Perspectives for Catholic–Orthodox Dialogue
in the Joint International Commission[1]
Kurt Cardinal Koch
“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.”[2] These remarkably passionate words of the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras, written in a telegram to Pope Paul on 7 December 1969 on the occasion of the anniversary of the lifting of the excommunications, clearly delineate the goal of ecumenical dialogue between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches. With this act the poison of excommunication was drawn from the organism of the body of Christ, and the ‘symbol of schism’ was replaced by the ‘symbol of love’. But wherever agape is present in its truest sense as an ecclesial reality it must, in order to be credible, also become Eucharistic agape. Eucharistic communion naturally presupposes ecclesial communion, and this is grounded in communion in the common faith.
1. As far as communion in the common faith is concerned, theological dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches can proceed from the premise that of all the Christian churches and ecclesial communities, the Orthodox is without any doubt the closest to us Catholics from the theological perspective. Catholics and Orthodox have maintained the same early church structure, namely the sacramental–eucharistic and episcopal fundamental structure of the Church, in the sense that in both churches the unity in the Eucharist and in the episcopal office are considered constitutive of being church.
Since the Catholic and Orthodox Churches share an extensive common basis of faith convictions, the ecumenical dialogue was in the first instance able to concentrate on consolidating the shared foundations of the faith. This occurred above all in the first decade from 1980 to 1990, in which far–reaching convergence was achieved between Catholic and Orthodox theology in fundamental questions of the faith and important theological issues such as the mystery of the Church and the Eucharist in the light of the mystery of the Holy Trinity, the relationship of faith, sacrament and the unity of the church and the sacrament of ordination in the sacramental structure of the Church.
In the second decade in the years 1990 to 2000 the ecumenical conversations in the Joint International Commission became increasingly difficult, concentrating with increasing intensity on the problems of uniatism and proselytism, leading in 2000 to the suspension of the work of the Commission.
These difficult discussions naturally also showed that progress can only be made in these crucial questions by tackling the crucial question of communion with Rome and the primacy of the Bishop of Rome. And that did occur after the resumption of ecumenical dialogue in 2006, with the promulgation at the Plenary Assembly in Ravenna in 2007 of the document “Ecclesiological and Canonical Consequences of the Sacramental Nature of the Church. Ecclesial Communion, Conciliarity and Authority”. This document gives expression above all to the two–fold conviction that synodality and primacy are mutually interdependent on one another, and that this correlation is realised on all levels of the church, local, regional and universal. The fact that 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, can be deemed a milestone on the path towards the restoration of the one church in East and West. Since then the Joint International Commission has been dealing with the relationship between synodality and primacy, and already in 2016 presented a document on the theory and practice of this relationship in the first millennium. Now the ecumenical dialogue is set to discuss this relationship in the second millennium, in order to then turn to the important question of what shape this relationship will take when the unity of the one church in East and West has been restored.
2. How can we achieve progress in this conversation? It is my conviction that the ecumenical dialogue can only progress if two extreme forms are excluded. On the one hand, maximal demands which the churches could make of one another do not serve the quest for unity. The maximal demand that the Catholic Church could propose to Orthodoxy would consist in requiring the recognition of the primacy of the Bishop of Rome to its fullest extent, as it was defined at the First Vatican Council. Accordingly, the Catholic Church could demand the alignment of the Orthodox Churches with the practice of primacy as adopted by the Catholic Oriental Churches which are affiliated with Rome.
The maximal Orthodox demand from the Catholic Church would vice versa consist in requiring a declaration that the specific ecclesiological character of the second millennium – up to and including the doctrine of primacy of the First Vatican Council – was an erroneous development, demanding as a consequence the renunciation of all binding doctrinal statements resting on that development, beginning with the filioque in the Creed and continuing to the Marian dogmas of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Such unrealistic maximal demands would block the ecumenical dialogue just as surely as on the other hand the attempt to achieve a compromise on the lowest common denominator, resting content with minimal demands, would not represent a constructive path into the future. Such a minimal demand would be, for example, to restrict the Petrine office of the Bishop of Rome to a mere honorary precedence, while eliminating the question of possible and necessary prerogatives which are integral to this ministry in the service of the unity of the Church.
In the face of these two extremes, the ecumenical dialogue can only have a future if the respective strengths of both Churches are engaged in conversation with one another in the hope of finding a willingness to learn on both sides.
