A Catholic View of Eastern Orthodoxy (1 of 4)

First, I shall discuss why Catholics should not only show some ecumenical concern for Orthodoxy but also treat the Orthodox as their privileged or primary ecumenical partner.

Secondly, I shall ask why the schism between the Catholic and Orthodox churches occurred, focussing as it finally did on four historic 'dividing issues'.

Thirdly, I shall evaluate the present state of Catholic-Orthodox relations, with particular reference to the problem of the 'Uniate' or Eastern Catholic churches.

Fourthly and finally, having been highly sympathetic and complimentary to the Orthodox throughout, I shall end by saying what, in my judgment, is wrong with the Orthodox Church and why it needs Catholicism for (humanly speaking) its own salvation.

Part 1 First, then, why should Catholics take the Orthodox as not only an ecumenical partner but the ecumenical partner par excellence? There are three kinds of reasons: historical, theological and practical - of which in most discussion only the historical and theological are mentioned since the third sort - what I term the 'practical' - takes us into areas of potential controversy among Western Catholics themselves.

The historical reasons for giving preference to Orthodoxy over all other separated communions turn on the fact that the schism between the Roman church and the ancient Chalcedonian churches of the East is the most tragic and burdensome of the splits in historic Christendom if we take up a universal rather than merely regional, perspective. Though segments of the Church of the Fathers were lost to the Great Church through the departure from Catholic unity of the Assyrian (Nestorian) and Oriental Orthodox (Monophysite) churches after the Councils of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451) respectively, Christians representing the two principal cultures of the Mediterranean basin where the Gospel had its greatest flowering - the Greek and the Latin - lived in peace and unity with each other, despite occasional stirrings and some local difficulties right up until the end of the patristic epoch.

That epoch came to its climax with the Seventh Ecumenical Council, Nicaea II, in 787, the last Council Catholics and Orthodox have in common, and the Council which, in its teaching on the icon, and notably on the icon of Christ, brought to a triumphant close the series of conciliar clarifications of the Christological faith of the Church which had opened with Nicaea I in 325.

The iconography, liturgical life, Creeds and dogmatic believing of the ancient Church come down to us in forms at once Eastern and Western; and it was this rich unity of patristic culture, expressing as it did the faith of the apostolic community, which was shattered by the schism between Catholics and Orthodox, never (so far) to be repaired. And let me say at this point that Church history provides exceedingly few examples of historic schisms overcome, so if history is to be our teacher we have no grounds for confidence or optimism that this most catastrophic of all schisms will be undone. 'Catastrophic' because, historically, as the present pope has pointed out, taking up a metaphor suggested by a French ecclesiologist, the late Cardinal Yves Congar: each Church, West and East, henceforth could only breathe with one lung.

No Church could now lay claim to the total cultural patrimony of both Eastern and Western Chalcedonianism - that is, the christologically and therefore triadologically and soteriologically correct understanding of the Gospel. The result of the consequent rivalry and conflict was the creation of an invisible line down the middle of Europe. And what the historic consequences of that were we know well enough from the situation of the former Yugoslavia today.

After the historical, the theological. The second reason for giving priority to ecumenical relations with the Orthodox is theological. If the main point of ecumenism, or work for the restoration of the Church's full unity, were simply to redress historic wrongs and defuse historically generated causes of conflict, then we might suppose that we should be equally - or perhaps even more - nterested in addressing the Catholic-Protestant divide. After all, there have been no actual wars of religion - simply as such - between Catholics and Orthodox, unlike those between Catholics and Protestants in sixteenth century France or the seventeenth century Holy Roman Empire.

But theologically there cannot be any doubt that the Catholic Church must accord greater importance to dialogue with the Orthodox than to conversations with any Protestant body. For the Orthodox churches are churches in the apostolic succession; they are bearers of the apostolic Tradition, witnesses to apostolic faith, worship and order - even though they are also, and at the same time, unhappily undered from the prima sedes, the first see. Their Fathers and other ecclesiastical writers, their liturgical texts and practices, their iconographic tradition, these remain loci theologici - authoritative sources - to which the Catholic theologian can and must turn in his or her intellectual construal of Catholic Christianity. And that cannot possibly be said of the monuments of Anglican, Lutheran, Reformed or any other kind of Protestantism.

