Leo can’t even make peace with traditional Catholics.
LeoWatch: Lucy and the Football
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
“Imagine.. it’s easy if you can…”
With the Orthodox ecumenism is The goal -but not to Roman Catholicism as it existed for 19 1/2 centuries.
With the SSPX… the Keep of Tradition.. it’s annihilation. Other Traditional groups too.. but the SSPX which has shown growth (unheard of synodal wise) and still Core of Catholic Tradition cannot be allowed to exist along side the synodal.
This will happen on the 12th of Never. The Orthodox won’t give up their traditional liturgies and they don’t have to listen to the Pope anymore.
I think, all things being equal, it’s a good thing to seek reunion.
That being said, reunion was already achieved at the Council of Florence (and continues with the Eastern Catholic Churches). The theological and ecclesiological issues were frankly and thoroughly hammered out, even, if I remember correctly, with the Copts (cf. bull Cantate Domino), and I believe almost all of the eastern bishops in attendance (except Mark of Ephesus) approved of the bull of union with the Greeks (Laetentur Caeli) and it was even accepted by the then current byzantine emperor (who, to be fair, seems to have been in it for hoped for military support against the Turks, which it turns out he really needed).
After getting back to their lands there was severe public backlash, and many of the bishops claimed they signed under “intense political pressure” and the whole thing fell apart. And now Mark of Ephesus is an Orthodox saint and a “pillar” of Orthodoxy. As an aside, I’ve always kind of wondered how these types of modern re-unions are supposed to work on the practical level, when you have major figures within Orthodoxy who were diametrically opposed to union with the Catholic Church and are venerated for this opposition. Do you drop him completely? Try and retcon him into something he wasn’t? It would be kind of like asking Catholics to drop St. Thomas Aquinas.
So while I think overtures and gestures of union are in balance generally good, I think that if rigorous theological reconciliation and an looming existential threat were not able to make it stick after Florence, the type of ecumenism generally practiced today makes for nice photo-ops but little else. I think ultimately it’s going to have to be a genuine supernatural intervention, at which point we can maybe get around to making Istanbul Constantinople again.
While Leo and (especially) his predecessor have done yeoman’s work toward eliminating the primacy of Peter from the equation, the fact is, Bartholomew and the Russian Patriarch Kirill aren’t even in communion with each other.
The more I meet football pullers in real life, the less I like the character Lucy.
Charlie Brown must have the patience of a saint.
The causes of the original separation pale beside the present internal divisions of the Western Church. The common enemies of secularism and totalitarianism should be enough to look at reunification as a bulwark against the evil one in the world.
Most Eastern Orthodox are more anti-Catholic than Protestant anti-Catholics. But in fairness, there are some “traditionalist” Catholics who are just as intransigent as many Eastern Orthodox.
Reunification with Orthodoxy is a dead issue because the Russian Orthodox Church, the largest part by far and greater than all the rest put together, won’t join, period. As for the rest, if it isn’t the war in Ukraine decimating them, then it’s Islam. As for the adviseability of reunification with an Institutional Church gone fully woke, fully environmentalist, LGBTQ-inclusive, the Orthodox will do well to stay away, but sadly Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew embraces some of the liberal progressive trash promulgated by Francis and Leo. One would hope he knew better. Sorry, Guys, I am disgusted with the Vatican and the USCCB. Wasn’t it said before something to the effect that the only reason the Church survives her clerics is a miracle from the Lord?
At this time Greek Orthodox Catholics can receive Communion and vice versa.
“The rule that the pope must approve bishops was formalized in the 1983 Code of Canon Law..,”
primarily to avoid the CCP appointing Bishops..,
Leo has approved Bishops appointed by the CCP and excommunicated Bishops of the SSPX who were only interested in survival of Catholic Tradition with the need to ordain priests not governance.
But Leo is a “nice guy”.