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

Kremlin Calls…Vatican Answers

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:

1. I believe everything which Eastern Orthodoxy teaches.
2. 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!

Today is the feat of St. John Damascene, the last of the Greek Church Fathers. St. John was an extraordinary saint, living in an extraordinary time. He lived under Muslim rule all his life, and this fact actually helped him in his great battles against the iconoclasts. Because he was not part of the Eastern Empire, he was protected against the iconoclastic Eastern Emperor as well as the iconoclastic Patriarch of Constantinople.

Along with his work against the iconoclasts, he also wrote An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, which cataloged the teachings of the Greek Fathers who proceeded him, and which in many ways is the Eastern equivalent of the Summa of St. Thomas Aquinas. In fact, some even consider him the first scholastic (a term I’m sure most Eastern Christians would not use).

St. John Damascene, pray for us!

Last week an Orthodox priest in Moscow, who had converted a number of Muslims to Christianity, was murdered in his own church.

The official Web site of the Moscow Patriarchate said that the Rev. Daniil Sysoyev, 35, a father of three, died shortly after being shot in the head and chest by an unidentified assailant who entered his parish church of St. Thomas in southern Moscow late on 19 November…

A Moscow Patriarchate official who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Ecumenical News International that the murder could be connected to Sysoyev’s missionary work among Muslims. “He led to Christianity people, whether Tatars or other ethnic groups, that were overwhelmingly Muslim,” the official said.

Sysoyev gave lectures critical of Islam, debated directly with Muslim leaders, and wrote books on subjects such as the dangers of Christian women marrying Muslim men…

Kirill Frolov, an Orthodox missionary activist who was close to the slain priest told Interfax that Sysoyev had received threats over the past two or three years calling on him “stop his theological polemics with Islam” or otherwise “he will be dealt with like an infidel”.

More information can be found in this news report:

Pray for Fr. Sysoyev and his family and for those who committed this terrible act.

National Geographic has an interesting profile of Mount Athos, the “Holy Mountain” of Eastern Orthodoxy. Some excerpts:

The holy peninsula of Mount Athos reaches 31 miles out into the Aegean Sea like an appendage struggling to dislocate itself from the secular corpus of northeastern Greece. For the past thousand years or so, a community of Eastern Orthodox monks has dwelled here, purposefully removed from everything except God. They live only to become one with Jesus Christ. Their enclave—crashing waves, dense chestnut forests, the specter of snowy-veined Mount Athos, 6,670 feet high—is the very essence of isolation.

Living in one of the peninsula’s 20 monasteries, dozen cloisters, or hundreds of cells, the monks are detached even from each other, reserving most of their time for prayer and solitude. In their heavy beards and black garb—worn to signify their death to the world—the monks seem to recede into a Byzantine fresco, an ageless brotherhood of ritual, acute simplicity, and constant worship, but also imperfection. There is an awareness, as one elder puts it, that “even on Mount Athos we are humans walking every day on the razor’s edge.”

…after two world wars and communism reduced the monastic population to 1,145 in 1971, the past decades have seen a rebirth. A steady influx of young men—often with college degrees, a number from the former Soviet bloc—has dramatically increased Mount Athos’s ranks to nearly 2,000 monks and novices, while Greece’s entrance into the European Union in 1981 made the peninsula eligible for EU preservation funds.

“There are 2,000 stories here—everyone has their own spiritual walk,” says Father Maximos, whose own walk began in Long Island as a teenage devotee of edgy musical artists like Lou Reed and Leonard Cohen, and who later became a theology professor at Harvard before resigning to “live my life closer to God.”

The following passage worries me, however:

Mount Athos has survived by bending where it must, though never without fretfulness. St. Athanasios, who founded the Megistis Lavras monastery in 963, infuriated the hermits by introducing audacious architecture into an otherwise rustic landscape. Roads and buses, then electricity, then cell phones have all been sources of angst. The latest encroachment is the Internet. A few monasteries have conducted ever so timid forays into cyberspace—ordering spare parts, communicating with lawyers, obtaining scholarly research. “It’s a great danger to be connected to the outside world,” cautions one monk. “Most of the monks weren’t even informed about 9/11.”

