Following the
announcement of Benedict XVI’s retirement, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the
chief hierarch of the Eastern Orthodox Churches, issued a statement expressing his profound respect and friendship to Benedict.
Bartholomew
honored Pope Benedict as an eminent theologian and reaffirmed his desire to keep
dialogue open between Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians “for the union
of all.”
Benedict and Bartholomew’s friendship has been marked by their common
mission to restore Christian culture to Europe. The Russian Orthodox Church
issued a similar statement thanking Benedict for his efforts to restore
relations between the Vatican and the Moscow patriarchate.
Benedict XVI played
an important role in modern efforts to heal the schism between the Catholic and
Eastern Orthodox Churches. Dialogue began in 1964 when Pope Paul VI and
Patriarch Athenagoras I went together as pilgrims to Jerusalem. The work of
restoring communion was renewed by Pope John Paul II and Patriarch Dimitrios I
during the 1980s.
Between 1980 and 2000 the Mixed Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic
Church and the Orthodox Church worked to find common ground that would
lead to further unity. After a period of interruption, Benedict and
Bartholomew reopened the work of the commission in 2007.
Pope Benedict signed
a joint statement with Patriarch
Bartholomew in 2006 that renewed their commitment to building Christian unity
and working together for the common good of humanity.
Admittedly, progress has
been slow—too slow for some critics, but then long histories of contention
between alienated peoples take a lot of time to heal, Christian or not. Hasty
reconciliation attempts between Rome and the Eastern Orthodox in the past did
not prove successful.
Like the Oriental
Orthodox, the Eastern Orthodox Churches have counterparts who are in full
union with the pope, called Eastern Catholics.
The Eastern
Catholic Churches are part of a long-standing effort to reunite Catholics and
Eastern Orthodox Christians. Unsuccessful reunification attempts took place in Lyon
(1274) and in Florence (1438), but the current Eastern Catholic communion was
established by the Union of Brest in 1596. At this council the Metropolitan of
Kiev (in modern Ukraine) united his church to the Pope of Rome, which is why
they are sometimes called “Uniates.”
The Ukrainian Catholic Church is the
largest of 22 Eastern Catholic Churches, sui iuris, in the world. The
Ukrainian Catholics even have a cardinal, Cardinal Archbishop Emeritus Lubomyr Husar, who was papabile at the 2005 papal conclave but is no longer eligible
because of his age.
Some Orthodox theologians claim the establishment of Uniate churches by
Rome has only created a further stumbling block to reunion, but they do not
speak for all Orthodox believers. Eastern Catholics have played a vital role in
safeguarding authentic Eastern liturgy and canons, and Uniates have maintained
an important dialogue between the Churches.
Perhaps a brief look at history
will help us understand the complexity of the rift.
As early as 476 AD,
cultural dissonance had emerged between the Latin-speaking West and the Greek-speaking,
Eastern Mediterranean Christians. As early as the second century, Eastern
theology had begun to develop in a different direction from Western theology.
An
example of this is the fact that the West tended to emphasize aspects of
theology like the unity of the Godhead, Christ the paschal victim, and the Augustinian
understanding of redemption. The East, for their part, preferred to speak of
the Threeness of Divine Persons, Christ the Victor, and Theosis.
Furthermore,
Eastern and Western Christians had different liturgical and canonical disciplines.
For example, the Western Church discouraged married clergy and eventually
forbade it, while the East maintained the apostolic tradition of supporting both
a celibate and a married clergy. Eastern and Western Christians also practiced
different rules for fasting and had opposing views on the use of leaven in Communion
bread.
Most of these theological differences have already been resolved by
recent dialogue and have long been understood to be canonical disciplines that
do not threaten orthodox doctrine.
More significant divisions
in theology concerned the papal claims and the Latin addition of the Filioque (the idea that the Holy Spirit
proceeds from the Father and the Son)
into the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. At one time the Greeks assigned the pope
a primacy of honor as “first among equals” in the college of bishops, a title
that has since been transferred to the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, but
they have never recognized the Roman papal claim to universal jurisdiction.
