the cuppboard

In Defense of the Catholic Church Against the Polemics of James Likoudis

Very interesting post. The author writes:

In this post I shall defend the teaching of the Eastern Catholic Church against the criticism levied by the Roman polemicist James Likoudis, a “convert” from Greek Orthodoxy.  This article was published in an arch-traditionalist journal based in St. Paul, The Wanderer, the radicalism of which I have come to dislike despite its old opposition to the Americanist heresy perpetrated by Archbishop John Ireland (who was also destroyer of the Byzantine Catholic Church in America and real founder of the Orthodox Church of America).  

The following quote was particularly powerful to me, and articulated schism in revealing way (emphasis mine): 

[You cannot artificially parse the Byzantine tradition into its pre-1054 “Catholic” phase and its later “dissident” phase.  It is a seamless garment, one which we accept the fullness of.  The later natural and organic developments explain and clarify the earlier ones.  There is no rupture or disjunction in the Byzantine tradition.  Likoudis, not Fr. Gurovich, is the one confused here.  And Likoudis is to be blamed for his polemics working in opposition to Christian unity in violation of the truth.  He is disseminating error, driving a wedge of separation where none really exists, and putting himself in opposition to the Eastern Churches including those with whom he is in communion as well as those whose reconciliation the mind of the Church ardently desires.  Schism is not something that we can unilaterally blame on those who ended up in separation from Rome - schism between Churches is not a complete cutting-off from the Body of Christ as it is in St. Jerome’s definition (which is rebellion against one’s lawful bishop), but rather a shameful and unacceptable wound BETWEEN bishops.  As Kyr Elias Zoghby of thrice-blessed memory pointed out, “we are all schismatics” - not just the Orthodox.  We are in schism from them just as much as they are in schism from us, and woe to those who wallow self-satisfied in their pride because they ended up in communion with the Rock upon which Christ built His Church and with whom communion is necessary for salvation - you are still your brother’s keeper, and you are still in schism from those cut off from that Rock, and in schism from fellow Christians to whom the duty of charity obliges communion.  A Roman Catholic can fall into danger of being is just as much guilty of schism as St. Photios or anyone else, for as St. Thomas Aquinas declares, those who relish in division and separation are just as much schismatics as those who engage in it.  On theological questions, matters of the intellect moreso than the will, let us give the benefit of the doubt, but here Likoudis is simply wrong.  And he is wrong on a matter of grave importance, concerning nothing less than the wound splitting the Heart of Christ in two.]

I would love to hear any thoughts on this article. It certainly helped me clarify the way I think about the different Catholic Rites and their relationship with the Orthodox Church.