CWR: Most Catholics probably envision future unity between the Orthodox Churches and the Catholic Church as a re-installment of one world Church organization with the pope of Rome at the top of the governing pyramid. A look at history shows that such a model never existed, so what could Orthodox-Catholic communion actually look like if it were achieved? A renewal of Eucharistic communion? The possibility of an eighth ecumenical council? A resolution for the dating of Pascha/Easter?

Taft: What it would look like is not a “reunion” with them “returning to Rome,” to which they never belonged anyway; nor us being incorporated by them, since we are all ancient apostolic “Sister Churches” with a valid episcopate and priesthood and the full panoply of sacraments needed to minister salvation to our respective faithful, as is proclaimed in the renewed Catholic ecclesiology since Vatican II and enshrined in numerous papal documents from Paul VI on, as well as in the wonderful Catechism of the Catholic Church. So we just need to restore our broken communion and the rest of the problems you mention can be addressed one by one and resolved by common accord.

. . .

CWR: How could the papal claims of Rome be modified in a way that would be both acceptable to the Orthodox Churches and faithful to the tradition of the Catholic Church? Do you think the jurisdiction issue really is a hang-up for the Orthodox since they also practice cross-jurisdiction throughout Western Europe, the Americas, Australia, and East Asia?

Taft: The new Catholic “Sister Churches” ecclesiology describes not only how the Catholic Church views the Orthodox Churches. It also represents a startling revolution in how the Catholic Church views itself: we are no longer the only kid on the block, the whole Church of Christ, but one Sister Church among others. Previously, the Catholic Church saw itself as the original one and only true Church of Christ from which all other Christians had separated for one reason or another in the course of history, and Catholics held, simplistically, that the solution to divided Christendom consisted in all other Christians returning to Rome’s maternal bosom.

Vatican II, with an assist from those Council Fathers with a less naïve Disney-World view of their own Church’s past, managed to put aside this historically ludicrous, self-centered, self-congratulatory perception of reality. In doing so they had a strong assist from the Council Fathers of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church whose concrete experience of the realities of the Christian East made them spokesmen and defenders of that reality.

In this context I would recommend the excellent new book by Robert Louis Wilken, The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press 2012). Professor Wilken, a convert to Catholicism who is a recognized expert on Early Christianity and its history and literature, shows that Early Christianity developed not out of some Roman cradle but as a federation of local Churches, Western and Eastern, each one under the authority of a chief hierarch who would come to be called Archbishop, Pope, Patriarch, or Catholicos, each with its own independent governing synod and polity, all of them initially in communion with one another until the vicissitudes of history led to lasting divisions.

Via Pravmir:

Police in Jerusalem beat, choked and handcuffed an 85-year-old Coptic priest during a widely reported altercation in the Old City almost two weeks ago, which also involved several Egyptian diplomatic officials, a video revealed. . . .

The incident occurred on Saturday, May 4, the day before the Egyptian Coptic Orthodox Church’s observance of Easter. The head of the Coptic church in Ramallah, Father Arsanios, who lives in Jerusalem, was leading a group of visiting dignitaries to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City when he found himself being subdued by a group of policemen stationed to manage the holiday crowds. . . .

As that group tried to enter, Arsanios said, they were suddenly accosted by the police, who “threw one priest on the stairs and one of the officers stomped on him like a dog.”

“We didn’t do anything,” he added. “They pulled at me, beat me all over and when I was on the ground, put handcuffs on me.”

The six-minute video begins with Arsanios already in a physical struggle with the police, after which an officer puts him into a choke hold from behind and throws him to the ground as a crowd of police, residents and tourists look on. Arsanios briefly lost consciousness during the alternation [sic], was treated at a Jerusalem hospital and was subsequently released without serious injury.

What holiday is this:
Before lunch, reap,
After lunch, weep,
And in the evening, leap?
- Belarusian riddle about Radonitsa

Today Slavic Orthodox throughout the world observe (in Russian) Radonitsa, the Day of Rejoicing. A sort of eastern “All Souls Day,” it is devoted to prayers for the departed, often before a meal consumed at the gravesite of a loved one (the photo above was taken in a Belarusian cemetery).

Among other things, Radonitsa marks the beginning of “marriage season,” as weddings may not be conducted during Great Lent, Holy Week, Pascha, or Bright Week.

Prayers for the dead are very important in the Orthodox tradition, and as such we have several days marked for them throughout the liturgical year. As Fr. Schmemann writes,

Praying for them we meet them in Christ who is Love and who, because He is Love, overcomes death which is the ultimate victory of separation and lovelessness. In Christ there is no difference between living and dead because all are alive in Him. . . . Loving Christ, we love all those who are in Him; loving those who are in Him, we love Christ: this is the law of the Church and the obvious rationale for her of prayer for the dead.

