The Jesuits and the Christian East:interview with R. Taft (updated 2004)

Robert F. Taft, S.J., professor at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome, is a Byzantine Catholic Jesuit priest ordained by Bishop Nicholas T. Elko in 1963. An internationally known liturgical scholar, Fr. Taft is recognized as one of the world?s leading experts in the history of Eastern Christian worship. He is the author of over 250 scholarly writings, mostly on eastern liturgy, including five books (as of April 2004: 642 publications, including fourteen books, plus seven others edited or co-edited),[2] one of which, The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West, won First Place award of the Catholic Press Association for the Best Book in Theology in 1986. Several of his writings have been translated into Arabic, Armenian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Malayalam, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, and Ukrainian.

Fr. Taft has lectured and taught in Armenia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Egypt, England, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Iraq, Ireland, Italy, The Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Russia, Slovakia, Turkey, Ukraine, as well as the USA. He is a consultor of the Vatican Congregation for the Oriental Churches, member of the Board of Visitors of The Catholic University of America School of Religious Studies from 1989 until the recent reorganization of theological education there, consultor of the Delegate for Russian Affairs of the General Superior of the Society of Jesus (1989-1990, when it was dissolved after the re-establishment of the Catholic hierarchy in the former USSR), member of the US National Committee for Byzantine Studies, member and former President (1985-87) of the International Societas Liturgica, member of the official committee of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops for ecumenical dialogue with the Oriental Orthodox Churches (1978-1994), editor of Orientalia Christiana Analecta and associate editor of several scholarly journals, recipient of several academic awards, most recently an honorary degree from Holy Cross College Worcester, in May 1990, and in November, The Johannes Quasten Medal for Excellence in Scholarship and Leadership in Religious Studies from The Catholic University of America.

He is also known for his sense of humor. A couple of years ago his students at the University of Notre Dame, where he has served as Visiting Professor of Liturgy in the Graduate School off and on since 1974, published The Sayings of Fr. Robert Taft, S.J., an anthology of witticisms culled from his class lectures.

The extent of Fr. Taft?s professional experience is obvious; his lifelong dedication to the Jesuit apostolate to Eastern Christianity goes back to the early days of his religious vocation over forty years ago. During this 1991 Ignatian Year the editors of Diakonia interviewed Fr. Taft, to see what reflections on Jesuit ministry to the Christian East he might offer our readers from his long and fruitful career.

Diakonia: Fr. Taft, would you tell our readers how you became involved in the Eastern Christian ministry?

Fr. Taft: I entered the Jesuit Novitiate of the New England Province at Shadowbrook, in Lenox Massachusetts, on August 14, 1949, after graduating from LaSalle Academy in Providence, R.I. It was there, at Shadowbrook, that I first heard of Eastern Catholicism. In the novitiate with me was a novice from Iraq, a member, by birth, of the Syro-Antiochene Rite. The very existence of such Catholics was news to me. Here was a whole area of Catholic life, history, culture, of which I was totally innocent. I have always had an inquisitive, wandering mind, and even as a young man was something of a know-it-all (even as a kid, some of my friends called me?prophetically if ironically??the professor?), ready to hold forth on a multitude of topics at the drop of a hat. Now with a character like that, I was obviously piqued at my ignorance of an entire aspect of the life of my Church, and felt compelled to do something about it. So I plagued my fellow novice with questions about a topic that was obviously much more interesting to me than it was to him, and read everything I could get my hands on, beginning with a book of essays entitled The Eastern Branches of the Catholic Church, then the books of Donald Attwater and Adrian Fortescue and Archdale A. King. Then and there, in 1949, the Christian East became my passion, and the door that opened onto the world of Christian liturgy that would later occupy so much of my life. It was love at first sight?or better, at first reading, since I had not yet seen anything of the Christian East, had never even set foot in an Orthodox or Eastern Catholic church, never experienced an Eastern Liturgy.

That last point if worth stressing: my interest in the Christian East did not begin with a fascination with liturgical haberdashery or the smell of incense. That point of departure, unfortunately an all-too-common beginning for westerners who become enamored of things Eastern, is superficial and often leads to grief.

Fr. Taft: Some Eastern Catholics leave the Catholic communion to become Orthodox. They are often ex-Latins who have joined Eastern Catholic Churches for the wrong reasons. I think this is unfortunate. By that I do not at all wish to deny people the freedom to do with their lives exactly what they feel called to do, nor do I wish in any way to denigrate the possibility or reality of real religiously motivated conversions of Catholics to Orthodoxy or vice-versa. I am the world?s greatest believer in absolute freedom. Of course it is perhaps never possible to have one-hundred percent pure religious motives for what we do, since religion is always intertwined with so many other factors in our lives. But to change one?s religious confession is a matter of the utmost gravity, and to abandon one?s childhood faith and the Church of one?s baptism for less than the purest religious motives possible is, in my view, just one more sign of the superficiality and narcissism so rife in our times.

Diakonia: You said privately that once when you were lecturing in an Orthodox theology faculty on the Byzantine tradition, some students wanted to know how someone who knew their tradition so well was not Orthodox. Haven?t you ever been tempted to join the Orthodox Church?

Fr. Taft: The short answer to the last question is, no. But let me expand and nuance it a bit, since this is often a serious issue for any sincere, honest, realistic, well-informed Eastern Catholic. And it is a question on which one can have many points of view. What follows is mine, but I realize that others might think differently. Indeed, I have always been amused at the frequently heard rejoinder: ?Well, that?s your point of view.? Of course it?s my point of view! Who else?s should one suppose it to be when it?s coming out of my mouth? My general presumption whenever others say anything, they?re giving ?their point of view.? What else should it be? Joe Stalin?s? Well, my point of view here is that of the great English Catholic liturgist Edmund Bishop: ?On ne change pas de religion?One doesn?t change religions.? But since he was an Anglican who became a Catholic, he obviously did not look on that as ?changing religions.? And for a Catholic to become Orthodox or vice-versa is not, in my view, ?changing religions,? since the differences, though important, are not of the substance of the faith, despite the strenuous attempts of some Orthodox to make them so.

But it is also true that Eastern Catholics are sort of like certain Anglicans/Episcopalians. Some members of the Anglican communion who consider themselves ?Anglo-Catholics? always have one eye over their shoulder trained on the Roman Catholics to see what they are doing, and some ?high-church? Eastern Catholics, those really devoted to and impregnated with their tradition, and not just Latins with a different set of vestments, always have one eye on what the Orthodox Church is doing, because in both cases these people realize that the Mother Church, the real repository of their tradition, is, respectively, the Catholic or Orthodox Church. This creates inevitable tensions. It is not easy to be a Christian fully faithful to the Eastern tradition, yet in union with Rome, a real Orthodox-Catholic in the fullest sense of both terms. It?s much easier to just throw in the towel and give way to Latinization, or, in the case of those like myself for whom that is just an unthinkable surrender, to become Orthodox. Any Eastern Catholic who doesn?t feel the tension is simply narcotized or doesn?t care. So I feel the tension too, especially as an Eastern-rite Catholic priest who is also a member of a Latin religious order. But none of this presents me with insuperable obstacles, because I did not expect it to be easy, and do not think life should be without antinomies and tensions. Nor am I so pretentious as to pretend I always resolve all my tensions successfully?who does? But so what? The Last Judgment isn?t a geography lesson on fidelity to East or West, but to Jesus Christ, which each one must resolve according to his or her own conscience.