Not long ago I was talking to a friend who is a member of a (Catholic) religious order. He told me that they were considering the possibility of having the Internet available on one of their computers in their house. Some of the younger novices need it for their studies. I told him frankly: do everything you can to keep the Internet out of your houses! As I mention in my previous post, it is possible to be contemplative while in the world, but to me the Internet seems completely contrary to the religious life they are trying to lead. Hopefully the introduction of many of these modern conveniences to Mt. Athos will not harm their spiritual life.

Today the Catholic Church celebrates the feast of St. Josaphat, who was the first Eastern Catholic canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. He lived in the 16th century, during the first years of the Union of Brest, which brought large parts of the Ruthenian Orthodox church into communion with the bishop of Rome. Living in a difficult time, Josaphat was controversial to his contemporaries and continues to be a point of contention between the Orthodox and Catholic believers today.

During his lifetime, Josaphat angered many Roman Catholics by his insistence in maintaining Eastern traditions. However, he also angered those Eastern believers who did not want union with Rome. But the exact details of his life depends on who is telling the story. To Catholics today, he is seen as a saintly bishop who heroically strove to bring people into union with Rome while maintaining the legitimate traditions of the East. To Orthodox, he was a “butcher” who violently tried to force Orthodox Christians to abandon their faith for the Papist heresy. For an example of the strong emotions Josaphat still engenders, see this thread at an Orthodox forum.

This is not the only way in which St. Josaphat is an uncomfortable saint for us today. He strove to implement “uniatism”, which the Joint International Commission for the Theological Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church in 1993 at Balamand, Lebanon declared was no longer an acceptable model for seeking union between East and West (although the existing Eastern Catholic Churches still have a right to exist). The very cause of his life which led to him being canonized has now been abandoned as an inadequate form of ecumenism.

St. Josaphat was in many ways a product of his times: he was born into a time of great division and open hatred between Eastern and Western Christians. He did what he thought was best to advance unity in the Church, and although we might no longer support some of his methods, we Catholics should ask his prayers in the cause of East-West relations. But we should not be surprised if our Orthodox brothers and sisters do not join us in asking for his intercession.

Throughout Pope John Paul II’s pontificate, the pope had a great desire to visit Russia. For a number of reasons, the Russian Orthodox Church was cool to this idea and the Pope wisely decided to abide by their wishes and refrained from making the trip. The relationship was so problematic that there was never even a meeting between Pope John Paul II and Russian Patriarch Alexis, even though JPII met with just about every other Orthodox (and Protestant and non-Christian) leader in the world.

However, now there is a new Pope and a new Patriarch, and the two men know each other and have much in common personally. Furthermore, Pope Benedict – again, for a number of reasons – is seen more favorably in Russia than his predecessor. So hopes have been building that there can be a meeting between these two men – and now the influential Russian Archbishop Hilarion, the head of the patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, has confirmed that a meeting might very well take place soon. This would be an extraordinary meeting between the leaders of the two largest Christian Churches in the world and could have incredible consequences.

One thing that Archbishop Hilarion said that I found interesting, however, was that Pope Benedict is a “very reserved, traditional man who does not seek the expansion of the Catholic Church to traditionally Orthodox regions”. This seems to me to be a swipe at Pope John Paul II, who was seen as more of a “charismatic” figure whose very presence in Russia could possibly cause many Russians to consider joining the Catholic Church. I think his point about Pope Benedict not seeking expansion in Orthodox countries is true to a certain extent. The Pope does not wish to work towards the “conversion” of Orthodox believers to the Catholic Church, but instead towards a corporate reunion between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. There is a difference.

Pray for the continued relations between these two Churches and that all Christians might one day be united in one communion.

Seen in an Orthodox church:

(Source)

Translation: “Not turned-off cell phones in church – 100 prostrations”

I think we need something similar in our Catholic churches – perhaps 100 genuflections?

All of us who are striving for holiness by the grace of God are often frustrated by certain persistent sins. These are the sins – sometimes minor, sometimes not so minor – which plague our daily lives. Perhaps it is gossiping at work, or impatience with others, or wasting time. Whatever it might be, persistent sins have the ability to rob us of spiritual strength and lead us to the very dangerous sins of acedia or even despair, which can be fatal to our spiritual lives.

