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 you speak of is earnestly to be prayed for, but in all honesty, what do you do with the different phronemas of the East and the West?"

In all honesty, what you do is you leave them alone.
I mean really, truthfully, leave them alone. The Russian Rite stays the Russian Rite. The Greek Rite stays the Greek Rite. The Latin Rite stays the Latin Rite. But Latin Rite Catholics can take communion in Russian Rite Churches, and Russian Rite Orthodox Catholics can take communion in Latin Rite Churches. All of the sacraments are available to all of the Catholic faithful, be they Latin or Greek, Russian or Copt or Syriac or Armenian.
'There is neither Greek nor Jew, there is neither male nor female, there is neither slave nor free: for you are all one in Christ Jesus.' - Paul to the Galatians.

We are not talking about diluting the religion with needless ecumenism here. Orthodox and Catholic share the same sacraments, and we believe the same things about them. This is what matters. What divides us is concepts of religious GOVERNMENT, not the sacraments, and not our relationship to God. And these things are the bedrock truths, the things that God cares about.

Let's be honest here: wooly threads of nationalism have gotten twisted up in the golden threads of faith. We don't need to untwist them. What we need to do is respect them and come into communion with each other anyway.

Consider the Latin American churches. There are many things that go on in them that would be utterly bewildering to a Northern European Catholic. The "milagre" candles, little clay images of the body part one wishes to see healed, with a candle in them...the effervescent praise of Our Lady of Guadelupe, with the strange painted pattern that is said to have appeared on a peasant coat...

Every Catholic in the world is NOT required to practice the faith that way, but Catholics in Latin America, and in Catholic Churches in the Latin diaspora, retain those practices. Is it NECESSARY to repress all of the strange cultural variants of the Church which make national churches very different indeed? No. None of these things are suppressed by Rome. There is room for just about as much ethic differentiation as one could ever wish for, so long as the SACRAMENTS are preserved. THOSE are the ways we literally touch God. In THOSE we Orthodox and we Catholics all believe the same thing, and we should no longer permit what is at heart a POLITICAL fight over the authority of the monarchical Church to prevent Christians of the apostolic succession from dining together at the Lord's table.

So, what happens in a meeting of clergy of Russian, Greek and Catholic rites when it is time to say the Credo? Instead of charging headlong into the filoque dispute with a will to divide, you all recite the Apostles Creed instead. The Apostles Creed is older, and as authoritative, and avoids the problem.

The Latin Rite remains monarchic, because that is its history and that is the culture of the West. The Eastern Rites remain more congregational in their lines of authority. These are entirely disciplinary matters. On the Catholic side, the Pope can grant dispensations and to change canon law to bring together the two haves of the Church. The Papacy will not cease to be monarchical over the Latin rite. The West will not become the East. And the East will not become the West. The Orthodox Church IS Holy, and the Catholic Church is Holy. One does not have to devour the other. What we need to do is to be able to share communion. To share communion does not require that the Patriarch of Constantinople surrender 1000 years of Orthodox governmental tradition. It requires a return to the mindset of primus inter pares. And it does not require that the Pope surrender 1000 years of the Western tradition of the monarchic Church.

What it requires is delicacy, gentleness and grace. It requires the humility of Paul, who wrote in some of his epistles that his purpose was not to bind his readers with rules, but to impart his love. The West and the East fought bitterly over ecclesial POWER, and destroyed the unity of Christ's Church. To reunite the two halves requires, most of all, the will NOT TO GOVERN, but merely the will to share the Lord's table and fellowship. That's it. That's all. It was not imperative for the first 1500 years of Christianity that Christians recite the words "filioque", and it is not imperative now than Christians seeking unity with each other should be forced to recite such words against their will. The common liturgical elements between East and West would fill a wing of the Library of Congress. Indeed, it is incumbent of everyone who calls himself a Christian to not seek the things that divide us, but unite us.

We cannot talk in this same way about Protestants. They do not share the sacraments. Their theology is different. Ours is the same. Where we differ is only over who is top dog in the ecclesial hierarchy. And the Schism was provoked by headstrong old men, East and West, determined to assert authority specifically by binding others on controversial fine points of doctrine...and by no less headstrong old men determined to resist that authority.
They chose to dispute matters of authority at the expense of unity. Jesus did not pray for the authority of the officers of the Church. Facing death, he prayed for our unity.

We share the sacraments and theology. That is sufficient.
The political leaders of our churches need to be humble enough to let us sup at the Lord's table together. Further integration or standardization between East and West is not only not necessary, it is not even desireable.

When your mother and your father fight, you do not want one to kill the other. You want them to stop fighting.

We are not talking about something otherworldly or ridiculous here. By being sundered from each other, we are opposing the will of our Savior, who prayed for our unity.
Our churches are sacramental. Let the laity share the sacraments. If the old men want to bicker in camera, well, that cannot be helped among men, can it? It is a scandal that I cannot walk into an Orthodox Church, and an Orthodox cannot walk into a Catholic Church, experience the presence of God on the altar in the eucharist, but then be barred from partaking of the same feast in the same God because a bunch of unreasonable old men could not get along with each other 500 and 1000 years ago. We simply have to be better than that. And we can be. If we want to be. It would require, most of all, trust.