So have I ever thought of becoming Orthodox? No. But the more fundamental reason for that is that I am a believing Catholic, born and bred, and couldn?t even imagine being anything else. Furthermore, although I am fully aware from my study of history that Rome shares responsibility for the East-West split, which should no longer be called ?the Eastern Schism? since it is a two-sided affair; and although I am equally aware that the Catholic Church has greatly exaggerated the papacy beyond anything which is acceptable to the Orthodox East (it?s not acceptable to me, so I see no reason why it should be to them)?despite all that, I firmly believe that it is necessary for all Christians to be in communion with the Bishop of Rome, and I myself could not even imagine not being. That does not imply any disrespect for those who aren?t. Had I been born Orthodox I?d probably still be Orthodox, since loyalty and consistency are very strong parts of my makeup.

But I have nothing but disdain for people who ?play church,? always seeking the ideal Church, which exists only in their own fantasy, and even more contempt for Catholics or Orthodox who switch and then soil their own nest by turning on the Church of their birth where they were nurtured into Christian life, or worse, those converts who deny all value to their previous Catholic Christian life and even ministry by allowing themselves to be rebaptized.

So did I ever consider becoming Orthodox? No?but certainly not because of any disregard for Orthodoxy. Nothing in creation is more important to me than the gift of my Catholic faith, not family, not friends, not my work, not my U.S. citizenship, not life itself. And I am deeply grateful to my mother and father and to all the priests and religious, especially the Christian Brothers and the Jesuits, who nurtured it in me. The idea of my abandoning it is simply preposterous. Besides, even from the purely human point of view, prescinding from faith and theology, there are a lot of advantages in belonging both to the Catholic Church and to one of its religious orders!

Diakonia: But some Orthodox would claim that the tension you describe is irresolvable, because it is impossible to live authentically according to the Byzantine tradition outside the communion of the Orthodox Church.

Fr. Taft: Some Orthodox try to make a sort of gnosticism out of Orthodoxy?the ?Well you can?t really understand because you?re not Orthodox? line. If that were true, it would only prove that Orthodoxy is not Christianity, since Christianity is for everyone, and therefore must be intelligible to everyone. Furthermore, how it is that some Methodist who becomes an Orthodox priest after a few years of study acquires all of a sudden, by osmosis, a deeper appreciation of the tradition than I, who have forgotten more about it than he?ll ever know, and who have lived it day in and day out for over a quarter of a century, not just in some parish church whose services are limited to the weekend, but who have celebrated, in Old Slavonic, day after day, every day, the Divine Office and the Divine Liturgy? Sorry, but that?s just nonsense as far as I?m concerned. Does that mean that there is no such thing as ritual nominalism in Eastern Catholicism, that there are no people who abuse all norms of authenticity and good taste by using a tradition they neither understand nor possess? Of course such people exist?but not just in Eastern Catholicism. Besides, it has never been my custom to ask the approval of anyone except those who have the right to tell me what to do?and they have it only because I have freely given it to them.

Diakonia: You mentioned the advantages of being both an Eastern Catholic priest and member of a Catholic religious order. Can you be more specific?

Fr. Taft: From a purely sociological point of view, the Catholic Church is really ?catholic? with a small ?c.? It includes the white and the black and the brown and the yellow and the red and all intermediate tones; it includes the North and the South and the East and the West; the people who smell of garlic and those who don?t even sweat. It?s not a ghetto, national or ethnic Church serving only one constituency and complaining only when its own rights are violated. It?s a Church with an even voice, protesting against injustices even when not done against its own private interests. It?s a Church that has always had great respect for human intelligence, education, the natural gifts. It?s a Church that has of late shown its capacity to absorb radical change without losing the moorings of its age-old tradition, and has manifested a remarkable flexibility in the forms of its ministry and religious life. It?s a Church that holds its leaders for downs and tolerates a fair amount of internal criticism?not always and not enough, maybe, but an awful lot more than one ever hears in some other religious communions, where public self-criticism is totally?and I mean totally, absent?and hierarchs are never publicly called on the carpet by their own faithful for what they say and do, regardless how outrageous it is. It?s a Church where, in recent years, at least, the propaganda is better tailored, the rhetoric trimmed to fit the reality more snugly. When one hears the idealized self-descriptions of some Churches, one has the impression of being in a dream-world, so distant is the image from the reality. More important, in recent years the Catholic Church has come to treat other Churches with scrupulous fairness, avoiding the invective and caricature that is so general in Orthodox treatment of the ?West,? which has become a four-letter word in the minds of some. I consider this a major obstacle to the advance of East-West ecumenism today. If we can?t even treat each other with objective honesty?never mind Christian charity?what?s the point of talking? The Orthodox do not even approach anything resembling objectivity and simple historical equilibrium when writing and speaking about the West, and it?s time someone said so out loud. But maybe this is a reflection of history. Each Church has its historic defects. And if one of the Latin West?s defects is ecclesiastical imperialism, the drive for domination, one of the Byzantine East?s defects is intolerance and bigotry. It goes right back to the Council in Trullo (691/2) with its condemnation of Armenian and Latin usages, etc.

So belonging to the Catholic Church has, for the Eastern Catholic, the advantage of forcing one out of the Eastern tendency to tunnel vision, cultural implosion, common to ghettoized communities. Similarly, belonging to a huge international and multi-ritual religious order like the Jesuits provides an inevitable ?internationalism? to one?s vision that has the same effect. Of course it can also have the effect of making minority members feel lost in the shuffle, a drop in the Latin sea, but for someone as aggressive as I am that has never been a problem.

Diakonia: But your interest does not seem to have remained purely intellectual.

Fr. Taft: Not at all. I have always had what I think is a ?Jesuit way? of reacting to things, even long before I ever met a Jesuit. Jesuits, like Communists, are action-oriented. For us, no aspect of human history, experience, culture remains on the purely intellectual level. That is not the Jesuit way, what St. Ignatius called ?our way of proceeding.? For the Jesuit, knowledge leads to conclusions, to action, to service. This is rooted in The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, where the bottom line of every period of prayer is: ?What am I going to do about it?? The famous question Lenin put as the title to his call to revolution, Chto delat??What is to be done?, is like the basic question St. Ignatius teaches us to ask ourselves at the beginning and end of prayer. At the beginning: ?What am I asking for? What is it I want?? And at the end, ?What conclusion do I draw from it all, what am I going to do for Jesus??

Well, what I was learning about Eastern Catholicism both angered and embarrassed me, and I had the urge to do something about it. I was embarrassed by the myopic vision of Christendom I had had, totally unaware of the ancient traditions of the Christian East, and even more by the naive and sectarian views of the history and virtues of my own Church. And as I read on, I was indignant at how Eastern Christians in union with Rome had been mistreated as second-rate citizens in the City of God.

This was a very important step in my intellectual and spiritual development. Here, for the first time, I saw history as the great relativizer, and I have never forgotten this crucial lesson. This history I was devouring?all of it written by Catholics, let me add?confronted me with a Catholic Church and a Rome and a papacy far different from the rosy image of my youthful idealism. This Catholic Church was my Church, the one in which I had been born and baptized and raised, and which meant more to me in every way, even as a youth, than any other reality on earth?and still does, I might add. But here was a different image of this Church, no longer as the Mystical Body of Christ, Loving Mother, Ark of Salvation, and all the rest, but as a cruel and unfeeling ?system,? willfully misunderstanding, aloof, cold, contemptuous of others, riding roughshod over the rights of minorities, untrue to its most solemnly pledged word.

The results of this experience were twofold. First, I grew up fast, quickly and easily shucking off all illusions about human organizations and authorities, Catholic ecclesiastical included. This critical, skeptical stance has stood me in good stead throughout my life, on both the practical and academic levels, and I do not regret it one whit. Of course the ground had been prepared for this long before. My father, an upright man if there ever was one, and a staunchly faithful Catholic in his own very unsentimental and masculine way, was also a critical man with no great love for the clergy?though he made an exception for the Jesuits. They had been very good to him when he was a student at Holy Cross College in Worcester from 1918-1922, and he never forgot it. (That, by the way, is another great lesson I learned from my father: unswerving loyalty and gratitude to one?s teachers). But even if I inherited a critical spirit and sharp tongue from him, I had never dreamt it could be applied to the highest authorities of the Church, Rome, the very pope! I knew that there had been immoral popes who practiced nepotism and had mistresses and illegitimate offspring, and so on, but I hadn?t considered such common human failings any big deal. But popes who worked against the good of the church itself? Popes more interested in the power of their see than in the good of God?s Kingdom? To learn to live without illusions, but also without resignation or cynicism, was one of life?s great lessons from all this.