It is truly our love in Christ that keeps them alive because it keeps them “in Christ,” and how wrong, how hopelessly wrong, are those Western Christians who either reduce prayer for the dead to a juridical doctrine of “merits” and “compensations” or simply reject it as useless.

However, because of the great and central importance of the Feast of Feasts, memorial services for the dead are forbidden between Holy Thursday and Antipascha (the first Sunday after Pascha): “the first opportunity after Pascha to remember the dead is on the second Monday of Pascha. However, because in Orthodox countries a number of monasteries follow the custom of fasting on Mondays, the feast is often celebrated on Tuesday, so that all may partake of the paschal foods (which are intentionally non-fasting).”

Radonitsa is often marked by excessive drinking and wild revelry, both in the cemetery and elsewhere. Patricia Herlihy in “Joy of the Rus’: Rites and Rituals of Russian Drinking,” examines the relationship between holy days and getting hosed:

Though it often gave scandal to the pious, religious holidays were drinking days. The close connection in Russian culture between religious observances and alcohol consumption is evident in a folk tale about a village drunkard who dies and seeks admission to heaven. St. Peter at first tries to send him away, but the drunkard retorts: “I drank and praised God with every swallow, but you denied Christ three times, and you are in heaven!” He similarly reduces to shame and silence St. Paul, Kings David and Solomon, Nicholas the Wonder-worker, and others, and had to be allowed a seat in heaven.

From Pascha til the Feast of the Ascension, we sing “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life”—sung sober or otherwise, it does seem fit to ring out over actual tombs.

It was within the WCC that two visionaries from each church met and began to collaborate—Nikos Nissiotis of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and Paul Verghese of the Malankara Indian Orthodox Church (later Metropolitan Paulos Mar Gregorios of Delhi). This work with the WCC helped galvanize the Orthodox to meet together at Rhodes in 1961—and also invite the Miaphysites. In 1963, when the WCC Faith & Order Commission met, Swiss Reformed Protestant Lukas Vischer began working closely with Nissiotis and Verghese to eventually organize the first formal Orthodox-Miaphysite consultation in 1964, in which the bulk of the division was overcome in matter of days.

Virtually as soon as the two church families managed to come into contrastive dialogue with each other in this century, it was realize that physis . . . was being used in different ways in our different churches.

In matter of days a division and misunderstanding that had lasted nearly fifteen hundred years—almost sixty generations!—was viewed in an entirely new and promising way, almost resolved then and there. And this was due in large part to the encouragement, sponsorship, and support of Protestant Christians through the WCC. Moreover, can not the Protestant openness to diversity in doctrine (no doubt to a fault at other times) be seen as a strength in the midst of intransigent myopia holding tenaciously to old prejudices? Indeed, this very cooperation with Protestants has helped the Orthodox rediscover their own tradition more fully. A more mature understanding of the Church canons, for instance, has been brought to bear on mainstream Orthodox theology.

Orthodox Christians have often been divided on the WCC, many seeing it with suspicion and hostility. The Special Commission on Orthodox Participation in the WCC was created in 1998 in an attempt to assuage Orthodox concerns about ecclesiology, social and ethical issues, interconfessional prayer, and the WCC’s structure and decision-making process. Nearly all Orthodox Churches remain WCC members today.

Christianity Today:

Dallas Willard, a prominent philosopher on a “quiet quest to subvert nominal Christianity” (according to a 2006 CT profile), died today after losing a battle with cancer. He was 77. . . .

According to Gary Moon, executive director of the Dallas Willard Center at Westmont College, Willard died early Wednesday morning, but “awakened to a full experience of the reality of the Kingdom of the Heavens he described so beautifully. Fittingly, his last two words were, “‘Thank you.’”

Writing on the necessity of inner transformation in 2006, Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. had this to say of Willard:

The first thing to do is to trust our Christian friends who have died with Jesus Christ when they tell us it’s going to be okay if we do it, too. This, in my judgment, is one of the greatest services offered to the church by our Christian friend Dallas Willard.

He is a brilliant, modest, immensely experienced Christian older brother, calling to us from the Resurrection side of things. His books all call out, in one way or another: Come on over. It’s going to be okay to die first. You have to do it, and you can do it. Not even Jesus got a resurrection without a death, and he’ll be at your side when you surrender your old life. Trust me on this. If you die with Jesus Christ, God will walk you out of your tomb into a life of incomparable joy and purpose inside his boundless and competent love.

US Secretary of State John Kerry urged Turkey on Sunday to re-open Orthodox clergy schools near Istanbul that authorities have kept closed for more than 40 years.

“It is our hope that the Halki seminary will open,” Kerry said during a press conference in Istanbul after two days of talks on the Syrian crisis and the Mideast peace process.

Kerry said he discussed religious freedom in overwhelmingly Muslim Turkey and the possible re-opening of the theological schools in talks with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

The Halki seminary, where Orthodox clergy used to train, is located on an island off Istanbul and was closed in 1971, after Turkey fell out with Greece over Cyprus.