To put the same point in another way: the separated Western communities have Christian traditions - in the plural, with a small 't' - which may well be worthy of the Catholic theologian's interest and respect. But only the Orthodox are, along with the Catholic Church, bearers of Holy Tradition - in the singular, with a capital 'T', that is, of the Gospel in its plenary organic transmission through the entirety of the life - credal, doxological, ethical - of Christ's Church.

There is for Catholics, therefore, a theological imperative to restore unity with the Orthodox which is lacking in our attitude to Protestantism - though I should not be misinterpreted as saying that there is no theological basis for the impulse to Catholic-Protestant rapprochement for we have it in the prayer of our Lord himself at the Great Supper, 'that they all may be one'. I am emphasising the greater priority we should give to relations with the Orthodox because I do not believe the optimistic statement of many professional ecumenists to the effect that all bilateral dialogues - all negotiations with individual separated communions - feed into each other in a positive and unproblematic way.

It would be nice to think that a step towards one separated group of Christians never meant a step away from another one, but such a pious claim does not become more credible with the frequency of its repeating. The issue of the ordination of women, to take but one particularly clear example, is evidently a topic where to move closer to world Protestantism is to move further from global Orthodoxy - and vice versa.

This brings me to my third reason for advocating ecumenical rapport with Orthodoxy: its practical advantages. At the present time, the Catholic Church, in many parts of the world, is undergoing one of the most serious crises in its history, a crisis resulting from a disorienting encounter with secular culture and compounded by a failure of Christian discernment on the part of many people over the last quarter century - from the highest office holders - to the ordinary faithful. This crisis touches many aspects of Church life but notably theology and catechesis, liturgy and spirituality, Religious life and Christian ethics at large. Orthodoxy is well placed to stabilise Catholicism in most if not all of these areas.

Were we to ask in a simply empirical or phenomenological frame of mind just what the Orthodox Church is like, we could describe it as a dogmatic Church, a liturgical Church, a contemplative Church, and a monastic Church - and in all these respects it furnishes a helpful counter-balance to certain features of much western Catholicism today.

Firstly, then, Orthodoxy is a dogmatic Church. It lives from out of the fullness of the truth impressed by the Spirit on the minds of the apostles at the first Pentecost, a fullness which transformed their awareness and made possible that specifically Christian kind of thinking we call dogmatic thought.

The Holy Trinity, the God-man, the Mother of God and the saints, the Church as the mystery of the Kingdom expressed in a common life on earth, the sacraments as means to humanity's deification - our participation in the uncreated life of God himself: these are the truths among which the Orthodox live, move and have their being.

Orthodox theology in all its forms is a call to the renewal of our minds in Christ, something which finds its measure not in pure reason or secular culture but in the apostolic preaching attested to by the holy Fathers, in accord with the principal dogmata of faith as summed up in the Ecumenical Councils of the Church.

Secondly, Orthodoxy is a liturgical Church. It is a Church for which the Liturgy provides a total ambience expressed in poetry, music and iconography, text and gesture, and where the touchstone of the liturgical life is not the capacity of liturgy to express contemporary concerns legitimate though these may be in their own context), but, rather, the ability of the Liturgy to act as a vehicle of the Kingdom, our anticipated entry, even here and now, into the divine life.

Thirdly, Orthodoxy is a contemplative Church. Though certainly not ignoring the calls of missionary activity and practical charity, essential to the Gospel and the Gospel community as these are, the Orthodox lay their primary emphasis on the life of prayer as the absolutely necessary condition of all Christianity worth the name.

In the tradition of the desert fathers, and of such great theologian-mystics as the Cappadocian fathers, St Maximus and St Gregory Palamas, encapsulated as these contributions are in that anthology of Eastern Christian spirituality the Philokalia, Orthodoxy gives testimony to the primacy of what the Saviour himself called the first and greatest commandment, to love the Lord your God with your whole heart, soul, mind and strength, for it is in the light of this commandment with its appeal for a God-centred process of personal conversion and sanctification - that all our efforts to live out its companion commandment (to love our neighbour as ourself) must be guided.

