|
Post by wenceslav on Jul 1, 2019 12:29:03 GMT -5
Answer to Pacelli’s #1Pacelli said: (1) The saints of Russian origin recognized by Rome were definitely not in schism. Palamas, on the other hand, refused union with Rome and rejected Catholic doctrines (Filioque) and rejected that the blessed in heaven enjoy the divine essence (i.e. in direct opposition to Pope Benedict XII’s constitution “ Benedictus Deus”. For references see Fr. Martin Jugie, one of the preeminent Byzantine scholars of the 20th century. For a more recent reference see James Likoudis. The following quote is from Professor Michael Petrowycz’s (presently at Ukrainian Catholic University, L’viv Ukraine] dissertation “ Bringing Back the Saints: The Contribution of the Roman Edition of the Ruthenian Liturgical Books (Recensio Ruthena, 1940-1952) to the Commemoration of Slavic Saints in the Ukrainian Catholic Church, p.363. Source. RR = Recensio Ruthena (Ukrainian Catholic sanctorale) RV = Recensio Vulgata (Russian Catholic sanctorale) The above quote from Petrowycz’s dissertation is quite clear. The Russian saints approved during the pontificate of Pius XII had to be in communion with Rome. Even hose who inherited the schism and were of good faith were not considered for sainthood in either the Russian or Ukrainian Catholic Churches. Palamas could not be considered and certainly was not considered a “saint” under the reign of a true Pope.
|
|
|
Post by wenceslav on Jul 1, 2019 12:30:33 GMT -5
Pacelli’s Q.2: Pacelli, the source of your quote, Fr. Keleher (byzcath.org) is mistaken. The only reference where Cardinal Slipyj considers this question re:Palamas is contained in the Archivum Patriarchale Sanctae Sophiae in a correspondence between himself and Cardinal Šeper (prefect of the CDF at that time). He even apologizes to Šeper, for not being able give an “exhaustive reply” for lack of time due to the dire straits of the Ukrainian Catholic Church. I present the text, below, from a paper by Victor Žukovsky (Professor of the Ukrainian Catholic University in L’viv). I translated the text from Ukrainian but the original Italian is included in the appendix of the same journal article. Source. For your perusal is the following excerpt from Jaroslav Pelikan’s book Confessor between East and West describing this correspondence between Slipyj and Šeper. Source. See p. 228. CommentsPelikan, who was a Lutheran minister and a convert to “Eastern Orthodoxy” in the latter years of his life, made quite a liberal interpretation of Cardinal Slipyj’s response (as do all the proponents of the commemoration of Palamas in the Ukrainian Catholic Church). Unlike Pelikan’s interpretation, Cardinal Slipyj’s endorsement of the commemoration of Palamas was lack-lustre at best. Unbelievably, though, Slipyj made his conclusions(especially pts. 2- 3) in the light of Roman theologians accusing Palamas of heresy (Palamas’ views were certainly heretical if you consider Palamas’ denial that the blessed in heaven enjoy the divine essence) and he explicitly rejected union with Rome (i.e. schismatic). Slipyj’s conclusions in point 2 and 3 are misleading which I will discuss below, in the next post.
|
|
|
Post by wenceslav on Jul 1, 2019 12:32:17 GMT -5
Pacelli said: Your argument, above, is basically an extension to Cardinal Slipyj’s point-2(in his response to Šeper). The historical record does not concur with your argument. Upon further research, there is no evidence that the Ukrainian Church commemorated Palamas or other schismatics in the Liturgy before the Synod of Zamość. On the contrary, the following excerpt from Bp. Huculak’s well known book ( The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom) shows exactly the opposite. Source.Bp. Rafal Korsak, (later Metropolitan of Kiev in the first half of the 17th century, not long after the Unia) complains about errors in the content of Liturgical books (i.e. služebnyks printed by the “Orthodox“). He specifically mentions the errors introduced by the Palamites and other schismatics. It is true that Palamas may have been commemorated in služebnyks used by Catholics, but that was only accidental due to the lack of Catholic printing presses. Palamas was acknowledged as a schismatic in those early days after the Unia and was certainly not commemorated in the Divine Liturgy. The only reason why the Synod of Zamość found it necessary to formally legislate against any commemoration of Palamas was a result of newly incorporated eparchies into the Unia. As Professor Petrowycz explains: Source. The eparchies that had joined the Unia at the beginning of the 18th century had in their schismatic past venerated Palamas. The Synod of Zamość quickly settled the matter and established uniformity with the earlier Uniate eparchies.