The second result was the Chto delat? ? part, the Ignatian part: what to do about it? Even as a child I was contemptuous of prejudice and inequality and injustice. I used to ask why our African-American maid was working for us instead of vice-versa, and my father used to call me the ?fellow-traveller,? even though I had no idea what the epithet meant. So when faced with evident injustice, especially in the way the U.S. Roman Catholic hierarchy had mistreated Eastern Catholics in their early years in North America, I wasn?t just disedified and dismayed, and contemptuous of the stupidity and unfairness of these pastors, unworthy of their calling, whose policies were the direct cause of a quarter of a million defections from the Catholic Church. Now that?s something worth going down in church history for, isn?t it! Let me formulate it unambiguously: the Roman Catholic hierarchy of the U.S., with the complicity of the officials of Propaganda fide in the Roman Curia, was responsible for the greatest defection from the Catholic Church in modern times. History is not only the great relativizer. It is also, as I said recently in my review of Fr. Marvin O?Connell?s superb new biography of Archbishop John Ireland,[3] the only revenge of the powerless, a revenge all the more sweet because it is both legitimate and permanent. And the historic injustice of these episcopal bullies remains as a permanent record for all to see.

But I wasn?t just indignant. I was also determined to do something about it. All I was able to do then was propagandize everyone I could buttonhole, in my aggressively pedantic way, about the evils we Roman Catholics had wreaked on our fellow Catholics from the East, and I am sure that my endless sermonizing bored my fellow Jesuits to tears. Much of it fell, of course, on deaf ears.

Thereby hangs another lesson, one learned with considerably more difficulty, and only much later: that not everybody is like me (for which I am sure we can all breathe a sigh of relief), not everyone has the same agenda, not everyone can be expected to react to the same stimuli in the same way, and the fact that they don?t does not mean they are stupid or indifferent or not of good will. I had to learn the same lesson from the purely intellectual standpoint. I remember the first time I read Josef A. Jungmann?s Missarum Sollemnia, one of the great 20th-century works of liturgical scholarship. I was immediately inflamed with enthusiasm for liturgical reform, and passed the book on to a fellow Jesuit scholastic, convinced it would set him on fire too. No way. I might as well have given him the telephone book to read, for all the reaction it provoked. ?Hmmmm,? I said to myself, and filed that lesson away too.

Diakonia: But when did all this finally lead to some ?Ignatian action,? something more concrete than intellectual enthusiasm, moral indignation, sermonizing, and several useful lessons?

Fr. Taft: That came during my novitiate (1949-51) when Fr. Patrick A. Sullivan, S.J., arrived at the New England Jesuit Novitiate-Juniorate of Shadowbrook in the Berkshires to teach Greek to the ?Juniors,? the scholastics, in first vows after completing the two years of novitiate, who were doing their two years of college studies in the humanities. Pat had just finished his doctoral studies in classics at Fordham, and he brought with him news of a group of Russian-rite Jesuits there. This was big news for me: a group of Jesuits who belonged to an Eastern Catholic Church, worshiped and lived according to its traditions, its rite, and worked for its people.[4] These Jesuits were members of what had originally been called the Missio Orientalis of the Society of Jesus. The origins of this mission can be traced to the Treaty of Riga in 1924, which determined the border between Poland, newly reestablished by the Treaty of Versailles in the post World War I settlement, and the nascent Soviet Union. Hundreds of thousands of Byzantine-rite Catholics who had been forcibly incorporated into the Russian Orthodox Church in the aftermath of the 18th-century Partitions of Poland (1772, 1793, and 1795), suddenly found themselves free to practice their Catholicism once again, and they flocked back to union with the Catholic Church in droves. (Had the Russians paid attention to this unmistakable lesson, they wouldn?t have made the same mistake at Lviv in 1946). These returning Catholics were in need of priests, and Pope Pius XI requested help from the Jesuits. Thus was born the Missio Orientalis of the Society of Jesus in Eastern Marches of Poland, where Fr. Walter Ciszek S.J., the mission?s first American member, served, a group I myself was later to join.

Exiled by World War II and its aftermath, some Jesuits of this group came to Fordham University in 1949, to found the famous Russian Center at a time when Russian studies were becoming popular at American universities. These strange looking men with beards and smelling of incense travelled around the world not because they were doing the Grand Tour on sabbatical, but because they had been forced to flee China. They arrived in New York as refugees from Shanghai, where they had run a boarding school for Russian youth in the Shanghai emigre community. During the Russian Revolution and the ensuing Civil War, Russians had fled east as well as west, and there were large Russian colonies in Harbin and Shanghai. When Shanghai fell to the troops of Mao, the Jesuits serving this community fled to the Philippines, and after helping with the resettlement, mostly in North and South America, of the Russian refugees who had fled with them, they came to New York to rebuild their lives and their apostolate.

They arrived at Fordham with some liturgical books and vestments, a few icons, and other paraphernalia salvaged from their chapel in Shanghai, and not much else but their vision and their superior. The latter was the legendary Fr. Frederick (aka Feodor) Wilcock, a doughty Yorkshireman of boundless energy, enthusiasm, and initiative, who had founded more houses, schools, missions, apostolates before he died than most Provinces could have in the same time span. Under his dynamic leadership they took over an old army barracks in a corner of the Fordham campus, which was quickly turned into a community residence complete with kitchen, library, common rooms, and Russian-style Chapel of the Protecting Veil (Pokrov in Slavonic). How I came to love that chapel, where I first served the liturgy as a deacon, after being ordained to the diaconate at Holy Ghost Church in McKees Rocks by Bishop Elko in December, 1962! But that?s another chapter.

They stuck a pretty gold onion dome topped with the traditional Russian ?three-barred cross? at the outside entrance to the chapel, and christened their barracks Soloviev Hall, after the Russian philosopher and ecumenist Vladimir Soloviev. The name was as intentional as it was fortuitous: it manifested the ecumenical orientation that the apostolate was to have. And it is to the credit of this small group of farsighted men that the first modest beginnings of ecumenical dialogue between Catholics and Orthodox in the U.S. began in the parlor of Soloviev Hall. It was in the parlor of that decrepit old building, little more than a shack, that I first met Alexander Schmemann and John Meyendorff and Nicholas Arseniev and Gus Weigel, S.J., and a host of other Orthodox and Catholic ecumenical pioneers.

But I?m running ahead of myself. Anyway, that?s how I first heard of an Eastern-rite Jesuit apostolate already in place, tailor-made for my burgeoning interest. A breathtaking ideal was conjured up by my adolescent romanticism: to open one?s heart and mind to this great and long-suffering Russian people with its rich Christian cultural roots, to work for the restoration of Christianity in the U.S.S.R. and the reconciliation of East and West. I immediately contacted the Russian-rite Jesuits at Soloviev Hall, and began badgering my skeptical superiors to assign me to the Russian Mission.

Fr. Taft: You?ve got to be kidding! In those days young Jesuit scholastics in the U.S. who were interested in this business?and I would come to know several in my province and elsewhere?weren?t taken too seriously, and maybe that is as it should have been. Religious superiors must always be running into young people with exotic ideas, and are probably right in discouraging these fantasies, at least initially. The provincial sent me a courteous but non-committal answer, with the usual exhortations to devote myself to the work and studies at hand, and to pray about it all, and what would happen in the future could be taken care of later (when it would no longer be his problem, I?m sure he felt like adding, busy man that he was, with more important things to worry about than the fantasies of some twenty-year old scholastic still in the Juniorate).

