Interesting Report on Christians in Lebanon

The unusual blog Sigmund, Carl and Alfred, has a very interesting article on the plight of Christians in Lebanon entitled The Forgotten Christians of Lebanon.

Consider a few excerpts...

I am not suggesting that all Western involvement in the affairs of the Near and Middle East over the centuries has been detrimental to the region's Christians. Far from it. However, the fact remains that the West's interaction with the Middle East was always designed to serve primarily the West's interests. This includes the Protestant missionary activities of the nineteenth century, which, after failing to make noticeable headway among Muslims, turned their energies to converting the local Christians to the creeds of Europe's great Reformers. Resulting tensions and mutual misunderstandings between the native churches and the newly transplanted Protestants linger to the present.

Meanwhile, the reputed tolerance of Islam, particularly for the "People of the Book," as Jews and Christians are designated, created in reality the dhimmi system of second-class servitude, which, under the guise of toleration, was actually a system of subtle repression and dehumanization leading to gradual liquidation.

...

Back in the 1970s and '80s it became disgracefully fashionable in Western policy and media circles to put down the Lebanese Christians, particularly the Maronites. These attacks often bordered on outright racism. Similarly today it has become fashionable to lay all the blame for the Bosnian conflict on the shoulders of the Serbs. If the priorities of certain Western governments and their policy planners (Washington included) have dictated that such one-sided obfuscations serve as the basis for ethically dubious policies, the priorities of self-aware and morally critical Christians in these same Western countries ought to be markedly different.

...

Western apathy. In the hard-nosed world of realpolitik, petroleum-free Lebanon does not amount to much either strategically or economically for a country like the United States. Injecting other human and value-oriented parameters and ingredients into the policy calculus of Washington that would elevate Lebanon on the scale of foreign-policy priorities is in itself an awesome and daunting undertaking requiring prayer and patient hard work.

Read it all here.

St Athanasios on Music

Just as we make known and signify the thoughts of the soul through the words we express, so too the Lord wished the melody of the words to be a sign of the spiritual harmony of the soul, and ordained that the canticles be sung with melody and the psalms be read with the canticles.

Letter to Marcellunus, Saint Athanasios the Great (d 373)

Update on Bishop Nicholae

Catholic News Agency has the update....

Romanian Orthodox synod disciplines bishop for intercommunion with Catholics


Bucharest, Jul 11, 2008 / 06:03 am (CNA).- The Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church has decided to “forgive” two Orthodox bishops for their participation in religious rites with Eastern Catholics. However, it warned that no Orthodox cleric may celebrate sacraments or blessings with ministers of other religions on pain of excommunication.

Nicolae Corneanu, the Orthodox Metropolitan Bishop of Banat, had provoked controversy after receiving Holy Communion during a Greek Catholic Mass in Timisoara on May 25. The synod’s forgiveness has reportedly settled the controversy, according to the SIR News Agency.

“The Holy Eucharist is not a means and a stage towards the unity of the Christian Church, but the deepest manifestation of the unity of the Church, its highlight,” stated Patriarch Daniel of the Romanian Orthodox Church in a speech to the synod.

Patriarch Daniel reportedly intended to reassert the fundamental principle of Orthodox ecclesiology and ecumenism. He said that such gestures of “so-called inter-communion” in fact “reduce the dogmatic differences between the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church and undermine the unity of faith as the foundation of the reconstruction of the communion between the two Churches.”

The Patriarch reiterated that it is forbidden for Orthodox believers to receive the Eucharist in a different Church.

He also said the decision does not intend to treat other Christians “with arrogance or contempt” or to interrupt theological dialogue.

“Through a sincere, deep theological dialogue, the dogmas that separate the Catholic Church from the Orthodox Church can be redefined,” he concluded.

Father Francisc Dobos, spokesman for the Catholic Archdiocese of Bucharest, responded to the decision, saying in a press release, “We believe it is right for every Church to solve its own problems according to its own principles and regulations. We are convinced that the dialogue between the two Churches will move on, towards a communion from the same chalice.”

The Romanian synod also “forgave” Bishop Sofronie of Oradea, another Orthodox prelate, who had celebrated the blessing of holy water with the Greek Catholic Bishop of Oradea, Virgil Bercea, on “Twelfth Night,” the evening of Epiphany.

“The Holy Synod disapproved of the non-canonical gestures made by the two leaders and accepted their change of mind and repentance as a first sign of their correction,” read a press release from the Romanian Orthodox Patriarchate.

And so it goes

Is it Truth or Is It Propaganda?

