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.

I grant you your point re the sensus Catholicus, especially the part about being Rome centric. In the Eastern Church, we don't speak about "unity", but rather "communion" because so far as we perceive things, the fullness of the Church is, as St. Ignatius of Antioch tells us, where the bishop is. This so because the bishop stands in the place of Christ at the Eucharist and at every Eucharist is the fullness of the Church. The Eastern Church views the Church as a Eucharistic society. Organization is necessary, but that takes a back seat to the inner, sacramental life of the Church. Metropolitans and Patriarchs, while due precedence in honor and administratively may have more to do, yet they are no more bishops than any other, their "flock" no more the Church than that of any other bishop. The Eastern Church, traditionally, is organized along ethnic lines, though it has also been organized along regional lines as with the Patriarch of Alexandria or the EP's claim to jurisdiction over "barbarian lands". Because the fullness of the Church is where each of the bishops, individually, is, central unity isn't the point with us (nor for that matter is ethnicity). For us, communion, determined by shared Faith, praxis as it reflects the Faith and ecclesiology, is what describes the relationships among the Orthodox Churches. Within each "national church" the Church acts in Synods of hierarchs and occasionally (outside of some places like America, among others where they are more common)in Councils of the national church. The highest authority of the Eastern Church would be a Great Council of all the national (or regional) churches in communion with each other. The decisions of such a Council would be binding on everyone. Your unity is visible and at least traditionally quite tangible. Our communion is more mystical since as we see it, the fullness of the Church has been preserved without the necessity of a central, universal authority.

This is unfair.

You accuse the West of not being the East.
For example, you accuse us of keeping the people in darkness and in ignorance, away from the Bible, for a thousand years.
No.
The truth is that the West WAS dark and ignorant. We were barbarians. The only literate civilizaton in the West was Rome, and then only the aristocrats. Celt, Teuton, Angle, Saxon, Jute and Frank, Langobard and Viking, and Illyrian, and Balt and Pole and Magyar - the West - us - we were SAVAGES. Civilization has been in the east for, what? 7500 years? The alphabet was brought to us by the priests! We were the Apache and the Cherokee, the Iroquois and the Comanche. 1500 years ago, when your civilization was in its 6000th year, we were still - most of us - totally illiterate, wearing animal skins, without the wheel, and stripping off our clothes to run into battle naked and painted blue!
When the Church came to you, it came into cities that had stood, in some cases, for 7500 years. It came into a settled world of civilized people, taught to read, and build, and follow laws, and make coins and trade, and to pray, by Egyptian and Minoan, Phoenician and Sumerian and Babylonian, Assyrian and Mede and Persian and Greek and Macedonian and Parthian and Hittite and Jew. Your end of the Church captured the hearts, minds and souls of the first world of its time, in a world that had been able to read and think and live in solid houses for 5 millennia.

What did we have? Two, maybe three Greek trading cities, at Massilia, at Tartessus, at Syracuse. And one city, Rome, which was no Constantinople or Corinth. Before Christ, Rome was as brutal as ancient Nineveh of the Assyrians.

Civilization, and literacy, and law, were all BROUGHT TO US by the Church, and very much against the will of many of us, who picked up our swords and shields - war was the one thing we were better at than anyone else, sacking and burning even Rome thrice - and sought to wreck everything.

The Church was the capstone, the finishing touch of your civilization. The Church GAVE US ours. It was the Church, and nobody else, who gave us law, and literacy, and peace. The Romans made us slaves and killed us for sport. But the Roman Church lifted us up, clothed us, and loved us.

It is not fair to judge us by the standards of yourselves. Where we were in the "Middle Ages", which you call dark and oppressive, was at the very dawn of our civilization, when the Church, alone, without the help of organized states, taught us to read. The Church didn't "keep us in the dark". She did for us in 500 years what it took successive civilizations five thousand years to do for you.