A while back my confessor gave me some great advice regarding persistent sins. He recommended the use of the Jesus Prayer as a weapon against these nagging faults we can’t seem to overcome. For those unfamiliar with it, the Jesus Prayer is an ancient prayer based on the prayer of the Publican which goes:

“Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

My confessor recommended that I say this prayer when I am tempted to commit one of these persistent sins. If I fall anyway (usually because I forgot to beg for God’s mercy), then say it immediately after I do so. Saying it before I fall reminds me that I am just a sinner and without God’s mercy I would never be able to overcome my faults. Saying it right after I commit the sin begs God to be merciful to me even though I am a great sinner. Either way, it is a powerful weapon to use to combat those nagging, persistent sins which are extremely difficult to root out.

In practice, I find that at first I usually forget to say the prayer when I am tempted, so I say it immediately after I fall. But eventually I begin to remember to say it during the temptation, and over time I find that it helps me avoid the sin altogether, which leads to less temptations in that area. God is looking to pour out His mercy on us – we just have to avail ourselves of that abundant mercy.

Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!

Yet again there is talk of an imminent reunion between Rome and the Russian Orthodox Church. This time, it is TAC bishop John Hepworth, who says, “they’re probably apocryphal, but we do know that the Russian Orthodox Church is very close to achieving unity with Rome.” Many Catholics are speculating that the recent overtures of Rome to the Anglicans will be looked at as a possible model for this potential East-West reunion.

I want to be clear in my next statement which is directed towards my fellow Catholics about this possible “reunion”:

IT IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.

I don’t want to be spoil-sport, and I don’t want to discount the possibility of a miracle from the Holy Spirit. Of course a miracle could occur and a reunion could happen, but the miracle would not be some announcement of reunion by hierarchs, it would be the acceptance of that announcement by millions and millions of the faithful. As I’ve mentioned before, there is little grassroots support in the East for reunion at this time, and so any premature announcement would be doomed for failure.

I also think the comparisons between the Anglican situation and the Russian Orthodox are faulty; they are completely different realities. For one thing, Anglo-Catholics belong to an ecclesial community which has been headed for self-destruction the past 50 years. It is a sinking ship and the Pope is mercifully throwing its remaining traditional members a life-line. This is not the case with the Russian Orthodox Church; it is a vital Church with over 1,000 years of history behind it. Its origins predate the East-West schism and they have no external “need” for reunion with Rome.

The Anglican outreach by Pope Benedict cannot be a model for the Church’s work for reunion with the East, and I’m sure the Pope realizes that. With the Anglicans you have a community that has a rich and beautiful spirituality, but it is essentially a variant of Roman Catholicism. They are very Western and the Anglo-Catholics being courted are very close to Rome on many theological fronts. But the Russian Orthodox Church, unlike the Anglicans, have a theological outlook that is quite different from the Western view; the differences between the East and the West are very deep and will need a long time to sort out. A “personal ordinariate” is a wonderful construct for returning Anglicans, but it would be an insult to Orthodox believers, as it would turn their true Church into just a “spirituality” within the Roman (Western) Church.

I pray daily for the reunion of the apostolic Churches of the East and the West and I hope that much progress is made in my lifetime towards that end. However, I am under no illusions about the barriers to union that currently exist. Like any persistent sin, our divisions will only be overcome by a whole lot of prayer, penance and hard work. Let us look to those three tasks rather than some “quicky” solution.

One of the biggest controversies within the Orthodox Church here in United States is the issue of a united “American Orthodox Church”. Traditionally, Orthodox missionaries will go to a country and establish a mission church there. After some time, that church will become independent from the “Mother Church”, forming a national church such as the Russian Orthodox Church or the Bulgarian Orthodox Church or the Romanian Orthodox Church. Note that when I say “independent” I don’t mean that the new church has a different belief system than the mother church, just that it is its own jurisdiction now. All the Orthodox Churches are united in the faith but they each have their own governing structure. (There is a great resource available online which describes the history of each church here).

