Conference organized by the Apostolic vicariate of Istanbul
on the Occasion of the 50th Anniversary of the Visit of Pope Paul VI to Istanbul
Istanbul, 28 November 2017
The Ecumenical Path of the Catholic Church
with the Orthodox Church
Of all the Christian churches and ecclesial communities, the Orthodox is without any doubt the closest to Catholics from the theological perspective. Catholics and Orthodox have maintained the same early church structure, namely the fundamental sacramental–eucharistic and episcopal structure of the Church, in the sense that in both churches the unity in the eucharist and in the episcopal ministry are considered constitutive of being church. When we reflect on how close the communion between the two churches is, we also feel compelled to overcome the ecclesial schism between East and West and to restore eucharistic communion once more. In order to understand and evaluate the path of reconciliation between the Orthodox and the Catholic Church it seems appropriate to briefly revisit its beginning over fifty years ago.
1. The beginning of the legally binding restoration of charity
In its official form the bilateral ecumenical dialogue dates its beginning to the historical meeting between the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople and the Bishop of Rome, the blessed Pope Paul VI, on the 5th and 6th of January 1964 in Jerusalem. The mutual will for the restoration of charity between the two churches proclaimed by this meeting and sealed with a fraternal embrace remains vivid in our minds as an icon of readiness for reconciliation and – since agape and the fraternal embrace in fact represent the terminus and rite of eucharistic unity – unification in eucharistic communion, which must be the goal of this shared path. For wherever agape is present in its truest sense as an ecclesial reality it must, in order to be credible, also become eucharistic agape. That accords with the intention of Patriarch Athenagoras and Pope Paul VI, who perceived in this event in Jerusalem the dawn of a new day in which future generations will together glorify the one Lord by participating in the same body and blood of the Lord.[1]
This memorable encounter in Jerusalem paved the way for the historical event of the 7th of December 1965 when in the Patriarchal Church of Saint George in Phanar in Constantinople and in the Basilica of Saint Peter in Rome the highest representatives of both churches removed, as the Joint Declaration states, both “from the memory and from the midst of the church” the reciprocal anathemas of 1054, so that they can no longer hinder “closer relations in charity”.[2] As the events of 1054 were thus consigned to oblivion in this way, it was at the same time declared that they no longer pertain to the official deposit of the churches. With this act the poison of excommunication was drawn from the organism of the church, and the “symbol of schism” was replaced by the “symbol of love”: “The relationship of ‘love grown cold’, of contradictions, mistrust and antagonism, has been replaced by the relationship of love, of fraternity, symbolised by the fraternal embrace”.[3]
These acts became the starting point for the ecumenical dialogue of charity, which was intensified over the following years through reciprocal visits and a lively exchange of communications which are documented in the “Tomos Agapis”. Today we recall above all the visit of Pope Paul VI to Patriarch Athenagoras on the 25th of July fifty years ago. The dialogue of charity has found a gracious continuity in the beautiful tradition of reciprocal visits between the Church of Constantinople and the Church of Rome on their respective patronal festivals or for especially important occasions. It has, for example, become a noteworthy custom for the popes to travel to the Phanar in Constantinople soon after the beginning of their pontificate; and vice versa it was a beautiful sign of a mature friendship that the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew came to Rome for the inauguration of Pope Francis, which can be regarded as the first event in the ecumenical relationships between Rome and Constantinople.
Today and in the future the dialogue of charity must be deepened, in no small measure due to the fact that in our history differing spiritualities have to a great extent been at least a contributing factor in the ecclesial schism, as Cardinal Walter Kasper has rightly stated: “Christianity did not primarily talk its way apart quarrelling over different doctrinal formulae, but grew apart leading different lives”.[4] This development is to a large extent based on the fact that in Eastern and Western Christianity the gospel of Jesus Christ was from the start received in a different way and lived and handed down in different traditions and cultural forms. In the first millennium Eastern and Western Christianity still lived in the one church with such differences, but they became increasingly estranged from one another and could no longer understand one another, with the result that this mutual alienation must be seen as the underlying cause of the ultimate split.[5] Overcoming such estrangement, which has in the past led to misunderstandings and polemics, can only be achieved through love and patience.
