Bishop Soter Ortynsky

Unfortunately, Bishop Soter Ortynsky was a Ukrainian nationalist. Consequently, he was much opposed by the Rusyn clergy in the United States after he became the first Eastern Catholic bishop in the United States in 1907. 

Despite his Ukrainian nationalism, Ortynsky fought for the Church. He manfully ignored offensive and inappropriate aspects of Ea Semper, such as its prohibition of infant chrismation and married priesthood.[1] If the Rusyn clergy knew then what we now know about the conflicts and schisms that would result over the latter issue, then they may have lessened their ethnic and political opposition to Ortynsky. Had Ortynsky not died so young (at the age of 50), he may have been able to maintain important Eastern traditions and to work for Slavic Byzantine Catholic unity. As it happened, he was replaced by two bishops - one for the Ukrainians and another for the Rusyns. In my opinion, this division along ethnic lines has not, in the long run, served well either the Rusyn or the Ukrainian Churches .

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[1] Ea Semper Articles 10, 12, 14. 

From Evangelism to Ethnic Enclaves: Early Eastern Christian Immigration to America

The Russian Orthodox missionaries worked among the Alaskan Natives, converting many thousands to the true faith by their sincere efforts to inculturate the gospel. They came to Alaska with evangelical intent. Even Fr. Juvenaly’s great detractor, Nicholas Rezanov, acknowledges this: “the monk Juvenaly went there immediately to propagate the faith.”

Unfortunately, later Eastern Christian immigrants did not always maintain this evangelical impulse to present the faith in terms comprehensible to other cultures. A difference of intention motivated subsequent immigrant communities of Eastern Christians. They came not to evangelize but primarily to escape economic hardships. Their priests also came with no particular intention to evangelize, but rather to serve their own people while they temporarily sojourned in a foreign land, already peopled with others of Western European descent. The Eastern Churches in America, perhaps also unjustly suffering from feelings of cultural inferiority, began to isolate themselves ethnically. 

Historical Theological Defense of Icons

Though questions of politics and the locus of Church authority – that is, whether or not the emperor ought to have a deciding voice on doctrinal matters – weigh heavily in the historical dispute over icons, the doctrinal questions themselves are worthy of careful consideration. Furthermore, it is worth bearing in mind that, though it is intuitive to ascribe iconoclastic tendencies among Christians to external Jewish and Muslim influences, iconoclasm historically found as much support from within the Greek Christian tradition as from without it. Nonetheless, the Jewish origin of Christianity and the consequent Christian acceptance of Jewish scriptures certainly gave the iconoclasts the opportunity to point to the all-important prohibition of images found in the Decalogue as a proof-text. Christianity had inherited from Judaism an abhorrence of idolatry – which was shared by iconoclasts and iconodules alike. Earlier iconoclasts particularly focused on their claim that the veneration of icons was idolatrous.

Iconoclasts appealed to the authority of scripture and the early church fathers, which railed always and everywhere against the worship of idols. They neglected, however, to account for the images God commanded for use in worship (for example, the golden cherubim over the ark) in the very same books – especially Exodus – that condemned idolatry. This tension between right and wrong use of images exists already in the Old Testament along with the implicit acknowledgement that not all use of images is idolatrous.

Iconoclasts appealed to a particular understanding of the nature of images. Constantine Kopronymos went so far as to call an image homoousios with its subject. Icons, therefore, he considered false images, because a true image of Christ would be God himself, just as Christ, the image of the Father, is one in essence with the Father and is God. In a sense, Constantine V is not against worshipping images, but against worshiping icons, which are not, in his view, true images. Only Christ (and Christ in the Eucharist) is a true image. This is a failure to appreciate what an icon actually is and is not. An icon, as John of Damascus would later assert, is more like a mirror reflection of the one it portrays. It is an imitation. A painting of Christ is an image of Christ, who is an image of the Father. There is more than one sense of image. An icon is like an image of an image. It is not Christ himself, but his reflection. It is obvious that paint on a board is not one in essence with the Father! Iconodules were not suggesting otherwise. They worship God and God alone – God who has become man – man, who by his very nature can be imaged with paint on a board.