However, this is not what has happened in America. Here we have the presence of just about every Orthodox Church in the world, so we have the phenomenon of dozens of Orthodox churches in our major cities, all under different jurisdictions. We even have the Orthodox Church in America, which originated with the Russian Orthodox Church, but despite its name is just one more Orthodox body in America. There are a number of reasons for this situation, and there are many Orthodox in this country who want to unify all the American Orthodox churches into one juridical body. Back in 1994 there was a serious attempt for this to happen, but it was quickly quashed by the Ecumencial Patriarch for reasons I’ll admit I don’t understand.

Now another effort is underway and many are hoping that this one will be more successful than the last. One thing I’m impressed with is that Metropolitan Jonah, the head of the OCA, seems to be supportive of this effort even though it may mean the suppression of his own Church. That takes a good dose of humility.

As a Catholic I don’t really have any skin in this game, but I do support the efforts of those trying to unify the Orthodox churches in America. It seems to be consistent with their history and it also will give them a stronger voice for traditional Christianity in our society, something that is sorely needed.

Pray for those involved in these efforts that they might be lead by the Holy Spirit towards a unified church in this country.

Two interesting stories about relations between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, via the wonderful blog Eirenikon :

Bulgarian Orthodox Leader Affirms Desire for Unity

Archbishop Hilarion (Alfeev) on Catholic Sacraments

Catholics might read these stories with a somewhat “ho-hum” attitude, but they are both important. It is common in the Catholic Church for us to speak of reunion with the Orthodox like it is just around the corner and to easily acknowledge the validity of Orthodox sacraments. This is not the case in the East; they are, in general, much more hesitant in their ecumenical pronouncements. But the fact that Orthodox bishops are publicly desiring reunion “as soon as possible” and are acknowledging the validity of Catholic sacraments is a necessary step in the right direction. I still believe that reunion won’t occur for a long time (most likely long after I’ve left this place of exile), but it will only occur if we are moving in the right direction: towards each other instead of away from each other.

Today Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew is arriving in the United States for a pastoral visit. He will be here from October 20th to November 5th, visiting New Orleans, New York, Atlanta, and Washington, DC (full itinerary here). I heard His All Holiness speak in Baltimore in the late 1990′s and I was impressed with the man. I also have have been greatly impressed with his efforts to achieve a closer unity between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. I especially was touched at his participation in the opening of the Year of St. Paul with Pope Benedict back in 2008.

But what Bartholomew has become most known for in recent years is his environmental crusade. Many have been calling him the “Green Patriarch” because of his focus on this issue. In fact, the first item on Bartholomew’s agenda in the United States is to attend the “Religion, Science and The Environment Symposium” held in New Orleans. I do not have a problem with Christian leaders advocating a responsible use of our world’s resources (God knows that our country too often puts personal comfort above any other consideration when using the resources God gives us), but I do wish he would be more outspoken about other moral evils such as abortion, which ravages traditionally Orthodox countries.

Let us pray that Bartholomew’s visit is a time of great blessing for Orthodox Christians and that His All Holiness will have the courage to be a prophetic voice in the world.

This week, the Joint Commission for the Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church is meeting in Cyprus to discuss the crucial issue of the role of the “Bishop of Rome in the Communion of the Church During the First Millennium”. This is THE critical obstacle to unity between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, and I am very happy to see that they are discussing it.

However, some people are not so happy:

MEMBERS of Orthodox Christian unions along with clerics and monks yesterday disrupted a Paphos conference between Orthodox and Catholic Christians.

The unions, monks from Stavrovouni monastery and Larnaca clerics were protesting against the conference and demanding that Archbichop Chrysostomos II cancel it.

It was day one of the conference of the Joint Commission for the Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church.

The protesters claimed the dialogue between the two churches aimed in the submission of the Orthodox Church to the Pope.

The archbishop expressed his displeasure at the protest and asked the participants to visit him on Monday.

The Joint Commission is made up of representatives of the Orthodox and Catholic Churches and aims in restoring communion between them.

The two churches split in the 11th century in what became known as the Great Schism.

The protest caused the cancellation of the programme.

Paphos Bishop Georgios said everyone stresses that “there are differences, there are serious differences; a thousand years of division have increased our differences.”

“But times today necessitate reconciliation, despite our Churches going through hate and animosity, today we understand that we need to cooperate,” Georgios said.