2. From the dialogue of charity to the dialogue of truth
The dialogue of charity is also the environment in which the dialogue of truth can flourish, that is the thorough theological inquiry into the divisive differences that must be overcome in order to enable ecclesial communion. The two dialogues belong together as inseparably as love and truth. For love without truth is empty and mere sentiment, and truth without love is blind and cold. The dialogue of charity forms the prerequisite for the dialogue of truth and must always accompany it. The beginning of theological dialogue was proclaimed in a joint declaration on the occasion of the first visit by Pope John Paul II to the Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I on the Feast of Saint Andrew in 1979.[6] Already in the following year the first two plenary assemblies of the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue held in Patmos and Rhodes served as the preparation for the dialogue with regard to the methodology and the subject matters to be dealt with in the first phase of the dialogue.
a) Becoming one in faith and the persistent problem of uniatism
The theological dialogue can proceed from the encouraging starting point that the Catholic and Orthodox Churches share an extensive common basis of faith convictions, so that the ecumenical dialogue was in the first instance able to concentrate on consolidating the shared foundations of the faith. The ecumenical dialogue proved extremely fruitful in the first decade from 1980 to 1990, in which far–reaching convergences were achieved between Catholic and Orthodox theology in fundamental questions of the faith and important theological issues. The beginning was made with the question of the understanding of the Church, which was issued by the Plenary Assembly of the Commission in Munich in 1982 in the document entitled “The Mystery of the Church and the Eucharist in the Light of the Mystery of the Holy Trinity”. The following Plenary Assemblies in Chania on the Island of Crete in 1984 and in Bari in 1987 dealt with subject “Faith, Sacrament and the Unity of the Church”. The Plenary Assembly in New Valamo in Finland in 1988 reflected on the vocation of ordained ministry in the church and issued the document “The Sacrament of Ordination in the Sacramental Structure of the Church”. At that time an envisaged assembly in Freising in 1990 was intended to discuss the theological and canonical consequences of the sacramental nature of the church, and above all the question of the reciprocal relationships between authority and conciliarity in the Church.
But that did not eventuate because in the second decade, in the years from 1990 to 2000, the ecumenical conversations became increasingly difficult. The essential cause was the new situation ushered in by the political turning point in 1989. The political transformations in Eastern Europe led – in the Ukraine, in Siebenbürgen and in Romania above all – to the return from the catacombs into public life of the Catholic Eastern Churches which had been brutally suppressed and forcibly integrated into the Orthodox Church under the Stalinist dictatorship. On the Orthodox side this development re–inflamed the old polemics of uniatism and proselytism, leading to a dramatic worsening of the atmosphere of dialogue. The Plenary Assemblies of the Commission in Balamand in 1993 and in Baltimore in 2000 dealt with these difficult problems, without arriving at a constructive result, with the consequence that the work of the Commission was suspended. In spite of a long period of theological progress, the theological dialogue was ship-wrecked by the problem of uniatism, and it seemed to have returned to ground zero, at least as far as the solution of this thorny issue was concerned.
The ecumenical dialogue had thus reached a critical phase. On the one hand, the question of uniatism represents a lasting trauma for the Orthodox Churches which must be dealt with sensitively on the part of the Catholic Church. On the other hand, this question can only be solved if the more fundamental question of the communion with Rome and the primacy of the Bishop of Rome can be dealt with in depth, with the consequence that progress could only be made by returning to this issue of principle. And that occurred in 2006.
b) History and theology of primacy
The Plenary Assemblies in Belgrade in 2006 and in Ravenna in 2007 turned back to the document that had been prepared for the Assembly in Freising in 1990, and issued it under the title “Ecclesiological and Canonical Consequences of the Sacramental Nature of the Church. Ecclesial Communion, Conciliarity and Authority”. This document gives expression above all to the twofold conviction that synodality and primacy are mutually dependent on one another and that this correlation is realised on all levels of the church – local, regional and universal. Catholics and Orthodox were thereby able to jointly declare for the first time that the church requires a protos on all levels of its life, including the universal. In conclusion the document gives expression to the conviction of the Commission that the reflections offered here represent a “positive and significant progress in our dialogue” and deliver a “firm basis for future discussion of the question of primacy at the universal level of the Church”[7]. This result can be deemed a milestone in Orthodox–Catholic dialogue.
