Calibacy For Priests - Vatican Secretary Of State

[Apotheoun]

That's a weird way of looking at things from a traditional Christian perspective. The Orthodox peoples of the Byzantine Empire didn't think their empire was some ancillary matter, but the proof of God's favor and historical triumph of Orthodoxy. Your statement reflects more modern separations of religion and public life, so that religion can operate in its own domain. Which is interesting, because that is somewhat closer to how it operated in the early church, before the fall of the Roman empire, in the world but not (yet) strongly of it.

The Byzantine Empire - as important as it was - has been gone for 500 years, but Orthodoxy is still around. Do the Orthodox advocate creating an Orthodox society? Yes. Orthodox Christians believe that the faith should inform the culture. So in that sense they are for creating Christian societies, but they do not need to have a new Byzantine emperor to do that, nor do they need a Czar, or some other king. It can be accomplished by instilling Orthodox values into daily life, which is the natural outcome of living the faith anyway. You cannot separate the Orthodox mindset from how you individually (or how society collectively) experience and organize your life.

Edited September 13, 2013 by Apotheoun

[Era Might]

The Byzantine Empire - as important as it was - has been gone for 500 years, but Orthodoxy is still around. Do the Orthodox advocate creating an Orthodox society? Yes. Orthodox Christians believe that the faith should inform the culture. So in that sense they are for creating Christian societies, but they do not need to have a new Byzantine emperor to do that, nor do they need a Czar, or some other king. It can be accomplished by instilling Orthodox values into daily life, which is the natural outcome of living the faith anyway. You cannot separate the Orthodox mindset from how you individually (or how society collectively) experience and organize your life.

 

So in other words, Orthodoxy can rearrange its worldview and civilization to fit any worldview and civilization (even a secular one like modernity). I don't think that's a bad thing, but it flies in the face of the caricature of Orthodoxy as some unchanging bastion. At least the Western church doesn't try to maintain such a fiction. It has come to grips with the fact that the old dogmatic imperialisms were problematic to say the least.

[Apotheoun]

Can't you picture it, Putin and Patriarch leading Mother Russia and all the world to Holy Orthodoxy!!!1111

I would prefer that to Obama. But the resurgence of Orthodoxy in the former communist block is still underway, after all it has only been going on for about 20 years. It is weird to say this, but my Orthodox friends are all very optimistic about the future, while many (possibly even the majority) of my Catholic friends are pessimistic. Perhaps the battles over gay marriage in the West are affecting Catholics perception of the world, while in Eastern European countries that form of attack has not had the same impact.

[Apotheoun]

Yes, Roman Catholicism is dying, as someone in contact with the Orthodox this should be nothing new to you. 

I had a sense of this even before I changed ritual Churches and became Eastern Catholic in 2006. I would say that my first awareness of it began when I converted to Roman Catholicism in 1988, and started attending the modern Roman liturgy after having spent three years as an Anglo-Catholic. My first feelings were a sense of the loss of beauty, because I went from a liturgy that was ritually magnificent to one that seemed like I had entered a liturgical bargain basement.

Edited September 13, 2013 by Apotheoun

[Era Might]

I would prefer that to Obama. But the resurgence of Orthodoxy in the former communist block is still underway, after all it has only been going on for about 20 years. It is weird to say this, but my Orthodox friends are all very optimistic about the future, while many (possibly even the majority) of my Catholic friends are pessimistic. Perhaps the battles over gay marriage in the West are affecting Catholics perception of the world, while in Eastern European countries that form of attack has not had the same impact.

 

There is a thinly veiled nostalgic imperialism in the idea that the "former communist bloc" is Orthodox territory, but just doesn't know it yet. The world is moving away from that kind of regional imperialism...the emergence of nation states has been a big part of that, as well as globalization.

Edited September 13, 2013 by Era Might

[Apotheoun]

There is a thinly veiled nostalgic imperialism in the idea that the "former communist bloc" is Orthodox territory, but just doesn't know it yet. The world is moving away from that kind of regional imperialism...the emergence of nation states has been a big part of that, as well as globalization.

You're reading more into my post than is there. I was making a simple historical and geographical reference, I was not talking about canonical territory.   :smile3:

[Apotheoun]

Postscript: The Russian Orthodox Church has Churches throughout Western Europe, so it clearly does not see itself as limited to a specific canonical territory.

[Era Might]

Well, to try and tie all this back to the original topic, I think one of the more interesting and fruitful "projects" for Catholicism is developing a theology of history and how the church can sort out the different ways it has been shaped, and how it can use that to inform its mission in the world going forward.