Hat tip to Rorate Caeli for noticing the following article from the Religious Information Service of Ukraine.

Read it, and let it sink in before continuing...

Patriarch of Constantinople Proposes Eastern Catholicism’s Return to Orthodoxy
19.06.2008, [12:10] // Inter-Christian relations //

Munich—In a recent interview with the German ecumenical journal Cyril and Methodius, the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church in Constantinople Bartholomew I invited Eastern Catholic Churches to return to Orthodoxy without breaking unity with Rome. He noted that “the Constantinople Mother-Church keeps the door open for all its sons and daughters.” According to the Orthodox hierarch, the form of coexistence of the Byzantine Church and the Roman Church in the 1st century of Christianity should be used as a model of unity. This story was posted by KATH.net on 16 June 2008.

At the same time, the patriarch made positive remarks about the idea of “dual unity” proposed by the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Archbishop Lubomyr (Husar). Patriarch Bartholomew I noted in particular that this model would help to overcome the schism between the Churches.

Now before anyone gets too excited (or concerned), I checked the original KATH.net story, and it doesn't seem quite so irenic. My German is quite a bit rusty, so I hope someone will produce a translation.

Note that "1st century" should read "1st millennium".

If the Patriarch really were speaking along the lines this article suggests, he would be revealed as a Zogbyite! (Not that that's such a bad thing....) But until I see an accurate reportage of the original interview I will pray and leave it to our Lord. However, I can't help but think Moscow will not be favorable to this option unless it is seen as merely asking all us "Uniates" to come to our senses and return to the Orthodox fold.

Time will tell.

An Important Historical Lesson - The Fall of Byzantium

The epic historical study of the fall of Byzantium (recently aired in Russia) is available online at the Vizantia Website. The site includes the full film in several languages, including English.




As you can see, I've "youtube'd" it here, but go check out the site. It will be especially interesting if you read Russian, but interesting nonetheless! It is not without its particular viewpoint on East-West, Rome-Constantinople relations.

A Big T Byzantine Blog (Deep in the Heart of ...)

One of the better Eastern Christian blogs is that of Josephus Flavius, Byzantine, Texas. Josephus casts his net far and wide, finding thoughtful and informative entries to inspire prayer and reflection. Recently, he reported on the Melkite Patriarchal Synod meeting, the SCOBA (Orthodox Bishops in the US) Spring meeting, and most recently, a very good piece on children in church. (I highly recommend this last one as the issue of children's attendance at the Liturgy is a pervasive and perennial issue everywhere.)

Visit the site here. You'll soon add it to your bookmarks!

Chalcedon, the Pope, and an Orthodox Priest's View

Recently, the Post and Courier ran a series of articles on authority in various religious traditions. (Unfortunately, they forgot about us!) One of the entries was written by one of the local Orthodox Priests. For various reasons, I try not to engage in polemics with the Orthodox, particularly locally; but in this case, I was strongly tempted to write a rejoinder.

After an imaginative interpretation of Rublev's Icon of the Holy Trinity (which view very traditional orthodox would sternly condemn), we come to this paragraph (emphasis added by your rambling host):

There is, indeed a "head" bishop, just as the father is the head of the Trinity. In the Church on Earth, in the first centuries, this head bishop was the Bishop of Rome, the most prominent See, and where saints Peter and Paul were martyred. In the year 451, at the fourth Ecumenical Council held in Chalcedon, this honor was accorded to the See of Constantinople, called "New Rome," as the center of the empire shifted. Since that time, the Patriarch of Constantinople has enjoyed the place of Primus — first hierarch.

Now this interpretation of the twenty-eighth canon of the Council of Chalcedon as so stated is so egregiously wrong that I didn't know whether to reply with the facts or just shake my head at the silliness of it. Ultimately, I decided to ignore it.

However, over at Eirenikon a succinct retort to the typical Orthodox arguments related to the Council has found its way into blog-print. It comes from A. St. Leger Westall's The Fathers Gave Rome the Primacy from The Dublin Review in 1903. It is well worth reading.

Here is but a snippet:

The usual Anglican and Greek Orthodox interpretation of the canon is hat the Roman primacy was the gift either of the Nicene Fathers or the Fathers generally, and was a matter of mere ecclesiastical arrangement, and not, as Rome teaches, an inheritance from St. Peter. To this view there are four main objections, each one of which appears to be fatal, and in the cumulative force are so beyond all contradiction. First, the statement, thus interpreted is historically false. Secondly, it expressly contradicts the other explicit statements of the council, and renders its letter to Leo absolutely meaningless. Thirdly, the authors of the canon would have defeated their own purpose, for they would have knowingly and wilfully made it impossible for the Pope to ratify the canon, and their success depended, as they themselves assert, on gaining his assent. Fourthly, it makes the attitude of the Pope towards the canon inexplicable. Although one of the strongest champions of the Petrine claims of his see that history can produce, he betrays from the first to last no consciousness that this crucial statement affected, or was meant to affect, the privileges of his chair as the “Cathedra Petri.”

