Ecumenism and Culture

Let's turn on the comments feature again and see if it's safe!

The family forum is an interesting foray into practical ecumenism. One could quibble with a few aspects, e.g. the annoying reference to the concept of marriage in Orthodox theology as an "eternal union of spouses" as though it were settled Orthodox doctrine rather than being simply a very recent theologoumenon. But the point of the statement was not to explore possible differences or fracture lines. It was to present a united front in the face of the incredible attacks being made by modernity upon the family.

Still, the document does provide ample scope for a little deconstruction, which vice I will try to indulge over the next few weeks....

Apparently Patriarch Bartholomew I (the numeration always strikes me as a little optimistic) is one degree less influential than Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, but one degree more than Reserve Bank Chairman Bernanke. Pope Benedict is not in the top 100 at all, nor is Patriarch Alexey. No influence at all, I suppose?

Perhaps I should find better places to do my Bright Week reading??

The Turkish government will not enjoy seeing His All-Holiness referred to as "Ecumenical Patriarch", which title they consider themselves competent to deny him with vehemence. Ah well, if a little international media attention keeps Them off his back, we can perhaps forgive the hype

Many thanks to our friend Anne who pointed me to this article on the Ravenna document published in the London Times under the Ruth Gledhill by-line. Beware. This is the same outfit that reported, entirely mendaciously, that by releasing the CDF document earlier this year, " The Vatican has described the Protestant and Orthodox faiths as “not proper Churches” in a document issued with the full authority of the Pope." Of course, when I was a boy, the Times used to be a "proper" newspaper....

Once again the entire debate about conciliarity and authority is misread through a secular lens. (With a few glaring factual errors along the way: Moscow is not, and will not be, "third" among equals in the patriarchal rankings. Let's say it together: [Rome], Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem and then the national patriarchs in order of creation.) Rome will "sacrifice" some of its power-capital to get access to a whole new market. Constantinople is really trying to bolster its position against Islamic structures of domination. Moscow is only concerned about its own hegemonic ambitions. Etc. Etc. Etc. One wonders why the other participants bother showing up to those meetings at all!

I don't really think any secular outlet is going to "get" this problem. Far too few believers do either, at least not intellectually. The whole problem with the primacy is issue is not who has it but what primacy is. It's about how authority works in a Church founded on the ultimate refusal of power, the kenosis of the Son of God. Does there really need to be an "arbiter" whose final word ends all disputes, as the Roman side claims? Or is the real guarantor of Truth the Spirit at work in Scripture, Sacrament and the Saints as the Orthodox aver?

My view is that the final solution, from which we are intellectually, emotionally and culturally very far, will come about only when the notion of "hierarchy" is rescued from the power-political prison into which it has been placed since the cultural triumph of nominalism sealed by the Reformation and Enlightenment. Only then will we be in a position to understand the mystical, sacramental symbolic weight of apostolic authority that witnesses to, without recourse to worldly strategies of domination, what the Areopagite calls "the most conspicuous fact of theology -- the God-formation of Jesus amongst us."

Power and authority are not the same thing. The author of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy has much to teach us still. When the Times starts quoting St. Dionysius, with or without the "pseudo", then I'll really take some notice.

In the course of a fruitless search for something else I happened upon this website which, for all I know, may be quite famous: www.bustedhalo.com. There you can, among other things, read "A Young Nun Defends The Vagina Monologues." There is another article on what are, apparently, moral ambiguities surrounding the "slutification" of Halloween (now there's a few words I never expected to type on this blog). The site proclaims itself to be "an online magazine for spiritual seekers in the 20s and 30s" and that it is "powered by the Paulists."

I am reliably informed by a friend who understands these things, that this site is a classic example of "post-modern" ministry. The whole point of the discussion is to pose questions that lead to questions that lead to questions. Post-modern people like questions. I guess answers are pre-modern.

It would be easy to purse my lips and decry this as simple madness. But easy for me to say. My work does not center on trying to get young people to sit still and concentrate on the Deep Things. I suppose those empowering Paulists have decided fire can only be fought with fire. So pump up the volume, celebrate the contemporary and try to get some face time with the Facebook generation. Your window of opportunity is about 30 seconds, so make it count.

Let me take a stab at this from the point of view of spiritual ecumenism. Let's try and look at this tactical move on the part of one group of the Catholic Church from the point of view of another group, let's say some desert Fathers.

Today's saints in the Byzantine calendar (version 2.0) include a remarkable pair: Abraham (or Abramius) and his niece Mary. If you don't know the story, you can find it here. Basically, after living a few years with her uncle as his companion in asceticism, Mary is seduced by a vagabond monk. Her shame forces her to abandon the life she loved, and no longer believed herself to be worthy of, and to seek the only alternative she knew. She fled to a town where she gave herself over to prostitution and drinking. Sex and drugs: a very post-modern tale.

The story is, of course, really centered on the way in which the good Abraham follows his niece right to the center of her shame and, by gentle embrace, kindly words and the purity of his love, restores her to herself. Abraham never for one second considered the "slutification" of Mary to be anything but a fall into darkness. There is, beneath the kindness and gentleness, a hard edge to Abraham's care. Abraham was able to see, however, that no-one knew more than Mary how sharp, how unforgiving this edge was. He went to her where she was because he knew her to long for his coming. Few stories in the lives of the saints more beautifully speak of one heart knowing another.

So what do you think? Does St.Abraham give us a framework within which we might begin to question the questioners of Bustedhalo.com and the whole post-modern ministerial project? Is there a way of being present to sin, to debauchery, to shame and to despair without, as a hymn at yesterday's Orthros put it, "being touched by it"? I suspect so, but it will require a commitment to holiness no less firm than that of the saint himself. And that means prayer, asceticism and mercy.

