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The historic council ended Sunday, leaving more questions than answers.
VICTOR GAETAN, National Catholic Register
KOLYMBARI, Crete — It has been a tough week for globalists, even on the island of Crete.
The weeklong “Holy and Great Council of Orthodox Churches” concluded
on June 27, with the release of a message and broad encyclical that,
mainly, asserts its vitality, relevance and primacy as the “one, holy,
catholic and apostolic Church” — the English translation even refers, twice, to the Orthodox Catholic Church.
Holy See diplomats can be relieved that the document represents no
setback for ecumenical relations, a Vatican priority for more than 50
years.
In the Holy Father’s words
— delivered as he flew home from Armenia, a nation with a predominantly
Orthodox local Church, although one in communion with the Oriental
Orthodox Churches rather than with the participants at Crete — the
council represents “a step forward” because it brought 10 autocephalous
(self-governing) Churches together, and encounter yields greater
understanding, in Francis’ view.
Yet the Holy and Great Council made public an enormous gulf in
worldviews between the historic ecclesial power of Constantinople and
the earthly power of Russia.
By opting “exit” through its refusal to participate in the council,
the Russian Orthodox Church — by far the largest of the 14 autocephalous
Churches that comprise the Orthodox communion — foiled Ecumenical
Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople’s dream of projecting global
Orthodox unity.
Yet the Russian Church also served to elevate Bartholomew’s status by
giving him an unimpeded stage in Crete to project his leadership as
“first among equals.”
Vatican’s View
Pope Francis sent two observers to the council: Cardinal Kurt Koch,
president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, and
the pontifical council’s secretary, Bishop Brian Farrell.
They were denied participation in the council. Instead, they were
invited to opening and closing ceremonies, as were observers from the Oriental Orthodox Churches.
“We believe very strongly in the unity of the Orthodox Church, so we
have been eagerly waiting for this moment,” Cardinal Koch told the
Register.
The cardinal added that the last-minute decisions against participation by the Russian Orthodox and three other autocephalous Churches did not invalidate what had taken place.
“I think this question [of the absence of four Churches] is
temporary. There are difficulties, but they can be overcome. It’s a
process,” he continued.
The Holy See has been engaged in dialogue with the Orthodox Churches of the Byzantine tradition for more than 50 years, with the next meeting scheduled in Italy in September.
But, Cardinal Koch recalled, there have been periods of tension. The dialogue was suspended from 2000 to 2006.
“We had tremendous difficulties with Churches that emerged from
communism. Trust was lost. But little by little, especially with the
help of Patriarch Bartholomew, difficulties were discussed and
overcome,” explained the cardinal. “He was able to bring the Churches
back to the table.”
At that time, the problems especially related to Greek-Catholic
communities trying to get properties back from Orthodox Churches in
Ukraine and Romania, as well as accusations that Catholic priests were
proselytizing in Russia.
But today, Cardinal Koch continued, the Holy See has strong relations with the Russian Orthodox Church, symbolized by the meeting between Patriarch Kirill and Pope Francis four months ago in Cuba.
“We’ve had marvelous, friendly visits and normal relations, full of hope for the future,” said the cardinal.
And whatever caused the Russian Orthodox Church to drop out, “it has nothing to do with us,” he said firmly.
‘Everything Is Normal’
“Everything is normal with this council,” professor Alberto Melloni
reassured the Register in Crete, adding that it took 100 years for the
Council of Trent to convene.
Melloni, who teaches Church history at the University of
Modena-Reggio and the University of Bologna, serves as director of the
St. John XXIII Foundation for Religious Studies, which has published the Decrees of the Ecumenical and General Councils
series, including the first critical edition of the first millennium’s
ecumenical councils and the Byzantine and post-Byzantine Councils of the
Orthodox Church.
“The fact that this council has been celebrated is the real
accomplishment, and it’s the success of Constantinople,” Melloni said.
Melloni explained that it is not unusual for eleventh-hour decisions
to be made about participation in historic Church councils: “Soviet
President Nikita Khrushchev ordered Russian observers to attend the
Second Vatican Council in 1962 at the very last minute.”
Does Melloni think President Vladimir Putin told the Russian delegation not to attend the Holy and Great Council this month?
“We don’t know, but there is strong evidence President Putin imposed the meeting of Patriarch Kirill with Pope Francis.”
Constantinople’s Gain
According to Melloni, the Russian Orthodox Church planned to exert strong control over council proceedings.
It managed to win agreement that a “consensus” model of
decision-making would be used, which effectively gives veto power to one
voice.
“Having this principle of consensus, the Russians could have been a
perpetual threat” to Constantinople’s goals, explained Melloni.
“Bartholomew can thank Patriarch Kirill and Metropolitan Hilarion
[effectively, the Russian Orthodox Church’s foreign minister] for giving
him a council that was able to run by consensus” because they stepped aside.
As a result, “this council proves the ability of the Orthodox to gather as a worldwide community,” he said.
The historian considers this pan-Orthodox experience to be relevant
to the Catholic Church because “synodality is a field of battle” for all
churches.
He reminded the Register that Pope Francis transformed last year’s
Synod on the Family “from a banal meeting” into a semi-council, to
endorse the authority of bishops working through a conciliar structure.
Mystical Resilience
Two related 20th-century phenomena have tremendous bearing on what
unfolded on the island of Crete — and both testify to the mystical
resilience of the Orthodox Church: the post-communist renaissance of the
Russian Orthodox Church and the resurgence of Orthodox theology in the
diaspora since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.