First, I agree that nothing could be a greater step forward for the universal church of Christ than a reconciliation between east and west. I do not challenge your desire for unity.

What I believe must be challenged and faced head-on before any dialog on unity can bear fruit are two prevailing western notions regarding the FILIOQUE:
1) That the Roman Catholic Church had/has the authority to add a phrase to the Nicene Creed in the first place;
2) That the issue is largely one of semantics, and no great theological issue is involved.

The first goes to the heart of the the Catholic Church's assumption of papal authority and Orthodoxy's rejection of it. No bishop or patriarch, east or west, has the right to amend the Ecumenical Creed. Even if there were no dispute over the theology of such a change, the Nicene Creed is the product of the great Church Councils at Nicea, Chalcedon and Constantinople, and only a truly Ecumenical Council (viz., one that included the whole church, east and west) could change it.

The second notion above is generally assumed in the west. Nothing could be further from the truth among the Orthodox. The procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son is considered fundamental theological error.

St. Photius is not considered an unreasonable old man in the east, and his treatise, "The Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit," is a philosophical and theological masterpiece. He not only warns against the non-biblical, neo-Platonic philosophical basis for the FILIOQUE, he also makes some predictions about where it will ultimately lead. And, if you look at the history of the Church in the west over the past millennium or so, it's hard to argue his point!

Unfortunately, far more than cultural drift, varying rites, and even matters of Church government underlie the Great Schism.

Could Catholic and Orthodox believers participate in the Eucharist in each others' churches? That may not be a bridge too far. But the east will simply never accept organic unity on the west's terms.

Nor would I ask the East to accept organic unity on "the West's terms". Nor should the East ask the West to accept organic unity on the East's terms.

What ultimately matters?
We are eternal spirits. We live for a time on this Earth and then we die and go to God. While we are on this Earth, we can draw close to God through his sacraments. THOSE are the things in the Church that are Holy, and necessary. If a Church burns down and there is nothing but a blackened field and a tent, it is nevertheless possible for the souls of men to draw close to go by invoking God's power in the sacraments there in that tent. Armies on the march have done it for a millennium and a half. But if the church stays up and there are no sacraments inside of it, no matter how lofty the prose, men do not refresh themselves by the direct contact with God there. Men did not institute the sacraments to touch God. God instituted them to give men a sure and efficacious way to always reach him.

And men instituted the structures and governments of the Church in order to efficiently deliver the sacraments. Some men disagree...and some very, very strongly disagree...about the methods and authorities of organizations to deliver the sacraments. These disagreements are not illegitimate. But they are not theological. And they are not sacramental. We can always find a pretext not to share the sacraments in them.

But we should not do so.
This is not dealing with each other in grace and charity.
Those sacraments are the same sacraments, coming from the same God to save men. They don't "belong" to the Catholic Church and they don't "belong" to the Orthodox Church. They belong to God, who at His sole pleasure sees fit to distribute his grace sacramentally through BOTH Churches. Now, if GOD does not see enough of a difference to withhold His salvific grace from either wing of ancient Christianity, who are WE to gainsay this?

I agree, filioque is a theological issue. Is it fundamental enough, though, for God to turn away the grace of His sacraments from either Church? No. And that should tell us that however important WE think it is, it is not important enough to cause God to abandon the wrong party in the debate. Surely one is more wrong than the other on the facts of the case, and surely we will discover whom (if we really still care about things like that) after our deaths. But we BOTH are wrong in insisting that these things are of sufficient importance that we should not be able to share the sacraments with each other. GOD obviously disagrees, since he distributes the sacraments lovingly on both squabbling halves of the Church. And we should remember that Jesus prayed for our unity.

I do not believe that filioque needs to be challenged and faced head-on before dialogue. In fact, I think it needs to be ignored. The West will say it, the East will not. A Latin Rite Catholic sitting in a Greek Church when they recite the Credo will notice the difference, and a Greek Rite Catholic sitting in a Latin Church when they recite the Credo will not speak that word, or those two or three or four words, depending on the rite. Does this difference, and this allowance for mutual disagreement, prevent GOD from efficaciously granting the sacraments to either Church? No. And we both know it. So we need to lift our eyes from the circles of this world and the ancient disputes, and not persist in denying each other the sacraments over this. God does not deny either of us the sacraments because of this unresolved issue. And if He doesn't think it is important enough to do so, we exceed our authority and are oppressive when WE pretend to have the authority to do what God does not do.

"Full communion" need not mean full administrative integration. It means that we can share the Lord's Table with each other.

On some others, however, the differences go to the very heart of the Faith.

In researching our differences, I came across the following statement which immediately struck home.