Later iconoclasts focused more on the Christological implications of iconography.  They claimed that because Jesus Christ is one person with both a divine and human nature, it is impossible to make an image of him. The divine nature cannot be circumscribed. Divinity is invisible by nature. It could only be, therefore, that an icon portrays only the human nature. This much is true, but the iconoclasts went on to assert that making such an image separates the two natures of Christ. Such an assertion fails to recognize fully the reality of the incarnation. It is, as John of Damascus said, a type of Docetism. Christ was visible to the eyes of his disciples both before and after his resurrection. This visibility, characteristic of human nature, also lends itself naturally to circumscribability. If the iconoclasts were right in thinking that portraying Christ’s image separated his humanity from his divinity, then Christ himself would have made this separation every time he appeared to his disciples in visible flesh. No. Rather, as a person both fully God and fully man, he is fully circumscribable in his human nature. This is the reality of the incarnation – a reality so profound that iconoclasts had difficulty fully accepting it. To deny that an image may be made of Christ is to deny that he is fully man. To deny that this image is worthy of veneration is to deny that his humanity is one with God. 

Would it be possible to have an ideal American Rite melding features of the Byzantine tradition and American culture?

Though skeptical of all things American, I do think it evangelically important to inculturate the Gospel, which should include, for example, the use of vernaculars. Inculturation is particularly and notoriously difficult in America, which lacks any one culture. America is a place of many coexisting – but only limitedly interacting – cultures. It is also a place of rampant individualism, which is utterly contrary to the Gospel. It would certainly be possible to meld features of Byzantine tradition and American culture – which has happened historically to a small degree – but there would be nothing “ideal” about an “American Rite.” 

Is a united American Eastern Church a realistic possibility?

When first immigrating to the United States, Eastern Christians usually intended to return to their homelands and thus considered themselves as in diaspora. Despite new circumstances, the mother Churches often continue operating from this conception. Though continuing as minorities, Eastern Churches in this country now have generations of history, American cultural characteristics, and numbers enough to regard them as a particular Church. Really, it doesn't makes sense for one location to have five or more Eastern bishops representing various jurisdictions. This redundancy weakens the ability of the Eastern Churches to evangelize, to catechize, and to do all that the Church must do in the world. 

This jurisdictional unity could only happen if the Churches would seek it and would self-identify first as Eastern Christians rather than as this or that ethnic group. Until Eastern Christians in the United States stop referring to themselves primarily as Russians or Ukrainians or Rusyns or Greeks or Arabs or this or that ethnicity rather than primarily as Christians, they will poorly reflect the one Church they truly are. 

The Obligation to Pray

In 1890, the Synod of Lviv unsuccessfully attempted to obligate clerics - and only clerics - to pray the Divine Praises. Thus obliging some of the people of God (clergy), while not others, would violate the spirit of public liturgical prayer. As Fr. Robert Taft writes, “The burden of common prayer is incumbent on all.”[1] Liturgical prayer is communal by its very nature. The faithful – both lay and ordained – ought to live as vibrant and full a liturgical life as their lives reasonably allow. Daily celebration of the Divine Praises ought to be an act of, by, and for the whole community. The whole community is, in some sense,  "obliged." The Apostolic Constitutions instruct the bishop to “command and exhort” both clergy and laity to communal morning and evening prayer in the church every day: 

When you instruct the people, O bishop, command and exhort them to come constantly to church morning and evening every day, and by no means to forsake it on any account, but to assemble together continually.... For it is not only spoken concerning the priests, but let every one of the laity hearken to it as concerning himself. [2] 

Clericalizing the Divine Praises by obliging clerics and only clerics to pray them is imbalanced and contrary to the true spirit of liturgical prayer. Clergy are not properly thought of as those who pray in the place of or instead of the laity. This mentality weakens the communal and public celebration of the Divine Praises. Rather, the clergy are to lead the laity in prayer. 