Also of interest, one might profit by going here, here, and here.

Nowadays, Constantinople typically references canon 28 as justification for claiming all Orthodox Churches in diaspora (read: anywhere outside the traditional geographical limits of the Pentarchy) are under its jurisdiction. This claim, not surprisingly, is typically denied in strong terms by the Patriarchate of Moscow and most of those following the Slavic Tradition. Amongst Rome's original objections was that it placed Constantinople ahead of Alexandria and Antioch, both ancient Sees founded by St Peter. So be it.

Having said all this, I re-assert that it is my usual habit not to enter into polemical discussions with the Orthodox. But lest anyone be misled by the views put forth in the P&C article noted above, I felt compelled to address them at least this much.

Bishop Nicolae - Champion or Traitor?

Catholic World News reports the sad unfolding of events in Romania, both to date and likely to come in the days and weeks ahead. Metropolitan Nicolae of Banat may soon be excommunicated from the Romanian Orthodox Church. The crime, of course, is his receiving the Body and Blood of Christ at a Romanian Catholic Divine Liturgy. Bishop Sofronie of Oradea may "go down" with him. Bishop Sofronie's crime? He dared to celebrate the Great Blessing of Waters at Theophany with a Romanian Catholic Bishop!

Read the whole story here.

Behold, the angels look down and weep.

Professor Gilbert (and Fr Paul) -- "The Timisoara Incident"

De unione ecclesiarum has become one of my must check sites. Professor Gilbert's study of Ecumenical John Bekkos is both enlightening and thought-provoking from many perspectives. For the Catholic westerner, it succintly raises awareness of the roots of the Schism and the political and theological issues at stake. For the eastern Catholic and the Orthodox, it confronts with the vitality and breadth of Eastern theology and spirituality that belies the Palamite-only interpretation that has been in vogue in the last few centuries.

Now joined by "Fr Paul", the blog promises only to become stronger. A must read, is Fr Paul's assessment of the “Timisoara incident” is well worth reflective reading and prayer.

To wit., Stop everything and go read it now!

Feast of the Divine Body of Christ

On the Thursday after the Feast of All Saints (Sunday after Pentecost) many Byzantine Churches celebrate the Feast of the Divine Body and Blood of our Lord. While this Feast has its origin in the West, where it is known as Corpus Christi, devotion to our Lord in the Reserved Sacrament also grew in importance in the East. By the eighteenth century, the Melkite and Ukrainian Greek Catholic traditions had firmly fixed the celebration as a joyous time of adoration and devotion to our Lord's Incarnation and the great Mystery of His Body and Blood which we receive at every Divine Liturgy. In current practice, it is celebrated on the aforementioned Thursday or the Sunday after All Saints.

Since the Second Vatican Council, some in the Byzantine Churches have downplayed the importance of the Feast, even going so far as claiming that it should be suppressed as a "Roman innovation". This reflects and unfortunate misunderstanding of the Eastern mind and history. While it is wholly appropriate to embrace the fullness of our Eastern Tradition, we must be careful to distinguish between Western-influenced accretions and organic Byzantine developments that are coherent with our faith and customs, even if we find no counterpart to them in the practices of our Separated Brethren. The historic lateness of the development of a particular devotion or celebration is no argument against its orthodoxy. If it were, we would have to reconsider cherished customs such as the Iconistasion, administering Holy Communion via the spoon, Tabernacles on the Altar, etc..

The Church is One in confessing the real Sacramental presence of our Lord Jesus Christ in the sacrifice of the Divine Liturgy. The prayers, ritual actions, and devotions of the Divine Liturgy clearly indicate that the Bread and Wine become no less than the Body and Blood of our Lord. Iconography depicts the reality of this Mystical Gift in many ways, including our Lord situated in the Communion Chalice. St John of Damascus, as one example among many, discusses the reality of our Lord's Sacramental presence in his masterful refutation of the iconoclasts. It is meet to cherish this beautiful celebration.

Here are the Aposticha in Tone Six (Plagal of the Second) of the Great Vespers and the Troparion and Kontakion for the Feast.

Heavenly Bread who so generously satisfy with the wealth of Your goods those who hunger for justice: bestow Your grace upon us who now adore You, and save our souls!

