Posted on 04/16/2005 9:02:50 AM PDT by lizol
The End of Hostility?
By Aleksandr Soldatov The Moscow News
According to the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), the pope hindered mutual respect and brotherly love between the Catholic Church and the ROC
I hope that the forthcoming new period in the life of the Roman Catholic Church will help renew the relations of mutual respect and brotherly Christian love between our churches," Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Alexy II wrote in a letter of condolence to Rome several hours after John Paul II's death. It is difficult not to read into this condolence message a critical note in regard to the deceased: It turns out that he had hindered "mutual respect" and "brotherly love" between the two great churches. Fluctuations of the Party Line
The modern history of the relations between Moscow and the Vatican is full of contradictions, inconsistencies and ups and downs. When the Moscow Patriarchate was established in its present form (in 1943, during the war), it willingly repeated the anti-Catholic cliches of the party propaganda, adding some apocalyptic notes of its own. At the All Orthodox Conference in Moscow in 1948, the pope was called Antichrist while the Catholic Church was described as heretical and counterrevolutionary.
In 1969, the ROC Holy Synod made a decision that had no precedent in the history of the Russian Orthodoxy. It allowed Orthodox believers to receive Holy Communion from Catholic priests, and vice versa. That in effect meant that the Catholic sacraments were deemed as beneficial, filled with God's grace, and redemptive as the Orthodox sacraments. And if that was indeed the case, the Church was therefore unified and the split between Western and Eastern Christianity had been healed.
Myths and Phobias
The relations between the ROC and the Vatican remained stable and trouble-free until 1989. By that year "perestroika" in Russia had advanced so far that the religious communities which had been forced underground during the Soviet era began to be legalized. Krishnaites, Jehovah's Witnesses, and followers of the Orthodox Catacomb Church were then known as "informal religious groups." They also included Western Ukrainian Uniates who as a general rule had not gone underground but were forced to pose as the true Orthodox beholden to the Moscow Patriarchate.
In 1946, on Stalin's orders, a "Church Assembly" was convened in Lvov that announced a "reunification" of the Western Ukrainian Uniates with the "Mother Church." Many thousands of Western Ukrainians who openly challenged the "reunification" were executed or banished to Siberia and about just as many began to attend illegal Unitate services in village huts or in the woods. Most of the believers paid lip service to the Lvov "Assembly" while remaining true Uniates in the hearts.
As Soviet power weakened, this latent Uniatism began to come out into the open. This reporter visited Lvov in 1988, shortly before the Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church was legalized. The absolute majority of parishes in Galicia, which were formally still under ROC jurisdiction, were already openly mentioning the name of Pope John Paul II albeit on a par with the name of Patriarch Pimen. A year later those parishes spontaneously began to return to the Uniates that they had in fact never left.
The Moscow Patriarchate dubbed this natural and inevitable process the "destruction of the Orthodox dioceses in Western Ukraine," which was blamed on the Vatican.
The "destruction of dioceses" along with Catholic "proselytism" in Russia precluded not only a meeting between the pope and the patriarch but also a state visit by the head of the Vatican to Russia, implicit under diplomatic protocol: After all, Soviet and Russian leaders had often visited the Vatican.
Betting on a Liberal
Religious experts say that the succession of popes in the past century recalled the law of the pendulum: Paul VI, a liberal, was replaced by John Paul II, a conservative, whose way of ruling accumulated problems requiring a "liberal solution".
The ROC realizes that the new pope will most likely be a liberal, and bets on this. Apart from internal reform in the Catholic Church, a liberal will set out to invigorate ecumenical contacts, building relations with the Orthodox churches as with full-fledged "sisters" rather than communities that are temporarily outside Rome's jurisdiction. A full recognition of their status will mean that the Vatican will abandon all attempts to convert the Orthodox to Catholicism, will scale down its missionary programs in traditionally Orthodox countries, and will start providing financial assistance to official church structures.
By contrast, a conservative pope is a source of serious concern. Hot favorites for the papacy within the conservative faction are two high-profile figures: German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; and Italian Cardinal Angelo Sodano, secretary of state of the Vatican City State.
The former is widely known for his comments on the Orthodox as "schismatics" who need a "reunification" with the Holy See.
