MONKS AND MERMAIDS (A Benedictine Blog)

OBITUARY OF HIERO-MONK DYFRIG HARRIS OSB, written by Sister Petra Clare

2012-01-30T13:23:00.000-08:00

Fr Dyfrig who died a week ago was one of my closest friends at Belmont. We both shared a deep interest and love for the Byzantine Liturgy and for the spirituality and theology of the Orthodox Church. He will be greatly missed by us, though I am sure he will be fully occupied in the Liturgy of Heaven. More will be written after the funeral on Wednesday which will be attended by the monastic community, his family, old boys of the school, Ukrainian Greek Catholics from Gloucester, and friends from the Orthodox Church- David

source: EASTXWEST BLOG (click title)

27, 2012

On Monday, 23rd of January, on the feast of the Welsh saint Cadoc, Father Dyfrig Harris, a priest monk of Belmont Abbey and a native Welshman, died of a massive stroke, after a brief illness. Father Dyfrig was highly respected among Catholics and Orthodox in the UK , and was one of those rare western Christians with an innate understanding of the eastern liturgy, which eventually led to his becoming a bi-ritual priest, serving the liturgy in the Ukrainian church in Gloucester.

I first met Father Dyfrig when Sister Maximilian and I were searching for a base for Sancti Angeli Benedictine Skete. Soon afterwards I was invited to teach the icon at Belmont Abbey on an annual basis. During this time Father Dyfrig and I formed a team – I giving practical tuition and he contributing ever deeper and more illuminating studies on the relation of liturgy and the Bible. His great theme was Christ the Great High Priest. He understood, as a living reality, the development of the Aaronic priesthood, and it’s movement forward into the basis for the Christian priesthood.

He contributed some units to the Online Icon Course – although it was immensely hard to get him to write anything down! The interaction with people during a course sparked him off and a lecture rarely ended without some new point being developed – well beyond the original paper – but which was delivered with enthusiasm, erudition and sparkling vigour. People left his lectures enthused and ‘lit-up’ by a new understanding.

As well as learning to write the icon himself, he also made some of his own vestments, incorporating embroidered icon panels made in the Russian tradition by Kath Williams. His approach to the icon was painstaking and deep – never accepting payment, beyond materials, he made each work a profound and life changing spiritual journey. Technically, his life did not permit a full development of his potential, but he made up for this by profound integrity in each work he undertook. As it is spiritual integrity and spiritual honesty which gives the icon authenticity – a slick icon is a contradiction in terms! – the bold spiritual intensity outweighed occasional lack of technique.

He has been probably the single biggest influence on my own life, helping me to keep in tandem my own innate identification with the Orthodox tradition with my existence as a Catholic religious. We looked together – not for a facile Christian unity achieved by skirting over the deeper issues – but for a pre-schism perspective, seeking to see behind historical divergence to the unified root of the faith. This, as a work of prayer, and a work lived out in daily life – in him as a bi-ritual priest, and in me as a religious and iconographer – is a sharing in the Cross. It is a daily agony in which one holds the broken church in a broken heart. For him, this ministry was at the heart of his priesthood and his wonderful exposition of the ‘breaking of the bread’ in the eastern rite.

We had one conversation about our deaths. We both agreed we did not want a slow painful lingering over years, but to get on with it fast once it showed up. Father Dyfrig has had his wish – he took a quick look at death in a minor stroke about two months ago and his spirit decided it was time to shoot off to the next thing. I am sure he is exploring the Kingdom of Heaven with the same astonished pleasure I have seen on his face so many times when a new insight illumined him.

RECEPTION OF THE BODY AND PANAKHYDA (Jan.31st)

reception of the body in the cloister

singing of the Gospel (in English) by a Ukrainian deacon

after the monks' prayers, the Ukrainians sang a "panakhyda" for Fr Dyfrig, mostly in Ukrainian with some prayers in English

the body of Fr Dyfrig in the monastic choir before the altar

REQUIEM MASS AND FUNERAL
IN THE SACRISTY

a Syrian Orthodox priest and Archimandrite Silouan (Orth.)

the abbot, deacon etc before the procession

we sang the introit "Requiem aeternam" Here is the same, but from elsewhere

Ukrainian deacon in Gospel Procession (Gospel sung to Byzantine tone in English)

HOMILY BY ABBOT PAUL

Requiem Mass for Dom Dyfrig Harris 1st February 2012

“The virtuous man, though he die before his time, will find rest. Having come to perfection so soon, he has lived long; his soul being pleasing to God, he has hurried away from the wickedness around him.” These words from the Book of Wisdom are God’s answer to our questions, “Why? Why did he die so young?” Fr Dyfrig, to our way of thinking, did die “before his time”, just a few months after his 63rd birthday. There was so much still to do and, judging from the many tributes received this past week, many people who still needed his prayers and advice, his example and friendship. But “having come to perfection so soon, his soul being pleasing to God,” he was ready to die and prepared to meet his loving Father, whom he had served so faithfully throughout his life. Through the eyes of faith we can see, without a shadow of a doubt, that death for Fr Dyfrig was a reward for repentance and not a punishment for sin, the angel of death a welcome friend and not a feared adversary. Truly, “grace and mercy await” Fr Dyfrig, “the chosen of the Lord.”

St Paul, writing to the Romans, said, “If in union with Christ we have imitated his death, we shall also imitate him in his resurrection.” Fr Dyfrig, as we all know, was a man of faith. He lived and breathed Christ, whose living word, the Gospel, he avidly studied, lovingly meditated and powerfully preached. We all admired the integrity of his life, his unwavering faith, his devotion to the Church in all her richness and poverty and his ardent desire to enter fully into the mystery of Christ. We are grateful for what he shared with us: the overflowing joy of knowing Christ, the varied gifts of the Holy Spirit and the serene comfort that comes from knowing that we are our heavenly Father’s beloved children. In his suffering, and not only in his final illness, Fr Dyfrig always united himself to Christ, imitating his death, in the sure hope of sharing in his resurrection. St Benedict writes in the Holy Rule, “ As we progress in this way of life and in faith, we shall run on the path of God’s commandments, our hearts overflowing with the inexpressible delight of love. Never swerving from his instructions, but faithfully observing his teaching in the monastery until death, we shall through patience share in the sufferings of Christ that we may deserve also to share in his kingdom.”

Fr Dyfrig had a special love for St John’s Gospel. Who can forget his classes and sermons or just going for a walk around the garden and listening to his latest insights and discoveries? If only he had written a book! We heard just now a short passage from the “Farewell Discourse” given to the disciples at the Last Supper. “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God still and trust in me.” There were times in his life when Fr Dyfrig, like all of us, was troubled, but never did he stop trusting in God and trusting in the Lord Jesus. He encouraged us to trust and to put our hope firmly in God. “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one can come to the Father except through me.” The life of a Christian and the life of a Benedictine monk are centred on Christ, who alone is the Way, the Truth and the Life. If there is one word we can use to describe Fr Dyfrig it is Christocentric. He made his own the words of St Paul, “It is not I who live but Christ who lives in me.” He loved the Sacred Priesthood and was so proud of his vocation and grateful for the precious gift of representing Christ at the Altar, the Font, the Confessional, the bedside of a dying person or wherever else a priest is called to be. At times he could appear pompous or exaggeratedly devout as he presided at the Liturgy, but this was really a sign of the fear and trepidation we should all sense as we approach the Throne of Grace, our unworthiness on the one hand, God’s mercy and loving kindness on the other. Although Fr Dyfrig had a wicked and vivacious sense of humour (Who can forget the raucous laugh?), he was aware more than most of the immense dignity bestowed on a priest at Ordination and on all Christians at Baptism.

Fr Dyfrig did not want me to say anything about him at his Requiem. “When it’s my turn, just talk about Christ the High Priest; just talk about the Resurrection,” he would say. However, I would be failing in my duty to him and to you if I said nothing, especially as the Gospel becomes incarnate in real people and the fascinating story of their lives.

Kevin Charles Harris was born in Newport to Violet and Ivor Harris of Cwmbran on 29th October 1948, three years after his brother Michael. Theirs was a happy and devout Catholic home and life was centred on the parish church. He was a pupil at Our Lady of the Angels’ Primary, then at Fr Hill’s Secondary School, Newport, before going on to St Alban’s, Pontypool. There he gained a bursary to study with the Oblates of Mary Immaculate at Colwyn Bay. To tell the truth, Kevin was more interested in rugby and boxing than in studies. In fact, he and Michael were keen members of the Cwmbran Boxing Club, Kevin being a particularly good junior boxer. He preferred fighting older and bigger boys and he always won. It was here that he first showed that tenacity and inner strength, never giving in until he had won.

From an early age he had wanted to be a priest, so he applied to the Archdiocese of Cardiff and was sent to Mount Melleray in Ireland. Here the Cistercian monks ran a seminary and it was bleak indeed. Living conditions were subhuman and the food inadequate. Towards the end of Philosophy, Kevin’s health broke down and he returned home sick, depressed and seriously doubting his ability to go on to the priesthood. He took a job as a steel worker at Llanwern and assisted Fr Peter Thompson in the parish.

In 1969 he met Fr Luke, who invited him to visit Belmont. He came as a postulant, together with Br Peter and Br Roland (long since dead, God rest his soul). He was clothed on 28th September 1970 taking the name Dyfrig, the great Celtic saint born at Madley, a monk who eventually became Bishop of Llandaff. He was professed a year later by Abbot Jerome and took Solemn Vows in 1976. After completing priestly studies at Belmont and at Oscott College, Birmingham, he was ordained to the sacred priesthood by Archbishop John Murphy on 16th July 1977. Sadly his father did not live to see his son ordained, but his mother was always very proud of her son and prayed for the Belmont Community to her dying day, just two years’ago.

Fr Dyfrig served first as Assistant Housemaster to Fr Christopher in Kemble and later became Housemaster. He taught Divinity in the school and it was at this time, due to our close friendship with Archimandrite Barnabas and frequent visits to his monastery in mid Wales, that the seeds of a profound love for all things Byzantine were sown. He coached rugby, the game he loved, and threw himself wholeheartedly into running the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme. Dyfs, as he was affectionately called, and the D of E became synonymous. Who can forget those treks in the Brecon Beacons and Snowdonia not to mention the famous expedition to Norway and the Artic Circle? He was held in great esteem by boys, girls and staff alike. In those days everyone said that he and I looked alike, what with the beards and Welsh accents, and often got us mixed up.

Unfortunately by the summer of 1990 stress and exhaustion took their toll and there was a breakdown in Fr Dyfrig’s health. After a period of therapy and convalescence, he went to Cheadle as assistant to the parish priest. This was followed by two years as Pastor of St Joseph’s, Bromyard, where he was much loved and appreciated by parishioners. In 1994 he was appointed to St Mary’s, Harrington, where, in no time at all, the good people of Cumbria took him to their hearts and he them. Bishop Brewer was very impressed with his pastoral work and the quality of the liturgy at St Mary’s. He was very happy up north and it was here that he was able to develop his culinary skills. Essentially, Fr Dyfrig was a gentle soul and kindness itself. But it took him time to get used to an idea, especially where any major change was involved. He found the next move, to St David’s, Swansea, in 1998 difficult in the extreme. By this time he had not lived in Wales for 25 years and, in any case, Swansea is a long way from Cwmbran and no Welshman can be happy if not in his own valley and village. He was to stay at St David’s only seven months before the onset of acute colitis, that led to a general breakdown in health. Nevertheless, parishioners still recall the most moving Holy Week and Easter celebrations they have ever known, for by this time Fr Dyfrig had become expert in the Byzantine Rite. Bishop Hlib, Apostolic Exarch for the Ukrainians in this country, wrote of him, “His love for the Eastern tradition did not diminish his attachment to the Western, but rather integrated one with the other without confusion.”

After a period of rest at Ealing, he was given permission to help out at Banbury for 18 months before finally returning to Belmont at Easter 2003. Here he was encouraged to spend time writing icons and giving retreats. In a disused room he set up his workshop and busied himself with study, prayer and teaching. Sr Petra Clare, with whom he collaborated, said of him, “As it is spiritual integrity and spiritual honesty which give the icon authenticity – a slick icon is a contradiction in terms! – the bold spiritual intensity outweighed occasional lack of technique.” It was the theology of the icon that really interested Fr Dyfrig. He made magnificent vestments, adorned with embroidered icons made by his friend Kath Williams. He began regularly assisting Fr Stephen at the Ukrainian Parish of the Good Shepherd, Gloucester, a pastoral and liturgical duty he truly enjoyed. I remember his surprise and humility when he told me he had been given the title of Archpriest and the gift of a pectoral cross. Sustained by this life of liturgical prayer he developed a great interest in the Ukraine, its Church and monastic traditions. A stream of Studite and Basilian monks came to stay at Belmont, thus enriching our own life. But Fr Dyfrig’s interests were not limited to Greek Catholics: his outreach and friendship extended to the Orthodox, especially the nuns of St Elizabeth Monastery, Minsk, Belarus, whom we visited together, and he took part in meetings on interreligious dialogue at Minster Abbey in Kent.

But this quick survey of his life tells us little of the Fr Dyfrig we all knew and loved. Each one of us here today could have stood up and preached this homily, for we all have a story to tell. Fr Dyfrig was an intensely passionate man, a monk on fire with the love of God and a priest who wanted only to model himself on Christ. He was a compassionate confessor and a calm and sensitive advisor. He had a great sense of humour and it was always fun to be with him. Together, you could laugh and joke for hours. Then, of course, there was that rich baritone voice, which he used to sing the Liturgy with great enthusiasm. Before the great feasts there was nothing he liked better than to spend hours in church arranging flowers with Br Bernard. He loved his family and his friends and would do anything for them. He was very close to his mother and, together with Michael, nursed her to the end and saw to it that she was able to spend her last years at home in familiar surroundings. He loved family life and was able to spend quality time just down the road with Michael, Jean and all the family.

Fr Dyfrig must be fuming by now as I have said far too much about him, only in Purgatory there is no anger, only peace, love and purification, in the sure hope that nothing but the beatific vision lies ahead. And that is what he hoped and longed for even before his first stroke at the beginning of December and that was his constant wish throughout his illness. Fr Dyfrig was yearning to move on from Transfiguration to Resurrection, from the Cloud of Unknowing to the Glory of Heaven. His journey of faith is about to culminate in the vision of God, seeing him no longer through scripture, icon and sacrament but face to face.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace and may his memory be eternal. Amen.

the Abbot singing the last prayer before the procession

Ukrainian colleagues of Fr Dyfrig sing the Panakhyda for him

We then sang "Christos Anesti" (Christ has risen) in Greek. Hee it is sung by someone else

BY THE GRAVE

Bishop Mark Jabale blesses the grave

UNDERSTANDING POPE BENEDICT XVI ON THE LITURGY

2012-01-30T00:33:00.000-08:00

Understanding Pope Benedict XVI on the Liturgy

source: THE AMERICAN CATHOLIC

Published Tuesday, August 31, 2010 A.D. | By Christopher Blosser

Assessing Benedict’s views of the liturgy

In “Where Truth and Beauty Meet”: Understanding Benedict (The Tablet August 14, 2010) – Eamon Duffy, Professor of the History of Christianity, and Fellow and Director of Studies at Magdalene College, Cambridge, aptly summarizes Pope Benedict’s view of the liturgy and his calls for reform

[Pope Benedict] believes that behind many celebrations of the new liturgy lie a raft of disastrous theological, cultural, sociological and aesthetic assumptions, linked to the unsettled time in which the liturgical reforms were carried out. In particular, he believes that twentieth-century theologies of the Eucharist place far too much emphasis on the notion that the fundamental form of the Eucharist is that of a meal, at the cost of underplaying the cosmic, redemptive, and sacrificial character of the Mass.

The Pope, of course, himself calls the Mass the “Feast of Faith”, “the Banquet of the reconciled”. Nevertheless Calvary and the empty tomb, rather than the Upper Room, are for him the proper symbolic locations of Christian liturgy. The sacrificial character of the Eucharist has to be evident in the manner of its celebration, and the failure to embody this adequately in the actual performance of the new liturgy seems to him one of the central problems of the post-conciliar reforms. …

In his view, the liturgy is meant to still and calm human activity, to allow God to be God, to quiet our chatter in favour of attention to the Word of God and in adoration and communion with the self-gift of the Word incarnate.

The call for active participation and instant accessibility seem to him to have dumbed down the mystery we celebrate, and left us with a banal inadequate language (and music) of prayer. The “active participation” in the liturgy for which Vatican II called, he argues, emphatically does not mean participation in many acts. Rather, it means a deeper entry by everyone present into the one great action of the liturgy, its only real action, which is Christ’s self-giving on the Cross. For Ratzinger we can best enter into the action of the Mass by a recollected silence [emphasis mine - Chris], and by traditional gestures of self-offering and adoration – the Sign of the Cross, folded hands, reverent kneeling. [...]

For the Pope … liturgical practice since the Council has taken a wrong turn, aesthetically impoverished, creating a rupture in the continuity of Catholic worship, and reflecting and even fostering a defective understanding of the Divine and our relationship to it.

Apropos is Ratzinger’s strong criticism of certain forms of contemporary music and dance, which take on the character of ‘performance’; the very spirit of which runs counter to that of authentic liturgy.

