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Perspective,

Oh yeah, and about that…

From NCR: Is Catholic-Orthodox Unity in Sight?

The Catholic Archbishop of Moscow has given a remarkably upbeat assessment of relations with the Orthodox Church, saying unity between Catholics and Orthodox could be achieved —within a few months.—

In an interview today in Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper, Archbishop Paolo Pezzi said the miracle of reunification —is possible, indeed it has never been so close.— The archbishop added that Catholic-Orthodox reunification, the end of the historic schism that has divided them for a millennium, and spiritual communion between the two churches —could happen soon, within a few months.—

…Now the path to rapprochement is at its peak, and the third millennium of the Church could begin as a sign of unity.— He said there were —no formal obstacles— but that —everything depends on a real desire for communion.—

On the part of the Catholic Church, he added, —the desire is very much alive.—

Archbishop Pezzi, 49, whose proper title is Metropolitan Archbishop of the Mother of God Archdiocese in Moscow, said that now there are —no real obstacles— on the path towards full communion and reunification. On issues of modernity, Catholics and Orthodox Christians feel the same way, he said: —Nothing separates us on bioethics, the family, and the protection of life.—

Also on matters of doctrine, the two churches are essentially in agreement. —There remains the question of papal primacy,— Archbishop Pezzi acknowledged, —and this will be a concern at the next meeting of the Catholic-Orthodox Commission. But to me, it doesn’t seem impossible to reach an agreement.—…

This is the sort of well meaning ecumenical drivel that just wastes time. Of course the Archbishop doesn’t see a problem because he’s only looking at one side of whole issue, his own. Unless the Roman Church has decided to change the pronouncements of Vatican I on the scope and role of the pope, let’s say in the next few months, it isn’t happening. It doesn’t seem impossible to reach an agreement? I’d like some of the vodka he’s drinking.

Certainly there is common causes on social and political fronts, but at a core level one Church must prevail if counter claims to being The One True Church are to be resolved. Commonality on social and political issues cannot be used to whitewash or nullify major disagreements on the identity of the Church, the Church’s doctrines and so forth…

From my perspective the Archbishop needs to think long and hard about the things that separate the Churches and cease the publicly available wishful thinking. We all hope and pray — but this isn’t it. It will take very real and very painstaking work and in the end someone will have to say they were wrong.

Perspective, PNCC, ,

On Labor Day

And from that time, that is, more or less from the middle of the last century, begins the organization of workers on a larger scale in the name of the rights of man, in the name of the value and worthiness of labor. Everything that workers did in the name of their slogans was good.

And today one may say boldly that the cause of labor is the most important one, and that progress, the development and happiness of the whole nation, of all mankind, depends on its just resolution. Workers today have more privileges than they have ever had.

In this reasonable and just struggle for rights, bread for the family and education for children, for common control of the wealth created by the worker, our holy Church stands before the worker like a pillar of tire, and the hand of Christ blesses him in his work.

From an address by Bishop Francis Hodur at a reception for Maciej Leszczyński held in Scranton’s town hall on November 30, 1919. Mr. Leszczyński was in the United States as a delegate to the International Conference of Workers.

LaborDay09The struggle for the protection of workers rights continues. I urge my readers to look into the issue of wage theft and other abuses that are occurring at an alarming rate. Abuses as grave as virtual slavery and forced child labor still occur. Unfortunately, and I know this from first hand experience, this is not history but is happening down the street today. The pictures of abused workers from the early 1900’s are just as real today.

The cry of the abused worker struggling to feed his family, to obtain health care, to actually get paid for the value of his work echos the words from Deuteronomy 26:5-9:

“And you shall make response before the LORD your God, `A wandering Aramean was my father; and he went down into Egypt and sojourned there, few in number; and there he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous.
And the Egyptians treated us harshly, and afflicted us, and laid upon us hard bondage.
Then we cried to the LORD the God of our fathers, and the LORD heard our voice, and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression;
and the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror, with signs and wonders;
and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.'”

