St. Thomas: We Catholics Do Adore Images

St. Thomas: We Catholics Do Adore Images

Adapted from Francisco J. Romero Carrasquillo, "Aquinas’ Reception of John of Damascus’ Philosophy of Religious Worship," (forthcoming).  

You can download the original paper (draft) from my Academia.edu page.

Protestants have always accused Catholics of "worshipping images."  The standard response of Catholic apologists is simply to deny the charge, and instead respond that we really just 'venerate' the images.  This type of response is not only grossly insufficient, but actually runs afoul of the language of our tradition, as expressed in the writings of the saints.  For example, a Protestant can easily search through St. Thomas and find him saying that we do adore images.  When a Protestant brings this up to an untrained Catholic apologist, the apologist usually has nothing intelligent to say in reply.

In order to solve this puzzle, let's do what we do best: "Go to Thomas" (Ite ad Thomam).

According to St. Thomas, the first and most important of the exterior acts of religion (religio), i.e., of the virtue of worship (ST IIa-IIae, q. 81-100) is that of ‘adoration’ (adoratio).  The terminology here can be misleading.  We might be inclined to think of 'adoration' as simply being synonymous with ‘worship’, the kind of reverence that is reserved to God alone.  But Aquinas, who in this regard simply follows the received tradition, together with its complex and sophisticated theological language, already has a particular Latin term for divine worship, namely, látria (from the Greek, λατρεία, latréia).  Adoratio for Aquinas means concretely any kind of a physical humbling of the body, such as genuflections, prostrations, bowing down, etc., before something sacred or something that is worthy of respect or veneration.  As such, adoratio signifies primarily a physical act comprising a set of bodily postures.  Within the context of divine worship, these acts of adoratio are of course done as signs of an interior attitude of latria, but in themselves they are physical acts.  This is how it can be explained why we find St. Thomas saying that Catholics can and should 'adore' images.  

But the problem is deeper than that.  We actually find him saying that we should offer latria to images.  Yes, the worship due to God alone, should be given to images.  Why?

One of the most important practical points that St. Thomas makes in Christology is that Christ’s humanity, though in itself created, is deserving of the ‘adoration of latria’ in virtue of its Hypostatic or Personal Union with the Second Person of the Trinity: “the adoration of latria is not given to Christ’s humanity by reason of itself, but by reason of divinity to which it is united.”[i]  This is in contrast to the ‘adoration of dulia’, which is the kind of veneration given to the Saints and their relics, and that of hyperdulia, which is given to the Mother of God.

Yet, perhaps surprisingly, the humanity of Christ is not the only creature which is in some way deserving of latria.  There are other created things that are formally associated with Christ's humanity and thus are themselves deserving of latria (without this entailing the sin of idolatry): these are the true Cross of Christ—the actual historical instrument of Christ’s passion—as well as any image or icon of Christ.  By ‘icons’ or images we mean any pictorial representation of Christ, or of the Cross of Christ, whether in fresco form, or mosaics, “made of colors, pebbles, any other material that is fit, set in the holy churches of God, on holy utensils and vestments, on walls and boards, in houses and in streets,” in the words of the Second Council of Nicaea (AD 787), which addressed the issue of Iconoclasm, the anti-icon heresy that crept into the Church due to nascent Islam's hatred of religious imagery.[iv]

And interestingly, in another text, Aquinas relies again on St. John Damascene for a quote by St. Basil on this point. “Damascene quotes Basil as saying: ‘The honor given to an image reaches to the prototype,’ that is, the exemplar. But the exemplar itself, namely, Christ, is to be adored with the adoration of latria; therefore also His image.”[v]  What follows this quote is a remarkable text, where Aquinas uses Aristotelian semiotics as a basic premise to address to the issue on his own terms:

