We welcome back Father John Strickland to answer your questions about Orthodoxy.
In part one we tackle the Orthodox view on salvation and purgatory. As well as the role of the Ecumenical Patriarch and thoughts on the Byzantine understanding of how the divine played a role in daily life. Then we finish with the Orthodox view of Catholicism, Church Union and evangelisation.
John is the pastor of an Orthodox Church in Poulsbo in Washington State. He wrote a four-volume series about the history of Christian civilization called Paradise and Utopia. He’s also recorded a podcast of the same name as an accompaniment to the books which you can find wherever you get your podcasts or at www.ancientfaith.com.
Stream: Orthodox Questions. Part 1
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The History of Byzantium 
After listening to Episode 314 – The Divine Liturgy with Father John Strickland, I was really looking forward to hearing Episode 318 where Father Strickland was going to answer lots of questions on Orthodoxy.
I must confess I felt slightly disappointed with many of his replies. I thought that his knowledge of contemporary Roman Catholicism was going to be really wide, but I realised that he had prejudices and was not too aware of many changes that have taken place in Roman Catholicism since the II Vatican Council (1962-1965) with all its approaches to other Christian denominations, especially to Orthodoxy and the so-called Eastern Churches.
I am going to briefly give my personal views on what Father Strickland discussed in Episode 318 about Roman Catholicism and its relationship with Orthodoxy.
Regarding purgatory, most Roman Catholics nowadays, even priests, don’t believe in purgatory, at least in the sense of having to go through a kind of Hell in order to reach Heaven. I’m sure everybody agrees, whether we call it Purgatory or not, that there will be purification after death. So, I would totally agree with Father Strickland’s opinion about it. In any case, let’s be clear, nobody really knows anything about life after death.
There is great interest among many Roman Catholics, myself included, in the Orthodox idea of deification and the importance of not separating faith and works, as Protestants and Catholics did in the past. I think we could all learn plenty of things about each other if we just were open to each other. I do not see why I can’t be a practising, convinced Roman Catholic and feel attracted to many aspects of Orthodoxy at the same time: I love Orthodox liturgy, its hymns and chants, its wonderful spirituality, and many other things. Why do we have to think that everything we do is the only way or the best way to do things? Others can also enrich our knowledge and experience of the Divine.
Father Strickland’s explanation on the Byzantine understanding of how the Divine played a role in daily life was blurry and unclear, to say the least. Byzantines lived in a pre-modern world, when divine and daily issues were supposed to be intertwined. Of course, after the Enlightenment, Nietzsche’s criticism of religion, the theory of relativity, psychoanalysis, the quantum revolution, modernism, Auschwitz, postmodernism and many other things, we cannot hold age-old ideas the way they were understood back then because our understanding of the world has evolved exponentially. Unquestionably, Tradition is very important for Christians but it has to be analysed conscientiously and filtered out by using historical criticism to find out what comes from God and what is only cultural. Otherwise we risk imposing old cultural models on the modern world, which ultimately leads to confrontation and frustration.
Father Strickland believes that the 1000-year-old division between East and West, the past, is a great obstacle in achieving Church Union. Maybe for the Orthodox. Certainly not for most Roman Catholics, as far as I know. I think that what is gone is gone. We all need to forgive each other, we need to forgive what happened in 1054, what happened to the Venetians in Constantinople, the Sack of Constantinople in 1204 and everything else. We cannot hold on to the past forever. History is useful in order to learn and evolve, but it’s a curse if we go back to it without healing anything. I’m sure Jesus of Nazareth would be appalled to see that we are divided among us because of the past grudges we hold against each other. This is not Christian.
Father Strickland also says that Papal Supremacy and Infallibility are doctrines that cannot be accepted by the Orthodox and are an insurmountable obstacle to Church Union. As a matter of fact, Papal Supremacy is not what it used to be in the past. And it’s never going to be. Most Roman Catholics would never accept a doctrine imposed by a pope. Papal Infallibility is something that the I Vatican Council declared in 1870 and it was more a political than a doctrinal decision (Rome was being besieged by Italian troops and the popes’ political power was waning). However, the world has changed dramatically since then. Infallibility was only used once, but it was done in accordance with Church teachings and the Scriptures; nothing heretical came out of it. No pope has dared to use infallibility ever since and I’m sure that no pope will ever dare to do so because the times of papal absolutism are fortunately gone. I’m also sure that any pope now and in the future will be ready to redefine his “supremacy” and limit it as much as possible in order to achieve Church Union. I don’t have a single doubt about it.
Regarding the Practice of Indulgences, it belongs to the past. Now very few people believe in things like this.
Father Strickland also deals with the prohibition of using the vernacular for centuries as a reason for not achieving Church Union. But now everybody uses the vernacular! This is not an issue for Roman Catholics any longer.
Another obstacle he points out is the ban on priests to get married within the Roman Catholic Church. The Maronite Church, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and all the Orthodox, Nestorian, Anti-Chalcedonian groups that have joined the Roman Catholic Church along the centuries have never had to abandon their right to have married priests. Therefore, this is definitely not an obstacle and it’s never been.
To sum up, I don’t agree with Father Strickland on the reasons he gives for the difficulties in achieving a Church Union. Church Union has never been easy, but I dare to say that nowadays it is much easier than before, especially because mainstream Roman Catholicism is much more open to it and much more self-critical than ever, and all the popes, since John XXIII, have genuinely wanted it and would be ready to do almost anything to achieve it. I agree that before the II Vatican Council, Roman Catholic absolutism and legalism were some of the main difficulties to Church Union, but not any more. With due respect and love to my Orthodox brothers and sisters, nowadays the main obstacles come from the Orthodox Churches due to their unwillingness or perhaps inability to change one iota in their view of Tradition, and also due to their self-righteousness on the main issues.
I also think that, with some significant exceptions, there is still a lack of knowledge and interest about the other on both sides. And there has been plenty of ego along the way too.