"Latin Catholicism tends to be overly intellectualized, due to it's humanistic foundation. Orthodoxy tends to be both "mystical" and "ascetical," due to it's theanthropic foundation. This issue is perhaps the key difference between the two Churches since almost all the other differences, to at least some extent, emanate from this difference."
Holophotal

There are many ways to be a Catholic. When people think of Catholicism, they too often think that the Tradition of Roman Catholicism is the only way that Catholics live out their faith commitment. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth. There are in fact many Catholics whose spiritual, liturgical, historical, even disciplinary Traditions are closer to the Eastern Traditions of the Church and the Eastern origins of Christianity.

Since March of this year, I have been attending a Maronite Catholic Church, with theological roots in Ancient Antioch. The Maronite liturgy begins with calling on God's mercy, whereas the Latin Rite liturgy begins with "let us call to mind our sins." Though the distinction may be subtle, the difference is profound. The Maronites also acknowledge their sinfulness, but greater stress is laid on God's mercy. As one prayer says, "Your mercy, O Lord, is greater than the weight of the mountains..."

As a Roman Catholic attending an Eastern Catholic Rite liturgy, I have been truly captivated by the eastern traditions. They speak to the heart and soul, rather than trying to appeal to the intellectual.

NYer wrote: "As a Roman Catholic attending an Eastern Catholic Rite liturgy, I have been truly captivated by the eastern traditions. They speak to the heart and soul, rather than trying to appeal to the intellectual."

I agree. The Eastern rites have equal worth. And the sacraments in Eastern and Western rites are the same sacraments, and efficacious for improving grace and finding salvation.

The different intellectual and organizational thrusts of the different Churches are cultural and historical. Remember where the Eastern Church grew up: in the ancient, urbanized, sophisticated East, where the pyramids and the other ancient wonders towered over men and had been there longer than the time between us and Christ! Also, remember that in the East there were, and are, different cultural and political centers with millions of people: Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, the ancient cities of Greece.

Now look at the ancient West. There was one civilized nation: Rome. Everywhere else were frank, utter barbarians, and very nasty and savage barbarians too. Where there was sophistication and the possibility of debate and persuasive conversion in the East, the potential converts within the Western Empire were semi-civilized conquered Celts. And the potential converts outside of the Empire were violent savages that had to be turned back by the legionaries' swords even as the missionaries attempted to make headway among them.

Before the conversion of the Empire, the Western Church bore the brunt of particularly violent persecution, since the Seat of Peter was also in the City of Nero. After conversion, the Imperial Court itself shifted from violent Rome to the more peaceable and sophisticated East.

And then, it was the West that was utterly overrun by Germanic tribesmen, and left without the civil guard. The Church had to convert these tribesmen alone, and it had to do it with persuasion; it lacked the Emperor's legions to fend off the darkness. The more settled and sophisticated East would not experience the shock and horror of swimming in a sea of enemies, with enemy rulers, until the Muslim invasion centuries later.

The Western Patriarch, at Rome, had a particular set of regional challenges to deal with at a particular time in history. The histories of the East and West are not simply different because of (later) political and theological disputes. They are different because the whole course of events was radically different, and the enemies and challenges faced were different. The flock of the West was composed of semi-civilized barbarians, and nearly uncivilized barbarians, and Romans themselves, all of whom (because of each other) were organized for war, with clear command structures and clear authority. Greece and the East were lands of philosophy and trade. Rome and the West were lands of law and war. Christianity did not create either starting condition, but the different parts of Christianity had to adapt to meet the conditions of their regional flock. Of course the West had to be monarchical! When the Empire fell, what was the choice? Odoacer was an Arian barbarian. Vandal and Ostrogoth and Langobard, Angle, Saxon and Jute were warriors following leaders and customary laws. If the Patriarch of Rome did not buckle together the Western Church as a church militant, and military, with its own laws and its own chain of command...and use its own organization and structure to overawe the barbarian mind and make him adopt the Church's law as his own, the Catholic Church would not have survived. The monarchical church was a product of history, and it existed for half a millenium before the first schism.

I note too that the Schism of 1054 was not final and absolute. There were moments of reunification. The final schism which has not yet been repaired only occurred with the repudiation of the Council of Florence in the 1500s.

The Church cannot reunify by imposing the Western monarchic Church on the East. That was the primary cause of the Schism in the first place. And it cannot reunify by imposing all of the Eastern norms on the Western Church. The Western Church survived in the face of an environment of incredible hostility...Nero and the Visigoths!...BECAUSE OF the distinct features it evolved to meet the threats in the violent and barbaric West.

The Eastern traditions suit the East. The Western traditions suit the West. They do not need to be imposed, one upon the other.

