mgv@duke.UUCP (Marco G. Valtorta) (07/18/85)
This article is a comment on a posting by Judy Grass. I tried mailing it to her, but my message was returned. I apologize for the length of this digression. I think that Judy's article should have mentioned the Bulgarian Catholic Church, rather than the Bulgarian Orthodox Church: I doubt it would be interesting to study the liturgy of a Church founded in the 1950's for the purposes she indicated. According to information gathered during a visit to Bulgaria, the "Bulgarian Orthodox Church" is an autocephalos (roughly meaning "independent from other churches") church created by the governement in the early 1950's. Before that date, most Bulgarians were Catholics of the Eastern rite, just as the Ukrainians. It has been relatively easy for Communist regimes to force the faithful to switch from Catholic to Orthodox, because the Eastern rite of the Catholic Church is very close to Orthodoxy, at least superficially. (For example, married men can become Catholic priests of Eastern rite, just like in the Orthodox Church.) But Catholics are more of a nuisance to totalitarian regimes than Orthodoxes are, since they recognize their unity under the Pope and are therefore less likely to sway under political pressure. Now, two remarks. The Primate of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church was described to me as a holy man who cannot abandon his residence on beautiful mount Vitosa, overlooking Sophia, without governmental permission. The Pope has recently issued a letter entitled "Slavorum Apostoli" on the Saints Cyril and Methodius, who evangelized the Slavs and invented the cyrillic alphabet. They were brothers from Greece, sent by the Emperor and the Patriarch of Constantinople after a request by a Russian king, who complained that the teachers from Germany and Italy were good, but did not show respect for the specific mores of the Slavs. The Pope has made Cyril and Methodius co-patrons of Europe (together with St. Benedict, the founder of the Benedictians, the great monks of Western Europe). It is very remarkable that Cyril and Methodius were Greeks sent from Constantinople, invented a new language for the Slavs, and always sent reports and questions to the Pope. If you are a Christian, this is reason of hope for the eventual unity of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, a result that may be the key to unity and peace in Europe. Marco Valtorta