Is the thousand-year-old breach between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches a little closer to being mended?
Given the history of suspicion, hostility, political game-playing and
theological intransigence that has marked the process so far, it seems
unlikely. But after a significant meeting between theologians from the
two sides, there are signs that change is in the wind.
The 14th Plenary Session of the Joint Commission for Theological
Dialogue between the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church met
in Chieti, Italy, and has just completed its work.
What's significant is that it has approved a common document on a key
cause of the division between the Churches. Its title is unpromising – Synodality and Primacy during the First Millennium: Towards a Common Understanding in Service to the Unity of the Church –
but it deals with an issue of supreme importance: who's in charge?
According to Roman Catholics, it's the pope; according to the Orthodox,
he may be first among equals but he has no authority over patriarchs of
the other Churches. So the question of how the pope's office was seen in
the formative years of the Christian Church, before the Great Schism
that divided East and West in 1054, is absolutely crucial.
The Chieta document is a working paper that will go back to the
Churches for discussion and – possibly, in time – approval. It follows a
previous version approved at a meeting in Ravenna in 2007, which
established that – with different nuances between Eastern and Western
understandings of the word – the primacy of the Bishop of Rome was
accepted by all Christians. But on that occasion the representatives of
the Russian Orthodox Church walked out before discussions had even begun
and were not party to the final agreement. Now, however, they are.
This is only the beginning of the next stage
of the journey, and it would be unwise to predict anything approaching
the "reunion" of the two communions in anything like the foreseeable
future. Papal primacy is one thing, but the exact form of this primacy
is another thing entirely – and there are three major stumbling blocks
for the Orthodox Church on the road.
The first is the status of the Uniate or Eastern Catholic Churches,
which are Orthodox in theology and liturgy but in communion with Rome.
Orthodox Churches see this as unacceptable. The Russian Orthodox
Church's 'foreign minister', Metropolitan Hilarion, said after the Chieta meeting:
"I can predict that there will be many divisive issues and that we will
not agree on every point. However, the aim of our dialogue is not
simply to agree on the points of which we agree anyhow, but we have to
explore also the points of disagreement. And the issue of Uniatism is
one such extremely burning issues." The problem is particularly acute
with regard to the Ukrainian Greek Catholics, who have infuriated the
Russians both by their staunch Ukrainian loyalty and their insistence
that they are a valid Church with no intention of submitting to Moscow's
ecclesiastical authority.
The second is what one eminent Orthodox theologian, Metropolitan
Zizioulas of Pergamon, refers to as the "Orthodox Taliban". Stridently
nationalist and theologically fundamentalist, these priests and scholars
are vehemently opposed to any form of dialogue or compromise with Rome
or with Protestant Churches, which they refuse to recognise as Churches
at all. The Georgian Church pulled out of the recent Pan-Orthodox
Council because it believed it gave too much away to ecumenism. On Wednesday this week Georgian
Orthodox ultranationalists and priests demonstrated outside the Vatican
embassy in Tblisi to protest the forthcoming visit of Pope Francis: the
organisers said the visit amounts to a "spiritual aggression by the
Vatican and an attempt by the Catholic Church to colonise Georgia".
It is hard to see this as anything but xenophobic paranoia, but it
represents a deep suspicion that is felt elsewhere in the Orthodox world
as well. Against such resistance, any advances in understanding are
likely to take decades rather than years.
The third is the wider political landscape, particularly as it
affects the Russian Orthodox Church. It dwarfs the others in terms of
its numbers and wealth, and it is intimately tied to the regime of
Vladimir Putin. As well as theological considerations, there are others
that are purely political: how would any rapprochment between the
Orthodox East and Catholic West play out in terms of Russia's domestic
and foreign affairs?
There's still a long road ahead. As Gianni Valente for Vatican
Insider puts it, it's best to avoid both "sugary optimism and defeatist
pessimism when judging the forced stops, U-turns and abrupt restarts in
the journey the Catholic and Orthodox Churches have embarked on to
overcome age-old divisions and restore sacramental unity". But this
agreement is something, and not to be sneezed at.