Split from the Marriage thread: Joe Zollars

[rebecca]

I heard that Saint John of Shanghai and San Francisco would allow his female Chinese parishioners to wear loose pants as part of their traditional dress, but Russian and American women had to wear skirts.

to church, I mean.

[Joe Zollars]

that would be from the perspective of an Orthodox Christian, while those secular historians who are completely seperated from theological and eschatoligical issues recognize that it was the Orthodox who split from Rome.

paradosis, there you go again cropping my posts so they say what you want them too. If you read just one or two sentances down from the part you quoted, you will find where I said antiquity is not a prooftext of the Liturgy.

Now I will be obeying my confessor and leaving this forum completely, lest I be tempted to schism again.

I shall pray for all y'all's return to the one true church.

Joe Zollars

Deo Gratias, Deo Gratias.

[Natasha]

JoeZollars wrote: "I shall pray for all y'all's return to the one true church"

At first I was mildly shocked by such an ignorant statement, then it made me laugh until there were practically tears in my eyes. That is the best joke I have heard all day!

[Seraphim Reeves]

You and I have something in common that is very rare in my experience...

• we both want/wanted to be received into the Orthodox Church
• we both come from "traditionalist" Roman Catholic backgrounds. Just to give some of my "credentials" - I used to attend an SSPX chapel in Toronto, even went to the SSPX college in KS for a while, and my parents and brother are still affiliated with the SSPX (my brother is in fact an SSPX seminarian, who was tonsured this year.) I've also visited the SSPX seminary in Minnesota, and met two of the "Lefebvre Bishops" (Williamson and Fellay). I actually seriously contemplated becoming a priest with the SSPX at one point.

This familiarity as such, made me wonder about something you wrote. While "extra ecclessia nulla salus" is a doctrine of the RCC, I'm curious, do you hold to the position of Fr.Feeney (no salvation without the character of water baptism)? I only ask, because I've been told by my brother this is a very popular idea amongst traddies in the United States, but has been repeatedly condemned by the SSPX clergy (and in their official publications) as heretical (since it confuses, in their view, the "grace of baptism" with the "baptismal character", which they say is condemned indirectly by the Council of Trent.)

As for comparing the Tridentine Mass vs. the Orthodox Divine Liturgy, I believe the Orthodox is inferior (although only slightly) because it is seperated from Eternal Rome (of course the NOM is also seperated from eternal Rome but on a much grander scale).

Even by RC lights, the Divine Liturgy of St.John Chrysostom as it exists now is fundamentally the same liturgy as it was when Rome was in communion with the Orthodox Church. Any complaints about it's "development" square (at least) as much against the Tridentine Missal, since the form it exists now is certainly much different than it was prior to the reform of St.Gregory the Great, and even in the centuries following this (being in fact a hybrid of the Roman Mass and the various Carolingian/Gallican liturgies.)

However it is a proven historical fact that the ordinary of the Tridentine Mass (with the obvious exception of some of the names in the mementos) is older than any Liturgy still in use, with the single exception of the Divine Liturgy of St. James, which ties for antiquity with the Ordo of the Tridentine Mass, which is believed by many a scholar to have been composed by St. Peter himself. Of course antiquity is not the prooftext of the Liturgy.

Of course, you do realize that the Liturgy of St.John Chrysostom is a direct descendent of the St.James Liturgy, right? Comparing the two, I'm tempted to say the differences between them are no more radical than the differences between the Tridentine Missal and the older Romano-Gallican liturgies which developed throughout the west.

However this is not the real issue. The issue is development. The lack thereof in the East and the false kind in the NOM. The Tridentine Mass developed over time as a matter of organic development.

I think you'd agree "development for it's own sake" is silly, and is often a ruse to get bad ideas in through the back door.

Any "complaints" that could be made about problems in the current Orthodox liturgy, can equally be made about the Tridentine Missal; which is precisely why the "liturgical movement" began (rather harmlessly) during the 19th century in the RCC, before it became the flagship for the "modernists." The liturgical conservatism of the Orthodox Church exists for precisely the same reason it exists amongst RC traditionalists...

a) it ain't broke so don't try fixing it
b) even if some parts could use revision (arguably), this has to be done with care, and by the right people, with the consent of the right people
c) given the times we're in, those "right people" simply aren't there, so don't bother.

