I could also call this article The Wacko Factor!
Another British conservative press article: Pope Benedict XVI resigns: he won’t be a recluse, so could he divide the Church?
I see the conspiracy theories coming! Thirty years ago I was hearing from some of the more extreme cranks that Our Lady had said in a place called Bayside in the USA during the pontificate of John Paul II that Paul VI was still alive (had been replaced by an impostor until the impostor’s death in August 1978), drugged and kept in some Vatican dungeon. I don’t believe any of this rubbish, but I know that some people will believe just anything.
The scenario seems straightforward. A new Pope will be elected sometime in March, and Bishop/Father/Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger will spend a time at Castel Gandolfo, and then will be unconcerned for anything than living in retirement with his books, piano and cats. It happens in any diocese when the old bishop retires and a new one is appointed. But, the Papacy is enshrouded in irrational belief and the idea of infallibility that has been instilled into Catholic minds for a long time.
I suppose that future Cardinal Ratzinger would be a free man, not a prisoner. There would be media reporters waiting for him at every street corner. Perhaps someone really wicked might have the idea of kidnapping him, pumping him full of sodium penthatol or scopolamine, and making him sing like a canary about all the Vatican secrets! The mind boggles. He is certain not to influence the conclave election as he would not be there, but he would certainly meet the new Pope, and maybe there would be some influence. The prospect seems quite frightening, the possibility of a schism – especially if the new Pope and Cardinal Ratzinger are opposed. It is quite surreal.
How can a former Pope regain his freedom both to come / go and to express himself through writing books? I suppose there will be answers to all these questions, but it will certainly do much to bring the Papacy down to realistic proportions – the Bishop of an ancient Apostolic See and something like one of the Eastern Orthodox patriarchs. It that possibility intended?
The Vatican press officer Fr Lombardi seems assured that Cardinal Ratzinger will fade out of the picture and that all will be business as usual. It makes sense to me, but if enough people latched onto marginal ways of thinking like sede-vacantism, sede-impeditism, sede-privationism and the like, there could be some significant schisms over the brow of the hill.
See this Wikipedia article on Sedevacantism to discover a whole world of the irrational and falsely based intellectual speculation. Also see the Paul VI impostor theory. There is also a colourful theory concerning Cardinal Giuseppe Siri at the conclave that elected John XXIII in 1958. The “Siri Thesis” Unravels and The Pope in Red. That makes for fascinating reading more intriguing than a Clive Cussler novel!
As always, we have the Church of the theologians and the Church of the people. All the same problems come and go, and yet the “bad religion” the Reformation set out to eliminate is still there. It is simply the paganism of the unconverted masses, a problem with Christianity in itself or the replacement of Christianity by something alien and entirely man-made. Or something of our own making without any conspiracy?
Faith and reason, fides et ratio!
The Blue Flower 
The whacko factor is certainly out there, no doubt about it; however, I strongly suspect that His Holiness is seriously ill and will not survive very long after he steps down, making the whole question moot.
The organisational structure of the Church changes incrementally and we have by now got used to the idea (i) that diocesan clergy have pension plans and a retiring age and (ii) that bishops are required to submit their resignations when they reach a certain age and, if accepted, they become a “bishop ermeritus” of their former diocese.
The Apostolic Constitions on the mode of election of a Pope have always provided for the possibility of resignation and it is not so very long since an age limit was also fixed for the cardinal electors. Humans live longer than they did in the middle ages and that brings with it an increasing risk of senile dementia as well as other frailties. I hope that gradually it would become the norm for popes to surremder the burden of their office after a certain time: (i) because having had more power than others they deserve more time to prepare for death, (ii) because there is less chance of a frail aged pope being manipulated by the curia and (iii) because the physical demands on popes in terms of travel and the like have vastly increased in the last century.