Fr. Taft: No, I?m not easily discouraged, and I wasn?t then. I was realistic enough to know that no other answer could have been expected. Furthermore, I have never let my ideas and ideals be dependent on anyone else?s encouragement or approval. Besides, throughout the years to follow there were always some of my Jesuit teachers who took me seriously?in the Juniorate, Pat Sullivan, mentioned above, and Martin Ryan; in Philosophy, John Walsh; in Theology, John Walsh again, Edward Kilmartin, and others. For by that time, I guess, people realized I wasn?t nuts, and several encouraged me to persevere in my designs, though that was not really necessary, since dogged persistency, with or without support, may be my only strong suit. Once I make up my mind to do something, get out of the way!

Fr. Taft: I went over the provincial?s head and wrote to the General, with pretty much the same result. More important than that, however, was the fact that the discovery of this mission served to focus my nascent interest on a particular culture of the Christian East. For the next decade, more or less, as I plodded through the long years of Jesuit formation, I devoured Russian literature, philosophy, history, theology, depending on what stage of formation I was in. In the Juniorate at Shadowbrook, where we studied the humanities, I read Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. At Weston College, in philosophy, I wrote my MA thesis on Soloviev, and minored in history so I could read and take graduate courses at Boston College in Russian history. In short, I was able to combine what I was supposed to do with what I wanted to do, and managed to keep both superiors and myself happy.

I also became the quintessential Slavophile, impassioned by whatever was Russian, and inflicting on every unsuspecting Slav I ran into?Slovaks, Poles, Ukrainians...?beginning with Steve Ondus, the Slovak farmer who worked the truck-farm at Shadowbrook, whatever phrases of Russian I had managed to master, much to their mystification. But everything has a positive side: stupid as that was, it showed that even then I had sense enough to know that step number one in dealing with absolutely anything in human culture is the language, another basic principle that has stayed with me and served me well. The notion that one can know anything serious about any cultural phenomenon without knowing the language in which it is found, is simply amusing.

Meanwhile, I wrote every year to my successive provincials, one after another, just so they wouldn?t forget I was around or think I had changed my mind (fat chance of that!).

Diakonia: Didn?t you spend some time in the Middle East, too? Was that part of your Jesuit training for the Eastern Mission?

Fr. Taft: Yes, I did what we call ?regency,? a three-year period of teaching and/or study between philosophy and theology, in Baghdad, Iraq, from 1956-1959. But whether the provincial who sent me there looked on it as ?training? can be doubted. Logic, not subtlety, was his specialty: I was interested in Russia, Russia was in the East, Iraq was in the East too, we needed men in Iraq, so I was sent to Iraq, which was near Russia anyway. I?ve never regretted it. It was a great experience, and even if the idea was a bit daunting at first, I looked forward to it. First of all, the Iraqi Mission had its own special ?mystique,? the idea of being ?on the missions? was sort of romantic, even heroic, and like all young men I was something of a daydreamer. Besides, I?ve always been adventuresome, my mind has always been a tourist. As a child my favorite book was Richard Halliburton?s Book of Marvels, which told of the wonders of the world from the Pyramids to the Kremlin to Hagia Sopohia and the cliff-hanging Monastery of Simonopetras on Mt. Athos. Other peoples, other ways have always beckoned me, and spending three years in Baghdad on the Tigris, the fabled capital of Harun al-Rashid and the Thousand and One Nights, would at least provide me with some good stories, if nothing else. Reality, of course, is always the best cure for romanticism, and I soon encountered that in Baghdad, but, fortunately for the missions, the neophytes in our departing group of eleven missionaries didn?t know that when we got on the boat at Hoboken for the nineteen-day voyage to Beirut. In a sense it was like paying a debt, bringing things full circle back to where it all began in my initial encounter with a novice from Baghdad.

Diakonia: Above, you spoke disparagingly of the fascination with ritual as the stimulus for many westerners? interest in the Christian East. But didn?t your own interests ultimately ?turn liturgical?? When did that happen?

Fr. Taft: Well, in a sense I suppose I?d always been interested in liturgy without knowing it, if by liturgy one means faithful attendance at services, and serving mass with care and reverence right through high school, even after all others my age had ?grown out of being altar boys? and abandoned that ministry. But I can?t say I particularly ?liked? liturgy. I did all that from a sense of duty, not from any special attraction. But I had never even heard the word ?liturgy? until I entered the Jesuits. Like Moliere?s Monsieur Jourdain, who did not know he was speaking prose, I did not know what we did in church was liturgy. But in the novitiate I heard about the Liturgical Movement, the need to foster better ?active participation? in the liturgy, was provided with my own copy of the daily missal to make that possible, and eventually acquired the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin, in Latin, of course, which was to be my daily prayer for years. But I was still far from any professional or academic interest in liturgy. I was just trying to worship God the way better informed people seemed to think was right.

My interest in Eastern Liturgy was of course stimulated by my continued reading on the Christian East, which made it clear how central a role liturgy has in the culture and spirituality of these Churches. But this bookish interest turned experiential only in September of my first school year in Baghdad, when riots over the Baghdad Pact following the Suez Crisis led to the closing of all schools. This enforced idleness provided the time for my initiation into the liturgies of the East. Feast or funeral, wedding or baptism summoned me. Notebook and Attwater?s translation of the liturgies in hand, I would set out through the narrow, fetid alleys of the old city to one of the Catholic cathedrals of the several rites, all of them huddled together as if for protection and mutual support, in the Christian Quarter. There I would observe, try to locate in my translation what the troop of deacons on the bema was wailing about, and carefully note down whatever bizarre curiosities caught my interest, whatever seemed to deviate from what was supposed to be going on according to Attwater?s more or less reliable English version.

I suppose that was my first attempt at liturgical research. At any rate, it was the beginning of my publishing career, since I got out of it my first published article, in Jesuit Missions magazine of December 1957, entitled ?From Detroit to Zakho,? describing the episcopal ordination of Qas Tuma Rais, former Chaldean pastor in Detroit, as Chaldean Catholic Bishop of Zakho in Northern Iraq, a largely Kurdish village under the control of the Agha of the Shemdin family, one of whose sons was among my charges when I ran the Senior Boarding School at Baghdad College.

Fr. Taft: Well, in the first place your phraseology is anachronistic. In those days Jesuit scholastics didn?t ?decide? anything, especially not those on the Baghdad Mission! But to answer your question, no. Initially these forays were more the result of my curiosity about the ways of the East than of any academic interest in liturgy. What finally propelled me toward liturgical studies was a chance but fateful encounter the following summer, after my first year of teaching at Baghdad College. To escape the fierce Mesopotamian desert heat we were summering in the mountains of Lebanon, the Switzerland of the Middle East, at the Maronite Seminary in Ghazir, a mountain village overlooking beautiful, then unspoiled Jouneih Bay on the Mediterranean coastline north of Beirut. That was a memorable summer. It was there I first met Juan Mateos, one of the great teachers of liturgy in our times. It is from that meeting that I date my academic interest in Eastern Liturgy. Mateos formulated what I had already begun to perceive from my own reading and experience: that liturgy is the soul of the Christian East. For one as passionately interested in the Christian East as I was, Mateos argued, what better window opened onto this world?

Fr. Taft: The immediate result was that I spent most of that summer reading books on liturgy, including my first book by the great Jesuit liturgical scholar and historian of the Roman Mass, Josef A. Jungmann.

Fr. Taft: Yes, I?ve been called lots of things, some of them not repeatable, but that?s surely one of the most flattering, and comes from the fact that I am writing the history of the Byzantine eucharistic liturgy, like Jungmann did for the Roman Mass.

