Healing the Great Schism: Catholic/Orthodox Reconciliation

Christ prayed for the unity of His Church. Collectively, we have made quite a hash of it. What divides us? How far are we apart, really? Is reconciliation and reunification really impossible? I don't think so.

Doctrinally, there is more that separates the liberal and conservative wings of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches than separates Catholicism and Orthodoxy. Many of the doctrinal differences that there are date back to the early centuries, but were not a bar to us all being One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church for more than half of the history of Christianity.

Historical missteps, and more than a little stubbornness, divide us, but this division is unnatural and indeed unholy. We cannot simply ACCEPT it as a given. It is not what Jesus wanted of us, and we have a duty to try and put back together what He made whole but what we have sundered.

For starters, look at how very much unites us still. The Orthodox Church is Holy. The Catholic Church is Holy. Both are apostolic, in unbroken lineage back to the apostles. We share the same sacraments. We believe the same things about those sacraments. In extremis, we can give confession too and take extreme unction or viaticum from one another's priests. Because somewhere, at the bottom of it, we each really do know that it's the Latin, Russian, Greek, Syrian and Coptic rites of the same Holy catholic Church.

Indeed, within the Catholic Church proper, in union with Rome, are Byzantine and other Eastern Rite churches that are for all appearances Orthodox. That the Orthodox Liturgy of St. John Chysostom is beautiful, and sonorous, and long, should be no barrier. There is no reason that the Orthodox rite should not remain exactly as it is. Indeed, there is a very good reason to revive, in the West, the old Latin Rite of the Catholic Church: many people want it back. Why should they be denied it? The Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and the Liturgy of the Tridentine Mass were Holy and are Holy. There is no reason at all they they cannot all be practiced within a reunited Church. There is no reason for Russian Orthodoxy to cease using Slavonic, and Greek Orthodoxy to cease using Greek, just as there is no reason that Latin Rite Churches should not be able to reassume Latin if their parishoners desire it. For over a thousand years the different parts of the Church used different languages, and yet we were all one Church. Today, with the vernacular, the Catholic and Orthodox Churches use many, many, many languages. None of this diminishes their Holiness. Latin, Greek and Slavonic are not holy, they are old. And there is nothing wrong with old.

So again I ask: what really divides us? There is nothing of the liturgy of either Latin or Greek or Russian rite that would need to change were the Churches to come back into unity.

All that divides us, really, is the question of authority. It is a political question, about the office of the Pope. Cut through it all, and that is what is at the heart of it.

And this can be resolved. Indeed, the tension ALWAYS existed, and flared up at different times during the long millennium of Church unity. Our spiritual ancestors had the wisdom to settle for an arrangement of metropolitans and patriarchs, with the Bishop of Rome considered one of them, but primus inter pares at the "round table". Like the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, he sets the agenda and "assigns cases", but each preserves his dignity as a co-equal justice. In order to maintain Christian unity, it was necessary for the Pope to exercise discretion in this role. And most handled it well. It also required discretion on the part of the Eastern Patriarchs. And most handled it well. It is the contrivance of the Devil that the time arose whereby stubborn (and corrupt) Pope encountered stubborn (and beleaguered, by the Muslim invasion) eastern Patriarch, and the Schism erupted.

Surely we can repair this wound in the visible Body of Christ on Earth. Indeed, it is not really optional. It is our DUTY to attempt it.

What is it that the East wants? Surely it is not to compel the Cathedral of Notre Dame to start conducting masses in Slavonic! No. It is to be recognized in its liturgy and in its territorial area. Should Latin Rite missionaries be attempting to sieze Russia for Catholicism? No. Russia should be under the Russian Rite, subject to the Metropolitan of Moscow, sovereign in his sphere, who is in union with the Bishop of Rome. I should be able to give confession and take absolution in a seamless Church from Gibraltar to Vladivostok.

What is it that the West wants? Too much, probably. At the Council of Florence, the last moment of unity in the Church, the West acknowledged the customs of the East, and the East acknowledged "the traditional privileges of the Bishop of Rome", which is to say, primus inter pares.

Now, if there were deep and abiding spiritual and doctrinal divides, such as there are between the Catholic Church and, say, the Anglican Communion or the various Protestant Churches, reunification would be out of sight. Primus inter pares would lead directly to Papal interference. But the Orthodox and the Catholic are each so doctrinally close that there need not be ANY real interference in the West by the East, or the East by the West. Indeed, it would immeasurably help the post-Vatican II Western Church to have a Vatican III at which the Metropolitan of Moscow and the Patriarch of Constatinople and their affiliated Bishops, and the Eastern Cardinals, sat, spoke, voted. The Church needs the counterweight of Orthodox Tradition to offset some of the less propitious "modernizing" elements that have run unchecked in parts of the West.