And our neighborhood was a darker and more dangerous place than yours. We ourselves made it so, not the Church. Gaul, Briton, Scot, Pict, Irishman, Teuton, Angle, Saxon, Jute, Langobard, Viking, Norseman, Magyar, Wend, Hun and Mongol all descended on us from the North. And when the Muslims pounced on us from the South, we held them off and we drove them out...under the leadership of "kings" who were barely literate savages. It was the Church, alone, that welded us together into a civilization, and turned back enemy after enemy, this way and that way, on all sides. Had we had peace, maybe the dark ages would not have been so dark. But we had unrelenting war, 15 different invasions plus the Roman persecutions and ravages. Nero and Caligula and Commodus and Julien the Apostate: they lived with US. It was US they fed to the lions for their amusement. Read Eusebius' History of the Church. There was persecution in the East, yes, but when he wishes to describe the heights of relentless savagery, it is to Gaul he goes, to Vienne. We faced 15 different invaders and foes, 2 a century for nearly a millennium, and the constant civil wars that mad barbarians fought. And through all of that the Church, somehow, by the grace of God, not only civilized us and taught us to read, but welded us into a civilization that not only turned back all of the enemy thrusts, but converted their remnants to Christianity.
You denigrate our monarchical Church, but where were you when we were under the wheel of torment? When the Muslims overran you, you did not hold. We sent forces to try and save you. Yes, yes, eventually the later crusaders turned on Byzantium and attacked you too, but not the Children's Crusade, or the First Crusade, or the Third, or the Fifth. We came to help you five times, illiterate, barbarian Christians that we were, and still you with your 5000 year headstart and your four patriarchates and your emperor could not defeat the Muslims and lost everything to them. Yes, we were monarchic, but we saved Austria and Poland, and we saved Sicily from the Saracen. And we drove the Muslim from Spain and reconquered it for Christ.

We do not owe the East an apology that we were illiterate in the first few hundred years of our civilization. You were literate because you had a seven thousand year headstart. The Orthodox Church did not teach you to read. The Roman Catholic Church gave us the alphabet. The Orthodox Church did not teach you to obey law. We learned of law through the Church. The Orthodox Church did not teach you to respect order. It inherited that. Everything that we have, the Catholic Church taught us. She saved us from the lions of Rome, and she put clothes on us and gave us law and literature. She is our mother. All of that already existed for millennia when the Church came to you.
The Church had to build it all from scratch, from naked, howling savagery in a roadless wilderness when she came to us in 400 and 500 and 600 AD.

Without the monarchical Church, we would be Chechens and Moors.

So yes, our ecclesiology is completely foreign to the East. Because it is the very foundation stone of our entire civilization. Not yours. That obedience principle is the reason we are not slaves of pagans or Muslims. It is the reason we can read. The Church did not keep us in the dark and illiterate. It lit the lamp of learning for the first time in the trackless wildernesses of the West. How long did it take the Greeks to learn to read from the founding of their civilization? A thousand years? Two thousand? The Church gave us learning in a few hundred.

Our history is different. That is why the structure of our church is different. It is unfair to judge us for being savages in 1000 AD. For in 4000 BC, 1000 years after your settled civilization began, you were savages too. The Roman Church was our goverment because the alternative was anarchy and mass death and darkness and the triumph of paganism. (Where were the imperial cataphracts and galleys to save us from Frank and Saxon and Angle and Jute and Viking?)

Easterners were sophisticated. Westerners became civilized by the Church, nowhere else. Of course there is deep, abiding, residual respect. She is our Mother. Our people were not KEPT ignorant. We WERE ignorant, and savage. The Church civilized us even as she saved us.

What you have said is unfair. We are as we are because of our history. But God loves us and our Church. And yours. That is why He gives the same sacraments to both.

And that is why we cannot adopt your rite and you cannot adopt ours. Our histories are so different. But we ate at the same table once. And we should be able to eat at the same table again. We are not so lowly and barbaric anymore. We are capable of carrying on a conversation without sending armored knights and barking orders. Perhaps you could try to understand us and appreciate what Holy Mother Church has done for us. And then share the Lord's table with us, and us with you. That is all God asks of us.

We come from opposite poles of existence. It is Christ's table that unites us. Surely we can respect each others' histories and not refight all of the terrible wars of our ancestors? That was then. This is now. We were too violent. You were too arrogant. Now can we please stop it and pray that God will cover us and help us find the unity he commanded us to have?

There is virtually nothing in your post that I disagree with. But we shouldn't decide to ignore very real differences which the world has raised up between us.
The HMC (I have loved that term ever since I was little; its what the Irish side of the family has always called the Church. I wish we used it more)did civilize the West. It preserved and inculcated Greco/Roman civilization in our mutual, howling savage ancestors. But not all of that civilization came from monarchic, Roman monks, priests or prelates. The civilization of the Irish came from St. Patrick, who brought us "the gift of God's Faith, the sweet light of His love." St. Patrick planted, as was the way then, a distinctly Irish Church, orthodox in its Christian beliefs and by no means a vassal of Rome (well, the Church at Rome really didn't have any "vassals then, truth be told) His successors converted vast swaths of northern Europe, all the way to Lithuania, even before the Council of Whitby when Rome finally triumphed in at least England and Scotland.