As the Philosopher says in the book De Memoria et Reminiscentia, there is a twofold movement of the mind towards an image: one indeed towards the image itself as a certain thing; another, towards the image insofar as it is the image of something else. And between these movements there is this difference; that the former, by which one is moved towards an image as a certain thing, is different from the movement towards the thing: whereas the latter movement, which is towards the image as an image, is one and the same as that which is towards the thing. Thus therefore we must say that no reverence is shown to Christ’s image, as a thing, for instance, carved or painted wood: because reverence is not due save to a rational creature. It follows therefore that reverence should be shown to it only insofar as it is an image. Consequently the same reverence should be shown to Christ’s image as to Christ Himself. Since, therefore, Christ is adored with the adoration of latria, it follows that His image should be adored with the adoration of latria.[vi]

In other words, we can think of an image in two ways: as a thing in itself, or as a sign.  When we think of it as a thing in itself, we do not necessarily treat it as we treat the object of which it is a sign, but when we do think of it as a sign, we treat it in the same way as we treat the object of which it is a sign.  For example, if I look at a picture of my wife, it is entirely reasonable for me to point to the picture and say “I love her.”  No one would think that what I mean is that I love the picture itself, qua inanimate object.  All of my affection in this case is directed at the person of my wife, almost as though the picture were not involved.  I do not give the picture itself a different kind of love from the love I give my wife.  To paraphrase Basil and Damascene, my attitude towards the image is directed at the exemplar.  Hence, it matters not whether I point to the picture and say “I love her” or actually point to my wife and say “I love her”: it is the same love that is expressed in both cases.  Aquinas is saying that similarly, in the case of religious worship, it matters not whether the latria given to Christ is given to Him directly or by means of an image or icon: it is latria all the same.  The worship given is not directed at the image in itself as a thing, but to Christ through the image, the latter being only a sign that leads the mind to Christ. 

Given this doctrine on the adoration of images, Aquinas has now the trouble of explaining why, even though in the Hebrew Scriptures the use of images was forbidden in worship, the prohibition nonetheless no longer applies since the coming of Christ.  He cannot simply claim that the prohibition is only of adoring images, and that Christians only venerate them, as many contemporary Christians would argue.  Rather, he is committed to the doctrine that images of Christ are deserving of latria.  His response focuses instead on the doctrine of the twofold movement of the mind towards an image, affirming that whereas in the case of Old Testament idolatry, the adoration of images was adoration of the gods of the gentiles, where since the coming of Christ the adoration of images is of God Himself made man.

[B]ecause, as was said above, the movement towards the image is the same as the movement towards the thing, adoration of images is forbidden in the same way as adoration of the thing whose image it is.  Therefore here we are to understand the prohibition to adore those images which the Gentiles made for the purpose of venerating their own gods.... But no corporeal image could be made of the true God Himself, since He is incorporeal; because, as Damascene says, “It is the highest absurdity and impiety to make a figure of what is Divine.” But because in the New Testament, God was made man, He can be adored in His corporeal image.[vii]

In other words, according to Aquinas, the great difference between the Judaism and Christianity in regards to the adoration of images is that in Judaism, God cannot be represented in imagery because God is strictly incorporeal, but in Christianity God is believed to have taken human flesh and it is therefore possible not only to represent Him, but also to worship him, through imagery.

A few points on the reception of this doctrine in later Catholic theology are in order here.  This analysis of the use of images in worship, which Aquinas shares not only with Damascene, but also with other prominent 13^th Century sources such as Albert, Bonaventure, and the Summa Fratris Alexandri, is not standard within modern Catholic theology.  Later Catholic theologians such as Bellarmine, Bossuet, and Petavius taught that the proper attitude due to religious images is not that of latria, but a veneration along the lines of dulia.[viii]  And this latter opinion has become a commonplace in contemporary Catholic theology, catechesis, and especially apologetics.  And yet, rather inconsistently, John Damascene and Aquinas are still frequently used as reference points on the issue.  For example, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (AD 1992) teaches that “[t]he honor paid to sacred images is a ‘respectful veneration’ (reverens veneratio), not the adoration (adoratio) due to God alone.”[ix] Rather astonishingly, right after making this statement, the Catechism immediately quotes Aquinas' words for support:

The cultus of religio is not rendered to images as considered in themselves, as things, but insofar as they are images leading to God incarnate. Now the movement directed to an image insofar as it is an image does not stop at the image itself, but tends towards that of which it is an image.[x]

Although the quote in the Catechism ends here, the text of St. Thomas continues: “Hence neither latria nor the virtue of religion is differentiated by the fact that religious worship is paid to the images of Christ.”[xi]  Clearly, this text points to an account of the use of images in worship that is at odds with what the Catechism teaches in the preceding line, since the basic idea in this text of Aquinas is that the same latria is given to the image of Christ as to Christ Himself.

Some Thomists and commentators have used the language of ‘relative latria’, to describe the worship due to an image of Christ.  This terminology should not lead us to think that the latria offered to the image is of a different sort from the latria given to Christ.  The image is indeed being given latria in relation to Christ, Who is the terminus of the one movement of latria; but as Aquinas says, it is one movement of the mind that tends to both the image of Christ and to Christ Himself, one and the same latria being offered to both.

The take-home message is that we do adore images (i.e., we bow down to them, kneel before them, etc.).  But 'adoring' in this sense refers to just an exterior religious act.  The inner religious act that is expressed outwardly in adoration depends on what the image is of.  If the image is of Christ, then, yes, we give latria to the image; or more precisely, to Christ in the image.  We do not give latria to the image simply because it is an image, but because it is an image of Christ, the God-man.  And if the image is of a saint, then we give dulia to the image, or rather to the saint in the image.  And in the case of images of Our Lady, it is hyperdulia.  There is nothing wrong with doing this: it is the same movement of the mind that is directed to the image and to the person in the image.  Christ is thus deserving of the same latria, or worship, whether in person or in an image. To do otherwise would amount to a misuse of images.

So let us be traditional Catholics.  Let us not feel pressured by un-Catholic (ultimately Protestant) cultural sensibilities to miss the importance and value of Catholic iconography, religious sculpture, and sacred art in general.  Let us confidently adore Christ in our icons and statues.  And venerate our Saints in our images.  That is why these sacramentals fill our churches (or should fill them).   They are there as a powerful religious resource, and not as a 'mere symbol' or decoration.  The Church has so much confidence in them as powerful sacramentals, as "windows to heaven," that she dedicated a whole Ecumenical Council to defending them. 

The Eastern Churches have the beautiful tradition of celebrating this council, "The Triumph of Orthodoxy" as they call it, in their liturgies every year on the first Sunday of Great Lent by processing around their churches holding icons up high. It is quite a spectacle to behold.  Let us imitate them in defending the faith through these wonderful trophies of the Incarnation.

---

Notes:

[i] ST III.25.2 ad 1: “Adoratio latriae non exhibetur humanitati Christi ratione sui ipsius, sed ratione divinitatis cui unitur.”

[ii] Ibid. s.c.: “Adoratio latriae non exhibetur humanitati Christi ratione sui ipsius, sed ratione divinitatis cui unitur.”

[iii] Ibid., c.: “Sed quia, ut dicit Damascenus, si dividas subtilibus intelligentiis quod videtur ab eo quod intelligitur, inadorabilis est ut creatura, scilicet adoratione latriae. Et tunc sic intellectae ut separatae a Dei verbo, debetur sibi adoratio duliae, non cuiuscumque, puta quae communiter exhibetur aliis creaturis; sed quadam excellentiori, quam hyperduliam vocant.” 

[iv] Second Council of Nicaea (Denzinger 302 [600]; Mansi 12, 377D): “tam quae de coloribus et tessellis, quam quae ex alia materia congruenter in sanctis Dei ecclesiis, et sacris vasis et vestibus, et in parietibus ac tabulis, domibus et viis....”

[v] ST III.25.3 s.c.: “Damascenus inducit Basilium dicentem, imaginis honor ad prototypum pervenit, idest exemplar. Sed ipsum exemplar, scilicet Christus, est adorandus adoratione latriae. Ergo et eius imago.” 

