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Monastic Life in the Eastern (Byzantine) Orthodox Churches and Eastern (Byzantine) Catholic Churches is an essential part of their identity and therefore an essential dimension of Catholic-Orthodox relations. Catholic-Orthodox Relations can't be just between Bishops and Theologians but must include the piety of Monastics and the Faithful. It is therefore heartening to see last week that Archbishop Elpidophoros convened an Assembly for Monastics in the USA at which the letter in the link below from Patriarch Bartholomew was read. It is a good letter which should be read by all monastics, especially of the Byzantine, Christian Tradition!
Due to the canonical landscape in the USA, the Assembly only included monastics of the Greek Orthodox Province of America. It would be wonderful to have a similar Monastic Assembly for Byzantine Catholics but there are two main challenges to this. First, the total number of Byzantine, Greek-Catholic monastics in the USA is so small that it would have to include all Greek-Catholic Jurisdictions to be of any use. Second, the only person who could convene such an Assembly would have to be a delegate of the Holy See, no one else could convene an assembly across Greek-Catholic Jurisdictions. We would face similar problems as the recent Council in Crete. Who would be invited and who would come and not come and why. We Catholics pride ourselves that we have the Bishop of Rome who is the guarantor of our unity but often the situation is not much different than in Orthodoxy!
+Nicholas,
Abbot
St. Nazianz
Click the image to read the letter from Patriarch Bartholomew
Images below are from the Assembly for Monastics in the USA convened by Archbishop Elpidophoros.