In his indispensable history The Orthodox Church
(Penguin Books, 1997), Timothy Ware (now Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia)
dedicates a chapter to “The Twentieth Century I: Orthodoxy and the
Militant Atheists.”
He recounts the communist assault on the Russian Orthodox Church from
1917 to around 1988, as well as the face-off between other communist
regimes and autocephalous Orthodox Churches.
As brutally as the regime persecuted the Church, just as fiercely did the Church manifest indestructibility.
Russian theologian Vladimir Lossky wrote in 1944, “In every place
where the faith has been put to the test, there have been abundant
outpourings of grace, the most astonishing miracles — icons renewing
themselves before the eyes of astonished spectators; cupolas of churches
shining with a light not of this world. … Nevertheless, all this was
scarcely noticed. The glorious aspect of what has taken place in Russia
remained almost without issue for the generality of mankind.”
So the renaissance of the Russian Orthodox Church since communism’s collapse in 1991 is one of Christianity’s great modern miracles.
It has created a muscular Church and powerful Church leadership, not
keen on deferring to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, whose Greek
Orthodox Church of Constantinople is on the point of extinction.
The Church of Constantinople, with some 2,000 local believers, has been hounded by the Turkish government (which closed its only seminary) and routinely humiliated by the local Muslim population, which opened Ramadan this year with prayers in the Hagia Sophia, Christianity’s first cathedral and Constantinople’s see.
As scholar Melloni observed, what was probably annoying the Russian
Orthodox Church most about the Holy and Great Council was the “too large
role” it felt the council gave to the patriarch of Constantinople — who
relies largely on bishops and theologians living in the large Orthodox
diaspora, especially in North America and Western Europe.
Creative Diaspora
The second phenomena that greatly influenced proceedings in Crete has its roots in early 20th-century history, as well.
Professor Paul Gavrilyuk, an adviser to the Holy and Great Council, wrote a fascinating account in First Things magazine of how Orthodox theology has flourished in the West after the Bolshevik Revolution sent religious thinkers into exile.
The vitality of Orthodox theological scholarship continues to this
day, explains Gavrilyuk, Aquinas Chair in Theology and Philosophy at the
University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn.
Patriarch Bartholomew drew heavily from this contemporary talent bank to prepare the Holy and Great Council.
One reason is jurisdictional: Although the patriarch’s home Church is
miniscule, the majority of Orthodox faithful in North America fall
under the control of the Church of Constantinople.
In the chaotic lead-up to the council — when Churches from Antioch,
Bulgaria, Georgia, Russia and Serbia advocated postponing it (although
the Serbians subsequently shifted their position and attended) —
explaining Patriarch Bartholomew’s decision to forge ahead to the
Western press fell largely to Father John Chryssavgis, a theological
adviser to Constantinople from Australia, who lives in Maine.
In First Things, for example, Father Chryssavgis and Gavrilyuk assert “a minority [of Churches] desire ethnic isolation.”
Even before the May-June crisis, Father Chryssavgis criticized the
“paranoia,” “provincialism” and “ethnocentrism” coming from the Russian
Orthodox Church in a public lecture at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary on Feb. 1.
He angrily declared: “It’s … deplorable to see contemporary leaders,
exposed to and educated in the global challenges of the modern world,
less interested in transcending parochialism and prejudice than their
predecessors, who were restricted by an oppressive xenophobia behind the
Iron Curtain. Isn’t this sin of nationalism alone sufficient reason to
convene the Great Council? How can we so brazenly justify this heresy?”
The Russian Orthodox Church undoubtedly heard Father Chryssavgis’ performance.
At the Holy and Great Council, Father Chryssavgis served as Patriarch Bartholomew’s chief spokesman, together with Orthodox Archbishop Job of Telmessos, a Ukrainian Canadian.
No Need to Demonize
Not everyone attending the gathering blamed the Russian Orthodox for not coming. Romanian Archbishop Nifon was quick to warn against demonizing Russia and pointed to the authenticity of Russians living their faith.
Writing on June 23, Catholic Father Mark Drew counseled Catholic Herald readers: It’s a mistake to accuse Russia of undoing the council.
“Spokesmen for Bartholomew have had difficulty in masking the
bitterness of their conviction that the Russians are trying to wreck the
synod. But we should beware of oversimplification. Binary oppositions
rarely do justice to the complexity of conflicts, either in the world as
a whole or in the Church. And this is no exception,” the priest wrote.
Father Drew pointed out other antagonisms at work: a historical
resentment of Greek dominance of Orthodoxy among some Churches, for
example, and fears that council documents were too accommodating to
secular society — or not engaged enough.
He evoked the important, and long-simmering, complaints from the
Church of Antioch, which decided not to attend the gathering, over
Constantinople’s failure to solve a jurisdictional dispute with the
Church of Jerusalem.
The Church of Antioch has strong communities around the world, including the United States.
Terry Mattingly, founder of the “Get Religion” website and a member of an Antiochian Orthodox Church in Tennessee, explained,
“The Qatar dispute is actually a major escalation in decades of
tensions between Arab Christians and the Greek bishops that rule them,
operating in a system that is ultimately propped up by the Ecumenical
Patriarch.”
As Metropolitan Hilarion told RT.com on June 14, “You can’t impose unity.”
What’s Next?
Time will tell whether the Orthodox Church can institutionalize the council process, as was advocated by the Romanian Orthodox Church and supported by others.
The Orthodox Church has certainly survived far bigger conflicts and contests.
Asked what’s next, Cardinal Koch commented: “Some surprise of God! We
try to respond to the possibilities we find in each moment.”
Senior Register correspondent Victor Gaetan is an award-winning
international correspondent and a contributor to Foreign Affairs magazine.