For its part, much of Eastern Orthodoxy is subject to, and under the thumb of, Islam. And abused. We see this right now even in secular Turkey. There is no religious voice on earth more powerful than Rome. And no other religion has its own seat in the United Nations. The lot of Eastern Christians would be bettered by having the full weight of Western Christianity brought to bear within the Church.

I do not believe that this is a pipe dream. Reuniting the Pentecostals and Rome might be, but bringing Moscow, Constantinople and Rome together again at the same round table should not be. It is what Jesus intended from the beginning. What God has joined, let no man sunder. With God, everything is possible. There is nothing that goes on in Orthodox Churches that would not be able to continue in unity with the West, and nothing that goes on in Latin Churches that would have to stop to be in Union with the East.

Perhaps the fears of the East would be quelled if the Patriarchs were favored for election to the Papacy.

What a great and enlightening read. I'm really glad to see this thread is still alive and kicking.

This may be the best thread I've ever read. I've been following it from the beginning and I can't wait for the next post.

I'm Eastern Orthodox, but this thread has convinced me that the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church constitute THE Church in Christ's eye. Sure there's some very real differences in theology, but the roads obviously lead to the same place.

The analogy that continually springs to mind is that of theories on the art of acting.

On one hand there are the representational actors. This is the style of acting made famous by the English and it could be argued that Lawrence Olivier is the finest example of this style of acting. The representational actor will contort itself into the behavior and walk the walk of the character it wants to portray and trust that this discipline will cause an internal shift in the actor and the actor will be become the character it wishes.

On the other hand is the presentational actors. The presentational style of acting was fully developed into a discipline in Russia by Stanislavsky and it could be argued that Marlon Brando is the finest example of this style of acting. The Stanislavsky style of acting will work to create an internal shift in its psyche and trust that his outward behavior will be affected by this internal state and he'll become the character he wishes.

Both Olivier and Brando are to be considered fully actualized actors and neither path they choose to take could be considered wrong yet they both lead to the truth of their characters. Neither discipline is wrong and both lead to the truth.

Hopefully this analogy isn't too simplistic and out of place in such an extremely thoughtful thread, and please forgive me for sliding Marlon Brando into the conversation :-D

Thanks to all the participants for making this such a remarkable thread. Now all of you just ignore me and get back at it, but remember... God is watching ;-)

I wrote: "God did in fact design nature rationally, and he designed humans by the same law, and humans, therefore, have been able to find the patterns of God's mind in nature, and to prove the existence of God via nature"

kosta50 replied: "'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD' (Isa 55:8)
Nothing we make is anything even close to what we see in nature -- we cannot duplicate or reproduce His work. To try to find God's pattern is presumptious and arrogant. We know of God, by knowing what He is not. This, apophatic, thinking is the basis for Eastern theology, not logic and science."

Yes, it is perhaps the greatest difference in mindset between East and West. I agree that we cannot possibly make anything that can compare with what God has made. He is the Creator. We are practically compelled ourselves to make - as sub-creators - in the image of the Law by which we are made. And it would indeed be arrogant and presumptuous - indeed idolatrous! - of us to ever believe that any perishable thing we made could compare to the slightest thing that God has wrought.

But studying the handiwork of God in order to catch glimpses of His mind - this is not presumptuous at all in my eyes, or in the eyes of St. Thomas Acquinas, or Duns Scotus, or indeed the whole Dominican order. This is, rather, one of the deepest forms of pious reverence for God: to look at his handiwork and see in it the love of the Author. Western science, which is to say modern science, did not begin as a philosophy or as an alternative religion, but as a devotional exercise. Like the Easterner, the Westerner has practiced the Sacraments since the time of Christ, since Peter and Paul brought the faith to Rome. We sang our hymns and did our devotionals. But most of us still lived among the trees or beside the starlit seas, and we still looked into those woods and rocks and skies as we always had, and we knew - and rightly too - God made all of this. It is only natural, and perhaps inevitable, that Western rustics should look at the artwork of God, which is nature lying about, and find it much more beautiful than our crude efforts until well into the 1500s.
And to seek the traces of God's mind in the works of God's Hands.