According to Professor Duffy, Benedict’s 2007 Motu Proprio, Summorum Pontificum, permitting the free celebration of the Tridentine liturgy, “was intended both to repair that rupture and to issue a call to the recovery of the theological, spiritual and cultural values that he sees as underlying the old Mass.”

Criticism of the Novus Ordo – Can one go too far?

In a recent column, Dr. Jeff Mirus criticizes those who he believes go to the extreme in opposing and denigrating the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite, claiming that they are simply following the lead and writings of Cardinal Ratzinger (“The Mind of the Church on the Novus Ordo ” Catholic Culture. August 13, 2010):

I want to emphasize that he expressed these concerns in scholarly work, and that, taken in context, it is always clear that Ratzinger as a cardinal was not ill-disposed toward the Novus Ordo. Rather, he was interested in improvements which might be made (no liturgy is perfect) and, in particular, he was opposed to the free-wheeling manner in which some ignored the rubrics when saying Mass.

Dr. Mirus reminds us that “it is absolutely critical to note that the mind of the Church or even of the Pope himself cannot be determined by looking at the writings of a future pope before he became pope,” and that “while in office, Pope Benedict XVI has made his approval of the Novus Ordo clear”:

[Pope Benedict XVI] has also made clear that his serious criticisms do not apply to the rite itself but to the false interpretation of the Missal of Paul VI as something that requires constant experimentation and innovation, as if priests are to superimpose their own improvisations on the official liturgy and, in so doing, frequently substitute the banal for the sublime.

Benedict made these points in explaining his decision to widen the use of the Tridentine Mass (the Missal of Pope John XXIII) in his 2007 Motu Proprio, Summorum Pontificum. Readers will recall that the Pope issued an accompanying Letter to the Bishops on the Occasion of the Publication of Summorum Pontificum to explain his decision. In that letter he recounted why he wanted to expand the use of what he now called the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite and, in so doing, he deliberately responded to the fear that this expansion was somehow intended to demote the Novus Ordo or undermine the Second Vatican Council’s call for liturgical reform.

Dr. Mirus’ caution is a welcome one and worth reading in full, as he examines the commentary of Benedict on the liturgy as Pope — which may be contrasted with, and qualify — the more acerbic and oft-cited criticisms of Ratzinger the Cardinal. Dr. Mirus concludes with some advice (and admonishment) to critics of the Novus Ordo:

Admit your personal preference for the Extraordinary Form if you like; true Catholics should not criticize you for it, even if they prefer the Ordinary Form. Combat abuses of the Novus Ordo where you can; the Church will thank you for that. But do not denigrate the rite itself, as if it is something unworthy or profane, and never imply that the billion Catholics who use and have come to love it are somehow inferior in their Faith.

It is possible to debate the merits and demerits of any liturgy, but it is not possible to cite either Pope Benedict XVI or the mind of the Church as being anything less than in favor of the prescribed use of the ordinary form of the Roman Rite. Finally, no approved liturgy of the Church should ever be treated with disrespect, nor its adherents stigmatized if they are not disobedient, for it is a sacred thing.

Understanding Summorum Pontificum

Speaking of Summorum Pontificum, Ignatius Press has published a new book, The Old Mass and the New: Explaining the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum of Pope Benedict XVI, by Bishop Marc Aillet:

In July 7, 2007, Pope Benedict XVI released his motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, allowing for unprecedented freedom for priests to celebrate the so-called Tridentine Mass, now referred to as the “Extraordinary Form” of the Mass, as opposed to the Mass of Paul VI, or the “Ordinary Form”. In this new book by French bishop Marc Aillet, the historical and cultural impetus for the motu proprio as well as the rich tradition of liturgical reform are explored.

As a priest of the Community of Saint Martin, which celebrates the Mass of Paul VI in Latin, Bishop Aillet has been committed to the promotion of liturgical reform that is rooted in tradition for many years. As bishop of the diocese of Bayonne in France, he has been instrumental in reintroducing the Extraordinary Form in his diocese.

A work that is both easy to understand and deeply rich, The Old Mass and the New gives an overview of the history and theology of the liturgy. At the same time, Bishop Aillet beckons us to look ahead to move beyond the crisis in the liturgy to a reconciliation of these two forms of the Latin rite. An excellent introduction for those interested in the theological foundations of the liturgy.

(Click here to read the preface).

CHRISTIAN UNITY V: A CATHOLIC VIEW OF ORTHODOXY by Aidan Nichols O.P.

2012-01-29T00:27:00.000-08:00

(for source, click on this title: A Catholic View of Orthodoxy)

by Aidan Nichols OP

In this article I attempt an overview in four parts. 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 onsequences 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 - interested in addressing the CatholicProtestant 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 sundered 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 fulness of the truth impressed by the Spirit on the minds of the apostles at the first Pentecost, a fulness 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.[1]

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 Cappadoeian 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.

Part 2

I turn now to the actual genesis of the schism from a Catholic standpoint, along with some account - necessarily summary and unadorned - of the four historic 'dividing issues': those disputed questions which historians can show to have most worried many Easterners when looking at developments in the Latin church, and which constituted the agenda of the reunion Councils, Lyons II in 1274 and Florence in 1439.

This is of course an enormous subject which would require an account of most of Church history in the first millenium to do it justice. Here I can only give a brief indication and refer those interested in more historical detail - and certainly there is no shortage of fascinating material available, to my Rome and the Eastern Churches. A Study in Schism [2]

The development of the schism between Greek East and Latin West was owed essentially to three factors. The first of these is the increasing cultural distance, and so alienation, suspicion and eventually hostility, which counterposed, one against the other, the Byzantine and Latin halves of the Mediterranean basin, as also tracts of Europe further afield - especially Russia on the one hand, the Germanic world on the other, evangelised as these had been from, respectively, Greek and Roman mother-churches.

As a common language, a common political framework, a common social structure, and a common theological universe became, in the late patristic and early mediaeval periods, a thing of the past, Eastern and Western Christians ceased to feel themselves parts of one Commonwealth - something given especially brutal expression in the sack of Constantinople by the crusader host in 1204.

The second principal factor in the making of the schism was the rivalry between the Byzantine emperors and the Roman popes considered as officers of the Christian commonwealth responsible for its overall direction and for the adjustment of organisational problems or clashes within it. Constantine the Great not only inherited the imperial ideology of the supreme rulers of the Roman res publica, but also permitted - perhaps encouraged - the transformation of this ideology into a fullyfledged imperial theology by such figures as Eusebius of Caesarea.[3]

The Christian emperor, though pretending to no power to determine doctrine, did claim an overall right of supervision for the public, external life of the churches. But this was exactly the position which those in the West who supported the developing theology of the unique 'Petrine' ministry of the Roman bishop wished to give the pope. In the first millenium there was no generally agreed ecclesiology of the Roman primacy. There are Latins who took a minimalist view of it, Greeks who took a maximalist.

But in general of course Westerners came to favour a high theology of the Roman church and bishop, Easterners to regard such a theological doctrine with foreboding as a departure from the ethos of the Pentarchy, the idea of the necessary concord of the five patriarchs Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem - which by the eighth century at least must count as the normal Byzantine picture of what specifically episcopal leadership entailed.

The third and last factor in the turning of tensions into an actual break was the emergence of the four disputed questions which served as lenses concentrating the heat given off in these chronic or structural tensions until it became explosive.

In order of their historic emergence, these questions or topics are: the Filioque, the nature of the Roman primacy, the use of azymes or unleavened bread in the Western Mass, and the doctrine of Purgatory, and especially the symbolisation of the intermediate state as a purifying fire.

On all these points, even that of azymes which might be thought an issue singularly unprofitable or at least peripheral to Christian thought, theological ideas of great interest were brought forward on both sides, though probably only the Filioque and the primacy question would be regarded as 'dividing' issues today.

As regards the Filioque - the procession of the Holy Spirit, according to the amended Latin version of the Creed of Nicaea-Constantinople, not only from the Father but from the Son as well, I believe that, could we count on a modicum of good will, we might well be able, without damage to the doctrinal integrity of our two communions, to resolve this technical issue in Trinitarian theology: technical, yet also crucial for how we see the Spirit in relation to the Son, and so their respective economies in their interaction in our lives. The matter of the Roman primacy is less easily disposed of, and I will return to it at the end of my presentation.

So much - very schematically, and inadequately, - on the historic genesis of the schism and its quartet of doctrinal conflagration points. The operation of the three factors - the mutual cultural estrangement, the conflicting expectations for the ro1es of emperor and pope, and the specifically theological issues, meant that by the 1450's the Byzantine church, in rejecting the Florentine union of 1439, had definitely broken communion with the Roman see, a situation gradually extended in a rather uneven way to the rest of the Orthodox world in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, there being some examples of communicatio in sacris - for instance of the use of Latin clergy, chiefly Jesuits, to preach and hear the confessions of the Greek Orthodox faithful - even as late as the first half of the eighteenth century in some places.

Part 3

I come now to the third part of my paper which concerns the present state of Catholic-Orthodox relations. After a preparatory phase of initial contacts known as the 'dialogue of charity', the Catholic-Orthodox theological dialogue was officially established in 1979, with the 'common declaration' made by the Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios 1 and Pope John Paul II at the conclusion of the tatter's visit to the Phanar, the patriarchal seat in Istanbul, in November of that year.

At that juncture the situation between Orthodox and Catholics was from one point of view more hopeful than at, say, the time of the Council of Florence, but from another viewpoint it was less hopeful. It was more hopeful in that the participation of the Orthodox in the Ecumenical Movement from the 1920's onwards had accustomed them to the idea of work for Christian unity - though a strong and vociferous minority have always expressed reservations about this policy as likely to confirm what Catholics would call 'indifferentism'.

If at its origins the Ecumenical Movement was largely a pan-Protestant conception, the entry of the Orthodox into its ranks pressed that Movement, nonetheless, in a direction which made it possible for the Catholic Church to join it, nearly forty years later, on the eve of the Second Vatican Council. The Orthodox had this salutary effect in that their voices - combined with those of neo-patristically minded Anglicans (a species more common then than now) - succeeded in dispelling the sense that ecumenism was basically a movement preparing a purely moral and sentimental - rather than doctrinal and sacramental - union of Christians.

Along these broad lines, then, the Orthodox churches had functioned highly constructively within the Ecumenical Movement up to the 1980's, though whether they can continue to do so in the context of the World Council of Churches in the future - given the capture of the latter by a largely secular agenda - remains to be seen.

To this glowing account of Orthodox ecumenism one important caveat must be appended. It is possible to overrate the theological component of the role of Orthodoxy in the twentieth century Ecumenical Movement by overlooking the fact that the desire of many Orthodox for greater contest with Western communions was in part a pragmatic and even political one.

With the collapse of the Russian Tsardom in 1917, that mighty protector of the Orthodox churches was no more, and Orthodox communities in hostile States like Bolshevik Russia or Kemalist Turkey, or in comparatively weak confessionally Orthodox States such as Bulgaria and Greece, needed the support of a still surviving Christian political conscience in such great Powers of the first half of this century as Britain and the United States.

This realistic caution about the motives of some Orthodox ecumenism brings me to the less hopeful features of the situation which surrounded the opening of official dialogue at the beginning of the 1980's.

In the more than five hundred years since the collapse of the Florentine Union, Orthodox and Catholics had had time to practise yet more polemics against each other, to coarsen their images of each other, and also to add (especially from the Orthodox side) new bones of doctrinal contention though in one case, the definition in 1870 of the universal jurisdiction and doctrinal infallibility of the Roman bishop, the dismay of the Orthodox was of course entirely predictable, as was pointed out by several Oriental Catholic bishops at the First Vatican Council.

We find for instance such influential Orthodox thinkers as the Greek lay theologian John Romanides attacking the Western doctrine of original sin as heretical, thus rendering the Latin Marian dogma of the Immaculate Conception - Mary's original righteousness - superfluous if not nonsensical. Or again, and this would be a point that exercised those responsible for the official dialogue of the last fifteen years, some Orthodox now wished to regard the pastoral practice whereby many local churches in the Latin West delay the confirmation (or chrismation) of children till after their first Holy Communion as based on a gravely erroneous misjudgment in sacramental doctrine.

None of this, however, prevented the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church - to give it its mouthful of a title - from producing several (three, to be precise) very useful documents on the shared understanding (in the Great Church of which Orthodoxy and Catholicism are the two expressions) of the mystery of the Church herself, in her sacramental and especially eucharistic structure, seen in relation to the mystery of the triune God, the foundational reality of our faith. These statements are known by their place and date of origin: Munich 1982, Bari 1987, and Valamo (Finland) 1988.[4]

The shadow cast more recently was in 1979 only a cloud on the horizon, a cloud, as in Elijah's dealings with Ahab in the First Book of Kings, no bigger than a man's hand. And this is the threat posed to the dialogue by the re-invigoration of hitherto

communist-suppressed Uniate or Eastern Catholic churches, notably those of the Ukraine and Transylvania, in the course of the later 1980's and 1990's.

The existence of Byzantine-rite communities in union with the Holy See was already a major irritant to the Orthodox, even though some of these communities, for instance in Southern Italy and Sicily, had enjoyed an unbroken existence and were in no sense the result of prosyletism or political chicanery.

What the Orthodox quite naturally and rightly object to is Uniatism as a method of detaching Orthodox dioceses and parishes from their mother churches on a principle of divide et impera. Not all partial unions with the Byzantine Orthodox can be brought historically under this heading, for some, such as that with a portion of the Antiochene patriarchate which produced the present Melkite church, are principally the result of Eastern, not Western, initiative.

But that the pope (John Paul II) who presided over the beginnings of Catholic-Orthodox dialogue should also be a pope who played a major role in the destruction of Communism has certainly proved to be one of the ironies of Church history. The passing of Marxist-Leninist hegemony, the internal disintegration of the Soviet Union, the copycat rebellions against a Nationalist Communist nomenktatura in such countries as Rumania, made possible the re-emergence of Oriental Catholic churches once forcibly re-united with the Orthodox by Stalin's Comintern in the aftermath of World War II.

The process has been sufficient to place in jeopardy the project of Catholic-Orthodox reunion which is the one goal of ecclesiastical as distinct from merely public policy most dear to the heart of this extraordinary Slav bishop of Rome.

Thus in June 1990 at the plenary meeting of the Commission at Freising in Bavaria, the Orthodox refused to continue with the official agenda in discussing 'Conciliarity and Authority: the Ecclesiological and Canonical Consequences of the Sacramental Stricture of the Church' until a document could be agreed on the Byzantine-rite Catholic churches, a document actually produced at Balamand in the Lebanon in 1993 and which has, regrettably, failed to satisfy many Orthodox whilst angering many Oriental Catholics.[5]

Part 4

This brings me to the fourth and concluding section of my 'overview' where, as mentioned at the outset, I will single out for, I hope, charitable and eirenic comment one negative aspect of Orthodoxy where, in my opinion, the Orthodox need Catholic communion just as - for quite different reasons already outlined - Catholics need (at this time in history above all) the Orthodox Church.

The animosity, indeed the barely contained fury, with which many Orthodox react to the issue of Uniatism is hardly explicable.except in terms of a widespread and not readily defensible Orthodox feeling about the relation between the nation and the Church.

There must be, after all, some factor of social psychology or corporate ideology which complicates this issue. Bear in mind that the Orthodox have felt no difficulty this century in creating forms of Western-rite Orthodoxy, for example in France under the aegis of the Rumanian patriarchate or more recently in the United States under the jurisdiction of an exarch of the patriarch of Antioch. And what are these entities if not Orthodox Uniatism - to which the Catholic Church has, however, made no objection.

Nor do such non-Chalcedonian churches as the Assyrians (in Iraq and Iran), the Jacobites (in Syria) or the Syro-Malabar Christians of South India react in this way to the notion that some of their communities may be in peace and communion with the elder Rome. A partial - and significant - exception among such non-Chalcedonian Orthodox churches is the Copts of Egypt - precisely because of the notion that the Coptic patriarch is father of the whole Coptic nation. In other words, what we may call a political factor - giving the word 'political' its broadest possible meaning - has entered in.

It is the close link between Church and national consciousness, patriotic consciousness, which renders Uniatism so totally unacceptable in such countries as Greece and Rumania, and it is this phenomenon of Orthodox nationalism which I find the least attractive feature of Orthodoxy today.

An extreme example is the widespread philosophy in the Church of Serbia which goes by the name of the mediaeval royal Serbian saint Sava - hence Svetosavlje, 'Saint-Sava-sm'. The creation of the influential bishop Nikolay Velimirovich, who died in 1956, it argues that the Serbian people are, by their history of martyrdom, an elect nation, even among the Orthodox, a unique bearer of salvific suffering, an incomparably holy people, and counterposes them in particular to their Western neighbours who are merely pseudo-Christians, believers in humanity without divinity.[6]

And if the origins of such Orthodox attitudes lie in the attempts of nineteenth century nationalists to mobilise the political potential of Orthodox peasantries against both Islamic and Catholic rulers, these forces, which I would not hesitate to call profoundly unChristian, can turn even against the interests of Orthodoxy itself - as we are seeing today in the embarrassing campaign on the Holy Mountain Athos, to dislodge non-Greek monks and discourage non-Greek pilgrims, quite against the genius of the Athonite monastic republic which, historically, is a living testimony to Orthodox interethnicity, Orthodox internationalism.