The Roman Church civilized much of the West. There can be no argument about that. But the monarchic system which the times may required the Church to assume in order to advance and protect that civilization, and the Faith, had some grievous consequences which you are experiencing today. I am not prepared to say that the Church had a choice in this, but you know, the Church in the East spent centuries under the heel of Islam and survived. The Saracens, and the Turks after a while, may have been a rather more "sophisticated" than our barbarian ancestors, but they were just as deadly, and for a much longer time.

As for today, of course the West has civilized, perhaps too much. But the effects on the Western Church of what the Church there perhaps had to do, means for us in the East that there would have to be an openness, no a visceral commitment, on the part of the whole Church in the West to lay aside organizational forms and mindsets perhaps appropriate to another time and return to the phronema of the Church of the 7 Councils. This would be good for the East too, I have no doubt. But what I am suggesting is not easy, nor is there any quick, institutional fix that some group of "old men" can work out. It must come, first, from the Laos tou Theou and the clergy, no mean feat, by the way. Because the Holy Spirit is with the Church in the West, the hierarchs will come around. But it won't happen in our lifetimes unless Rome, in what might be its last exercise of monarchic power, exercises its authority within the Western Church to return it to that older way.

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).

I'm going to step out on a limb here and pray to our Lord that something in this will resonate with you.

I am a "baby boomer", baptized into the Roman Catholic Church. The ONLY liturgy I knew while growing up was the old Latin Mass. It was a great mystery to me and my family in that we followed along with our missals, as the priest mumbled in Latin. We NEVER questioned anything.

I distinctly recall one year when I was 7 or 8. It was Lent and certain members of the family were planning to attend the Midnight Mass (which took place at midnight!) I desperately wanted to join them and was given permission, on condition that I took a long nap in the afternoon. To this day, what stands out in that liturgy is the incense rising heavenward as the priest chanted the Litany of the Saints.

Shortly later, Vatican Council II ended, the altars were swung around, Eucharistic Ministers made their appearance, the organ and choir were replaced with guitars and singers.

2 years ago, someone in this forum recommended that I attend an Indult Tridentine Rite. I still had my missal, dusted it off and packed it up for the trip over to the church where this mass would be held. I was quite excited! Then the priest emerged from the side altar, wearing his beretta. Suddenly, I felt as though I had just stepped out of a time machine.

The altar servers were most impressive, giving their Latin responses. The choir sang Gregorian chant. And, suddenly, I realized that every aspect of this liturgy that had bothered me throughout me entire childhood, was still there. The altar boys were reciting "my" prayers. The choir was singing "my" hymns. Alone in that pew, I stared back at a beautiful liturgy. I was nothing more than an observer, a witness. I had NO participation whatsoever in what was happening before me.

Now, that may sound trite but it really isn't. My disappointment forced me to take a more introspective look at what I was seeking. Essentially, I sought a more reverent and spiritual approach to sharing in the liturgy of our Lord. It became apparent to me that I 'needed' to be a physical partner in that relationship, not just an observer or witness.

It took another two years before I turned to our Lord in prayer and asked Him to guide me to - a holy man, a valid liturgy and a welcoming community. As a Roman Catholic, it was also important to me that this liturgy and church be in total communion with the Holy See. That prayer was immediaely answered earlier this year, when I attended the Divine Liturgy at a Maronite (Eastern Rite) Catholic Church.

I can't begin to describe the awesome beauty of the Eastern liturgies. Having discovered one Eastern Rite church, and totally captivated by its respect for reverence, I sought to learn more. One book made that difference: "Captivated By Your Teacings", by Fr. Anthony Salim. In his book, he writes:

"Understanding the truths of the Faith may take different paths. In the Western Tradition of the Church, since the Middle Ages, one well-know path of doing theology has been summarized in the phrase, "faith seeking understanding" This approach has merit in that it begins with the acceptance of faith. However, its end-point, if too exaggerated, can leave one with primarily a rational point of view.

Eastern Tradition, on the other hand, recognizes that all reality is enveloped in a sense of Mystery (with a capital M). Some things may never be "figured out." I cannot always control my environment, my fiath journey, my life, perhaps the essence of faith lies in the trusting obedience I should have when I approach the greatest Myster y of all: our loving God."