|
|
|
Post by wenceslav on Jul 1, 2019 12:35:02 GMT -5
My comments on Card. Slipyj’s point #3 is coming later tonight or tomorrow morning. Thanks for your patience.
|
|
|
Post by wenceslav on Jul 1, 2019 13:31:54 GMT -5
Card. Slipyj’s Point #3 (in his response to Seper):
I refer back to Petrowycz’s dissertation , p.152 to clarify Cardinal Slipyj’s point 3:
The Russian “saints” in question were not to be liturgically venerated. But by placing Palamas in the Anthologion, as Slipyj was asked, Palamas was to be venerated liturgically. This is not a major point in favour or against the schismatic’s commemoration in the Divine Liturgy because by giving his “opinion” to Seper he was referring the final decision to who he thought was a representative of the Holy See.
|
|
|
Post by wenceslav on Jul 1, 2019 13:33:21 GMT -5
Answer to Pacelli’s Question 4: Pacelli said
The commemoration of Palamas is a very evil innovation. Just like the advent of the Novus Ordo, one does not need the previous authority of a true Pope to know that the commemoration of a known schismatic in the Liturgy is an evil. For example, my parents knew that the NO was evil when it first appeared -they didn’t even know of the Ottaviani intervention until many years later. Nor is there any doubt as to Palamas’ status of schism i.e. see the Synod of Zamosc (unlike the status of the Nopes who have not been officially condemned).
Below is an excerpt from the commemoration of Palamas from the Ukrainian Catholic Church on the second Sunday of Lent.
Troparia (2nd Sunday of the Great Fast -Lent)
Simply amazing that Palamas is the Light of orthodoxy, teacher of the Church when the schismatic’s teachings are heretical in the light of Benedict XII’s constitution on the Divine essence.
|
|
|
Post by Pacelli on Jul 1, 2019 17:27:02 GMT -5
Answer to Pacelli’s Question 4: Pacelli said The commemoration of Palamas is a very evil innovation. Just like the advent of the Novus Ordo, one does not need the previous authority of a true Pope to know that the commemoration of a known schismatic in the Liturgy is an evil. For example, my parents knew that the NO was evil when it first appeared -they didn’t even know of the Ottaviani intervention until many years later. Nor is there any doubt as to Palamas’ status of schism i.e. see the Synod of Zamosc (unlike the status of the Nopes who have not been officially condemned). Below is an excerpt from the commemoration of Palamas from the Ukrainian Catholic Church on the second Sunday of Lent. Troparia (2nd Sunday of the Great Fast -Lent) Simply amazing that Palamas is the Light of orthodoxy, teacher of the Church when the schismatic’s teachings are heretical in the light of Benedict XII’s constitution on the Divine essence. I do agree that one can recognize an evil without the judgment of the Church, but I am not yet in agreement that this is a certain evil. If the Catholic Church tolerated this, then it could not be evil. I would need to know more about why Cardinal Slipyj, who had an excellent reputation as a Catholic, would advocate for this, if the practice was an evil practice. Did he suffer for almost 20 years in the Soviet Gulag refusing to abandon his Faith to win his freedom from suffering only to abandon it the end anyway? I would certainly not advocate putting anyone in the liturgy who was a schismatic or a heretic. That much is obvious. What I do know is that Rome went very far in making concessions to the former schismatics to placate any resistance to them returning to the Church. In order to better understand this issue, I would like to know what Cardinal Slipyj based his assertions on. Is there any defenders of his assertions to be found, which can give us his side of the story? I need more information than you are providing to make a judgment. I believe that I am safe in making the judgment in regards to the Novus Ordo, and do not believe these two matters are of equal comparison. I realize some Catholics were quick to make a judgment in regards to the Novus Ordo, perhaps as your parents were, but I was not one of them. I spent a lot of time studying the matter, painstakingly trying to find the truth always fully aware of the great implications of what making such a judgment would mean, as they are far reaching beyond the matter of the missal itself. You don’t need to convince me that Palamas was a schismatic and most likely a heretic. The only matter at hand is whether Rome recognized him as such as he was not a named heretic or schismatic, at least as far as I am aware. Was it good idea to mention such a man in the liturgy? I don’t believe so, and even if it could be tolerated, I think it was at a minimum, a stupid thing to do. I also believe it should be reversed immediately. But, that is all besides the point. The only care I have is whether Rome, the real Rome pre-V2, tolerated this or not. If such an act were tolerated, I think the only justification could be based on the status of whether the person was a named heretic or schismatic or not.