To a Catholic mind, the Church of Pentecost is a Church of all nations in the sense of ecclesia ex gentibus, a Church taken from all nations, gathering them - with, to be sure, their own human and spiritual gifts- into a universal community in the image of the divine Triunity where the difference between Father, Son and Spirit only subserves their relations of communion.

The Church of Pentecost is not an ecctesia in gentibus, a Church distributed among the nations in the sense of parcelled out among them, accommodating herself completely to their structures and leaving their sense of

autonomous identity undisturbed.

Speaking as someone brought up in a national Church, the Church of England, though I am happy to consider myself perfectly English, I also regard it as a blessing of catholicity to be freed from particularism into the more spacious life of a Church raised up to be an ensign for all nations, a Church where those of every race, colour and culture can feel at home, in the Father's house.

It is in this final perspective that one should consider the role of the Roman bishop as a 'universal primate' in the service of the global communion of the churches. One of the most loved titles of the Western Middle Ages for the Roman bishop was universalis papa, and while one would nor wish to retrieve all aspects of Latin ecclesiology in the high mediaeval period, to a Catholic Christian the universal communion of the local churches in their multiple variety does need a father in the pope, just as much as the local church itself, with its varied congregations, ministries and activities, needs a father in the person of the bishop.

It is often said that such an ecclesiology of the papal office is irredeemably Western and Latin, and incapable of translation into Oriental terms. I believe this statement to be unjustified. Just as a patriarch, as regional primate, is responsible for the due functioning of the local churches of in

his region under their episcopal heads, so a universal primate is responsible for the operation of the entire episcopal taxis or order, and so for all the churches on a world?wide scale.

Needless to say, this office is meant for the upbuilding, not the destruction, of that episcopal order, founded ultimately as the latter is on the will of the Redeemer in establishing the apostolic mission, and further refined by Tradition in the institution of patriarchal and other primacies in this or that portion of the ecclesial whole. But at the same time, if the ministry of a first bishop is truly to meet the needs of the universal Church it will sometimes have to take decisions that are hard on some local community and unpopular with it.

Were the Orthodox and Catholic Churches to become one, some reform of the structure of the Roman primacy would nonetheless be necessary, especially at the level of the curia romana. The congregation for the Oriental Churches would become a secretariat at the service of the permanent apocrisaries (envoys) of the patriarchs and other primates.

The great majority of the other dicastsries would be re-defined as organs of the Western patriarch, rather than the supreme Pontiff. And yet no universal primacy that merely rubber-stamped the decisions of local or regional churches would be worth having; it would be appearance without reality.

Thus the pope as universal primate would need to retain: first, a doctrinal organ for the coordination of Church teaching, and secondly, some kind of 'apostolic secretaryship', replacing the present ill-named 'Secretariat of State', for the harmonisation of principles of pastoral care. To these could be added, thirdly, whichever of the 'new curial' bodies dealing with those outside the household of faith might be deemed to have proved their usefulness, and finally, a continuing 'Council for the Public Affairs of the Church', for the defence of the freedom of the churches (and of human rights) vis-à-vis State power.

The utility of the fourth of these to the Orthodox is obvious. As to the rest (of which only the first two are crucial in importance) they should function only on the rarest ocasions of 'crisis-management' as instruments of papal action in the Eastern churches. Normally, they should act, rather, as channels whereby impulses from the Eastern churches - impulses dogmatic, liturgical, contemplative, monastic in tenor -could reach via the pope the wider Church and world.

For this purpose the apocrisaries of the patriarchs, along with the prefects of the Western dicasteries, would need to constitute their governing committees, under papal presidency. It should go without saying that Oriental churches would naturally enjoy full parity with the Latin church throughout the world, and not simply in their homelands - the current Catholic practice. [7]

The Orthodox must ask themselves (as of course they do!) whether such instruments of universal communion (at once limiting and liberating) may not be worth the price. Or must the pleasures of particularity come first?

This paper was delivered at a meeting of Pro Scandiae Populis, on the theme of Catholic?Orthodox relations, at Turku (Aabo), Finland, on 21st April 1995. The section outlining a possible reform of the Roman curia in this context has been added by way of response to a tacit request for clarification from Bishop Ambrosius of Joensuu of the Orthodox Church of Finland.

1 Cf. A. Nichols, O. P., Light from the East. Authors and Themes in Orthodox Theology (London 1995).

2 Edinburgh 1992.

3 J.-M. Sansterre, 'Eusebe de Césarée et la naissance de la théorie "cesaropapiste"', Byzantion 42 (1972), pp. 131-195; 532-594.

4 Conveniently gathered together in P. McPartlan (ed.), One in 2000? Towards Catholic-Orthodox Unity (Middlegreen, Slough, 1993).

5 A communique published in its English form in One in Christ XXX 1 (1994), pp. 74-82.

6 See T. Bremer, Ekklesiale Struktur and Ekklesiologie in der Serbischen Orthodoxen Kirche im 19. and 20. Jahrhundert (Wiirzburg 1992).

7 A justifiable cause of anger among Oriental Catholics today: see T. E. Bird, 'The Vatican Decree on the Eastern Catholic Churches Thirty Years Later', Sophia 21, 4 (1994), pp. 23-29.

SAYINGS OF THE DESERT FATHERS (a tribute to Coptic Monasticism)

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From the Sayings of the Desert Fathers
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Abba Ammonas was asked, 'What is the "narrow and hard way?" (mt. 7.14) He replied, 'The "narrow and hard way" is this, to control your thoughts, and to strip yourself of your own will, for the sake of God. THis is also the meaningof the sentence, "Lo, we have left everything and followed you." (Mt. 19.27)

It was said of him that he had a hollow in his chest channelled out by the ears which fell from his eyes all his life while he sat at his manual work. When Abba Poemen learned that he was dead, he said weeping, 'Truly you are blessed, Abba Arsenius, for you wept for yourself in this world! He who does not weep for himself here below will weep eternally hereafter; so it is impossible not to weep, either voluntarily or when compelled through suffering.' [i.e. the latter suffering in hell]

It was also said of him (Abba Arsenius) that on Saturday evenings, pre- paring for the glory of Sunday, he would turn his back on the sun and stretch out his hands in prayer towards the heavens, till once again the sun shone on his

face. Then he would sit down.

+ + +

It was said of Abba Ammoes that when he went to church, he did not allow his disciple to walk beside him but onlly at a certain distance; and if the latter came to ask him about his thoughts, he would move away from himm as soon as he

had replied, saying to him, 'It is for fear that, after edifying words, irrelevant conversation should slip in, that I do not keep you with me.'

It was said of Abba Ammoes that he had fifty measures of wheat for his use and had put them out in the sun, Before they were properly dried off, he saw something in that place which seemed to him to be harmful so he said to his

servants, 'Let us go away from here.' But they were grieved at this. Seeing their dismay he said to them, 'Is it because of the loaves that you are sad? Truly, I have seen monks fleeing, leaving their white-washed cells and also their parchments, and they did not close the doors, but went leaving them

open.'

Abba Abraham told of a man of Scetis who was a scribe and did not eat bread. A brother came to beg him to copy a book. The old man whose spirit was engaged in contemplation, wrote, omitting some phrases and with no punctuation. The brother, taking the book and wishing to punctuate it, noticed that words were missing. So he said to the old man, 'Abba, there are some phrases missing.'The old man said to him, 'Go, and practise first that which is written, then come back and I will write the rest.' [Scetis=Sheheet]

+ + +

There was in the Cells an old man called Apollo. If someone came to find him about doing a piece of work, he would set out joyfully, saying, 'I am going to work with Christ today, for the salvation of my soul, for that is the reward he gives.'

Abba Doulas, the disciple of Abba Bessarion said, 'One day when we were walking beside the sea I was thirstty and I said to Abba Bessarion, "Father, I am very thirsty." He said a prayer and said to me, "Drink some of the sea water." The water proved sweet when I drank some. I even poured some into a leather bottle for fear of being thirsty later on. Seeing this, the old man asked me why I was taking some. I said to him, "Forgive me, it is for fear of being thirsty later on." Then the old man said, "God is here, God is everywhere." '

A brother questioned Abba Poemen in this way, 'My thoughts trouble me, makingme put my sins aside, and concern myself with my brother's faults'. The old man told him the following story about Abba Dioscorus (the monk), 'In his cell he wept over himself, while his disciple was sitting in another cell. When the latter came to see the old man he asked him, "Father, why are you weeping?" "I am weeping over my sins," the old man answered him. Then his disciple said, "You do not have any sins, Father." The old man replied, "Truly, my child, ifI were allowed to see my sins, three or four men would not be enough to weep for them. "

+ + +

This is what Abba Daniel, the Pharanite, said, 'Our Father abba Arsenius told us of an inhabitant of Scetis, of notable life and of simple faith; through his naivete he was deceived and said, "The bread which we receive is not

really the body of Christ, but a symbol. Two old men having learnt that he had uttered this saying, knowing that he was outstanding in his way of life, knew that he had not spoken through malice, but through simplicity. So they came to

find him and said, "Father, we have heard a proposition contrary to the faith on the part of someone who says that the bread which we receivve is not really the body of Christ, but a symbol." The old man said, "it is I who have said

that." Then the old men exhorted him saying, "Do not hold this position, Father, but hold one in conformity with that which the catholic Church has given us. We believe, for our part, that the bread itself is the body of Christ as in the beginning, God formed man in his image, taking the dust of the earth, without anyone being able to say that it iis not the image of God, even though it is not seen to be so; thus it is with the bread of which he said that it is his body; and so we believe that it is really the body of Christ." The old man said to them, "As long as I have not been persuaded by the thing itself, I shall not be fully convinced." So they said, "Let us pray God about this myster throughout the whole of this week and we believe that

God will reveal it to us." The old man received this saying with joy and he prayed in these words, "Lord, you know that it is not through malice that I do not believe and so that I may not err through ignorance, reveal this mystery to me, Lord Jesus Christ." The old men returned to their cells and they also prayed God, saying, "Lord Jesus Christ, reveal this mystery to the old man,that he may believe and not lose his reward." God heard both the prayers. At the end of the week they came to church on Sunday and sat all three on the same mat, the old man in the middle. Then their eyes were opened and when the bread was placed on the holy table, there appeared as it were a little child to these three alone. And when the priest put out his hand to

break the bread, behold an angel descended from heaven with a sword and poured the child's blood into the chalice. When the priest cut the bread into small pieces, the angel also cut the child in pieces. When they drew near to receive the sacred elements the old man alone received a morsel of bloody flesh. Seeing this he was afraid and cried out, "Lord, I believe that this bread is your flesh and this chalice your blood." Immediately the flesh which

he held in his hand became bread, according to the mystery and he took it, giving thanks to God. Then the old men said to him, "God knows human nature and that man cannot eat raw flesh and that is why he has changed his body into bread and his blood into wine, for those who receive it in faith. "Then they gave thanks to God for the old man, because he had allowed him not to lose the reward of his labour. So all three returned with joy to their own cells.'

+ + +

It was said of Abba Helladius that he spent twenty years in the Cells, without ever raising his eyes to see the roof of the church.

(Abba Epiphanius) added, 'A man who receives something from another because of his poverty or his need has therein his reward, and because he is ashamed, when he repays it he does so in secret. But it is the opposite for the Lord
God; he receives in secret, but he repays in the presence of the angels, the archangels and the righteous.'

It was said concerning Abba Agathon that some monks came to find him having heard tell of his great discernment. Wanting to see if he would lose his temper they said to him 'Aren't you that Agathon who is said to be a fornicator and a proud man?' 'Yes, it is very true,' he answered. They resumed, 'Arn't you that Agothon who is always talking nonsense?' 'I am." Again they said 'Aren't you Agothon the heretic?' But at that he replied 'I am not a heretic.' So they asked him, 'Tell us why you accepted everything we cast you, but repudiated this last insult.' He replied 'The first accusations I take to myself for that is good for my soul. But heresy is separation from God. Now I have no with to be separated from God.' At this saying they were astonished at his discernment and returned, edified.

(Abba Evagrius) said; 'Take away temptations and no one will be saved.'

+ + +

An Egyptian brother came to see Abba Zeno in Syria, and accused himself to the old man about his temptations. Filled with admiration, Zeno said, ' The Egyptians hide the virtues they possess and ceaselessly accuse themselves of faults they do not have, while the Syrians and Greeks pretend to have virtues they do not have, and hide the faults of which they are guilty.'

In a village there was said to be a man who fasted to such a degree that he was called 'the Faster'. Abba Zeno had heard of him, and he sent for him. The other came gladly. They prayed and sat down. The old man began to work in

silence. Since he could not succeed in talking to him the Faster began to get bored. So he for me, Abba, for I want to go.' The old man said to him. 'Why?' The other replied, "Because my heart is as if it were on fire and I do not know what is the matter with it. For truly, this when I was in the village and I fasted until the evening, nothing like this

happened to me.' The old man said, 'In the village you fed yourself through your ears. But go away and from now on eat at the ninth hour and whatever you do, do it secretly.' As soon as he had begun to act on this advice, the Faster

found it difficult to wait until the ninth hour. And those who knew him said, 'The Faster is possessed by the devil.' So he went to tell this to the old man who said to him, 'This way is according to God.'

One day Abba Moses said to brother Zacharias, 'Tell me what I ought to do?' At these words the latter threw himself on the ground at the old man's feet and said, 'Are you asking me, Father?' The old man said to him 'Believe me, Zacharias, my son, I have seen the Holy Spirit descending upon you and since then I am constrained to ask you.' Then Zacharias drew his hood off his head

put it under his feet and trampled on it, saying, 'The man who does not let himself be treated thus, cannot become a monk.'

Abba Zeno said, 'If a man wants God to hear his prayer quickly, then before he prays for anything else, even his own soul, when he stands and stretches out his hands towards God, he must pray with all his heart for his enemies. Through this action God will hear everything that he asks.'

+ + +

Abba Gerontius of Petra said that many, tempted by the pleasures of the body, commit fornication, not in their body but in their spirit, and while preserving their bodily virginity, commit prostitution in their soul. 'thus it is good, my well-beloved, to do that which is written and for each one to guard his own heart with all possible casre.' (prov. 4.23)

One day Abba Arsenius consulted an old Egyptian monk about his own thoughts Someone noticed this and said to him, 'Abba Arsenius, how is it that you with such a good Latin and Greek education, ask this peasant about your thoughts?' He replied, 'I have indeed been taught Latin and Greed, but I do not know even the alphabet of this peasant.'

Abba Elias, the minister, said, 'What can sin do where there is penitence? And of what use is love where there is pride?'

+ + +

(Abba Isaiah) said to those who were making a good beginning by putting themselves under the direction of the holy Fathers, 'As with purple dye, the first colouring is never lost.' And, 'Just as young shoots are easily trained back and bent, so it is with beginners who live in submission.'

(Abba Isaiah) also said that when there was an agape and the brethren were eating in the church and talking to one another, the priest of Pelusia re-primanded them in these words, 'Brethren, be quiet. For I have seen a brother eating with you and drinking as many cups as you and his prayer is ascending to the presence of God like fire.'

(Abba Isaiah) also said 'When God wishes to take pity on a soul and it rebels, not bearing anything and doing its own will, he then allows it to suffer that which it does not want, in order that it may seek him again.'

+ + +

The old men said of Abba Agothon to Abba Elias, in Egypt, 'He is a good abba.' The old man answered them, 'In comparison with his own generation, he is good.' They said to him, 'And what is he in comparison with the ancients?' He gave them this answer, 'I have said to you that in comparison with his generation he is good but as to that of the ancients, in Scetis I have seen a man who, like Joshua the son of Nun could make the sun stand still in the heavens.' At these words they were astounded and gave glory to God.

(Abba Theodore) said 'If you are friendly with someone who happens to fall into the temptation of fornication, offer him your hand, if you can, and deliver him from it. But if he falls into heresy and you cannot persuaded him to turn from it, separate yourself quickly from him, in case, if you delay, you too may be dragged down with him into the pit.

A brother came to Abba Theodore and began to converse with him about things which he had never yet put into practice. So the old man said to him, 'You have not yet found a ship nor put your cargo aboard it and before you have sailed, you have already arrived at the city. Do the work first; then you will have the speed you are making now.'

+ + +

Abba Theodore of Pherme said, 'The man who remains standing when he repents, has not kept the commandment.'

A brother said to Abba Theodore, 'I wish to fulfil the commandments.' The old man told him that Abba Theonas had said to him, 'I want to fill my spirit with God.' Taking some flour to the bakery, he had made loaves which he gave to the poor who asked him for them; others asked for more, and he gave them the baskets, then the cloak he was wearing, and he came back to his cell with his loins girded with his cape. Afterwards he took himself to task telling himself that he had still not fulfilled the commandment of God.'

The same Abba Theophilus, the archbishop, came to Scetis one day. The brethren who were assembled said to Abba Pambo, 'Say something to the Archbishop, so that he may be edified.' The old man said to them, 'If he is not edified by my silence, he will not be edified by my speech.'