As for titles, a pope who resigns his office will still be a priest and a bishop and one imagines that his sucessor could nominate him to a see in partibus. Further, a retired pope would be able to have a Vatican passport, residence within the Vatican and the provision of such security protection outside the Vatican as might be necessary. Who knows? We might see a custom grow up whereby it becomes the norm for popes to lay down the burden of office after, say, 15 years with the prospect of there beiing in the future more than one retired pope in a Vatican “St Peter’s Residence for Retired Pontiffs”
Yes, there will aways be the novels and other specualtions – one of which I enjoyed was Morris West’s “The Clowns of God”.
I’m sorry, of course, to see you denegrating the Church in the last paragraph of your post. You are obviously still very embittered by whatever happend to you. I do so wish a way could be found to resolve your canonical situation. I am sure it is not impossible but I don’t think it is made any easier by some of the things you write.
For the consideration concerning the RC Church’s internal running methods, most sensible people would see this as the case. The “cranks” are in the minority, as in every walk of life.
As for your personal comment, I do not denigrate any church and I am not bitter. I have got beyond that, and life goes on for me. I am no longer interested in trying to get into the RC clergy or reconcile in any shape or form with the RC Church. There is no way my canonical situation would be resolved except by becoming a layman in one of the parishes in the part of the world where I live. I am not interested.
As this is my blog, if I get one more personal insinuation or “I’m so sorry for you in your bitterness” from you, your comment will be moderated. I am critical enough of myself to know where my own problems are. Thank you very much.
Hear, Hear!
Why do both the Romans and the Byzantines think that they can resolve our so called “canonical situations”? It is indeed tiresome.
You are a priest in good standing with TAC…nuff’ said!
“Why do both the Romans and the Byzantines think that they can resolve our so called “canonical situations”? It is indeed tiresome.”
To me, the answer is obvious – because each of them think of their communion as, uniquely, “the Church.” And, Dale, don’t the Oriental Orthodox think the same thing about themself(ves)? If one wishes to fing an anceint pre-Reformation church that does not hold this view, the only one that comes to mind is the Assyrians. (I don’t include the Utrecht Union Old Catholics, not primarily becausew they are not “pre-Reformation,” but because they have outdone even the Canterbury Communion Anglkicans in “anglicanizing” — but perhaps one might also include the Union of Scranton churches.)
Thank you for this comment. The Orthodox world is bewildering, and you are closer to it being an Eastern riter in communion with Rome. How would you characterise the attitude of the Assyrians as opposed to the other non-Chalcedonian Churches? Are they interested in communities leaving western churches and wanting to carry on as before but in a “kosher” canonical situation?
Fr Anthony. The Assyrians, did indeed have two western rite diocese in the 1970-1980s. One bishop was located in Sicily and the other in the North of Italy. The communities had originally been western rite under Moscow, but were told that they had to adopt the Byzantine rite or go back to Rome. The communities tried to enter into the ROCOR via Bishop Anthony of Geneva, who refused to even speak to them. They approached the Assyrians who consecrated two bishops for them (they used the Roman rite). The “experiment” did not work. Part of the blame was to be laid at the feet of the Italians, who having been burnt by the Byzantines were distrustful of even the Assyrians and a very strong protest from Rome that the Assyrians were proselyting in the west.