Those wishing to learn more about the state of religious freedom in Turkey can do so here (though I do not endorse HALC on all issues).

On Sunday, Kerry met with His All Holiness, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. From the transcript:

SECRETARY KERRY: It’s such a privilege to talk with somebody who has been such a voice for tolerance, a voice for interfaith understanding, who most recently visited with His Holiness Pope Francis and was at his investiture, and who has consistently talked out about protecting rights of minorities, protecting religious rights, and who is struggling for larger understanding in the world. . . .

PATRIARCH BARTHOLOMEW: Thank you, Your Excellency.

SECRETARY KERRY: Thank you for my reception. And he gave me a beautiful rosary that the Pope gave him that’s been blessed by the Pope and by him, and I will carry that with great, great privilege. . . . Thank you, Patriarch.

PATRIARCH BARTHOLOMEW: Thank you. So have a nice life.

Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov has reacted to the Boston terror suspects on his favorite social media platform, Instagram (this is my own translation):

Tragic events have happened in Boston. As a result of the terrorist attack people have been killed. We have previously expressed our condolences to those living in the city and the people of America. Today, as reported by mass media, during an attempted arrest a certain Tsarnaev was killed. It would have been logical if he had been detained and an investigation carried out, and all the circumstances and the degree of his guilt figured out. Apparently, special services at any cost were needed to calm society. Any attempt to make the connection between Chechnya and the Tsarnaevs, if they are guilty, are in vain. They grew up in the U.S., their attitudes and beliefs were formed there. It is necessary to seek the roots of evil in America. The whole world must fight terrorism. This we know better than anyone else. We wish recovery to all the victims and share the Americans’ feelings of sorrow. #terroristattack #Boston #investigation

In what seems like a bizarre modern appropriation of the damnatio memoriae, Kermit Gosnell’s Wikipedia entry is being considered for deletion. From the original deletion request:

His case has not received national attention. It is a local multiple-murder story in Pennsylvania, nothing more.

Nearly all respondents have reacted strongly against this, however, with one editor even saying “This very deletion request is a WP:NPOV violation.”

“Methodism isn’t just a religion for Sundays—no faith is only a faith for Sundays. There were a lot of things during the week which one attended. Methodism is a pretty practical faith; there were the mothers’ sewing meetings and the guilds for young people.” . . .

Although she was married to Denis Thatcher 27 years ago in Wesley’s own chapel in the City of London, she has since moved towards Anglicanism and I asked her about this shift.

“You know, John Wesley would of course say that he was a member of the Church of England, and the service he believed in was the Church of England service; but it was too high for the kind of evangelical work he was doing.

“Methodism is the most marvellous evangelical faith and there is the most marvellous love and feeling for music in the Methodist Church which I think is greater than in the Anglican Church. But you sometimes feel the need for a slightly more formal service and perhaps a little bit more formality in the underlying theology too.

“So throughout my life I have felt the need for both things, to some extent for the informality, for the works you do; but always I found myself groping out for more of the actual teaching of the religious basis. As I say, I went for something a little more formal. I suppose it’s first one’s belief and then one’s background.”

She denies that this move was in any way a rebellion. The need for the formal and the evangelical came to rest for her in the Church of England, “but not the real High Church”, she adds.

Yesterday, February 28, Orthodox Christians observed the feast day of John Cassian, the fourth/fifth-century monastic saint known for his writings on the Desert Fathers and his responses to Augustine’s anti-Pelagian works.

Technically, however, his feast day is February 29, a distinction that inspired many curious Russian folktales explaining why his was the awful luck to be feasted only on leap years. From Linda Ivanits’ Russian Folk Belief:

Cassian, behaving with characteristic lack of compassion, refuses to help a poor peasant pull his load because he does not wish to appear in heaven with soiled garments; [Saint] Nicholas, on the other hand, helps the peasant and arrives in heaven dirty. As a result, God rewards Nicholas with two feast days per year, and punishes Cassian by granting him only one every four years.

“Characteristic lack of compassion” because, in the Christo-pagan syncretism of the early Russian Church, the saint somewhere became a quasi-demonic figure. While elsewhere John Cassian was called “the Roman,” in Russia he became Kas’ian Nemilostivyi, Kasyan the Unmerciful.

According to one belief, Cassian sits motionless on a chair with downcast eyebrows that reach his knees, unable to see the world. On February 29, however, he lifts his eyebrows and looks at the world. . . .

His true feast day was called “Kasyanov Day,” on which peasants often refused to leave the house or do any work at all for fear of attracting his evil eye. “Касьян на что ни взглянет – все вянет”—whatever Cassian glances at, wilts (it rhymes in Russian).

I don’t at all mean to dishonor the venerable saint, of whom I am personally quite fond, but the chance to pass on a story about ungroomed eyebrows protecting superstitious peasants from the evil eye of a persnickety saint is much too good to pass up.