+ + +

It was said about (abba Theodore) that, though he was made a deacon at Scetis he refused to exercise the office and fled to many places from it. Each time the old men brought him back to Scetis, saying, 'Do not leave your deaconate.' Abba Theodore said to them, 'Let me pray God that he may tell me for certain whether I ought to take my part in the liturgy.' THen he prayed God in this manner, 'If it is your will then I should stand in this place, make me certian of it.' Then appeared to him a column of fire, reaching from earth to heaven, and a voice said to him, 'IF you can become like this pillar, go be a deacon.' On hearing this he decided never to accept the office. When he went to church the brethren bowed before him saying, 'If you do not wish to be a deacon, at least hold the chalice.' But he refused, saying, 'If you do not leave me alone, I shall leave this place.' So they left him in peace.

Abba Theodore of Scetis said, 'A thought comes to me which troubles me and does not leave me free; but not being able to lead me to act, it simply stops me progressing in virtue; but a vigilant man would cut it off and get up to

pray.'

Abba Theodor said, 'Privation of food mortifies the body of the monk.'Another old man said, 'Vigils mortify it still more.'

+ + +

Amma Theodora said, 'Let us strive to enter by the narrow gate, Just as the trees, if they have not stood before the winter's storms cannot bear fruit, so it is with us; this present age is a storm and it is only through many trials and temptations that we can obtain an inheritance in the kingdom of heaven.'

The same amma said that a teacher ought to be a stranger to the desire for domination, vain-glory, and pride; one should not be able to fool him by flattery, nor blind him by gifts, nor conquer him by the stomach, not dominate him by anger; but hold be patient, gentle and humble as far as possible; he must be tested and without partisanship, full of concern, and a lover of souls.

She also said taht neither asceticism, nor vigils nor any kind of suffering are able to save, only true humility can do that. There was an anchorite who was able to banish the demons; and he asked them, 'What makes you go away?'

'Is it fasting?' They replied, 'We do not eat or drink.' 'Is it vigils?' They replied, 'We do not sleep.' 'Is it separation from the world?' 'We live in the deserts.' 'What power sends you away then?' They said, 'Nothing can overcome us, but only humility.' 'Do you see how humility is victorious over the

demons?'

+ + +

It was said of Abba John the Dwarf that he withdrew and livead in the desert at Scetis with an old man of Thebes. His abba, taking a piece of dry wood, planted it and said to him, 'Water it every day with a bottle of water, until it bears fruit.' Now the water was so far away that he had to leave in the evening and return the following morning. At the end of three years the wood came to life and bore fruit. Then the old man took some of the fruit and carried it to the church saying to the brethren, 'Take and eat the fruit of

obedience.'

It was said of Abba John the Dwarf, that one day he said to his elder brother,'I should like to be free of all care, like the angels, who do not work, but ceaselessly offer worship to God.' So he took off hsi cloak and went away into the desert. After a week he came back to his brother. When he knocked on the door, he heard his brother say, before he opened it 'Who are you?' He said, 'I am John, your brother.' But he replied, 'John has become an angel, and henceforth he is no longer among men.' Then the other begged him saying. 'It is I.' However, his brother did not let him in, but left him there in distress until morning. Then, opening the door, he said to him, 'You are a man and you must once agian work in order to eat.' Then John made a prostration before him, saying, 'Forgive me.'

One day when he was sitting in front of the church, the brethren were consulting him about their thoughts. One of the old men who saw it became a prey to jealousy and said to him, 'John, your vessel is full of poison.' Abba John said to him, 'That is very true, abba; and you have said that when you only see the outside, but if you were able to see the inside, too, what would you say then?'

+ + +

Some brethren came one day to test him to see whether he would let his thoughts get dissipated and speak of the things of this world. They said to him 'We give thanks to God that this year there has been much rain and the palm trees have been able to drink, and their shoots have grown, and the brethren have found manual work.' Abba John said to them, 'So it is when the Holy Spirit descends into the hearts of men; they are renewed and they put

forth leaves in the fear of God.'

It was said of him (Abba John the Dwarf) that one day he was weaving rope for two baskets, but he made it into one without noticing, until it had reached the wall, because his spirit was occupied in contemplation.

Abba John said, 'I am lke a man sitting under a great tree, who sees wild beasts and snakes coming against him in great numbers. When he cannot withstand them any longer, he runs to climb the tree and is saved. It is just

the same with me; I sit in my cell and I am aware of evil thoughts coming against me, and when I have no more strength against them, I take refuge in God by prayer and I am saved from the enemy.'

+ + +

Abba Poemen said of Abba John the Dwarf that he had prayed God to take his passions away from him so that he might become free from care. He went and told an old man this; 'I find myself in peace, without an enemy,' he said. The old man said to him, 'Go beseech God to stir up warfare so that you may regain the affliction and humility that you used to have, for it is by warfare that the soul makes progress.' So he besought God and when warfare came, he no longer prayed that it might be taken away, but said, 'Lord, give me strength for the fight.'

Abba John said, 'We have put the light burden on one side, that is to say, self-accusation, and we have loaded ourselves with a heavy one, that is to say, self-justification.'

He also said, 'Humility and the fear of God are above all virtues.'

+ + +

Abba John gave this advice, 'Watching means to sit in the cell and be always mindful of God. This is what is meant by, "I was on the watch and God came to me." (Matt. 25:36)

One of the Fathers said of him, 'Who is this John, who by his humility has all Scetis hanging from his little finger?'

Abba John the Dwarf said, 'There was a spiritual old man who lived a secluded life. He was held in high estimation in the city and enjoyed a great reputation. He was told that a certain old man, at the point of death, was calling for him, to embrace him before he fell asleep. He thought to himself, if I go by day, men will run after me, giving me great honour, and I shall not be at peace in all that. So I will go in the evening in the darkness and I shall escape everyone's notice. But lo, two angels were sent by God with lamps to give him light. Then the whole city came out to see his glory. The more he wished to Flee from glory, the more he was glorified. In this was accomplished that which is written: "He who humbles himself will be exalted." ' (Luke

14:11)

+ + +

Abba John the Dwarf said, 'a house is not built by geginning at the top and working down. You must begin with the fundations in order to reach the top. They said to him, 'What does this saying mean?' He said, 'The foundation is our neighbour, whom we must win, and that is the place to begin. For all the commandments of Christ depend on this one.'

Abba Poemen said that Abba John said that the saints are like a group of trees, each bearing different fruit, but watered from the same source. The practices of one saint differ from those of another, but it is the same Spirit that works in all of them.

Abba John said to his brother, 'Even if we are entirely despised in the eyes of men, let us rejoice that we are honoured in the sight of God.'

+ + +

The old man (abba John the Dwarf) said, 'You know that the first blow the devil gave to Job was through his possessions; and he saw that he had not grieved him nor separated him from God. With the second blow, he touched his flesh, but the brave athlete did not sin by any word that came out of his mouth in that either. In fact, he had within his heart that which is of God, and he drew on that source unceasingly.'

An old man came to abba John's cell and found him asleep with an angel standing above him, fanning him. Seeing this, he withdrew. When jAbba John got up, he siad to his disciple, 'Did anyone come in while I was asleep?' he said, 'Yes, an old man.' Then Abba John knew that this old man was his equal, and that he had seen the angel.

+ + +

(Abba Isidore) said, 'When I was younger and remained in my cell I set no limit to prayer; the night was for me as much the time of prayer as the day.'

Abba Isidore went one day to see Abba Theophilus archbishop of Alexandria and when he returned to Scetis the trethren asked him, 'What is going on in the city?' But he said to them, 'Truly, brothers, I did not see the face of anyone there, except that of the archbishop.' Hearing this they were very anxious and said to him, 'Has there been a disaster there, then, abba?' He said 'Not at all, but the thought of looking at anyone did not get the better of me' At these words they were filled with admiration, and strengthened in their intention of guarding kthe eyes from all distraction.

(Abba Isidore of Pelusia) said, 'Prize virtues and do not be the slave of glory; for the former are immortal, while the latter soon fades.'

He also said, 'The heights of humility are great and so are the depths of boasting; I advise you to attend to the first and not to fall into the second.'

+ + +

Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, 'Abba as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?' then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, 'If you will, you can become all flame.'

(Abba James) said, 'Just as a lamp lights up a dark room, so the fear of God when it penetrates the heart of a man illuminates him, teaching him all the virtues and commandments of God.'

He also said, 'We do not need words only, for, at the present time, there are many words among men, but we need works, for this is what is required, not words which do not bear fruit.'

+ + +

Abba John of the Cells told us this story: 'There was in Egypt a very rich and beautiful courtesan, to whom noble and powerful people came. Now one day she happened to be near the church and she wanted to go in. The sub- deacon, who was standing at the doors, would not allow her to enter saying, "You are not worthy to enter the house of God,j jfor you are impure." The Bishop heard the noise of their argument and came out. Then the courtesan said to him, "He will not let me enter the church." So the Bishop said to her, "You are not allowed to enter it, for you are not pure." She was filled with compunction and said to him, "Henceforth I will not commit fornication any more." The jbishop said to her, "If you bring your wealth here, I shall know that you will not commit fornication any more." She brought her wealth and the bishop burnt it all in the fire. Then she went into the church, weeping and saying, "If this has happened to me below, what would I not have suffered above?" So she was converted and became a vessel of election.'

(Abba Isidore the priest) said, 'If you fast regularly, do not be inflated with pride, but if you think hightly of yourself because of it, then you had better eat meat. It is better for a man to eat meat than to be inflated with pride and to glorify himself.'

It was said of Abba John the Persian thast when some evildoers came to him, he took a basin and wanted to wash their feet. But they were filled with confusion, and began to do penance.

+ + +

From Palistine, Abba Hilarion went to the mountain to abba Anthony. Abba Anthony said to him, 'You are welcome, torch which awakens the day.' Abba Hilarion said, 'Peace to you, pillar of light, giving light to the world.'

The holy Fathers were making predictions about the last generation. They said, "What have we ourselves done?' One of them, the great abba Ischyrion replied, 'We ourselves have fulfilled the commandments of God.' The others replied, 'And those who come after us, what will they do?' He said, 'They will struggle to achieve half our works.' They said, 'And to those who come after them, what will happen?' He said, 'THE MEN OF THAT GENERATION WILL NOT ACCOMPLISH ANY WORKS AT ALL AND TEMPTATION WILL COME UPON THEM; AND THOSE WHO WILL BE

APPROVED IN THAT DAY WILL BE GREATER THAN EITHER US OR OUR FATHERS.'

Abba Copres said, 'blessed is he who bears affliction with thankfulness.'

+ + +

One day, the inhabitants of Scetis assembled together to discuss Melchizedek and they forgot to invite Abba Copres. Later on they called him and asked him about this matter. Tapping his mouth three times, he said 'Alas for you,

Copres! For that which God commanded you do, you have put aside, and you are wanting to learn something which you have not been required to know about.' When they heard these words, the brothers fled to their cells.

Abba Cyrus of Alexandria was asked about the temptation of fornication, and he replied, 'If you do not think about it, you have no hope, for if you are not thinking about it, you are doing it. I mean, he who does not fight against the sin and resist it in his spirit will commit the sin physically. It is very

true that he who is fornicating in fact is not worried about thinking about it.

+ + +

Some of the monks who are called Euchites went to Enaton to see Abba Lucius. the Old man asked them, 'What is your manual work?' They said , 'We do not

touch manualj work but as the Apostle says, we pray without ceasing.' The old man asked them if they did not eat and they replied they did. So he said to

them "'When you are eating, who prays for you then?' Again he asked them if they did not sleep and they replied they did. and he said to them, 'When you are a asleep, who prays for you then?' They could not find any answer to give

him. He said to them, 'Forgive me, but you do not act as you speak. I will show you how, while doing my manual work, I pray without interruption. I sit down with God, soaking my reeds and plaiting my ropes, and I say "God, have mercy on me, according to your great goodness and according to the multitude of your mercies, save me from my sins." ' So he asked them if this were not prayer and they replied it was. Then he said to them, 'So when I shave spend the whole day working and praying, making thirteen pieces of money more or less, I put two pieces of money outside the door and I pay for my food with the rest of the mony. He who takes the two pieces of maney prays for me when I am eating and when I am sleeping; so , by the grace of God, I fulfil the precept to pray without ceasing.'

+ + +

They said of Abba Macarius the Great that he became, as it is written, a god upon earth, because, just as God protects the world, so Abba Macarius would cover the faults which he saw, as though he did not see them; and those which he heard, as though he did not hear them.

+ + +

The angel when giving the rules of monasticism to St. Pachomius said to him: "... He laid down that in the course of the day they should make twelve prayers, and at the lamp-lighting time twelve, and in the nightly vigils twelve, and at the ninth hour three. When the multitude goes to eat, he laid down that a psalm should be sung before each prayer. As Pachomius objected to the angel that the prayer were too few ..."

+ + +

The same Abba Macarius while he was in Egypt discovered a man who owned a beast of burden engaged in plundering Macarius' goods. So he came up to the thief as if he was a stranger and he helped him to load the animal. He saw him off in great peace of soul saying, 'We have brought nothing into this world, and we cannot take anything out of the world.' (1Tim.6.7) 'The Lord gave and

the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.' (Job 1.21)

Abba Macarius was asked, 'How should one pray?' The old man said 'There is no need at all to make long discourses; it is enough to stretch out one's hands and say, "Lord, as you will, and as you know, have mercy." And if the conflict grows fiercer say, "Lord, help!" He knows very well what we need and he shows us his mercy.'

A brother went to Abba Matoes and said to him, 'How is it that the monks of Scetis did more thatn the Scriptures required in loving their enemies more than themselves?' Abba Matoes said to him, 'As for me I have not yet managed to love those who love me as I love myself.'

+ + +

It was said of Abba Silvanus that at Scetis he had a dijsciple called Mark whose obedience was great. He was a scribe. The old man loved him because of his obedience. He had eleven other disciples who were hurt because he loved him more than them. When they knew this, the elders were sorry about it and they came one day to him to reproach him about it. Taking them with him, he went to knock at each cell, saying, 'Brother so and so, come here; I need you,' but none of them came immediately. Coming to Mark's cell, he knocked and said, 'Mark.' Hearing the old man's voice, he jumped up immediately and the old man sent him off to serve and said to the elders, 'Fathers, where are the other brothers?' Then he went into Mark's cell and picked up his book and noticed that he had begun to write the letter 'omega' ["w"] but when he had heard the old man, he had not finished writing it. Then the elders said, 'Truly, abba, he whom you love, we love too and God loves him.'

+ + +

Abba Poemen said of Abba Nisterus that he was like the serpent of brass which Moses made for the healing of the people: he possessed all virtue and without speaking, he healed everyone.

Abba Xanthias said, 'The thief was on the cross and he was justified by a single word; and Judas who was counted in the number jof the apostles lost all his labour in one single night and descended from heaven to hell. Therefore,

let no-one boast of his good works, for all those who trust in themselves fall.'

(Abba Poemen) said, 'The beginning of evil is heedlessness.'

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Bishop Angaelos and Bishop McDonald The Catholic Archbishop of Southwark, Most Rev Kevin McDonald and the Coptic Orthodox Bishop Angaelos marked the Week of Christian Unity today, with the launch of the first book compiled by the Catholic-Oriental Orthodox Regional Forum: 'Joint Statements between the Catholic and Oriental Orthodox Churches'. The book includes statements by Pope Benedict XVI and by the leadership of the Syrian, Coptic and Armenian Orthodox Churches. It aims to increase ecumenical cooperation and raise people's awareness on Catholic and Oriental Orthodox similarities, rather than differences.Speaking at the launch at the offices of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, Bishop Angaelos, who co-chairs Forum with Archbishop McDonald, said: "We're facing serious threats of increased secularism and marginalization of religion in general and Christianity in particular. As members of first century churches we really need to both live and introduce people to the wealth, meaning and value of what it means to witness and live our Christianity today. "It's very easy to become theoretical about theology and forget that we are talking about our faith in the incarnate word, in salvation and in the presence of God. We forget to speak in communion of what we can have in common."Bishop Angaelos gave the example of the time he sent a letter of support to the Catholic Church during the adoption issue a few years ago because of the common stance."When you're in a dialogue, it's not about compromise, its about reaching deeply into the Biblical routes in such a way that convergence can be developed," said Archbishop McDonald. "The purpose of publishing this book is precisely to engage people in this process at a local, grass-root level. "We're not talking about agreed statements from theologians that have yet to be ratified," said the Archbishop of Southwark. "We're talking about agreed statements to which the Catholic Church is already committed.""These differences will be resolved because Christ makes one promise about one flock and one shepherd and we will be unified one day," said Bishop Angaelos."We have a lot in common, which far outweighs our differences."We have so much happening this year with the Olympics and the Diamond Jubilee so there needs to be a very clear Christian voice. Also, if our faithfuls don't see us working together, it's pointless to preach about love, forgiveness and acceptance from the pulpits."The General Bishop of the Coptic Orthodox Church said he also hopes to have shared prayer gatherings in the future to get more people involved.Other members of the Forum attending were Abba Seraphim; His Grace Bishop Vahan Hovhannesian; Mgr Bernard Longley, Archbishop of Birmingham; Mgr Paul Hendriks, Auxilary Bishop of Southwark, and Father Peter Farrington (co-Secretary).

