened to you, no one would listen. Those of you who were abused in residential institutions must have felt that there was no escape from your sufferings. It is understandable that you find it hard to forgive or be reconciled with the Church. In her name, I openly express the shame and remorse that we all feel. At the same time, I ask you not to lose hope. It is in the communion of the Church that we encounter the person of Jesus Christ, who was himself a victim of injustice and sin. Like you, he still bears the wounds of his own unjust suffering. He understands the depths of your pain and its enduring effect upon your lives and your relationships, including your relationship with the Church. I know some of you find it difficult even to enter the doors of a church after all that has occurred. Yet Christ’s own wounds, transformed by his redemptive sufferings, are the very means by which the power of evil is broken and we are reborn to life and hope. I believe deeply in the healing power of his self-sacrificing love – even in the darkest and most hopeless situations – to bring liberation and the promise of a new beginning.
Speaking to you as a pastor concerned for the good of all God’s children, I humbly ask you to consider what I have said. I pray that, by drawing nearer to Christ and by participating in the life of his Church – a Church purified by penance and renewed in pastoral charity – you will come to rediscover Christ’s infinite love for each one of you. I am confident that in this way you will be able to find reconciliation, deep inner healing and peace.
7. To priests and religious who have abused children
You betrayed the trust that was placed in you by innocent young people and their parents, and you must answer for it before Almighty God and before properly constituted tribunals. You have forfeited the esteem of the people of Ireland and brought shame and dishonour upon your confreres. Those of you who are priests violated the sanctity of the sacrament of Holy Orders in which Christ makes himself present in us and in our actions. Together with the immense harm done to victims, great damage has been done to the Church and to the public perception of the priesthood and religious life.
I urge you to examine your conscience, take responsibility for the sins you have committed, and humbly express your sorrow. Sincere repentance opens the door to God’s forgiveness and the grace of true amendment. By offering prayers and penances for those you have wronged, you should seek to atone personally for your actions. Christ’s redeeming sacrifice has the power to forgive even the gravest of sins, and to bring forth good from even the most terrible evil. At the same time, God’s justice summons us to give an account of our actions and to conceal nothing. Openly acknowledge your guilt, submit yourselves to the demands of justice, but do not despair of God’s mercy.
8. To parents
You have been deeply shocked to learn of the terrible things that took place in what ought to be the safest and most secure environment of all. In today’s world it is not easy to build a home and to bring up children. They deserve to grow up in security, loved and cherished, with a strong sense of their identity and worth. They have a right to be educated in authentic moral values rooted in the dignity of the human person, to be inspired by the truth of our Catholic faith and to learn ways of behaving and acting that lead to healthy self-esteem and lasting happiness. This noble but demanding task is entrusted in the first place to you, their parents. I urge you to play your part in ensuring the best possible care of children, both at home and in society as a whole, while the Church, for her part, continues to implement the measures adopted in recent years to protect young people in parish and school environments. As you carry out your vital responsibilities, be assured that I remain close to you and I offer you the support of my prayers.
9. To the children and young people of Ireland
I wish to offer you a particular word of encouragement. Your experience of the Church is very different from that of your parents and grandparents. The world has changed greatly since they were your age. Yet all people, in every generation, are called to travel the same path through life, whatever their circumstances may be. We are all scandalized by the sins and failures of some of the Church’s members, particularly those who were chosen especially to guide and serve young people. But it is in the Church that you will find Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, today and for ever (cf. Heb 13:8). He loves you and he has offered himself on the cross for you. Seek a personal relationship with him within the communion of his Church, for he will never betray your trust! He alone can satisfy your deepest longings and give your lives their fullest meaning by directing them to the service of others. Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus and his goodness, and shelter the flame of faith in your heart. Together with your fellow Catholics in Ireland, I look to you to be faithful disciples of our Lord and to bring your much-needed enthusiasm and idealism to the rebuilding and renewal of our beloved Church.
10. To the priests and religious of Ireland
All of us are suffering as a result of the sins of our confreres who betrayed a sacred trust or failed to deal justly and responsibly with allegations of abuse. In view of the outrage and indignation which this has provoked, not only among the lay faithful but among yourselves and your religious communities, many of you feel personally discouraged, even abandoned. I am also aware that in some people’s eyes you are tainted by association, and viewed as if you were somehow responsible for the misdeeds of others. At this painful time, I want to acknowledge the dedication of your priestly and religious lives and apostolates, and I invite you to reaffirm your faith in Christ, your love of his Church and your confidence in the Gospel’s promise of redemption, forgiveness and interior renewal. In this way, you will demonstrate for all to see that where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more (cf. Rom 5:20).