Earlier in the thread, we became terribly frustrated with each other because we see the world through different eyes.
This is not something new to our culture. I am going to close with quotes from the ancient, pagan West, from a Roman and a Celtic barbarian centuries before the onset of Christianity. What they wrote has a spark of divine Truth in it that shows the degree to which God did not leave the pagans completely in the darkness. He prepared the way for the belief in himself long before the apostles came West bringing the Good News. The spirit that is in these two ancient Westerners captures something qunitessential about the West. I am asking you, especially, kosta50, to try not to judge this, but to instead see how this particular turn of mind inspired the distinct view of the religion of the West. I know you don't want to practice the religion or think like this, but that is my point. East is East, West is West, and we each have a different viewpoint, that comes from a different perspective on the same thing. I would describe it that your religion comes through your heart and mind, while the characteristic Western style of religion has come through the eyes to the heart. I do not think that your approach is bad or wrong, just different. I would ask that you consider that maybe our different, ancient approach is not bad or wrong either, just different...perhaps in a way you would prefer not to share, but in a way that you can at least somewhat respect.

The first ancient quote is from a Roman poet named Lucretius. Writing somewhere around 65 BC, he composed one very lengthy poem that has come down to us: De Rerum Natura. Now, certainly Lucretius' theology is inadequate. He peers, hard, at the natural world and concludes from it, essentially, that it is what it is, and the very nature of the way it is demonstrates that the pantheon of the Greco-Roman gods could not have made the world. The very nature of nature makes the belief system of his Roman civilization unsustainable to him. Here is some of what this pagan Westerner wrote, a concept that remained in the Western psyche and, when baptized and "Churched" a thousand years later by Acquinas, caused the Church to create what we call modern science:

"Often men for fear of death are seized by hatred of life itself... For just as children tremble, afraid of everything in blinding darkness, so we sometimes in borad daylight have fears as groundless as the ones that frighten children - imaginary terrors lurking in dark corners. This terror of the mind, these shadows must be dispelled not by the sun's bright shafts nor by the brilliant daylight, but by an understanding of the laws of Nature. ...For piety does not consist of veiling the head before a graven image and sprinkling blood on altars...True piety consists of contemplating the universe with a peaceful mind."

Lucretius was a cultured Roman, exposed to the great philosophers of the Greek East, particularly Epicurus. But the next fellow I quote, from the third century, was anything but cultured. He was a Celtic savage, a pagan Irish King named Cormac Mac Art, who lived a full century and a half before St. Patrick brought the Faith to the Emerald Isle.

From an extremely ancient Irish manuscript, we have this record of the Precepts of Cormac Mac Art, given to his son Cairbre:
"O grandson of Conn, O Cormac," said Cairbre, "What were your habits when you were a lad?"
"Not hard to tell," said Cormac,
"I wsa a listener in the woods,
I was a gazer at stars,
I was unseeing among secrets,
I was silent in a wilderness,
I was conversational among many,
I was mild in the mead-hall,
I was fierce in the battlefield,
I was gentle in friendship,
I was a nurse to the sick,
I was weak toward the strengthless,
I was strong toward the powerful..."

An in the ancient manuscript Releg na Riogh, it is recorded that Cormac Mac Art's long contemplations caused him to come to a stunning conclusion:
"For he said he would not adore stones, or trees, but that he would adore Him who made them, and who had powerful over all the elements - the one powerful God, who created the elements: in Him would he believe." King Cormac Mac Art's spontaneous monotheism, untaught by any traveller but deduced by looking long and hard at the trees and the stones and the stars and thinking about them, was a sea change in pagan Ireland. Others followed his example and thinking. When St. Patrick came, 150 years later, he did not bring a new idea to Ireland. He brought a NAME to the One True God that an Irish King discovered by looking at the stones and stars - God's handiwork - and thinking about what it all meant, with the grace of God on his shoulder as he did. His thinking spread throughout his kingdom, and when Patrick arrived, the conversion of Ireland was a peaceful cakewalk. God had already plowed the field and planted the seed. Patrick brought the fertilizer and reaped a Godly harvest.
But the point is that by looking at the handiwork of God in wild nature, an uncultured savage derived God.

This is the strong taproot of the Western mind. It predates Christianity by centuries. Christianity brought the flower to full completion, and it is thanks to Christ's light in the Western mind that Westerners, looking for God in God's art, discovered the galaxies, gravity, the solar system, and all that we consider to be modern science.

This is a Holy achievement, and to the glory of God, whence nature, and the idea to seek Him in nature, both came.

In other words, we may not "discover" more, or add to the faith we have been given

This is true for the Catholic Church as well. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, is 'introduced' with the following statement:

To my Venerable Brothers the cardinals, Patriarchs, Archbishops, Bishops, Priests, Deacons, and to all the People of God.

GUARDING THE DEPOSIT OF FAITH IS THE MISSION WHICH THE LORD ENTRUSTED TO HIS CHURCH, and which she fulfills in every age. The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, which was opened 30 years ago by my predecessor Pope John XXIII, of happy memory, had as its intention and purpose to highlight the Church's apostolic and pastoral mission, and by making the truth of the Gospel shine forth to lead all people to seek and receive Christ's love which surpasses all knowledge (cf. Eph 3:19).

