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20 June 2016 | by Tom Heneghan, The Tablet
Two absent churches failed to reply to last-minute invitations from council
The long-awaited Holy and Great Council of Eastern
Orthodoxy, the first in over 1,200 years, began a week of deliberations
in Crete on Monday with many participants saying such meetings should
become a regular institution in future.
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, who is the spiritual
head of the world’s 250-300 million Orthodox but has no administrative
authority over them, told the other nine Orthodox primates present that
last-minute repeat invitations had been sent over the weekend to the
four churches boycotting the session.
Two churches answered and two didn’t, Archbishop Job
Getcha, the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s representative to the World
Council of Churches, told a briefing at the conference site in the
Orthodox Academy outside the western Crete fishing town of Kolymvari.
He did not say which of the four absentee churches —
Russia, Bulgaria, Georgia and Antioch — had answered. Those churches
withdrew in disagreement with Council procedures in the days before the
historic summit was due to start.
Archbishop Job said the primates attending the session
“expressed their joy that … we finally got it in order to discuss the
issues that we are concerned with … Many of them expressed their hope
that this council … will become a new institution that will gather on a
regular basis”.
He said the Orthodox have had councils in the past without
all churches in attendance, noting that Antioch had not attended the
Council of Ephesus in 431 — the ecumenical council that confirmed the
Nicene Creed — but later accepted its conclusions.
“We hope this Holy and Great Council will initiate a new
process in the Orthodox Church. We need it on an internal level and on a
worldwide level,” he said.
Organised along national and territorial lines, the 14
autocephalous Orthodox churches have no formal mechanism for consulting
as a global church. Critics say they have drifted apart over the
centuries and cannot speak with one voice, which is a growing
disadvantage at a time of instant global communications that Pope
Francis is using quite effectively to raise the Catholic Church’s
profile in the world.
The issue of further meetings at primate level is not
among the six documents up for approval at the Council, all of which
were kept general enough to ensure consensus support. But even an
absentee churches such as Russia has stressed it would like
consultations to continue.
The deeper problem is whether the unity the Orthodox seek —
the Council’s motto is “He called all to unity” — requires unanimity
among all member churches. The Russians and Antioch, at least, say it
does and no meeting can go ahead if this does not exist. The Ecumenical
Patriarchate says unity can emerge from meetings, so getting together is
more important.
Council spokesman Fr John Chryssavgis echoed this in a
statement at the start of the Council that, while comparing the meeting
to the gathering of the Apostles at Pentecost, seemed to address the
problems this Council faces. Pentecost fell on Sunday according to the
Orthodox calendar.
“Then, like now, there were conflicts and
even rumours of wars,” he said. “Then, like now, there was division
among them as well as uncertainty. Then, like now, there were many
unanswered questions . Who would lead them, and by what authority? Who
among them was first, and who was second?”
But Pentecost was when the Holy Spirit intervened and the
Church was born, he said. “More than receiving an answer, they became
the answer,” he said. “They became the very unity that they sought.”
Under repeated questioning from Greek journalists,
Archbishop Job said the this meeting had officially been named the Holy
and Great Council of the Orthodox Church and its name could not be
changed by the last-minute absences of four churches.
“Pan-Orthodox Council” was not its official name, he
insisted when journalists asked if it could still be called that in view
of the boycotts.
He retreated a bit from earlier official statements that
all 14 churches had approved plans for the Council back in January,
saying only that all had attended the meeting of primates in Geneva that
backed it. Antioch refused to sign that document.
He also said that the Ukrainian parliament’s appeal to
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to help create a united Ukrainian
Orthodox church out of the three competing churches there “is not on the
agenda” of the Council.
The Council is due to close late on Saturday afternoon (25 June).