Verse: Taste and see how good the Lord is; blessed are those who trust in Him.

Divine Food, Wheat of the Elect who feed with heavenly Grace the souls of those who receive You: inflame our hearts and spirits with the Fire of Your Divine Love for the salvation of our souls.

Verse: I will take the chalice of Salvation and call upon the Name of the Lord.

Most Holy Wine who nurture virgins by pouring the grace of sanctification upon the souls of those who partake of You: cleanse our hearts of every sin, make them holy, and save our souls.

Verse: Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.

Lamb of God who take away the sins of the world, You move the hearts of all the faithful: they adore You deeply and reverently as they look upon You lifted up in the hands of Your holy priests. Together with the angels, they offer a hymn of praise to Your glory, crying out: O Lord, Life Itself, eternally living with Your Father and Your Holy Spirit: glory to You!

Verse: Now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

All the virgins come to you, Holy City of undisturbed purity, whose holy womb contained the King of Kings, from whose blood the Holy Spirit wove the porphyry robe of Christ Emmanuel, the One we now adore hidden in the Mystic Bread. O you who gave birth to the Incarnate God, intercede with Him for the salvation of our souls!

Troparion of the Divine Body in Tone One

Christ, having loved His own and loved them until the end, gave them His Body and His Blood as food and drink. Therefore, let us offer them adoration and say with fear: Glory to Your Presence, O Christ! Glory to Your Compassion! Glory to Your Condescension, for You alone are the Lover of Mankind!

Kontakion of the Divine Body in Tone Two

O Christ, do not turn Your Face away from me when I partake of the Bread which is Your Body and the Wine which is Your Blood. O Lord, let my sharing in these august Mysteries be not for my judgment or condemnation, but for my eternal and everlasting life.

May the Mystical Presence of our Lord in His Body and Blood lead us all in humility to repentance, forgiveness, and the Unity to which He calls us. Amen.

From the Patriarch of Antioch website

These are excerpts

Address of His Beatitude Patriarch Gregorios IIItoHis Holiness Pope Benedict XVI
(Apostolic Palace of the Vatican, 8 May 2008)


Most Holy Father,

May the Lord be blessed for this day which allows us this long-awaited meeting with Your Holiness, in the company of several Hierarchs, members of the Holy Synod of our patriarchal Melkite Greek Catholic Church, together with Superiors General and Mothers General of our religious Orders, priests from among our secular and regular clergy, and a goodly number of our faithful, including ministers, deputies, businessmen, and also fathers and mothers of families, all glad to be taking part in this pilgrimage, the memory of which will live on in their minds and in the annals of our Patriarchate.
...
Collegiality: strength and unity

A strong, united Church means, ad intra, effective and affectionate collegiality between the Patriarch and the Hierarchs who are members of the Holy Synod. It means a Church where love is the bond that unites the faithful with their pastors and with each other.

It also means a Church strong in its faith, that precious deposit that we must be capable of transmitting to younger generations. We have invented and popularised a saying in our community, “A Church without young people is a Church without a future. Young people without a Church are young people without a future.”
...
Ecumenical role

The other aspect of the ad extra mission of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church is its role in the ecumenical journey towards Christian unity.

Our Church has always been conscious of this role. The history of our Melkite Greek Catholic Church of Antioch, in full communion for close on three hundred years with the Church of Rome that “presides in love,” has been marked by many vexations. In particular, it has had to live in the catacombs for about one hundred and thirty years. Indeed, we are a Church of martyrs and confessors of the faith, especially in Lebanon and Syria. There are, standing before you, Most Holy Father, descendants of martyrs.

Absolute communion with Rome

These were martyrs for unity, martyrs of communion with Rome, that communion which was, and still is for us, an historic, existential choice for commitment, that is both effectual and emotional, a definitive and irreversible constituent of glory and humility.

Orthodox and Catholic

However, that communion with Rome does not separate us from our Orthodox ecclesial reality. We say this with profound humility, a deep ecumenical awareness and a touch of humour: we are an Orthodox Catholic Church.
...

Read it all here.

Holy Father Praises Vitality of the Melkite Church

Holy Father Praises Vitality of the Melkite Church
2008-05-08
VATICAN CITY, 8 MAY 2008 (VIS) - This morning in the Vatican, Benedict XVI received 300 members of the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarchate, headed by His Beatitude, Patriarch Gregorios III Laham, who are on pilgrimage to Rome.