After reading this, I had a more complete understanding of what drew me to that Midnight Mass at Easter and what has continued to draw me to the revised Novus Ordo liturgy over the years. It was indeed the "Mystery". The difference is that in the Eastern Rites, this is the norm.

My heart truly reaches out to you and I will hold you in my prayers, asking our Lord to deliver you to your destination on your journey of faith. Words are insufficient to express the profound gratitude I feel for having been guided to an Eastern Catholic liturgy. I firmly believe that God, in His infinite wisdom, reads the hearts of mortals, and 'feeds' them with the nourishment that will keep them alive. All we need do is place our trust in Him and ask for His guidance.

I have been following your discussion with utmost pleasure because it has remained very civil, and I wish to commend all of you.

There is also no doubt that some of you who come from the Western Rite have expressed love and admiration for the unchanging tradition and Orthodoxy of the East, and that we from the East should express our reverence to Rome, and its rightful honor.

Vicomte claims that our differences are not theological. I disagree. We can be in communion only when out Catechisms are one and the same; when and if we begin to preach the same faith. Unfortunately, we don't. We are two twins who may look very much alike, but who grew apart half way in their formative years and have two separate minds and habits that define them. No one can deny their similarity and their relationship, but one they are not. Our family name is Catholic, but we are two, not one.

Just like the twins, the Church can become one only if one dies; otherwise they will never profess with the same voice the same faith. The first church that admits to being in error will die as a church, so the best we can do about our "communion" is generous tolerance, and mutual respect and love for each other.

The Church of Rome is a different organism from its twin in Constantinople. The life of the Latin Church was in unity, obedience and universal consensus. That was only possible with one language and one Patriarch. The sooner the Church of Rome returns to universal Latin the sooner it will revitalize itself.

I had a chance to attend Pontifical Liturgy in Tokyo's St. Nicholas's Orthodox Cathedral during Lent. The service was sung in Japanese, the choir sung the hymns in Japanese, but we all knew what the Metropolitan was singing and what the choir and the people were replying. To us, Orthodox, it is not important if I am in a Greek or Russian church -- we all sing one and the same thing. The object of our Liturgy it to worship God, period, as artistically and beautifully as humanly possible. Thus, obedience, and language do not unite us, as is the case with Rome. Our Patriarch is primus inter pares literally (by necessity only, being without Rome). Nothing goes without him and he doesn't do anything wihtout the Synod. We are different, organically and theologically.

What makes it different is a multitude of things, Filioque being the most fundamental and historically divisive of united Church. Unless our understanding of Trinity and Divine Economy and the relationships between Divine Persons is the same, we cannot possibly agree or profess the same faith. For that reason, our communion is not possible in a fashion Vicomte suggests.

Orthodoxy will never abandon the decisions of the Seven Councils and admit that perhaps we can "modify" them for the sake of temporal and secular "unity" while perpetuating spiritual divide. So, either Rome will return to the Seven Councils or we will never be united.

What would returning to the Seven Councils entail, exactly? Abandoning the words "and from the Son" in the Nicene Creed. What else?

Read and compare Orthodox and Catholic Catechisms. If they are not the same, our teaching is not the same. Unless both the East and the West teach the same faith, they cannot be in spiritual and theological communion.

The Filioque would, of course, have to be removed because it is at the very heart of our understanding and teaching of the Trinity, that is, the Monarchy and the Divine Economy -- that the Father, who is the Supreme Wisdom (Sophia) is the only Source and Cause of everything, that the Wisdom eternally begets the Word and that the Spirit of God eternally proceeds from the Wisdom. That is the core and everything else is ex post facto.

Then there is Immaculate Conception. We both believe Mary is Immaculate and Ever-Virgin Mother of God, but that's where our "communion" stops, without going into the details that have been rehashed over and over.

Then there is the purgatory where souls are being flamed to the satisfaction of God (how preposterous!). Needless to say, the Church somehow didn't "know" this in earlier centuries. Makes you wonder what else the Church doesn't know!

Then there is the dogma, yes dogma of papacy. Dogma means that every member of the Church has to believe in it. How can we be in "communion" if the "other lung" doesn't believe it, and doesn't teach it?!

Our Sacraments may be the same, but our teaching of them is not. Take, for instance, the Eucharist (does it get any more basic than that, aside from the Filioque?): we both believe in the Real Presence, but that's where our "communion" stops. The doctrine of transubstantiation is alien to the Church of the Seven Councils. It is a philosophical exercise in futility to "explain" a Sacrament (Divine Mystery). Believe me, humans are not that smart!

