What would Catholic-Orthodox reunion look like?
There have been a flurry of news stories recently about the thawing of relations between the Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church (the two largest Christians Churches in the world). Here are a few examples:
New hints of movement toward Vatican-Moscow ’summit’
Vatican-Russian Relations Upgraded
Russian Orthodox publish book of Pope Benedict’s Writings
I have blogged previously (here and here) that I don’t think reunion will happen anytime soon – there is just too much baggage that needs to be overcome and there are a lot of details in any reunion that are still not close to being achieved. But I want to take a moment to consider: what would reunion actually look like?
There are two concrete proposals that have circulated within East-West ecumenical circles over the past few years which address this question. They are the Zoghby Initiative and the Ratzinger Proposal.
The Zoghby Initiative is named after the late Melkite Catholic Archibishop Elias Zoghby, who proposed a “double-communion” between the Melkite Catholic Church and the Antiochian Orthodox Church (from which the Melkite Catholic Church originated). The Initiative was basically a profession of faith, which stated:
- I believe everything which Eastern Orthodoxy teaches.
- I am in communion with the Bishop of Rome as the first among the bishops, according to the limits recognized by the Holy Fathers of the East during the first millennium, before the separation.
This profession was endorsed by 24 of 26 Melkite bishops at a 1995 Synod, but it found a cold reception both from Antiochian Orthodox officials as well as from Rome (including from then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger). Fundamentally, Zoghby felt that the Catholic and Orthodox faiths were essentially the “same faith” and therefore communion could be established now.
The Ratzinger Proposal refers to a speech made by then-Father Joseph Ratzinger in 1976 which was included in his book “Principles of Catholic Theology” published by Ignatius Press in 1987. In the speech, he proposed the following, which is very similar to Archbishop’s Zoghby’s profession (emphasis added):
Certainly, no one who claims allegiance to Catholic theology can simply declare the doctrine of primacy null and void, especially not if he seeks to understand the objections and evaluates with an open mind the relative weight of what can be determined historically. Nor is it possible, on the other hand, for him to regard as the only possible form and, consequently, as binding on all Christians the form this primacy has taken in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries…Although it is not given us to halt the flight of history, to change the course of centuries, we may say, nevertheless, that what was possible for a thousand years is not impossible for Christians today. After all, Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida, in the same bull in which he excommunicated the Patriarch Michael Cerularius and thus inaugurated the schism between East and West, designated the Emperor and people of Constantinople as “very Christian and orthodox”, although their concept of the Roman primacy was certainly far less different from that of Cerularius than from that, let us say, of the First Vatican Council. In other words, Rome must not require more from the East with respect to the doctrine of primacy than had been formulated and was lived in the first millennium. When the Patriarch Athenagoras, on July 25, 1967, on the occasion of the Pope’s visit to Phanar, designated him as the successor of St. Peter, as the most esteemed among us, as one also presides in charity, this great Church leader was expressing the essential content of the doctrine of primacy as it was known in the first millennium. Rome need not ask for more. Reunion could take place in this context if, on the one hand, the East would cease to oppose as heretical the developments that took place in the West in the second millennium and would accept the Catholic Church as legitimate and orthodox in the form she had acquired in the course of that development, while, on the other hand, the West would recognize the Church of the East as orthodox and legitimate in the form she has always had.
This is an incredible statement and one I’m not even sure if Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, would still endorse. He is basically saying that reunion can occur if we both treat the situation of the 1st millennium as normative for relations and accept the separate developments of each other during the 2nd millennium as valid if not normative on the universal Church. If you take a minute you can see how radical that proposal really is.
Neither of these two proposals have gotten much traction lately, but I think we would all do well to prayerfully consider if they are a road to reunion. What are we willing to concede for the greater good of unity? Are we Catholics willing to accept a form of primacy different than that which has been practiced since Vatican I?
More discussion of this issue can be found here and here and here (PDF).
Sts. Peter and Andrew, pray for us!