The Pope praised "the vitality of the Melkite Church, despite the difficulties of the region's social and political situation", affirming that "on drawing near to the beginning of the year dedicated to St. Paul, I cannot forget that the seat of your patriarchy is established in the city of Damascus, on the road to which the apostle lived the event that transformed his existence and opened the doors of Christianity to all the nations".

The Holy Father used the occasion of the Pauline Year to invite the patriarch to carry out "an intense pastoral outreach" to awaken in the faithful "a new impetus to know ever more closely the person of Christ, thanks to a renewed reading of Paul's writings". This focus," he emphasized, "will also guarantee a thriving future for the Melkite Church".

"In order to ensure the evangelical dynamism and unity of the communities, as well as the proper functioning of the ecclesial work in the patriarchal Churches," Benedict XVI observed, "the role of the Bishops' Synod is of primary importance. That is why it is necessary, every time the right allows for it, above all when it has to do with questions related to those same bishops, to give this venerable institution and not only the Permanent Synod, the standing it merits".

Referring to ecumenical outreach, the Pope recalled that "the commitment to the search for unity of all Jesus' disciples is an urgent obligation" and therefore "everything possible must be done to tear down the walls of division and mistrust that prevent us from achieving it. Nevertheless, we cannot lose sight of the fact that the search for unity is a task that concerns not only a particular Church but the entire Church, in respect of its nature".

"I also appreciate," he added, "your good relations with the Muslims (.) as well as your efforts to resolve, with a sincere and objective spirit of fraternal dialogue, problems that may arise. (.) In line with Vatican Council II, the Melkite Church has sincerely sought mutual understanding and the promotion and a shared defense of social justice, moral values, peace, and freedom with the Muslims to the benefit of all".

On achieving its mission in the troubled and at times dramatic context of the Middle East," he concluded, "the Church finds itself faced with situations where politics plays a role that is not indifferent to its life. That is why it is important to maintain contacts with the political authorities and institutions and the different political parties. Nevertheless, it does not fall to the clergy to dedicate themselves to a political life. That is the duty of the laity. The Church, however, should propose the light of the Gospel to all so that all may dedicate themselves to serve the common good and so that justice may always prevail, so that the path to peace for all peoples in this much loved region may be opened".


AC/PATRIARCHY GREEK MELKITE/GREGORIOS IIIVIS 080508 (515)

True Theology

H/T to Per Christum and Eirenikon for this inspiring piece.

“Humble and faithful witness to the undivided Church”
March 20, 2008 by eirenikon

I do not deny that there are differences between the Churches, but I say that we must change our way of approaching them. And the question of method is in the first place a psychological, or rather a spiritual problem. For centuries there have been conversations between theologians, and they have done nothing except to harden their positions. I have a whole library about it. And why? Because they spoke in fear and distrust of one another, with the desire to defend themselves and to defeat the others. Theology was no longer a pure celebration of the mystery of God. It became a weapon. God himself became a weapon!

I repeat: I do not ignore these difficulties. But I am trying to change the spiritual atmosphere. The restoration of mutual love will enable us to see the questions in a totally different light. We must express the truth which is dear to us – because it protects and celebrates the immensity of the life which is in Christ – we must express it, not so as to repulse the other, so as to force him to admit that he is beaten, but so as to share it with him; and also for its own sake, for its beauty, as a celebration of truth to which we invite our brothers. At the same time we must be ready to listen. For Christians, truth is not opposed to life or love; it expresses their fullness. First of all, we must free these words, these words which tend to collide, from the evil past, from all political, national and cultural hatreds which have nothing to do with Christ. Then we must root them in the deep life of the Church, in the experience of the Resurrection which it is their mission to serve. We must always weigh our words in the balance of life and death and Resurrection.

Those who accuse me of sacrificing Orthodoxy to a bind obsession with love, have a very poor conception of the truth. They make it into a system which they possess, which reassures them, when what it really is, is the living glorification of the living God, with all the risks involved in creative life. And we don’t possess God; it is He who holds us and fills us with His presence in proportion to our humility and love. Only by love can we glorify the God of love, only by giving and sharing and sacrificing oneself can one glorify the God who, to save us, sacrificed himself and went to death, the death of the cross.

But I would go further. Those who reproach me with sacrificing truth to love have no confidence in the truth. They shut it up, they lock it up like an unfaithful woman. But I say, if the truth is the truth, we must not be afraid for it; let us give it, let us share it, let us show it in its fullness, let us welcome all that there is of light and love in the experience of our brethren. If we continue in this attitude, then truth will become clear of itself, it will conquer all limitations and inadequacies from within, on the basis of the common mystery of the Church. Let us enlarge our hearts, “let each one of us, as the apostle says, look not to our own things, but rather to the things of others” (Phil. 2:4). We have a sure criterion – life in Christ. Faced with a partial expression of the truth, let us ask in what measure it conveys the life in Christ, or in what measure it is liable to compromise it.