|
|
|
Post by wenceslav on Jul 1, 2019 17:50:16 GMT -5
Pacelli,
Read my posts carefully and see what Cd. Slipyj said himself in correspondence with Seper. The Synod of Zamost formally forbids the naming and venerating of Palamas. The Synod was approved by the Holy See. The naming of Palamas was never tolerated. From my perspective that is all I can say. WRT to living confessors of the Faith, like Slipyj, he certainly was not infallible and after VII he did write some questionable material. Lack of a true Pope has much to do with this. Even Archbishop Beran of Prague who was certainly orthodox and a Confessor of the Faith before VII served an ecumenical service with a rabbi after VII.
|
|
|
Post by Pacelli on Jul 2, 2019 11:47:58 GMT -5
Pacelli, Read my posts carefully and see what Cd. Slipyj said himself in correspondence with Seper. The Synod of Zamost formally forbids the naming and venerating of Palamas. The Synod was approved by the Holy See. The naming of Palamas was never tolerated. From my perspective that is all I can say. WRT to living confessors of the Faith, like Slipyj, he certainly was not infallible and after VII he did write some questionable material. Lack of a true Pope has much to do with this. Even Archbishop Beran of Prague who was certainly orthodox and a Confessor of the Faith before VII served an ecumenical service with a rabbi after VII. I also ask you to read my post carefully. I was never writing about Zamosc or post-Zamosc in regards to this issue. The section you boldfaced is au uncontested fact where there is no disagreement. I have only brought up what happened from the time of the Union Brest until Zamosc. That is where I am not certain of your assertion. Cardinal Slipyj, in the letter to Cardinal Seper, #2 asserts that Rome allowed the former schismatics to venerate the pre-Brest saints. I do not see this point refuted in your responses. You only present the argument that this was done due to a lack of a printing press, which I will get to below. This is from The Theology and Liturgical Work of Andrei Sheptytsky. Fr. Galadza says on p. 296: If this source is accurate, and Metropolitan Sheptytsky, who I think you will agree that his Catholic orthodoxy is unquestioned, asserted that the practice of the Ruthenian Church until Zamosc used this feast in question. Assuming this is accurate, do you believe that Met. Sheptytsky was factually wrong on this point? As a last piece of evidence that appears to support the view that the Ruthenian Church was using this feast is the fact that Zamosc saw the need to remove it. If there was nothing to remove, then this action would have been unnecessary. If it was just a matter of only having old books, this could have been much more easily remedied by printing new ones to remove the feast. It seems that the bishops of Zamosc clearly realized the problem with having Palamas commemorated in the liturgy and dealt with this problem, and in my opinion rightly so. Zamosc was by law removing Palamas from the books. If there was something in the liturgy that was in itself evil, then the use of the books should have been ordered to cease being used immediately, but history shows that this was not what happened. A missal that contains evil cannot be tolerated just for convenience sake, it must be suppressed, even if it meant that Catholics may go for a period of time without the mass. They were used, with the apparent consent of Rome from 1695 until 1820, until Zamosc, as both Slipyj and Sheptytsky assert.