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The Pope is very accommodating to other apostolic traditionalists – Catholics in my terminology – but yeah, union is a zero-sum game because we’re talking about two Catholic churches which means two one-true-church claims. The scope of the Pope, not the existence of his office, is THE division: irreconcilable contra the Ratzinger Proposal. The trouble with the Zoghby Initiative is it’s the branch theory minus Anglicanism: there is no one true church. Either Rome recants and becomes Western Rite Orthodox or the whole Orthodox communion becomes the kind of non-latinised Greek Catholics that Rome has always wanted. I’m not a professor for more than 50 years like the Holy Father so he may know how to pull this off but I don’t see either as likely. Rome won’t give into the smaller church and any Orthodox move would only cause a big split: you’d have more Greek Catholics and a smaller Orthodox communion.
I wish I could disagree with you, but I can’t. I just don’t see how it happens except exactly as you predict: any union by the Orthodox with Rome would cause many Orthodox to split from the “reunited” Church, thus just changing the demographics, not the underlying reality of the split.
But I do have hope and faith in God: what is impossible for us to see is possible for Him to achieve. We just need to fast and pray.
I agree with you on this, but we have to remember that God works on our hearts and with a change of heart, all things are possible.
Right now I don’t feel any great longing in the East for a united Church, while I feel a growing longing for the East in the heart of the Western Church. We know that we need the wisdom, sense of awe and beauty of the Eastern Churches. Outside of pure numbers and money, what would the East get from the West? If we say that we offer them the philosophy of Augustine and Aquinas, well I’m not sure they really want that, especially of union is based on them not taking part in the refinements in dogma that the Western tradition represents.
So what can we offer the East? That would seem to be the most important idea that’s never considered. We talk about our difference, about our similarities but we don’t talk about what benefits would be gained by the East with reunion with the West. Why would they want reunion? What could move their hearts to want reunion?
Perhaps mostly we can offer then something seemingly so far off now, but possible if we dream. We can offer the East a chance to evangelize the whole world, to deal a decisive end to Protestantism and its offspring of materialism. United together, the reunited Church could work and pray, and together we could change the course of history.
In this the key concept would be the communion of saints. We live surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, the saints in heaven. But we also live helped and supported by the prayers and life of our Christian brothers and sisters. How much greater would that help be with a united Church? In a reunited Church the wisdom of the Eastern Church can spread throughout the world, including the West.
What we can offer them would be a new spiritual crusade against materialism, Protestantism and the culture of death.
Without a motivation for reunion in the East, none of this will happen. That is where we should concentrate on, not with dogma over the papacy or other things.
I do not think the “Zoghby Initiative” as an action item can serve. (Inter) Communion is associative; it takes at least three to tango, so to speak. That’s why neither the Orthodox, nor the Vatican, took it up; though the latter did try to reject it diplomatically, since Patriarch Zoghby’s proposal was made with such evident good intentions.
If the “Ratzinger Proposal” is left as you quote it here, from the mid-70s, it remains a “proposal”. In subsequent writings (”Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith: the Church as Communion”) he expands on it a bit, showing how the apparently “legalistic vocabulary” of Vatican I, which many Orthodox find distasteful at best, is reconcilable with the words of Ignatius of Antioch (quoted by Athenagoras in 1967), IF one takes into account a) the Catholic Church belongs to God, AND b) no human being can foretell, and thereby restrict, the powers that God might want the Successor of Peter to exercise in the interests of the unity of the Church. Hence, the Pope’s “universal jurisdiction” which doesn’t mean that the Pope is entitled to pass local law, but that no local hierarch can (rightly) forbid a decision, properly taken by the Pope, from occurring.
I’m not particularly “optimistic” about the prospects for near-term reunion, but who cares? My duty is to pray for it! I do think it will come about in God’s good time.
As a baptized Anglican, married to a Greek Orthodox, I see this issue from a slightly different point of view. MarkF’s comment above that, “Right now I don’t feel any great longing in the East for a united Church, while I feel a growing longing for the East in the heart of the Western Church. We know that we need the wisdom, sense of awe and beauty of the Eastern Churches.” I humbly submit that, of course there is no great longing in the East for the Roman West, or “united Church.” According to the Orthodox, there is no division. As our Parish Father explained to me during one of our theological discussions on my path of conversion (oh yeah, sorry, my mother is an Anglican priest…so my mind is all kinds of messed up…), “there is NO division within Christianity, there are those who are Orthodox and those who are not Christian.” While, admittedly, this is a rather hard line, especially for a local parish priest on the East Coast of the United States, but it is the position of the Orthodox Church.
