A Clean Break and Not a Further Merger
A Response to Christianity and the Challenge of Militant Secularism by Bishop Hilarion of Vienaa
If it be blessed, please allow me to offer some thoughts on the paper entitled ”Christianity and the Challenge of Militant Secularism” by Bishop Hilarion of Vienna.
It is astounding to me that, on the one hand, His Grace pinpoints the problem as being a backlash against the totalitarianism of the Papacy - not anti-christianity, but anti-catholicism - but, on the other hand, sees Catholicism as our main ally. Our main ally is the root of the problem? Our main ally is the root cause of the whole demise of Western Europe?
To Defeat Secularism, Religion Must Be Rooted Up
It seems to me that one must understand where we stand in the flow of history to understand why this stance is naive, if not dangerous. Suggesting the Orthodox Church join hands with the religions – the Papacy, Judaism, Islam - in the fight against secularism reveals a misunderstanding of the deeper nature of the problem, namely, that religion (not revelation) necessarily leads to secularism, is the other side of the coin, so to speak. Just as communism and capitalism, and ethnicism and ecumenism, are two sides of the same coin, so are religion (without revelation) and secularism two sides of the same coin. Both religion and secularism have man as the ultimate value because both derive from man and lead to man. Religion, when connected to Revelation, is the human in the divine-human. Religion of itself, however, is merely human because it is merely man’s search for God, producing in the end (when autonomous) a man-made God - God in man’s image. Without revelation (“Thine own of Thine own”
, religion remains man-centered (“our own of our own”.
Hence, when, after centuries, Western European man tired of theory without practice, there being no essential connection to the uncreated, he turned to the logical implication: freedom from a false god. His anti-Catholicism was, at base, a desperate cry - to throw off the totalitarian yoke of man-only religion. He was not rejecting Christ as much as the pope. Having lost confidence, however, in Christ - the Christ he knew through the pope - a false Christ - and not having ready access to the true Face of God, European man announced the death of God (who, it is true, had “died” already centuries before, practically, experientially, for Western man) and found a replacement in himself – not unlike Lucifer, who found a replacement for God in himself - in the reflection of God’s Light in himself. He mistook his own light, a mere reflection, for God’s uncreated Light. In erecting man as the ultimate value, however, European man did not go far from where he was; he simply rejected the false god of papal religion’s creation and his vicar, the pope.
For the Orthodox to now team up with the root cause of this present darkness is a major error; an error of apocalyptic proportions. It reveals ignorance, not only of contemporary Papalism – a horrific picture - but also of where we are in salvation history. The writing is on the wall. The die has been cast. By making allies with the deluded and deluding, the Orthodox will only confuse and discourage those serious seekers who exist in the West. Western man knows, in his heart, that the Papacy is counterfeit. He simply has no way out. Or, so he thinks.
Orthodoxy is the way out for the West. This must be made clear, not more confused, such as saying that we are “two traditional Churches, united by a common faith”. Holy Tradition is the life of the Holy Spirit in the Church, not mere human tradition. The Orthodox Faith does not countenance created grace, the filioque, universal jurisdiction, infallibility, indulgences, stigmata as signs of holiness, catholic “charismatic” spirituality and the rest of the papal delusions…
A clean break - and not a further merging - with the papacy is what will help contemporary man, and the contemporary West.
May God enlighten His Grace and all Orthodox bishops today of this truth, and quickly.
Read Less...