Furthermore,
most Eastern Orthodox theologians believe that, in matters of faith, the
ecumenical college of all the bishops of the Church must be in agreement and cannot
unconditionally yield to the voice of the Chair of Peter.
In 589, the
Council of Toledo interpolated the Filioque
into the Creed in order to counter Arianism in Spain. From Spain, the practice of
adding the Filioque to the Creed spread
to the rest of Europe.
In 753, Emperor Constantine V was unable to spare an
army for the defense of Rome against the invading barbarian Lombards. Desperately
in need of help, Pope Stephen turned to Pepin, the Frankish ruler. As the
Franks emerged as a rival Christian kingdom to the Byzantine East, the Pope of
Rome was caught between a rock and a hard place. It didn’t help that Rome was
defending the use of sacred relics and images, therefore further alienating the
iconoclastic Constantinopolitan court during this time.
As Franco-papal
relations strengthened, Constantinople became more and more estranged from
Rome.
In 794, a semi-iconoclast
council of German bishops in Frankfurt “officially” accepted the Filioque and accused the Greeks of
heresy for saying the old Nicene Creed without it. Pope Hadrian did not approve
of this council teaching, but it did not matter. This was mainly a
geo-political power struggle between Charlemagne and the imperial house of
Constantinople. In 800, Charlemagne had himself crowned Holy Roman Emperor by
Pope Leo, but his title was not recognized by Constantinople, which saw
Charlemagne as an interloper. The papal coronation was taken as an act of
schism within the Empire.
In 808, Pope Leo
III wrote to Charlemagne warning him against tampering with the words of the
Creed. Rome, still sensitive to its relationship with Constantinople, did not
use the Filioque until the 11th
century, even though the popes did not necessarily disagree with the theology
behind it.
The Greeks disapproved of the Filioque
addition for two reasons: first, the West had dared to add the clause without
the consent of the ecumenical college of bishops, and second, because most Greeks
disagreed with the theology, believing that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the
Father alone.
More recent Orthodox
theologians have been willing to discuss the idea that the Holy Spirit
proceeded from the Father through the
Son, or some such concession, while Rome encourages Eastern Catholics to omit
the Filioque within the Eastern
liturgy, making even this source of contention a surmountable barrier to union.
Yet another
constant thorn in the side of papal relations with Constantinople, which
persisted into the 15th century, was the fact that the Patriarch of
Constantinople had ecclesiastical jurisdiction in southern Italy, Sicily, and
Illyricum since the mid-eighth century and the pope wanted those territories to
return under his jurisdiction.
So when the Byzantine Emperor Michael III wrote
to Pope Nicholas I in 859 asking him to acknowledge and approve the appointment
of Photius as Patriarch of Constantinople after the previous patriarch,
Ignatius, had been exiled by the emperor and resigned under pressure, Nicholas
thought this a good opportunity to revisit the status of jurisdiction over
Illyricum.
In 861, Pope Nicholas
sent legates to Constantinople to investigate the legitimacy of Photius’ claim
to the See and to press the papal claim to Illyricum. When the legates returned
to Rome and announced that they had found Photius’ appointment legitimate but
that they had been unable to secure Illyricum, Pope Nicholas I disowned their
decision and held his own trial in Rome. In a bid to regain Illyricum, he found
Ignatius to be the true patriarch, not Photius. The Byzantines ignored this decision,
causing an open schism between Rome and Constantinople.
In 865, Pope Nicholas
claimed in a letter that the pope has authority “over all the earth, that is,
over every Church.” This claim went beyond the canons of Sardica (343), which
allowed a bishop who has been condemned to appeal to Rome.
But that bishop was
to be tried by peer bishops from neighboring eparchies—not the pope himself. This
claim, therefore, was unacceptable to the East. Twenty years of contention and
confusion followed between Rome and Constantinople, known to Catholic history
as the “Photian Schism.”
