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 your information, it's a fact that the so-called Eastern Catholic churches are now trying to recapture and revive their Orthodox roots and shed latinization. Perhaps you may wish to ask yourself why.

I don't think it's any secret why. They felt it necessary or perhaps were compelled to Latinize, and that was a big pastoral mistake. This is now being corrected.

Up till the early 1900s were not the Orthodox in the patriarchal sees of Alexandria and Antioch using the Byzantine Rite exclusively and not their own?

Thanks for the explanation with regards to the semantic differences between rite, church, and tradition.

I must respectfully disagree with the comment about "...the terms "uniatism" and "uniate" must never again be used."

The terms uniate and uniatism are, to a certain extent, being used as mild insults by our Orthodox bretheren. Words do have power. But I think in this instance it's only because we as eastern Catholics give it that power. Perhaps a better approach is to simply adopt those terms as our own.

Some of the the Orthodox seem to have some problems with the existence of the eastern Catholic churches. And let's face it, we need only go back about 50-100 years in history to see some serious problems with the treatment of the eastern Catholic churches at the hands of the latin Catholic church. But the point is, in spite of it all, we're still here and we're not going to disappear any time in the forseeable future.

Excursus. "If I need grammatical advice I will ask for one." Insert comma after "advice" and replace "one" with "it".

I am not an apostate. I am a cradle Roman Catholic with very good friends in several of the Eastern Catholic Churches.

You and Graves together provided us with these edifying words:

YOU: "Personally, I think 'pittiful' (sic) is a much better term for these churches."

GRAVES: "Just my personal opinion but how about, pitiful, pathetic & perfidious?"

You are certainly entitled to your opinion. Just as I am entitled to point out when I think that opinion is snide and uncharitable. It is certainly true that the Eastern Catholic Churches are trying to reverse centuries of latinization. You can make that point without succumbing to the temptation of being your own snide self by adding "so-called." To you, perhaps, they are "so-called," just as I might well consider the Serbian Church a "so-called" Orthodox Church. But it would be snide and uncharitable of me to refer to your Church that way.

The fact remains that both you and Graves were snide and uncharitable in your remarks. After reading Alexy II's nonsense about the Kazan icon, I'm beginning to wonder if that isn't a genetic component of "pure Orthodoxy."

"Up till the early 1900s were not the Orthodox in the patriarchal sees of Alexandria and Antioch using the Byzantine Rite exclusively and not their own?"

This is news to me. The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom is obviously Antiochian because, before he became Archbishop of Constantinople, St. John's turf was Antioch. And, as you know, Canon 32 of the Council in Trullo establishes the ancestry of the liturgies of the Church.

I have looked at the Divine Liturgy of St. Mark, the one used by the Pope of Alexandria and also the Patriarch of Auxum. Neither looks to me to be all that different from the Byzantine Rite to which you refer. But maybe I'm missing something. What exactly is your point?

"Just my personal opinion but how about, pitiful, pathetic & perfidious?"

Snide and uncharitable.

And my guess - the nastiest variety of "Orthodox" - an ex-Episcopalian.

That's alright, we've got a doozie of an ex-Anglican on our hands now, too. The SSPX bishop Williamson. Also, nasty as they come. And an anti-Semite to boot. What is it about ex-Anglicans that somehow even the Churches they "convert" to are never quite "extreme" enough for them? Oh well . . .

Meanwhile, Graves, I knew Saint Paul.

Saint Paul was a friend of mine.

And, Graves, you're no Saint Paul.

"Great quotes from you two here, really quite edifying!"

Free Republic is an open forum and is very egalitarian in that pretty much anyone can post whatever opinion they want. Sometimes you get insights that are stunning in their intelligence and beauty. Other times you get insights that are stunning in their ignorance and bigotry.

Unfortunately, we have a handful of "Orthodox" posters here on FR that seem to have made something of a cottage industry of spouting their bitterness and hatred toward any church or religious tradition that doesn't fit within the narrow confines of what they think is right. I would also hasten to add that FR has more than it's share of radical-traditionalist "Catholics" who do the same.

Members of both these angry factions would insist that they're Christians with a capital "C".

I would argue that they're completely missing the point, but then again, arguing with them at all is I believe a mistake. Why give sustenance to the anger and outrage that they seem so keen to nurture? Why put another layer of tarnish on my soul?

I find it all oddly reminiscent of dealing with the more primitive protestant sects who insist that they have found the ONE path to enlightenment and salvation.

"The terms uniate and uniatism are, to a certain extent, being used as mild insults by our Orthodox bretheren."

O fiddlesticks. If I want to insult the people of the Unia, I can do much better than to call them Uniates. The term is handy. The term is descriptive. If people of that persuasion find the term offensive, they really do need to get a grip.

The reality for the Uniates is simply this: They are a tiny minority within the Roman Catholic organization and they therefore get little respect from within it(as measured by clout). And they are viewed by the Orthodox as perfidious, pathetic, and pitiful at best. They have, however, contributed some important scholars. But so also have the Anglicans, for that matter.

Although I am posting this to myself, I am addressing it to all in this thread. Differences of opinion and faith, even profound differences, can be expressed without recourse to pejoratives and attacks upon the character and the integrity of other Christians. I would respectfully ask all concerned to tone down the temperature of the rhetoric a notch or two. Civility and charity are far more effective in communicating a point then heated and intemperate language, which some might interpret as invective.

