NEWSLETTER OF THE YOUNGSTOWN-WARREN CHAPTER OF THE SOCIETY OF SAINT JOHN CHRYSOSTOM VOLUME 14, NUMBER 4, JULY-AUGUST, 2015 VITO R. CARCHEDI, EDITOR, 35 SCHENLEY AVE. STRUTHERS, OH 44471, PHONE: 330-755-5635 EMAIL: [email protected] WEBSITE: www.byzcath.org/stjohnchrysostom/ FROM THE EDITOR... Binsley, Jenna Binsley, Fr. Dear Members and Friends, Our Schmidt, Chorbishop Kail, next regular chapter meeting will Msgr. Spinosa, Fr. Bleahu, be Tuesday, September 15, 7pm at Jim Dershaw, Esther St. Christine Catholic Church, Dershaw, Beri Berardi, 3165 S. Schenley Ave. Chris Berardi, Kolitsos, Youngstown, 44511. Our speaker Basista, Jacquet, Borak, will be Father Christiaan Kappes a Msgr. Siffrin, Fr. Manning, priest of the Archdiocese of Fr. Feicht, Fr. Indianapolis, ordained in 2002. He Witmer,Mattiussi, Fr. formerly served in his home Rudjak, Perantinides, diocese in both Anglo and Benedictine Sisters, Hudak, Hispanic ministry. Also he was variously Comichista, Chiu, Fr. Fiala, Fr. Loveless, assigned to aid missions in Ecuador and Mexico Vasilchek, Nakley, Katz, Democko, Deckant, Fr. and more recently finished doctoral studies in Ettinger. Italy and Greece. He was granted bi-ritual faculties in 2007 and currently is full-time professor of Patristics and Liturgy at SS Cyril *WE WILL HAVE CHAPTER MEETINGS IN and Methodius Seminary in Pittsburgh. He has OCTOBER & NOVEMBER--SYRO- written on a variety of topics, especially the MALABAR PRIEST IN NOVEMBER.* Theotokos. His topic will be "Reading the Fathers without denominational prejudices: The PRAYER OF SOUFANIEH Immaculate Conception in Orthodox theology as a case study for overcoming other assumed UNITY OF HEARTS! disagreements between the Roman and UNITY OF CHRISTIANS! Orthodox Churches." UNITY OF THE FEAST OF EASTER! Chapter dues 2015 paid: Demiduk, Fr. Conoboy, Fr. Rohan , Br. Calabro, Br. Scalise, Sleever, Tavolario, Billcheck, Sarantopoulos, BRING A FRIEND TO OUR MEETING. Limbert, Fr. Gage, Carchedi, Fr. Hilinski, Joan Many, perhaps most, Catholics in North Lessons From the America are unaware of the UGCC and the other nearly two-dozen Eastern Churches in Christian East communion with the bishop of Rome and therefore with the much larger Latin or Roman Catholic Church. July 02, 2015 Though collectively Eastern Catholics are tiny— perhaps 20 million around the world compared The twentieth anniversary of St. to well over a billion Latins—it occurs to me Pope John Paul II apostolic letter that we may have learned some over-sized "Orientale Lumen" is an lessons of immediate relevance to Roman occasion to reflect on what can Catholics today. Here are three of those lessons. I. Persecution be learned from Eastern Some people, including the recently deceased Catholics cardinal-archbishop of Chicago, Francis George of blessed memory, have begun to think Dr. Adam A. J. DeVille seriously about the increasing pressure on and outright persecution of Catholics in North America, not least at the hands of the LGBT crowd and their friends in media, academia, and government. Whether their machinations portend a sustained and systematic campaign of increasing persecution of the entire Church cannot be said just now, although plenty of learned commentators fear the worst. But if it comes to it, Eastern Catholics, especially those in the UGCC, have long and painful experience here of refusing to buckle to ideological enemies. Until 1990, the UGCC was the largest banned religious body in the world. Existing in the underground in Ukraine after having been officially eliminated by Stalin in 1946, this church saw most of her bishops sent to the Gulag or shot outright, along with many of her Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of Kiev- clergy and religious. (Dozens of these were Halych, major archbishop of the Ukrainian beatified as martyrs by Pope John Paul II in Catholic Church, gives the homily during a Ukraine in 2001.) Those who remained had to Divine Liturgy for Ukrianian expatriates at the meet secretly in apartments and houses for Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome Feb. 19, liturgy, baptize at night in ponds in remote 2015. (CNS photo/Paul Haring) forests, hear confessions while hewing rocks in a labor camp, and catechize children and train priests in covert ways. Twenty years ago, in his apostolic Every such act—liturgical, sacramental, letter Orientale Lumen (May 2, 1995), the late catechetical, prayerful—was enormously risky St. Pope John Paul II called on Roman Catholics and could result in the infamous 3:00 a.m. knock to deepen their knowledge of and love for the on the door as people were arrested and never Christian East. I was thinking of his exhortation seen again. It was a brutal, bloody time, with as I recently returned from a colloquium in millions killed, but Ukrainian Catholics Canada on the future of the Ukrainian Greco- persevered. Why? Because of their loyalty to the Catholic Church (UGCC) in North America. Gospel and to the (Continue next page) 2 bishop of Rome as an embodiment of the When the UGCC emerged twenty-five years ago Church’s refusal to be compliant to any worldly it did so not with a few dozen or few hundred or tyrant. even few thousand surviving members. When it Other Eastern Christians—especially today in began pouring out of the underground, Syria, Egypt, and Iraq—have more recent nobody—not the KGB, CIA, or the Vatican experience of persecution and execution, as even—could foresee the hundreds of thousands many of us are aware from ISIS-inspired and eventually millions who would emerge. headlines of the past year. Collectively these Today the UGCC has about 5 million members, churches have learned costly lessons after mostly in Ukraine but also many in North and surviving for decades (in the case of Ukraine South America, Western Europe, and Australia. under communism) and centuries (in the Middle How could so many survive in Ukraine under East under Islam) as persecuted minorities. the many-eyed totalitarian monster of Christians in North America, please God, will communism? They did so frequently in very face nothing nearly as serious and lethal as small, tight-knit communities. With no visible communism or Islam, but today’s increasing hierarchy (though bishops in the underground pressure and persecution, even in more took great pains always to ensure at least one attenuated forms, is an unfamiliar experience for man with apostolic succession in Ukraine many of us on this continent. Eastern Catholics, survived), and no way to receive direction from however, have learned important and costly a pope of Rome (in an era before cell phones, lessons about how to survive persecution in Twitter, e-mail, and Facebook), they had only many forms. What are those lessons? themselves for direction. Having been deeply Catechesis grounded in the faith, and availing themselves of Nobody is willing to die—or be hounded out of the sacraments—especially Confession and the a job by gangs on Twitter and Facebook—for a Eucharist—whenever and wherever they could question mark. If Christians today are facing find them, they were given the strength to increasing pressure and persecution, they can persevere. only survive by knowing the faith deeply and Today we have advantages those in the Soviet living it daily. “Sunday Christians” are Union did not, especially in the realm of Monday’s apostates. Shoddy catechesis, in short, communication: it is easier to stay in touch with will be deadly: in difficult times, there is a great people whose help and support we need. But we winnowing that happens as Christians who are must not make the mistake of relying only on lukewarm, ignorant, or otherwise non-committal technology. As embodied worshippers of an fall away. It is much easier to deny Christ, incarnate God, we cannot baptize, ordain, or whom one does not see, than to defy the bullies commune by texts or tweets. We need to gather whom one does see and who threaten one’s job in person for support and sacramental grace. or family or life. I have often thought that Catholics have much to Those who are willing to remain and suffer do learn from the Amish in living a life of deep so because they have a deep understanding of faith and personal accountability in a local, the faith and a deep formation through frequent tight-knit community that is largely self- reception of the sacraments. For them, Jesus is sustaining economically. The Amish deliberately not a sunbeam but the suffering servant and keep their communities both small in size and tortured Son of God who is with them intimately close to the earth through farming. That is no even as they are being starved or water-boarded. small advantage: as the UGCC priest-theologian For them Jesus is the very model par Andriy Chirovsky likes to point out, when you excellence of someone falsely and unjustly are very small and humble (a word whose root arrested, tortured, and executed. God himself has means “on the ground” or “close to the earth”), experienced all these horrors before and in not only do you please God, but you make person, and thus he shows Christians not only yourself a much harder target for the giants to how to persevere, but how the story ends: with hit! the death of death itself. Some Catholics already understand the need for Community and Communication such community.(Continue next page) 3 I think of organizations such as local elsewhere in the Middle East. As the Catholic associations of home-schooling Catholic anthropologist Mary Douglas has shown in her families. Or more clearly organized groups like 1970 book Natural Symbols , “thin” rituals have Opus Dei or “third-order” associations. Or even no staying power and no power to transform groups like the City of the Lord in Arizona and peoples and cultures; only “thick” traditions can California: a group of “charismatic” Catholics do that.