An example of the clergy celebrating Vespers together with the laity 

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[1] Taft, Robert. The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West. Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1986. 362.

[2] Apostolic Constitutions II, 59.

Culture and Ethnicity in the Church in the United States

Más Mural
photo by Ruby Sinreich, 2005

  Many of the tensions experienced within the Church in the United States have ethnic roots. The various ethnicities of the immigrants who make up this “immigrant church,” as Jay Dolan calls the Catholic Church in the U.S. in his book The American Catholic Experience, deeply inform attitudes and beliefs about church disciplines (125). There is often disagreement in this land – about what really is a Christian, how a Christian really ought to live, or what a Christian really ought to believe – that has more to do with ethnic and cultural backgrounds than with anything that Christ taught or exemplified. Nonetheless, the Church exists in a world of manifold cultures and ethnicities. If the Church intends to preach the gospel to all creation and to make disciples of all nations, as Jesus taught, she must seek ways of communicating this good news to each nation in culturally comprehensible terms (cf. Mark 16:15; Matt 28:19). In other words, the gospel must be in some sense inculturated. This is a deep problem in the U.S., where there is no one culture or ethnicity. In this nation, various inculturations of the same gospel compete. There is value in preserving these various heritages in all their diversity, rather than compelling all to assimilate to the dominant one, as long as people do not confuse cultural or ethnic expressions of Christian faith with the Christian faith itself – as long as Christians can learn to recognize Christ in cultures and ethnicities other than their own.
     
        The issue of ethnicity has particularly affected Eastern Christians in America. Partly because the migration to America from Eastern Europe and the Middle East began in significant numbers later than that from Western Europe in the history of immigration to this land, there was – from the moment of their arrival – pressure upon the minority ethnic communities of Eastern Christians in America to assimilate to the dominant culture of the larger Church in America. This was particularly true for Eastern Catholics who, in addition to receiving pressure from the wider American culture to assimilate, also received pressure from the Catholic Church in the U.S., which was overwhelmingly Roman and primarily of Irish and German ethnicities. Certain strong historical forces motivated many American Catholics to desire assimilation and to try to compel newcomers to assimilate.

        It is helpful to consider the background of the Catholics who sought a culturally monolithic presentation of Catholic faith. Dolan describes the background of the immigrants who would make up the majority of the Church in America. They came from a certain experience of the Church in Europe. “Catholics could be found in many countries of Europe and throughout the Middle East. But, within each nation, Catholicism was culturally quite homogenous, with the native culture clearly the dominant force in the church” (Dolan 127). Having come from such unified and ethnically homogenous churches in Europe, perhaps it is not surprising that many Catholics wanted the Church in the U.S. to be similar. Consequently, many Roman Catholic bishops here did not know what to do with Eastern Catholics, who brought with them alien liturgical practices and church disciplines, which included, most problematically, the ordination of married men to the priesthood.

        One of the most contentious issues for Eastern Catholics in America, both historically and in the present, is married priesthood. This issue well demonstrates how a cultural particularity can become so deeply entwined in the popular imagination with the nature of the Church that disagreement is considered tantamount to heresy. Western Catholics do not permit the ordination of married men to the priesthood. They have not permitted it for many centuries. This church discipline is a product of culture, not of divine revelation or of early church tradition. Eastern Catholics, coming from a different culture, have a different discipline and do permit this practice. In the U.S., after both Western and Eastern Catholics had immigrated here in large numbers, there was cultural diversity. On this and many other matters, there were two contrary disciplines existing side by side. There were multiple inculturations of the gospel living as neighbors in one land. They did not always coexist harmoniously.

