Uniate Conversions to Orthodoxy

by Nicholas Maas

Mr. Maas, a former Greek Catholic, was received by Baptism into the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad and attends St. John the Baptist Church in Washington, D.C.

 

 

Much has been written about the problem of Uniate conversions to the Orthodox Church, and in particular about the reception into Orthodoxy of Greek Catholics in North America and Eastern Europe at the turn of the century. The use of economy (that is, Chrismation or a confession of faith) in receiving these converts from the Unia is often cited to support the general reception of Uniate converts in this way in contemporary times. This is the result of a misrepresentation of this earlier use of economy as a precedent-setting gesture on the part of the Orthodox Church. In reality, the instances of the use of economy in receiving Uniates into the Faith were relatively rare even in the nineteenth century— instances deemed necessary because of what were then very exceptional circumstances. It can be persuasively argued that today, especially in the free world, circumstances are such that the nineteenth-century exception to the rule of conversion by Baptism should be put aside completely and that Uniates should be received into the Church only by Baptism.

During the latter half of the nineteenth century, millions of Greek Catholics were finally able to break away from the centuries-old bonds of the much-despised Unia. These were people who had been forced by circumstances beyond their control into union with the Roman Church. They never desired to be Latins, never were Latins, and never accepted the confession of the Roman Church. A few of their Hierarchs—cowardly apostates or ambitious men—allowed the Church to be enslaved by force of arms and by so-called "treaties" dictated by the interests of political expediency. Thus it is that, when no political power could impede them, these people returned to the Orthodox Church by the millions—and without hesitation, one might add.

Now, in the latter half of the twentieth century, however, there is a clear understanding among Greek Catholics of what they are: Greek Catholics. They are not Orthodox held by some political force in a false union in which they do not believe. Indeed, the Ukrainian Catholic Church, for example, is one with Rome. Ukrainian Catholics willingly embrace the Latin Church. The Melkites, too, are obviously Greek Catholics and clearly constitute an eastern rite of the Roman Church. There is no fear of persecution that keeps Uniates where they are; there is no threat of death at the hands of the Austro-Hungarian army or some other bellicose element. To claim that converts from the Greek Catholic Faith in our day are anything but converts from the Roman Church is simply to play an intellectually dishonest game.

Let us not hesitate to be honest. Greek Catholics are Greek Catholics, or Uniates, not Orthodox. This is a simple statement of fact. Unfortunately, a strange confusion with regard to this fact took root among some Uniate believers following the Second Vatican Council. The post-Vatican II changes in Latin attitudes towards the Eastern Church led many Greek Catholics—whether by a deliberate design of the Council Fathers or adventitiously, one cannot say—to think of themselves as members of an "Orthodox Church in union with Rome." This has become one of the burning convictions of the Melkite Greek Catholics, especially. Any serious Orthodox Christian—or any serious Roman Catholic, for that matter—would find that idea ludicrous, if not totally insane. Orthodox are Orthodox simply because they are not in union with Rome. Nonetheless, this idea holds forth strongly among many Greek Catholics and, worse yet, among some Orthodox modernists! Here is a clear example of the abuse of economy, that treasure of the Church, being made the source of serious harm to the Faithful and of an ecclesiology which is as wrong as it is wholly dishonest.

By abusing economy and receiving contemporary Greek Catholics by Chrismation or economy, many Greek Catholics and unlearned Orthodox come to believe that Greek Catholics are legitimately Orthodox. With such an abuse of economy, political ecumenism advances farther, denigrating and misrepresenting the Church to which the convert is supposed to be converting. For the sake of converts from the Unia, it must be made clear that conversion to Orthodoxy is to embrace the fullness of Christ in the One Church which He established. Greek Catholics are not simply changing jurisdictions. They are members of the Roman Church and outside the Greek Orthodox Church. And we Orthodox are not just Greek Catholics without a Pope. We are Orthodox Christians who consider the idea of the papacy a heresy and a distortion of the Apostolic Church.

Modernist jurisdictions are causing untold harm to their own Churches when, instead of inviting solidly converted Orthodox into their ranks, they make of their half-converted Greek Catholic guests nothing more than disgruntled Uniates on the "Orthodox side" of the Schism. How can a mere disdain for Rome be a substitute for the compelling Grace that leads a true convert humbly to enter the Orthodox Church through the salvific Grace of the waters of Holy Baptism? How can a change from one side of the "political" spectrum to another really accomplish what conversion to the fullness of Orthodox Christianity entails?

And what of the poor convert? When the novelty of being a convert—of being on the other side of the fence, no longer under the thumb of the Pope— wears off, where does he go? For all intents and purposes, he must begin anew his search for Orthodoxy, for true Orthodoxy, his soul thus in danger because of the time wasted.

Economy is, of course, not without very practical application in the Church under unusual and exceedingly rare circumstances. But prudence must guide us in its application in the contemporary Church. If we abuse economy in the name of ecumenism, in the name of misrepresenting those things which separate the Mother Church of Orthodoxy from all who have deviated from her teaching, and as a tool for fostering political attitude changes rather than true conversions, then we misuse and denigrate one of the Church's great treasures of love—her ability to relax the law for the sake of the spirit—, making of a tool of love a crude hatchet by which to cut away the image of the Faith in frenzied attempts to distort the truth which she symbolizes and embodies.

                                                                                     

Source: Orthodox Tradition, Vol. VII (1990), No. 3, p. 10.