We believe that we know all God wanted us to know about Him and that His Word delivered the faith to us through His Apostles. That faith is contained in the Holy Tradition of the Church (and by the Church we mean ekklesia, the clergy and the laity), the written and unwritten knowledge, the Sacaraments, and the explanations (not additions) of the Councils. We therefore do not believe in the "depository of faith" from which new "knowledge" or "better" faith can be derived.

We don't think the same and we don't teach the same. Someone who looks at our outwardly differences may conclude that we are two expressions of the same faith. We are not. A more careful look at the essence of our teachings makes that very clear.

So, in a nutshell, to answer your question: the West would (again) have to embrace orthodoxy in doctrine and praxis, as Kolkotronis correctly observes, for us to be one again. We are still the Church of the Seven Councils. In our eyes, you left the other four Patriarchs and then added unorthodox teachings. In your eyes, we remain frozen in time and are "missing" all the beautiful things that were added to the faith since the 11th century.

You acknowledge us as true, but "schismatic" because the Church that was true in the 8th century it is still true, but disobedient and "deficient.". We acklowegde you as having true roots, but in our eyes you are the first Protestants! You changed the faith into something that is unrecognizable to us and, therefore, unrecognizable to the Church when we were one and the same faith (before the Schism).

For us to be in spiritual and theological communion with each other, we must profess and believe the same faith; our teachings must be the same. It is not possible to be in communion if one side of the Church believes in purgatory and the other doesn't. Talk about a schizophrenic church!

One of us is (more) deficient than the other. We can't both be equally wrong. Only time will tell and perhaps we shall never know -- at least while on earth, and then it may not matter (no pun intended).

As I read through this thread and the other, more inflammatory one concerning the return of the icon and the tensions between Moscow and Rome, I realize that something I said earlier in the thread was a non-starter. I suggested that the Pope should recognize the Russian Patriarch in his sphere, and cease to send Catholic missionaries to seek Catholic conversions (from Russian Orthodoxy) in the territory of the Russian Patriarch.
But that cannot be the answer.

Our Churches are far apart. The Orthodox clearly believe that their side of the argument is completely correct. I have been unwilling to fight on the merits, because I think that no unity will ever be found that way. Personally, I think that Rome has the better argument. In a nutshell, I read Jesus' giving "the power of the keys, to loose and to bind" to Peter as Jesus himself creating the papacy, and I see Church Councils as a later creation, in apostolic times, to govern the Church. The Apostles and the Church did not have the power to override the Supreme Power that Jesus explicitly gave to Peter, and that Peter passed down in apostolic succession. When it comes down to it, I believe that the Bible itself says that Jesus Christ made the Pope infallible and final and absolute in his power, and that Church developments that trended away from that are themselves innovations that derogated from the structure that Jesus created. I believe in the monarchic Church, not just as a matter of historical necessity in the West, but as commanded by God Incarnate.

But I don't think that there is any way to argue the issue. One either reads the Gospels that way, or one does not.

Here, I sought a discussion as to how we could go about putting the sacramental Church back together. It has become clear enough to me that the desire to do so - which is to say the desire to obey Jesus - is weaker than the desire to preserve our respective traditions. If the Muslim onslaught did not reconcile East to West, nothing else is likely ever to do so in our lifetimes.

Therefore, the Pope must not recognize the territorial integrity of the Eastern Patriarchs. He must send Latin missionaries into Russia and compete directly with the Orthodox Church. There isn't anything else to be done at this point. Future generations may be more able to cooperate than we seem to be able to, but until that day, the Pope must not cede his authority over the universal Church, and if the Eastern Precincts of the Church will not recognize that authority, than it is the duty of the Pope to send in Roman Catholic missionaries into the Patriarchate of Moscow, and elsewhere, and compete for souls. Obviously the Russian Church has an ethnic advantage on this turf, but the long history of co-option by the Communists has certainly created the dynamic whereby Russians are, in fact, turning to Rome in unprecedented numbers. Will Catholicism sweep Russia? No. No more than the Eastern Rite Catholics will predominate in Eastern lands. Nevertheless, since it is clearer to me than it has ever been that there is not going to be a rapprochement between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, Catholicism has to be directly on the ground in the East, in direct competition. The Pope cannot wait and hope that things will get better. If they do, future generations will see their way clear where we will not. If they do not, the Catholic Church needs to be aggressively competeing for souls everywhere in the world, including in Orthodox lands.
Unfortunately, there apparently is no other way.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.