Alexis Toth

        Foremost among those who considered it essential for Byzantine Catholics to assimilate and adopt the ecclesiastical customs predominant in America was Bishop John Ireland. Ireland was a liberal who sought a thoroughly and uniformly Americanized Church. Toward this end, he particularly sought the latinization of the Ruthenians, particularly on the issue of married priests. Demonstrating how deeply went his culturally informed ideology, Ireland reportedly said to Alexis Toth on December 19, 1889, after learning that Toth had been married, “I do not consider that you or this bishop of yours [who ordained Toth] are Catholic.” If this quotation accurately represents Ireland’s beliefs, it would seem that to disagree with Ireland about this cultural practice was, in his estimation, to be non-Catholic. For Catholics of this ilk, the Church was inextricable from culture. Ireland’s perspective, as is well known, inspired Toth to lead thousands of Eastern Catholics into Orthodoxy.


        Prejudices against other cultures and ethnicities led to divisions within the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. Ethnic groups in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century tended to isolate themselves into immigrant neighborhoods. They worshiped with one another, drank with one another, and lived with one another. They brought their European cultures with them and reestablished them as best they could in what Dolan calls, “cultural ghettos” (201). Because of cultural and ethnic prejudices, immigrant communities often isolated themselves and strongly resisted any kind of assimilation. “Prejudice among Catholic immigrant groups was widespread and led to overt discrimination and even open conflict in the parish” (Dolan 201).
The strong identification of the Church with a particular ethnic culture was by no means limited to Irish bishops and their attempt to impose Roman Catholic ideas upon Easterners. There were ethnic divisions between various predominantly Roman Catholic ethnic groups. Additionally, among and between Eastern Christians, ethnicity was a major source of division.

Eastern Orthodox Church of Holy Trinity
New Orleans, LA

        It was not like this from the beginning. There was a degree of cooperation among Eastern Orthodox Christians of various ethnicities when they first began to establish parishes in the U.S.. They were so few that their shared ecclesiastical and liturgical heritage was enough to keep them together despite their ethnic differences. Indicative of this, in December of 1867, in San Francisco, a group of Orthodox Christians established the “Greek-Russian-Slavonic Church and Philanthropic Society.” The name of this organization alone indicates the early cooperation among various ethnic groups. For another example, the earliest Orthodox parish in Louisiana, Holy Trinity Church, founded by Greeks in 1864, served both Greeks and Russians. It served the Liturgy in Greek and Slavonic and conducted parish business in English.

        This partnership between different ethnicities was uneasy from the very beginning, however, and as soon as they were numerous enough to function independently, the Greeks found it necessary to establish a separate diocese for the Greek Orthodox in 1921, disregarding the theoretical Orthodox adherence to the idea that one place ought to have one bishop. One might glean from this that they regarded their ethnic identity as Greeks as being at least as important, if not more so, than their identity as Orthodox Christians. Certainly, they found it necessary to create a jurisdictional division in America drawn on ethnic lines.

        Many have called American society a “melting pot.” While there is certainly interplay between cultures and ethnicities in America, they have not melted together as much as been tossed together. America is more like a fruit salad than a smoothie. There is no one blended-together American culture to which all Christians can assimilate – or to which the Church can inculturate the gospel message. Cultural and ethnic heritages have been preserved and passed down. American is a nation of multiple cultures. To make a disciple of this nation, then, the Church here must present the gospel in more than one way. Therefore, the preservation of diversity within the American Church is necessary. It is a good thing – a strength and not a weakness of the Church in the U.S.– that here the gospel is presented and lived out with different theological emphases and church disciplines by different communities. Perhaps here the Church is uniquely suited to “breathe with her two lungs” (Ut Unum Sint 54).

        However, while it is a fact that these different expressions of the faith grew out of different cultures, it is not clear to what extent they should continue to be associated with certain ethnicities. Some continue to believe that ethnicity is an important element of, not just cultural, but also ecclesial identity. To this very day, there are members of the Byzantine Catholic Church in America who believe that a married man ethnically connected to an Eastern Catholic Church is more suitable for ordination to the priesthood than is a married man of another ethnicity. This is not tenable. When a person grows up in a pluralist society like that of the U.S., it is likely and good that he or she will be aware of other cultures and ethnicities and will interact with them. Children of this nation become children of many nations. This should be promoted, not discouraged. The cultural isolation common among early immigrants should not perpetually persist in the United States. Interaction and dialogue between Eastern and Western Christians without seeking homogenization is good thing.