I know that many of you are disappointed, bewildered and angered by the way these matters have been handled by some of your superiors. Yet, it is essential that you cooperate closely with those in authority and help to ensure that the measures adopted to respond to the crisis will be truly evangelical, just and effective. Above all, I urge you to become ever more clearly men and women of prayer, courageously following the path of conversion, purification and reconciliation. In this way, the Church in Ireland will draw new life and vitality from your witness to the Lord’s redeeming power made visible in your lives.
11. To my brother bishops
It cannot be denied that some of you and your predecessors failed, at times grievously, to apply the long-established norms of canon law to the crime of child abuse. Serious mistakes were made in responding to allegations. I recognize how difficult it was to grasp the extent and complexity of the problem, to obtain reliable information and to make the right decisions in the light of conflicting expert advice. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that grave errors of judgement were made and failures of leadership occurred. All this has seriously undermined your credibility and effectiveness. I appreciate the efforts you have made to remedy past mistakes and to guarantee that they do not happen again. Besides fully implementing the norms of canon law in addressing cases of child abuse, continue to cooperate with the civil authorities in their area of competence. Clearly, religious superiors should do likewise. They too have taken part in recent discussions here in Rome with a view to establishing a clear and consistent approach to these matters. It is imperative that the child safety norms of the Church in Ireland be continually revised and updated and that they be applied fully and impartially in conformity with canon law.
Only decisive action carried out with complete honesty and transparency will restore the respect and good will of the Irish people towards the Church to which we have consecrated our lives. This must arise, first and foremost, from your own self-examination, inner purification and spiritual renewal. The Irish people rightly expect you to be men of God, to be holy, to live simply, to pursue personal conversion daily. For them, in the words of Saint Augustine, you are a bishop; yet with them you are called to be a follower of Christ (cf. Sermon 340, 1). I therefore exhort you to renew your sense of accountability before God, to grow in solidarity with your people and to deepen your pastoral concern for all the members of your flock. In particular, I ask you to be attentive to the spiritual and moral lives of each one of your priests. Set them an example by your own lives, be close to them, listen to their concerns, offer them encouragement at this difficult time and stir up the flame of their love for Christ and their commitment to the service of their brothers and sisters.
The lay faithful, too, should be encouraged to play their proper part in the life of the Church. See that they are formed in such a way that they can offer an articulate and convincing account of the Gospel in the midst of modern society (cf. 1 Pet 3:15) and cooperate more fully in the Church’s life and mission. This in turn will help you once again become credible leaders and witnesses to the redeeming truth of Christ.
12. To all the faithful of Ireland
A young person’s experience of the Church should always bear fruit in a personal and life-giving encounter with Jesus Christ within a loving, nourishing community. In this environment, young people should be encouraged to grow to their full human and spiritual stature, to aspire to high ideals of holiness, charity and truth, and to draw inspiration from the riches of a great religious and cultural tradition. In our increasingly secularized society, where even we Christians often find it difficult to speak of the transcendent dimension of our existence, we need to find new ways to pass on to young people the beauty and richness of friendship with Jesus Christ in the communion of his Church. In confronting the present crisis, measures to deal justly with individual crimes are essential, yet on their own they are not enough: a new vision is needed, to inspire present and future generations to treasure the gift of our common faith. By treading the path marked out by the Gospel, by observing the commandments and by conforming your lives ever more closely to the figure of Jesus Christ, you will surely experience the profound renewal that is so urgently needed at this time. I invite you all to persevere along this path.
13. Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, it is out of deep concern for all of you at this painful time in which the fragility of the human condition has been so starkly revealed that I have wished to offer these words of encouragement and support. I hope that you will receive them as a sign of my spiritual closeness and my confidence in your ability to respond to the challenges of the present hour by drawing renewed inspiration and strength from Ireland’s noble traditions of fidelity to the Gospel, perseverance in the faith and steadfastness in the pursuit of holiness. In solidarity with all of you, I am praying earnestly that, by God’s grace, the wounds afflicting so many individuals and families may be healed and that the Church in Ireland may experience a season of rebirth and spiritual renewal.
14. I now wish to propose to you some concrete initiatives to address the situation.
At the conclusion of my meeting with the Irish bishops, I asked that Lent this year be set aside as a time to pray for an outpouring of God’s mercy and the Holy Spirit’s gifts of holiness and strength upon the Church in your country. I now invite all of you to devote your Friday penances, for a period of one year, between now and Easter 2011, to this intention. I ask you to offer up your fasting, your prayer, your reading of Scripture and your works of mercy in order to obtain the grace of healing and renewal for the Church in Ireland. I encourage you to discover anew the sacrament of Reconciliation and to avail yourselves more frequently of the transforming power of its grace.
