Russian Orthodox say “no breakthrough” at Catholic-Orthodox talks last week
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.”
John didn’t elaborate on these points at the news conference, so it’s not clear if he might disagree with Hilarion’s view. Koch said that “unity without the Bishop of Rome is unimaginable. That’s because the issue of the Bishop of Rome is not just an organisational question, but also a theological one. The dialogue about just how this unity should be shaped must be continued intensively.” That means there are still years of discussions ahead of these theologians, but it doesn’t seem to contradict their message that progress was made.
Russian Orthodox and Polish Catholic churches eye major reconciliation
Russia’s Orthodox Church and Poland’s Roman Catholic Church have pledged to help their nations overcome a painful shared past and move towards reconciliation. The two churches, very influential in their own countries, agreed at a rare meeting of senior clergy to draw up a joint document that will express their Christian vision of how the two Slavic neighbours can come together.
“The idea is to look at the history of our nations from our Churches’ point of view. During the history of our nations we have experienced glorious moments but also very painful ones,” Stanislaw Budzik, a Polish bishop, told a news conference on Thursday. “As Christians we should reflect on the history of our nations and call for mutual love and cooperation,” said Budzik, general secretary of the Polish Bishops’ Conference.
Conflicts between Russia and Poland stretch back centuries. Soviet Russia joined Nazi Germany in 1939 in carving up Poland and Josef Stalin ordered the murder of 20,000 Polish officers in 1940 in Katyn forest. After World War Two, Moscow imposed an atheistic communist regime in Poland that lasted until 1989.
The churches’ initiative coincides with a cautious rapprochement between the governments that has gathered pace since a plane crash in Russia in April killed Poland’s President Lech Kaczynski, triggering an outpouring of Russian solidarity. Kaczynski and his 95-strong entourage had been heading to Katyn to mark the 70th anniversary of the massacre there. Russia and Poland remain at loggerheads over a host of issues including NATO expansion and missile defence, but want to focus more on their burgeoning trade relations.
Archbishop Hilarion Alfeyev, head of the Russian Orthodox Church’s external relations department, said the churches would steer clear of politics in their document, which he said would probably take up to a year to complete. “Our aim is to call for mutual forgiveness and reconciliation so the errors of the past are not repeated in the future. Our aim is to seek those things common to us both… such as Christian history,” he said.
The Catholic and Orthodox Churches have been split since the Great Schism of 1054 and relations have often been poor, but Russia’s Patriarch Kirill has assigned a high priority to improving inter-faith dialogue since his election last year.
Ukraine dispute blocks Vatican, Russian Orthodox meeting – Hilarion
By Aidar Buribayev
Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, would be willing to meet Pope Benedict after disputes with Catholics in Ukraine are resolved, Archbishop Hilarion, the Church’s external relations head, has said. A meeting with the pope would begin to heal the 1,000 year-old-rift between the Western and Eastern branches of Christianity, which split in 1054 amid disputes over doctrine and papal authority that remain unresolved.
“This is not an issue of when the meeting will take place, but what will be discussed,” Hilarion told journalists on Tuesay. He said the patriarch of the 165-million-strong Russian Orthodox Church, whose believers include the majority of Russia’s population as well as millions in neighbouring ex-Soviet countries Ukraine and Belarus, wanted a conflict in western Ukraine over church property to be resolved first.
“The situation in western Ukraine is the primary reason for the blocking of the meeting,” he said.
After the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Eastern Rite Catholics who owe their allegiance to Rome took back some churches that had been confiscated by communist authorities after World War Two and given to the Orthodox. The Russian Orthodox Church does not demand the churches are returned but wants the Vatican to take “concrete measures” towards improving the situation, Hilarion said, such as helping Orthodox followers who have only Catholic churches nearby.
“As soon as there are positive dynamics (from the Vatican) towards resolving this issue, then we can return to the issue of the pope and patriarch meeting,” Hilarion said.
He did not specify if the patriarch wanted help given only to members of the Russian Orthodox Church or to an independent Orthodox church formed in Ukraine in the 1990s, which rejects Russia’s top clergy despite Kirill’s appeals for unity.
Russian Orthodox wants joint traditional front with Catholics
Archbishop Hilarion Alfeyev, the Russian Orthodox Church’s top official for relations with other churches, has been busy this past week putting his revived church’s stamp on the world Christian scene. Over the weekend, he urged Catholics and Orthodox to join forces to defend their traditional version of Christianity. His comments, made during a visit to Paris to inaugurate his Church’s first seminary outside of Russia, come only days after positive remarks he made last week about how the Vatican and Moscow were slowly moving towards a meeting between Moscow’s Patriarch Kirill and Pope Benedict. Also last week, Hilarion indicated the Russian Orthodox might end their ecumenical dialogue with Lutherans after Germany’s Protestants elected a divorced woman, Bishop Margot Kässmann, as the new head of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD). After all this, he planned to take off for a visit to China.