Diakonia: When you finally were able to begin your doctoral studies in 1965, at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome, under Mateos? direction, what were your goals?

Fr. Taft: By that time my reading, study, and experience had both broadened and focussed my vision in several ways. First, I had come to see that what is derisively referred to as the ?Uniate? solution to the East-West division was not the ideal to be pursued. That does not mean in any way that I accept the prejudicial propaganda, and even outright lies, that surface whenever the history of that question is discussed. If Uniatism is not the answer, neither is violence, the denial of basic human rights, and the inability to even recognize and tell the truth. This remains an issue on which some authors do not even approach honesty, objectivity, fairness, even truthfulness-to say nothing of Christian charity.

But I came to see that ecumenism, which I consider not just a movement but a whole new way of being Christian, was the only answer to this problem. Ecumenism means much more than being objective, honest, fair to those we disagree with or are not in communion with. It means trying to see things from the other?s point of view; giving what others do or say the best, not the worst possible interpretation; taking seriously the other?s critique of the failings of one?s own communion; and, above all, being self-critical and not just smugly self-satisfied and critical of others. Furthermore, I came to see that it was much more than a Russian problem. And with my abandonment of the ?Uniate? solution I of course dropped any notion that Russia was going to be ?converted? to Catholicism. Thereafter I have always maintained, in public and in private, that the Russian Orthodox Church was the one in whose hands God had placed the future of Christianity in Russia, and that the only sane policy for the Catholic Church was to strengthen in every way possible, not undermine, that Church in the fulfillment of that divine mission, while, of course, at the same time caring for its own faithful and striving for the restoration of communion between our two ?Sister Churches.?

But I also maintain that this can be done only in truth and justice, with absolute respect for the mutual rights and dignity of all, regardless of anyone?s views of how the religious world should or should not look. Many commentators on this issue persist in maintaining an anachronistic, ?premodern? religious outlook which thinks that world can be divided like a pie, on the presumption that Italians or Poles ?should be? Catholic, whereas Greeks and Russians ?should be? Orthodox. Such views are simply beneath contempt, as are those who hold them. Religiously, the only thing persons ?should be? is exactly what they want to be, regardless of whose subjective view of history it does or does not agree with. Life is not a history lesson. To suggest that because the Unions with Rome two, three, or four centuries ago were an mixed bag of political and religious motivation, they should now be suppressed, is as monstrous as suggesting that because Henry VIII did not take a plebiscite among the English Catholics to see if they wanted to separate from Rome, but just presented them with a fait accompli later enforced with violence and bloodshed, that the Anglican Church should now, over four hundred and fifty years later, be suppressed or forcibly reunited with Rome. The very notion is so preposterous that no one in his right mind would even dare mention it. But when it comes to the East, a different set of moral principles seems to take over, as if only Westerners were held to the most basic norms of human justice and decency. This double standard is operative even on lesser levels. Orthodox in the diaspora, for instance, think it is the most normal thing in the world to have access to Catholic churches for their services, when in an Orthodox country they would not even dream of permitting Catholics to use an Orthodox church.

In the face of this hypocrisy, the Catholic attitude must remain clear: ecumenism, generosity, and unfailing and ungrudging charity regardless of how others behave towards us. But at the same time, one should make it quite clear that ?ecumenism at any price,? or by ultimatum or threats, must be rejected resolutely, with everyone accepting full responsibility for everything they say and do. That?s where an untrammeled free press is of prime importance. I am in favor of full disclosure in these matters. If whatever was proposed in ecumenical meetings appeared on the front page of the daily papers the next day, some participants might be a bit more careful in what they affirm or propose.

Diakonia: In this shift from a ?conversion? or ?mission? outlook to an ecumenical ministry, how did you conceive your own future service?

Fr. Taft: Well, a certain success in my seminary studies?not in the early years, when I was in the ?slow class,? but later?joined to an interest in writing and research, drew me inexorably towards intellectual and scholarly work, and by the time I had begun my theological studies it was generally accepted that I was destined to go on for graduate work. So considering where my talents and inclinations seemed to be pushing me, and my desire to serve the Eastern Churches, both Orthodox and Catholic, and the cause of ecumenism, I decided that I would be most useful doing scholarly and educational work in some area of Eastern Christian Studies. The Churches must learn again to breathe with both lungs, Eastern and Western?and that is true of the East as well as the West. The widespread notion that the West has a lot to learn from the East but not vice-versa is simply ridiculous. Furthermore, the only way the Christian tradition, Eastern or Western, will be preserved in a modern and intelligent way that can maintain its respectability in dialogue with the modern secular world of scholarship and science, is if we study it objectively, scientifically, from an historico-critical point of view. Christianity is not a mass of myths and legends and superstitions supporting a mystifying ritual. It is a perfectly coherent and respectable world-view?but only if it is studied and portrayed as such by the objective, honest Christian scholar, with the critical methods of modern scholarship. Anything else is a waste of time, and those who don?t realize it are living in a dream world. Some are fond of talking about ?the secularized West,? or ?Western secularism.? Well, the truth of the matter is that secularism is not Eastern or Western but general, and religious practice is better in highly secularized France or Germany than it is in Belgrade or Athens. And the eternal values of, say, Eastern Liturgy will be preserved in this modern world not because someone living in a dream world thinks that the text goes back to the apostles, but because some modern scholar, who has taken the trouble to learn the necessary languages, ferret out the manuscripts, identify the sources, and retrace the historical levels, has unlocked its riches in terms intelligible to men and women not of the past, but of today. Modern secular indifference is a far greater danger to Christianity than persecution, which never works. And the only way to combat indifference is to get down to basics. The contemporary secular world doesn?t care a fig whether or not you put olive oil on your salad during Lent. They do care whether or not you know anything, have anything to say, anything to contribute, and whether you?re part of the problem or part of the solution. I wanted to be someone the world of secular scholarship couldn?t write off because I?m a Christian, and someone the Orthodox couldn?t ignore because I?m a Catholic. The only way you?ll be heard is if you get their attention.

So I hoped that my writing and teaching would help the West to know the East, help the East to know itself, and help the world to know Jesus Christ and the salvation He brings it through His Church.

Diakonia: Have your goals or your approach to teaching changed over the years?

Fr. Taft: I don?t think they?ve changed so much as been confirmed and hardened. I have even less tolerance for sham and pretense now than I did previously, if that?s possible, and less patience with all forms of bigotry, fanaticism, dishonesty, or unfairness in religious dialogue. In a sense, the scholar is like a rubbish man, the work of both is largely trash removal, stripping away the morass of myths and clichés under which the religious reality groans. The religious cliché, once invented, takes on a life of its own and gets repeated and repeated and repeated, ad nauseam, until it acquires the status of a self-evident truth. In my field a classic example is the myth of Eastern conservatism, the notion that, in liturgy, whatever is Eastern is automatically older, more representative of primitive church usage, etc. That?s just nonsense. During the first seven or so centuries of Christianity practically every single liturgical innovation came from the East, and the Byzantine liturgy underwent far more wide-ranging developments and changes than the Roman rite ever did. I do not say that to praise one or condemn the other?far from it?but merely to insist that reality be seen for what it is, not for what we?d like or imagine it to be.

Diakonia: When you began teaching, what was the state of research in your area of studies?

Fr. Taft: As with any field, there were some first rate world-class scholars, some of the best of them at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome, carrying forward the slow, painstaking work of original scholarship which alone pushes back the frontiers of our knowledge in a field. But in the field of oriental liturgiology, by comparison with other areas of ecclesiastical or even Eastern Christian studies like patristics or history, three things were noteworthy: [1] the embryonic nature of the area of study, with methods and aims only inadequately articulated if at all; [2] the infinitesimally small number of first-rate scholars in the field; [3] the fact that all but a few of them were Westerners. In more recent times the situation has gradually improved in areas [2-3], and notably improved in [1]. It is beyond cavil that the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome has played the seminal role in all three levels of improvement. Nowhere else have more students, Catholic or Orthodox, done graduate degrees in Eastern Liturgy, and nowhere else have more first-rate studies advancing our knowledge of the field and its methods been written and published. If this is not a service to the East, then I don?t know what is.

