Is Eastern Catholicism ‘Orthodox LARP’?

I love Eastern Catholics. I love them for many reasons. Above all, I love how much they love Orthodoxy. Maybe that sounds condescending, but—truly—I don’t mean it to be. I’ve learned so much about how to love Orthodoxy from Eastern Catholics. There’s no jealousy or egoism in their love. They revere Orthodox saints, study Orthodox texts, practice Orthodox spirituality, follow Orthodox customs.. And they do it all without feeling the need to “own” Orthodoxy. There’s a purity and a humility in that love that I find irresistible.

The prideful part of my brain (which is all of it) wants to say to Eastern Catholics: Hey! You can’t play with our toys! You’re not in our club! Then I remember how John complains to Jesus: “Teacher, we saw someone who does not follow us casting out demons in Your name, and we forbade him because he does not follow us.” And what does the Lord say? “Do not forbid him, for no one who works a miracle in My name can soon afterward speak evil of Me. For he who is not against us is on our side” (Mark 9:38-42).

So, if anyone in the Roman communion falls in love with the Orthodox tradition, I say, “Glory to God!”

Also, Eastern Catholics are great podcasters. I just discovered a great new(ish) show called “Searchers of the Lost.” The host, Fr. Nathan Symeon, is a Byzantine Catholic priest. Recently, he did a spot with another Byzantine priest, Fr. Michael O’Loughlin. Many of you will know Fr. Michael from his own podcast What God Is Not, which he hosts with the world-renowned Mother Natalia.

In this episode, Fr. Nathan and Fr. Michael discussed the question: “Are Eastern Catholics LARPing as Orthodox Christians?” It’s a really interesting discussion; I hope you’ll give it a listen.

And at one point Fr. Nathan said, “I am willing to hear people who would like to challenge me on this.” I thought that, as a convert to Orthodoxy from Eastern Catholicism, he may find my perspective interesting.

So, here we go.

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1. The Orthodox phronema

According to Fr. Nathan, this all boils down to the question of phronema (mindset; worldview). Fr. Nathan argues that Eastern Catholics possess the Orthodox phronema. In fact, he goes further. He argues that, in some ways, more orthodox than the Orthodox:

There is nothing within the first thousand years of Christianity in the Orthodox Church that I do not believe. I even want to go a little bit further one of the reasons why I’m a Byzantine Catholic priest is because I see the potentiality for me to fully embrace the first thousand years, though it comes with its difficulties major difficulties. So, for now, I’m willing to say I can work with those difficulties. But there’s nothing within the first thousand years that I believe that is not completely Orthodox, that cannot be justified with the history of the first thousand years very clearly. I would even go so far as to say, in many regards, I hold to greater catholic, universal theology than many Orthodox persons. There’s a potentiality for greater breadth of understanding here.

I appreciate what Fr. Nathan is getting at, and I admire his commitment to the Apostolic and Patristic tradition.

The trouble is that, from our perspective, Orthodoxy is not simply the faith of the first millennium, frozen in amber. I know that’s how Catholics often see it. And they don’t always mean it as a compliment, as Fr. Nathan does! For instance, Pope Benedict XVI said: “These Churches have an authentic doctrine, but it is static, petrified as it were. They remain faithful to the tradition of the first Christian millennium, but they reject later developments on the grounds that Catholics decided upon these developments without them.”

That’s not our self-understanding, however.

It’s true, the Orthodox strive to preserve “the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). And when we seek to understand Orthodoxy, we look to the Scriptures and the Fathers. But the Orthodox do not have a concept of the “Patristic Era” as something that happened “back then.” For us, it’s always the Patristic Era. Seraphim of Sarov and Paisios of Mount Athos are Fathers of the Church, no less than Athanasius of Alexandria or Augustine of Hippo.

Fr. Georges Florovsky makes a distinction that may prove useful here. He says that Orthodoxy must be considered in both its objective and subjective aspects: “The objective side is the uninterrupted sacramental succession, the continuity of the hierarchy. The Holy Ghost does not descend upon the earth again and again, but abides in the ‘visible’ and historical Church. . . The subjective side is the loyalty to the Apostolic tradition: a life spent according to the tradition, as in a living realm of truth.”

I think, when Fr. Nathan talks about the “Orthodox phronema,” he’s talking about the subjective aspect of Orthodoxy. But the subjective and objective aspects of Orthodoxy can’t be separated from one another. We may go further: to separate the Orthodox phronema from the Orthodox Church is, itself, contrary to the Orthodox phronema.

Orthodoxy isn’t a dead consensus. It’s a relationship. We can only learn the Orthodox phronema from the Orthodox Church. She teaches us the Apostolic faith and sustains us in the Apostolic life.

“Tradition is not limited to Church archaeology,” Florovsky concludes. “Tradition is no outward testimony which can be accepted by an outsider. The Church alone is the living witness of tradition; and only from inside, from within the Church, can tradition be felt and accepted as a certainty.”

