To my mind Forgiveness Vespers is a service wherein the people seek mutual forgiveness as a community that lives a life of prayer and worship together. I'm not sure - beyond extending "forgiveness" to be something like a trite and contrived "forgiveness for our disunity" - how this special and quite personal experience would be fostered by complete strangers looking through stapled photocopies of the service trying to figure out what's going on.
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(Orthodoxy & Heterodoxy) - When the blog Red River Orthodox announced a change in format in order to attempt a “liberal engagement with the ‘West,’” many of us were both intrigued with the hopeful possibilities of such an endeavor but troubled at what might actually occur. Now that a number of posts have been published, I would like to take this opportunity to reexamine the notion “liberal engagement” for fear that an authentic “liberal engagement” has not in fact occurred.Complete post here.
In a recent post, Orthodox priest Fr. Oliver Herbel asks why Orthodox Christians would not participate in a suggested joint Orthodox-Catholic service of Forgiveness Vespers. His reply is a vitriolic assertion that Orthodox bishops and priests simply don’t have “the guts” to do so. In referencing Eastern Catholic scholar Adam DeVille’s original suggestion of the idea, we find that he intends it as an effort to “heal the divisions of the dead, and moreover, the memory of those divisions among the living.”
So I ask the question: Is this a true, liberal engagement with “the other”? May Catholics and Orthodox engage each other authentically with such a service? In order to extrapolate this question, we must delve further into the concept of “liberal engagement.”
What does a “liberal engagement” actually look like? I propose we tackle the issue by expressing it in simpler terms, terms that I encountered and embraced while an undergraduate student at a Southern Baptist liberal arts university – the integration of faith and learning...
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So I guess they're going to invite them to the Sunday of Orthodoxy service too?
ReplyDeleteI love it! :-)
DeleteWhy wouldn't they invite them to Sun. of Orthodoxy? Catholics and Orthodox stand together on iconodulism, which that feast celebrates.
DeleteTo answer your concern, JF, we could start by forgiving each other for the uncharitable things said and thought by our community about their community. Since we both celebrate the same forgiveness service on the same calendar day, it seems like a good time to ask such forgiveness from each other. Unless, of course, one considers himself guiltless of such thoughts, words, or deeds. Let he (or she) who is without without sin stay home and watch basketball.
Seeking and extending forgiveness to others, regardless of their affiliations, is at the heart of the Gospel. What is of concern is the turning this into a politically correct gesture with all the fanfare that goes with it.
ReplyDeleteFr. Oliver is quite wrong. Celebrating a service of forgiveness with Catholics before we have resolved our differences and reached doctrinal agreement and are once again in full Communion would be an empty gesture that would send the wrong message that a unity exists that does not in fact exist. I cannot accept Fr. Oliver's "lets all hold hands, forget about our differences pretend that we are all united and sing Koombaya" kind of ecumenism. There are real differences that divide us that must be resolved before we can serve together as one body in Christ. I bear no animosity towards Catholics, but I also strongly disagree with the papal claims.
ReplyDeleteArchpriest John W. Morris
July 2008 at the Orientale Lumen XII we see Fr. Seraphim Gan of ROCOR serve Vespers with Byzantine Catholic bishops, priests, and laity.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.oltv.tv/id721.html
. . . which means only that Fr. Seraphim Gan did something wrong from Orthodox Christian viewpoint and practice.
DeleteAn error does not constitute a precedent to be followed.
Hey Jakov, he didn't serve *with* Byzantine Catholic hierarchs and clergy, but *in the presence of* Byzantine Catholic hierarchs and clergy.
DeleteJakov, thank you for that reference. This is exactly the trouble with extremism: it blinds itself to reality.
ReplyDeleteFr. John, part of resolving differences is this "singing Koombaya" as you call it. It can't all be cut-and-dry argumentation by bishops and theologians around boardroom tables. Don't you see? Prayer must play a role.
If a family who prays together stays together, cannot prayer together between strangers over time build a family?
ReplyDeleteWhy just Catholics? Why not make Forgiveness Vespers an event for the entire town? That way, there is no issue of forbidden concelebration -- it's an Orthodox service with non-Orthodox people in attendance; that's fine with the canons.
ReplyDeleteBesides, Forgiveness Vespers is for people, not for institutions. I need to forgive my Protestant neighbor far more than I need to forgive the Vatican bureaucracy.
Celebrating a service of forgiveness with Catholics before we have resolved our differences and reached doctrinal agreement and are once again in full Communion would be an empty gesture that would send the wrong message that a unity exists that does not in fact exist.
ReplyDeleteExactly. Intimacy is good; I enjoy it with my wife for example. Knock down the barriers, and it's no longer intimacy.
I just don't understand why this issue has become THE litmus test for Christian unity. It's as if anyone opposed to an ecumenical forgiveness vespers is still holding a grudge over Cardinal Humbert and the Fourth Crusade.
ReplyDeleteIt just seems silly to me in light of the steps that Orthodox and Catholics have taken towards healing the rift. The excommunications were lifted almost 50 years ago, there's been ongoing theological dialogue, agreements to collaborate on religious liberty and the family, joint participation on the March for Life, etc.
This whole flap about the vespers service looks to me like an instance of majoring in minors by elevating this one proposal to the sine qua non of Christian unity.
I'd raise two concerns with this practice:
ReplyDelete1. Forgiveness Vespers is intended to allow members of a parish community to reconcile with each other at the outset of Great Lent. It's not, fundamentally, an ecumenist outreach. When we aim at two targets simultaneously, we rarely hit either.
2. Studies have shown that people who are encouraged to express disapproval of racism actually end up *practicing* more discrimination than those who aren't. Speaking becomes a substitute for acting. Having ecumenist, "look-at-me, I-care-about-disunity" events will, in the long run, make actual reunion harder. It's better to be the best Orthodox or Roman Christian one can be, and discuss the filioque over a brew.
Having said those things, props to Fr. Oliver for trying to do something. I just don't think this is the sort of thing that will move us closer to the goal he's seeking.