As for "development" in general, it's not all bad, obviously. However, I will say that the "modernists of today" are not without precedence in the RCC. Keep in mind that Thomas Aquinas was himself viewed as a "modernist" by many of his contemporaries, since he made the Aristolianism imported from the Muslims the basis of his theological thought - Christianity as a philosophical study. Is it not possible that the "trads" of our day in the RCC, are parallel to the "trads" of Aquinas' day, who resented the intrusion of a basically alien thought paradigm into their Christian learning?

[Seraphim Reeves]

that would be from the perspective of an Orthodox Christian, while those secular historians who are completely seperated from theological and eschatoligical issues recognize that it was the Orthodox who split from Rome.

I don't see what eschatology has to do with this. However, I am interested in knowing who some of these disinterested scholars are. Most secular treatments I've read of Catholicism and the Papacy readily recognize the incredible evolution "papalism" underwent from the pre-Nicean era through to the "great schism", and well beyond (since quite a bit of change occured even between the "great schism" through to the first Vatican Council.)

I shall pray for all y'all's return to the one true church.

At one point I believed as you (seem) to, but because I had read so much on ancient Christianity, I could never believe it with the gusto and whole heartedness I would have liked to. Simply put, the papal-centric church of the ultra-montane never existed in the "pre-schism" days. For goodness' sake, it didn't even exist in the west for much of the period between 1054 and the first Vatican Council.

This is the tragedy of Roman Catholicism, particularly the "traditionalist" brand - it is precisely the poison found in many of the things traditionalists venerate, which allowed for the complete dissolution of whatever good was left in Catholicism in this century. Without Newman's vindication of outrageous Roman Catholic innovation under the guise of "development of doctrine" (since without this theory it is very obvious that Catholicism went way off the straight path a long time ago), there would never have been a back door for the liberals who "hijacked" Vatican II to crawl in through. They are, without doubt, nothing less than the newest generation of "modernist" and innovators. They are different only in degree, but not kind.

For example, traditionalist Roman Catholics resent the stripping down of liturgical services, their desacralization and loss of ascetic merit. Of course, the apologists for these changes, say "hey, it's valid, so what's the problem?" To which the traditionalist replies "validity is not all that matters". And they're right! However, this minimalizing, this economizing of divine services is a tendency heretical Latins have haboured for some time now. If you doubt this, ask yourself why the Latins stopped baptizing by immersion? The answer is simply that this was motivated by the same mentality which reared it's head again in the 20th century in the "liturgical movement".

Blessed Justin of Serbia has called Catholicism "the oldest Protestantism." I would go further, and say in all seriousness, that Catholicism is in fact the oldest modernism, since it is precisely the tendencies which RC traditionalists don't like about the Congars and Rahners of our day, which made/make Orthodox Christians weary of Latin innovations (both theological and in praxis.)

In short, by re-embracing RC traditionalism, you have only opted for modernism 1.0 instead of modernism 2.0 - you have not in fact rid yourself of the "modernist mindset" which is what cleaved the Latin west from the Orthodox Church in the first place.

I wish you all the best Joseph.

Seraphim

P.S. - I appreciate your attachment to the Tridentine Liturgy cycle and the popular forms of piety attached to it. However, it would be worth keeping in mind that if taken as a whole, Orthodox practices as they survive today have a far greater resemblence (particularly in tone) to ancient Latin (and western liturgies in general, like the various Gallican rites) practice than the Tridentine rite now does. If you got into a time machine and went back to Rome during the age of St.Gregory the Great, you would have found yourself amongst bearded clergy, who kept the great fasts, stood for all of the divine services (with various forms of prostration as contemporary Orthodox use), recited the Nicene Creed minus the filioque clause, who would have had absolutely no clue that their Bishop was personally "infallible", and whose liturgical "art" was for the most part the same as the iconographic tradition of the "Orthodox East" (if you need evidence of the latter, just compare St.John the Lateran in Rome to the far newer churches, in particular St.Peter's Basillica.)

[OrthodoxyOrDeath]

Very nice.

...called Catholicism "the oldest Protestantism." I would go further, and say in all seriousness, that Catholicism is in fact the oldest modernism...

It is both of these things and so much more; it is a "protestantism", "modernism", a minimalism, a scholasticism, renovationism, revisionism, an atificial social message, and a great phylosophical adventure primarily because it has RATIONALISM as its foundation from the very beginning.

Rationalism is at the core of every heresy, and rationalism is the spirit of this world, the spirit of man's intellect.

[尼古拉前执事]

Joe Zollars asks that people email him at joe_zollars@yahoo.com to continue this conversation as he has left the forum in accordance to his Roman Spiritual Father. Pray for his true and complete conversion please.