Ecumenical Thoughts

 
This is in response to Cacciaguida's much anticipated post, which was worth the wait. 
 
I plan on both addressing Cacciaguida's post directly as well as offering some other tidbits to help the discussion along.  Whether or not I will finish this all now (during my lunch break) remains to be seen.
 
One point, before all else.  Every now and again, both in and out of the blogosphere, I take the liberty of ranting about something that really chaps my hindquarters; this is one such opportunity.  This latest debate about ecumenicism started on the comments on Elinor's blog (that's where I found the comment that provoked my e-mail to Cacciaguida), and continues as we speak on C.'s.  Some Catholic commentators are very fond of calling us Orthodox "heterodox," of commenting on the East's supposed lack of theological development, of placing all the blame for the Schism on the East's shoulders, etc. 
 
(Note: Cacciaguida is not on my gripe list; I respect him quite a bit and can't thank him for all the times he has been helpful and kind to me in the past)
 
(Note 2: I don't mind name-calling in fun; I've had plenty of Catholic friends joke about my Faith, which is all well and good; that stops, naturally, once the serious debate starts because they know that, for me to be open to their side, they have to be seriously open to mine; for a discussion to be truly ecumenical, neither side can assume orthodoxy in a pig-headed way)
 
Such people are arrogant, wrong, and unhelpful.  I didn't come to this discussion calling Catholics "Romish" or "popish" or whatever, pick your slur.  In fact, I was pretty much the only Orthodox in the comments boxes I referred to above, and still these slurs were being bandied about.  It's not a question of sensititivy; it's a question of intellectual honesty.  Quite frankly, a lot of the bad blood that Orthodox have for Catholics stems from these slurs.  When an Orthodox hears his faith being called heterodox, when he hears that his Faith has zero development of doctrine since sometime in the 5th century, when he hears that the East broke from the innocent West, he can't help but feel a little indignant, and rightly so. 
 
He knows that his Faith now does not contradict the Faith of the Faithers at all (make up your minds, arrogant Catholics: how are we heretics when we follow the faith of the undisputed Councils?); he knows that the theological tradition of his Church in no way comes second to the West's in terms of subtlety of thought, pure genius, or whatever standard you'd like to apply; he knows that his Faith is still strong and continues to produce amazing saints and great stories of heroism, to no lesser degree than the West; he knows that his Faith produced some of the greatest kingdoms and secular culture the world has ever known.
 
Do Orthodox remember the past?  Sure they do.  Why shouldn't they forget the great moments of betrayal?  When they hear Catholic blowhards ignore debate and repeat the old mantra of submission and authority they think of the: the barbarous sack of Constantinople, and the theft of relics, gold, and statuary that adorn the Vatican to this day; the way the Patriarchs of Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, and Constantinople were uncanonically sent into exile and replaced with Western yes-men; the way the one of the greatest (if not the greatest) empires in history fell to the Saracen horde with scarcely a finger lifted in the West, despite the fact that that Empire did more to save Europe from Muslim conquest than Charles Martel or any other Western leader.  They also cannot help but realize that, for all the West's claims to sheer intellectual superiority, the Renaissance would not have happened without the fall of Constantinople to the Turks (and the subsequent flight of untold artists and thinkers); after all, there was never anything that could be mistaken for a "Dark Age" in the East.  Quite frankly, they're also just sort after the 400 years of Ottoman rule, when Christian children were kidnapped at a young age and trained to be the very madmen that routinely pillaged Christian communities; they were called Janissaries.
 
Anyway, rant over.
 
Moral of the story: get off your high horse and approach your fellow Christians with a degree of honesty and charity.  Your attitude is no less unhelpful than that of the Christians (be they Orthodox or Catholic) who complain about the whore of Babylon.

Well, that took up more of my lunch break than I anticipated.  I'll see if I can't finish my work and get back to the substance of the debate.