May their cry be heard and may we as a Church respond and lift them up. Bishop Hodur led the effort to lift up our grandfathers and great-grandfathers from hard bondage and this is our heritage and our call. Let us not forget.

Perspective, PNCC, ,

Possibilities, not so much

From the Catholic Answers Forum: Anglican Church in America (TAC) and the Polish National Catholic Church

I wonder with all of the struggle of the TAC/ACA to move towards union with Rome (and the constant expectation of an announcement…over and over), why they do not look towards forming an alliance with the Polish National Catholic Church?

The PNCC has valid orders (according to Rome) and has limited intercommunion. They are seen in a way similar to the Eastern Orthodox in that in extraordinary circumstances the PNCC and Catholics can receive sacraments from one another.

This makes sense until you scratch the surface a little.

Those in the TAC/ACA who long for Rome are really singleminded in that regard. They see no possible alternative, and if they did, they would have been there already. They are actually willing to give up their Episcopal Orders, their former Roman priests who had married, and anyone else in an “unclear” situation, casting them under the bus so to speak; sort of Machiavellian, which is ironic.

Others, who will quit the Church when it joins with Rome, are really Protestants. They like Catholic externals but don’t really believe in the infallibility of the ChurchIt’s one thing to believe that the person of the Bishop of Rome is not infallible, quite another to believe the Church is not infallible.. Not believing in the infallibility of the Church makes these folks a bad fit in any Catholic Church whether it be Oriental, Orthodox, Roman, or PNCC. They are headed for some far corner of the Anglican movement where they can maintain their ‘I’m smarter than the Church’ attitude.

I also think that marriages for the sake of convenience are a bad idea. Why partner with someone if they’re constantly looking over their shoulder for what they perceive to be a more handsome/beautiful/whatever prospect. Could the TAC/ACA accept the Declaration of Scranton in clear conscience? Could they be PNCC? I highly doubt it.

Speaking with Rome doesn’t mean you are at the place ACA/TAC perceived themselves to be, signing copies of the Catechism and FedEx’ing them off to Rome and praying for Newman to descend upon you. I’m sure there’s a few in the PNCC who long for unity with Rome just as there are those like myself who long for unity with Orthodoxy. But no matter. In the bigger picture we’re just PNCC and most of us are happy to work in that part of God’s field. To waste our time waiting, or courting for the purpose of courting, would be an affront to the gifts God has granted us and the work He has asked us to do.

Perspective, Poland - Polish - Polonia, ,

A review of the recording of Moniuszko’s Masses and other works

From Ionarts: Reviewed, Not Necessarily Recommended: Masses by Stanisław Moniuszko

51X8yIUKCPL._SL500_AA240_Stanislaw Moniuszko: Masses/ Warsaw Phil. Chorus, DUX 0657 (76:42)

Stanisław Moniuszko (1819-1872) was born near Minsk (Polish territory at the time), grew up in Warsaw (then de-facto Russian), and studied in Berlin (capitol of the Prussian Province of Brandenburg). Especially because of his (Polish) patriotic-nationalist sentiment of his music—”especially his operas, he became the national Polish composer and remains so to this day. Only Karol Szyamnowski and the ‘lost son’ Fryderyk Chopin share a similarly high level of popularity. Moniuszko would make for an excellent introduction to a college primer on —Central European History in the 19th Century—, but the Polish record company DUX—”wisely—”focuses on his music, instead.

So far issued are songs of Moniuszko, his two String Quartets, and two of his ten Operas. To that, DUX adds here three masses for organ and chorus: the Latin Mass in Dâ™­ (1870), the Funeral Mass in G minor (1871), and the Polish St.Peter’s Mass in Bâ™­ (1871). The works, composed to —enrich, strengthen, console—, vacillate between Mozartean beauty and romanticized kitsch, but for most of their duration the music stays on the sheerly beautiful, not shallow, side of things. (And, I suppose, how to praise God, if not through beauty.) The Dâ™­ Kyrie (—Ky-rie— sung bisyllabic to match the alternating —Christe eleisons—) and the Funeral Mass’ Offertorium are high-points; how Moniuszko writes for two intertwining female voices—”especially in the St. Peter’s Mass’ Benedictus—”is wonderful to listen to. The Requiem Eternam dabbles prettily: romantic chill-out with a sacred veneer…

My only comment relates to the the reviewer’s mention of kitsch and history. To understand the composer you must understand his life and times, his struggles and values. The kitsch comes from the history – the Polish notion of romanticism. It was exactly that call that spoke to the heart and soul of his listeners, motivating them to action. You can certainly find technical brillance in the pantheon of Polish composers. That brilliance coupled with romanticism made things happen.

Here is Moniuszko’s Our Father (Ojcze Nasz) performed by the Choir of the Pomeranian Academy in Słupsk.

Current Events, Perspective, , , ,

Writing – the art of letters

From The Asia-Pacific Journal’s Japan Focus: The Letter as Literature’s Political and Poetic Body on the art of writing, its politics and messages.

In November 2006 a new translation of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov appeared that soon had sold 500,000 copies. I knew the translator, Kameyama Ikuo, as the author of a fascinating book on Stalin and the artists of his time.

Just as in other countries, people in Japan have been lamenting since the 1980s (if not much longer) that young people no longer read the classics of world literature. First it was the culture of manga and television that was seen as the culprit; later it was the internet, computer games and obsessive text messaging. The number of books sold each year has actually been rising, because manga, the autobiographies of TV stars, internet literature and even text-message literature have come out in book form—”but nonetheless people have been complaining that the old canon of world literature is no longer being taken seriously. And so this new Karamazov boom was a pleasant surprise. But I asked how this new translation of the novel could be so different that suddenly hundreds of thousands of Japanese readers were in such a hurry to buy it and were reading it with such enthusiasm. Even in times when literature supposedly had many more readers than today, Dostoevsky was never a bestseller.

When I was in high school, I read The Brothers Karamazov in the translation by Masao Yonekawa. I also bought a Russian edition as a first-year university student, but it was too difficult for me, and so I continued to rely on the Japanese translation. This didn’t make me sad, I enjoyed the Japanese words and expressions I hadn’t known before. This translation dating from 1927 was linguistically far more unfamiliar to me than, say, the stories written by Kawabata Yasunari around the same time. It seemed to me as if the translator had collected Japanese words from a number of regions, classes, times and places and masterfully assembled them to translate a foreign culture. Therefore this translation made the range of the Japanese language appear much larger than the Japanese literature of the time did. But this quality of the translation also demanded patience, calm and persistence on the part of the individual reader. I would try to extract a cultural concept unfamiliar to me from an unusual combination of two adjectives. Certain concepts would appear in unexpected places and glow. I learned a great deal about the uncompromising nature of a competent translator. Reading a bestseller, on the other hand, I never had the feeling that there was something I couldn’t immediately understand. Indignantly I rejected the secret that bestsellers sometimes offered the weary reader as a pick-me-up. I was interested in more radical drugs and looked for them in the Dostoevsky translation, which was difficult to digest.

Can the novel The Brothers Karamazov be translated in such a way that it reads smoothly and fluidly like a bestseller? I bought the new translation, read the first hundred pages, and concluded that each phrase used in it appeared easily accessible and had a good rhythm. In this book, the odors and dust of a foreign society are suppressed. The characters are readily distinguishable from one another despite their inconsistencies. Regardless of whether one values these attributes of the new translation, the difference between the new and old translations seemed to me insufficient to explain this explosive boom.

