The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Feeling Better

4.13.06 @ 12:01AM

(Page 4 of 5)

With the arrival of Passover, it's worth highlighting the orthodox position: solidarity of mind and will with God and the community. Out of the struggle with the Pharaoh and Egyptians, the passing over the Red Sea after the angel passed over their homes, and the journey through the desert, came the uniting of a dozen tribes into one nation, united in the covenant sealed by Moses and the Law proclaimed again by Joshua. Out of the struggle with the King and the English, including what historian David McCullough described as the miracle of Valley Forge and the crossing of the Delaware after Washington's reassuring vision of an angel, came the uniting of the 13 states -- former colonies -- into one nation, sealed in the covenant of the Declaration of Independence, purified in the wanderings of the Articles of Confederation, and solidified in the more unifying Constitution.
-- R.L.A. Schaefer
Dubuque, Iowa

REMEMBER THE EASTERN CHURCHES
Re: Daniel A. Moroco's letter (under "The Resurrected Church") in Reader Mail's Modern Outrages:

Daniel Moroco writes: "For anyone who really wants to get to the 'meat and potatoes' of traditional orthodox Catholicism, I would suggest the Catechism of the Council of Trent, the result of that dogmatic council in the 16th century, which reaffirmed a millennium and a half of Catholic belief, and the Catechetical Instruction of St. Thomas Aquinas."

There are a couple of problems with this statement. First, one needs to recognize that the Council of Trent was not, as most Catholics of the Latin Church would have it, either "ecumenical" or "dogmatic"; it is merely one of the many "general councils" held by the Church of the West in the second Christian millennium. None of the Churches of the East were present, nor were they even asked to participate, and the issues addressed, the theological constructs and methods applied, and the decrees, acts and constitutions promulgated by that general council pertain almost exclusively to the Latin or Western Church.

Second, Trent was very much a council of reaction -- reaction to the threat of the Reformation, and in its attempt to draw bright distinctions between the Church of Rome and the various Protestant sects, the Council chose to toss out the baby with the bathwater, opposing things such as liturgy in the vernacular that were indeed part of the Catholic tradition simply because they were endorsed by Martin Luther and the other reformers. Thus, the Council of Trent really succeeded only in clarifying the differences between Western Catholicism and Protestantism by embalming the practices of the Church of Rome as they stood ca. 1565 -- whether these practices were in accordance with the Apostolic Tradition in opposition to them.

Nowhere was this more harmful than in the realm of ecclesiology, for at Trent the Church of Rome made the claim that the Catholic Church -- the One True Church of God -- and itself were entirely coterminous. There could only be one Church, it was the Church of Rome, and outside of it were only heretics, schismatics and heathens. It totally ignored the older patristic understanding of the Catholic Church as a communion of particular Churches, an understanding that was only partially recovered with the Second Vatican Council.

From the perspective of the present day, Mr. Moroco's letter also reveals the striking provinciality of a particular brand of Catholicism that has pretensions to universality. It seems completely unaware that there are, in fact, more Catholic traditions than just that of the Church of Rome, or that the Catholic Church is in fact a communion composed of 22 particular Churches (Ecclesiae sui juris), each of which is equal in grace, each of which is entitled by right to its own unique Tradition -- defined as an ecclesial patrimony of liturgy, theology, spirituality, doctrine and discipline. It may surprise Mr. Moroco to learn that the Church of Rome, while the largest, is still only one of those 22 -- the other 21 being Eastern Catholic Churches in communion with the Church of Rome. Each of those Churches, many of which are in fact older than the Church of Rome, has its own unique modes of theological expression, its own forms of worship, its own doctrines (I am sure it will distress Mr. Moroco to no end that Thomism just ain't our cup of tea, for we have our own theological methods, thanks very much). This was recognized by the entire Catholic communion in the Vatican II Decree on the Oriental Churches (Orientalium ecclesiarum), and reaffirmed by Pope John Paul II many times, most notably in his pastoral letter Orientale Lumen (1996).

It is for this reason that these Churches -- for they are really Churches in the fullness of the term, and not merely "rites" or "ritual adjuncts" of the Roman Catholic Church -- each have their own catechism independent of the CCC. The CCC is a Western document, concerned mainly with Western issues, using Western theological terms and methodologies, which does not answer either the pedagogical or spiritual needs of Eastern Catholics. Thus, in my own Byzantine Catholic Church, we have a three-volume series (Light for Life) which deals with the Catholic faith from an Eastern Christian perspective, one grounded in the concept of Holy Tradition, which in turn is grounded in the Liturgy of the Church, for Liturgy is how the Church defines and manifests itself. Scripture, the Fathers, the Seven Great Council -- all of these are components of Tradition, but Liturgy is both the source and the touchstone of our theology, for Liturgy is what the Church does. In that context, Mr. Moroco's call to return to Trent has little appeal and in fact would be a return to a very pinched and narrow view of the faith. He should remember Jaroslav Pelikan's distinction: "Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living."

John Paul II wrote that the Church has two lungs, one Western the other Eastern, and it needs to be able to breath with both in order to be healthy. Mr. Moroco's view of the Church would permanently excise one of those lungs, or at best, reduce it to a mere lobe grafted onto the other. Mr. Moroco needs to understand what that means, and one way he could do that is by jettisoning his nostalgia for the Tridentine Church -- an image that exists only in his mind, and not in history -- and by reading the document he apparently finds so inadequate, the Catechism promulgated by his own particular Church.
-- Stuart Koehl
Falls Church, Virginia

FINDING TRENT
Re: Pete Chagnon's letter (under "The Resurrected Church") in Reader Mail's Modern Outrages

There are today independent parishes offering the pre-1962 (Latin) Mass of St. Pius V, i.e. the liturgy codified by the Council of Trent; he can check the website Traditio for a location near where he lives. There you can find the two-millennia-old teaching of the Church taught and upheld.
-- Daniel A. Moroco Jr., Colonel, USMCR (Ret.)
Fredericksburg, Virginia

THAT PESKY SECOND AMENDMENT
Re: Jim Woodward's letter (under "In Like Flynn") in Reader Mail's Hope and Sanity:

I read with great interest Jim Woodward's letter to the editor. While you may enjoy your Second Amendment in the U.S., Jim, the real lack of any gun-related violence in Australia is something this country is very proud of. A month ago we mourned over the ten-year anniversary of the WORST EVER GUN-RELATED SHOOTING IN THE WORLD. In Port Arthur in 1996, a disturbed man, Martin Bryant shot and killed 36 people with an automatic rifle. Conservative PM Howard instituted further tough laws that have ensured the lack of any real instituted gun-violence. Organized criminal figures still seem to fancy guns but I thank the good sense of many Australian governments that don't buy into the claptrap that guns are a normal part of society. In a perfect world guns would only be available to the armed forces and law enforcement, as well as farmers and those in rural settings, and those who participate in gun-related sports. Guns are first and foremost a weapon of violence and with over 30,000 gun-related violent instances in the U.S. every year I hope you guys wake up and try to get rid of that pesky Second Amendment.
-- Nathan Maskiell
Victoria, Australia

LONE SUPPORTERS
Re: Ben Stein's Greetings From Rancho Mirage:

Thanks Ben. We really appreciate you kind and thoughtful words. Unfortunately, most of our fellow citizens do not feel the same.
-- Matt Lissner, LTC, U.S. Army

Letter to the Editor

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