The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church is the largest of the Eastern Catholic Churches. Her Patriarch Sviatoslav (currently "Major Archbishop" because the title he deserves would offend Putin's House Chaplain and wreck the chance to have a meaningless papal confab with said House Chaplain) is a model of Christian resistance to tyranny and unjust war.
Not that he or the millions he leads matter a damn to Putin's Catholic Amen Corner. And it this point I have to concede that Todd is more right than I was about the depth (in every sense of the word) of apologetics for the Russian thug. While the overt support is more muted, there's a bumper crop of anti-anti-Putinism that is functionally the same thing. And it gives not a damn for the deaths of Ukrainian Catholics, to my building fury.
But then again, Easterners have never mattered much to American Catholics of the western rite. The Orthodox Catholic Church in America was birthed by Archbishop John Ireland and fellow Latin hierarchs who were appalled by the married priesthood of Easterners and their desire to maintain ethnic traditions, leading to the inevitable conversion of large numbers of Slavic Catholics to Orthodoxy.
As always, slowly and painfully, Easterners won out against Latin pig-headedness with the belated support of Rome. For example, the Latin Bishop of Mobile, Thomas Toolen, tried to ban use of the vernacular in a Melkite parish, but was thankfully overruled by John XXIII.
Lest you think Bishop Toolen was some stock southern villain from Progressive Casting, he should be remembered as a good-hearted man with a mostly-solid record when it came to African-Americans.
Still, the rote-obedience-and-uniformity-at-all-costs mindset of Latin Catholicism is one of its least attractive features and invariably harms its relationship with Catholics of the East. And it is something that needs to be remedied as soon as possible.
Divine Physician, heal all of our hearts in this time of war.
The same is true about our regard for Christians in the Holy Land and middle east.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely correct.
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