[Apotheoun]

Well, to try and tie all this back to the original topic, I think one of the more interesting and fruitful "projects" for Catholicism is developing a theology of history and how the church can sort out the different ways it has been shaped, and how it can use that to inform its mission in the world going forward.

I think it would be better to develop a theology of memory, because that is truly biblical, while the latter is really a 19th century German idea.

Edited September 13, 2013 by Apotheoun

[Era Might]

I think it would be better to develop a theology of memory, because that is truly biblical, while the latter is really a 19th century German effort.

 

The West has always been good about growing its knowledge along with the world. Well, it hasn't always been good...in its best days it has been (and is) good at that. The west was not as closed in on itself as the Orthodox world was, nor as ossified.

[Era Might]

It's mission going forward? You speak as if the Roman Church has a way out of this mess.

 

Christ is always the way out of any mess. I do not look at Christian history as a story of glorious triumph and shameful conquest, but as a lesson in humility. We've had 2,000 years of experience now to see what has opened the doors to Christ, and what has closed them.

[Apotheoun]

The West has always been good about growing its knowledge along with the world. Well, it hasn't always been good...in its best days it has been (and is) good at that. The west was not as closed in on itself as the Orthodox world was, nor as ossified.

The West has always reduced the knowledge of God to a discursive reality, while the East has seen it as an experience transcending thought. The former can be developed because it is simply a form of impersonal intellectual knowledge, while the latter is immutable.

[Era Might]

The West has always reduced the knowledge of God to a discursive reality, while the East has seen it as an experience transcending thought. The former can be developed because it is simply a form of impersonal intellectual knowledge, while the latter is immutable.

 

Well, the West has led the way in all the great breakthroughs of modern civilization. I do not discount any tradition of experience, but the whole world can't approach the world like the Orthodox do. There's a reason why the West was building modern civilization while the East is still trying to catch up.

[Apotheoun]

Well, the West has led the way in all the great breakthroughs of modern civilization. I do not discount any tradition of experience, but the whole world can't approach the world like the Orthodox do. There's a reason why the West was building modern civilization while the East is still trying to catch up.

So the West has created technology? I enjoy technology, but spiritually the West is vapid, and I am so glad that I have found a spiritual home that allows me to experience God in exactly the same way as He was experienced by the Apostles and Prophets, that is, by hymning His glory.

[Era Might]

So the West has created technology? I enjoy technology, but spiritually the West is vapid, and I am so glad that I have found a spiritual home that allows me to experience God in exactly the same way as He was experienced by the Apostles and Prophets, that is, by hymning His glory.

 

It didn't create "technology" itself but it created most modern technologies. I have no quarrel with your love for Eastern ways of being in the world, but worldviews have inherent capabilities and limitations. If you want to be mystic and traditional, I don't look down on you, but that is a different way of being in the world that could never had created modern civilization. And I don't think other ways of being in the world should disappear. One of the "projects" of modernity is finding balance and diversity.

[Apotheoun]

I should probably clarify my comment, because when I said that the West is spiritually vapid, I was referring to Western society and not to the Latin Church. Western society is quite dead spiritually.

[Apotheoun]

. . . but worldviews have inherent capabilities and limitations. 

Now when I talk about a "worldview" I am talking about the phrenoma of Orthodoxy, which is itself just a fancy way of talking about what St. Paul referred to in his letters as "having the mind of Christ." All that a Christian does should be motivated by the faith, and when Christians live together in society their culture, their way of living, should also reflect this phrenoma.

[Era Might]

Societies are often quite dead. There were many periods of Christian history when Christian society was quite dead spiritually. I don't look at modernity as some threshold of iniquity. Christ is always moving in and out of society, where the sun shines on the just and the unjust, and the church is (or should be) there in the middle of it all, healing the sick, feeding the poor, raising the dead.

[Era Might]

Now when I talk about a "worldview" I am talking about the phrenoma of Orthodoxy, which is itself just a fancy way of talking about what St. Paul referred to in his letters as "having the mind of Christ." All that a Christian does should be motivated by the faith, and when Christians live together in society their culture, their way of living, should also reflect this phrenoma.

 

St. Paul also said that he became all things to all men, in order to win them all to Christ.

[Apotheoun]

St. Paul also said that he became all things to all men, in order to win them all to Christ.

Did he become a fornicator? Did he become an idolater? It is like when St. Paul said that all men sinned, well Christ was a man and He didn't sin. I think St. Paul would agree that he did not become a liar or a thief for all men in order to win them for Christ.   :evil: