Throughout the past year on Called to Communion, the various blog posts and full-length articles by the contributors have been met with objections of various stripes and sizes. It has been a mixture of excitement, hope, prayer, frustration, and calls for mercy for me to read many of those posts and the dialogue that has followed-my hope is that this venture has led us all to grow in learning more about one another and where we come from in our understanding of the Christian Faith. One comment which I have observed that seems to be repeated with an ever-growing frequency by some of our Protestant readers goes something like this: “Well, you Catholics argue for X but so do the Eastern Orthodox!”

Be it Apostolic Succession, opposition to Solo/Sola Scriptura, a Canon that is based more on the Septuagint than the Hebrew Scriptures as collected in Jamnia, or what have you, it seems that the essence of this argument is that because other Christians apart from Catholics assert something about our faith, that something does not argue for the particular correctness of Catholicism. Well, yes and no.

Yes, Catholics adhere to X, and yes, so do other Christians of the Apostolic Churches. Does it then logically follow that the common voice of Catholics and the other Traditional Christian Churches should not be heeded? Not by any means. As I recall my own days of searching and wrestling with Tradition as contrasted to my former Reformed Protestant home, I knew that the variety of options before me did not make their common voice any less persuasive, or fearful to consider. I recall saying with much trepidation that God had clearly called me to become Catholic or some flavor of Orthodoxy (Eastern, Oriental, Coptic, Armenian, etc.). It was a huge change that I knew would come to my life, and while I did not know where I would end up exactly, I knew without a doubt that the arguments over Apostolic Succession had me needing to leave Protestantism.

And so I write this post in dedication to the ones who make this sort of argument–realize what you are saying when you say that the Orthodox Churches also advocate a particular doctrine being supported by the writers on Called to Communion. The Catholic and Orthodox Churches speak in unison about so many things. That we differ on important matters like the nature of the episcopacy, particularly the successor of Peter, is worthy of reflection for Catholics, Orthodox and those Protestants who see our common message. But despite our differences, we are so close. We make the same call to communion with the Church Fathers. We venerate the Holy Mother of Our God (on this note, I want to parenthetically state that devotion to the Blessed Virgin is more full and flowering in the East than the West in terms of during the liturgical services, but my point is that Protestants should feel less at home in an Orthodox or Eastern Catholic Parish than they would in a Roman Catholic service, if Marian devotion is troubling). We beseech our Lord and King to have mercy on the souls of those who have gone to their eternal Rest. We view some of God’s faithful saints who lived lives of exceptional holiness as those to whom we may call upon in prayers on earth. We see the laying on of hands from the Apostles and their successors as something integral to ordination. We proclaim that we partake of the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Lord in the Holy Eucharistic Mystery. We call upon Christ’s representative to hear our confessions of weakness and trust in his priestly prayer to absolve us of our sins, not through his own power, but through the grace of the ministry of Christ our high priest which has been passed down through that laying on of hands. We are anointed with oil for a fuller reception of the Holy Spirit in confirmation/chrismation. When we see our frailty of human illness, we are anointed again and partake of the body and the blood of Our Lord if possible, confident that the words of St. James will be true for us, and that any sins we have committed will be forgiven, again through the prayer of the elders who pray to God for us. We join ourselves to history with a liturgical calendar that reminds us of the rhythm of life. We fast on a regular basis. We see sacred art as a help and not some idolatrous hindrance to our spiritual life. In fact, we were together at an Ecumenical Council where iconoclasm was not only thought to be bad aesthetics–it was declared to be heresy.

Doctrinally, we do have our differences. But for my part as a Catholic, I am taught to thank God for the fullness of the sacraments that exist in Eastern Orthodox Churches that are not in communion with the Pope. In fact, as of the time of this writing, I have two good friends who are catechumens in the Antiochian Orthodox Church. When I have heard of their departure from Protestantism, I did not hesitate to express my joy at this growth in union with the Church that has existed since the time Our Lord’s ministry.

This joy is not something that I do of my own analysis or affections. The Catechism of the Catholic Church is even more joyful than me when it speaks of what we share in common with the Eastern Orthodox. Let’s examine two key points from its discussion of the Orthodox Churches.

838 “The Church knows that she is joined in many ways to the baptized who are honored by the name of Christian, but do not profess the Catholic faith in its entirety or have not preserved unity or communion under the successor of Peter.” Those “who believe in Christ and have been properly baptized are put in a certain, although imperfect, communion with the Catholic Church.” With the Orthodox Churches, this communion is so profound “that it lacks little to attain the fullness that would permit a common celebration of the Lord’s Eucharist.”

And later in the Catechism we read:

1399 The Eastern churches that are not in full communion with the Catholic Church celebrate the Eucharist with great love. “These Churches, although separated from us, yet possess true sacraments, above all – by apostolic succession – the priesthood and the Eucharist, whereby they are still joined to us in closest intimacy.” A certain communion in sacris, and so in the Eucharist, “given suitable circumstances and the approval of Church authority, is not merely possible but is encouraged.”238

All of the sacraments that the Orthodox Churches celebrate are viewed by Catholics to be entirely valid. We are separated, yes, but we are united in sharing the holy mysteries. This may be something that some readers do not know. One friend of mine who left evangelicalism for Orthodoxy had no idea that we as Catholics accept all of the sacraments of the Orthodox, but yes, our affection goes beyond smiles. It goes to the center of our spiritual life in the Church. If I were on my deathbed and there were no Catholic priests around, I would beg an Orthodox priest to say the last rites to me, and I would be faithful to my devotion to the Pope as the Bishop who is first among equals.

In contrast, the Catholic Catechism is clear that while our Reformed background is worthy of some admiration, it is simply not on the same ecclesial footing as the Orthodox Church.

1400 Ecclesial communities derived from the Reformation and separated from the Catholic Church, “have not preserved the proper reality of the Eucharistic mystery in its fullness, especially because of the absence of the sacrament of Holy Orders.”239 It is for this reason that, for the Catholic Church, Eucharistic intercommunion with these communities is not possible. However these ecclesial communities, “when they commemorate the Lord’s death and resurrection in the Holy Supper . . . profess that it signifies life in communion with Christ and await his coming in glory.”240

Here we read that there is a deficiency in the sacramental life of the Protestant ecclesial communities, as compared to that of the Orthodox Churches. The same words of closeness and sacramental fullness that were uttered regarding the Eastern Churches are not poured out by the councils and catechetical writers when thoughts turn to Protestantism. Forthcoming discussions here on Called to Communion will flesh out our understanding of the sacrament of Holy Orders, but for now I simply want to emphasize that Catholicism sees Orthodoxy as something far grander than Protestantism. Therefore, if one sees these arguments as a Protestant and feels called to communion vis a vis a conversion to Orthodoxy, this is not something that I as a Catholic bemoan. It is not a nudge in the right direction. Leaving Protestantism for Orthodoxy is to possess the fullness of sacramental life, despite not being in communion with Rome.

In a forthcoming post, I will explain the qualifications to my joy. But before qualifying my joy, I want to embrace and celebrate it. I thank God so much for my Orthodox brethren, and am truly happy to hear of God calling people to Himself through growth in the sacramental life that occurs when one leaves Protestantism for Orthodoxy.

May we all be faithful to His call to growth in faith, hope, and charity. May the divisions that scandalize the Lord and His Church end, so that they may no longer be causes for excuses to consider Tradition.

Leo Tolstoy, photographed by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky (1908)

His brother Sergey Ivanovitch advised him to read the theological works of Homiakov. Levin read the second volume of Homiakov’s works, and in spite of the elegant, epigrammatic, argumentative style which at first repelled him, he was impressed by the doctrine of the church he found in them. He was struck at first by the idea that the apprehension of divine truths had not been vouchsafed to man, but to a corporation of men bound together by love–to the church. What delighted him was the thought how much easier it was to believe in a still existing living church, embracing all the beliefs of men, and having God at its head, and therefore holy and infallible, and from it to accept the faith in God, in the creation, the fall, the redemption, than to begin with God, a mysterious, far-away God, the creation, etc. But afterwards, on reading a Catholic writer’s history of the church, and then a Greek orthodox writer’s history of the church, and seeing that the two churches, in their very conception infallible, each deny the authority of the other, Homiakov’s doctrine of the church lost all its charm for him, and this edifice crumbled into dust like the philosophers’ edifices.¹

This passage is remarkable both for its winsome description of ecclesial faith and for its abrupt dismissal of that faith on the basis of the mutually exclusive claims of the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church.

The greatest scandal in the world is the separation of Catholics and the Orthodox. If the various schisms intruded upon the Western Church were suddenly healed, the most fundamental division in Christendom, and the most imposing obstacle to ecclesial faith, would remain. Those who would be united to Christ in a community of faith that stands in visible, sacramental continuity with Our Lord and his Apostles must make a difficult choice: Catholic or Orthodox? The choice is so difficult for many seekers, that they, like Levin, simply revert to the primacy of personal opinion.

For Catholic and Orthodox Christians, a genuine ecumenical movement cannot be a fundamentally progressive enterprise. Rather, we must find our way towards future unity by reaching back to that unity we once enjoyed.

The structures of the Church in the East and in the West evolved in reference to that Apostolic heritage. Her unity during the first millennium was maintained within those same structures through the Bishops, Successors of the Apostles, in communion with the Bishop of Rome. If today at the end of the second millennium we are seeking to restore full communion, it is to that unity, thus structured, which we must look.²

Any Christian who claims to look to the “undivided Church of the first millennium” is bound to be deeply affected by a reunion of the Roman Church and the Eastern Churches. Even individuals who find (or claim to find) their deepest connection to Jesus Christ apart from historical considerations and sacramental practice would be faced with one less obstacle to the historical Church, should they ever seek its communion.

When I was a Protestant Christian in search of the ancient Church, I had to somehow “deal with” the division between Orthodoxy and Catholicism. My own best efforts at making sense of the available data had led me to conclude that the Church that Christ founded was both visible and indivisible, therefore indestructible, being his mystical Body. This conviction compelled me to seek for a Church both ancient and alive, abiding throughout the past two thousand years.

Sadly, it is at this exact point that one is confronted by the great scandal, a deep wound half as old as the Church herself. Catholic or Orthodox? For some converts to one communion or the other, the choice might have seemed obvious. For me, the thing was a conundrum. Now, having made my choice, I can testify that the division still remains an unwelcome test of ecclesial faith. I sympathize with Levin, though I believe the Church.

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1. Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, trans. Constance Garrance (online edition).
2. Pope John Paul II, Ut Unam Sint, II, 55.