Cindy Wooden,catholic Herald
Patriarch Bartholomew urges fellow leaders to attend Pan-Orthodox Council
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople has called on
his brother patriarchs and primates of the Orthodox churches to honour
their commitments and join him for the Great and Holy Council of the
Orthodox Church.
Four of the churches – the Antiochian, Bulgarian, Georgian and
Russian Orthodox – announced they would not attend the gathering
scheduled for June 19-26 on the Greek island of Crete.
The patriarchs and primates of the 14 autocephalous or self-governing
Orthodox churches met in Switzerland in January and voted unanimously
to convene the Council, which would be the first Pan-Orthodox Council in
more than 1,000 years. The 14 primates also adopted the procedures to
be followed and the draft texts to be voted upon.
But in the days leading to the meeting’s scheduled opening, the
synods of some of the churches objected to parts of the proposed texts,
the procedures or both.
Arriving in Crete on Wednesday, Patriarch Bartholomew – the “first
among equals” of the Orthodox primates – said participating in the
Council was a “sacred mission.”
Church leaders who decide not to attend, he said, bear responsibility
for reneging on their commitment to realising “this vision held over
many years, which all our churches cherish, to declare and proclaim the
unity of our Orthodox Church and to examine and reach a common
resolution of the problems that are of concern to the Orthodox world.”
Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting
Christian Unity, and Bishop Brian Farrell, council secretary, were to
attend the meeting as observers at the invitation of Patriarch
Bartholomew.
Just a few hours after the patriarch arrived in Crete, Orthodox
theologians – including the ambassadors of Georgia and Romania to the
Holy See – held a conference in Rome to discuss the content of the six
documents proposed for the council and, more broadly, to speak about the
importance of the Council for demonstrating Orthodox unity.
Tamara Grdzelidze, the Georgian ambassador and former staff member of
the World Council of Churches, told conference participants that the
Orthodox Church describes itself as “divine and human.” The controversy
surrounding the Pan-Orthodox Council, she said, demonstrates “the human
part needs a lot of work.”
While the intra-Orthodox differences are garnering headlines, she
said, “the Orthodox churches, when they decided to convene this Council
after 1,200 years, were not concerned about any dogmatic question – they
do not have a problem of dogmatic unity or spiritual unity – but how to
apply this unity in today’s world. That is the problem.”
The documents that were to be considered at the Council are largely
pastoral, including regulations regarding marriage and fasting and
organising Church life in countries outside the traditional Orthodox
territories. One document is focused on Orthodox relations with other
Christians and another tries to explain the mission of Orthodoxy in
modern societies.
The discussions, Grdzelidze said, “should have renewed the synodality
of the church”, which is its ability to bring people with different
points of view and experiences together under the guidance of the Holy
Spirit to give a united response to challenges.
“It is one thing to say that we are spiritually together and we are
one,” she said. “But if we don’t practise it to make decisions, then it
is very difficult to prove it to the world.”
Problems, she said, can be “discussed, addressed and discerned only
in a spirit of conciliarity where brotherly love and prayer prevail.”
Bogdan Tataru-Cazaban, Romanian ambassador to the Vatican and former
professor on the Orthodox theological faculty at the University of
Bucharest, told conference participants “it’s a miracle” that the
Orthodox churches have maintained their spiritual and dogmatic unity
given historical situations – from war to Communist oppression – that
prevented leaders of all the autocephalous churches from meeting for
centuries.
In organising the Pan-Orthodox Council, he said, the Orthodox
churches clearly are still battling the “phantoms” of that troubled
history.
The struggles should not surprise or scandalise people, the
ambassador said. “Throughout history, unity always has been a work in
progress.”