There’s been encouraging — sometimes tantalizing — news in recent
years about the growing potential for Catholic-Orthodox unification.
Pope Benedict XVI is said to be viewed more favorably by the Orthodox
than his predecessor.
The Catholic Archbishop of Moscow exclaimed in
2009 that unity with the Orthodox could be achieved “within months.”
And
the North American Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation issued a
document last October that envisions practical steps each Church can
begin taking to begin the process of reunification.
But Russian Orthodox Archbishop Hilarion Alfeyev is a lot more
cautious about any predictions of imminent unity between East and West.
Archbishop Hilarion heads the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department of
External Church Relations, a position that was held by now-Patriarch
Kirill before Patriarch Alexei died in 2008.
At 44, Hilarion has experienced a meteoric rise in the hierarchy of
the Orthodox Church.
A brilliant theologian and author, he was elected
bishop at age 35, has served as bishop of Vienna and head of the
Representation of the Russian Orthodox Church to the European
Institutions in Brussels.
He is deeply involved in ecumenical dialogues
with the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion.
He’s also an accomplished composer and is in New York for the U.S. English-language premiere of his St. Matthew Passion
oratorio this evening.
He also delivered the annual Father Alexander
Schmemann lecture at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in
Yonkers, N.Y., on Saturday, where he spoke about the meaning of icons in the Orthodox Church.
Thanks to Father John Behr and Deborah Belonick of St. Vladimir’s, I
was able to sit down with Archbishop Hilarion for a chat after the
lecture.
Here’s a transcript of our conversation.
How important is Christian unity to the Orthodox Church?
The notion of Christian unity is essentially linked to the last words
of Jesus Christ, which he pronounced at the Last Supper and, notably,
those which were addressed to his father, when he preached about the
unity of his disciples. It is a tragedy that Christ’s disciples
throughout the world were unable to preserve this unity and that many
schisms and divisions arose in the Church, and the call to Christian
unity is the ultimate goal of our exposure to inter-Christian activities
and to various dialogues which we lead with the Roman Catholic Church
and with other Christian traditions.
So I think for an Orthodox Christian, it is essential to participate
in inter-Christian exchanges in order to bring different Christian
traditions closer to mutual understanding in order to overcome centuries
of prejudices with the ultimate goal of the restoration of the full
Eucharistic communion between various Christian denominations.
Of course, the Orthodox and the Catholic are the closest ones. We
have certain differences in dogma, certain differences in ecclesiology,
but we have the same teaching on the apostolic succession of the
hierarchy, on the sacraments and on the Church in general.
Therefore, though there are obstacles to unity, they are, I believe, in no way insurmountable.
What in the Orthodox view constitutes full Christian unity? What does it look like?
Full Christian unity is the Eucharistic communion. We do not need to
reshape our Church administration, our local traditions. We can live
with our differences within one Church, participating from one bread and
one cup. We need, however, to rediscover what united us and what
brought us to disunity, particularly in the 11th century.
So the basis for the restoration of the full communion would be, I
believe, the faith of the Church east and west in the first millennium.
And you are quite involved in these talks personally.
Yes.
Has Catholic-Orthodox unity become more of a possibility in recent years? If so, since when, or because of what?
I think certain feasible positive changes came with the beginning of
the pontificate of Benedict XVI. He is a man of the Church. He is very
traditional in his understanding of the dogma and of morality and he is
very close to the Orthodox Church.
He highly respects Orthodox
traditions. He knows Orthodox theology, and as he indicated in his
latest book, Orthodox concerns are very close to his heart. He speaks
very highly about the Ecumenical Patriarch (Bartholomew I).
He speaks
very highly and also very personally about his encounters with the
current Patriarch of Moscow, Kirill.
And it is clear that, for him, the
relationship with the Orthodox Church is one of the primary tasks on his
agenda.
Do you think complete union between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches is a possibility in our lifetime? What do you think would have to happen before it could come about?
I would respond by quoting the Pope: it depends on how long we will
live. But I believe that the Eucharistic unity between the Orthodox and
the Catholics is not something easily achievable within a few years
because even if we look at our theological dialogue, it goes very
slowly, and we sometimes are unable to solve even rather insignificant
problems which existed in the past for many years.