|
|
|
Post by Voxxkowalski on Jul 2, 2019 12:14:49 GMT -5
This is an excellent discussion my friends. Be sure to check that no animosity or frustration is creeping in. (not saying it has mind you...but just in case we forget how much the devil hates us all...and likes to destroy good discussions...and good men)
|
|
|
Post by wenceslav on Jul 3, 2019 22:31:47 GMT -5
I went through [Ukr. Catholic] Vespers and the Divine Liturgy on the 2nd Sunday of Lent. Below are the prayers referring to “Saint” Gregory Palamas. Source. Palamas rejected Union with the Holy See. His teachings explicitly contradict the doctrines of the Church and Papal teachings. As you say Pacelli, the Church cannot give stones rather than bread by having Catholics participate in an evil practice and by that leading them astray. But if the above was used in the Liturgy, before Zamosc, the Church would be leading Catholics astray. How could Palamas be a teacher of the Church, a great guide, and a protector of the Faith when he refused Union with Rome and his teachings directly contradict papal teaching. That is impossible!
|
|
|
Post by wenceslav on Jul 3, 2019 22:33:03 GMT -5
The entire text that you quoted from Galadza’s book is here for your perusal. I realize you don’t have a copy so I scanned the relevant page. Scanned source is at bottom of quote. SourceI don’t know why Met. Sheptytsky would say that Palamas was tolerated before Zamosc. Perhaps he thought that since Zamosc had prohibited Palamas’ veneration, he must have been venerated before. I discussed this same issue in my previous post and I will discuss it again since my explanation must have been insufficient since you brought up this question yourself - later in the thread. However context is important and that is why I scanned the whole page. The context, that the above page refers to, is the time during the First World War era and the time just prior to the Synod of St. Petersburg(1917) where the Russian saints were approved for veneration. But a very important distinction must be made and that involves the liturgical veneration of such persons versus a simple private expression of piety or veneration. The former is forbidden until the Holy See would deem otherwise (and the canons of the St. Petersburg Synod confirm this). Since Palamas is discussed in this same correspondence, it would seem that +Sheptytsky was referring to veneration of Palamas in this sense, only i.e. private or individual veneration, perhaps at worst a feast day but not a liturgical commemoration. Also note that in the paragraph after the one you quoted, Sheptytsky felt to put “saint” in quotation marks since saints cannot exist outside of the Catholic Church, especially by one that explicitly rejects Union with the Catholic Church. Also remember that the Russian Byzantine Catholics would even have feast days (corresponding to the Orthodox Feast day) dedicated to a given Russian saint but they could not commemorate them liturgically. Also note that those approved later by Rome in the 1940s had to be shown that they were in communion with the Holy See. It was at that point that they could be liturgically commemorated. I would have no problem if you claim the veneration of Palamas was only private before Zamosc, in the sense I described above. I do have a problem if you claim such veneration could be found in the Liturgy that was used by the Greek Catholics.
|
|
|
Post by wenceslav on Jul 3, 2019 22:35:40 GMT -5
Pacelli said: Pacelli, please see page 4; post 3 of this thread. I answered your above point in the aforementioned post. I will try again, I realize I may not have been succinct enough. From Petrowycz, pp. 49-51. SourcePalamas was removed (at Zamosc) only from those recently unified eparchies - Przemyśl, Lviv and Lutsk) who had venerated Palamas in their recent schismatic pasts. The original Eparchy that had accepted the Unia, i.e. Kyiv/Kiev had already expunged these errors (by Palamites) shortly after the Unia, a century before Zamosc. Please see quote from Huculak’s book, page 4 of thread; post 3 again. Pacelli further said: As the Huculak quote mentions, Catholics had the Mamonyč služebnyk which was limited. However since the Palamite schismatic errors (in the “Orthodox” služebnyk) were mostly limited to Sundays during Lent and Eastertide (i.e. Palamas is celebrated on the 2nd Sunday of Lent by the Orthodox), it would be a simple act to just rip out the offending pages). Not unlike from my SSPX prayerbooks when I cross out material about JPII - although the SSPX dare not venerate him in the Mass as the Novus Ordo does on October 22.