Fr. Taft: That I don?t know everything?not just all the answers, but not even all the questions. Students have a way of bringing you down to reality, and keeping you in touch with new ways of viewing things.

Diakonia: How have your Latin-rite students responded to the content of your teaching?

Fr. Taft: I don?t divide my students into categories. Eastern, Latin, it?s all the same to me. Nor?and this is very important?do I have any interest in trying to ?orientalize? Western Christianity. For some time now in the pop literature on prayer, spirituality, etc., we have had sort of a ?preferential option? favoring the East, as if everything Eastern were somehow, older, better, preferable, and poor St. Augustine is blamed for all sorts of ?aberrations? that set Western Christianity off the track and onto its long decline?blamed, I might add, by those who never read a page of Augustine and don?t know enough Latin to understand him even if they tried. That sort of thing is meaningless to the serious, objective student of Christianity. Augustine, like an other Father, including the great Origen with whom, in a sense, all systematic theology began, said some things we can do better without. But he towered over his age as an intellectual giant without peer, and to denigrate him is simply adolescent. Furthermore, Latin Christianity is one of humankind?s great achievements, the major source of Western civilization as we know it today. What ALL my students need, Eastern or Western, is to penetrate into the common roots of both traditions, and to recover what is best in them, for the good of us all, and for the demise of all the stupid clichés beneath which our spiritual vision is suffocated today.

Diakonia: Has your research had practical results, do you see your conclusions implemented? Has this been encouraging or frustrating?

Fr. Taft: The practical results true scholars seek are to have their scholarly field of study move forward by seeing their conclusions accepted in significant ways that create paradigm shifts in the area. On that level, I certainly have nothing to complain about, since my work is generally acclaimed, and I think I have been able to shift the interpretative structure of the study of Eastern Liturgy in several ways. The practical result graduate-school teachers want is to see their students growing in understanding, insight, maturity of judgment, and to see them develop into mature, responsible, objective, in some cases even great scholars. That has happened too and, of course, is encouraging.

On the pastoral level, if that is what you mean, I have never put myself forward as a liturgical reformer, though others have often tried to cast me in that mold, and even to exploit my work to champion this or that cause. The only cause I am championing is truth. So I laid to rest the popular theory that the Great Entrance was once an ?offertory procession? of the faithful, or that the Proskomide Prayer is an ?offertory prayer,? not because I have something against offertories, but because the popular theory was not true. Period. What others want then to make of that conclusion is their problem, not mine. It is up to the Churches, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to regulate and/or change the liturgy. My message to the Eastern Churches, implicit if unexpressed, has been quite simple: ?I am not saying you need to change things. But since you are doing it already, then you are obviously the ones who think things need changing. And since you are often doing it ignorantly, at times hilariously so, it might be wise to pay some attention to what those who know something about the topic have to say.? In actual fact, I have no reason to complain that my work is ignored in either Orthodox or Catholic ecclesiastical circles. And as liturgy consultor of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches in Rome, my opinion is often asked, and always given a respectful and grateful hearing. But of course I am not free to enter into specifics.

Diakonia: How has your life as a priest who celebrates the Divine Liturgy affected your teaching and your research?

Fr. Taft: Profoundly, but I would not limit it to the Divine Liturgy. In our beautiful Russian Church of St. Anthony the Abbot in Rome, the church of the Russicum right next-door to the Oriental Institute, I also take part in Vespers daily, the Vigil or Vsenoshchnoe Bdenie on Saturdays and the eve of feasts, etc., where I always sing in the choir if I am not serving as hebdomadary priest or concelebrating. I have always felt that my love of the liturgy and my chosen academic field have allowed me to enjoy a singularly integrated life, one in which I live what I study, and study what I live. In the first place, this makes work easy: I like what I do, and ?job satisfaction? is, at least for the hard worker, a real necessity to maintain sanity! More important, however, is perhaps the effect this has on teaching. I have often had students tell me that my teaching had an impact on them because it was obvious that I believe what I say to them.

Fr. Taft: Our greatest achievements are God?s, not ours. In that vein I consider the most important thing the grace of remaining faithful to my vocation. By that I don?t mean to imply I have not been unfaithful in myriad ways, but I?m still here, and I thank God for that. Second, there are lots of ways?discretion demands they remain unspecified?in which God has permitted me in my ministry to affect for the better the lives of many people, or so they have assured me, and that is what Christian ministry is all about. On the academic level, however, it?s all of a piece. My research and writing feed my teaching and vice-versa, and both have been enormously satisfying, and even successful. In the process, I think my transparent love for the Eastern traditions has helped to give Eastern Catholics, who often have an inferiority complex, a sense of love for their tradition, and some self-respect in knowing that a respected scholar is proud to be one of them. On the purely personal level, I have managed to keep my friends, far-flung as they may be, and that?s a source of comfort.

Fr. Taft: Here too, I?d have to distinguish those that are more global and ecclesial, and those more personal to me. On the personal side, like everyone else in the human race I have my disappointments in myself, my failings, my infidelities, the times I have been less a friend, less a Christian, less a priest, less a minister of the Gospel, whatever, than I ought to have been. Our vocation as Christians is to let the light of Christ shine forth from us to illumine the sin-darkened world, regardless of what anyone else is doing. ?Do unto others as Jesus would have done, and as He does unto us at every moment,? is the one and only Christian rule for dealing with others, the one that includes all the rest. Everything else is secondary. The monks and nuns and solitaries, the hermits and ascetics, may spend hours in prayers and vigils, may never eat meat, may fast until they?re anorexic; and the popes and patriarchs and bishops can make all the significant pronouncements of prophetic leadership and defense of orthodox doctrine they want; and the celibate clergy can carefully guard their celibacy; but if they don?t have charity, if they don?t adhere to that bottom line, then they?re not Christians. Period. Just read Mt 25. God isn?t going to ask us what kind of oil we put on our lettuce during Lent. But He is going to hold us for downs on a few more fundamental issues.

On the global and ecclesial levels the litany would be a long one, so let me restrict it to what is dearest to my heart, Eastern Christianity, and especially its future in the Soviet Union. I am disappointed that ecumenism had not made more progress, that East and West are still divided, that the level of relations between Catholics and Orthodox can still be clouded by smugness, self-satisfaction, ludicrous distortions of history, even bigotry and outright lying. On the Orthodox side I am scandalized, in the literal, moral-theological sense of the term, that the Russian Orthodox Church has not responded to the hand of mutual forgiveness extended to them by the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, has not disowned the Pseudo-Synod of Lvov in 1946, and asked pardon for their Church?s complicity in this infamous act of ecclesial genocide and the untold human suffering it caused. I am disappointed that some Orthodox authorities continue to lie through their teeth concerning recent events in Ukraine. Of course the world had long been accustomed to Orthodox hierarchs from the Soviet Union making statements that we and they knew were false, and they knew we knew, and we knew they knew we knew. But then, they had no choice. When someone has a gun in his ear and lies, we call him persecuted. When he no longer has a gun in his ear and continues to lie, we call him a liar. Charity in truth can be the only basis for progress on this very difficult issue. If it is painful for the Orthodox Church, because it exposes before the whole world as a cynical charade their policies and statements on the question over the past fifty-four years, it was far more painful for the innumerable victims of this monstrous travesty of justice?to say nothing of Christianity. If that is hard, it?s only because the truth is hard, and without the truth we are going to get nowhere.