But in an odd turn of events Photius was restored to
the patriarchate and died in communion with Rome (886). The century that
followed was relatively calm in regard to Latin-Greek relations. But the mid-11th
century was not so peaceful.
At the beginning
of the 11th century, Normans invaded Southern Italy and Sicily. As they began
to settle permanently and establish their dominance, the Normans forced the
Greeks in Byzantine Italy to conform to Latin usages. In 1053, Pope Leo IX,
although not opposed to the Latin practices, unsuccessful joined forces with
Argyrus, the Byzantine governor of Southern Italy, to drive back the fierce Normans.
Meanwhile, Michael
Cerularius, Patriarch of Constantinople, had closed the Latin churches in Constantinople.
He and his supporters objected to unleavened bread being used for the Eucharist,
as well as other minor Latin practices. One of Cerularius’ archbishops wrote a
letter to the bishops of Italy and the pope that articulated these different practices
so that they could “correct their errors.”
In the letter, translated into Latin
by Humbert, Cardinal Bishop of Silva Candida, the Patriarch of Constantinople
was referred to as the “Universal Patriarch of New Rome.” “Universal” was a bad
translation of the Greek title “Ecumenical,” and was taken as a threat.
In his
response to two more letters from the emperor and the patriarch that soon
followed, Leo showed deference to Emperor Constantine IX, but was surly with
the “archbishop of Constantinople.”
He made it clear that Rome was the “Head
and Mother of the Church.” Pope Leo also sent legates to settle the disputed
questions of Greek and Latin usages in 1054. The papal legates were led by Humbert.
Both Humbert and Patriarch Cerularius, proud and unbending, were bad diplomats.
Humbert rudely
delivered a letter from the pope and did not make any real attempt at
reconciliation. Cerularius was even worse, as he refused to attend the meetings
between the legates, the emperor, and certain monks who defended the Greek
side.
Humbert soon lost patience with the whole hostile situation and secretly laid
a papal bull, excommunicating Cerularius and his close associates (not the
entire Orthodox Church, as Cerularius later claimed), on the altar in Hagia
Sophia. Cerularius responded by excommunicating Humbert.
Actually, these were
matters of hierarchical dispute and not generally noticed at the public level. Because
neither party excommunicated the entire Church, the particular excommunications
of Cerularius and Humbert were not as serious to East-West relations as they
have sometimes been made out to be.
Nevertheless, these anathemas were solemnly
lifted by Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras in 1965.
But historically, the
real tragedy was that a lasting consensus was never reached concerning the
different customs, the papal claims, and the use of the Filioque. Reconciliation still could have been possible until 1204.
It was the hijacking of the Fourth Crusade by the Venetians and their sack of
Constantinople that brought complete schism.
As mentioned
above, the differences in customs and the Filioque
problem are no longer the main issue. The real bones of contention are the papal
claims to universal jurisdiction and infallibility.
These matters will take time
to sort out.
The obstacles to union between Rome and Moscow are further
complicated by the history of the Ukrainian Church over the past 400 years and
disputes between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church over property
in Ukraine.
However, through prayer and the grace of God, the next pope will
make further headway, and we will one day see the brother Churches—represented
by Saints Peter (Rome) and Andrew (Constantinople)—united again, and the full
communion of the ecumenical college of bishops restored.
The councils of Lyon (1274) and Florence (1438) failed because the Byzantine Orthodox monks and laity refused to acknowledge the union agreed upon by their hierarchs. Current Church leaders, East and West, may have done as much as they can at present. Premature union could easily fail again without a cooperative effort at the grass-roots level. But we are not without hope.
There is nothing like a common enemy to renew old alliances. Perhaps the best way forward for Catholics is to follow Benedict’s example and to befriend and cooperate with Orthodox Christians. United for the common good of defending Christian culture, this kind of ecumenism cannot fail to bear fruit and reestablish our fraternal bond.
For all their differences, Catholics have much more in common with Orthodox believers than with Protestants.
Orthodox and Catholics, alone, participate in the full sacramental life of the Church because of their common apostolic origins and traditions.
Ut unum sint.