And fourthly, Orthodoxy is a monastic Church, a Church with a monastic heart where the monasteries provide the spiritual fathers of the bishops, the counsellors of the laity and the example of a Christian maximalism. A Church without a flourishing monasticism, without the lived 'martyrdom' of an asceticism inspired by the Paschal Mystery of the Lord's Cross and Resurrection, could hardly be a Church according to the mind of the Christ of the Gospels, for monasticism, of all Christian life ways, is the one which most clearly and publicly leaves all things behind for the sake of the Kingdom.

Practically speaking, then, the re-entry into Catholic unity of this dogmatic, liturgical, contemplative and monastic Church could only have the effect of steadying and strengthening those aspects of Western Catholicism which today are most under threat by the corrosives of secularism and theological liberalism.

For what it's worth, I believe that "persona" (like the English word "person") can either be a translation of "prosopon" *or* "hypostasis," terms that at times the Greek Fathers use interchangably, and at other times, with distinct meanings.

Finding exact equivalents for Greek terms has a long and problematic history that we don't need to revisit here.

At any rate, "hypostasis" tends to be commonly translated into English as "person," although many Orthodox translators tend to leave it, untranslated, as "hypostasis" (just as we tend to leave "Theotokos" untranslated) to prevent exactly this misunderstanding and to maintain the precision of the Greek terminology.

The problem is thus not with the Latin meaning of "persona," it is with the common understanding of the English word "person." For this very reason, we also have in English the word "persona," which means something more precise and that perhaps better reflects the meaning of the Latin word "persona" that you intend.

Most people using the English word "person" in a theological context, however, are going to mean something closer to how the Greek fathers used "hypostasis" than to the Latin meaning of "persona" that you are describing.

In any event, Orthodox Christians believe that all of our clergy, especially our bishops, are icons of Christ. There is no reason to believe that the patristic understanding was that the bishop of Rome was unique in this sense, although I am probably going to regret having said that, since it will likely result in endless patristic quotations in subsequent posts "disproving" the Orthodox understanding... :-)

RE: Changes in liturgical language in the West

Indeed the change from clerical Greek to popular Latin did cause a brief schism in the See of Rome in the early 3rd century. Clerics, most of whome were Greek argued for the universality and sanctity of Greek as most of the Christian world understood the Greek of the NT. Populists and native Roman clerics prevailed because, they argued, of the importance of having worship in a language (namely, Latin) that the people understood.

An interesting side note: the brief anti-Pope Hippolytus, who represented the conservative Greek faction in the Roman See in the early 3rd century is also the author of the work entitled The Apostolic Tradition concerning the regulation of ecclesiastical life. He probably wrote the work in 215 AD just prior to the schism as a justification of the Hellenic tradition in Rome. The division that followed and the fact that Hippolytus wrote The Apostolic Tradition explains why the work was almost entirely forgotten in Rome and the West while in the East, in Egypt and Syria precisely because it claimed to present the apostolic tradition from Rome it had a tremendous success. It would be a mistake to envision this text as THE Roman Mass of the 3rd century, pure and simple. At this time there was still no fixed formulary for the Liturgy, but only a fixed framework which the celebrant fills with his own words, as older texts clearly indicate. Rather, Hippolytus presents his text only as a suggestion, and expressly stresses the right to freely extemporize a text as a right which remained long in force. The right that Hippolytus laid claim to in his famous work. Hippolytus would later reconcile with Rome and died a martyr for the faith.

When Rome fell, the facility of Latin left the people, who began to develop native languages (the so-called Romance languages) of their own. This process was certainly under way by the 6th century. Latin then became a language preserved almost entirely by clerics. By the time of the Middle Ages, the Latin used by the clergy had developed into its own dialect (so-called Ecclesiastical Latin) and Europe developed its own popular languages.

adapted from: The Mass of the Roman Rite its origins and development, JA Jungmann.

The Liturgy of St. James was the local liturgy of Jerusalem in the fourth-century. It was never universal.