3. The strength of the Orthodox Church is without doubt its synodality, of which Pope Francis has said that we Catholics have the opportunity ‘to learn more about the meaning of episcopal collegiality and their experience of synodality”[3] in dialogue with our Orthodox brothers. The Catholic Church must indeed admit that in its life and in its ecclesial structures it has not yet developed the measure of synodality that would be theologically possible and indeed necessary. The development of synodality is therefore without doubt one of the most important contributions by the Catholic Church towards a possible recognition of primacy. For Pope Francis it is evident that the commitment to build a synodal Church has significant ecumenical implications. “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.”[4]
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 when he honoured the Church of Rome with the cathedra of its bishop as that church which “presides in love”. Here it is important to bear in mind that in the early church the word “love=agape” also and in particular was the term for the mystery of the Eucharist. 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. It is to ensure that the church continues to take its measure from the Eucharist and to be experienced as communio ecclesiarum and as communio ecclesiae.
4. Here I see the foremost theological tasks that the Catholic Church has to fulfil in the future. What challenges Orthodoxy will have to confront I can of course only express in the form of expectations and hopes. I hope that Orthodoxy will be able to perceive with increasing clarity the strength of the Catholic Church, and learn from it that also on the universal level of the Church a primacy is not only possible and theologically legitimate but also necessary, and that such a ministry of unity on the universal level does not stand in contradiction to Eucharistic ecclesiology but is compatible with it, as Metropolitan John D. Zizioulas, the former Co–President of the Joint International Commission, has repeatedly called to mind. The need for clarification of the question of primacy within the Orthodox ecclesial community is demonstrated not only by the intensive debate on this issue when the Russian Orthodox Patriarchate did not recognise the Ravenna Document and delivered instead its own declaration on the question of primacy at the universal level, which has in turn been clearly refuted on the part of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. Nor did the experience of the Pan–Orthodox Council in Crete give a Catholic observer the impression of a successful synthesis of synodality and primacy.
In order for the Orthodox ecclesial community to clarify the issue of primacy, in my view, Orthodoxy needs to decisively confront its core ecclesiological problem, namely the autocephalic principle of national churches with its inherent nationalistic tendency. The strength of the Orthodox Churches consists in one respect in their deep roots in their respective nations and cultures; but in another respect this proves to be their weakness, not seldom providing the cause for a multitude of tensions between Orthodox Churches themselves. I must however note with gratitude that Orthodox theologians like John Meyendorff also perceive the conception of autocephalous national churches as a weakness within Orthodoxy, and regard theological reflection on it as an urgent issue. In this context there us a question which requires intensive discussion but is commonly reprehensibly neglected, namely the relationship of faith and politics or of church and state.
5. Surveying the perspectives delineated here that need to be dealt with in the future, one is in conclusion struck by the realisation that the question of the relationship between synodality and primacy is a symptom of a more profound fundamental issue, that ultimately two diverse ecclesiologies have until now confronted one another unreconciled, namely an understanding of the Church “bound to national culture and the Catholic understanding of the Church cast in a universal mould.”[5] Underlying that is a constantly controversial definition of the relationship between local and universal church. While the Orthodox understanding of Church implies a strong local–church ecclesiology, for Catholic ecclesiology the reciprocal interrelationship of local and universal church is constitutive. Without theological reflection on this ecclesiological question, a credible synthesis of synodality and primacy can hardly be found. But it is precisely what is necessary in order to envisage a reconciliation between Eucharistic ecclesiology and the principle of the Petrine ministry, which in turn can prepare the way for the restoration of the unity of the Church in East and West and the resumption of Eucharistic communion.
Comp: Orthodox-Katholisch- Pro Oriente – Kreta 2018
[1] Statement at the Conference “Crossroads of Theological Dialogue. Reflecting on New Perspectives for Orthodox–Catholic Encounters” at the Orthodox Academy in Crete, 23–28 April 2018.
[2] 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.
[3] Francis, Evangelii gaudium, 246.
[4] Francis, Address on the 50th anniversary of the institution of the Synod of Bishops on 17 October 2015.
[5] W. Kardinal Kasper, Ökumene zwischen Ost und West. Stand und Perspektiven des Dialogs mit den Orthodoxen Kirchen, in: Stimmen der Zeit 128 (2003) 151-164, zit. 157.