        In order to assist in the evangelization of the people of the U.S., Eastern Catholic Churches should also practice inculturation here to the extent that such would not compromise any essential element of the faith or tradition of the Church. There are legitimate differences that should be preserved – such as the tradition of a married priesthood, but there are also areas in which it is good to adapt – such as by the use of English in the Liturgy.

        Regarding language, His Beatitude Sviatoslav, head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, stated after his recent elevation,

Patriarch Sviatoslav

We as a church descended from the mission of the Slavic Apostles Cyril and Methodius – great translators of the Scripture and liturgy – have an extraordinary mission to continue this translation so we may pray properly and profoundly in English, in Spanish, in Portuguese, in Ukrainian…. The question of inculturation is very important (Shevchuk).  

Language is one aspect of American culture that has indeed become rather homogenous. Gone, for the most part, are the “polyglot, cosmopolitan parishes of the early nineteenth century” (Dolan 197). It is important to preach the gospel in a language the people understand, and at the moment in the United States that is overwhelmingly English. This is changing to include ever more Spanish, of course, and the Church must respond to this as well.

        The Eastern Churches in the U.S. should welcome all people of whatever ethnicity or language and respond to their needs as well as it is able. The Church has changed throughout her millennia of history to respond to the needs of people in various places and times and to communicate the salvation, freedom, and eternal life available in Jesus Christ to every culture and ethnicity she contacts. Each particular Church should be the Church fully and should cooperate to evangelize the nation.

The Role of the Church in Social Welfare

As the history of the Byzantine world makes clear, philanthropic service to society has always been an important part of the Church’s mission. Seeing Christ in the poor, members of the Church developed a philanthropic philosophy from the very beginning. In a distinct way, the Byzantine Church expressed this divine attribute, blending Greek and Christian understandings of its importance. The Byzantine Empire (which many of its citizens saw as a divinely appointed institution), as well as the Church itself, promoted and practiced philanthropy throughout its history, with varying degrees of sincerity. Both philosophical and practical examples of this abound and serve as an enduring testimony to this proper ministry of the Church throughout the ages.

Pre-Christian Greek civilization already had significantly developed notions of philanthropy expressed in numerous ways. For example, they established philanthropic institutions such as public guest-chambers, brotherhoods of hospitality, and, hospices. However, according to Demetrios Constantelos in his work Byzantine Philanthropy and Social Welfare, “their philanthropy was practiced in a limited field and was directed mostly toward the civilized Hellenes” (11).

Emporer Arcadios,
archetype of God, the Universal King

Christian ideas of universal philanthropy took the existing Hellenic understanding of this virtue and expanded it, insisting that Christians love and charitably serve the human needs of even their enemies and pagans. This latter practice greatly distressed the Emperor Julian (the pagan apostate upon whom we lovingly spit), who wrote, “It is disgraceful that… the impious Galileans support not only their own poor but ours as well” (15). Julian himself encouraged philanthropy, but Christianity, it seems, more successfully persuaded its faithful to take charitable action.

Many of the other Emperors in Constantinople gave good examples of Christian philanthropy. A common theme behind their philanthropic thought was that, as divinely appointed representatives of God on earth, they should exemplify this preeminent divine attribute. Counseling the Emperor Arcadios, Bishop Synesios of Cyrene gives an example of this type of thinking, emphasizing “that the king is the projection of the archetype, God the Universal King” and that the king must therefore make policies to benefit the people (45).

Many Byzantine clergy were also great examples of Christian philanthropy by their charitable work seeking social justice and equality. Certain of these, John Chrysostom, for example, gave generously to the poor out of their personal wealth. Chrysostom also built institutions of charity, such as hospitals and homes for the aged and infirm. Furthermore, in continuity with its early origins, the Church maintained the diaconate, which was created to serve widows and continued this work by seeing to the distribution of all kinds of welfare (Acts 6:1-4).