Brief biography of Father Aidan Nichols OP
Father Aidan is a lecturer in the Cambridge University Divinity Faculty, Prior of Blackfriars Cambridge, and Visiting Professor of Systematic Theology in the Institute. During his time at Oxford he completed a BA in Modern History in 1970, a MA in 1974, and a Dip.Theol. in 1977. An STL was also conferred by the English Dominican Studium in 1977. In 1986 he was awarded his Doctorate in Philosophy at Edinburgh. An STL was conferred by the Pontifical university of St Thomas, Rome, in 1990. He has been Chaplain to Edinburgh University (1977-1983), lecturer in the History of Christian Doctrine and Ecumenics at the Angelicum (1983-1991), and Assistant Catholic Chaplain to Cambridge University (1991-95). Aidan is the most prolific writer of theology in the English language in the world today and has published on countless topics in theology including more than 25 major books and numerous articles in systematic, sacramental and ecumenical theology.

Father Aidan’s most recent books include: “From Newman to Congar: The Idea of Doctrinal Development” (1990), “Holy Order: The Apostolic Ministry” (1990), “The Shape of Catholic Theology” (1991), “A grammar of consent: The Existence of God in Christian Tradition” (1991), “Rome and the Eastern churches” (1992), “The Panther and the Hind: a Theological History of Anglicanism” (1993), “Byzantine Gospel: Maximus the Confessor in Modern Scholarship” (1993), “Scribe of the Kingdom: Essays on Theology and Culture” (1994), “The Splendour of Doctrine: The Catechism” (1995), “Light from the East: Authors and Themes in Orthodox Theology” (1995), “Looking at the Liturgy: A Critical View of its Contemporary Form” (1996), “Catholic Thought since the Enlightenment: A Survey” (1998), The Word has been abroad: A Guide through Balthasar’s Aesthetics” (1998), “Christendom awake: On Re-energising the Church in Culture” (1999), “No bloodless myth: A Guide through Balthasar’s Dramatics” (2000), “Come to the Father: An Invitation to Share the Catholic Faith” (2000), “Say it is Pentecost.: A Guide through Balthasar’s Logic” (2000), “Abortion and martyrdom” (2002) and “Beyond the blue glass: Catholic Essays on Faith and Culture” (2002). Father Aidan has taught at the Institute in Melbourne during 2004.

"Civility and charity are far more effective in communicating a point then heated and intemperate language, which some might interpret as invective." The word uniate is not invective and it is not heated, or intemperate.

To call pious monks "perverts". Now that's uncivil, uncharitable, heated, intemperate and.....quite frankly, unacceptable.

Just my personal opinion of course, but I say let the azymites and their allies in the East clean up their own house.

You probably wanted to write "insert a comma..." but never mind.

Just as I am entitled to point out when I think that opinion is snide and uncharitable

Truth hurts. What is really an "Eastern Catholic" but a minority, and oddity in the Roman Catholic communion? They were useful at one time; they were latinized and they may become a bargaining chip -- once again. They are stuck between Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy. They are neither. Their theology is Orthodox. But their heart is not. In the RCC they are a low singe digit percentage figure. That is pitiful. Nothing uncharitable or snide about it; just sad.

You can make that point without succumbing to the temptation of being your own snide self by adding "so-called."

The "so-called" is not snide or uncharitable either. It is confusing. The Orthodox Church is Catholic and Apostolic, and it is Eastern. How can there be "another" Eastern Catholic church? The same goes for the so-called "Greek-Catholic" church in Ukraine. It is not Greek, for sure. And the Greek Orthodox Church is fully Catholic, so what is a "Greek-Catholic" church? The term "Uniate" leaves no ambiguity as to what churches wer are talking about.

Perhaps you need to work on your sensitivities and not read into things

I might well consider the Serbian Church a "so-called" Orthodox Church. But it would be snide and uncharitable of me to refer to your Church that way

You certainly may! But, I hope you realize that you will be laughed at by the Orthodox as well as the Roman Catholics.

Thank you for posting the last part (4). As I suspected, the author's logic started to crumble in that last episode.

For one, nationalism is not an obstacle to Orthodox unity or cahtolicity. I can tell you that when I walk into an Orthodox Church in Japan I feel at home. I can't say that for any Roman Catholic Church.

Second, his representation of Svetosavlye as something "created" by St. Nikolai Velimirovich is a joke -- an ignorant joke at that. And, given the educational menu of this author, a real surprize. It is a gross caricature at best.

For one, Orthodoxy is not knocking on Vatican's doors. Most of the touchy-feely stuff coming from the Orthodox side is mainly from the Ecumenical Patriarch in Istanbul, and we all know that EPs were frequently out of line and even openly heretical, so this one -- and many of the churches under his jurisdiction -- are outwardly, and even inwardly, seriosuly tainted.

It is Roman Catholicism that, apparently at all costs, wants to convince the Orthodox to "return" to the Church. That is naive, at best, and -- for the sake of civility that you have appealed to -- I shall leave it at that. I can understand why Rome is reaching out, but you must also understand that we don't want the kind of Church you have. We do not share the same faith. We do not see things the same way. It's that simple. You are more than welcome to return to Orthodoxy. But we all know that will never happen.

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