In the 20th and 21st centuries, as the Orthodox Church in the Anglophone world was deeply engaging with the Church Fathers, translating Patristic and Liturgical texts, it became popular among some to criticize St. Peter Mogila's 17th Century Catechism. There were moments when some Orthodox theologians could be heard declaring that Orthodox Christianity doesn't even "do" systematic theology. In this light, St. Peter's Catechism was seen as too Western, too capitulated to Romanism, and therefore it can be safely ignored and set aside as, at best, a curiosity that bears no meaningful authority.
The problem with this attitude towards the Catechism is that it is truly self-defeating. In order to criticize St. Peter Mogila's Catechism, one ends up criticizing its conciliar nature, and so conciliarity itself. For the document was amended and formally received by the four highest Patriarchates: Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. Furthermore, it was officially received at the Particular Council of Jerusalem in 1672 held under Patriarch Dositheus. To criticize St. Peter's Catechism is then to criticize these Fathers, to criticize the conciliar nature of its unanimous acceptation, and so to say that the whole Church was capitulated to Romanism. For it is not merely St. Peter Mogila's Catechism; it is claimed as the Catechism of the Orthodox Church itself. What is worse, this criticism ends up treading upon the promise of Christ to the Church, that She cannot fail, and so moves in the direction of unraveling the very fabric of Orthodox ecclesiology.
The Church has never been captive to the Latins. Therefore, for Orthodox Christians to be skeptical towards St. Peter Mogila is for them to be skeptical of the Orthodox Church, and this ends up becoming truly self-defeating. If, in light of its conciliar and formal acceptance, we cannot wholeheartedly embrace and trust the Catechism, then we cannot embrace and trust the Church which produced it and unanimously declared its canonicity, and then, finally, we cannot even trust the contemporary theologians who sought to criticize it. If we cannot trust St. Peter Mogila, and the Patriarchs and Councils which formally approved his Catechism, then we certainly should not trust some 20th or 21st Century theologian who seeks to minimize and diminish its importance. Rather, it looks like those who seek to criticize it have placed themselves in a position contrary to the phronema of the Orthodox Church.
-Fr. Joshua Schooping