Frankly, there are features of the East that the West could use as modern innovations. For example, the greater authority of the laity over bishops. With the terrible sexual abuse scandals in the Western Church, and the connivance in secrecy on the part of bishops, the easy assumption of old Catholicism that the Bishops know best has been fatally disproven. They have proven themselves not just fallible and venal, but actually complicit in covering up evil. The monarchic model of episcopal authority without check by the laity was necessary and worked in the face of Ostrogoth, Visigoth, Nero and Commodus. But in the face of the individual temptations in the flesh posed by Satan, it has actually proved a HINDRANCE to cleaning up the clergy. The greater participation of the laity in episcopal decision taking that is de rigeur in the Orthodox Church would not have worked in the Catholic Church of the West circa 800 AD, or perhaps even 1700 AD. But the full monarchic Church with bishops unanswerable to the Catholic laity DOES NOT WORK in AMERICA circa 2004 AD. There are, what, 20,000...30,000...100,000 raped boys to prove it. And no, we cannot just overlook that and pretend that everything will be ok if we just soldier on under the traditional governmental rule of the Church. The traditional governmental rule of the Western church: clear monarchical authority, was ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY in the barbaric West of old. The Latin Rite has nothing to apologize for, because it was this organization and priestly celibacy that allowed it to withstand the hurricane that overcame the Western Empire, but not the Western Church. Indeed, it was precisely because of this monarchic, powerful organization that it was the Western Church able to come to the aid of the Eastern Church in the first onslaught of the Muslims.
But the organization of yesteryear is a hindrance today.
That bishops should not be answerable to their flock at all is NOT a theological or sacramental issue. It is a disciplinary matter. Rome made it that way, for good reasons, and Rome can change that now, for good reasons. If that simultaneously restores confidence and moral control over the episcopate in America and elsewhere so traumatized by abuse AND makes reconciliation with the East much, much easier to achieve, then there can be no objection to it other than stubbornness. And stubbornness is not a godly virtue on matters such as this.

Without the monarchic Latin Church, the Muslims would have won at Tours and in Southern Italy, and Vienna, and swept Europe into Islam. Without the monarchic Latin Church, the Mongols would have ravaged not just Russia, but swept through Poland as well. Without the monarchic Western Church, Europe would have been the center of an aggressive Arian Empire. Without the monarchic Western Church, Scandinavian paganism would have burnt the Atlantic seaboard to the ground, instead of turning Viking and Angle into Christians. The West cannot, and should not, apologize for the way it organized itself to defend Christ's Church.

But that was then.
Today, the problem is not Visigoths, Vandals, Vikings and the hordes of the Caliphate. It is the predations of Satan from within, and the scattering of the flock. For that, we in the West do need to unbuckle our literal body armor and sheath our literal sword and mace, and look to our own brethren WITHIN the Church to heal the wounds within. Paradoxically, the very weapons of command and control which the Latin Church required to resist lightning bolt after lightning bolt from without, are like a heavy axe: fitter to bruise than to polish when used within. We cannot go about issuing imperious commands to each other within the Church. IT DOES NOT WORK. And we cannot simply turn to the men in the mitres with unconditional trust: they let the priests rape our little boys for 50 years. We have to have some say, some control.
The East knows how to do this, and it is our duty to the Catholic Church that we learn from them how.

Seriously.

The problem is not theological. It is organizational.

"Full communion" need not mean full administrative integration. It means that we can share the Lord's Table with each other."

Sorry to be a misery-guts here but, if I was an E.O., I would have to ask myself "What on earth would we gain by being in communion with Rome again?"

The Tradition they have received from the Eastern Fathers in terms of devotions, liturgy, sacramental theology, ecclesiology, pneumatology etc. is as vital to their self-identity as Christians as it should be for Catholics with respect to the Western Tradition.

However, if you take a look at Rome from the East, what is to be seen?

A Church which in the space of 40 years has managed to lose its memory of much that had gone before in the previous 1500 years.

A Church which no longer has a recognisable liturgical rite between any 2 parishes, never mind any 2 dioceses.

A Church which is plunging headlong into syncretism with non-Christian religions (despite Dominus Iesus)

A Church where some of its senior prelates suggest that people don't need Christ for salvation

A Church where neither laity nor clergy have any ability to expel heretics and corrupt prelates from their midst

Not to mention the totally different psychology, theological language and theological differences. Why would they want to risk importing any of this into their Churches?

It seems that all we could offer them would be communion with the Apostolic See and satisfaction that they knew they were doing something to fulfil half a chapter of scripture. If I were E.O. I would probably tell the Pope to come back in a couple of hundred years, and we'd think about talking then.

I realise I'm not being very spiritual or "ecumenical" here, but if we are serious about the unity of Christians we should start from a position of reality and try and see ourselves as others might see us. We can't change other people, but we can, with God's grace, change ourselves.

What they would gain would be fulfilling the desire of Christ, which is to say, Divine Grace.