Orthodoxy, if it goes back to the sources of its great tradition, will be the humble and faithful witness to the undivided Church. The Orthodox Churches, in coming together themselves in mutual respect and love, will set a movement of brotherhood going throughout the Christian world, giving the example of a free communion of sister Churches, united by the same sacraments and the same faith. As to the Orthodox faith, centered as it is on liturgical praise and worship, and on holiness, it will bring the criterion of spiritual experience to ecumenical dialogue, a criterion which will allow us to disentangle partial truths from their limitations so that they may be reconciled in a higher plenitude of truth.

But we Orthodox: are we worthy of Orthodoxy? Up till the efforts we have made in recent years, what kind of example have our Churches given? We are united in faith and united in the chalice, but we have become strangers to one another, sometimes rivals. And our great tradition, the Fathers, Palamas, the Philokalia: is it living and creative in us? If we are satisfied to repeat our formulas, hardening them against our fellow Christians, then our inheritance will become something dead. It is sharing, humility, reconciliation which makes us truly Orthodox, holding the faith not for ourselves – if we did that we should simply be affirming yet one more historic confession of faith – but for the union of all, as the selfless witnesses of the undivided Church.

– Athenagoras I, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople (1886-1972)

Hope for the Ecumenical Patriarchate?

From Today's Zaman comes this interesting story for which we can pray and hope a joyful ending.

Government warm to patriarch’s ‘ecumenical' title

Despite the absence of signs of preparation for a plan to recognize the ecumenical status of the İstanbul-based Greek Orthodox Patriarchate at the bureaucratic level, senior members of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) haven't ruled out the possibility of amending the country's long-established policy on the controversial issue.

This new stance of the government was first displayed last Wednesday by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Speaking at a joint press conference following his meeting with visiting Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis, Erdoğan said the government was working on a solution that would allow the Patriarchate to reopen a Greek Orthodox seminary in Turkey and emphasized that the government has been doing its best to make things easier for the Patriarchate.

"As a matter of fact, the ecumenical issue is an internal issue of the Orthodox Christian world. Turkey's positive attitude [toward the Patriarchate] has been revealed in the elections [of patriarchs] and is obvious," Erdoğan said without elaborating and in an apparent reference to the fact that patriarchs have been elected freely by the Holy Synod of the Patriarchate since the foundation of the Turkish Republic in 1923.

Two days later, more elaborated remarks on the issue came from Foreign Minister Ali Babacan, who is also the country's chief EU negotiator. In response to a question, Babacan initially referred the correspondent to Erdoğan's remarks, describing the issue as "an internal issue" for the Orthodox world.

"Actually, when we look at the issue with a long-term perspective and when we also take Turkey and İstanbul's position into consideration, perhaps it is an issue on which we should develop a new view and an issue which we should not consider taboo," Babacan said.

"Consequently, this issue will absolutely be spoken about and discussed. What matters in the long term is the position of Turkey and İstanbul in the world -- Turkey's power. What makes Turkey stronger or what makes Turkey weaker should be very carefully calculated," he added.

These remarks from Erdoğan and Babacan have already been interpreted as a divergence from Ankara's well-known stance of considering the Patriarchate a domestic issue since it is by law a Turkish institution.

While diplomats speaking with Today's Zaman refrained from interpreting these remarks, a statement by Egemen Bağış, a top foreign policy adviser to Erdoğan, strengthened assertions concerning the possibility of the government bringing in a new perspective on the issue.

"The Patriarchate is not an institution that was just founded yesterday. It is an institution that has been present in these lands throughout the centuries. There is a need for looking at the past and making an analysis of the periods during which the Patriarchate positively or negatively contributed to these lands," Bağış, now in charge of foreign policy affairs in the AK Party, told Today's Zaman.

Ankara does not recognize Patriarch Bartholomew's international role as the spiritual leader of hundreds of millions of Orthodox Christians worldwide. It rejects his use of the title "ecumenical," or universal, arguing instead that the patriarch is merely the spiritual leader of İstanbul's dwindling Orthodox community.

The Fener Greek Patriarchate in İstanbul dates from the 1,100-year-old Orthodox Greek Byzantine Empire, which collapsed when Muslim Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople, today's İstanbul, in 1453. "After making such an analysis, if eventual assessment shows that Turkey's interests lay toward a certain choice, then Turkey should make this choice," Bağış said.