Within the Catholic communion I am disappointed that some integralist movements are beginning to make the old mistakes, looking upon Russia as some sort of mission territory?though this view, thankfully, is in no way the official policy of the Catholic Church, which, thank God, has resolutely maintained an ecumenical stance in its dealings with the Russian and Romanian Orthodox Churches, and, kept a low profile in its public declarations concerning some of the issues mentioned above, though privately the disillusionment and anger at Orthodox failure to admit their mistakes?indeed, crimes?of the past, and continuing to stonewall in the hope that it will go away, has been palpable. Even from the purely tactical and political point of view, presiding from questions of justice and fairness and Christian brotherhood, the loss of credibility and respect that this policy is causing should lead someone with a modicum of political savvy and common sense to initiate some damage control. Even the staunchest friends of Orthodoxy within the Catholic communion view all this with utter disgust and contempt, even if they don?t say so. But the situation is so grave that I think it is time to put aside such inhibitions and put it on the line. And the bottom line here is that people, every single solitary person on the face of the earth, has the right to be, religiously, just exactly what he or she wants to be regardless of whose vision of past history, whose a priori dividing up of the religious pie it agrees or disagrees with. It has taken a long time for that simple truth to surface in religious history, but now that it is in place, it will never go away, and the Orthodox have to face it now just like Catholics had to at the Reformation and again in the decree on religious liberty at Vatican II. And if they don?t, they will merit the derision and contempt of all persons of good will.

But the same derision and contempt is merited by the Catholic Church for its treatment of Eastern Catholics in Poland and Malabar and North America, for some of the stupid propaganda that was issued concerning just whose Millennium of the Baptism of Rus? it was in 1988 (it was everybody?s). Although different visions of history will always be with us, there is no room among Sister Churches for denying others their past. This is what Communists did, making up history as they went along. I am disappointed that married Eastern Catholic clergy are not treated in official Catholic documents with the respect they deserve, since some of them are far better ministers of God?s Church than their celibate counterparts, bishops included. I am disappointed that the U.S. and Canadian Catholic hierarchies do not put an end to the prohibition against ordaining married candidates to the presbyterate for the Eastern Catholic communities of North America, a measure that is in direct violation of the Catholic Church?s solemn word to respect the rights and traditions of the East at the time of Union. I am disappointed at the dreadful so-called Byzantine Catholic church buildings and liturgies I sometimes see in the USA and elsewhere, in complete violation of the norms of tradition which repeated Roman documents have explicitly ordered us to uphold. It is always amusing that those who pretend to be more Catholic than the pope are ever ready to ignore?at times contemptuously?whatever papal statements and ordinances don?t please them, especially those concerning the preservation and, where eroded, restoration of their Eastern traditions. I am disappointed at how little Eastern monastic life that is at once traditional and contemporary has flourished in Eastern Churches in the USA. As an intellectual, I am disappointed especially by the stupid, pseudo-theological and historical justifications that semi-educated people sometimes offer, even in print, for this stuff. People who are ignorant should at least have the sense to keep quiet.

Oh, I?ve got a long litany of disappointments?it could go on and on. But I am also a realist, with plenty of faith in the Providence of God, and I would rather be part of the solution than part of the problem. So I try to work for improvement instead of taking the adolescent route of making dramatic and emotionally satisfying but ultimately counterproductive gestures. So if I have precious little faith in humankind, I fully realize that I am a part of it, must share responsibility for its imbecilities, and be willing to work for its betterment rather than just standing around shouting and waving flags. In so doing, I do not expect instant gratification, the satisfaction of having the world immediately recreated in the way I?d like to see it, nor do I pretend to have all the answers, nor to be the only one with any answers. Nor do I presume bad will wherever things don?t go my way, or whenever church authorities disagree with me. So I have my disappointments with God?s Church of the East, both Catholic and Orthodox, and of the West and the North and the South too, and am not naive enough to think like some dumbos that salvation comes from East or West. It comes from Jesus Christ, and he is everywhere, if we would only open our eyes and see Him. So instead of sitting around wringing my hands about what ?disappoints me,? I try to get on with the work. In fact this is a question I would never even have asked myself, since I have never imagined that I and my disappointments or satisfactions were realities of cosmic significance for the rest of humanity. People are always asking me questions I consider irrelevant. ?Am I happy?? I never even ask myself the question, so I suppose I must be, but navel-gazing has never occupied much of my time. ?Do I have nice living quarters in Rome?? What possible difference could that make? I love my work and am intensely interested in all I do. The color of my bedspread is not high on my agenda.

Maybe that comes from being a student of history. We must each accept our personal history and operate within it, or else opt out. I have not opted out. But I also have disappointments in myself, and corrrections, metanoia, should begin at home.

My greatest personal disappointment so far is that I have not found a successor to carry on after me?I?ll be sixty in a year?as I succeeded Mateos.

Diakonia: What advice would you give someone you were encouraging to study for a graduate degree in Eastern Christian studies?

Fr. Taft: I rarely encourage people to do anything?I just lay out the options if they ask me. I think there are far too many people in PhD studies. PhDs are a dime a dozen in the U.S., and many of the people in doctoral studies and university teaching shouldn?t be. But the advice I?d give to someone whom I thought had the qualities, drive, and stamina to go on would include the following.

1. Learn languages. That?s what Mateos told me years ago, and it?s the best advice I ever received. History and language are the matrix of all cultural knowledge. But language is the more fundamental because without languages you can?t even begin to know history, and without both of them you can?t know anything else. Imagine trying to appreciate Shakespeare in translation, or to comprehend eighth-century Byzantine mystagogy without knowing Greek and the history of the Iconoclast struggle! The very idea is ludicrous. Of course one can come to such a knowledge by reading the books of those who do know English or Greek or history?but then one is their prisoner, always forced to view reality refracted through the prism of an alien mind.

2. Focus, specialize. Specialization is the price of excellence. I?m always getting letters from students someone has put onto me, saying that they are interested in Russian icons, Coptic liturgy, Chinese painting, Korean cooking, and the philosophy of Wittgenstein, and where can they find a graduate program to suit them? My answer is always the same: life is not a series of hobbies. Grow up, get serious, drop the dilettantism, and pick one.

3. Lead a disciplined, ordered life. Above all, get a good night?s sleep, and that means learn to go to bed and get up not only on time, but at the same time, every working day.

4. Learn how to relax, to leave the work behind. There is nothing so boring as those who always have to talk shop.

Fr. Taft: Well, apart from the usual ones?parents, family, Church, teachers (especially the great ones), friends, fellow Jesuits and professional colleagues?I would note especially the Christian Brothers who taught me at LaSalle Academy in Providence, R.I.; those who gave me my Jesuit intellectual and spiritual formation, especially the inestimable gifts of Ignatian Spirituality and the truly stupendous education I received at Shadowbrook and Weston College; contact with Lutherans, Methodists, and Anglicans/Episcopalians, and above all with the Christian East, especially with Russian Orthodoxy and its marvellous liturgical and spiritual traditions; the experience of living in different cultural milieux; my mentor Juan Mateos; and the support of those who have loved me. But running through and binding it all is the unearned gift of an unbreakable thread, my Catholic faith, the firm rock of my life.

Fr. Taft: As my mentor Juan Mateos once astutely remarked (all his remarks were astute!), the study of the traditions of the Christian East?not just one of them but all seven?prepared us for the Vatican II Church ante diem. For it brought us face to face with the relativity of much in our native ecclesial culture and its formulations, with the resulting breaking of mental barriers and clichés. In addition, the influence of Russian Orthodox liturgy and spirituality on my life are, I would hope, obvious.

Diakonia: Why do you single out the Lutherans, Methodists, and Anglicans too? One would not expect those traditions to be very influential in the life of an orientalist.

