Monday, November 12, 2012

The Feast of Saint Josaphat and Ecumenism

So today is the feast of Saint Josaphat, a man who was killed by an Orthodox mob shortly after the Union of Brest. In the history of ecumenism, Josaphat isn't exactly something new these days: both sides of the Catholic-Orthodox "discussion" (proclaiming "we are right" isn't a discussion) have their share of holy men who died to the other side.

And that's the rub. We both have holy men.

This is something that I honestly wonder why we don't think about too often. Catholic and Orthodox have saints, with confirmed miracles. This isn't me being wistful, people go out of their way to verify these things. We have miracles, we have saints, on both sides. God favors both. God has not taken a side in this puny little debate we holy Christians have taken up. If He had there wouldn't be an argument about who was right, like with the Arians or any of the many heresies we've had over the centuries.  I mean, for all the people from Facebook who are reading this and who care about the schism, take a good hard look at the fruits of the other side. Yes, you will see mistakes, killings, scandals, government take-overs, etc. But you will see genuine saints, if you look hard enough and if you swallow your own pride for two seconds.

It almost doesn't matter what we're arguing about, because God does not seem to care about who's right in the Catholic-Orthodox split. He still considers us one, so what is with this incredible hubris?

Because that's your only excuse.

4 comments:

  1. What think you of miracles in other religions? I think it is a similar thing myself, that although they are not with the Church, and may not even proclaim our God to be God, they too can have holy men and women.

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  2. Here's a dumb question... In your opinion (and/or according to whichever authorities, thinkers and/or lines of reasoning you find most credible on the matter), to what extent is it meet for Catholic and Orthodox to... shall we say, mingle (I deliberately choose a broad and fuzzy term since the question concerns how broad the thing should be), given the current state of separation? Do you know how either Church would formally answer that question? How much room is there for Catholics and Orthodox to simply get to know each other's Faith*, if they must maintain some separations in practice because of the separation of their Churches, and if both Churches would urge their members to avoid danger of confusion about articles of the Faith from, say, attending sermons of the other side (so to speak)? Is there more or less room in any given area/way for lay or clergy (e.g., are lay people allowed any more leeway on attending each others' services though obviously not Holy Communion, are clergy allowed/expected to do more study of the theological claims the other side makes)?

    *Which as far as I know may be dearly hoped to be the same Faith, whatever inessential differences may have cropped up and whatever differences of authority/hierarchy may also be involved; but I am not an expert on the schism.

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