Last week, at the same press conference with Erdoğan, Karamanlis said having the Patriarchate based in Turkey was "an EU passport" for Turkey. Turkey's current position puts it at odds with the EU, with which it is involved in accession negotiations, as both the EU and Washington consider the status of the patriarch a matter of religious freedom.

Similar remarks came from Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis, who accompanied Karamanlis during the visit which ended on Friday, when she assessed the outcome of Karamanlis' visit.

"I believe that Turkey should become aware that the best ambassador for a European Turkey is İstanbul's Ecumenical Orthodox Patriarchate. The ecumenical patriarch is a Turkish citizen and he is a fierce supporter of Turkey's EU membership. Turkey should make sure this ecumenical Patriarchate institution is maintained. This means reopening the seminary on the island of Heybeliada, training of new generation priests and accepting religious freedom. I believe that the intention [of the Turkish government] is there. We can find a way through if there is intention," Bakoyannis was quoted as saying in remarks aired on the Web site of the BBC Turkish service on Saturday.

Turkey has also been resisting EU pressure to reopen the Halki seminary on the island of Heybeliada near İstanbul which was closed to new students in 1971 under a law that put religious and military training under state control. The theological school once trained generations of Greek Orthodox leaders, including the current patriarch. The seminary remained open until 1985, when the last five students graduated.

An ethnic Greek but a Turkish citizen, Bartholomew says the dwindling Orthodox community could soon die out in Turkey if the seminary is not reopened.

Babacan, speaking with reporters over the weekend in Davos where he participated in a summit of the World Economic Forum, said the government has been working on reopening the seminary via ongoing studies at the Education Ministry as well as at the Higher Education Board (YÖK), the Hürriyet daily reported yesterday, noting that the minister did not elaborate further.


28.01.2008
News
EMİNE KART

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words - Enough Said

(Hat tip to GetReligion.Org.)

In other Patriarchal News...

From Interfax.

The Moscow Patriarchate criticizes ‘politically correct’ Christianity

Vienna, January 22, Interfax - The Russian Orthodox Church's representative to the European International Institutions believes it important to preserve Christian traditions in today’s liberal world.

‘Christianity, empty inside, lacking inner power, Christianity that has renounced itself, will not be able to oppose challenges of the modern world,’ Bishop Hilarion of Vienna and Austria said at a meeting organized by the Ecumenical Council of Churches in Austria dedicated to its 50th anniversary.

The Russian Church’s representative stressed that ‘we should be afraid of giving up spiritual and moral teaching accumulated by the Christian Church for centuries and surrender to the influence of liberal ideas and secular moral standards.’

‘When some Christian communities start revising theological or moral teaching of Christianity in order to ‘update’ it or to make it more ‘politically correct’, it is a direct way to spiritual collapse,’ the bishop added.

According to him, ‘Christians are powerful only when they follow the testament of Christ rather than when they start building their life by the rules of secular world.’

Wall Street Reviews Patriarch's Book

This, from the Wall Street Journal: Patriarch Bartholomeos of Constantinople has written a book. The book may be interesting; the review is very interesting. A couple of excerpts follow:

Nowhere does the plight of Christians look so pitiful as in Turkey, nominally secular but 99% Muslim. At the turn of the 20th century, some 500,000 Orthodox Christians, mostly ethnic Greeks, lived in Constantinople, where they constituted half the city's residents, and millions more resided elsewhere in what is now Turkey. Today, Bartholomew has only about 4,000 mostly elderly fellow believers (2,000 in Istanbul) left in Turkey's 71 million-plus population. The quasi-militaristic regime of Kemal Ataturk that supplanted the Ottoman Empire during the 1920s forcibly Westernized the country's institutions but also made Islam an essential component of the Turkish national identity that it relentlessly promoted.
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On first reading, this exercise in fiddling while the new Rome burns seems pathetic, presenting a picture of a church leader so intimidated by his country's Islamic majority that he cannot speak up for his dwindling flock even as its members are murdered at his doorstep. Bartholomew's book presents an eerie mirror image of the concerns of aging, culturally exhausted, post-Christian Western Europe, happy to blather on at conferences about carbon emissions and diversity but unwilling to confront its own demographic crisis in the face of youthful, rapidly growing and culturally antagonistic Muslim populations. The suicide of the West meets the homicide of the East.

Read the whole review here.

I spoke too soon...

Unfortunately, it looks like troubles for the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem aren't over after all. The Jerusalem Post reports that Israel's High Court of Justice has frozen the recognition of Theophilos III as Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem. The report gives the details and also exemplifies some of the ecclesial-political problems that plague the Orthodox Church.