Several months later I happened to have a chance to chat with a young editor from a Japanese publishing house about this new translation. He said that readers today have developed a manga or text message way of seeing, meaning that their eyes grasp one entire section of text as an image and then go on to the next. For this reason, the sections cannot be too long: ideally, no longer than would fit on the screen of a cell phone or in a single manga picture.

It’s well known that the pre-war generation can read today’s manga only with effort, they’re like a foreign language for these readers. An experienced manga eye, on the other hand, can move swiftly from one image to the next, but this same eye might have difficulty reading a long text passage without paragraphs.

The editor told me that in his opinion the secret of this new translation was that an unusually large number of paragraph breaks had been added to the novel. Manga readers can read the novel by passing from paragraph to paragraph as if from one manga image to the next. They are no less intelligent than their grandparents, but they have a different organ of vision, or a different cable connecting their retinas to their brains.

A Japanese translator I spoke with several weeks later confirmed the editor’s theory. She was just translating a book for the world literature series in which the new Brothers Karamazov had also appeared, and her editor kept repeating the same sentence: Give me more paragraphs!

…

My first trip abroad in 1979 included a visit to Poland. As a student of Slavic Studies, I found Cyrillic more practical than the Latin alphabet for writing all Slavic languages, including Polish. I had difficulties with the combinations of consonants that frequently appeared in Polish, for example RZ, SZ or DS, and also with the diacritical marks, the slashes and little hooks that modified the letters. If you used Cyrillic, you generally only needed a single letter for one of these sibilants. There were even German words I would have preferred to write with Cyrillic letters rather than using the Latin alphabet. The cabbage soup with beets will be cold by the time you finish spelling the word —Borschtsch.—

Nevertheless, the Latin alphabet used in Polish was a more suitable wrapping paper for me than the Cyrillic in which I preserved my first memories of this country. I saw no icons of the Russian Orthodox church there; instead, I saw many people going to services at Catholic churches on Sundays. Here and there I saw interiors and facades that filled me with a longing for Paris…

Current Events, Media, Perspective, Poetry, Poland - Polish - Polonia, Political, , , , , ,

The latest issue of The Cosmopolitan Review

The latest edition of The Cosmopolitan Review has been published. The Cosmopolitan Review is published by the alumni of Poland in the Rockies, a biennial symposium in Polish studies held at Canmore, Alberta. This editions features include:

EDITORIAL: Between Past and Present, Poland and North America

This summer at CR, we took the time to slow down and to bring you an eclectic mix of warm delights to enjoy while sipping that glass of chilled white wine or licking the last of your strawberry sorbet. In this issue, travel back in time with architecture critic Witold Rybczynski when he visits Poland for the first time in 1967, discovering his parents’ homeland for himself…

…and more including events, politics, reviews, travel, and spotlight.

Christian Witness, Perspective, Poland - Polish - Polonia

The lessons of Christian history lost on Christians

From Alaska Dispatch, Johanna Eurich writes in Talk of the Tundra: No sanctuary here or How to kill Christian hospitality and charity through bureaucracy.

My husband and I, and a friend who lives with us in Spenard, just said goodbye to three unlikely guests —“ two priests and a policeman from Poland. For a few days they sang Matins and Vespers in Polish to begin and end the day in Rancho Spenardo’s garden, the site of locally legendary pagan ceremonies. Our guests arrived here when two Anchorage Catholic Churches turned them away. Sure, they weren’t on a donkey and carrying a babe… but they didn’t even get a stable.

Ks. mgr Krzysztof GrzybowskiThis is how it happened. The three had just summited Denali in a week —“ a lot faster than they expected —“ when I met them in Talkeetna and offered them a ride to Anchorage with their considerable pile of mountain gear. They had some days to spend in the state and not too much money before they flew out of Anchorage. So they planned to stay at a church —“ two of them being priests and all.

The three had been put up by tiny Saint Bernard’s Church in Talkeetna, which doesn’t even have a full time priest. There seemed no reason to doubt the generosity of the much larger and more endowed Catholic establishment in Anchorage.