One of my favorite things to do while our little dog Ozzy takes me for walks is to listen to podcasts from the St. Irenaeus Ministries in Rochester, NY. David Higbee's scripture studies are really worth listening to.

Right now the center is putting up a series of seminars on early Church history. It is well worth downloading and hearing. Dr. Higbee's socratic style is in full throttle, which makes for a really interesting experience. I find you don't so much get much new information as are made to think about this period in new ways. Or rather old ways you get out of the habit of thinking in. One of the main themes is the ever relevant problem of Church and world, the Constantinian compromise. For anyone really interested in east/west ecumenism this is a subject on which you cannot reflect too deeply or often!

Wouldn't hurt to support this ministry with a few shekels, either!

I was surprised this morning to get an email from the novelist, Anne Rice. Admittedly I had emailed her first; but in the midst of the thousands of messages she must have received in the past week I hardly expected to receive that brief, but clearly personal response to what I had written.

Yes, of course the subject was Ms. Rice's recent statement that she is both pro-Hillary and pro-life. I had written to thank her for taking a thoughtful and courageous stand.

"You did what?" I can hear some of our readers say: "How can anyone be pro-life and even be pro-Democrat, let along pro-Hillary?" Now let me be clear. As a priest I am hardly going to join in any public endorsement of a candidate or political party. That is not my venue. I wanted to congratulate Anne Rice not so much for her conclusions as for the process by which she reached them. I thanked her for making public the way she thought through her political choices from within her faith in Jesus Christ. In the process she brought faith and reason together in shaping a political stance that is reasoned and defensible. I don't say I agree with it. But it is intelligible and recognizably Christian. In making this choice, and the reasoning behind it public, I believe she is doing a service to the Christian and pro-life community.

"OK," you ask, "how is it 'reasonable' to be pro-life and yet support an avowedly pro-abortion politician, and a party committed to the continued legalization of abortion?" Here we come to a point that is sometimes missed in the sterile rhetoric of the pro-life/pro-"choice" impasse. A truly pro-life position has as its ultimate goal not the criminalization of abortion, but its abolition. We don't just want to punish people for their abortions; we don't want them to have abortion–or to want them–in the first place. Rolling back Roe v. Wade will not achieve this goal, at least not by itself. In fact control of the state and its coercive powers could only ever be a tool, and perhaps a rather blunt one at that, in the great work of promoting life.

Now once you properly define the goal of the pro-life movement, you suddenly discover a whole new range of possibilities open up beyond the narrow straightjacket of two-party politics. It may be, in fact, that the fixation with the law as the tool of choice in the battle for life has actually done us great harm. By buying into the party political system the pro-life movement has contributed to reducing something that goes to the heart of what it is to be human to being a mere political wedge issue. Yes, one party has an anti-abortion statement in its manifesto. It professes to seek out judges who will rule in favor of the unborn. But in the end, any victories won in this way are as shaky as the political plurality on which they are based. One election could sweep them all away.

The goal of a complete end to abortion will be won primarily by changing hearts, not laws. And this is also why I have dared to broach this subject on a blog dedicated to the Catholic-Orthodox ecumenical dialogue. The parallels are really rather striking. In both areas, the pro-life/pro-abortion dialectic as well as the Catholic-Orthodox quarrel, arguing and politicking seem to have led us as far as we can go. What is needed in both disputes is a renewed emphasis on ultimate goals and a recognition that these are achievable on by a change of heart, repentance. "Spiritual ecumenism" turns out to be the answer to more than one problem!

Now I do not want to be misunderstood. Of course abortion should be illegal. On this point I think I disagree with Anne Rice. If I were given the opportunity to vote on that question in a referendum of course I would tick the box that would foster respect for life. But the reality is there will never be such a referendum until we Christians are able to attract this culture to the grandeur and power of our moral vision. And this we do not primarily by being politicians, but by becoming saints. Of course, there's nothing wrong with saints engaging in politics. Nor can we entirely put off the work of politics until we achieve a certain level of sanctity. Done properly, the work of politics can even be a means of sanctification. But we must remember that the goals of sainthood, and therefore saintly politics, are far higher and infinitely deeper than the mundane and compromised aims of secular politics. Was it Metternich who called the latter the "art of the possible"? Well, saintly politics is most definitely the "art of the impossible"! For with God, all things are possible....

In the end a thing as important as life with dignity for every human being is too great a thing to be entrusted to one party only. We need pro-lifers in all political parties, in every profession (medicine especially) and in every other honorable walk of life. But more than that, we need to stop defining ourselves as simply "pro-life" as though that could be separated from the other aspects of our Christianity, our prayer, fasting and almsgiving done in faith, hope and love. 

I really do suspect that the moral vision of the Orthodox tradition can offer western Christians an important help in this regard. The Eastern Christian emphasis on personal metanoia rather than on institutional solutions is one that is badly needed to reinvigorate the whole Christian engagement with the secular world. Man, do we need each other badly!

Here is a horrific insight into the "culture of death." I am sure the attitude can be found among elements of the homosexual sub-culture in America and in elsewhere in the world:

It is a way out for lonely folks. After infection you enter a circle of the elected, a sort of ‘Masonic lodge’. You are bearing ‘a seal of death’, you are one of our own, a marked one, not alone, and you can do anything. You have friends and lovers in many countries of the world...

Here is certainly an area in which Catholics and Orthodox can come together. Whatever else divides us, we certainly must proclaim with one voice the Lord of Life!!