On Reforming Diocesan Boundaries and Structures

I was at the twenty-third Orientale Lumen conference in Washington this past week. Capably organized as ever by the indefatigable and ever-generous Jack Figel, its sessions were moderated this year by my friend Will Cohen, author of The Concept of Sister Churches in Orthodox-Catholic Relations Since Vatican II.

Fascinating papers were given by several people, including Anastacia Wooden, whose work on Afanasiev I noted here; by Hyacinthe Destivelle, whose book The Moscow Council has been widely read; and by my friend and co-editor Daniel Galadza, author of Liturgy and Byzantinization in Jerusalem, which is, he tells us, coming out in December in a much more affordable paperback edition.

I too gave a paper--this year's theme was on the old notion of "One Bishop to One City?"--and I drew on my new book Everything Hidden Shall Be Revealed: Ridding the Church of Abuses of Sex and Power, in which my last chapter talks about restructuring dioceses, especially in the Latin Church, so that they are no longer huge corporations with archbishops, junior vice-presidents called "auxiliary bishops," and massive, dehumanized bureaucracy spending millions to hide abuse and abusers--and to hide the slush fund abusive bishops use for booze, flowers, and rent-boys.

It was, as ever, a good conference even if for many people today this whole ecumenical venture seems increasingly ignored by the vast majority of Christians. In my experience, dating back to 1991 in Australia, it has always been that way, alas.

In Praise of Afanasiev

I was in Iasi, Romania last week for the inaugural conference of the International Orthodox Theological Association. I was both an official ecumenical observer and also a panelist giving a paper on papal primacy.

Among many interesting sessions and papers, one impressed me more than the rest: a paper given by a newly minted scholar, Anastacia Wooden, on the legacy of Nicholas Afanasiev.

It was a superlative piece of scholarship, and clearly marks Wooden down now as the Afanasiev expert in the world. What made her paper simultaneously fascinating and depressing was her careful documentation of how shabbily Afanasiev has been treated by Catholic (esp. Aidan Nichols) and Orthodox (esp. John Zizioulas) theologians alike, who, at best, pay him the briefest lip service before going on to criticize him (typically for things he did not say, while ignoring the things he did say) or else ignore him. Apart from such shabby treatment by these two, he is apparently generally ignored. I found this astonishing because, in my naivete, I had assumed that everyone recognized Afanasiev as one of the great men of postwar ecclesiology and therefore blithely imagined he was widely and appreciatively read. Apparently not.

Nonetheless, do not let that stop you, dear discerning reader, from reading Afanasiev. The easiest place to begin is with his Church of the Holy Spirit. I drew on that in several of my writings, including, most recently, this essay.

An introduction to him may be found in the chapter on his life written by Michael Plekon in Living Icons: Persons of Faith in the Eastern Church.

Other works in English include the three essays found in the collection edited again by Plekon, Tradition Alive: On the Church and the Christian Life in Our Time. 

There is much that remains untranslated and unpublished, and I strongly encouraged Wooden to remedy these lacunae as soon as possible. We have every reason to expect many good things from her, and I shall endeavor to keep you apprised of them.