CHRISTIAN UNITY IV: A NEW STEP TOWARDS UNITY

2012-01-26T03:53:00.000-08:00

On Sunday within the Octave of Christian Unity, we remembered the Orthodox martyr for peace Alexander Scheroll who will be canonized on February 7th. He was a founder member of a small group called the "White Rose" that wrote and published pamphlets against Adolph Hitler and Fascism during World War II. It was the only group to explicitly condemn the Holocaust. He was Orthodox, but his step-mother, brothers and sisters were Catholic.

The "White Rose" was not a religious group, but their Christian faith was a strong factor in binding them together and in motivating them. Alexander was Orthodox; Hans Scholl and his sister Sophie were Lutheran, and there were Catholic members of the group. It is probable that none had heard of ecumenism; and it certainly was not one of their aims; but they were a group of Catholics, Orthodox and Lutherans who supported one another on their way to heroic sanctity, each being an intimate part of the Christian vocation of all the others; and, as a group, they have borne witness to Christ's presence in Nazi Germany down to the present day. They also bear witness to the reality of Christian living in the modern era, where , at the level of ordinary, everyday life, Grace flows across ecclesiastical barriers, and people of different churches and denominations experience their unity in Christ, even when they are scarcely aware of it. This forms the context for the modern ecumenical movement in which theologians and hierarchs are trying to catch up with different degrees of success.

This is true in countries like the Ukraine, Bulgaria, Belarus and Roumania, where Catholic and Orthodox populations mingle and rub shoulders.

In the Ukraine, when Greek Catholics were moved in cattle trucks from their homes in Western Ukraine to gulags in different parts of Russia, often with the support of Russian Orthodox authorities, they found ordinary Orthodox believers suffering for their faith in the same gulags. Friendships were formed, and, incidentally, Greek Catholicism established itself in places it had never been before - something not foreseen by the Orthodox authorities who collaborated in their exile. When Stalin's Russia murdered six million Ukrainian peasants, men, women and children, by starving them to death on purpose, Orthodox and Catholics died together. Common suffering forged strong bonds which exist to the present day. Communicatio in sacris is common; Orthodox and Catholic priests help each other out; Orthodox bishops make their retreats in Catholic monasteries; and Orthodox students go to to Greek Catholic university. There is much more friendliness than is apparent in statements from Moscow; but it is linked with Ukrainian nationalism for which the Moscow Patriarchate has no sympathy.

That strong links were forged between neighbours during the Communist era is also true in other countries. When two Belmont monks visited Minsk in Belarus, people, Catholic and Orthodox were daily demonstrating for the return to worship of a church that had been confiscated by the Communists. The monks discovered that the people did not care very much whether it was returned to the Catholics who originally owned it, or the Orthodox who are in the majority. Their concern was that it should be returned to its original use. Eastern Christians cannot accept that a church dedicated to the celebration of Mass should then be put to secular use: better to dynamite it or let it fall into ruin than to de-sacralize what has been made sacred. These bonds of Christian friendship, together with the fact that the barriers between Catholicism and Orthodoxy have never been water-tight, in spite of efforts by some on both sides to make them so, form part of the context in which efforts towards reunion are taking place.

Nevertheless, there is a marked difference of tone between the talks by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware with his report on Catholic-Orthodox talks in CHRISTIAN UNITY I, and the following passage from Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev. If I wanted to be petty, I could simply put the difference down to the fact that the prime Orthodox mover in the talks is Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, while Archbishop Hilarion represents the Patriarch of Moscow. Constantinople and Moscow are not the best of friends. However, to dismiss the source of the cold water poured on the talks as mere Russian ambition and feelings of rivalry is to underestimate Patriarch Kiril of Moscow and Archbishop Hilarion who are not anti-Catholic or anti-ecumenical and are keen on closer relations with Rome. Before we go on, please read this Russian statement.

Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev of Volokolamsk, the head of the MP Department for External Church Relations, refuted media rumours that an alleged breakthrough in the Orthodox-Catholic dialogue occurred at the meeting of the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue in Vienna last week. In the words of a statement released by Vladyki Hilarion, “Contrary to press reports, there was no ‘breakthrough’. All our time was devoted to a discussion of the role of the Bishop of Rome in the first millennium. On this subject, the Coordinating Committee of the Commission had previously produced a document that we discussed last year in Cyprus. A rough version of this document was ‘leaked’ to the media, which published it”. According to a piece posted on the official MP website, the participants thought that they could finish discussion on this document at the Vienna meeting. Metropolitan Hilarion’s statement went on to say, “However, nothing happened. It took us much time to discuss the status of the text. From the very beginning, the Orthodox members at the meeting insisted that the Commission could not formally issue the ‘Cretan’ document (revised later in Cyprus), nor could its members sign it. From our point of view, this document requires considerable revision, but even after such review, it would still only have the status of a ‘working document’, that is, merely auxiliary material (instrumentum laboris), which can be used in the preparation of following documents, but in itself, it wouldn’t have any official status”.
Metropolitan Hilarion noted that the document prepared in Crete was “strictly historical in nature”, and, in reference to the role of the Bishop of Rome, has almost no mention of the bishops of other Local Churches of the first millennium, which creates a misconception about the distribution of power in the ancient Church. In addition, he added, the document didn’t clearly and precisely state that the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome in the first millennium didn’t extend to the East. Metropolitan Hilarion hoped that the finalised text would remedy these lacunae. He went on to say that, after a lengthy discussion, the Commission decided that it should rework this document, and that the next plenary meeting of the Commission, which is due in two years time, shall make a final decision on its status. By that time, another new draft document will be under consideration, covering the same material, but only from a theological point of view.
Vladyki Hilarion said, “For the Orthodox parties, it’s obvious that, in the first millennium, the jurisdiction of the Roman bishop resided solely in the West, whereas the East was divided between the four Patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. In any case, the bishop of Rome had no direct jurisdiction over the East, despite the fact that, in some cases, eastern bishops appealed to him as an arbiter in theological disputes. Such actions didn’t give rise to any systematic treatment or development, nor can we read this in any way as implying that the Bishop of Rome was seen by the East as the possessor of supreme authority throughout the Universal Church”. He hoped that the Catholic side would agree with this position at subsequent meetings of the Commission, which, in his view, is confirmed by abundant historical evidence.

Cold water indeed! The first half calls to question the status of the document which had been the fruit of discussions between Catholic and Orthodox theologians at a time when the Russians were absent. In other words, it calls in question the value of the discussions and optimistic sounds coming from Metropolitan Kallistos Ware in our first article. The second half simply denies that the Pope enjoyed universal jurisdiction in the first thousand years of history, as though no discussion had ever taken place. We must notice that Archimandrite Robert Taft S.J. agrees with him on that point. However, even when that is agreed, there still remains other questions related to the Petrine Ministry which don't go away even when the question of jurisdiction is agreed.

The breakthrough in Catholic-Orthodox dialogue is "Eucharistic Ecclesiology" which finds the fullness of Catholicism in the Eucharist which is its essence as body of Christ and the source of all the Church's functions and powers. This is an enormous paradigm shift and permits the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church and the various Oriental Orthodox churches all to claim that they possess the fulness of Catholicism because its source is the Divine Liturgy which is celebrated locally. It makes the Catholic Church re-think its theology of the petrine ministry, finding papal authority, not primarily in a legal delegation from Christ to Peter, as in the sacramental unity of the episcopate based on the identity of all eucharistic celebrations. This re-thinking is taking place together with Orthodox theologians like Metropolitan John Zizioulas. It links infallibility with the epiclesis at the Mass and the nature of Tradition and Liturgy as the fruit of the synergy between the Holy Spirit and the Church. Thus rises the question: if Tradition as expressed in a liturgical life that has come down from Apostolic times, is found in several versions, all of which can claim the Holy Spirit as one of their components by their very nature, what do we do about truths proclaimed in one tradition and denied in another? Papal Infallibility and universal jurisdiction is an important example. Perhaps some of the Orthodox teaching on Hesychasm is another. Clearly, an effort must be made to find something which both sides hold in common and which may have within it a solution to the difficulty. That is what the Orthodox-Catholic dialogues are doing.

Why do the Russian Orthodox was to slow down or halt this process?

Firstly, ecumenism, especially with Rome, is a very divisive issue in Orthodoxy. The hierarchs and theologians who really know anything about Rome are few and far between. For the rest, folk memories of papist atrocities, theological cliches, Protestant anti-Catholic propaganda that they had adopted to defend themselves against Catholic argument, hundreds of prejudices, and a belief that being right involves being intolerant, all mixed up with a large dose of fear because the Catholic Church has a higher educated clergy, is more organized, better equipped, more prepared in catechesis and pastoral programmes, and, above all in the Ukraine, free of all complicity with the atheistic Communist regime. Ecumenism is divisive in Greece and other places as well, as the Athonite abbots showed in an open letter against Rome. In this context, signs that the Orthodox-Catholic dialogue was coming up with mutually agreed solutions would cause divisions in Orthodoxy. I don't think the theologians were so near an agreement; but the problem is fear of an agreement.

Another fact is that the wounds caused by the Russian Revolution, the 2nd World War, and the Communist regime are all very raw, and hurt is just below the surface. When ecumenism is mixed up with nationalism, old memories and old scores, it can become explosive.

It is also true that, while ecumenism is important, it is not the first concern of the Russian Orthodox Church. Re-establishing the Russian Orthodox Church in Russia and its dependencies after a long period of atheism is their primary goal. It colours everything else they do. For this, they do not need internal bickering about ecumenism; but they may need help. Organisation is notoriously bad. The level of education and academic level of the seminaries is abysmally poo. They have seen how much, in general, the Greek Catholics arein catechetics and in engaging in conversation with intellectuals outside the Church. Moreover, they have seen the difficulties that the Catholic Church has in Western Europe over a rampant secularism.

Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev has said that a basic problem of relations between Orthodoxy and Catholicism is lack of confidence in each other. About a thousand years ago, he has said, both sides decided that they did not need each other and that they could go it alone. While that mentality is general, theological discussion has only limited worth. What is needed is that each side should re-discover their need for the other. Let us start with the fight against secularism. Russian Orthodoxy is fighting for the soul of Russia and those places it likes to think are its dependencies; the Pope and the Catholic bishops have launched the "new evangelization". Why not combine forces, putting aside until later or turning into a side show for the moment the differences in theology and practice that are so charged with emotion? Metropolitan Hilarion is not a liberal who considers doctrinal differences as unimportant. It is just that, in the Russian judgement, the time is not right. Only when both sides have become part of the other's Christian world, when they are accustomed to work together at common goals, will they form a context where ecumenism is not threatening division. Hence we have the Moscow initiative.

Source: Question More | Elena Yakovleva (click)
Moscow Patriarchate calls for strategic alliance with Catholic Church
The Russian Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church should accept each other not as rivals, but first and foremost as allies, working to protect the rights of Christians, said “the Lavrov of the Church”, head of the ROC’s Department for External Church Relations, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, while speaking at the International Christian Congress in Wurzburg, Germany.
This year Easter celebrations coincide for the Orthodox and Catholic faiths. Bishop Hilarion told Rossiiskaya Gazeta how the two Churches could develop an allied position without damaging their integrity, dogmas, and principles.
“Today, the Orthodox and Catholic Christians should accept each other not as rivals, but as allies working to protect the rights of Christians. We share a common field of missionary work.” said Metropolitan Hilarion, while speaking at the fourth international congress in Wurzburg, stressing that “the future of Christianity in the third millennium depends on the joint efforts of the Orthodox believers and Catholics.’’
Bishop Hilarion commented on his statement to RG as follows.
“The idea of a strategic alliance with the Catholics– is an old idea of mine. It came to me when the Catholics were electing the new Pope. Although I would like to point out that what I am suggesting is, in essence, the direct opposite of Uniatism, which is a way toward a rapprochement based on doctrinal compromises. In our point of view, the policy of Uniatism had suffered complete failure. Not only did it not bring the Orthodox Christians and Catholics closer together, it actually distanced them. And Uniatism, as is currently recognized by both Orthodox believers and Catholics, is not the path toward unity.
“I, on the other hand, am asking to – without any doctrinal compromises and without attempts to artificially level our dogmatic differences, the teachings about the Church and about the superiority of the Universal Church, without the claims to resolve all of the existing problems between us – act as allies, at the same time, without being a single Church, without having a single administrative system or common liturgy, and while maintaining the differences on the points in which we differ.
“This is especially important in light of the common challenges that face both Orthodox and Catholic Christians. They are first and foremost the challenges of a godless world, which is equally hostile today to Orthodox believers and Catholics, the challenge of the aggressive Islamic movement, the challenge of moral corruption, family decay, the abandonment by many people in traditionally Christian countries of the traditional family structure, liberalism in theology and morals, which is eroding the Christian community from within. We can respond to these, and a number of other challenges, together.
“I would like to stress, once more, that there are well-known doctrinal differences between the Orthodox and Catholic faiths, but there are also common positions in regard to morality and social issues which, today, are not shared by many of the representatives of liberal Protestantism. Therefore, cooperation is first and foremost necessary between the Orthodox and Catholic Christians – and that is what I call a strategic alliance.
“The Church is not ready to make any compromises. And I am not calling for compromise, but on the contrary, to uncompromisingly defend our positions. Within the framework of the Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, my position is often the toughest. Meanwhile, the documents that are drafted there, are the most often contested by the ROC delegations. There have been instances when we were forced to walk out of sessions as a sign of disagreement with what was happening. We always very firmly oppose attempts to erode the differences that exist between us.
“We don’t need any compromises. We need cooperation and collaboration. And within the framework of the theological commission, we could discuss the differences that exist between us not in order to find a compromise, but in order to clarify our differences and the things we have in common. It could so happen that in the course of discussion we realise that in some doctrinal aspects we are actually closer than seemed to be before – and this will be a rapprochement. But just the opposite could happen: we may see the differences that we have never noticed before.
“The theological dialogue should be allowed to take its course; it may or may not lead to some results. Meanwhile, cooperation that is built on a systematic basis and that is founded on the fact that we share many of the same tasks and challenges should be developed at the same time.”

It was hoped that this approach would not subject the Orthodox Church to the strains that were being caused by the theological talks, but would further the movement of Christian unity more quickly, so that an atmosphere would eventually be created in which theological dialogue would not cause the problems that it does now. Even more important, by mutual help between Catholic and Orthodox churches, both churches will have more resources against the rampant secularism of our time. The Russians knew that this would appeal to Pope Benedict XVI because they know and respect him. On Facebook, here is Metropolitan Hilarion again (click here).

The initiative has already been enthusiastically accepted in Rome from which has come the suggestion that the Orthodox form a European equivalent to the European Synod of Bishops that can treat with the Catholic authorities on an equal footing.
There is another side to it. The Russians wish to use this alliance so wanted by the Vatican, together with the hope of a visit by the Pope to Moscow, to entice the Vatican into doing something about the Greek Catholic Church in the Ukraine.

This church is advancing all the time. It is even said that more Greek Catholics go to church on Sunday in the Ukraine than Orthodox loyal to Moscow! These advances are largely due to the fact that many of the Orthodox of the Ukraine were forced into Orthodoxy by Stalin's police, resented it, and now their grandchildren can do what they want (see CHRISTIAN UNITY III). The Orthodox do not seem to be able to see that they are partly responsible for the situation by their collaboration with the Communist regime, and that Moscow has not earned the affection of the Ukrainians in recent history. Instead, they blame the situation on efforts of Catholics to convert Orthodox. While there must be instances of this, as there must be instances of Orthodox trying to convert Catholics, seeing the hostile relationship between the two sides, this is not the main reason, nor is the hostility general.

Unfortunately, there are signs that the Vatican has, at least partially, given into temptation. There are many thousands of Greek Catholics from the Ukraine in Italy, but they are yet to have their own eparchy as in Britain. A papal nuncio recently visited a Ukrainian parish where the congregation was told four times during the course of the ceremony that they were an obstacle to closer relations between the Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church. What does the papal nuncio want the Greek Catholics to do about it? What right allows Vatican authorities who have never suffered for the faith to disparage a martyr Church like the Greek Catholics of the Ukraine? Meanwhile, with many signs of being blessed by God, with many vocations, a relatively new university with a high reputation, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church continues to advance among descendants of reluctant converts to Orthodoxy and with unchurched Ukrainian intellectuals who are negotiating their way out of atheism.. Greek Catholics have as much right to be themselves as we have to be Latin Catholics in England; and the sooner both Moscow and the Vatican accept this, the better.

We began this post with the account of the White Rose; how Catholics, Lutherans and Orthodox were united by a common goal, discovered they were motivated by a common faith and, together, helped each other on the path to holiness. This initiative from Moscow of an alliance between Catholicism and Orthodoxy to defend the Christian heritage of Europe, to promote Christian values and to oppose rampant secularism is an expansion of the same idea. As long as Catholics and Orthodox do not makes demands that the other side cannot in conscience accept, and treating Ukrainian Greek Catholics as though their church is in some way inferior to other Catholic churches is one such a demand, then it should benefit both churches enormously. We can unite in asking Alexander Scheroll, after February 7th SAINT Alexander Scheroll, to pray to God for the success of this initiative.

next: CHRISTIAN UNITY V: a Catholic View of Orthodoxy by Aidan Nichols O.P. and an Update on Catholic-Oriental Orthodox relations. (Sorry for being late with today's post which should have been published on Tuesday, within the Octave; but someone needed my computer with greater urgency than I did - it is called "community life".