For one of the third-century Roman Eucharistic Prayers, see #4 here

When he has been made bishop, everyone shall give him the kiss of peace, and salute him
respectfully, for he has been made worthy of this. 2Then the deacons shall present the oblation
to him, and he shall lay his hand upon it, and give thanks, with the entire council of elders, saying: 3The Lord be with you. And all reply:
And with your spirit. The bishop says:
Raise your hearts. The people respond:
We have them with the Lord. The bishop says:
Let us give thanks to the Lord. The people respond:
It is proper and just. The bishop then continues:
4We give thanks to you God, through your beloved son Jesus Christ, whom you sent to us in former times as Savior, Redeemer, and Messenger of your Will, 5who is your inseparable Word, through whom you made all, and in whom you were well-pleased, 6whom you sent from heaven into the womb of a virgin, who, being conceived within her, was made flesh, and appeared as your Son, born of the Holy Spirit and the virgin. 7It is he who, fulfilling your will and acquiring for you a holy people,
extended his hands in suffering, in order to liberate from sufferings those who believe in you.a 8Who, when he was delivered to voluntary suffering, in order to dissolve death, and break the chains of the devil, and tread down hell, and bring the just to the light, and set the limit, and manifest the resurrection, 9taking the bread, and giving thanks to you, said, "Take, eat, for this is my body which is broken for you." Likewise the chalice, saying, This is my blood which is shed for you. 10Whenever you do this, do this (in) memory of me.
11Therefore, remembering his death and resurrection,
we offer to you the bread and the chalice,
giving thanks to you, who has made us worthy
to stand before you and to serve as your priests. 12And we pray that you would send your Holy Spirit
to the oblation of your Holy Church.
In their gathering together,
give to all those who partake of your holy mysteries the fullness of the Holy Spirit,
toward the strengthening of the faith in truth,
13that we may praise you and glorify you, through your son Jesus Christ, through whom to you be glory and honor, Father and Son,
with the Holy Spirit, in your Holy Church, now and throughout the ages of the ages. Amen.

Thanks for the posts, as always. I was really looking for something more ancient than the 3rd or 4th century. The Divine Liturgy evolved from Jewish tradition of liturgical prayer, and it was my understanding that the liturgies of the East contain the earliest remnants of the Church, which is why we say that it has changed the least.

Isn't Saturday still a liturgical day in the East, beginning at sundown? And what about the Liturgical year? Saturday is not a fast day. Liturgy is not celebrated during Lenten weekdays. Eastern Liturgical tradition still calls the catechumens to leave before Eucharist, etc.

Are these things still part of the Roman Catholic Liturgy? The Liturgy of St. John Chrysosstomos didn't change the elements of the service; he made it shorter, cutting out the 'fat.'

Are you accusing St. Vincent of being a Protestant, or of promoting the idea of a visibly divided Church, or of promoting individualism?

Nothing that you quoted St. Vincent as saying supports the idea that he would place private judgment above that of visible church authority. Quite to the contrary he affirms the authority of Church councils:

Then it will be his care by all means, to prefer the decrees, if such there be, of an ancient General Council to the rashness and ignorance of a few.

It is only when the judgment of the Church has not been exercised by the authority of the church visible that a private appeal be made to the sentences of the Fathers:

But what, if some error should spring up on which no such decree is found to bear? Then he must collate and consult and interrogate the opinions of the ancients...

If the Church in ancient times had the authority to pass binding judgments then she possesses that same authority today. St. Vincent is not implying that private judgment has the right to judge the Church herself. Thus St. Vincent escapes the charge of being a Protestant.

The challenge these days, at least in my opinion, is to FIND the Church. Once found, it is not for us to question her authority.

But how are we to FIND the one true Church. For us Catholics it is to recognize the visible apostolic authority that our Lord Jesus Christ established. By your rubric, however, we are first to pass judgment on the teachings of the alleged true Church. If it passes the muster of one's private judgment then, and only then, is it to be accepted as the true Church. Once found you then say "it is not for us to question her authority." But this is to deny any authority outside the individual.

Why should I, or anyone, accept your judgment in this matter? My judgment, and that of 1.1 billion other Catholics as well as some of the finest minds in the history of the West, all accept that the Catholic Church is faithful to the apostolic teaching and the teaching of the early councils. Your insistence that you are right carries no weight with those whose judgment disagrees with you.

And where, according to you, are we to find the true Church? By your judgment Catholics are heretics because well they are Catholic. The Ecumenical Patriarch is a heretic because he speaks with Catholics (and because he can count and knows that the Julian calender is inaccurate). But by your past statements anyone who is in communion with heretics are also heretics and thus excluded from the Church. Thus the entire Greek church, being in communion with the Ecumenical Patriarch, is also heretical. The same for the Russian church, etc. In the end the one true Church can only be found in a dozen monks of the Esphigmenou Monastery on Mount Athos. And you have the nerve to call the Greek Catholics "pitiful, pathetic & perfidious"?

