COMMENTS ON THE JOINT DECLARATION WITH THE POPE
Facebook – 14/2/ 2016
Fr. George Maximov, a dynamic and tireless missionary priest who has served in mission fields throughout the world, offers some thoughts on the joint declaration signed by His Holiness Patriarch Kirill and Pope Francis.
To begin with, let me remind those who already by the mere fact of the meeting are lamenting: “all is lost, all is lost”: nothing is lost. The canons forbid to serve with heretics, to pray with them, and to take their blessing. Simply to meet, the canons do not forbid. The patriarch has not become a Catholic by this meeting.
On the meeting
Inasmuch as our patriarch was sent to this meeting neither by the Synod, nor by the Council of Primates (as far as I know), it is, in fact, his personal meeting.
It is good that the meeting passed without any kind of joint liturgical services or prayers. One gets the impression that the pope received the patriarch as an equal –nowhere in any of the photos do we see that the patriarch would have agreed to any subordination in relation to the Pope’s position.
On the document
On one hand, there are in the document not a few words with which we can agree. For example, the words in defense of the persecuted and oppressed in the Middle East (§8-10), the criticism of Islam (§13), the words against the discrimination of Christians in the West (§15), the call for rich countries to share with the poor (§17), the condemnation of homosexual indoctrination (§20), and abortion (§21), and that the schisms in Ukraine should be resolved “on the basis of canonical norms” (§27).
But for all of these, there are also expressions which are by no means indisputable, and sometimes erroneous.
For example: “it is our hope that our meeting may contribute to the re–establishment of this unity willed by God, for which Christ prayed … [and] inspire Christians throughout the world to pray to the Lord … for the full unity of all His disciples (§9). In the Church of Christ unity is already achieved in its fullness. Therefore in the Creed we confess faith in “one Church.” It is another matter that from this unity with the Church departed various heretical and schismatic communities. But their members cannot be called disciples of Christ. They are disciples of those who teach perversely about Christ and led them out of unity with the Church.
“We bow before the martyrdom of those who, at the cost of their own lives, have given witness to the truth of the Gospel, preferring death to the denial of Christ. We believe that these martyrs of our times, who belong to various Churches but who are united by their shared suffering, are a pledge of the unity of Christians” (§12). They would be able to be the pledge of unity of Christians only were we to proclaim that all the dogmatic differences in the faiths of the churches to which belonged those who were killed were wholly irrelevant. But to do so, we are unable. In actuality, only unity in truth can be the pledge of unity of Christians, which is not achieved by the suppression of dogmatic divergences, but in investigating them and rejecting those dogmas which are fallacious, for the sake of those which are true.
Cause for concern is the statement that mission work “excludes any form of proselytism” (§24). It is not clear what is meant. For example, within the concept of missionary work there is the explanation that proselytism is the carrying out of missionary work by improper means (coercion, bribery, deception). In this sense, we can agree. But I believe that in this document, particularly concerning the phrase “any form,” can be understood that, generally, it is forbidden to guide Catholics into Orthodoxy, which, naturally, is absurd. And the same in the following paragraph: “the method of ‘uniatism’ of past centuries, involving leading one community into unity with another by way of its separation from its own Church, is not the way to restore unity” (§25). But if we could guide some community of the Catholic Church into Orthodoxy, it would be for that given community the reestablishment of unity with the Church of Christ, and if it doesn’t happen, then that community remains in a state of separation from the Church.
“Thus, in large part, the future of humanity depends upon whether we will be able in this critical period to bear witness together to the Spirit of truth” (§28). In order for us, together with the Roman Church, to “bear witness together to the Spirit of truth” it is necessary for it to confess the truth and abandon its false dogmas.
