The recent decision by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople to grant autocephaly to a unified Ukrainian Orthodox Church – which would mean its independence from the Russian Orthodox Moscow patriarchate — would be precisely such a dramatic, tectonic shift; perhaps the greatest in Eastern Christianity since Constantinople and Rome formally severed full communion in 1054.
by Father Sean M. Suckiel
This week, the Catholic Church in the United States celebrates National Vocation Awareness Week. It is a week-long celebration dedicated to promoting vocations to the priesthood, religious life, diaconate and married life through prayer and education.
The temptation to ally the Church with a particular political party and its program is a perennial one, it seems. When that temptation is not resisted, it invariably leads to trouble – politically, and more importantly, evangelically.
As we endure these difficult days in the life of our Church, I’ve been thinking about the potential for committed Catholic women to bind wounds and buoy up the spirits of the faithful. Saint John Paul II once commended women for helping to make “political and economic structures ever more worthy of humanity.”
POLE THAT HE WAS, Karol Wojtyla had a well-developed sense of historical irony. So from his present position in the Communion of Saints, he might be struck by the ironic fact that the Synod on “Youth, Faith, and Vocational Discernment,” currently underway in Rome, coincides with the 40th anniversary of his election as pope.
PEERING OUTSIDE THE window from an airplane thousands of feet in the air, I had no idea that what I saw in front of me would make Scripture come to life.
MY GRANDMOTHER’S BIRTHDAY is coming up and she does not live in this country, so my family will not be able to see her.
I NEVER TOOK a class from historian Frank Orlando, but the motto he placed in the faculty section of my college yearbook — “History is an antidote for despair” —has stuck with me for 45 years. It also seems quite appropriate at this disturbing moment in the life of the Church, so perhaps a history lesson is in order.
It has been said that St. John Paul II was our first “media” pope. His international visits attracted scores of media attention. Television footage of millions attending a papal Mass were awe-inspiring. In 1987, the Holy Father delivered a prayer for world peace to more than a billion people thanks to satellite TV. Media technology was helping to spread the Gospel message farther and wider than ever before.
WHILE CATHOLICISM HAS been embroiled in a crisis of sexual abuse and episcopal malfeasance reaching to the highest levels of the Church, Eastern Orthodoxy may be on the verge of an epic crack-up with major ecumenical and geopolitical consequences.