Look at it a different way. Let's stipulate that the West really is sinking fast in every way that you say it is. Eastern Orthodoxy coming back into full Communion with the West would provide the Western branch of the Catholic Church (for Eastern Orthodoxy is also the Catholic Church, properly understood) with a lifeline. If the Roman Catholic ship of faith is being blown pell mell into the rocks, as you say, then the stabilizing presence of the Eastern traditions, priests, bishops and patriarchs will stabilize it. For they will have authority within the unified Church. They will not be potted plants. There are plenty of appalled Latin Rite Catholics, but they do not have the critical mass to stop the weakness. Drop the weight of reunified Orthodoxy on the scale, and the scale tips heavily within the hierarchy of the Church itself. The Greek and Russian Rite are not in danger of disappearance. You say that the Latin Rite is (I'm not so sure, but we'll go with it). If that is so, then the steadying support of the Eastern rites will help the traditionalists whose heads are still screwed on straight to right the Western ship and save the Latin Rite. I don't think anyone in the Russian Rite believes that Church Slavonic needs to be spoken at Notre Dame in Paris. But there sure are clergy in Paris who could use the force and moral authority of all of those Eastern Rite Clergy sitting at the table of the Curia in Rome, and sitting in the college of Cardinals, and supporting them.
From a hardcore Old Catholic traditionalists' perspective, the Jesuits are an unchecked menace. The weight of Orthodoxy within the councils of the Church would more than check that menace: it could help reverse it.

And secondarily, there is the matter of Christian charity. It is all very satisfying to say: the West is failing. But it is sinful to take glee in the failure of the West and say: Let them rot! They erred long ago, now let Christ's light perish from the West! That's the Devil talking, not Jesus. What would bringing the Churches into full communion do? It would give Latin Rite Catholics the option of taking communion in Russian or Greek Rite Churches. This would be licit. It would be Mass, and the Sacraments. If the Western Church really failed, the Eastern Church would be the lifeboat for the faithful. And the Orthodox have a Christian DUTY to provide that lifeboat, if they really believe that half of Christianity is in danger of foundering!

Now, I don't really believe that the Western Church is collapsing. I think there are problems. There are always problems. And I think that Western Rite Catholics having the option to regularly attend Liturgy** and take communion there would act as a corrective for the Western Church. Because many Western Rite Catholics would avail themselves of the option, and this would chasten the Western leaders and probably cause the revival of the full Latin Rite. There is a hunger for this in the West, and the clergy do not feel the need to provide to that hunger. Allow Roman Catholics to take communion with the Orthodox Catholics, and the need to feed the flock what the flock needs would become acute.

(**I say "regular" attendance at Orthodox Liturgy, because the Catholic Church already accepts that occasional attendance at Orthodox Liturgy fulfills the Catholic's duty to attend Sunday Mass. Liturgy = Mass, according to current Roman doctrine, so long as you don't make it a weekly thing.)

It is very politically and emotionally satisfying to cut the lines and let the West drift onto the rocks. But the mindset behind that is the very antithesis of Christ's teachings. Jesus did not say to Peter: "Feed my lambs, except for the ones that go over that wall: let them drown in the river - serves 'em right!" That is what you have proposed. It is wrong.

The Western Church is monarchical.
Roman Catholics are under the authority of their parish priests, who are under the authority of their diocesan bishops, who are under the authority of the Pope.
That's the way it is, and nothing I have said proposes changing any of that.

The Eastern Church has very clear lines of authority as well. Bishops are subject to removal under certain circumstances through actions by the laity, but that does not mean that the individual Russian or Greek Orthodox is a free agent who can remove HIMSELF from the authority of the bishop or the Church simply because he disagrees with something. Orthodoxy is not Protestantism. It is Catholicism circa 450 AD. The Orthodox are not free agents or Protestants. They are Catholics of different rites, with a greater degree of participation in the government of their churches. Some Orthodox parish somewhere cannot vote that they don't accept the Holy Trinity anymore, or that there is not the Real Presence of God in the Eucharist, or any other damned thing.

A political analogy is apt again. The Roman Catholic Church is the French Monarchy before the Revolution: absolute. The Eastern Orthodox Churches are the United States Federal government: you get a vote in your governance, but your vote is limited by the Constitution, by law established through long judicial tradition, and by the applicability of the law to you even if your side loses.

The proof that Eastern Orthodoxy's form of governance is well within the pale of holiness is this: it has been 500 or 1000 years, depending on how you measure it, since the Great Schism. And yet all of the things instituted directly by God for access to Himself: the Sacraments, are revered and treated the same in both Churches. The Godly core is there in both. God is fully present in both.

We are simply not talking here about handing the Catholic Church over to ecumenism. Orthodox and Roman reconciliation is not ecumenical. It is the reconciliation of identical twins within the family of One Holy Mother Church. Orthodox and Roman reconciliation is not handing over the Roman Church to the trap of dissent or spiritual "democracy". Roman Catholicism is an absolute monarchy, Eastern Orthodoxy is a constitutional monarchy, and both serve Christ the King.
If anything, the Catholics would find the attitudes of their Orthodox brethren to be those of spiritual hard-asses: unbending, uncompromising.

There is no trap in trying to reunify the Orthodox and Roman Churches. The fact that God has not allowed either to lapse into sacramental sin despite 1000 years of Schism shows that God has preserved each, probably to teach us a lesson in Christian charity and comity. God wants the Church united. Whereas Protestantism broke forcibly with Rome, Rome presumed to "throw out" the Orthodox. This is a different thing. And subsequent historical development demonstrates the extent to which this is different: God hasn't let either branch of the Church lose the purity of the sacraments. We are meant to put this back together.
And the lesson we are meant to learn from this is to not use the monarchical power of the Church to overbear our fellow believing Catholic Christians. That was not its purpose in historical development. Remember: it was a Western change, attempted to be imposed by monarchical authority, that led to the Schism. If we rolled back to the day before that change and only moved forward with persuasion and conciliar gestures, rather than attempts at command and brute force, we would not have separated.

