There is something worthy of comment in the fact that, during the Synod, two of the clearest Catholic voices have come from Byzantine Christians: from a Romanian woman in full communion with the See of S Peter; and from a Russian Metropolitan who, most sadly, is not in full communion. And there have indeed been comments! I will not duplicate them.
I would simply like to point out the dog which did not bark in Metropolitan Hilarion's night ... what he did not say.
At the beginning of this ghastly mess, Orthodox Marriage praxis was cited as something Catholics should have a new look at. Indeed, Orthodox Oikonomia was set before us as being an expression of the Mercy of God. Metropolitan Hilarion might, therefore, have slipped into his address, somewhere, a sly hint of Orthodox triumphalism ... "How gratifying that you Latins are coming round to our Orthodox way of thinking".
Not a whisker of it.
His address was a straightforward act of support for those Catholics who uphold the witness of the Gospel against the corruptions of the World, the Flesh, and the Zeitgeist. It was an unambiguous condemnation of the Spirit of Apostasy, the Spirit of the Antichrist, which has infected some Latin bishops. Of the Smoke of Satan which Blessed Pope Paul VI detected as having entered the Temple of God. Just think what a cruel disappointment Hilarion's words must have been to the heterodox delegates in the synodal aula! I bet it quite put them off their Knockwurst!
May the Lord remember his Episcopate in His Kingdom. And I hope that faithful orthodox Catholics will not forget this moment and its significance.
And I have a strange premonition that in the next pontificate the Sovereign Pontiff will be that weeny bit less anxious to persuade the Bishop of Second Rome to bless him; and a tadge keener to be photographed with the Patriarch of Moskow and of All the Russias!
Yes, I know there are problems ... but all the same ...
It would fly in the face of fact to say oikonomia, as we commonly know it, i.e. in relation to the second attempt at marrriage by a divorced person, is not at all tolerated by the Byzantine churches. But, I think that more prelates of those churches than we Latins might give credit for oppose it or at least recognize that it is is really irreconcilable with the Gospel. We certainly need to realize a second marriage is far from a given!
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