As we drove, the two priests explained, with the help of the more English-proficient policeman, that visiting priests are always welcomed by churches and parishioners. Catholics are generous, they said. They take in the wayward. They have even sheltered this pagan. During my extended hike of the Appalachian Trail, monasteries, churches and Catholic retreats provided shelter and food. But apparently such hospitality has been lost track of by the Catholics of Anchorage.

First stop — Holy Family Cathedral. The staff was in a meeting and couldn’t deal with the priests. They were told to go to Our Lady of Guadaloupe —“ another well-appointed church in the Turnagain area. There a sister turned them away after consulting the —boss— by phone. I don’t think it was —The Boss— —“ you know, the Big Guy Jehovah, his son Jesus, or even the Holy Ghost. I didn’t go that high. Being good church bureaucrats, they just followed their own rules and forgot about these nice young men in a foreign land who needed a little hospitality.

The priests: Robert and Krzysztof Grzybowski (brothers) were shocked. The policeman Adrian Przylucki was worried. What were they going to do? I was embarrassed for my town and invited them home. The next thing you know their bright yellow tent was going up in my garden, and three of the nicest, handsomest guys (each could pose for a Greek statue) headed into my sauna.

Catholics and other Christians may wait for their reward in Heaven. I got my reward at Rancho Spenardo’s regular Friday sauna. The three Polish climbers were the prettiest sight. Seeing them romping in the garden, using the hose to cool down, and then steaming in the old cedar sauna was enough to make this female heart young again.

As far as Anchorage’s Catholics getting their reward in Heaven… I think they need to do a little more work here on Earth… or Saint Peter will start recruiting us tree-hugging, naked, garden-romping pagans. We at least know how to make guests welcome. And don’t be surprised if those priests start hugging trees. They learned it at my house.

The priests probably would have been better off trying with the Orthodox in Alaska. The typical response of a certain section of U.S. Catholic Bishops – get those Poles out of here before they stay and interject conservatism among the flock…

Perspective, Poland - Polish - Polonia, Political, ,

Holy Memory – Prof. Leszek Kołakowski

From the BBC: Polish anti-Marxist thinker dies

The Polish philosopher and historian of ideas, Leszek Kołakowski has died in hospital in Oxford, England. He was 81.

One of the few 20th Century eastern European thinkers to gain international renown, he spent almost half of his life in exile from his native country.

He argued that the cruelties of Stalinism were not an aberration, but the logical conclusion of Marxism.

MPs in Warsaw observed a minute’s silence to remember his contribution to a free and democratic Poland.

Leszek Kołakowski was born in Radom, Poland, 12 years before the outbreak of the World War II.

Under the Nazi occupation of Poland school classes were banned so he taught himself foreign languages and literature.

He even systematically read through an incomplete encyclopaedia he found.

He once said he knew everything under the letters, A, D and E, but nothing about the Bs and the Cs.

After the war he studied philosophy and became a professor. Seeing the destruction wrought by the Nazis in Poland he joined the Communist Party.

But he gradually became disillusioned and more daring in his criticism of the system. In 1966 he was expelled from the party and two years later he lost his job.

Seeking exile in the West, he eventually settled at Oxford’s All Souls college where he wrote his best-known work, the three-volume Main Currents of Marxism, considered by some to be one of the most important books on political theory of the 20th Century.

In the 1980s, from his base in Britain, he supported Poland’s pro-democracy Solidarity movement which overthrew communism in 1989.

For many of its leaders he was an icon.

Along with a photographic retrospective, Interia carries the following quotes:

Czeslaw Milosz: “how could Leszek Kołakowski, philosopher, positivist, materialist and Marxist become Kołakowski the wise, turning against the philosophies of all the isims?”

Fr. Józef Tischner: He was “the spiritual master of the liberal intelligentsia”

From the Professor: “How to be a Conservative-Liberal-Socialist.”