But that lesson probably could not be learned without tragedy. Well, we have learnt it, and learnt it well. For that Schism led to two Churches that God preserved holy and sacramental. But the lesson of the hardening of authority was not learned, and the Protestant Reformation may yet prove irreparable (or rather, will prove irreparable UNTIL Orthodoxy and Romanism are within the Catholic Church again. For Alabama will never, ever, ever obey an imperious Roman command again, BUT the faithful Alabamian is apt to be drawn into the Orthodox Rite, for complicated reasons having to do with the faith of God.

On the other side of the coin, a unified Church would have been better able to throw back the Muslim challenge. Divided, the West let the East fall and the misery of oppression lives on to this day.

Orthodox/Catholic reconciliation contains none of the threat of incipient Protestantism that you fear. It does contain an implicit threat of a return to the Latin Rite in the West. And that would not be such a terrible thing.

It is difficult.

I have had Christmas dinners and Easter celebrations in a Russian Church. I noted the icon to St. Patrick in the corner. I have been to too many Orthodox funerals. I walked the circle holding a crown in my best friend's wedding, and made the assembled (Orthodox) families smile by the mirror image crossing myself alongside my friend's brother.
I think that the two-fingered/three-fingered circle of the crossing hand is intensely symbolic, and so I myself use it.

I disagree fundamentally with the Catholics and the Orthodox that these are two different Churches. They are not. What goes on in the Orthodox Church is my church too. And what goes on in the Roman Church is your church too. Communion is communion, and reconciliation is reconciliation, and if I were in a place unserved by Roman Churches, I would attend Orthodox Liturgy and take Communion there, because it is Communion, and I would say confession there too, because it is confession. An Orthodox priest is a Priest. A Roman priest is a Priest. Men and authorities say that they are different, but those men and authorities are wrong, all of them.

That said, I am a creature of law. Obedience is itself a virtue. Defiance of lawful authority is a sin. I live in a place where there is a Catholic Church...two in fact...and I prefer one over the other. I attend the one I do not prefer because I live one block inside of the parish boundary. The pastor of the Church himself has said that from his perspective, the most important thing is that people GO to church, not the boundary line of the parishes. While I understand his pastoral sentiment and do not think he is wrong, I know the Canon Law, and I know that I am obligated to attend the Church in my parish. Because the Bible or Jesus says so?
No. We are not Protestants, we Catholics (and by "Catholic", I always mean Orthodox and Roman/Latin/Western Catholics). Jesus, in the Bible, says to obey the duly constituted authorities, and Jesus leaves a Church, not a bible dispensary. The Church has established canon laws, and I am subject to them.

The Church has relaxed its own practice of the Canon Laws, and could choose to abolish the rule. I wish she would. But until she does, I will soldier grimly on. To do otherwise would be disobedient.

However, I believe that the Orthodox Church IS the Catholic Church. And I believe that it was made so by God, at one with the Roman Church which are both part of the Catholic Church. I accept the authority of the prelates over me who tell me that I must attend the Latin Rite, and do so (even though it is not very Latin at this point). But I reject the political arguments in totum. Pope and Patriarch say that these are two Churches. But I have spoken with God, and they are wrong. This is one Church divided in two. And we are under a duty to bind its wounds and make it one again.

For me to take Communion in an Orthodox service would be for me to break the law under which I am bound by the duly constituted authorities over me. I won't do it. Although I do attend Liturgy, occasionally, as the Cathechism permits.
For me to accept the argument that these are really two Churches would be for me to directly defy God and follow the bickering traditions of men. I won't do that.
I will continue to take Communion in the Roman Rite, because the law requires me to, and it has the right to do so.
And I will continue to recognize the Orthodox Church up the street as the Catholic Church, because God tells me so, and no man has the right to presume to countermand God.
That's the long and the short of it.

Ideally, my own Catholic Church would restore the Roman rite in Latin. As it is, the only Latin I ever get to sing is the occasional choral piece when our choir director assigns it.

Is the following accurate?

On the Question of the Filioque

From the fourth to the eighth century tension already existed in the Church between East and West over the true significance of the Roman primacy. (...) The latent tension only came to the surface in the ninth century, when it developed into open hostility.

The political event which occasioned this conflict was the founding of the Carolingian Empire in the West.

(...) When a project for the marriage of Charles and the reigning Byzantine empress fell through, the Frankish king decided to ruin Constantinople's claim to universal jurisdiction. One of the means used to achieve this end was to bring the charge of heresy against the East. The Eastern emperor could not claim to be the successor of earlier Christian basileis because he worshipped images and because he confessed that the Holy Spirit proceeds "from the Father by the Son" instead of "from the Father and the Son." These allegations by Charlemagne in his famous Libri Carolini, sent to the pope in 792, formed part of the Frankish refutation of the decrees of the Second Ecumenical Council in Nicaea (787) and prepared the way for the interminable quarrel between East and West over the question of the Filioque. [During the sixth century certain anti-Arian councils in Spain had inserted in the Nicaean-Constantinopolitan Creed the word Filioque which was not in the original (Credo ... in Spiritum Sanctum ...qui ex Patre Filioque procedit).