What I truly have never understood is the seeming inability of the East and the West to recognize the base political causes of the Schism (from the Pope’s desire to hold Western Europe together after the fall of Rome and the invasion of the barbarians without sacrificing ALL of Christianity and converting the Northern European groups. To the East’s desire to be the ONLY evangelical influence over the Slavs, Rus and Eastern Europeans, without any influence from the Bishop of Rome).
When will Christianity in particular and the Abrahamic Faiths, in general, recognize that we are siblings in the same family and that, no matter how close the ties are, no one fights more intensely than family?
Eric,
The recent Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus could shed some light on a future Catholic-Orthodox reunion:
(1) Although all Anglicans are targeted by Anglicanorum Coetibus, this is a response to the petitions of those Anglicans who are actually more orthodox in their celebration of the liturgy than an overwhelming majority of Roman Catholics: parishes in the Traditional Anglican Communion (which mostly petitioned the Pope for reunion) practice an “Ad Orientem” position at the altar, regularly use chants and incense, do no allow female altar-servers, etc.
(2) Pope Benedict has been encouraging the “reform of the reform” – if not with words, then at least with clear actions. Consider the Pope’s celebration of the Mass with an “Ad Deum” position at the altar and an abundance of Latin… all the while using the “Novus Ordo” Roman Missal.
(3) Any reunion with an Eastern Church, therefore, should be weighted for its input of orthodoxy and orthopraxy into the Roman Rite, just as the above reunion with Anglicans. In other words, while Benedict may pray for the reunion of all Christians, he is mostly interested in those communities and churches who would challenge the common-place “heterodoxy” of most Roman Catholic dioceses.
Therefore:
Any reunion must necessarily be orthodox (”conservative” in its doctrines) and radiate with ortho-praxis (correct celebration of the rites, the Liturgy, etc).
(I doubt that the Orthodox would accept to enter into communion with a Church where the altar is used for “versus populum” entertainment, the “ordination” of women to the priesthood is still “controversial” among clergy and theologians, homosexuality divides believers, etc.)
In conclusion:
The question of reunion should not be juridical (what bishops have jurisdiction over what dioceses) but rather doctrinal and pastoral.
If a reunion with Rome should corrupt Orthodox practices (e.g.: Orthodox pulling down their Icon Screens and allowing female servers in the sanctuary), it would be better never to happen. But if a reunion with Rome should encourage the “reform of the reform” IN ROME, then the reunited Church will have to be Orthodox while being diverse:
- Orthodox dioceses will celebrate the Divine Liturgy as they always had, but will include prayers for the Pope in their petitions and maybe other rites typically associated with Rome;
- Roman dioceses will celebrate the Mass using the current Roman Missal with more accurate language, better observation of the rubrics – which includes an “Ad orientem” position of the priest at the altar, makes no allowance for women in the sanctuary, etc., just as it is in Eastern Christianity;
- Anglicans ordinariates will continue celebrating their Masses following their Anglican-use books, keepong alive the above orthodoxy and orthopraxy;
Etc.
U R G E N T P R A Y E R A P P E A L
Church unity and world peace will come when we UNIFY THE DATE OF EASTER. Jesus has been asking the Church for more than 2 decades to have one Easter date.
“Will I, brother, one more season go through the pain I have been going through year after year? or will you give Me rest this time? am I going to drink one more season the Cup of your division? or will you rest My Body and unify, for My sake, the Feast of Easter?
In unifying the date of Easter, you will alleviate My pain, brother, and you will rejoice in Me and I in you; and I will have the sight of many restored;” (Oct 14, 1991 TLIG)
LOVE AND HUMILITY IS MISSING.
Dialogues, rationalism and intellectualism will not bring about unity. Unity begins not with a signed treaty, but in the heart. All is possible with God and prayer is our contact with Him. Let us ask the Holy Spirit for the grace to truly repent, for the fruit of repentance is humility and love.
We need to and must allow the Holy Spirit to invade our minds and hearts so that He is able to direct us towards complete unity and peace. Until we UNIFY THE DATE OF EASTER, we hinder the Holy Spirit’s action to come upon us in full force to give us the next step to take. We must UNIFY THE DATE OF EASTER first.
Let us bend our knees in prayer and ask for the grace of the Holy Spirit to inflame our hearts with obedience and love to UNIFY THE DATE OF EASTER.
Lord, have mercy on us. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us.