|
|
|
Post by Pacelli on Jul 3, 2019 23:49:58 GMT -5
The entire text that you quoted from Galadza’s book is here for your perusal. I realize you don’t have a copy so I scanned the relevant page. Scanned source is at bottom of quote. SourceI don’t know why Met. Sheptytsky would say that Palamas was tolerated before Zamosc. Perhaps he thought that since Zamosc had prohibited Palamas’ veneration, he must have been venerated before. I discussed this same issue in my previous post and I will discuss it again since my explanation must have been insufficient since you brought up this question yourself - later in the thread. However context is important and that is why I scanned the whole page. The context, that the above page refers to, is the time during the First World War era and the time just prior to the Synod of St. Petersburg(1917) where the Russian saints were approved for veneration. But a very important distinction must be made and that involves the liturgical veneration of such persons versus a simple private expression of piety or veneration. The former is forbidden until the Holy See would deem otherwise (and the canons of the St. Petersburg Synod confirm this). Since Palamas is discussed in this same correspondence, it would seem that +Sheptytsky was referring to veneration of Palamas in this sense, only i.e. private or individual veneration, perhaps at worst a feast day but not a liturgical commemoration. Also note that in the paragraph after the one you quoted, Sheptytsky felt to put “saint” in quotation marks since saints cannot exist outside of the Catholic Church, especially by one that explicitly rejects Union with the Catholic Church. Also remember that the Russian Byzantine Catholics would even have feast days (corresponding to the Orthodox Feast day) dedicated to a given Russian saint but they could not commemorate them liturgically. Also note that those approved later by Rome in the 1940s had to be shown that they were in communion with the Holy See. It was at that point that they could be liturgically commemorated. I would have no problem if you claim the veneration of Palamas was only private before Zamosc, in the sense I described above. I do have a problem if you claim such veneration could be found in the Liturgy that was used by the Greek Catholics. Thank you for taking the time to scan the text, and others in this discussion. I cannot say that your interpretation of this is wrong. I will leave off with this, that your argument makes sense, and I will end this with that. The most important matter to me is to defend the Church. It is impossible that the Church directly or tacitly allowed an evil in the liturgy. It’s possible that your interpretation is correct and both Metropolitan Sheptytsky and Cardinal Slipyj were both wrong in their understanding of this matter. I would also leave open the door to anyone that has the time to further study this matter on whether the text of the commemoration in the Orthodox liturgy used after Brest was identical to the one you quoted. I am not sure they are. I also leave open the door to other possibilities on this matter but all leading to the same end that you are clearly defending, and that I am equally defending, but perhaps by two different routes: that the Church can never fail, that the approved liturgies can never be evil or a cause of impiety, and that if it ever appears that way, there is always an explanation as the idea of a defected Church is in itself evil. I will not lock myself into this one defense that you have presented. If new evidence arises on this matter, I am sure you and I and those left that still care about defending the Faith and the Church will react accordingly. The Church can never fail us, and if anyone or any argument ever presents itself to attack this truth, then it must be struck down, as the Church is a divinely created body that cannot defect or be the cause of evil. I am going to leave off this discussion with this, as Voxx had a concern that this discussion could lead to bad feelings. I will say this, you are a tenacious defender of the Faith, and while I am not always convinced of sub-issues, not directly dealing with the Faith itself, that you present, (and in this case, I am leaning to the idea that your solution to this difficulty might be the better explanation,) I will say that I only regard you as a loyal and good Catholic. Thank you for the discussion.
|
|
|
Post by wenceslav on Jul 4, 2019 21:04:11 GMT -5
Hi Pacelli,
Thank you for your kind reply. Also many thanks to Vox for providing this venue to discuss these very important issues.
Yes, I hope we’ll return to this if we find more information. I am very happy to share this discussion with a Catholic gentleman of your high intellectual caliber - you put me to shame and deservedly so on many occasions with your articulate posts. I have also admired you for many years when you posted on JL’s forum. I also continue to quote you many times when I post on other forums.
My best wishes
|
|