This new version of the Creed spread to Gaul and the Frankish lands in the eighth century. It was not accepted by the Church of Rome, which opposed the interpolation until the eleventh century.]

(...)Fortunately for the cause of church unity, while the Roman Church approved Charlemagne's political aims, it was decidedly opposed to his theological attack on Byzantium. Popes Hadrian I (772-795) and Leo III (795-816) defended the Council of Nicaea and formally rejected the interpolation in the Creed. (pp. 41-43)

...The way in which the Fathers interpret the transcendence of God; that is, God remains unknowable in his unique essence, but he has revealed himself as a Trinity of Three Persons. The God of the Bible therefore in known to the extent that He is a living and acting Deity, the One who has sent His Son for the salvation of the world. This particular emphasis of the thought of the Eastern Fathers distinguishes them - (...) - to the way in which their Latin brothers preferred to think of God first as a unique essence, and then only as a Trinity. These two different attitudes would later give rise to two schools of Trinitarian theology. In Latin theology, the divine Persons were considered as the simple inner relations of the unique essence of the Godhead: hence, if the very existence of the Spirit is determined by its relations to the Father and the Son, the doctrine of the Filioque - or procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son - becomes a logical, dogmatic necessity, for the Spirit cannot be said to be distinct from the Son if he does not proceed from him. Eastern theologians, on the other hand, remained faithful to the old "personalism" of the Greek Fathers. The doctrine of the Filioque appeared to them, consequently, as Semi-Sabellianism (to use the expression of Photius). [Sabellianism is a heresy dating from the second century attributed to a certain Sabellius, who taught that the divine Persons are simply "modes" or "aspects" of a unique God.] Consubstantial with the Father and the Son, because proceeding from the Father, the unique source of the Deity, the Spirit has his own existence and personal function in the inner life of God and the economy of salvation: his task is to bring about the unity of the human race in the Body of Christ, but he also imparts to this unity a personal, and hence diversified, character. It is with a prayer to the Holy Spirit that all the liturgical services of the Orthodox Church begin, and with an invocation of his name that the eucharistic mystery is effected. (pp. 195-197

From: John Meyendorff, The Orthodox Church, Crestwood, NY, 1981.

(http://www.ocf.org/OrthodoxPage/reading/filioque.html)

I'll simply reply to your most recent post and include my thoughts on the others here, though I think your last post actually and clearly sums up where you are and probably where you are headed.