These few of the innumerable historical examples available partially demonstrate the Church’s consistent devotion to the service of the poor, the sick, the imprisoned, the aged, the orphans, the widows, and all the needy. Since the apostolic age, the Church has emphasized social welfare as an important aspect of its work. Since the fourth century, the Church has sought ways to cooperate with the state in providing this welfare. Seeing Christ in the least of His brethren (Mt 25:40), the Byzantine Church throughout its history served Him and should never neglect to serve Him, the only Philanthropos.

3) Cursing Psalms - Scholarly Reinterpretation

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Dr. Jonathan Ben-Dov

Readers of the cursing Psalms sometimes have a tendency to try to explain them away, as I attempted in the last post by pointing out that the form of Psalm 137:9 was not exactly that of a curse, as if this could remove some of the horror from the image of smashing babies' heads. Some have attempted this kind of explanation for the longest and most devastating of the curses, found in Psalm 109. Ben-Dov describes how it is possible to read this curse into the mouth of the enemy rather than the Psalmist:

A simple reading of Psalm cix understands  vv. 6-19 to be the words of an individual, who is in despair as a result of his enemies' actions. However, this can also be contested, with  vv. 6-19 understood as a quotation of the prosecutors' words. This may be supported from the fact that the enemies are referred to in the plural at the opening of the psalm, while the curse refers to a single person (450).

I am uncertain whether we should critically favor the “simple reading” of this Psalm, but it causes me to wonder why some feel it necessary to seek out a more convoluted reading (then again, perhaps textual scholars enjoy that for its own sake). It seems to me that some just simply cannot stand for these passages to be in the Bible expressing sentiments they regard as so unbiblical.

Fr. Roland Murphy

Along these same lines, Roland Murphy provides a rather creative understanding of the enemies in these Psalms. Regarding the enemies, he writes in his book The Gift of the Psalms, “Are they really human beings? The descriptions are so extreme and exaggerated that they seem to portray superhuman hostile and evil powers…. Perhaps the reader of the psalms should understand the enemies as personifications of evil” (46). He has here departed from a strictly historical understanding. It seems to me that Murphy simply does not want the enemies to be human beings. He even asks, “Was the problem an evil spirit?” (47). I think he may be reaching for an explanation that the text itself does not support. I sympathize – I do not want the enemies to be human beings either – but, historically, that is what they are.

Fr. Jack Custer

No historical contextualizing, however well it alleviates certain misconceptions about these texts, can change the reality that they express hateful and destructive sentiments. Theirs is a pure and perfect hatred, however understandable or even justified it may be (Ps 139:22). As John Custer writes in his book The Old Testament: A Byzantine Perspective, “There is no reason to deny that the Psalmist probably meant exactly what he prayed for: the physical destruction of the real enemies of his nation” (167). This, in my opinion, is the accurate historical reading of the curses themselves.


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2) Cursing Psalms - A Historical-Critical Interpretation

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The enemies cursed by these Psalms represent extreme examples of wickedness and injustice. The text presents this reality of injustice even at times when it is not clearly apparent in certain translations. In his article, “The poor's curse,” Jonathan Ben-Dov provides some helpful textual analysis of the term  עָנִי, as used in Psalm 35:10 immediately following a curse. This term is usually translated “poor” and it appears in six cursing Psalms. For example, as if to give in part the reason for the preceding brutal curses, such as, “Let their eyes be darkened,” and, “Make their loins continually to shake,” and, “Let them be blotted out of the book of the living,” Psalm 69:29 explains “I am poor” (Ps 69:23, 28-29 KJV). On face value, such an understanding of this term might make these passages appear to be a poor person cursing the rich, as if inequity of capital were so great an injustice as to justify the hope that “ruin come upon them unawares,” but there is more implied by the term than simple poverty (Ps 35:8). Ben-Dov writes,

The root ‘nh in nominal and verbal forms does not necessarily express lack of capital. עָנִי  is a passive form of the verb ‘nh when implying oppression and the עָנִי is therefore one who has suffered oppression or injustice. Lack of property naturally accompanies this situation, but is not the major aspect of it; it is the social status, not the poverty, which leads to violence and oppression (434). 