" In the end the one true Church can only be found in a dozen monks of the Esphigmenou Monastery on Mount Athos." I don't think I said that but, were this the case, it would not be the first time in history that the Church has been outwardly reduced to a pitiful looking few.

G. K. Chesterton had an interesting remark on this conundrum. Writing as an Anglican but shortly before his conversion to Roman Catholcism, he said in ORTHODOXY,
"Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around."

Here, here, I say!

G. K. Chesterton had an interesting remark on this conundrum. Writing as an Anglican but shortly before his conversion to Roman Catholcism, he said in ORTHODOXY, "Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around."

Here, here, I say!

Here, here, I say also! It was indeed Chesterton's respect for Tradition that led him into the Catholic Church recognizing that only she was completely faithful to it:

The difficulty of explaining why I am a Catholic, is that there are 10,000 reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true.

But Tradition can be no infallible guide unless the visible Church which produced it is itself infallible. But if the visible Church was infallible two thousand years ago, it is infallible still today!

"But Tradition can be no infallible guide unless the visible Church which produced it is itself infallible. But if the visible Church was infallible two thousand years ago, it is infallible still today!"
Very true.
G. K. is a mystery to me. He had the right idea and then he went to Rome instead of further east. DUMB!
Well anyway, yes. The Church is just as infallible today as she ever was.
Jurisdictions, however, and individual hierarchs, are not and never were infallible. The fact that one bishop declares himself infallible is just another of his many heresies.
Seems as if from century to century the Pope of Rome just keeps getting more and more messed up in his head. I guess it must be the Roman air befouled by the Roman sewer system. Maybe there's still a lot of lead or mercury in the water pipes or something.

G. K. is a mystery to me. He had the right idea and then he went to Rome instead of further east. DUMB!

Chesterton has been called many things in his lifetime but dumb was never one of them. And here we come the the problem. Chesterton did exactly what you said he should do but his judgment came out different than yours. By your reasoning you have given no cause for picking one conclusion (his or yours) over the other. Thus we are trapped by our own personal judgment. If I were to chose between Chesterton and you on the basis of intellect I am afraid that Chesterton would have to win hands down. (This is not meant to be an insult. I judge that Chesterton also towers above my own small mind.)

Jurisdictions, however, and individual hierarchs, are not and never were infallible.

Then we must admit that Patriarch Michael I and the Greek bishops that supported him were not infallible in their condemnation of the Latin church. You judge that they were correct; I do not. If there is no visible external authority to decide between us then we are left with only private judgment and the "authority" of the visible church evaporates.

" If there is no visible external authority to decide between us then[sic]...."
You ASSUME there is no visible authority. G. K. Chesterton points us to that authority, as does St. Vincent of Lerins. Once again, here is what St. Vincent said:
"But what, if in antiquity itself there be found error on the part of two or three men, or at any rate of a city or even of a province? Then it will be his care by all means, to prefer the decrees, if such there be, of an ancient General Council to the rashness and ignorance of a few."(Commonitory iii:8) The Second Ecumenical Council spoke. The Pope of Rome ignored it. The Third Ecumenical Council spoke and he ignored that one as well.
Or as G. K. Chesterton said, "Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around."
The Pope of Rome ignored the votes of the dead and instead opted for the votes of those who just happened to be walking around in the Patriarchate of the West.

You ASSUME there is no visible authority. G. K. Chesterton points us to that authority, as does St. Vincent of Lerins.

But you are looking for the visible authority of the Church in the wrong place. This authority is not to be found in the written words of the councils but in the living authors who penned those words. The councilar decrees are only the preservation of their judgment. If the living flesh and bones Church possessed that infallible authority two thousand years ago so does she today.

The Second Ecumenical Council spoke. The Pope of Rome ignored it. The Third Ecumenical Council spoke and he ignored that one as well.

The popes, along with all the bishops of the West, have ignored nothing. It has been the constant profession of the Catholic Church that we are in complete fidelity to these, and all, ecumenical councils. It is your judgment that Catholic teaching is incompatible with these councils. I, and 1.1 billion Catholics, disagree with you. What external authority is to decide between us? In the end all you can offer me is your private judgment.

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