A common trademark of a Doctor of the Law is of course to exalt the letter of the Law at the expense of the spirit, a legalistic appeal to doctrinal purity as the sole measure, it seems, of the spiritual health, vitality and Christocentricity of a Christian community. The assertion appears to be that dogmatic purity trumps all else, but in the process exposes the reality that attention is being sidetracked from the very real sickness emanating from non-doctrinal heretical praxis which interact with and pose every bit as much a threat to the spiritual life of a Christian as dogmatic heterodoxy. In many cases these aberrations are innocently accepted as correct practice. However, the fact that a church proudly confesses the faith of the Seven Ecumenical Councils may amount to very little if that faith is tainted to the degree in which extra-doctrinal elements have distorted the witness of faith and corrupted the life of the Church. In other words, is doctrinal orthodoxy the only litmus test? How, furthermore, do churches sick with corrupt practices, traditions of men, and gross shortcomings in charity and mercy measure up to the rule of love and charity? As a Christian, I say: “Do not begin to say to yourselves: “We have Abraham as our father” (Luke 3:8-9).
To the great interest of many readers who may or may not have toasted Fr. George’s comments with the traditional thrice-fold ‘axios’, I propose that we do the same thing that Fr. George calls for: “investigating…and rejecting those dogmas which are fallacious, for the sake of those which are true”, except on the non-dogmatic milieu which I have stressed. Let’s identify and evaluate how widespread corrupt practices in the Patriarchate of Russia live up to the SPIRIT of the faith of the Ecumenical Councils and whether a nominal obedience to those dogmatic pronouncements codification by the Church is truly enough, at the end of the day. There is in the Russian Church:
an outright puritanicalism, women being refused a ‘blessing’ by priests for failing to wear “skirts” (even if modest trousers are worn underneath long winter coats covering up a person from head to toe); church life reduced to rules, regulations; distorted applications of canons with a total ignorance of their historical context; a rigidity and inflexibility in the prescription of fasting rules making no provision for the weak; the imposition of unnecessary burdens on those who wish to receive the Eucharist; charging fixed monetary prices for Molebens (and a higher price for the thanksgiving Molebens!); sectarian attitudes towards theology that challenges the soundness of the old-school Russian theology clung to and countered by ritual book-burning (I refer to the burning of publications written by luminaries such as Schmemann and Meyendorff!), which gives one the impression that a revival of the Vatican of old’s Index of Forbidden Books is currently underway.
Are these ills pardonable and capable of being brushed aside merely because a church community has the true faith as its pedigree? Is this a positive witness to the experience of faith and life in Christ? Where is the warmth of the Spirit in the midst of the cold winter of Pharisaism? We see rather a verification of the maxim coined by the great Church Historian, Jaroslav Pelican: traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. How do love and charity co-exist in the midst of these widespread practices?
Then Fr. George continues with a shocking statement: “But their members cannot be called disciples of Christ. They are disciples of those who teach perversely about Christ and led them out of unity with the Church.” Does Fr. George insinuate that Catholic Christians can’t be disciples of Christ? Who then were Mother Theresa, Oscar Romero, Edith Stein, Pope John XXIII, disciples of? Satan? The Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Philaret (+1985) made the following claim: “It is self evident, however, that sincere Christians who are Roman Catholics, or Lutherans, or members, of other non-Orthodox confessions, cannot be termed renegades or heretics—i.e. those who knowingly pervert the truth…They have been born and raised and are living according to the creed which they have inherited, just as do the majority of you who are Orthodox.” I would chose saintly men and women in the Church of Rome rather than nit-picking rigorists in the Patriarchate of Russia as my examples of a disciple of Christ.
Certainly, we must all utterly reject the pronouncements of Vatican I – in its present form – on the primacy of the papacy. Purgatory/Indulgences and the Immaculate Conception need to be re-examined. Yet people are jeopardising the dialogue and deliberately doing all they can to undo the hard work, inspired by the Spirit, of those taking part. Ignorant lay people are being misinformed in the process. It must be stressed that there IS agreement at the highest level through the official talks between the two Churches of a shared witness to a common Sacramental life, valid sacraments in the Roman Catholic Church including Baptism and Eucharist. The Russian Orthodox Church has pronounced in like fashion in past documents spanning several centuries, perhaps Fr. George may be unaware of this also. Disciples of Christ become saints by sacraments. Pharisaism promotes phobia towards God, neurosis, externalism, mercilessness, and slow spiritual death.
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