A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics

Russian Orthodox playing games? September 29, 2010

I reported earlier that both the Vatican and representatives of the Patriarch of Constantinople, the symbolic head of the Orthodox Church were claiming that talks on reunification were going very well.  Today, the Russian Orthodox Church vehemently denied these claims, and completely made up the claim that for the first 1000 years of the Church, prior to the Great Schism of East and West, the Pope never, ever had any authority in the East.  From everything I have read on the early Church fathers, this is completely false and a ridiculous, unsupportable statement to make.  I am severely dismayed. 

The Russian Orthodox Church said on Tuesday there was no “breakthrough” at a Catholic-Orthodox theological dialogue meeting in Vienna last week that ended with reports of promising progress on the thorny issue of the role of the Catholic pope. The statement may be more interesting for what it doesn’t say than what it does. It’s not clear which reports Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, the “foreign minister” of the Moscow Patriarchate, was referring to when he said that “contrary to allegations in the press, the Orthodox-Catholic Commission meeting in Vienna has made no ‘breakthrough’ whatsoever.”

Did any media report a breakthrough? Not that I’ve seen. Is it possible that Hilarion was actually referring to the cautiously upbeat statements given at a final news conference by Metropolitan John Zizioulas of Pergamon and Archbishop Kurt Koch, the top Vatican official for Christian unity?

Hilarion was in Vienna last week but did not appear at the news conference. Metropolitan John, who spoke for the Orthodox side, is affiliated with the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul, the spiritual leader of all Orthodox which Moscow seems to compete with for a leadership role. Could this have played a part?

The issue was the role the pope played in the millennium before the Great Schism of 1054. At the 2007 dialogue meeting in Ravenna, the Orthodox confirmed that the pope, as the bishop of Rome, was traditionally the first of the five ancient patriarchs. At the news conference in Vienna, the two delegation heads said that Catholics and Orthodox could eventually come to see themselves as “sister churches” if they could agree to translate that traditional role of the pope into a modern understanding of how the churches related to each other.

In his statement, Hilarion said:  “For the Orthodox participants, it is clear that in the first millennium the jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome was exercised only in the West, while in the East, the territories were divided between four Patriarchs – those of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem.”

“The bishop of Rome did not exercise any direct jurisdiction in the East in spite of the fact that in some cases Eastern hierarchs appealed to him as arbiter in theological disputes. These appeals were not systematic and can in no way be interpreted in the sense that the bishop of Rome was seen in the East as the supreme authority in the whole Universal Church. It is hoped that at the next meetings of the Commission, the Catholic side will agree with this position which is confirmed by numerous historical evidence.”

This statement is completely false.  The Pope was always viewed as the head of the Church, and although there were always attempts in the Greek church to usurp this role, for the first 1000 years of the Church the Primacy of the See of Peter was clear.  When the East repeatedly fell into heresy after about AD 350, it was the West, and, in particular, Rome, that would have to set things straight again.  Saying that the East just appealed to Rome occasionally to answer some questions is ridiculous – the entire Church, including the frequently wayward Greek Church, constantly referred to Rome on core issues of doctrine, recognizing the See of Peter as the final source of Authority in the Church.  I find this claim completely flabbergasting, and it calls into question both the integrity of Hilarion and the entire motives of the Russian Orthodox Church in these talks.  It’s like saying Peter wasn’t the head of the apostles, he was just a guy that Jesus talked with sometimes. 

I am forced to wonder if the Russian Church hasn’t simply been playing up the prospects of some ecumenical advance in order to wrangle from the Catholic Church more concessions on issues like whether many Churches in Russia should be returned to Catholic ownership, and how far Catholic evangelization efforts in countries like the Ukraine can advance.  It would be very disappointing to see that all this talk about a potential reunion wasn’t just a cynical exercise in realpolitick by the Russian Church.  But it would not be the first time.  There have been a half dozen or more occasions where the Eastern, and Russian church in particular, seemed to make overtures towards reunion, and they always collapsed.  Am I learning why?