The whole situation is complicated by the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre, a mainly ethnic Greek order whose members exclusively choose the Patriarch for a mainly ethnic Palestinian Orthodox population.

Strangers in their own lands

Over at De unione ecclesiarum, Peter Gilbert references an article in the British journal the Tablet on Greek Catholicism and some of the troubles Greek Catholics face. The article, by Marcus Tanner, is entitled "Outsiders in their own land". (Note that the link to the article often leads to a "log-in to read page" but occasionally takes you straight to the article. Hence, reading it from Peter Gilbert's blog may be the easier path.)

Presented here are a few excerpts (and, Lord, forgive me, a couple of my comments):

“It’s difficult to understand if you’re not from here,” the archbishop says, pointing to the nearby tower of the ruined Augustinian abbey, where Mass was first said in the fourteenth century. “We are here in Greece, we feel Greek, are Greek, but among other Greeks there is this strong identification of Greek and Orthodox. As a result, when I take part in official ceremonies, they say ‘He’s not a bishop! He is not Orthodox.’”

I have experienced this on many occasions in the US. For example, recently my wife and I met an OCA priest and his wife. We chatted briefly and went our separate ways. Later, Khourieh noted that the priest held out his hand in the manner traditional to receive a reverential kiss. She obliged as this is a custom she routinely practices with clergy (except yours truly....). She asked me if Matushka had kissed mine. No; I hadn't thought about it at the time, but she had not. Then, looking back on the conversation, I realized there had been a slight familiarity. Also, when I had approached Batushka for the embrace of peace he had stuck out his hand for a handshake. Clearly, to them I was not a priest and we were to show respect to them with no reciprocation. C'est la vie! It's a small thing, but indicative of how we "Uniates" are often treated by our separated brethren.
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As the Athens-based journalist Helena Smith wrote some years ago, many Greeks “still relate to the notorious declaration of the Byzantine commander Loukas Notaras (uttered days before the sacking of Constantinople in 1453) that it would be better to see the Turkish turban in the city than a cardinal’s mitre”. That mood, stiffened by the religious dimension to the Balkan wars of the 1990s, has hardly softened at all. Smith told me: “This is still a country that is very ethnocentric, where minorities are seen as a threat to the state and where to be 100 per cent Greek you must be Orthodox.”

This is endemic to Orthodoxy. While there is much talk about the Unity of the Faith, there is a tendency for many to see their jurisdiction, and the ethnicity that grounds it, as the superior others within Orthodoxy and even more so regarding Catholics in general, and Eastern Catholic in particular.
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Back in his office, the archbishop concurred. “We have got to become really Catholic, meaning universal,” he said. “We were never really considered true Greeks anyway. Now we have to be brothers to all those coming from outside. It is the future of the Church - no Greek, no Jew, but all one in Christ. That could be something to be proud of.”

This is precisely why I crossed the Tiber. There is a fullness of Catholic Faith within the Catholic Church. By this, I mean that "the Faith of the Orthodox" (as the Synodikon of Nicaea II refers to it) only attainable in union with Rome. My faith, worship, and discipline are the same as when I was an Orthodox priest, but the fullness of that Faith is more profoundly present through communion with the Pope of Rome. This may scandalize Orthodox, and in fact probably lies much behind the manifest desire of Orthodox for Eastern Catholics to cease to exist.

May our Lord bring unity to His Church and unite all Catholic and Orthodox Christians with peace, health, safety and length of days. May our Lady the Theotokos through her intercessions convict the hearts of all of us in the Churches of God whose hardness prevents that unity for which our Lord prayed. May the confidence of hope remove all prejudice, the fruits of love melt all animosity, and the Faith that saves bless us all with eternal life to the glory of God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and always and unto ages of ages. Amen.

From the Orations of St Gregory of Nazianus

The very Son of God, older than the ages, the Invisible, the Incomprehensible, the Incorporeal, the Beginning of beginning, the Light of light, the Fountain of Life and Immortality, the Image of the Archetype, the immovable Seal, the perfect Likeness, the Definition and Word of the Father: He it is who comes of His own Image and takes our nature for the good of our nature, and unites Himself to an intelligent soul for the good of my soul, to purify like by like. He takes to Himself all that is human, except for sin. He was conceived by the Virgin Mary, who had been first prepared in soul and body by the Spirit; His coming to birth had to be treated with honor, virginity had to receive new honor. He comes forth as God, in the human nature He has taken, one Being, made of two contrary elements, flesh and spirit. Spirit gave Divinity, flesh received it.