The present-day “Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of the East, and of the Assyrians” (the last part, “and of the Assyrians,” was adopted only in the 1870s) is actually, in its origins a “uniate” church dating from 1552, when an “Assyrian” bishop, disgusted by the succession to his church’s by-then hereditary Patriarchate of an unsuitable here, travelled to Rome, “submitted” to the Pope, and was made patriarch of the Chaldeans. The majority of the Chaldeans, who dwelt in the plains of NE Mesopotamia, rejected this “Roman” patriarch, so he and his followers took refuge in the mountains of Kurdistan, now the extreme SW part of Turkey. (The Patriarch himself was executed by the Turks in 1555, but his followers maintained a succession of patriarchs.) Contacts with Rome (notification of the election of a new patriarch, Rome returning its approbation) were kept up until around 1600, but then all contact was lost with Rome for 60 years. By the time contacts with Rome were resumed again, around 1660, the “uniate” patriarchate had become hereditary in the Shumun family, and those Roman representatives (either Dominicans or Jesuits, I forget which) who reached them in the 1660s were astonished to find that these “uniates” still commemorated Theodore of Mopsuestia and Nestorius as saints and anathematized Cyril of Alexandria as a heretic. Rome ordered these “saints” no longer to be commemorated, and Cyril no longer to be anathematized; and in response to this, in 1672, this group of “mountain Chaldeans” severed communion with Rome. Meanwhile, down in the plains, the mainline “Nestorian” Church split into two, then three, rival groups in the late 17th/early 18th centuries. Between the 1760s and 1804 all of the bishops of these three “splinters” of the “plains Chaldeans” submitted to Rome, and in 1830 Rome erected the “Chaldean Catholic Church” to unify them. The “Assyrians” (they took this name in 1874 to distinguish themselves from the Syriac Orthodox, since both of them were called, in Syriac, Suriane) maintained their isolation until the disasters of the First Word War and its aftermath, in which they suffered far more than the Chaldean Catholics, since they tended to agitate for an independent homeland for themselves in what became Iraq, while the Chaldean Catholics were politically quiescent. Those interested might wish to consult:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaldean_Catholic_Church
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyrian_Church_of_the_East
and (if I may):
http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=21-05-027-f
(to be continued)
(continued)
In 2001 or 2002 I had the privilege of speaking privately with an Assyrian bishop. He told me that the Assyrians “no longer” regarded themselves as “the only true church,” and he went on to say that they regarded as “true churches” all those churches that were doctrinally and morally orthodox (he didn’t define these criteria further), that possessed an episcopate-in-the-apostolic-succession, that regarded the Holy Qurbana (Eucharist) as a sacrifice, that confessed the bread and wine in the Eucharist became the true Body and Blood of Christ, and that did not ordain women to the episcopate, priesthood or diaconate (he was very firm in insisting that the “deaconesses” of the ancient Mesopotamian/Persian Church were not “female deacons” — unlike, one may regretfully add, some portions of the Armenian Church today). I wonder — but without any evidence — whether this adoption of a kind of “Branch Theory” might have been a result of the Anglican influence on the “Assyrians” from the 1870s to the 1910s, and again in the 1920s and 30s.
I do not know to what extent the Assyrians are interested in “Western extension.” From the late 1980s until about 2002 they seemed fairly exclusively interested in returning to communion and union with their sister (uniate) Chaldean Catholic Church and thus, of necessity, into some kind of communion with Rome. In the 1990s all participants in what was a tripartite series of discussions (Assyrians, Chaldeans and Rome) reached complete agreement on, first, Christology and then, secondly, on sacramental doctrine and practice. As the discussions on the papacy were about to begin, the Assyrians asked that these discussions be “postponed,” and in the decade since they have not been resumed, nor is there any sign that they are about to be resumed.
The Assyrians have attracted some converts in the United States, especially in California (where there is a considerable Assyrian community), and some of them (I can think of one formerly Pentecostalist minister in particular) bring to their new church a zeal equal to that brought to Catholicism or Orthodoxy by the most ardent converts, as well as the conviction that they have found the one surviving remnant of the “Apostolic faith” that professes the faith of the Two Ecumenical Councils, and eschews the blasphemies of iconodulia and “worship” of the Mother of God. (My conversation withn the Assyrian bishop deminstrated that some, at least, of the Assyrians, regard such converts with a degree of embarrassment.)
Dr Tighe, one could also mention that the majority of the Assyrian diocese of California have recently submitted to Rome. It was done rather quietly, with very little fuss.
Also, in the last century a group of Assyrians entered into the Moscow Patriarchate, they had been promised the use of their Syriac liturgy, but were very quickly Russified and nothing seems to be left of this movement. Rome has been far, far more honest in their dealings with the Assyrians and the perpetual maintenance of their ancient traditions.