[vi] ST III.25.3c: “Respondeo dicendum quod, sicut philosophus dicit, in libro de Mem. et Remin., duplex est motus animae in imaginem, unus quidem in imaginem ipsam secundum quod est res quaedam; alio modo, in imaginem inquantum est imago alterius. Et inter hos motus est haec differentia, quia primus motus, quo quis movetur in imaginem prout est res quaedam, est alius a motu qui est in rem, secundus autem motus, qui est in imaginem inquantum est imago, est unus et idem cum illo qui est in rem. Sic igitur dicendum est quod imagini Christi inquantum est res quaedam, puta lignum sculptum vel pictum, nulla reverentia exhibetur, quia reverentia debetur non nisi rationali naturae. Relinquitur ergo quod exhibeatur ei reverentia solum inquantum est imago. Et sic sequitur quod eadem reverentia exhibeatur imagini Christi et ipsi Christo. Cum igitur Christus adoretur adoratione latriae, consequens est quod eius imago sit adoratione latriae adoranda.” 

[vii] ST III.25.3 ad 1: “Et quia, sicut dictum est, idem est motus in imaginem et in rem, eo modo prohibetur adoratio quo prohibetur adoratio rei cuius est imago. Unde ibi intelligitur prohiberi adoratio imaginum quas gentiles faciebant in venerationem deorum suorum.... Ipsi autem Deo vero, cum sit incorporeus, nulla imago corporalis poterat poni, quia, ut Damascenus dicit, insipientiae summae est et impietatis figurare quod est divinum. Sed quia in novo testamento Deus factus est homo, potest in sua imagine corporali adorari.”

[viii] Cf. F. Cabrol, “The True Cross,” in The Catholic Encyclopedia, New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908.    

[ix] Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2132: “Honor sanctis imaginibus tributus est reverens veneratio, non adoratio quae soli Deo convenit.”

[x] ST II-II.81.3 ad 3: “Imaginibus non exhibetur religionis cultus secundum quod in seipsis considerantur, quasi res quaedam: sed secundum quod sunt imagines ducentes in Deum incarnatum. Motus autem qui est in imaginem prout est imago, non sistit in ipsa, sed tendit in id cuius est imago.”

[xi] Ibid.: “Et ideo ex hoc quod imaginibus Christi exhibetur religionis cultus, non diversificatur ratio latriae, nec virtus religionis.”

Christianize your Greek Pronunciation: Say Your Greek Prayers the Traditional Way

Christianize your Greek Pronunciation: Say Your Greek Prayers the Traditional Way

As is well known, Ecclesiastical Latin has its own pronunciation--or family of pronunciations, if we include regional variants, the prevailing one being the italianate pronunciation.  This pronunciation is notably different from what scholars since Erasmus' De recta latini graecique sermonis pronutiatione (1528) have been telling us would have been the original, historical pre-Christian pronunciation of Latin (of the weni-widi-wiki variety).  Of course, we have no certainty about the way Latin was really spoken in classical times, simply because we have no audio recordings of it.  And the written clues the ancients left us only go so far.  The reconstruction is inevitably somewhat artificial.

Moreover, although few scholars would acknowledge it, the matter is significantly aggravated by the fact that English-speaking scholars are particularly bad at capturing the phonetic nuances of Mediterranean languages.  (You can make a Mexican laugh by asking one of these professors to sing "La Cucaracha" as best they can.)  Most native English speakers, no matter how smart, have no business trying to reconstruct what Latin would really have sounded like around the First Century AD.  The way their brain-tongue neurons connect is dramatically un-Mediterranean.

