The only thing in crisis is the liberal world religions version of Orthodoxy: on Moscow, Constantinople, and Chinatown

October 23, 2018 By Justin Tse

In light of the bluster of the Moscow Patriarchate in its claim that its full communion with Constantinople has been impaired by its actions in Ukraine, speculation has abounded about the future of Orthodoxy. To me, the clearest sorting of fact from fiction in this endeavour has been from one of the premier scholars in the study of Ukrainian Orthodoxy, Nicholas Denysenko, in a short post on Pray Tell demonstrating that the real issue between the Ecumenical Patriarchate and Moscow is neo-imperialism. Metropolitan... Read more

Oscar Romero, the scholarship of everyday life, and the omophor of Pokrov for the civilization of love

October 14, 2018 By Justin Tse

These are my reflections on the canonization of Archbishop Oscar Romero in our sister Latin Church on this Old Calendar Feast of the Protecting Mantle of the Most Holy Theotokos in our church. On the night in 2016 that gave the world Donald Trump as President of the United States, I re-committed myself to Christian scholarship. It was a bleak night, and my spiritual father was online with me. I wrote about the experience then, of him asking me whether... Read more

Reading Sobrino on Óscar Romero and the glory of God

October 13, 2018 By Justin Tse

I confess, and do not deny, that I have had difficulty reading the works of the theologian Jon Sobrino, and it is not for want of trying. I have tried to read Christology at the Crossroads on the advice of my spiritual father and just could not get into it. My spiritual father had once been posted to El Salvador as a young Canadian Jesuit, and he had known Sobrino’s friends, the ones who were later murdered as they bridged their... Read more

The Bishops of Rome and the Hieromartyr Óscar Romero: on Paul Elie in The Atlantic

October 13, 2018 By Justin Tse

Paul Elie’s piece in The Atlantic on the Bishops of Rome and the Holy New-Hieromartyr Óscar Romero is, simply put, excellent, with most of the nuances that it needs. There are only two addenda I’d add to it. First, it is certainly true that it was on Ratzinger’s watch under Wojtyła’s pontificate that liberation theology was suppressed. However, their own written records on theologies of liberation are a bit mixed, as is Bergoglio’s himself, with all three frequently making use of... Read more

The Non-Alignment of the People of God

October 13, 2018 By Justin Tse

Tomorrow, Archbishop Oscar Romero, the martyred Latin hierarch of El Salvador in the 1980s, will be canonized in the Latin Church. I am in the habit of asking for his intercession already, as well as for his friend Rutilio Grande SJ, and the Jesuit martyrs from the university too. However, friends of mine in the Latin Church have recently pointed out to me that my writings of late, while insisting on our full communion, have waxed critical of the Latin... Read more

One of my bishops on the question of Ukrainian autocephaly and the Greek Catholic Church

October 12, 2018 By Justin Tse

My view of my church, the Greek-Catholic Church of Kyiv, may seem radical to those in the imperial churches of Rome and Moscow. However, it is modest. A few days ago, my bishop in the St Nicholas Eparchy of Chicago, Benedict Aleksiychuk, spoke with a journalist about what autocephaly means for us Greek Catholics. The first point he makes is that we already have it. The second is that Rome guarantees it. The third is that we are not uniates.... Read more

Ukrainian autocephaly is vindication for those who read

October 11, 2018 By Justin Tse

Today is a great day. As Constantinople announces that it will indeed grant autocephaly to the Church of Ukraine, all of us who are able to read have been vindicated. No longer must we play the charade that the ‘Orthodox way’ is about a kind of oikonomia in which might makes right and the loudest is the strongest. Oikonomia presumes nomos. There are documents, and as the site Orthodox Synaxis makes abundantly clear, we can read them. This announcement might not settle the question of... Read more

Theology is the exegesis of love (for the repose of Holy John the Theologian)

October 9, 2018 By Justin Tse

I have long reflected on why, mysteriously, the Holy Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian has been special to me. I ask myself this again on this celebration of his repose. Reflecting, I wonder whether my time spent as a doctoral student, freshly disillusioned with the prospect of ordained ministry in the Anglican Communion and questioning the logics of the realignment, might have contributed to this devotion, especially as I worshipped regularly in a parish that was deeply connected to... Read more

Stopped in at my spiritual home, reflected on the secular

October 7, 2018 By Justin Tse

I stopped home in Richmond for Liturgy. It is Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, and my dear friends were getting married. As is the case, a great number of my friends are what we might call secular, and I have attended a number of secular weddings, like this one. There is a beauty to them that I will reflect upon in another post. Certainly, in response to one of my Orthodox commentators who tells me that the legitimacy of the marriage depends on... Read more

Back to Asian American basics

October 1, 2018 By Justin Tse

Today was my first day back on the job teaching. The quarter officially started on Thursday, but I teach on Mondays and Wednesdays. This quarter, both of my courses are introductory. I am teaching the largest course I’ve ever done, Introduction to Asian American History, which was the biggest class I had ever taught the first time I did it two years ago, but it has just about doubled in size now. The other course is not small either –... Read more