The victim crying out for God to curse his enemies is not reacting to simple inequities or minor slights, but to actual and severe injustices. Ben-Dov further points out that the word is textually similar to an Akkadian idiom which “can indicate a person, just as it can indicate a field or any other object that has been forcefully confiscated” (434). The oppression referred to can be as severe as enslavement, such as was experienced by the Jews in the Babylonian captivity. For these reasons, I think the term is better translated “afflicted,” especially when associated with a curse, as it occasionally is in the RSV (e.g. Ps 69:29).

Babylonian Siege of Jerusalem
from  L'Histoire du Vieux et du Nouveau Testament
by Nicolas Fontaine

Foremost among the oppressors cursed by the Psalms are the Babylonians, who consequently receive the most terrible of the curses: “Happy shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!” (Ps 137:9). This Psalm calls the Babylonians “captors,” “tormenters,” and “devastators” for what they have done to Jerusalem and its people (Ps 137:3, 8). The brutal devastation that they inflicted upon the Israelites involved all the atrocities of war, likely including the slaughter of children and the enslavement of the people. The psalmist is not demanding a curse upon his enemies worse than that which his enemies have already visited upon the psalmist’s people. The psalmist is invoking the law of just retribution: “life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe” (Exod 21:23-25; see also Lev 24:17-22). Further, it is worth keeping in mind that this most sadistic passage is not a curse in the proper sense. It does not say “O God, dash their babies against the rock!” but, “Happy shall he be” who does so, as if to say, not that the psalmist intends to carry out infanticide, but that, if someone were to do so, they would be justified, given that the Babylonians have committed equivalent atrocities.

Historically, it seems clear to me that the psalmist composed these curses, for the most part, against actual human enemies of the people of Israel. The Israelites suffered terrible atrocities. Seeing themselves as a people in relationship with God, to call upon God to curse those they would curse was, in a sense, only natural. The human reaction to severe injustice is to cry out for retribution.

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1) Cursing Psalms - Introduction

Here is an odd picture of me giving a presentation
on the Cursing Psalms

Images of violence fill the Book of Psalms – violence perpetrated both by God and by humans sanctioned by God. In the following series of posts, I will be concerned primarily with prayer for violence against one’s enemies, which is known as a curse or imprecation. Some of these passages in the Psalms, with their extreme images (for example, breaking teeth, bathing feet in blood, burying with burning coals, and breaking the heads of babies) can be quite shocking to our sensibilities, especially if we use the Psalms as a book of prayer. For this reason, the modern Roman Church has sometimes omitted these passages from its liturgical prayer. However, as a member of the Byzantine Church, which is deeply steeped in the tradition of praying the entire Psalter, this solution does not satisfy me in the least. Therefore, I will first consider these passages tomorrow from a historical-critical point of view and attempt to discover, as far as possible, the intended meaning of the text in the historical context. In the following days, I will consider how the Church Fathers and later commentators have reinterpreted and allegorized these passages and thus incorporated them into the prayer of the Church.

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For today's feast of Ss. Constantine and Helen, Equals to the Apostles

Perhaps so his baptism would cleanse as many sins as possible, St. Constantine the Great, ἰσαπόστολος, postponed it until he was near death. In the meantime, just for example, he ordered the poisoning of his son Crispus and the scalding suffocation of his wife Fausta (326). His sins were great. Then his glorification shows God’s great mercy. His baptism was by the Arian Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia (337). Then his canonization demonstrates one significant thing that extra ecclesiam nulla salus does not mean. This implicit acceptance of a baptism from a heretical hand shows the mysterious workings of God’s grace.