Per recent conversion of the Assyrians to Rome: http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2008/05/3000-assyrians-received-into-catholic.html
Perhaps this is the reason for the stalling of conversations?
Dale, what I heard at the time was that Mar Bawai’s decision was itself a consequence of the “stalling of converstions,” and not their cause, although it can scarcely, “diplomatically speaking,” have helped matters. See also:
http://www.zindamagazine.com/html/archives/2005/11.19.05/index_sat.php
And, actually, Rome found itself hard-pressed to decide how to treat Mar Bawai. The Assyrian synod deposed him, and declared him to be henceforth “a layman,” and insisted that it would be a sign of Rome’s “sincerity” whether Rome treated him subsequently as a layman or as a bishop. For the better part of a year Rome refused to give any publicity to his “conversion,” and kept him from serving the Liturgy, in public at least, but after an outcry from those who had followed him to Rome (or to the Chadean Church), Rome recognized him as a bishop, in the process further alienating the Assyrians (who seem to be, or to have become, as selectively “Cyprianic” in their attitude to Orders as any other Easterners).
As I said to him privately, my anti-spam seems to be stopping Dr Tighe’s comments and I had to override that manually.
Fr. Anthony, A most fascinating comment: “The Orthodox world is bewildering, and you are closer to it being an Eastern riter in communion with Rome.”
While I can appreciate the first part (and pray the Holy Spirit guide us into a more fully realized spirit of concord, but would also point out that the ongoing worldwide “war” within the RCC between modernists, liberals, moderates, conservatives, & traditionalists is equally bewildering when expressed daily by bishops, priests, monks, nuns, and laity regarding the life and doctrine of a Church), I can’t concur in the second. Though I would be interested to see your elaboration on that point.
Of course, from my EO perspective, merely preserving outward forms of worship while simultaneously fully accepting all of the innovations of Rome (which is both de facto and de jure for reunion with Rome) essentially “overthroweth” the nature of the worship. So now the eucharist is done for the dead in purgatory, fasting and almsgiving are tied to indulgences, the Theotokos was immaculately conceived, etc. That is no longer Orthodox. It certainly may look, sound, and smell like it, but it means something entirely different. More akin to a performance obscuring the inherent medieval scholasticism than lived Orthodox mysticism?
Fr. Anthony, I will confess that my own personal experience with uniate RCs in USA is near nil. But if I ever did go to one, I’d have a million questions for the priest that get at the potential bewilderment of trying to be orthodox within modern American RCC. Must be somewhat schizophrenic to leave their safe traditional refuge and then go to say a modern Latin Rite RC funeral mass where the priest is praying over cremains, the altar girls are flitting about, and they receive communion from a female eucharistic minister while horrible folk music is being played? An odd coupling of two different ways of thinking and behaving? (I assume the separate ER canon law might still prohibit cremation and altar girls, though I could be wrong.)
Michael, you stated: “So now the eucharist is done for the dead in purgatory.”
Actually, the Ukrainian and Carpatho-Rusyn Orthodox do offer masses for the dead. I think you may have to modify your rejection of purgatory as well; the Orthodox do believe in an intermediate state, but, the difference, according to the Catechism of 1640 (composed by S Peter Mohyla) accepts the existence of purgatory, but not the concept of a “cleansing fire.”
Personally, I find the acceptance of purgatory far easier to accept than the “toll houses” posited by some Russians more recently.
Dale, I make little use of Orthodox theology from about 1300-1950, in general, and next to none at all for Russian Orthodox theology before 1990. The concerns with Empire and then the trauma of the loss of same and the resulting Turkish predations led to a general decline in our theological position, relatively speaking. And the Russian Church, lacking a working patriarchiate and being subservient to a brutal state, was pretty thoroughly infected with medieval and Counter-Reformation scholasticism. Thankfully over the past 50 years or so we’ve recovered our patristic foundations and are re-engaging the West without relying on post-1,000 AD Western concepts or ideas.