This hopeful step has however been overshadowed by the fact that on the one hand the Russian Orthodox Patriarchate did not recognise the Ravenna document and in 2013 issued its own declaration on the question of primacy on the universal level of the Church, and on the other hand that the ecumenical dialogue has become very difficult since Ravenna. In Ravenna the plan was indeed made that the Commission should as the next step follow up with a historical study of the question of what role the Bishop of Rome had played in the first millennium in which East and West were united, in order to then in a second step analyse the different developments in East and West in the second millennium, and finally in a third step to develop a shared understanding of the primacy in the third millennium. After very difficult Plenary Assemblies in Cyprus in 2009, Vienna in 2010 and Amman in 2014 it was not possible until the assembly in Chieti in 2016 to issue a new document with the title “Synodality and Primacy During the First Millennium: Towards a Common Understanding in Service to the Unity of the Church”.
Last September the Coordinating Committee met on the Island of Leros in a positive atmosphere, planning the future dialogue and deciding to devote future reflection to the subject “On the way to unity in the faith: theological and canonical questions”. Thus those problems which need to be solved in order to find unity in the faith must firstly be identified. The first question to be tackled is “Primacy and Synodality in the Second Millennium and Today”. Beside various other questions the question of so-called “uniatism” is also to be dealt with within this broader context.
3. Catholic perspective for the future
I am confident that with this resolution the Commission can follow a constructive path into the future. The path ahead will indeed not become easier, for it cannot be a matter of finding a compromise with the lowest common denominator. Instead, the respective strengths of both churches will be engaged in conversation with one another on the basis of the fundamental principle of ecumenical dialogue consisting in the mutual exchange of gifts. I trust I may be permitted in conclusion to sketch a brief perspective for the future, in which of course my task can be only to outline what the Catholic Church can learn from this dialogue and can itself contribute to it following critical self-examination.
a) Distinction between the essence and the exercise of primacy
The starting point is to acknowledge that the primacy of the Bishop of Rome is perceived to be a serious obstacle to the restoration of Christian unity. It is to the credit of Pope Paul VI that during a visit to the then Secretariat for Christian Unity in 1967 he expressed in a free and frank manner that the question of the papal ministry represents one of the most important ecumenical problems: “The Pope is, we know all too well, without doubt the gravest obstacle on the path of ecumenism.”[8]
In his encyclical on the commitment to ecumenism “Ut unum sint” Pope John Paul II referred back to this honest confession when he declared that the ministry of the Bishop of Rome “constitutes a difficulty for most other Christians, whose memory is marked by certain painful recollections”.[9] John Paul II was however convinced that that the ministry handed down to the successor of Peter is in the first instance a ministry for unity and that it finds its “quite particular explanation in the sphere of ecumenism”.[10] With this conviction he devoted the conclusion of his encyclical on ecumenism to fundamental thoughts on the “ministry of unity of the Bishop of Rome”. In this context he expressed the request to his own Church but also to the whole of ecumenism to engage with him in a patient and fraternal dialogue on the primacy of the Bishop of Rome, with the particular goal of finding “a way of exercising the primacy which, while in no way renouncing what is essential to its mission, is nonetheless open to a new situation … in which this ministry may accomplish a service of love recognized by all concerned”.[11]
The fundamental distinction between the essence of the primacy of the Bishop of Rome and the concrete form of its exercise was also taken up by Pope Benedict XVI on various occasions, renewing the related invitation to the ecumenical community, for example in his encounter with representatives of the Orthodox churches in Freiburg im Breisgau in September 2011. “We know that above all it is the question of primacy that we must continue patiently and humbly struggling to understand aright. In this regard, I think that the ideas put forward by Pope John Paul II in the Encyclical Ut Unum Sint (no. 95) on the distinction between the nature and form of the exercise of primacy can yield further fruitful discussion points.”[12]
For his part, Pope Francis follows the path his predecessors have prepared with great openness, in that he too clearly distinguishes between what is essential to the primacy and what pertains to the concrete and in part historically determined form in which it is exercised. At the same time he admits that until now we “have made little progress” towards making this distinction. Pope Francis is however convinced that “an excessive centralisation complicates the life of the Church and its missionary dynamism”, and that it is necessary for the papacy as well as the central structures of the universal church to heed the call for a pastoral new direction. “It is my duty, as the Bishop of Rome, to be open to suggestions which can help make the exercise of my ministry more faithful to the meaning which Jesus Christ wished to give it and to the present needs of evangelization.”[13]
b) Reconciliation of primacy and synodality