Particular attention should also be given to Eucharistic adoration, and in every diocese there should be churches or chapels specifically devoted to this purpose. I ask parishes, seminaries, religious houses and monasteries to organize periods of Eucharistic adoration, so that all have an opportunity to take part. Through intense prayer before the real presence of the Lord, you can make reparation for the sins of abuse that have done so much harm, at the same time imploring the grace of renewed strength and a deeper sense of mission on the part of all bishops, priests, religious and lay faithful.
I am confident that this programme will lead to a rebirth of the Church in Ireland in the fullness of God’s own truth, for it is the truth that sets us free (cf. Jn 8:32).
Furthermore, having consulted and prayed about the matter, I intend to hold an Apostolic Visitation of certain dioceses in Ireland, as well as seminaries and religious congregations. Arrangements for the Visitation, which is intended to assist the local Church on her path of renewal, will be made in cooperation with the competent offices of the Roman Curia and the Irish Episcopal Conference. The details will be announced in due course.
I also propose that a nationwide Mission be held for all bishops, priests and religious. It is my hope that, by drawing on the expertise of experienced preachers and retreat-givers from Ireland and from elsewhere, and by exploring anew the conciliar documents, the liturgical rites of ordination and profession, and recent pontifical teaching, you will come to a more profound appreciation of your respective vocations, so as to rediscover the roots of your faith in Jesus Christ and to drink deeply from the springs of living water that he offers you through his Church.
In this Year for Priests, I commend to you most particularly the figure of Saint John Mary Vianney, who had such a rich understanding of the mystery of the priesthood. “The priest”, he wrote, “holds the key to the treasures of heaven: it is he who opens the door: he is the steward of the good Lord; the administrator of his goods.” The Curé d’Ars understood well how greatly blessed a community is when served by a good and holy priest: “A good shepherd, a pastor after God’s heart, is the greatest treasure which the good Lord can grant to a parish, and one of the most precious gifts of divine mercy.” Through the intercession of Saint John Mary Vianney, may the priesthood in Ireland be revitalized, and may the whole Church in Ireland grow in appreciation for the great gift of the priestly ministry.
I take this opportunity to thank in anticipation all those who will be involved in the work of organizing the Apostolic Visitation and the Mission, as well as the many men and women throughout Ireland already working for the safety of children in church environments. Since the time when the gravity and extent of the problem of child sexual abuse in Catholic institutions first began to be fully grasped, the Church has done an immense amount of work in many parts of the world in order to address and remedy it. While no effort should be spared in improving and updating existing procedures, I am encouraged by the fact that the current safeguarding practices adopted by local Churches are being seen, in some parts of the world, as a model for other institutions to follow.
I wish to conclude this Letter with a special Prayer for the Church in Ireland, which I send to you with the care of a father for his children and with the affection of a fellow Christian, scandalized and hurt by what has occurred in our beloved Church. As you make use of this prayer in your families, parishes and communities, may the Blessed Virgin Mary protect and guide each of you to a closer union with her Son, crucified and risen. With great affection and unswerving confidence in God’s promises, I cordially impart to all of you my Apostolic Blessing as a pledge of strength and peace in the Lord.
From the Vatican, 19 March 2010, on the Solemnity of Saint Joseph
Prayer for the Church in Ireland
God of our fathers,
renew us in the faith which is our life and salvation,
the hope which promises forgiveness and interior renewal,
the charity which purifies and opens our hearts
to love you, and in you, each of our brothers and sisters.
Lord Jesus Christ,
may the Church in Ireland renew her age-old commitment
to the education of our young people in the way of truth and goodness, holiness and generous service to society.
Holy Spirit, comforter, advocate and guide,
inspire a new springtime of holiness and apostolic zeal
for the Church in Ireland.
May our sorrow and our tears,
our sincere effort to redress past wrongs,
and our firm purpose of amendment
bear an abundant harvest of grace
for the deepening of the faith
in our families, parishes, schools and communities,
for the spiritual progress of Irish society,
and the growth of charity, justice, joy and peace
within the whole human family.
To you, Triune God,
confident in the loving protection of Mary,
Queen of Ireland, our Mother,
and of Saint Patrick, Saint Brigid and all the saints,
do we entrust ourselves, our children,
and the needs of the Church in Ireland.
Amen.
De unione ecclesiarum 