You have no argument with me on the toll houses! I’ve never met an American EO layperson or parish priest in SCOBA who either taught or publicly accepted this very esoteric, almost Gnostic, speculation. (Guess I’ll stick with John’s Ladder? 🙂 ) Thankfully, that is nothing but speculative theology of the most mystical kind. I remember reading a then non-canonical ROCOC monk’s work on same ( a work on death and the resurrection by…Seraphim Rose?) and about chucked the book when it told some awful legend about a pope (Gregory the Great?) allegedly interceding to get Emperor Hadrian or Trajan (?) out of hell because he had done some nice little thing once to someone somewhere. But if memory serves me, this same monk and author also wrote something about UFOs (being demons?). Go figure…
Hello Dr Tighe, with the Oriental Orthodoxy it depends. The Copts most certainly do hold the same opinion as the Romans and the Byzantines, but the Malankaras and especially the Armenians are actually quote a bit closer to Anglicanism in this respect; they simply consider themselves to be the Church of a specific Nation, and not the one true, church to whom everyone must belong to be saved.
Of course, in the end, simply because the Romans et al. believe this of themselves does not obligate Anglicans, or anyone else for that matter, to believe so.
FWIW, Dale, and it may not be worth much, in the late 1970s a now-deceased liberal Anglo-Catholic clergman whose wide acquaintance with Eastern Churches and their bishops went back to the 1940s, a man who, sadly, capitulated to WO once it began to be practiced in the Episcopal Church and who, by the time of his death, was defending the “blessing” of same-sex “partnerships,” predicted to me that the Armenians would be the first Eastern church to “ordain women,” as he said, “in 30 to 50 years,” Now, I know that there is a lot of nonsense, some of it ignorant and some of it partisan, vented online about the “ordination” of women in some Eastern churches (e.g., one sometimes sees reports claiming that within the last decade the Church of Greece began to ordain “woman deacons,” although, when pressed, they will concede that it is really “deaconesses,” which they go on to claim is the same thing as “woman deacons” — whereas, in fact, at least as of 4 or 5 years ago, when I went to some trouble to investigate these reports, it was cases of some nuns being made subdeacons to assist infirm bishops and priests in the celebration of the Liturgy) but I have read that some dioceses of the Armenian Church do indeed purport to ordain women to “the diaconate,” and that these purported deacons are allowed to undertake the same liturgical roles and functions of real, that is, male, deacons. I dio not know whether these rerports are true — do you know anything about this? — but if they are true, it strikes me as a bad thing, and as a harbinger of troubles to come.
Dr Tighe, I once heard from a very elderly Russian priest that the Russian Renovatist Church (a group that accepted the Communist Revolution and hoped to serve the communists in the same manner as the Russian Church of the Tzars had served the state) did ordain women in the 1930’s. But there seems to be a real dearth of information concerning the Renovatist Russian Orthodox Church; although at one time they numbered in the millions.
Hello again Dr Tighe. The closet I have ever, with my own eyes, seen was that in Russian convents certain elderly nuns may be blessed to take the place of the acolytes to serve the Mass and offices, in no male is available. But they do not vest in stickarions. Perhaps this is what is being, by people with other motives, said to be the ordination of women to the sub-diaconate?
But even with the sub-diaconate, one must be careful. The Russians consider the sub-diaconate, as did Rome until recently, to be a major order whilst churches of the Greek tradition tend to place it within the boundaries of minor orders.
