Letters 09.07.14

Elusive Unity

Regarding “On East and West” (Opinion, Aug. 10): I appreciate and feel invited to offer a response to the insightful opinion by Evan Lambrou, who was critiquing an earlier commentary by James Hitchcock, both dealing with the long-standing East-West schism within the Church.
On the use of unleavened bread in the West and on all of our inadequate efforts to understand the “innovative” purgatory, I have little comment. In the latter case, the resurrection of the whole person — as contrasted with all dualistic notions of soul and body — is the shared core doctrine.
Regarding the doctrine of transubstantiation, instead of “substance,” the Council of Trent’s definition actually used the less speculative term “species.” Insertion of the “filioque” clause in the Nicene Creed is possibly an expendable “interpolation” (originally countering late Arianism in the West), or does it actually express our shared embrace of “circumincession” (the mutual indwelling of the three Persons in the oneness of God)?
The formal definition is “the indwelling of the three distinct Persons of the Blessed Trinity, the Father being whole and entire in the Son and in the Holy Spirit, and each one in the other as well as in the Father” (The Catholic Encyclopedia, Thomas Nelson Inc., 1976). The Holy Spirit proceeds equally from both the Father and the Son and not allegedly from the Father through the Son — the real point of unnecessary contention.
Finally, as a practical matter alone, the primacy of the bishop of Rome at least protects against the subordination of the Church to worldly powers, whether Bismarck’s kulturkampf or French Gallicanism (or the national Protestant sects) — or those at least comparable instances of the Orthodox Churches (plural).
The fine point at issue is what Lambrou says of the patriarch of Constantinople: “No ecclesiastical issues can be resolved without the ecumenical patriarch’s administrative participation.” How might administrative participation be substantive enough to ensure external freedom for the whole Church, rendering more possible Lambrou’s proposed internal consensus, sidestepping such flashpoints as in 1054 (and the sacking of Constantinople in 1204)? An architectural analogy for the ecumenical and intercultural harmony and unity we seek is the connecting pendentive arch so essential to domed churches — both East and West.
Each of the linked four arches is concave and triangular in shape, joining the four corners of the square ground-floor plan to the round base of the unifying domes overhead. Institutional architecture may also square the circle.
Peter D. Beaulieu
Shoreline, Washington

Hardly a Technicality

Relative to “Gram Josephine: Witness to the Truth About Marriage” (In Depth, Aug. 24 issue):
I am brought to wonder how many people really know what is behind the Church’s disciplinary regulation that prohibits divorced-and-remarried Catholics from receiving the Eucharist.
Sometimes, the impression seems to be given that these folks are, generally, in conformity with the will of God and his Church, perhaps even in a state of grace, but that there is just this “technicality” that prevents them from receiving the Eucharist.  It is felt that they are doing everything right (except for this small detail of cohabitating with someone who is not one’s spouse, since theirs would not be a valid, sacramental marriage), and it is a real injustice that they may not receive the Eucharist.
The only reasons I know of for not being able to receive the Eucharist are that the person in question has broken his fast without good reason, she does not believe that the Eucharist is the real body and blood of Jesus or he is aware that he is in a state of mortal sin.
I do believe that that is what this is really all about, and that, objectively speaking (since no one except God and the person involved can know for certain), the person divorced and remarried outside of the Church is in the state of mortal sin.
It is not just a technicality that can be “blessed” and ignored. How can that situation be “blessed” in such a way that they can now receive holy Communion, without agreeing to change present living arrangements where they are continuing to live as husband and wife, which, according to the Church’s teaching on marriage, they are not?
Bottom line: How are we to view a situation where a person decides: I know that marriage is for life, unless annulled, and that if I am divorced and remarry I may be excluded from receiving holy Communion (Jesus Christ) because I would be living in a state of serious sin. But I love my second husband more than I will miss being in the state of grace and connected to Christ.
Stephen A. Blubaugh
Columbus, Ohio

Correction

The editorial in the Register’s Aug. 24 issue, “Marriage Equality,” stated that Baker v. Carr, a 1962 Supreme Court ruling, was the legal precedent cited by Judge Simmons that holds that a state’s law on same-sex “marriage” does not violate the equal protection or substantive due-process rights under the U.S. Constitution. It was actually Baker v. Nelson, a 1972 Supreme Court ruling. The Register regrets the error.