So we should not anticipate that there will be major breakthroughs in just a few years time.
But we should be hopeful, and, what is most
important, we should work. We should be honest towards each other. We
should not hide our differences. We should discuss them openly.
But I also believe that, without aspiring that solving all
theological problems that exist between the Orthodox and the Catholics
we can learn how to work together, how to act together. And without
being one Church administratively we can act as members of one Christian
body.
This is what I call a strategic alliance between the Orthodox and the
Catholic Church. This alliance is necessary in order for us to learn
how to work together, because the challenges we are facing are the same.
One of the challenges is how to re-Christianize a de-Christianized
world.
This is what Pope Benedict XVI speaks about very often. In
particular he speaks about the New Evangelization of Europe. I believe
that this is a huge missionary task and even such a grand Church as the
Catholic Church cannot accomplish this task alone. And the closest
allies for it would be the Orthodox Church.
I believe we can do many
things together; we can face modern changes together, even without being
one Church, even without having full Eucharistic communion.
How would you describe recent dialogue on the issue of primacy? What is each side saying? Has either side shown any sign of possibly changing?
Well, Pope John Paul II called on everybody, particularly on the Orthodox to express their understanding of primacy.
In his encyclical Ut Unum Sint.
Yes. I believe we the Orthodox are ourselves not altogether clear about what we
mean by primacy and how this primacy should be exercised. We have, for
example, certain differences between the primacy as it is understood by
the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the primacy as it is understood
by the Patriarchate of Moscow.
In any case, we do not believe that there could be a bishop above all
other bishops whose decisions would be binding for the entire Church.
We believe that the bishop of Rome in the first Millennium was obviously
first in honor but he was first among equals.
He did not have direct
jurisdiction, for example, over the East.
Therefore, when we come to the
discussion of the primacy we would argue that the universal
jurisdiction of the Pope is something that didn’t exist in the first
Millennium and that if we restore, for example, Eucharistic communion,
we would accept his role as first among equals but not as the universal
bishop
So what has some of the dialogue been like in recent months? There’s been a lot of talk about breakthroughs and being on the verge of unity.
I believe that when some people talk about breakthroughs, it was a
wishful thinking rather than anything close to reality. We are still at a
rather early stage of the discussions.
We still discuss the role of the
bishop of Rome in the first millennium, and even on this issue we see
clear differences between the Orthodox and the Catholics.
If we come to
the discussion of the second millennium, the differences will become
much more obvious. Therefore we should not pretend that we are close to
solving this problem.
I think, however, that we should discuss it honestly; we should
describe the differences in our positions, and we should see what would
be the way out. For us, as I said, the way out would be the return to
what we had in the first millennium.
Would you tell me about your background: where you are from originally, what was your family like when you were growing up, what kind of family you come from.
It would be a long story. I wonder whether I should start telling you this story.
I was born in Moscow. I studied music for many years.
Then I became a
monk in a small monastery in Lithuania. I spent five years there. I did
my doctorate at Oxford. And then I became a bishop and served in
Austria and Hungary as a Russian Orthodox bishop.
And when Metropolitan
Kirill became Patriarch Kirill, I inherited his former chair as
president of the Department of Foreign Relations.
This is to make a long story short.
How did you discover that you had a vocation to the priesthood?
I cannot quite tell you how I discovered it but I can tell you when I
discovered it.
It was approximately at the age of 15 when I realized
that I really wanted to serve the Church and serve as a priest.
For some
preceding years, as I was studying music, the choice which I had to
make for myself was whether to become a professional musician or to
serve the Church.
I was even thinking about combining the two by, for
example, becoming the choir master.
At the end I decided that I wanted to serve the Church in the full
sense, to serve at the altar, i.e., to become a priest.
And this was the
inner voice that was repeatedly telling me this, and this is what we
call a vocation.
How do you find time to write music?
I no longer have time to write music.
I didn’t even have it before,
but when I was a bishop in Austria, I could somehow organize my agenda
in order to have some minutes to write music, but very often I did it
on a plane or in the waiting area of an airport.
For example, some of
the pieces from St. Matthew Passion were composed literally on a plane.