Most people in the Church are aware of these differences and have sensibly embraced the ecclesiastical pronunciation of Latin as being just the way Latin is realistically pronounced.  We speak Latin with the pronunciation we have gratefully received from our ancestors in the Faith.  It may not be historically rooted in Cicero, Virgil, or Ovid, but it is certainly what we have been handed down.  This is so much the case that, for Catholics who encounter Latin in the liturgy on a daily basis, using a 'classical' Latin pronunciation in Church would be laughable.  And of course in academic circles, these same Catholics use the ecclesiastical pronunciation, even when they are reading classical texts.  The revival of Latin that we have been witnessing in the Church is happily based on the received traditional pronunciation.

Yet what few Catholics, scholars or otherwise, realize is that Greek, too, is an ecclesiastical language.  Yes, there are Greek Catholics, Greek liturgies, with Greek prayers, and even Greek chant.  And no, it's not just the Eastern Orthodox who use these things.  It is all originally Catholic, and continues to be essentially Catholic.

And just like in Latin, in Greek there is a huge difference between the way it is pronounced in actual practice in the Church and the way Erasmus and his modern followers suppose it was spoken in classical and early Christian times.  One of the most notable differences has to do with the issue of iotacism (in ecclesiastical Greek ι, η, υ, ει, οι, ηι, υι are all pronounced |i|, like a iota, so you hear that sound a lot).  The phonetic details lie outside of the scope of this post, but the main point is that if you are exclusively familiar with one way of doing it, hearing the other way of doing it can be highly distracting, funny, and even annoying or simply unintelligible.

But if you call the Latin rites your liturgical home, and are blessed to have studied Greek (or at least the rudiments of it), chances are you are unaware of the ecclesiastical pronunciation.  You probably learned the "Erasmian" pronunciation; you pronouce Greek with the (purportedly) 'classical', bookish pronunciation of secular academics.  Even if you took courses in Biblical Greek, you were taught to use this half-made-up, half-historical, wholly-dead pronunciation. If you are a philosopher, you habitually talk about episteme, not realizing Greek philosophers actually pronounce it "eh-pis-tee-mee."  And perhaps most embarrasing of all, you were taught to pronounce Κύριε ελέησον (Kýrie eléison), as "Koo-ri-eh eh-leh-eh-son," despite your liturgical instincts telling you otherwise.  Something is clearly wrong.

So if the above paragraph describes you, then I have a challenge for you.  Christianize your Greek pronunciation.  Make it more Catholic.  Make it traditional.  Not historically accurate, or authentically ancient (or whatever).  But authentically Byzantine, the way it was handed down within the Byzantine Empire and up to our own day. In a word: traditional.

As is the case with the purportedly classical pronunciation of Latin, the 'classical', or rather Erasmian, pronunciation of Greek, is an artificial reconstruction and has no native speakers on the whole Earth who use it.  Much of it is still a matter of debate.  Modern Greeks speak modern Greek, which is grammatically distinct from Ancient, Koine, and liturgical Greek, and even when they pronounce their liturgical Greek prayers, they use the received pronunciation.  Yes, indeed, "there’s an entire country of people who speak Greek and can’t bear to listen to the awful linguistic barbarity known as Erasmian."  Just as no Catholic in their right mind would ever bear to hear chanted "Sal-way Re-gi-na" (even though supposedly that is the correct pronunciation, according to most Latin instructors) so a Greek, no matter how scholarly, would consider it an insult to God's ears to pronounce His revealed Word, originally penned in Greek, in this reconstructed, Erasmian invention.  The Catholic spirit is to embrace what one has reverently received.  So we sing Κύριε ελέησον (Kýrie eléison).

A good way to start Christianizing your Greek is by learning the Our Father, the Πάτερ ἡμῶν (Páter imón). Below is the text, and an audio recording of an entire Byzantine Divine Liturgy (Holy Mass).  Skip to 1:00:44 to hear the recitation of the Πάτερ ἡμῶν.  Repeat until you've memorized the text, understood the words, and internalized the beauty of the sounds of Ecclesiastical Greek.

Πάτερ ἡμῶν ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς, 

ἁγιασθήτω το ὄνομά σου, 

ἐλθέτω ἡ βασιλεία σου, 

γενηθήτω το θέλημά σου, 

ὡς ἐν οὐρανῷ και ἐπι τῆς γῆς. 