The latter is considered to be the ideologue of John Paul II's "eastern policy" - that is to say, the creation of full-fledged church structures (dioceses and metropolitan sees) in the FSU and the organization of papal visits to post-Soviet countries (Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and the Baltic states). A papal visit to Russia has been Angelo Sodano's long-cherished dream, and the secretary of state will without doubt redouble his efforts to fulfill it.
Ping
Liberal, smiberal. The fact that the pope was a Pole was the problem. The western Ukraine was once part of Poland That is why Moscow could not accept the reversion of the western Ukraine to Catholicism as inevitable.
BTTT
In England the Church head is also the state head and the Pope was once (and still) a temporal ruler of a nation as well as a spiritual head of the Church and in German regions after the Reformation, cities were ruled by Church councils holding temporal and spiritual powers.
No Orthodox Bishop ever held out as prince of an estate. The Orthodox way of dealing with the the historic way the Church after Pentacost dealt with the State right up till Constantine.
The West was the greatest violator of Church and State relationship.
The Orthodox Church is in a symphonic relationship with the state - the traditional role of the true historic Church as seen since Constantine - it is the true Roman Christian model. In the West is where you saw Church and State become one and the same.
bump for later
Plain fact is, that the people who settled North America's eastern seaboard included many who could find no place in Europe which would tolerate their versions of Christianity. And when they got here, they didn't all see any reason to tolerate other versions than the one they made a difficult and hazardous journey here in order to be able to practice. Basically they thought, "If you want to belong to one of the established churches of one of the European states, why didn't you go there?"Came the Revolution, and the Bill of Rights, and they didn't simply say in the First Amendment that there wouldn't be any established churches. They said rather, that Congress would keep its nose out of the business of the states as regards established churches in the several states. There were still established churches in various states well into the ninteenth century.
From an American POV - at least a protestant American POV - neither the RO church nor the RC church has historically been happy not being the establishment in any given state. In post-Civil War America, no choice has had that luxury - and churches have ironically prospered more here than where they are the establishment and, for that very reason, are not voluntarily respected.
Today in Europe we the relics only of what is left of that relationship - The Anglican Church head is still King or Queen - not the Bishop and The Vatican is all that is left of the Papal States. The Churches that once ruled Protestant city-states in Germany and Switzerland as theocracies are of course now gone.
So it is a littke hypocritical or maybe an act of self denial or ignorance to attack the Orthodox as "statists" when the real historical "statists" were found in the West until the American/French-Napoleonic Revolutions.
Excuse my typoes...
God willing, the next pope will make that visit for him.
Catholic Ping
Please freepmail me if you want on/off this list
A bit off topic but I noticed neither Putin or Bishop Alexi attended the funeral Mass of John Paul II. I wondered why?
Now, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
I have no dog in this fight, but I must disagree, respectfully, with you, sir.
It is my impression, from the long span of history that while western churches have usually been a "counterweight" to secular rule (Henry II and Thomas Becket, for example), the Orthodox Churches have had this tendency to be an instrument of the state, a tool of the government, an annex of the state.....rather than an opposing "counterweight" to temporal political rule.
Ain't it cool that I come along to burst bubbles and provide out of the box thinking?
What counterweight existed in England when the King was both head of State and Church? Why is that not ever brought up? What about the Pope being both a religous leader and a national leader - the Papal States at their height of power was not a small little nation. Both these conditions exist today, do they not? Also, we had the Protestant Churches ruling city-states during the Reformation, no? Also inside the Holy Roman Empire you had Catholic holdings whose bishops (if I remember) ruled as princes and so on as well as being men of the cloth. So it is in the West (until the American/French-Napoleonic Revolutions like I said) where we found examples of the Church BEING the state.
Orthodoxy has a reltionship where it does not challenge the authority of the state for power but tries to live with the state, within Christian values and limits of course.
This is the authentic and historic relationship that Christianity should have. Name me one Christian Father that advocated war of revolution against the Roman Empire to over throw it? In fact the Orthodox were stunned and disgusted when they saw Latin clergy serving as kinghts during the First Crusade. (The reason the Eastern Roman empire requested aid from the Pope was because he viewed him as a temporal ruler of the Papal states like himself not just a religous one). The conflicts you speak of were mostly between the wordly pretentions of the Pope over other kings.
The Orthodox live by the words of Christ: "So give to Caesar what is Caesars, and to God what is Gods."
bttt
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