At his news conference, the 43-year-old archbishop said the Catholic and Orthodox churches were “already working together in many areas. Their views are almost identical in matters of doctrine and social ethics. They could show all these values in secular society, nationally or internationally, for example regarding the concept of family, environment, economy, education etc.. Orthodox and Catholics should find a common language and speak with one voice to defend the values that derive from their faith. They could also work effectively in many areas of social and charitable work. This testimony and cooperation, I am sure, could help us take a different approach to the theological issues that divide us. They could make the question of unity more interesting to a wider audience, which is little concerned with theological issues such as the Filioque or primacy issues, but sensitive to questions that concern everyday life. I had the honour to raise these issues with His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI last September, during my visit to Rome.”
He also evoked this theme at the opening of the Russian Orthodox seminary in a former 17th-century Catholic convent in Epinay-sous-Sénart outside of Paris. “The opening of an Orthodox seminary of the Moscow Patriarchate in Paris is an unprecedented event,” he said. “The seminary is called among other things to become an important center of rapprochement between traditional Christian Churches in Europe … The primary task of Paris Seminary is to offer high-quality theological education. The seminary is also to become a link between the Russian Orthodox Church and Christians in France.”
Hilarion said Catholics and Orthodox were making progress in theological discussions on issues that split them in the Great Schism over a millennium ago. But he said the Moscow Patriarchate took a “prudent” approach to the “uncertain and distant results of theological dialogue … it knows that such a dialogue will probably take decades to come to a result.”
On that dialogue with German Protestants, Hilarion was quoted last week as citing protocol problems arising from Kässmann’s election. “We can develop the dialogue, but there are lots of simple protocol questions. How will the Patriarch address her or meet with her?” the Interfax news agency quoted him as saying. This elicited a sharp reaction from Kässman and Bishop Martin Schindehütte, Hilarion’s counterpart in the EKD. In a joint letter to Patriarch Kirill, they expressed their “great surprise and incomprehension” at his “unsuitable” remarks on her election. They said there was a Christian commandment of mutual respect “im geschwisterlichen Umgang” (in brotherly and sisterly interchange) among churches despite theological differences and regretted that a planned ceremony on November 30 to mark 50 years of EKD-Russian Orthodox dialogue had to be called off.
Pope, Moscow patriarch moving slowly towards possible meeting
A senior Russian Orthodox leader has said the idea of a meeting between Moscow’s Patriarch Kirill and Pope Benedict could be moving towards the preparation stage. Archbishop Hilarion Alfeyev, the “foreign minister” of the Russian church, made clear that neither a date nor a location for such the long-awaited meeting was under discussion. But given the glacial pace at which progress on this issue is made, even the change in tone from Moscow is worth noting.
There has never been a meeting between a pope and the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, the largest of the Orthodox Churches that make up the second biggest Christian family after Roman Catholicism. The late Pope John Paul II wanted to make history with a visit to Russia, but strains between the Vatican and Moscow over alleged Catholic proselytising in the former Soviet Union got in the way.
The election of Pope Benedict in 2005 and of Patriarch Kirill early this year seemed to close that chapter of the churches’ bilateral relations and open a new one moving towards a possible meeting. But despite the warmer tone in comments from each side, problems still remained. Only last month, Hilarion denied reports of an impending meeting and said relations needed a “radical improvement.”
The Interfax news agency quoted Hilarion as telling reporters in Moscow: “Today it can be said that we are moving to a moment when it becomes possible to prepare a meeting between the Pope and the Patriarch of Moscow … There are no specific plans for the venue or timing of such a meeting but on both sides there is a desire to prepare it.”
Hilarion added with approval that that Benedict is “a very reserved, traditional man who does not seek the expansion of the Catholic Church to traditionally Orthodox regions.”
Cardinal Walter Kasper, the top Catholic official for ecumenical relations, made positive sounds back in September after Hilarion met Benedict at the Vatican. Last month, he said a Catholic-Orthodox theologians’ meeting in Cyprus had gone well and even discussed the question of the primacy of the Bishop of Rome, one of the main issues dividing Catholics and Orthodox. There was no agreement, of course, but the two sides agreed to continue to talk — in September 2010 in Vienna.
pax
its Good news when the Orthodox joins us as Brothers we become a Real Moving Force but tradition is tradition so Ecumenism with the protestant dosent hold waters . we Roman catholic are happy being traditional because this will make us Grow and moral standing will prevail.
God Bless the Holy father pope Benedict and the Russian Patriarch Kirill
God bless.
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