Fr. Taft: Well, one can learn from everyone. The Lutherans I have known well, almost all of them pastors, have impressed me as utterly serious ministers of the Gospel, committed Christians of profound faith and commitment. From their theology, I have come to a new appreciation of the centrality of the Word in liturgy and life, of the theology of the Cross, and above all of the gratuitousness of salvation by faith. I consider myself a very serious person, even if some people think I?m funny too, and also a committed one, so maybe I resonate with Lutherans for this reason.

But I have many more colleagues and personal friends among ministers and priests of the Anglican tradition: Anglicans, Episcopalians, Methodists. First of all, my close friendship with them?one of my very best friends, Thomas J. Talley is an Episcopal priest?has shown the possibility of a deep-down, human, grassroots ecumenism that in no way dilutes religious differences, but does not let them stand in the way of the deepest communion on other human levels. My friendship with two Russian Orthodox priests from the Soviet Union was of the same sort.

But in addition to such personal friendships, I think there is an important lesson to be learned from Anglicanism. I?m not sure I can describe it adequately, but the Anglican tradition in modern times, once the Iron Age passed with Catholic emancipation, has acquired an even-handed, courteous, civilized way of dealing with other Churches that I find admirable. They do not try to fish in anyone else?s pond. They do not engage in caricature and invective. They do not take pleasure in others? discomfiture and failings. They?re not all prickly and defensive and confrontational, and such a bore to deal with at ecumenical meetings, to say nothing of socially. In short, they?re good company, they make good friends, one doesn?t have to pretend with them. Just look at the wonderful style set for them by the recent Archbishops of Canterbury, a leadership that makes me jealous. That doesn?t mean I agree with everything the Anglicans do. That?s not the point. What is the point, is that they don?t give the impression of using what they decide they have to do as a club to smash others in the face with, and that?s a refreshing style. They teach us how to disagree in a civilized, Christian way. Of course that may be easy for them. As an established and wealthy Church, they occupy the high ground in Britain and many other areas without having to fight for it; they?ve won before the game even begins, and so maybe noblesse oblige is their duty. Still, for anyone who has spent his life dealing with the Christian East, it?s a breath of fresh air.

So I would see great hope in the relationship between the Anglican and Catholic Churches today as a model for what may some day come about between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. Violence and force clouded our common past, and there were martyrs on both sides, as Catholics thought all England should be Catholic, and Anglicans thought it should be Anglican, willy-nilly in those days of cuius regio, eius et religio, regardless of what the hapless faithful involved wanted. Today, all this is serenely recognized and accepted by both sides, neither trying to deny or rewrite each other?s history, as is still the case between Orthodox and, at least Eastern, Catholics today. So Anglicans can accept benignly the canonization of the ?English Martyrs? and even send official representatives to the festivities! How far Catholics and Orthodox are from this serenity, when something so stupid as an icon exhibit at the Vatican can be blown into a cause-célèbre for not participating in bilateral dialogue!

Diakonia: You are a man of many responsibilities and jobs. What are your hobbies, what do you do for relaxation? Do you keep a diary to keep track of all your activities for yourself or for posterity?

Fr. Taft: To begin at the end, no, I don?t keep a diary. I?m not a self-watcher like Thomas Merton. I don?t consider myself so important, and try not to confuse my personal life with Salvation History. Besides, implosion is not the Jesuit style. Ignatius taught us to be men for others while contemplating God, not ourselves.

As for hobbies, maybe I don?t have any because I do not find life tiring or boring. I love all I do, so my whole life is a hobby, I guess. As for relaxing, I walk a lot, both for exercise and to clear the head and give my seat a rest from the sedentary existence of scholarship. But I do a lot thinking while walking, that?s why I prefer to walk alone. Thinking is, I guess, my job description, and I always have paper and pen at hand to jot down whatever ideas come to mind.

And of course like any intellectual, I read a lot?three or four newpapers a day in English, Italian, and French; some literature but especially biography and history; loads of critical book reviews and periodical articles outside my field of specialization. Liturgy doesn?t exist in a vacuum, and there is no way one can be an historian of liturgy without being immersed in the culture, history, and theology of the times in which the liturgy was being celebrated. Actually, I don?t read much on liturgy itself, except what is first rate.

Fr. Taft: The new freedom for the Churches in the East, the requests for help already received from the Orthodox Churches, the work of aiding the Catholic reconstruction in the former Soviet Bloc that the pope has committed to the Society of Jesus, makes it imperative that I devote full time to my post in Rome. As a result, I have made the difficult decision to discontinue my work as Visiting Professor of Liturgy in the Graduate School of the University of Notre Dame one semester every two years, as I have been doing for over fifteen years.

As far as my scholarly projects are concerned, the most important one is my projected six-volume History of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. Volume II, The Great Entrance, appeared in 1975, sold out, and went into a second edition in 1978. Volume IV, The Diptychs, went to press in the summer of 1990 (and appeared in 1991; volume V, The Precommunion Rites, appeared in 2000); volumes III and VI are almost finished. In addition, I have numerous other projects simmering on the back burner in various stages of completion, and several things planned but not begun. So I do not feel unemployed! As far as recently completed work is concerned, I wrote the entire liturgical section?over 250 pages of material in about 90 separate articles?for the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium.

Diakonia: One final question. What are your ultimate aims as a Jesuit priest-scholar?

Fr. Taft: Well, I would rather be an active participant in the events of my time, not just a witness. So apart from the aims I have in common with any Jesuit: the greater glory of God and the service of humankind, the salvation of souls, the ministry of faith and justice, etc.; or with any real scholar: the free and objective pursuit and propagation of truth wherever it be found, and regardless of whom it pleases or displeases?I have tried to combine both those ideals and be one who does scholarship as ministry, i.e., as a service to humanity and the Church. Of course that is by no means the only way to do liturgical scholarship, and numerous renowned liturgiologists studied liturgy in a way that had no effect whatever on the liturgical praxis of the Church. But that is not the tradition of Jesuit scholars like Jungmann or Mateos, whose scholarship was no less scholarly for the realization that it had a direct relation to the Church?s understanding and practice of worship. That doesn?t mean that the scholar gives concrete recipes to solve contemporary problems. No, the work of historical scholarship is to remove the obstacles to understanding or progress that result from a misreading of the past. History is the great relativizer, the greatest intellectual force freeing us from the schackles of the past. We?ll never be free of it unless we study it. Without Jungmann there would have been no reform of the Roman Mass at Vatican II, and if that is not hands-on ministry I don?t know what is! And on the personal level, in dealing with students and others, I can testify to the enormous amount of good one can do by the objective, honest, scientific study of the Christian tradition. One can change people?s lives forever by bringing them into contact with the living wellsprings of tradition after the layers of misunderstanding, and the mass of clichés, have been stripped away. The key to the heart of the Christian East is its liturgy. It is only through the liturgy that Scripture, tradition, the Fathers, piety, spirituality?everything?is preserved, transmitted, and lived. It may have become overgrown and sclerotic, but underneath the overgrowth lie the jewels of a people?s incarnation of the Gospel waiting to be uncovered by the scholar who is able to distinguish the wheat from the chaff, and cut back the brush. What can be a more fitting and rewarding ministry than to study the heritage of a people in order to uncover its riches for the good not only of that people, but of all peoples, to the unending glory of God?s eternal name?

[1] First published in ?Diakonia? 24 (1991) 45-78, this interview, updated where necessary only with regard to statistics and other factual details, remains otherwise substantially the same as published in 1991.

[2] Updated 2004

[3] R.F. Taft, Review of Marvin R. O'Connell, John Ireland and the American Catholic Church (St. Paul 1988), OCP 56 (1990) 220-221.

[4] That is how I then saw things; I am now perfectly aware that, ecclesiologically speaking, there is really no such thing as a Russian Catholic Church of the Eastern rite.