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2. The Catholic phronema

A bit later, Fr. Michael says of the Orthodox and Catholic traditions:

Each one doesn’t emphasize the same things because that seems to be part of the phronema. In the West, you’re going to emphasize things that are more ordered, Scholastic, legalistic—to use those [terms] in a good way—and in the East, the more mystical, mysterious, and experiential, maybe. And, okay, those may be different phronemas. And those may be a good thing!

I always appreciate how irenic Fr. Michael is. He’s clearly a wonderful priest and a gentle, magnanimous soul. However, we don’t believe that the Orthodox phronema is equal to the Roman phronema.

For instance, is the Jesus Prayer equal to the Rosary? Many Catholics—especially Eastern Catholics—would say yes. The Orthodox, however, would say no.

Firstly, the Jesus Prayer is about 1,000 years older than the Rosary. It belongs to the very origins of Christianity. It’s fundamental to Christian spirituality in a way that no other prayer can ever be, save the Divine Liturgy and the Psalms.

Secondly, we would consider the Rosary problematic because it encourages the use of imagination in prayer. This, to the Orthodox, is extremely dangerous. It opens us up to prelest, or spiritual deception. As St. Hesychios the Priest warns in the Philokalia: “Only by means of a mental image can Satan fabricate an evil thought and insinuate this into the intellect in order to lead it astray.” This is why, in the Jesus Prayer, we seek to clear our minds of all thoughts, ideas, and mental images.

Of course, one is free to disagree! An Eastern Catholic may have strong arguments as to why the Rosary and the Jesus Prayer should be held in equal regard. But, in that case, they don’t have the Orthodox phronema. Really, they would have to say that the Orthodox phronema is wrong, at least in this instance. They would have to say that the Orthodox Church’s perpetual and universal skepticism towards imaginative prayer is a defect.

Then there’s the Filioque.

Eastern Catholics prefer not to use the Filioque clause when reciting the Nicene Creed. In this, they resemble the Orthodox. However, they are obliged by the Council of Florence to affirm that the theological substance of the Filioque: the double procession of the Holy Spirit. Also, they must be willing to tolerate the use of the Filioque in the Creed, as this is the practice of the Latin Church, which constitutes 98% of the Roman communion.

The Orthodox would say that the double procession is heresy, and that the Filioque violates the Eighth Ecumenical Council. These teachings were laid out clearly by three saints known as the Pillars of Orthodoxy: Photios the Great, Gregory Palamas, and Mark of Ephesus.

Photius, Palamas, and Mark were convinced that the Roman Church’s new teachings are fundamentally incompatible with Orthodox Christianity. Now, Eastern Catholics may feel differently! That’s their right. But how can one claim to possess the Orthodox phronema when he disagrees with the Pillars of Orthodoxy?

This is the irony of Eastern Catholicism. They share everything with the Orthodox Church except her Orthodoxy.

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3. More orthodox than the Orthodox?

Now, an Eastern Catholic may argue that these matters are less essential to the Orthodox phronema. But then we have to ask: By what standard are we measuring “Orthodoxy,” if not the living tradition (zhivoe predanie) of the Orthodox Church?

Fr. Michael may agree with Fr. Nathan that Eastern Catholics have preserved the Orthodox phronema better than the Orthodox. And, in fairness, this is the proper Eastern Catholic view. As a member of the Roman communion, Fr. Nathan is obliged to believe that the Vatican I papacy existed in the first millennium—that the Orthodox have actually committed a species of schism, if not heresy, by separating ourselves from the See of Rome. In this, he’s perfectly consistent.

Yet, in that case, it really wouldn’t be the Orthodox phronema, properly speaking. It would be the Eastern Catholic phronema. Catholics shouldn’t be striving for the Orthodox phronema: they should be enjoining the Orthodox to embrace the proper “Eastern” phronema, which is found in the Eastern Catholic church.

Later in the show, however, Fr. Nathan says that he doesn’t want the Orthodox to reunite with Rome because “the West needs to get itself in order. I wouldn’t want some of the stuff I see going on to leak over into the Orthodox Church. That would scare me.” But wait! You don’t think the Orthodox should unite with the Pope because error may leak into the Orthodox Church?

For what it’s worth, I agree… But that’s why I became Orthodox! I realized that Orthodoxy was (at the very least) “more true” than Catholicism. But then I had to ask myself: How is that possible, if the Catholic Church is the true Church? Rome says that we need the papacy in order to ensure clarity of teaching, and yet it seems that the Orthodox have done a better job of preserving the Apostolic Faith. How can that be possible, unless the Orthodox Church really is the Orthodox Catholic Church?

It sounds to me like they already believe in the Orthodox Church. They just haven’t made the jump. Why is that?

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4. The World and the Church

Here’s how Fr. Nathan answers that question:

I thought at Greek monasteries—I’ve asked the Lord before, “Why didn’t you just let me be a Greek Orthodox priest? And it’s like, “Well, that would be too easy for you. You wouldn’t have grown the way you need to grow. . . . So, the temptation that I had of saying, “I just need to be Greek Orthodox and I’ll be happy”—I have to think about this for a second. Because it’s like, “Is that God or is that Nathan?” . . . There’s a lot of Nathan in there.”