CHRISTIAN UNITY III -ROBERT TAFT S.J. "PUTTING THINGS STRAIGHT"

2012-01-23T00:15:00.000-08:00

ROBERT TAFT ON CATHOLIC - ORTHODOX RELATIONS (CLICK)

On Liturgical Theology in the thought of Fr A> Schmemann. Not explicitly ecumenical but, perhaps, a step on the way.

ROBERT TAFT ON MODERN LITURGICAL THEOLOGY, 25TH FR A. SCHMEMANN MEMORIAL LECTURE. (CLICK)

(FOR THE FULL ARTICLE, CLICK HERE)

National Catholic Reporter
The Independent Newsweekly

February 4, 2004 Excerpt from an interview with Jesuit Fr. Robert Taft of the Pontifical Oriental Institute, February 4, 2004By John L. Allen, Jr. Rome,

What’s the argument for erecting a patriarchate for the Greek Catholic church in Ukraine?

The argument is that when an Eastern church reaches a certain consistency, unity, size, consolidation and so forth, it’s a normal step. Furthermore, among the Orthodox it’s often been a normal step taken illegally. For example, the Bulgarians were under the Patriarchate of Constantinople, who according to Orthodox practice, imposed upon them a Greek hierarchy, until the Bulgarians had enough and declared their independence, erecting their own patriarchate. Constantinople refused to recognize it, until they finally realized that nothing’s going to change and so they recognized it. Frankly, my advice to the Ukrainians has always been to do the same thing. Just declare the patriarchate and get on with it. Do it, of course, only if you’ve got the bishops unanimously behind it …

Why erect it in Kiev rather than L’viv, where the Greek Catholics in the Ukraine are traditionally concentrated?

You have to understand, and this is something that anyone who knows any history has to sympathize with, that Kiev, “Kievan Rus” as they call it, is the heartland of all Orthodoxy among the East Slavs – Belorussians, Ukrainians, and the Russians. To ask one of them to renounce Kiev is like asking the Christians to give Jerusalem over to the Jews, to say we really don’t have any interest there anymore. It’s ridiculous. …
Furthermore, there was a time when all of Ukraine west of the Dnepr River was in union with Rome, and the presiding hierarch was in Kiev. It’s not like there’s never been a Ukrainian Catholic bishop of Kiev, a metropolitan of Kiev. But, you know, you don’t resolve this on the basis of history. History is instructive but not normative. …

Kiev in Ukraine is like Paris in France. L’viv, even though it’s a lovely town, is still a backwater. You’re dealing with a church that has spread beyond the old Galician boundaries, in other words the Western Ukrainian boundaries of its existence. In the modern world people spread all over the place. Even though this is still the heartland, there are Ukrainian Greek Catholics not only throughout Eastern Ukraine but also across Russia, Kazakhstan, you name it. These people have a right to be served. Furthermore, one of the ugly secrets that no one talks about is that it’s quite possible that the Ukrainian Greek Catholic church is the largest group of practicing Christians in the country, East or West. I’m talking about those who go to church. You ask the Orthodox in the Ukraine, “How big are you?” and they say, “310 parishes.” But ask them “Who goes to church?” and they say, “We don’t know.” “Eastern” and “statistics” is an oxymoron. One thing that characterizes Ukrainian Catholics is that they go to church, and they practice. Why was the Russian Orthodox church so upset at losing that area back to the Catholic church? That’s where their vocations came from, and that’s where their money came from. Collect a statistic sometime of how many priests who were ordained in the Russian Orthodox church from the end of World War II until the day before yesterday came from Western Ukraine. Certainly it would be an overwhelmingly unbalanced proportion with respect to the size of the Orthodox population.

By the way, almost all the Ukrainian Orthodox today are Catholics who had been forced into the Orthodox Church and for one reason or another remained Orthodox.

.But there’s no intra-Catholic reason to object to the patriarchate?

Are you kidding? We’ve got a patriarchate for the Copts whose total membership would fit in this room, for God’s sake. Give me a break. Maybe there shouldn’t be, that’s another question, but there is.

What it is that bothers the Orthodox so much about the idea of a Ukrainian patriarchate?

What bothers them is the very existence of these churches. They look upon all of these people as their property that has been won away, coaxed away, forced away from them. And they’re right. But what they don’t realize is that you just cannot collapse history the way they do. It’s like going on a visit to Greece to the beach because you want to get a suntan, and some jerk points his finger at you as if you fought in the Fourth Crusade. Most Westerners don’t even know what the hell the Fourth Crusade was, and don’t need to know. You’re dealing with people who collapse history as if it happened yesterday. Let me use my classic example of the Anglicans. Does anybody think that Henry VIII took a plebiscite to see if the Catholics in England wanted to separate from Rome? No, they got up one morning and found that they were no longer Catholics. But that’s 500 years ago. It certainly doesn’t mean that the Catholic church could enter England with an army today and force all those people back into the fold. The same thing is true in Ukraine. These people, the Greek Catholics, have been in the Catholic church since 1596, and want to remain there. The Orthodox propose, and it’s hard to even take this seriously, that Eastern Catholics should be given the “free choice” of joining the Orthodox church or joining the Latin church. That’s like telling African-Americans in Georgia that because you’re the descendants of somebody who got dragged there, you can have the “free choice” of living in Albania or Uganda. Maybe they want to stay where they were born, right in the good old USA. To call that a “free choice” is a mockery of language.

The Orthodox say that Union of 1596 was dissolved in 1946.
Everybody knows what a comedy that was. Even the secret police who organized the thing have spilled the beans in print. As everybody knows, all of the bishops of the Catholic church were arrested, so how can you have a synod without bishops? The two or three bishops who were there had been ordained as Orthodox bishops, therefore they were not Catholic bishops, therefore they could not in any canonical way preside over a Catholic synod. Everybody knows this.

You’ve got two levels: the level of what appears in public declarations and the press, and then the level of face-to-face contacts with people who can be rational, like Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk (the number two official in the Russian Orthodox hierarchy) [and now Patriarch of Moscow]. He’s a rational, intelligent human being, and he’s not an enemy of Catholicism. He has to make certain sounds from time to time. You see, you have to realize that much of what the Russian Orthodox hierarchy does is because of their own lunatic fringe. It’s a mistake to think the patriarch and the permanent synod have the kind of control over their hierarchy and their church that the pope does in the Catholic church. The patriarch of Moscow is not a pope.

How can Kasper accomplish anything?:

By talking turkey the way he did in his article in Civiltà Cattolica when the Orthodox complained about the creation of the dioceses in Russia, which was translated into other languages, he could make some headway. He laid it right out. There are over 300,000 Catholics in European Russia, 65,000 of them in Moscow alone. To say that a church doesn’t have a right to erect a diocese there is absurd, especially when the Orthodox plant metropolitans wherever they want. Let’s take the example of Austria. Vienna has been a Catholic see since the first millennium, yet the Russian Orthodox have a metropolitan, not just “in” Vienna but “of” Vienna … that’s his title. Yet there probably aren’t 5,000 Russian Orthodox in the whole of Austria. Fair is fair. Is Moscow their canonical territory? Yes, but guess whose canonical territory Vienna is. They come up with the argument, we believe in the principle of “one bishop, one city.” Want to guess how many Orthodox bishops there are in New York? I mean, for God’s sake. The problem is, nobody talks to them like that because nobody knows what I know. Catholics hear this stuff and say, “Oh, gee, aren’t we awful.” Give me a break.

So what can Kasper hope for?

What Kasper can hope for is a renewal of the dialogue. What he needs to do is to reassure Moscow once again is that the Catholic church regards the Russian Orthodox church as a sister church, that we are there to take care of Catholics, not to fish in their pond. We’ve said this a million times. Kirill has been making some good noises lately. He’s said the dialogue has never been interrupted, which is true, and that while the official position of both churches is that we shouldn’t be fishing in one another’s waters, but there are clergy on both sides who don’t respect those norms. There are Orthodox clergy who proselytize among Catholics, we know that for a fact. The Russian Orthodox opened up a parish in Palermo! All the Russians in Palermo you could fit into a telephone booth. Who’s the priest? He’s a converted Catholic. When it was opened up, in the journal of the Moscow patriarchate, it stated quite clearly that this is a step toward recovering the Byzantine heritage of Sicily. Furthermore, there’s a Greek monastery in Calabria that’s also proselytizing among the Catholics. There are loose cannons all over the place.

It’s extremely difficult for the Orthodox to face up to their own reality. They don’t really understand the uses of history. For example, there are hundreds of thousands of Catholics today in Siberia. How come? Because the Russians dragged them there in cattle cars, that’s how come. Let’s say it the way it is. Furthermore, before the war, 20 percent of the population of Siberia was Catholic. Were there Catholics dioceses in Russia before the revolution wiped them out? Yes, there were. I mean real dioceses, not just fictitious apostolic administrations. Real dioceses. If there are Catholic bishops now in regions where there weren’t before the revolution, it’s for the reason I just gave – these people were dragged to those regions in cattle cars. The pope didn’t drag them there. Let’s say it the way it is. They’re incapable of facing reality.

There seems to be a predictable pattern of crisis/reconciliation/crisis in Catholic-Orthodox relations. Are we doomed to keep repeating this cycle?

I think so. In part, because we live in a free world and nobody really controls all of their own people. If the Neocatechumenate crowd decides to show up in some Russian city and cause trouble, who’s going to put them under control? Part of the problem is that this papacy hasn’t controlled some of these new movements. Matter of fact, it encourages them. It’s not the Jesuits who are causing trouble in Russia. It’s not the Franciscans

. Part of the problem too is that the Russians are always reacting not so much to what we do, as to how their own constituency reacts to whatever we do. Basically, there are three groups in the Russian hierarchy. You’ve got a real wacko kind of right-wing fringe. These are the ones who would agree with calling Rasputin a saint and that kind of garbage. Then you’ve got people like Kirill, who are open and ecumenical and intelligent, because he’s got an education. Then you’ve got kind of a middle group that’s very conservative but not frothing at the mouth. Kirill’s group is a very small minority. The patriarch is a juggler trying to keep all these balls in the air.

The post-Vatican II goal of the ecumenical movement was full structural unity. Is that a pipe dream with the Orthodox?

No, it’s not a pipe dream, but it depends what you mean. The only possible aim for ecumenism is communion. The old notion that the church begins with God, then the pope, and on down in pyramidal fashion, is gone. What we’re dealing with now is sister churches. That’s what we had before the East/West schism. Does anybody think that Rome had anything to say about who became patriarch of Constantinople? Or who became the metropolitan of Nicomedia? Of course not. These guys were bishops there just like we had bishops here, and when they met they’d say, “You’re a bishop? Hey, I’m a bishop too. How’s it going?” They were all in communion. It’s not like Rome was telling them what to do.

How do we get communion?
First, let’s be clear that this is all we’re ever going to get.

When will we get it?
I don’t know. Certainly not in my lifetime. I would suspect that it’s going to take a few more centuries.

Do you agree that the central problem is the papacy?

Of course. What we’ve made out of the papacy is simply ridiculous. There’s no possible justification in the New Testament or anyplace else for what we’ve made out of the papacy. That doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in a Petrine ministry. I believe that Rome has inherited that Petrine ministry. But there’s no reason on God’s earth why the pope should be appointing the bishop of Peoria. None whatsoever. So we really need a devolution, a decentralization.

The Catholic church has become so big that we need some kind of a synodal structure in the West the same way you have in the East. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops ought to be a kind of synod of Catholic bishops in the United States. They ought to be able to elect the bishops. Leave Rome a veto, if you want. By the way, this would be no guarantee of better bishops. The notion that the locals will necessarily pick better people than Rome is obviously false, as anybody who knows the East understands. But at least people will see these guys as their bishops and not Rome’s. Make your own bed and sleep in it. The pope could say: ‘You don’t like the archbishop of New York? Hey, I didn’t name him.’

Given all the hassles, is there a case for simply forgetting about dialogue with the Orthodox?

The Catholic church never calls anybody else a “church” if they don’t have an episcopate. In that strict sense of the term, the Russian Orthodox is the largest church in the world after the Catholic church. To ignore them would be like the United States’ policy on China for so many years. There are a billion people over there, and the U.S. tried to pretend they don’t exist. How stupid can you be? So we’ve got to come to terms with Moscow, but they also have to come to terms with us. Like it or lump it.

So, tough love is your approach?

Absolutely. That was one of the problems of the Secretariat of Christian Unity under Willebrands. When the Orthodox would say something outrageous, they would make remonstrances privately, but never did anything appear in public. You can’t do it that way. That makes them think they’re getting away with it. It’s got to be front page, in your face. We shouldn’t have a Catholic bishop in Moscow? Well, let’s see, there’s a Russian Orthodox metropolitan in Brussels, to say nothing of Paris, of London. Up to a while ago, there were three Orthodox bishops in Oxford. All of the Orthodox in Oxford you could fit into a telephone booth. You’ve got to challenge this sort of nonsense.

National Catholic Reporter, February 6, 2004

George Weigel on the Ukrainian Catholic University

Next: CHRISTIAN UNITY IV: MOSCOW AND ROME - THE NEW INITIATIVE

Alexander Schmorell: A Witness in Dark Times (by Jim Forest)

2012-01-22T01:19:00.000-08:00

On February 4 and 5, 2012 Alexander Schmorell will be recognized (canonized) as a martyr saint.

Alex Schmorell and Hans Scholl in military uniform

After the beheading on July 13, 1943 Schmorell’s body was buried behind Stadelheim Prison in the cemetery at Perlacher Forst. 50 years later, in 1993, Schmorell’s parish buys and reconstructs a church-building across the street from where his earthly remains are buried. In the iconostasis of the church dedicated to the New Martyrs of Russia, there is an icon showing Schmorell among the saints canonized by the Russian Church Abroad since 1964.

In May 1942, two young medical students in Munich secretly formed an anti-Nazi project they christened the White Rose. The work they envisioned was simple but daring: publication of a series of anti-Nazi leaflets. In the months that followed, four more friends joined the White Rose. Once launched, the group managed to publish and widely distribute six leaflets advocating active resistance by the German people to Nazi oppression and tyranny. Rejecting fascism and militarism, the White Rose called for a federated Europe committed to tolerance and justice. The leaflets quoted extensively from the Bible, Aristotle, Goethe, Novalis and Schiller. Following the German defeat at Stalingrad, the White Rose also carried out a night-time action of writing anti-Nazi slogans on walls such as “Freedom” and “Down with Hitler” as well as a white swastika with a red slash running through it.

In less than a year, all the principal participants in the group plus many collaborators had been identified, arrested and executed, but their memory lives on. Today not only has the White Rose become important to Germans, but it is internationally known.

This is in part thanks to “Sophie Scholl: The Final Days,” the Oscar-nominated film that focuses on the youngest member of the White Rose, Sophie (only 21 when she died) and her brother Hans. There have also been several books, including Sophie Scholl and the White Rose, and numerous web sites.

Part of the initial inspiration for the activities of the White Rose came from a series of sermons by August von Galen, Catholic bishop of Münster, in which he denounced Aryan racism and the Nazi euthanasia program that resulted in the killing of members of society whom the Nazis regarded as unfit or unproductive.

“These are men and women, our neighbors, our brothers and sisters!” said Bishop von Galen. “Poor ill human beings. Maybe they are unproductive, but does that mean that they have lost the right to live?… If one adopts and puts into practice the principle that men are entitled to kill their unproductive fellows, then woe to all of us when we become aged and infirm! … Then no one will be safe: some committee or other will be able to put him on the list of ‘unproductive’ persons, who in their judgment have become ‘unworthy to live.’ And there will be no police to protect him, no court to avenge his murder and bring his murderers to justice. Who could then trust his doctor? He might decide that a patient is ‘unproductive,’ condemning him to death! One cannot even imagine the moral depravity, the universal mistrust that would spread even in the bosom of the family, if this terrible doctrine is tolerated, accepted, and put into practice. Woe to man, woe to the German people, if the divine commandment, Thou shalt not kill, which the Lord gave at Sinai amid thunder and lightning, which God our Creator wrote into man’s conscience from the beginning, if this commandment is not only violated, but violated with impunity!”

No German newspaper reported the bishop’s remarks. The Gestapo, while not daring to arrest and imprison so prominent a bishop, put von Galen under house arrest. After the war, it was revealed that Hitler had put von Galen on a list of people to be executed after the German victory in the war. Von Galen’s sermons, and their clandestine distribution far beyond Münster, helped inspire the founding of the White Rose. Although not a religious group per se, faith in God was one of the main strands uniting those involved in the White Rose.

Though the printings of the first few White Rose leaflets were small – obtaining the paper needed was a serious problem – the leaflets caused an immediate sensation. The Gestapo began an intensive search for the authors.

The White Rose founders and principal leaflet authors were Alexander Schmorell and Hans Scholl.

Hans Scholl, born in Ingersheim on September 22, 1918, came from a Lutheran family. Hans’s father Robert had served in World War I as a non-combatant medic because of his pacifist convictions. Active in liberal politics, in pre-Nazi times he had been a mayor. As a boy, Hans had been active in the Hitler Youth, but became disillusioned and developed anti-Nazi convictions.