Christian Witness, Perspective, ,

Where hope is found

Eminem’s new video draws parallels between his career and the economic state of his hometown, Detroit.

Having grown up in a declining rust belt city I see the parallels. The struggle is to continuously recognize your inner beauty and that of your neighbor in the midst of decay, neglect, and abuse. Faith is that lifeline. The call of our Lord and Savior breaks through the walls and the depression. He tells you that beauty does exist — right there in your humanity and that of your neighbor.

Christian Witness, Perspective, Political

Catholic when convenient

Anthony Stevens-Arroyo dissects Roman Catholic pundits who love the Bishop of Rome when he speaks their creed and who cast him into a corner when they disagree. True, the Pope can and does err, and Roman Catholic dogmas never declared the Pope infallible in his personal pronouncements, his personal political views, or even his personal theological perspective. That said, he does speak for the Church and is charged with teaching things consistent with the Catholic faith. Sometimes he teaches things people just don’t like. A person’s personal likes and dislikes matter little in the face of such teaching.

From Mr. Stevens-Arroyo’s Washington Post column: Vatican Insiders and Outsiders

Like most large organizations, the Catholic Church experiences both insiders and outsiders… The insider role to the Vatican has been played for more than a decade by George Weigel, the official biographer of Pope John Paul II and a trusted spokesperson for the conservative right-wing in U.S. politics. But in the law of political changes, today’s insider can become tomorrow’s outsider. That, I think, has been the turnaround for Weigel.

Named official biographer for Pope John Paul II, Wiegel was given unparalleled access to the Vatican and to the persons and places surrounding the pontiff. But Weigel was not content in producing a quality biography (Witness to Hope, 1999): he decided to parlay his access with the church into an influential role among neo-conservatives. His insider status with the Vatican allowed him to wax expansively in the conservative media about “what the pope really meant.” Almost without exception, Weigel considered the pope’s thinking to be in line with Republican Party politics.

Weigel then set up shop at Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, one of many “think tanks” within the Beltway. His opinions were regularly posted by the National Review, the birthplace of “Mater, Sí­; Magistra, No!” While no doubt his political job paid the bills, it also aligned him with the authors of the classic Cafeteria Catholic dismissal of papal authority in matters of social justice. The compromise was painfully evident when first John Paul II and then his successor, Benedict XVI, condemned the invasion of Iraq. Weigel voiced the line that “abortion was an intrinsic evil” which meant no deviation was possible, but that waging an unjust war or supporting the death penalty were areas where good Catholics like himself could openly differ with papal teaching. Weigel’s postings became more ideological and less insightful, I think. Clearly, with the majority of Catholic voters supporting Barack Obama for president in 2008, Weigel had been turned into an outsider in Washington. Then Weigel’s response to Pope Benedict’s social justice encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, revealed that he had been turned into an outsider for Vatican goings-on as well.

Weigel apparently believed that he could accept the parts of the encyclical with which he agreed politically and dismiss the rest of the pope’s teaching. He inferred that Pope Benedict had not been honest with the world’s Catholics but instead had succumbed to ideas foisted on him by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace According to Weigel, Pope Benedict produced a document in which certain passages were “golden” (as in GOP) and others were “red” (as in Communist). When discussing the pope’s call to lessen world poverty through international cooperation, Weigel opined that “it may mean something naïve or dumb.” Weigel concluded that rather than an expression of the Ordinary Magisterium of the Church, Caritas in Veritate was “an encyclical that resembles a duck-billed platypus.” One wonders if the inability to find coherence in a papal document is the fault of the pope or of prejudgments from analysts like George Weigel…

The mixing of politics and faith leads to an internal dichotomy and eventually to self-serving philosophies and theologies. Perhaps Mr. Weigel and those similarly situated should reconsider what it means to be Catholic, and particularly Roman Catholic. Catholicism often entails hard choices and a reordering of perspectives.

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