Τον ἄρτον ἡμῶν τον ἐπιούσιον 

δος ἡμῖν σήμερον· 

και ἄφες ἡμῖν τα ὀφειλήματα ἡμῶν, 

ὡς και ἡμεῖς ἀφίεμεν τοῖς ὀφειλέταις ἡμῶν· 

και μη εἰσενέγκῃς ἡμᾶς εἰς πειρασμόν, 

ἀλλα ῥῦσαι ἡμᾶς ἀπο τοῦ πονηροῦ.

Here are other decent examples, both recited and sung:

And if you try and just cannot get yourself to pronounce it that way, it's ok. Just, whatever you do, please do not pronounce it this way:

I hear that and I immediately imagine God the Father wincing from Heaven.

The Feast of the Immaculate Conception and Byzantine Theology

The Feast of the Immaculate Conception and Byzantine Theology

In my own devotional life and study, I follow both the traditional Roman liturgical calendar and the Byzantine calendar, specifically that published by the US Melkites, whom I regard as the 'other' traditional Catholics (more on that later).  It is a huge learning experience for me to compare the two calendars, as the arrangement of feasts reflects theological similarities and differences between East and West, illustrating the complexities of the faith and the richness of Catholicism.

Case in point: today, December 8th, we joyfully celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.  My Byzantine Melkite calendar, however, does not have the feast.  What it does have is the "Feast of the Conception of the Theotokos" or the "Feast of the Maternity of St. Anne", tomorrow, December 9th.  Moreover, the feast of the Conception of the Theotokos does not celebrate her holiness or her immaculate nature, but simply that, her Conception.  (The Byzantine feast that truly zeros in on her holiness is the Feast of the Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple when she was a child, which is celebrated on November 21.)

I did some research and apparently the East had this feast first. It seems to have originated in Palestine in the 5th Century, and started making its way into the West in the 8th Century, first in the liturgical traditions in northern Europe (Sarum, Gallican, etc.) and gradually adopted down south by the Roman liturgy.  At some point it was moved back one day to December 8th in the West.  Originally the Western feast was called the "Feast of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary," and much later the name was modified to the "Feast of the Immaculate Conception."  The feast on our calendar, on December 8th, is exactly 9 months before the Feast of the Nativity of the BVM, which falls on September 8th.  This is quite fitting, and actually mirrors the same reality in the case of the Conception of Our Lord and His Nativity, which are 9 months apart, on March 25 and December 25, respectively.

But the East does it slightly differently.  Whereas we celebrate two conceptions, Our Lord's and Our Lady's, they celebrate three, adding that of St. John the Baptist to the mix.  Moreover, the Conception of the Theotokos in the Byzantine calendar is on December 9th, so that it is not quite exactly 9 months prior to the feast of the Nativity of the Theotokos on September 8th, signifying by that fact that her conception, though a wondrous event in the history of salvation, was not perfect, not virginal.  Many of the icons that commemorate the event represent this fact by showing Sts. Joachim and Ann embracing with a bed in the background (see the icon above).  The same is true of the Byzantine feast of the Conception of the Forerunner, St. John the Baptist on September 23, which is 9 months minus one day before June 24 (the Nativity of St. John), and which is also represented in iconography by showing Sts. Elizabeth and Zacharias embracing.  

Now, whereas the Conception of the Theotokos and the Conception of St. John the Baptist are both 9 months minus a day away from the corresponding nativities, in the Byzantine calendar the Conception of Our Lord, celebrated on March 25, is exactly 9 months before the Feast of His Nativity, December 25.  This is to symbolize the perfect, divine, and virginal nature of His Conception, given that He was born not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

