Orthodox Leaders Split Over Whether Council Can Go Ahead

The Catholic Herald (UK) ^ | 8/7/18 | Staff Reporter

[marshmallow]

The Patriarchate of Constantinople say the meeting should go ahead, while the Moscow Patriarchate say a pre-Council meeting is needed

The Pan-Orthodox Council is hanging in the balance, after the two most important churches disagreed over whether it should be postponed.

The Council, scheduled for June 16-26, was supposed to bring together all 14 Orthodox churches, but last week the Bulgarian church said they would not attend. The reasons were unclear.

While the Patriarchate of Constantinople have said the meeting should go ahead as planned, the Moscow Patriarchate have said it may be better to postpone it until all concerns have been addressed.

Fr John Chryssavgis, spokesman for the Patriarchate of Constantinople, told the Catholic Herald on Monday that in the view of the patriarchate “no procedural or organisational issues had changed” and that the council would go ahead.

But yesterday Metropolitan Hilarion, the “foreign minister” of the Moscow Patriarchate, told Russian TV that the Patriarchate of Constantinople should hold a pre-Council meeting was held to resolve debated issues. “If they are not, then it’s probably best to postpone it,” said Metropoitan Hilarion.

He added: “”Decisions at the Council should be made by a consensus that is unanimous. What does that mean for us? It means not simply the agreement of everyone present in the hall to some one statement or another, some one document or another. For us it means that all Churches should express agreement with it.”

[vladimir998]

Should we start taking bets on whether or not this comes together?

[Kolokotronis]

The “Third Rome” has been trying to assert it’s imagined preeminence for centuries. The expressions of the Bulgarians and the Georgians are simply nonsense and I expect they are cat’s paws for Moscow. The concerns of the Patriarch of Antioch, on the other hand, should be taken very seriously by Black Bart of Istanbul, but probably won’t be.

[NRx]

While we have a different take on the Council, I do agree with you in part. Some of what is going on is clearly intra-Orthodox church politics. Moscow and Constantinople have very different views of things. Moscow thinks they should be at the head of the table because they are the biggest local Church and the EP thinks she has jurisdiction over the entire world outside the 14 local churches she recognizes as autocephalous. And I agree that I see Moscow’s hand in some of this. That said, the complaints from the Bulgarians and Georgians, echoed by Antioch along with their very justified grievances, are real. And the EP’s open contempt for those concerns is only aggravating the situation.

Still if you study church history all of this is child’s play compared to the backroom politics and machinations of bishops at some of the nine OEcumenical Councils. The Holy Spirit works in Its own way and uses often very flawed tools for Its own ends.

The Council will happen or it won’t. If it meets then it will either succeed in some good, or it won’t and will end up not being received. God’s will be done.

[Kolokotronis]

“If it meets then it will either succeed in some good, or it won’t and will end up not being received.”

Precisely, with or without the feigned imprimatur of Moscow! In the end it is up to us, the People of God, to give or withhold the Great Axios!