With this in mind Pope Francis stressed in “Evangelii gaudium” that “in the dialogue with our Orthodox brothers and sisters, we Catholics have the opportunity to learn more about the meaning of episcopal collegiality and their experience of synodality.”[14] The Catholic Church must indeed admit that it has not yet developed that measure of synodality in its life and ecclesial structures that would be theologically possible and necessary, and that a credible combination of the hierarchical and the synodal–communial principle could be an essential aid towards further ecumenical conversation with the Orthodox. The strengthening of synodality is an essential ecumenical contribution by the Catholic Church towards a possible recognition of the primacy. For Pope Francis it is evident that the Catholic engagement to build up a synodal church is “rich in ramifications for ecumenism” and also enables a new view of the primacy of the Bishop of Rome: “I am persuaded that in a synodal Church, greater light can be shed on the exercise of the Petrine primacy. The Pope is not, by himself, above the Church; but within it as one of the baptized, and within the College of Bishops as a Bishop among Bishops, called at the same time — as Successor of Peter — to lead the Church of Rome which presides in charity over all the Churches.”[15]
That is the crucial keyword as to how the primacy of the Bishop of Rome in the Catholic Church is to be understood and how it was expressed already by Ignatius of Antioch in his letter to the Romans in the year 110, in which he honoured the Church of Rome with the cathedra of its bishop as that church which “presides in charity”. Here it is important to bear in mind that in the early church the word “charity=agape” also and in particular was the term for the mystery of the eucharist in which Christ’s charity for his church is intensively experienced. The Catholic Church must therefore profoundly and credibly demonstrate that the primacy of the Bishop of Rome does not represent simply a juridical entity and is by no means a merely external adjunct to eucharistic ecclesiology but is grounded in it. The primacy of the Bishop of Rome can therefore ultimately only be understood on the basis of the eucharist, more precisely of the worldwide eucharistic network of eucharistic communions which constitutes the innermost essence of the church. In this sense the primacy of the Bishop of Rome stands in the service of the eucharistic unity of the church and is to ensure that the church continues to take its measure from the eucharist and is experienced as communio ecclesiarum and as communio ecclesiae.
The success of a credible synthesis of primacy and synodality depends above all on the primacy of the Bishop of Rome as a primacy of obedience to the gospel, as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1998 – under the presidency of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger – stated in his considerations in “The Primacy of the Successor of Peter in the Mystery of the Church”: “The Roman Pontiff – like all the faithful – is subject to the Word of God, to the Catholic faith, and is the guarantor of the Church’s obedience; in this sense he is servus servorum Dei. He does not make arbitrary decisions, but is spokesman for the will of the Lord, who speaks to man in the Scriptures lived and interpreted by Tradition; in other words, the episkope of the primacy has limits set by divine law and by the Church’s divine, inviolable constitution found in Revelation.”[16]
If the Bishop of Rome understands and exercises his primacy in this sense there is a prospect and a hope that the primacy of the Bishop of Rome is no longer the “gravest obstacle on the path of ecumenism” but a promotor of ecumenical understanding and guarantor of Christian unity in shared faith. In this sense Pope Francis, during his visit to the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I in Constantinople in 2014 gave the assurance to “each one of you here that, to reach the desired goal of full unity, the Catholic Church does not intend to impose any conditions except that of the shared profession of faith. Further, I would add that we are ready to seek together, in light of Scriptural teaching and the experience of the first millennium, the ways in which we can guarantee the needed unity of the Church in the present circumstances. The one thing that the Catholic Church desires, and that I seek as Bishop of Rome, ‘the Church which presides in charity’, is communion with the Orthodox Churches.”[17]
Understood and exercised in this way the primacy of the Bishop of Rome could stand more fully in the service of the restoration of the one undivided church in East and West which will find its fulfilment in the restoration of eucharistic communion as in the words of the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras in 1968: “This is the time for Christian courage. Let us love one another in order to confess our former common faith: let us make our way together before the glory of the holy common altar in order to fulfil the will of the Lord so that the church may shine, so that the world may believe and the peace of God may be with us all.”[18]
I am pleased to have this opportunity to express my heartfelt thanks to the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew for continuing to follow this ecumenical path with the Catholic Church in the same spirit and to actively support the theological dialogue even in its difficult phases. To be permitted to work together on this great project of reconciliation between East and West and to pray for the time when this path that began so promisingly fifty years ago will reach its goal in eucharistic agape is a serious obligation, but in the first instance a great grace for which we glorify the Triune God in gratitude.