I understand the history behind the resistance of some Orthodox to ecumenical dialogue. They are afraid it will be a re-occurrence of the Council of Florence, which most Orthodox see as a capitulation of Orthodox bishops to the demands of papal primacy, mostly for political reasons. Yet I still find their reaction sad. Even if they believe that reunion will only occur if Rome submits to the demands of Orthodoxy, is not dialogue a place to start that process? How can it hurt? No Orthodox bishop today is saying that they accept the Vatican I definitions of papal primacy, so why do they fear that this might occur?

Pray that all those involved in these conferences – as well as the protesters – might have a deep desire for unity in the Body of Christ, have confidence in the Holy Spirit to guide these discussions as He wills, and work to make that happen.

I mentioned in a previous post that North America has very few “seeds”, i.e. martyrs. Iraq, however, is full of these beautiful seeds, and has been for 1600 years. Recently, the diocese of Kirkuk celebrated the 1600th anniversary of a mass martyrdom in Iraq:

In 409 AD hundreds of Christians were beheaded for their faith. “Among them” – said Msgr. Sako – “a widow named Scirin-Miskenta, with two children, and general Tahmazgerd”, who carried out the decree of the king, who ordered the massacre. “Seeing their faith, serenity and the trust of the widow” – continued the prelate – “Tahmzgerd converted to Christianity” and as a result was “beheaded later.” Around 470, to commemorate the massacre of Christians, the bishop of Kirkuk Maruta “built a sanctuary” on the hill where “the martyrs were buried”. The “Red Church”, as it is called, unites Christians and Muslims and is now “the graveyard of the Chaldeans”; the relics of martyrs, custodied on the main altar, have always been a destination for the processions of the faithful.

Unfortunately, martyrdoms are not just past events for Iraqi Christians; it is a living reality that is present every day:

The history of violence and persecution against Christians has continued uninterrupted. Abductions, kidnappings, assassinations, fleeing families are the dramatic testimony of a “chain of martyrs” – underlines Msgr. Sako – “that continues. Our country is dotted with shrines to martyrs that people constantly visit, it is a spirituality of martyrdom”. Christians find the strength to “remain faithful” in the “Holy Spirit, but also in the liturgy, especially the Eucharist.” “In every Mass” – added the archbishop of Kirkuk – “we are called upon to make the sacrifice of Christ in our life, in his words; take, break, give … Do this in memory of me: this is the sacred history of Christians and … their journey”.

Pray for our brothers and sisters in Iraq that they might be strengthened by the prayers of the martyrs of their country, and that those beautiful seeds might one day grow into a full garden.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the rumors of a possible reunion between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches (rumors which were started by the overenthusiastic comments of a Catholic bishop in Russia). I was very skeptical about the possibility and I later wrote that a forced reunion right now could be disastrous. Well now someone much more qualified than I is saying the same thing: Metropolitan John of Pergamon, a bishop of the Greek Orthodox Church, who is well-known as one of the most ecumenical Orthodox bishops (and who is also, quite simply, brilliant), states quite clearly that no reunion is imminent:

the ongoing theological Dialogue has yet to span an extremely long course, because the theological differences that have accumulated during the one thousand years of division are many; and secondly, that the Committee for the Dialogue is entirely unqualified for the “signing” of a union, given that this right belongs to the Synods of the Churches

Yet Metropolitan John also criticizes those Orthodox who so quickly condemn any possible reunion with Rome as being prima facie illegitimate and undesirable. It is true that reunion is far off, but both Catholics and Orthodox should desire it deeply and ask for the Lord’s mercy in the face of our continued division.

A division, I might add, that is still quite strong in certain segments of the Catholic world, if this comment on the linked blog is any indication:

Patriarchs Bartholomew and Kiril should catch the next flight to Rome, crawl to St Peter’s on their blooded knees, kiss the Sacred Feet of the Supreme Pontiff, then kiss his ring.

After which, they can beg mercy and forgiveness for a thousand years of schism.

After which, they can prostrate themselves while the Holy Father pronounces absolution, with both his feet resting on their necks.

Then, and only then, will there be reunion.

Hey, a Papophile can dream, can’t he?

Clearly, this was written by someone who never subscribed to the “What Would Jesus Do?” movement.