I’ve heard a similar argument made by virtually every Eastern Catholic I’ve ever met. For instance, I remember Derek Cummins recounting this advice which was given to him by the great Ukrainian Catholic priest Fr. Roman Galadza:

Well, if you want to save your soul the easy way—not that it’s easy—you should stay Orthodox, for sure. But if you want to die a martyr’s death and climb up out of the trenches and get shot at by both sides, you should be an Eastern Catholic. And I thought, “Wow, that’s beautiful. We should all desire some kind of martyrdom. White martyrdom, red martyrdom, whatever.”

Here’s where my personal experience may come in handy.

I don’t know Fr. Nathan’s exact circumstances. But I’ve found that, on a material level, it’s way harder to be Orthodox than Catholic. My conversion cost me two jobs, a book deal, and several friendships. And I know I’ll never come back from that.

There’s way less money in the Orthodox Church. Orthodox writers don’t make as much as Catholic writers. Orthodox podcasters don’t have as wide of an audience. On average, Orthodox priests make less money than Catholic priests. And so on.

I’ve never heard anyone who said that becoming Orthodox was “easier” in the worldly sense. But I’ve also never met anyone who regretted their decision. Personally, if I had to go back and make this choice a thousand times, I’d gladly choose Orthodoxy over and over again.

Again, just speaking for myself, I’ve only found it “easier” in these five ways:

1. No cognitive dissonance. I believe in Orthodoxy… and so I joined the Orthodox Church. Simple enough!

2. Less talking, more doing. Eastern Catholics use words like “phronema” way more than the Orthodox do. It’s also more common to hear ECs explaining how metanoia actually means “to turn,” yada yada. For the Orthodox, that’s the default. We don’t have to talk about it. We just… do it. We may not do it well; I certainly don’t. But it doesn’t feel as cerebral or (forgive me) affected.

3. No beef with Rome. In my experience, Eastern Catholics are more down on the Vatican (and the papacy, the “Latins,” etc.) more than Orthodox. We think they’re wrong; we wish them well. And that’s about it. They’re not really our problem. We don’t have to define ourselves against the Latins. We’re not always being compared to them. We don’t have to constantly explain—even justify—our existence. We just do our Orthodox thing.

4. Community of faith. Eastern Catholics make up 2% of the Roman Communion. And even within their parishes, there’s a huge range of opinions. Some are Zoghbyites, like Fr. Nathan: folks who see themselves as “Orthodox in communion with Rome.” Others are what we used to call “tourists”: Latin Catholics who like the Eastern liturgy but have zero interest in the theology, spirituality, etc. Most folks fall somewhere in the middle.

At our Orthodox parish, though, everyone’s… Orthodox. We’re all on the same page. We’re walking the same road together, encouraging and strengthening each other. And, in this, we’re joined by 300 million Orthodox Christians all around the world. Glory to God!

5. Not “Eastern,” just Orthodox. Eastern Catholicism is, by definition… well, Eastern. It will never become the normative expression of Catholicism in the West. You don’t have to give up your Western-ness to become Orthodox, though.

We belong to the Orthodox Church in America. Our primate is the Metropolitan of Washington. He doesn’t answer to anyone in Rome, Ukraine, Syria, Russia… We’re an American Church. That’s why our service is in English—though some parishes in the south use Spanish, and some in the north use French. (Go up far enough and they’re speaking Yupik!) Our tones are Russian, but Russian chant was deeply influenced by the Gregorian and Anglican traditions, so it sounds “Western.”

We also commemorate great Western saints that most Catholics have forgotten: Augustine of Canterbury, Alfred the Great, Edmund the Confessor, Cuthbert of Lindesfarne, Chad of Mercia, Melangell of Wales, Columba of Iona… Not to mention great Western Fathers such as Irenaeus of Lyons, Vincent of Lerins, Gregory the Dialogist, Ambrose of Milan… Frankly, I’ve found that the Orthodox have a greater devotion to Western saints of the first millennium than do Roman Catholics. They also read more of the Western Fathers who aren’t Augustine of Hippo. Just saying!

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5. Cleaning the wounds

I’d like to conclude by quoting a saint with whom I’ve recently fallen in love.

Philaret of Moscow once said:

“You expect now that I should give judgment concerning the other half of present Christianity, but I simply look upon them; in part to see how the head and Lord of the Church heals the many deep wounds of the old serpent in all parts and limbs of this body, applying now gentle, now strong remedies, even fire and iron, in order to soften hardness, to draw out poison, to clean the wounds, to separate out malignant growths, to restore spirit and life in the half-dead and numbed structures. In such wise I attest that in the end the power of God patently will triumph over human weakness, good over evil, unity over division, life over death.”

Amen! Come, Lord Jesus.

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P.S. I joined my friend

Kyle King

on his podcast Barrel Aged Faith the other day. We talked Orthodoxy, philosophy, and the death of Pope Francis. Please check it out and subscribe to Kyle’s show. If you’d like us to do more livestreams, please drop a comment, too.