Schmorell was a member of the Orthodox Church, attending the liturgy regularly. His friend Lilo Ramdohr recalls he always had a Bible with him and in various ways expressed his bond with the Orthodox Church. Schmorell was born in Orenburg, Russia, on September 16, 1917. Friends often called him by his Russian nickname, Shurik. His father Hugo was a physician – German by nationality but Russian by birth – and his mother was the daughter of a Russian Orthodox priest. She died of typhus in 1919 when Alexander was only two years old. Hugo remarried the following year. His second wife, Elisabeth, though German, had grown up in Russia. In 1921, the Schmorell family plus their nanny, Feodosiya Lapschina, fled Russia for Germany to escape from the Bolsheviks and the civil war. They settled in Munich, where two more children, Erich and Natasha, were born. Within the home Russian was spoken. Elisabeth Schmorell was Catholic, as were Alexander’s siblings, but Alexander remained Orthodox, attending Orthodox church services as well as religion classes in Munich.

According to Nazi theories of race, Slavs (Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, etc.) were untermenschen, sub-human – a view no member of the Schmorell family could accept. At one point, Alexander had been part of the Scharnhorst Youth, but once the group merged with Hitler Youth he stopped attending meetings.

When Schmorell was drafted into the army and was required to take an oath of loyalty to Hitler, he told his commanding officer that he could not do it, asking instead to be released from military duty. Though not discharged, remarkably he was excused from taking the oath and suffered no punishment. Before his participation in the White Rose, Schmorell had served in Czechoslovakia and in France and so knew first-hand of the crimes the occupying troops were committing

Schmorell began his medical studies in Hamburg in 1939, but by the fall of 1940 he was studying closer to home at Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich. There he met Hans Scholl.

Scholl and Schmorell managed to obtain a duplicating machine – no easy achievement at the time, as such devices had to be officially registered – which they used in duplicating all the White Rose leaflets.

The White Rose Members

The first leaflet, issued in June 1942, declared that “Nothing is so unworthy of a civilized nation as allowing itself to be ‘governed’ without opposition by an irresponsible clique that has yielded to base instinct. It is certain that today every honest German is ashamed of his government. Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible of crimes – crimes that infinitely outdistance every human measure – reach the light of day? If the German people are already so corrupted and spiritually crushed that they do not raise a hand, frivolously trusting in a questionable faith in the lawful order of history; if they surrender man’s highest principle, that which raises him above all other of God’s creatures, his free will; if they abandon the will to take decisive action and turn the wheel of history and thus subject it to their own rational decision; if they are so devoid of all individuality, have already gone so far along the road toward turning into a spiritless and cowardly mass – then, yes, they deserve their downfall.”

A passage written by Schmorell in the second leaflet, issued in June 1942, contains the only known public protest by any German resistance group specifically against the Holocaust. “We wish to cite the fact that, since the conquest of Poland, 300,000 Jews have been murdered in that country in a bestial manner. Here we see the most terrible crime committed against the dignity of man, a crime that has no counterpart in human history…. No crime of this dimension has ever been perpetrated against human beings.” The text blames the German people, in their apathy, for allowing such crimes to be committed by “these criminal fascists.” The leaflet declares, however, that “it is not too late to do away with this most reprehensible of all miscarriages of government, to avoid being burdened with even greater guilt…. We know exactly who our adversary is.” The text adds, “Please make as many copies of this leaflet as possible and pass them on.”

The third leaflet recognized that many people “do not see clearly how they can practice an effective opposition. They do not see any avenues open to them. We want to try to show them that everyone is in a position to contribute to the overthrow of this system. It is not possible through solitary withdrawal, in the manner of embittered hermits, to prepare the ground for the overturn of this ‘government’ or bring about the revolution at the earliest possible moment. No, it can be done only by the cooperation of many convinced, energetic people – people who are agreed as to the means they must use to attain their goal. We have no great number of choices as to these means. The only one available is passive resistance. The meaning and the goal of passive resistance is to topple National Socialism…”

The fourth leaflet had a theological dimension: “Every word that comes from Hitler’s mouth is a lie. When he says peace, he means war, and when he blasphemously uses the name of the Almighty, he means the power of evil, the fallen angel, Satan. His mouth is the foul-smelling maw of Hell, and his might is at bottom accursed. True, we must conduct a struggle against the National Socialist terrorist state with rational means, but whoever today still doubts the reality, the existence of demonic powers, has failed by a wide margin to understand the metaphysical background of this war. Behind the concrete, the visible events, behind all objective, logical considerations, we find the irrational element: the struggle against the demon, against the servants of the Antichrist.

“Everywhere and at all times demons have been lurking in the dark, waiting for the moment when man is weak, when of his own volition he leaves his place in the order of Creation as founded for him by God in freedom, when he yields to the force of evil, separates himself from the powers of a higher order, and after voluntarily taking the first step, he is driven on to the next and the next at a furiously accelerating rate.

“Everywhere and at all times of greatest trial men have appeared, prophets and saints who cherished their freedom, who preached the One God and who with His help brought the people to a reversal of their downward course. Man is free, to be sure, but without the true God he is defenseless against the principle of evil. He is a like rudderless ship, at the mercy of the storm, an infant without his mother, a cloud dissolving into thin air.”

In the summer of 1942, Hans Scholl, Schmorell and another soon-to-be White Rose member, Willi Graf, were sent as medics to the Russian “Eastern Front.” For Schmorell it was a homecoming of sorts, the first time since early childhood that he could experience Russia for himself rather than through such writers as Dostoevsky. He told his friends that there was no way that he could shoot at any Russian, adding he would not kill Germans either. As a fluent speaker of Russian, he opened the door for his friends to make informal contact with ordinary Russian people as well as doctors and Orthodox priests. He, Scholl and Graf attended Orthodox liturgies together.

When they returned to Munich in October, the activities of the White Rose were redoubled. Several new people were involved – Christoph Probst, Sophie Scholl (Hans’s sister), Professor Kurt Huber and Willi Graf – as well as others in a supportive outer circle. Through Alexander’s friend, Lilo Ramdohr, contact was established with Falk Harnack, younger brother of Arvid Harnack, active in a resistance group in Berlin.

In January 1943, the fifth leaflet was ready. Asking if Germany was forever to be “a nation which is hated and rejected by all mankind,” the text called on its readers to dissociate themselves “from National Socialist gangsterism” and to “prove by your deeds that you think otherwise…. Cast off the cloak of indifference you have wrapped around you. Make the decision before it is too late…. Separate yourselves in time from everything connected with National Socialism. In the aftermath a terrible but just judgment will be meted out to those who stayed in hiding, who were cowardly and hesitant.” Thousands of copies were distributed all over “greater” Germany – that is, in Austria as well. Schmorell’s travels brought him to Linz, Vienna, and Salzburg.

Two weeks after the fall of Stalingrad on February 2, 1943, a sixth leaflet was produced. In it Hitler was described as “the most contemptible tyrant our people has ever endured…. For ten long years Hitler and his collaborators have manhandled, squeezed, twisted, and debased these two splendid German words – freedom and honor – to the point of nausea, as only dilettantes can, casting the highest values of a nation before swine. They have sufficiently demonstrated in the ten years of destruction of all material and intellectual freedom, of all moral substance among the German people, what they understand by freedom and honor.”

On February 18, Hans and Sophie Scholl were caught distributing the leaflet at the University in Munich. Two days later Christoph Probst was arrested. On February 22, the three were tried and executed by guillotine hours later.

A Gestapo manhunt was now underway for Schmorell. Assisted by friends, he tried to escape to Switzerland using a forged passport, but he was inadequately clothed for a winter crossing of a mountain route – he had no alternative but to return to Munich. On February 24, with the city under heavy bombardment, he was arrested after being recognized in an air-raid shelter. On April 19 he was tried and sentenced to death and executed by guillotine on July 13, 1943.

At his trial, Schmorell told the court of his work as a medic trying to save lives on the Russian front, his refusal to shoot “the enemy,” and also his earlier refusal to take the oath of loyalty to Hitler. The judge, the notorious ultra-Nazi Roland Freisler, responded by screaming, “Traitor!”

Schmorell’s body was buried behind Stadelheim Prison in the cemetery at Perlacher Forst. After the war, American forces built a base adjacent to the cemetery. Following closure of the base in the mid-1990s, the buildings, including a church, were turned over to the German government. Providentially the Russian Orthodox community was searching for a church building and was able to purchase it. As a result, Schmorell’s parish is across the street from where his earthly remains are buried, while in the church there is an icon of Schmorell.

Archbishop Mark of Berlin, head the German diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, says that in the near future Schmorell will be formally recognized as a martyr saint. In 2007, he led a pilgrimage group to Orenburg, Russia, to celebrate the 90th anniversary of Schmorell’s birth, an event arranged by Igor Chramow of the Eurasia Foundation in Orenburg. During this trip, the pilgrim group met 87-year-old Nikolai Daniilovich Hamazaspian, who, while living in Munich, had been a friend of Schmorell. He had given Schmorell his Bulgarian passport for possible flight from the country. Hamazaspian recalled that Schmorell had often spoken with him about spiritual matters, since they were both Orthodox Christians.

Katja Yurschak, a participant in the Orenburg pilgrimage in 2007, described to me in a letter how impressed she was by the comments Hamasaspian made over dinner one evening: “He said that his friend, Alexander Schmorell, loved his life and did not go around with the idea that he would become a martyr. It’s easy to forget that Alexander Schmorell, in many ways, was not so much different than most other 26-year-old young men at that time. I have always felt it easier to relate to Alexander Schmorell and the story of the White Rose because besides the story being amazing, it’s true, and in some ways, it’s easier to relate to people who are of a similar age, and who live in a similar type of world. In the bonus material for the ‘Sophie Scholl: The Final Days’ DVD, there’s an interview with Elisabeth Scholl Hartnagel, sister to Hans and Sophie. The part that especially hit me was when she said that she doesn’t like it when people call her brother and sister heroes because they tend to use it as an excuse – well, they could do what they did because they were heroes, but you can’t expect me to do anything of the same because I’m not a hero. It misses the point that it is more or less ‘ordinary’ people who work and struggle day by day to accomplish something bigger than themselves…. that the ‘cloud of witnesses’ is always around us, and that we can aspire to that in our lives. Alexander Schmorell was a young man with many talents. He had good friends and loved sculpture and music and literature. Apparently, he also was someone that young women became smitten with. All these things would point to a very bright future, but because of his faith, these alluring things did not hold him fast to this earth. Doing what was right was that much more important.”

In the letters Schmorell sent to his family from prison, he wrote about the deepening of his faith, assuring his family that, although he had been condemned to die, he was at peace, knowing he had served the truth. “This difficult ‘misfortune’ was necessary,” he wrote, “to put me on the right road, and therefore was no misfortune at all…. What did I know until now about belief, about a true and deep belief, about the truth, the last and only truth, about God?” In the last letter, written the day of his death, he told his family, “Never forget God!!” Just before he was taken to the guillotine, he told his lawyer, “I’m convinced that my life has to end now, early as it seems, because I have fulfilled my life’s mission. I wouldn’t know what else I have to do on this earth.” ?

* * *

Jim Forest is secretary of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship. His books include All is Grace: a biography of Dorothy Day (due out in March), Living With Wisdom: A Biography of Thomas Merton, The Road to Emmaus: Pilgrimage as a Way of Life, Ladder of the Beatitudes, Praying with Icons and Confession: Doorway to Forgiveness. A White Rose web link to visit: http://www.katjasdacha.com/whiterose/ .

The icon of Blessed Alexander Schmorell is the work of Deacon Paul Drozdowski and is located in St. Elizabeth the New Martyr Orthodox Church in Rocky Hill, New Jersey. Mounted prints can be ordered from Come and See Icons at http://www.comeandseeicons.com/a/drz33.htm .

Published in the Winter 2011 issue of In Communion, the quarterly journal of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship.

Foto: Archpriest Nikolai Artemoff of the Russian cathedral in Munich, panikheda at Alexander Schmorell's grave in 2005

CHRISTIAN UNITY II - THE MOSCOW PERSPECTIVE

2012-01-21T01:07:00.000-08:00

Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev: Prospects of Orthodox-Catholic Relations (click for source)

Paper delivered on 7 October 2002 at the University of St Thomas (St Paul, Minessota, USA), and repeated on 9 October 2002 at the Catholic University of America (Washington D.C).

In this paper I shall first of all outline the history of the relations between the two major Christian Traditions. Then I shall look more specifically at the theological dialogue that has taken place between the Catholic and the Orthodox Churches throughout the last two decades of the 20th century. Relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church will also be discussed, with special reference to the recent developments. Finally, I will share my vision for the future of Catholic-Orthodox relations in the 21st century.

An outline of the history of Catholic-Orthodox relations

The history of the relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church has for the most part been one of mistakes, betrayals, lies, suspicions, disappointments and disillusionments.

The division between Eastern and Western Christianity which took place in the 11th century was in itself the result of a long development of alienation between these two traditions.

When one looks at the history of the Early Church, one is struck by the fact that Latin Christianity was markedly different from its Greek counterpart almost from the very beginning. Differences are evident both at the dogmatic and ecclesiological levels. The Trinitarian theology of Latin Christian authors, such as Tertullian and Augustine, differed significantly from that of the Greeks, e.g. Origen and the Cappadocians: over the centuries the divergence became more and more acute, leading to the long and still unresolved Trinitarian dispute around the question of the Filioque.

Ecclesiological presuppositions were also dissimilar. If in the East, a system of Patriarchates gradually developed, where each head of a local Church was regarded as equal to the others, in the West the central role of the Bishop of Rome was stressed with ever increasing insistence. While the Easterners regarded the Bishop of Rome as primus inter pares, i.e. the first among the five equal great Patriarchs (the so-called 'Pentarchy'), he himself was rather inclined to regard his primacy as that of jurisdiction over the other four. At several Ecumenical Councils this difference was manifested in the behaviour of the Papal legates: while their interventions were regarded by the Easterners as contributions to discussions leading to conciliar decisions, the legates thought that it was their right to pronounce the final word. The Pope would normally express approval or disapproval of the decisions of the Councils, while the Councils themselves did not deem it necessary.

Political developments in East and West also contributed to growing differences in the ecclesiological visions of the two traditions. In the Byzantine East, the figure of the Emperor was central: it was he who convened the Councils, who gave approval to various decisions regarding church life, who in many cases appointed and dismissed patriarchs and bishops. The ideal of 'symphony' between Church and state was developed against this background. In practice this most often led to a direct interference of the state into church affairs. No central ecclesiastical figure emerged in the Byzantine East during the first millennium, even though the Patriarch of Constantinople received the title of 'Ecumenical'. Western developments were altogether different. For many centuries Western Europe was disunited and divided into many small and fragile kingdoms. In the absence of a strong centralized civil authority, the Papacy gradually became the strongest unifying factor. Hence the role of the Pope not only as the head of the Western Church, but also as a powerful political figure, a head of state, a mighty magnate, a land- and slave-owner.

The West was separated from the East not only by political and theological factors: there was also an apparent cultural difference, conditioned to a significant degree by the use of Latin in the West and Greek in the East. Different cultural contexts contributed to differences in theological approaches, and vice versa. When reading Byzantine polemical treatises against the Latins or Latin diatribes against the Byzantines, one is struck by how theological accusations were permeated with various reproaches of a purely cultural nature. The 'Encyclical Letter' by Patriarch Photius is but one of many such examples. Being dedicated to the important question of the procession of the Holy Spirit, it begins with petty accusations against various liturgical and domestic customs of the Latins, such as fasting on Saturdays. Even if one takes into account that such accusations were advanced in the heat of the polemics and were part of a developed propaganda strategy, it is still evident that even minor cultural differences were regarded by both sides as grave deviations from Tradition. This, in turn, resulted from people's inability to cross the borders of their own cultural contexts. (Maximus the Confessor's attempt, in his 'Letter to Marinus', to look at the Filioque question from the Western perspective is a rare and extrinsic example of the opposite).

The schism of 1054 was, therefore, the result of quite a long development, and not simply a matter of misunderstanding between the Papal envoys and the members of the Church of Constantinople, as it is sometimes presented. Obviously, dogmatic and ecclesiological differences between East and West in the first millennium did not necessitate the complete breach of eucharistic relations between the two traditions, but they definitely contributed to the alienation that resulted in this breach.

The second millennium was marked by a continual struggle between East and West, and by the numerous attempts of the Pope to bring disobedient Easterners under his control. The Crusades were the most striking and outrageous example of the use of violence against the Orthodox by their Western fellow-Christians. The memory of the Crusades is still alive among the Greeks: the wound is still bleeding. Recently the Pope 'apologized' for the Crusades before the Archbishop of Athens, which by itself was a noble action. One has to admit, however, that the apology was delayed by eight centuries. It must also be recognised that numerous remnants of the Crusaders' activity still survive, including, for example, Latin Patriarchate in Orient, which were created at the time of the Crusades in order to replace the respective Orthodox Patriarchate.