Michael, I think you’ve also been a little isolated from a good deal of theological thought in the RC Eastern Rites. Yes, there are, and have been, those whose thinking has been strongly Latinized, but I think you’d find it refreshing and hopeful to see how many (I wish I could give names and sources, but my aging memory fails), in spite of the obvious differences such as the role of the papacy, are approaching theology from a strongly Eastern perspective and sound more like Orthodox than like Latins. Fr. Anthony’s assessment that Dr. Tighe must have a good vantage point is far more accurate than you seem to think. I’ve noted that comparing certain “Uniates” with certain Orthodox writers (particularly some 19thC Russians) leaves the latter looking far more Thomist than the former. Yes, there are distinct differences, but, praise God, the barriers appear to be gradually eroding.
ed, Yes I would be very much interested in seeing a full-throated, unflinchingly uniate RC theology that accepts (as they absolutely must if they are truly RC) without any reservation or hesitation ALL of the unique post-schsim RC dogmas…that doesn’t ultimately rely on Augustine or Aquinas or the scholastics or medieval/Counter-Reformation RC councils.
As for the Russian Church, it will likely take them another century or so to finally work out of their system the accretions of RC scholasticism and Counter-Reformation theology that they oft adopted or adapted in their time spent pondering the West. Catherine the Great and Peter the Great weren’t the only leaders or intellectuals who wanted to westernize the Russian nation and culture. By the start of the 20th century, they seemed to most sample RC theology and Prussian/Imperial German polity and then graft what they wanted back home? With ultimately disasterous results!
I wish I could remember who or where, but I recall reading a Uniate’s defense of Immaculate Conception from the viewpoint of one who does not accept Augustinian notions of original sin. I didn’t agree, am not sure I fully understood, but found it interesting that it could be done.
Ed, could you perhaps be thinking of the defence of the Immaculate Conception (not as a dogma, but as a probable “theologoumenon”) by Fr. Lev Gillet? Gillet was not a “uniate,” but a French Roman Catholic who became a bi-ritual monk at Chevtogne. Subsequently he served as a priest “on loan” from the monastery to Metropolitan Szeptitsky of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, and then became Orthodox. His defense of the IC eschews Augustinian ideas of Original Sin entirely, but rather relies on the numerous testimonies from Orthodox writers, including Patriarch Photios, that the Theotokos was pure, or purified, “ek tous brephous” (from the embryo). I have somewhere a photocopy of Fr. Lev’s brief article, which was not published for years after he wrote it.
Could be. Chevotogne rings a bell. I was not ‘sold’ on what he said, but found it interesting that it could be done from and Eastern viewpoint. To my mind the one impermeable barrier to real unity is (what I can’t help seeing to be) the inflated views the RCC has committed itself to regarding the see of Rome.
The issue of the Immaculate Conception is indeed interesting vis-a-vis the Russian Church. I remember once as a seminarian having a discussion on this issue, and several others, with an Old Rite priest (not Yedinovertzi) who stated that the Old Believers believed in the Immaculate Conception and offered several fathers of the pre-1666 Russian Church in defense of the doctrine. Even thought the established Russian Church is very Thomistic in her theology, the Old Believers preserve not only the old rite, but also preserve the Thomistic theology of the 17th century as well.
Michael, be careful of what you wish for. If the Russians simply reject the Thomistic tradition that so strongly influenced the Russian Church, the danger is to adopt a type of protestantism of the Byzantine rite, often of a very liberal variety. I have already seen this happening with the theological concepts of Satisfaction and Original Sin; both of which are, mostly by converts, declared to be not Orthodox. This is in tune with all the blather about S Augustine not being a saint in the Orthodox church etc.
One thing that your posting does prove is that Byzantium, much like Protestantism, Anglicanism, and Romanism does indeed have theological changes and movements; it is not all from the 2nd century, or whatever is the preferred date nowadays.
Dale, I think all Churches have different ideas, issues, etc. arise at different times. The life of the Church in a non-static world. I readily admit I’m pretty ecumenically inclined. I want Orthodoxy to actively engage RCs and the Reformers, but I also accept that we have to listen as well as speak. It is a 2-way street. Orthodoxy has to engage the West today in light of both the Reformation/Counter-Reformation and Vatican II.