[1]. Cf. Atenagora con Olivier Clément, Umanesimo spirituale. Dialoghi tra Oriente e Occidente. A Cura di Andrea Riccardi (Cinisello Balsamo 2013), esp. 406-427: Gerusalemme; Dialogue of Love. Breaking the Silence of Centuries. Ed. by J. Chryssavgis (New York 2014); J. Ernesti, Paul VI. Der vergessene Papst (Freiburg i. Br. 2012), esp. 86-91: „Ökumenische Wallfahrt“ ins Heilige Land; V. Martano, L’Abbraccio di Gerusalemme. Cinquant’anni fa il storico incontro tra Paolo VI e Athenagoras (Milano 2014); E. Morini, È vicina l’unità tra cattolici e ortodossi? Le scomuniche del 1054 e la riconciliazione del 1965 (Magnano 2016).
[2]. Déclaration commune du pape Paul VI et du patriarche Athenagoras exprimant leur décision d’enlever de la mémoire et du milieu de l’Eglise les sentences d’excommunication de l’année 1054, dans: Tomos Agapis. Vatican-Phanar (1958-1970) (Rome – Istanbul 1971), Nr. 127.
[3]. J. Cardinal Ratzinger, Rom und die Kirchen des Ostens nach der Aufhebung der Exkommunikationen von 1054, in: Ders., Theologische Prinzipienlehre. Bausteine zur Fundamentaltheologie (München 1982) 214−230, cit. 229.
[4] W. Cardinal Kasper, Wege der Einheit. Perspektiven für die Ökumene (Freiburg i. Br. 2005) 208.
[5] Cf. Y. Congar, Zerrissene Christenheit. Wo trennten sich Ost und West? (Wien 1959).
[6]. The Declaration in Greek and French was published in: L’Osservatore Romano, 1 December 1979.
[7]. No. 46.
[8]. Documented in: AAS 59 (1967) 498.
[9]. John Paul II, Ut unum sint, 88.
[10]. Johannes Paul II., Die Schwelle der Hoffnung überschreiten (Hamburg 1994) 181.
[11]. John Paul II, Ut unum sint, 95.
[12]. Benedict XVI, Address at the encounter with representatives of the Orthodox churches in Freiburg i. Br., 24 September 2011.
[13]. Francis, Evangelii gaudium, 32.
[14]. Francis, Evangelii gaudium, 246.
[15]. Francis, Address at the Ceremony Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Institution of the Synod of Bishops, 17 October 2015.
[16]. Il primato del Successore di Pietro nel Mistero della Chiesa. Considerazioni della Congregazione per la Dottrina della fede, in: Documenti e Studi 19 (Città del Vaticano 2002) 9-21, Nr. 7.
[17]. Francis, Address in the Patriarchal Church of St George, Istanbul, 30 November 2014.
[18]. Télégramme du patriarche Athénagoras au pape Paul VI, à l’occasion de l’anniversaire de la levée des anathèmes le 7 décembre 1969, dans : Tomos Agapis. Vatican-Phanar (1958-1970) (Rome – Istanbul 1971) Nr. 277.