Breaking News: The Orthodox Church is not Catholic

...At least in the sense generally understood by Christians in communion with the Pope of Rome.

Apparently a large number of (big 'C') Catholics and ecumenically minded Orthodox have been disconcerted by the glorification (canonization) of St. Justin Popovic of Celije by the Serbian Orthodox Church, whose ceremony of glorification was held today. It would appear that St. Justin's principal shortcoming was that he lacked the ecumenical spirit. He was hostile (polemically so) to the non-Orthodox in general and Roman Catholicism in particular. One of his better known quotes was...

"In the history of the human race there have been three principal falls: that of Adam, that of Judas, and that of the pope."

Such is unlikely to go over well in the modern age when the answer to all differences is tolerance and endless dialogue.

Now in fairness, I am not a huge fan of polemics. I have never seen anyone converted by insulting them. Still, all of the hubbub now spreading in the blogosphere (I count no less than five blogs that I regularly look at addressing this subject within the last 24hrs) raises an important question. How does St. Justin's position fit in with the opinions of the other Orthodox saints? How does it fit with the historic teachings of the Orthodox Church?

The answer, unfortunately for the kumbaya crowd, is quite well.

I might have chosen other ways to express the point, but the fact remains without exception that no Orthodox saint of the post-schism era has ever even hinted that the Christian West was/is anything other than heretical. We can try and dance around this all we want, but there it is.

None of this of course means that Roman Catholics are evil people. Nor does it mean that we can have nothing at all to do with them. Many members of my family are Catholic. And I still have a great deal of respect for some aspects of the Roman Church including their many charitable works and their heroic witness for life and and against the encroachments of radical secularism. Further, I remain convinced that +Benedict XVI is the best thing to hit Rome in a very long time.

What it does mean is that they are not Orthodox, and we are not simply misguided Catholics who don't realize that we really don't disagree on the important issues. And it is time for people on both sides to stop pretending otherwise. I am a strong supporter of strategic cooperation with the RCC where such is possible and without compromising the Faith. However as far as ecumenism is concerned, I rather support the view of the Bulgarian Church, whose Holy Synod recently concluded that more than four decades of ecumenical dialogue with Rome have proven utterly fruitless and thus have suspended their participation in the every year or two photo-ops over champagne and expensive food in very picturesque locals.

In the end, St. Justin's offense was to rather undiplomatically point out that we don't in fact belong to the same church in large part because we don't believe the same things. Those who try to get around that are going to have to overcome the unanimous concurrence of at least the last five centuries worth of Orthodox saints.