Now, all Easterners, Catholic and Orthodox alike, firmly believe, profess, and celebrate the fullness of grace of the Theotokos, whom they exuberantly call in the litanies of their Divine Liturgy "our all-holy, immaculate, most blessed and glorified Lady, the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary": Τῆς Παναγίας, ἀχράντου, ὑπερευλογημένης, ἐνδόξου, δεσποίνης ἡμῶν Θεοτόκου καὶ ἀειπαρθένου Μαρίας (I've memorized this Greek prayer as an ejaculatory prayer, as I just love how the words roll off the tongue...).  Also, in every Divine Liturgy they sing the wonderful hymn Άξιον Εστίν, which praises the Mother of God beyond all creatures for her excelling holiness:

It is truly meet to bless you, O Theotokos, who are ever blessed and all blameless, and the Mother of our God. More honorable than the Cherubim, and more glorious beyond compare than the Seraphim, you who without stain didst bear God the Word, you are truly Theotokos!  We magnify you! 

In other words, there is no doubt in the Eastern mind that the Theotokos was always completely free from sin and absolutely full of grace from the moment of her conception. This is Sacred Tradition and every corner of the universal Church is aware of that.  Even Muslims have this as part of their tradition!  But what Eastern Christians struggle with is the very idea of original sin, which although we believe it has been divinely revealed (Ecce enim in iniquitatibus conceptus sum: et in peccatis concepit me mater mea, Ps. 5o:7), the development of this dogma occured in the West without the participation of the East, and its subtleties have simply escaped them.  

As far as I can understand, the tendency among Orthodox theologians is to think that what is inherited from Adam and Eve are the effects of original sin: we inherit from Adam our concupiscence, our passibility, our mortality.  But it would be absurd, they think, to claim that the sin itself is inherited without personal consent.  In other words, they don't conceive of any other sin than actual sin, and they can't conceive of a 'stain' of sin that is inherited without personal consent.  Our nature is definitely fractured thanks to Adam's personal sin, but in their mind Adam's guilt is not our guilt.  As a consequence, most Orthodox theologians flat out reject the dogma of the Immaculate Conception.  That's one way in which some Orthodox undersand the matter.  But others reject the dogma for other reasons, many of which are not always coherent, nor do they even seem to have a sufficiently adequate grasp of the dogma that they criticize.  And above all they resent the West and its imperialist understanding of the papacy, so many will reject a priori any dogmas issued since the Great Schism, even if they have some equivalent doctrine within their tradition.

Byzantine Catholics, however, do not reject the dogma.  Ultimately they accept it (otherwise they wouldn't be Catholic), but they assess this extraordinary act of Pope Pius IX's magisterium in different ways.  Slavic Byzantines seem to have little problem with it, and some even celebrate the feast on December 8.  But the Greeks/Melkites, who are arguably the more staunchly Byzantine of the bunch, the 'purists' as it were, seem to have some reservations regarding the dogma's implications regarding original sin, as they are strongly attached to their Eastern way of thinking.  Not that they flat out deny the dogma: they are a lot more careful than that.  They admit the truth of the dogma in its own terms, but prefer their own tradition and theological language, and many further think that it was unnecessary, imprudent, or inconsiderate for Pius IX to define the dogma in the way he did, lacking sensitivity to Eastern ways of speaking and thinking.  Ultimately, as in other issues, they are walking a thin line between being fully faithful to their own tradition (which I as a traditional Catholic can certainly appreciate!) and being faithful to the pope, whom they profess to have primacy over the universal Church, despite the fact that he has often made decisions that have been detrimental to authentic Eastern modes of thinking.  This thin line that they are walking is remarkably similar to the line that many traditional Roman Catholics are walking between being faithful to tradition and being faithful to the pope, the only difference being that the Melkites have been walking it for much longer than we have, since the popes whom they profess fidelity to have been undermining their Eastern tradition for much longer.

Melkites have the courage to continue preserving their own tradition.  They will teach, profess, and celebrate Our Lady's perfection in grace, the "all-holy, immaculate, most blessed and glorified Lady, the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary," in their own language and according to their tradition on November 21; and they will commemorate her conception on December 9, without reference to the Western understanding of original sin.  It's the only way they can be traditional Catholics.