And West Is West?

The Reverend John Hunwicke writes:

There are one or two suggestions around that discontented Anglican clergy should avoid the Papal Initiative and consider the Orthodox option ... including an article in the July New Directions. There seems even to be a hint that this would easier for us than the dreadful burdens which the Papacy imposes.

I expect I've got this wrong, but I remember reading somewhere, sometime, that married Orthodox clergy are expected to refrain from sexual intercourse on the day before and on the day of a Eucharistic celebration, and on fast days ... Wednesdays, Fridays, Lent, Little Lents of the Apostles and of the Koimesis ... have I got that right?

The invitations being dangled before unhappy Anglicans don't mention this.

I also recall being told that Orthodox laity are expected to make a sacramental confession before every act of Holy Communion. This also doesn't feature large in the go-to-Orthodoxy propaganda.

Perhaps I shall be told that, of course, Orthodoxy is not monolithic and uniform and that Modern Orthodoxy has quietly and sensibly forgotten about such troublesome little traditional details [I'm not sure that they have, nor am I sure that they should]. In which case I shall want to take a critical new look at the claims sometimes rather self-righteously made by some Orthodox about the uniquely unbroken traditions of Orthodoxy and all that sort of ... er ... stuff.

I am not anti-Orthodox. Three of the happiest years of my life were when, in south London, I enjoyed the friendship of Archimandrite Commodatos (later Bishop of Telmissos) and of the to-be-martyred Little Brother Lazarus. The archimandrite honoured me by using me as a sort of pseudo-deacon (he didn't have a deacon) during Holy Week, and by asking me to sing an ectene during the funeral of Brother Lazarus. It was in his flat behind his church in Camberwell that I became aware of the easy yet respectful intimacy which the Orthodox clergy enjoy with their people, and came love Orthodoxy as being still a Christianity for all the people, not just for a pious and po-faced minority. But ...

A final point: we are being asked to consider "Western Orthodoxy". This is a set-up which uses, for example, the Roman Canon "corrected" by having a 'Byzantine' epiclesis interpolated. I resent very profoundly such contemptuous insults to the venerable Western Tradition which the East was happy to live in communion with for more than a millennium. The Roman Rite should no more be polluted with Byzantinisms than the Byzantine Rite should be corrupted by being Latinised.

Orthodoxy, Yes. An à la carte Orthodoxy manufactured, adapted, and tailored to proselytise shamelessly among troubled members of the Western Tradition: No.

No, indeed. And the New Directions article specifically advocates joining ROCOR, of all things. I am really very surprised that ROCOR has authorised the Western Rite.

But the Catholic Church is the unity, in the full sense, of the Latin and several Eastern Rites. So spare a thought for the Ukrainians, who are now being forbidden to practise Eucharistic Adoration, the Stations of the Cross, and the Holy Rosary.

Apparently, these three forms of spirituality, all very long-established among Ukrainians, are “Latin”, with no part in a Byzantine Rite Catholic Church whose self-prostration to the Orthodox (who occupied her churches during the Soviet period) does not preclude very good relations with Buddhists and Hare Krishnas.

Photian Monopatrism, and denial of the Petrine Office even in principle? Fine. Nirvana? Great. Bhakti? Marvellous. But Eucharistic Adoration, or the Stations of the Cross, or the Holy Rosary? Any of that carry on and you are looking at having to send your young men to Warsaw to be ordained (in the Latin Rite, of course) by none other than Richard Williamson, with the inevitable excommunications to follow.

There is never any excuse for schism.

But the wound is not felt only on one side.