I agree with you that the basic problem is organizational. The ecclesiology of the Roman Church is completely foreign to anything in the East, before or since the Great Schism. The historical reasons why the Church in the West became what it is are interesting, (and may tell us a great deal about the attempted imposition of the filioque on the Church by Rome) but add nothing to answering the question of why that difference in ecclesiology makes it so very unlikely that there will be any communion between the Orthodox and Roman Churches. NYer quoted someone who rather precisely laid out the differences between the East and Rome. That is the phronema difference I have been talking about here and there on these threads. In the early centuries of the Church, the Roman Church was orthodox both in teaching and in praxis. For undoubted historical reasons, the "syndesmos"
among people, clergy and hierarchs became shattered as the Roman Church took over many of the functions of government. Hierarchs became temporal Lords, with the Pope the Temporal Lord of all Temporal Lords. Other hierarchs became like baronial vassals of the Pope, the priests the vassals of the the hierarchs and the Laous tou Theou, the very People of God, became the serfs, both socially and within the Church. The Roman Church burned people for translating the Bible into the vernacular, lest the people read and question the dogmatic pronouncements of the hierarchs and ultimately the Pope. And in the Orthodox East? The people were known to riot over what they considered to be non-canonical pronouncements of their hierarchs, even on fine points of the Faith. Why? Because they were educated in the Faith, read the Bible, discussed theology, and all of that then, as it is now, was seen to be an appropriate, if sometimes disturbing from the hierarchs' pov, role for the People of God. In the West the people were kept ignorant and silent and obedient, paying over from their very substance to sustain their betters. So what was the result? The excesses of the Middle Ages which lead to the rise of Protestantism, a revolution which, like the French Revolution, went quickly off the rails and wandered off into a theological wilderness where confusion and darkness reigned and reigns to this day. You see, things had gone just too far. But the Roman Church, instead of recognizing where its monarchical, even tyrannical, system had lead it, persisted in its error throughout the counter reformation , so that by the 1840s in Ireland, the Primate there saw no problem with the English policy of genocide against the Irish people and by the same time in Italy the Popes could issue bull after bull condemning the legitimate efforts of people all across Europe to throw out the oppressive regimes which ruled over them. The RCs who remained faithful to the Roman Church lowered their heads, said their prayers and trembled in the presence of the parish priest. During and after WWII, the Vatican supported the depredations of Croat Roman Catholics, under the leadership of their bloddy Cardinal and in league with the Nazis to destroy the Orthodox Serbs, because they wouldn't submit. By the 1950s, nuns in this country were still telling 6 year olds that there was no salvation for those who did not submit (SUBMIT !!!) to the Universal Pontiff at Rome. I know, it happened to me. It happens to this day on these threads. Then came Vatican II. You know, that always reminded me of the concessions made by the Czarist government or the Bourbons just before their people rose up and swept them away. In a revolution coming in response to too little, too late, the nuts and evil doers always seem to rise to the top. And that is just what has happened to the Roman Church at least here in America. Pro-abortion nuns, websites for gay priests, women priests, indeed! In the meantime, and lately, the scandal of pederasty has revealed the rot and corruption of a hierarchy, both here and abroad, too long accustomed to a laity, beaten down by a millennium of monarchism in the Roman Church, which simply pays, prays and obeys, obeys just like you say you must. As another poster has said, how could the laity just sit back and let this happen? Obedience, thats how, fear that it is a sin for you as a lay person to challenge evil in your hierarchy when you see it. It is your duty to disobey when the hierarchy becomes oppressive of the proper role of the laity or teaches heresy! The Roman system is collapsing here in America, with attendant horrors at a level apparently not see in Europe or elsewhere. It isn't surprising that it has happened here. In Old Europe, a post-modern socialist society with no belief except in comfort, it has just sort of melted away. But here, in the most religious Christian and at the same time demon plagued nation on Earth we are presented with this mess. Orthodox monks would say this is not surprising. Demons lurk where holiness abounds and in its own way, it does here. Once the lid came off the Roman pot in this country, in came the demons, and because neither the Roman hierarchs, nor the clergy nor the people had nor have anything to say, except "obey", it all comes apart. And it all stems from a denial of the proper syndesmos of the hierarchs, clergy and laity within the Church Christ himself established on Pentecost. How can we ever come into communion with that? How could we stand by praying our Divine Liturgies and practicing our ascetic practices while our brethren in the West, in communion with us, were subject to such a system. The union you suggest is impossible. We would never tolerate it, even if Rome left us totally alone. You've implied that we will let you stew in your own juice. That is not what we are doing. We pray for communion and the Roman Church. What more would you have us do if you yourself refuse to fulfill the duties incumbent upon you as a member of the Church? So what do you do? Well, I've made a couple of suggestions earlier which apparently aren't acceptable to you. Attending a Latin Mass won't do it. Try this: Stand up against the evil and corruption in the Church. Condemn heretical practices which have silenced the people and clergy in the West for 1500 years. Guide yourself by the writings of the Fathers and the praxis of the Church of the Seven Councils. Pray unceasingly for God's mercy. You may, in the end, get yourself excommunicated. If so, so be it.

"Eastern Orthodoxy coming back into full Communion with the West would provide the Western branch of the Catholic Church (for Eastern Orthodoxy is also the Catholic Church, properly understood) with a lifeline."

This is one way of looking at it, however, I think it is not a good motivation for seeking unity and it is looking at it from the perspective of what would be good for the West - not for the East. This approach would be effectively using other Christians as a means to an end i.e. using them as a means to sort out the problems which we have the responsibility to put right. If we are to seek unity, then our motivation should arise from our love for God and love for our estranged brethren.

"Now, I don't really believe that the Western Church is collapsing."

It will not collapse terminally, but it will continue (in the developed countries) to contract dramatically under the weight of our sin and loss of faith. As the Pope himself has said there is a "silent apostasy" going on - sometimes not so silent. However God will preserve His faithful remnant.

"It is very politically and emotionally satisfying to cut the lines and let the West drift onto the rocks....That is what you have proposed. It is wrong."

Obviously I was speaking hypothetically as I am not an E.O. and I cannot pretend to be able to think as such. However there are many problem areas of deep division which I fear will still take decades or centuries to overcome.

Not least of which is the fact that many of them do not trust our motives and they do not trust Rome. This isn't just in their hierarchies, but it runs deep down to the grass roots.

Many of their Churches have only just come out from under the Communist yoke of oppression, and many are still under the repressive attentions of Islam. They need space to regain their confidence as Churches and communities without the fear that they are being lured back into another situation of oppression. This is why IMHO that the Pope ought to leave Patriarch Alexy alone, and give his Church the room to make the first approach if ever they feel ready.

Another factor which complicates this on the psychological/spiritual level is that the E.O. system of autocephaly has engendered a very different sentiment to the other Churches than we generally experience as Catholics. As Catholics we tend to have a very highly developed "sensus Catholicus": we relate to Rome as the centre of unity, we have a strong sense of the Church Universal, to seek unity with other Christians is obviously a good thing.

In comparison, in E.O. there is a much greater sense of sufficiency of the local Church which is based usually on ethnic and/or cultural lines. Consequently the sensus Catholicus is less developed and the desire for unity not such an imperative.

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