An Orthodox Irishman in the Russian Catholic Church
Thursday, May 23, 2002
Shortly after I announced the ArisBlog on the First Hour list, I saw that Gerard had placed a link to it on his Blog page, under Catholic blogs. I found this a little embarassing, since I haven't called myself a Catholic (without further qualification) since I left the Roman Catholic Church three years ago.
Before Attila the Nun comes at me with her mil. spec. razor sharp steel ruler, let me hasten to add that I was received into the Russian Catholic Church sui juris by order of the late John, Cardinal O'Connor, acting on authority granted to him by Pope John Paul II. Like most members of my tiny denomination I prefer to think of myself as an Orthodox Christian in communion with Rome, but I do not insist on this, largely out of respect for my true blue Ortho friends who claim that they just haint no sech animule, though the Melkite Greek Catholic Church is a marvelous counterexample.
If you ask why I did what I did the way I did it, I can only say that I want to live the integral life of an Orthodox Christian, but I cannot in good conscience repudiate the graces I experienced in the half century of my life as a Roman Catholic, which indeed brought me to where I am now. Further, I am a product of modern Western civilization. Much as I revere the memory of Philip Sherrard, with whom I studied, all too briefly, in 1969, I cannot agree that it is heretical root and branch, particularly in its unique ideal of science and human dignity.
12:37 PM
Friday, May 24, 2002
Ed MacDonald writes, "I don't think referring to the RusCath church as a 'denomination' is quite right. Makes us sound like Free-Will Baptists."
It does sound a bit grand for an outfit with no bishops, maybe ten priests, and a couple of hundred communicants. I was thinking of denomination in the sense of variety, as in, "There are three denominations of Russian Orthodox in New York, the OCA, the ROCA Synod, and the Patriarchal." and ourselves as a would-be fourth, I suppose. It's all right for Roman canon lawyers to call us a Church sui juris, but that is precisely what we are not. Our mandate from the Holy Father was to preserve the customs and traditions of Orthodoxy intact, except for any incidental accretions that might be contrary to the Faith, such as, I suppose, the veneration of St. Peter the Aleut. But on the whole we steer a middle course between the innovations of New Skete and the ossifications of Jordanville.
2:56 PM
Sunday, May 26, 2002
"Did Sherrard consider "Western Civilization" as heretical? I don't see how an abstraction can be accused of heresy."
How like a Westerner (never mind that I'm one myself) to assume that only the individual is really real, and that that which he participates in is mere abstraction! From a Traditional point of view, which I may not be able to represent very well because it is not fully my own, this assumption is not merely intellectual error or spiritual blindness, but enthrallment to a very particular Spirit of Lies, to whom the Papacy opened the Roman Church in the time of St. Photios, which eventualted in the demonic practice of autonomous sciences of nature, and the equally demonic pretention to individual human rights.
Such was the belief of a dear and good man, sadly deluded, his delusion shared less by Orthodoxy in general than by his fellow Traditionalists, many of whom were converts from European occultism to Islam.
10:32 PM
Blog Between the Worlds 
Monday, June 10, 2002