The principal task entrusted to the Council by Pope John XXIII was to guard and present better the precious deposit of Christian doctrine in order to make it more accessible to the Christian faithful and to all people of good will. For this reason the Council was not first of all to condemn the errors of the time, but above all to strive calmly to show the strength and beauty of the doctrine of the faith. "Illumined by the light of this Council", the Pope said, "the Church. . . will become greater in spiritual riches and gaining the strength of new energies therefrom, she will look to the future without fear. . . Our duty is to dedicate ourselves with an earnest will and without fear to that work which our era demands of us, thus pursuing the path which the Church has followed for 20 centuries."¹
FIDEI DEPOSITUM

I am glad to see that you, as a Catholic, recognize that people who are not even Christian can know of God the way we know of Him. This doesn't come as a surprise to an Orthodox Chirstian, who should believe that God made us all potentially His children. It is lovely that you posted these two sources, showing that even pagans of the old had a notion of one God, realizing that one should look beyond the created and seek the Creator; that all people have that capacity.

This is, rather, one of the deepest forms of pious reverence for God: to look at his handiwork and see in it the love of the Author.

Seeing His love, though, is not understanding it.

Western science, which is to say modern science, did not begin as a philosophy or as an alternative religion

Actually, it began as pagan philosophy. Greek philosophy and humanism where the driving force that culminated in the Age of Reason, in the West, glorifying, even deifraying man as a being capable of solving all problems. I am not so sure that the world is substantially better, or that our understanding of God is any more profound than that of Early Fathers because of science. If science, then, didn't deepen our knowledge of God, what good did it do for the faith?

I would describe it that your religion comes through your heart and mind, while the characteristic Western style of religion has come through the eyes to the heart. I do not think that your approach is bad or wrong, just different.

We know what love is, although no one has ever seen or measured it. Yet we all speak of love as something substantial and very much real. We have never seen justice either. Neither of these appears in nature to be observed and measured.

Perhaps you don't mind me sharing with you a few select short passages of St. John of Damascus Book I (from An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith")

"All things, that exist, are either created or uncreated. If, then, things are created, it follows that they are also wholly mutable. For things, whose existence originated in change, must also be subject to change

"But things that are created must be the work of some maker, and the maker cannot have been created. For if he had been created, he also must surely have been created by some one, and so on till we arrive at something uncreated. The Creator, then, being uncreated, is also wholly immutable. And what could this be other than Deity?

"It is plain, then, that there is a God. But what He is in His essence anti nature is absolutely incomprehensible and unknowable [my emphasis]. For it is evident that He is incorporeal(3). For how could that possess body which is infinite, and boundless, and formless, and intangible and invisible, in short, simple and not compound? How could that be immutable(4) which is circumscribed and subject to passion? And how could that be passionless which is composed of elements and is resolved again into them? For combination(5) is the beginning of conflict, and conflict of separation, and separation of dissolution, and dissolution is altogether foreign to God(6).

"Again, how will it also be maintained(7) that God permeates and fills the universe? as the Scriptures say, Do not I fill heaven and earth, saith the Lords(8)? For it is an impossibility(9) that one body should permeate other bodies without dividing and being divided, and without being enveloped and contrasted, in the same way as all fluids mix and commingle.

"But if some say that the body is immaterial, in thee same way as the fifth body(1) of which the Greek philosophers speak (which body is an impossibility), it will be wholly subject to motion like the heaven. For that is what they mean by the fifth body. Who then is it that moves it? For everything that is moved is moved by another thing. And who again is it that moves that? and so on to infinity till we at length arrive at something motionless. For the first mover is motionless, and that is the Deity. And must not that which is moved be circumscribed in space? The Deity, then, alone is motionless, moving the universe by immobility(2). So then it must be assumed that the Deity is incorporeal. But even this gives no true idea of His essence [my emphasis], to say

"God then is infinite and incomprehensible and all that is comprehensible about Him is His infinity and incomprehensibility. But all that we can affirm concerning God does not shew forth God's nature, but only the qualities of His nature [my emphasis](8). For when you speak of Him as good, and just, and wise, and so forth, you do not tell God's nature but only the qualities of His nature(9). Further there are some affirmations which we make concerning God which have the force of absolute negation [my emphasis]: for example, when we use the term darkness, in reference to God, we do not mean darkness itself, but that He is not light but above light: and when we speak of Him as light, we mean that He is not darkness." [this is an example of apophatic thinking of orthodox theology, my comment]

This is a Holy achievement, and to the glory of God, whence nature, and the idea to seek Him in nature, both came.

Orthgodoxy does not reject science but finds in it only further proof of God's glory (look up Elder Cleopa).

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