Other blows dealt repeatedly to the Orthodox were the numerous attempts to bring them under the jurisdiction of Rome by means of 'union'. The first such attempt, made in Lyon in the 13th century, was followed the Union of Ferrara-Florence in 1439, on the eve of the fall of the Byzantine Empire. Nothing has remained of these two 'unions'. But the Union of Brest, proclaimed in 1596, gave birth to ecclesiastical structures that still exist and whose recent revival has contributed to aggravating Catholic-Orthodox relations.

Parallel to these processes, a continuing theological alienation between Orthodox and Catholics also grew. This was to a significant degree conditioned by the introduction of new doctrines in the Catholic Church, which were (and are still) regarded by the Orthodox as dogmatic innovations. The belief in the infallibility of the Pope when he speaks ex cathedra is the most striking example. A teaching that was the consequence of many centuries of theological debate within the Catholic Church, it was strongly censured by the Orthodox. Indeed, this doctrine was rejected also by some traditional circles within the Western Church: hence the appearance of the Old Catholic Movement, which for many decades conducted a dialogue with the Orthodox.

The struggles between the two Christian traditions in the first half of the 20th century did not differ from those of previous times in that they continued at various levels. There were, however, some latent streams within both traditions which predetermined a rather rapid rapprochement in the second half of the 20th century. Already in the 1930s and 1940s theologians from both sides began to meet on a more regular basis, and for the very first time in Christian history the possibility emerged for each to cross the borders of its own context. The theological exchange that took place at that time contributed to the remarkable change on the part of the Catholics towards the Orthodox which was most evidently manifested during the Second Vatican Council.

At this Council the Orthodox Church was recognised as possessing the fullness of the divine grace that leads people to salvation. It is from Vatican II that the term 'sister Church' with reference to the Orthodox Church stems. This same Council predetermined the significant achievements attained in theological dialogue between the two great Christian traditions in the 1960s-1980s.

Theological dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches. The question of Uniatism.

Official theological dialogue between the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches goes back to early 1960s. In 1961, the First Pan-Orthodox Conference chose the following topics for the forthcoming Pan-Orthodox Council: 'Orthodoxy and the Roman Catholic Church. a) A study of positive and negative moments in the relations between the two Churches: 1) on faith; 2) on government; 3) on church activity (especially, propaganda, proselytism, Unia)'. In 1963, the Second Pan-Orthodox Conference 'unanimously agreed that our Eastern Orthodox Church should propose a dialogue with the honourable Roman Catholic Church on conditions of parity'. The work of the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches was preceded by three meetings of the Orthodox Technical Theological Commission for the preparation of such dialogue. In 1978, the Third Conference of the Technical Commission (Chambesy, Switzerland) stated: 'The objective of the dialogue between the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Churches is to establish full communion. Such communion is to be based on unity in the faith, on the commonly shared life and Tradition of the early Church, and is to be realised through the celebration of one Eucharist'.

The official dialogue began in 1980 on the Greek island of Patmos. The theme of the first session of the Joint Commission was 'The Mystery of the Church and the Eucharist in the Light of the Mystery of the Holy Trinity'. The same theme was discussed in 1981 in Munich, at the second meeting of the Commission. The third (1984, Crete) and the fourth (1986-1987, Bari) sessions of the Commission were devoted to 'The Faith, Sacraments and Unity of the Church'. The fifth session, which took place in 1988 at New Valamo Monastery, discussed 'The Sacrament of Ministry in the Sacramental Structure of the Church, and the Importance of Apostolic Succession for the Consecration and Unity of the People of God'. It is evident that all of these topics have a theological character. The intention of both parties was to come to a better understanding of each other's positions, while at the same time identifying the major differences that existed between them. A significant degree of unity was achieved, and the participants were ready to embark upon a discussion of the major dividing issue, the question of the authority of the Pope of Rome.

However, the end of 1980s was marked by a rapid deterioration in the relations between the Orthodox and the Catholic Churches. The main reason for this was the emergence of the Greek Catholic Church in Western Ukraine. Its presence, which was created after the 1596 Union of Brest, was strong in Western Ukraine until 1946, when it was banned by Stalin. After 1946, many members of this Church were imprisoned and killed and some went into exile. The Greek Catholic Church was declared to be illegal and many church buildings that belonged to it were given to the Orthodox. A similar process took place in 1948 in Communist Romania, where the Uniate Church was also declared to be illegal and its buildings were either closed or transferred to the Orthodox.

Now, at the end of 1980s, under the influence of the nationalist movement in Western Ukraine, the Greek Catholics began to re-establish their presence in the region. What may have become a restoration of justice, however, turned out to be a crying injustice, since the revival of the Greek Catholic Church took place at the expense of the Orthodox Church. On 29 October 1989, the Greek Catholics seized the Transfiguration Cathedral of Lvov, after expelling the Orthodox from it. Shortly thereafter, many similar acts occurred in other parts of the country.

January 1990 saw the creation of the so-called Quadrennial Commission, which comprised representatives of the Moscow Patriarchate, the Roman Catholic Church, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the Eastern Rite Catholics from Western Ukraine. The Commission began to discuss concrete cases of human rights violations during the campaign launched by the Uniates. In March 1990, the Commission developed basic principles for the distribution of the property between the Greek Catholics and the Orthodox. It was agreed that, where there are two churches, one should be given to the Greek Catholics and another one remain Orthodox; where there is only one church, it should belong to the majority group, which must in this case help the minority find or build a suitable place of worship. However, on 13 March 1990, the Greek Catholics unilaterally left the Commission. From then on the seizure of the Orthodox churches (some of them had belonged to the Orthodox even before the Union of 1596) assumed an avalanche-like character. In many places violent methods were employed by the Greek Catholics as they seized Orthodox churches and expelled parishioners from their places of worship. Tensions between the Orthodox and the Greek Catholics led to clashes and mass disorders. By the end of 1990, most churches in Lvov, Ternopol and Ivano-Frankovsk had been captured and by the end of 1991, 597 churches had been taken from the Orthodox.

Commenting on these events, the Theological Commission of the Russian Orthodox Church stated in 1997:

In such a situation it was important to do the utmost to bring home to public opinion, to international organizations, to Christian Churches, including the Roman Catholic Church, that beating Orthodoxy in Western Ukraine was not only an act of violation of human rights and religious freedom, but also an annihilation of whatever progress the dialogue between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches had made in the previous years. It was essential to show that Uniatism was a dangerous and unacceptable way for achieving unity.

The Unia has brought about new divisions, tearing the One Body of the Orthodox Church. The four centuries of its maintenance have revealed it as a dangerous form of proselytism against Orthodoxy. Human suffering and even bloodshed were the sad aftermath of the divisions it had caused.

At the same time, it is important to emphasize that, while repudiating Unia as a method, the Churches do not abjure people. The Greek Catholic communities existing today, with a legal right to exist, like any other religious organization or association, should cease to be the source of divisions and conflicts between the Orthodox and Catholics. To serve this purpose, rules should be worked out to regulate co-existence and relations in places where there is tension causing suffering among the people of God.

The revival of the Greek Catholic Church in Western Ukraine, accompanied as it was by violence, together with other, similar events in the Transcarpathian region, brought the Joint Catholic-Orthodox Commission to decide on suspending the discussion of purely theological topics and to turn to the burning issue of Uniatism. In 1990, the sixth plenary session of the Commission in Freising (Munich) set out to discuss the matter. The Statement that ensued said, among other things, that 'Unia, as a method, failed-where it was introduced-to bring the Churches closer. On the contrary, it caused further disunity. The situation, as a whole, gave occasion to confrontation and pain which became imprinted in the historical memory of both Churches. Ecclesiological motives, too, call for some other methods to be found'. Both sides of the Commission were resolute in their denunciation of Uniatism: 'We reject it as a method for the search for unity because it is opposed to the common tradition of our Churches'. The Freising Statement was accepted with satisfaction by most Orthodox Churches. The Roman Catholic Church, however, did not ratify it.

In 1993, the seventh plenary session of the Joint Commission took place in Balamand, Lebanon. The representatives of the Roman Catholic Church and those of the Orthodox Churches (excluding the Patriarchate of Jerusalem and the Greek, Serbian, Bulgarian and Czechoslovak Churches) agreed on the theological principles and practical recommendations with regard to Uniatism. Once again, it was stated that Uniatism is not a method for achieving unity between the Catholics and the Orthodox:

Because of the way in which Catholics and Orthodox once again consider each other in relationship to the mystery of the Church and discover each other once again as Sister Churches, this form of 'missionary apostolate' described above, and which has been called 'uniatism', can no longer be accepted either as a method to be followed or as a model of the unity our Churches are seeking.

All forms of proselytism were strongly condemned, and a call to mutual collaboration was made:

While the inviolable freedom of persons and their obligation to follow the requirements of their conscience remain secure, in the search for re-establishing unity there is no question of conversion of people from one Church to the other in order to ensure their salvation.

The Eastern Catholic Churches... should be inserted, on both local and universal levels, into the dialogue of love, in mutual respect and reciprocal trust found once again, and enter into the theological dialogue, with all its practical implications.

Pastoral activity in the Catholic Church, Latin as well as Eastern, no longer aims at having the faithful of one Church pass over to the other; that is to say, it no longer aims at proselytizing among the Orthodox. It aims at answering the spiritual needs of its own faithful and it has no desire for expansion at the expense of the Orthodox Church.

Religious freedom would be violated when, under the cover of financial assistance, the faithful of one Church would be attracted to the other, by promises, for example, of education and material benefits that may be lacking in their own Church. In this context, it will be necessary that social assistance, as well as every form of philanthropic activity, be organized with common agreement so as to avoid creating new suspicions.

Furthermore, the necessary respect for Christian freedom - one of the most precious gifts received from Christ - should not become an occasion for undertaking a pastoral project which may also involve the faithful of other Churches, without previous consultation with the pastors of these Churches.

Those in charge of the communities concerned should create joint local commissions or make effective those which already exist, for finding solutions to concrete problems and seeing that these solutions are applied in truth and love, in justice and peace. If agreement cannot be reached on the local level, the question should be brought to mixed commissions established by higher authorities.

Suspicion would disappear more easily if the two parties were to condemn violence wherever communities of one Church use it against communities of a Sister Church.

Important guidelines were developed, specifying, in particular, what should be the position and behaviour of the Catholic Church in territories where the Orthodox Churches are present:

...To avoid all misunderstanding and to develop confidence between the two Churches, it is necessary that Catholic and Orthodox bishops of the same territory consult with each other before establishing Catholic pastoral projects which imply the creation of new structures in regions which traditionally form part of the jurisdiction of the Orthodox Church, in view to avoid parallel pastoral activities which would risk rapidly degenerating into rivalry or even conflicts.

The admonition of the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians (I Cor. 6:17) will be recalled. It recommends that Christians resolve their differences through fraternal dialogue, thus avoiding recourse to the intervention of the civil authorities for a practical solution to the problems which arise between Churches or local communities. This applies particularly to the possession or return of ecclesiastical property. These solutions should not be based only on past situations or rely solely on general juridical principles, but they must also take into account the complexity of present realities and local circumstances.

The Balamand statement with its call on 'excluding for the future all proselytism and all desire for expansion by Catholics at the expense of the Orthodox Church' was a breakthrough in Catholic-Orthodox relations at the theological level. The fact that it was officially ratified by the Roman Catholic Church testifies to the latter's willingness at that time to foster good relations with the Orthodox Church.

However, the reaction to the document among certain Catholics was not altogether positive; some Greek Catholics, for example, greeted it with open hostility. In 1994, Bishop George Gutu, the Apostolic Administrator for the Greek Catholics in Romania, in his letter to Pope John Paul II, criticized those passages in the document where Uniatism was rejected as a method contradicting the tradition of the two Churches. The Bishop spoke accusingly of the Romanian Orthodox Church that 'it does not admit co-opting the Romanian Uniate Church by the Romanian Orthodox Church by means of violence and terror in 1948'. The letter concluded with the complete rejection of the conclusions of the dialogue between the Catholics and the Orthodox on the issue of Uniatism: 'The Romanian Church in communion with Rome accepts none of the texts signed in Rhodes, Freising, Ariccia and Balamand, and declares the signatures under these texts to be invalid'. Critical comments on the Balamand Statement came also from the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholics, Cardinal Miroslav Lyubachivsky.

Negative reaction was voiced also within some local Orthodox Churches. The major reason for dissatisfaction was, however, not the document itself, but the fact that it did not bring about any noticeable change in the relations between the Orthodox and the Greek Catholics in the areas of conflict. The document admitted that Uniatism was a mistake of the past, but it did not solve the problems relating to the coexistence of the Greek Catholics and the Orthodox in the present. This is why the Orthodox participants insisted on continuing the discussion within the framework of the Joint Commission on the theological and ecclesiological consequences of Uniatism. Two meetings of the Steering Committee took place; one in Rome (1997) and the other in Arriccia (1998): both made progress in the discussion of the issue by admitting that the very existence of the Greek Catholic structures parallel to the Orthodox ones is, from the ecclesiological point of view, something 'abnormal'. The 'Arriccia paper' pointed to the three factors which make Uniatism abnormal: a) by the very fact of its existence it calls into question the salvific character of the Mother Churches (i.e. the local Orthodox Churches); b) it contradicts the fundamental ecclesiological principle according to which there should be only one local Church and one bishop in a given place; c) it presupposes the conception of the universal jurisdiction of the Pope of Rome, which is unacceptable for Orthodox theology.

The 'Arriccia paper' was to be discussed by the plenary session of the Joint Commission. However, when in 2000 the members of the Commission met in Baltimore, it became clear that the Roman Catholic delegation was not prepared to go any further than Balamand in the discussion on Uniatism. It did not even want to discuss the 'Arriccia paper' since it claimed that this paper, written by both the Orthodox and the Catholics sides of the Steering committee, represented only the Orthodox point of view. The ecclesiological situation of the Greek Catholic Churches cannot be called 'abnormal', insisted the Catholics in Baltimore, since these Churches are in full communion with Rome. This was a startling and highly regrettable turn in the entire discussion of the issue. For several days heated debates took place, but all in vain: no common position was found and no solution was reached. The session ended without a clear decision as to whether the work of the Joint Commission would ever be resumed. Most probably, the Commission will now be dissolved and some other framework for dialogue will have to take its place.

Many Orthodox delegates present in Baltimore interpreted what happened as a huge step backwards: towards the era before the Vatican II. I must admit that even the emotional atmosphere which reigned in Baltimore reminded one of the Council of Ferrara-Florence rather than the Second Vatican Council. During one of the sessions the atmosphere became so heated that the entire Catholic delegation, headed by Cardinal Cassidy, stalked out of the meeting. Thanks to the 'shuttle diplomacy' undertaken by some Orthodox members of the Commission the session was resumed on the following day, but no progress was achieved. The Commission acknowledged its own inability to continue the discussion and the necessity of raising the question about the future of the dialogue before the respective authorities of the Churches that took part in it.

This was the unfortunate and miserable end of the theological dialogue which began with so many expectations and whose ultimate goal had been no less than the restoration of full communion between the Orthodox and the Catholic Churches.

The present crisis in the relations between the Roman Catholic and the Russian Orthodox Churches

The Russian Orthodox Church participated in the theological dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church at the Pan-Orthodox level from the very beginning. Parallel to this it conducted its own bilateral dialogue with Rome. The latter began in 1967 and from the very beginning it had a theological character. Among the themes for discussion were: 'Church and salvation', 'Pastoral care today', 'The people of God and contemporary issues', 'The Christian message of salvation in a changing world'. All these matters were of mutual interest for both the Roman Catholic and the Russian Orthodox sides and they broadened significantly their knowledge of each other.

At the end of 1980s, when the atheist regime in Russia weakened and religious freedom began to flower, hope was brought to both the Orthodox and the Catholics in the territory of the then Soviet Union. The ties between the two Churches, which in Soviet times were quite close (in the face of a common enemy people tend to be united), could have become closer still. I remember this period most vividly. At the time I was a parish priest in Lithuania, a Soviet republic with a predominantly Catholic population. The Orthodox and the Catholics had coexisted there peacefully (this, fortunately, is still the case), and there was a significant degree of mutual trust and assistance. Catholic seminarians came to me for advice before ordination - I was present at their ordination in the Catholic seminary - and meetings between the clergy of the two Churches were frequent. Some Catholic priests and bishops began to return from prison or from exile. I remember my conversation with the newly appointed dean of the theological seminary: when I asked him about his previous 'appointment' he said that he had just returned from prison, where he had spent some ten years. Another Catholic priest spent twenty-five years in a Soviet camp: he had been accused of teaching religion to children, which was forbidden by Soviet law.

The situation in Lithuania, however, differed from that in Ukraine, Russia and some other republics. In Ukraine, the emergence of the Greek Catholic Church, which I have already described, caused grave problems in the relations between the two Churches - problems which remain unresolved until the present. In Russia, the main cause of discord was and still is the missionary activity of the Catholic Church, which the Russian Church has labelled as proselytism. It took different forms in different places, not only in the Russian Federation itself, but also outside it, in what the Russian Church considers to be its 'canonical territory'.

In 1991, the Roman Catholic Church established four 'apostolic administrations' in Russia and appointed Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz as head of the Russian Catholics. In order to avoid any collision with the Russian Orthodox Church, the term 'administration' was clearly defined and an explanation was given why the Catholic Church did not create dioceses in Russia. It claimed that it wanted to avoid creating parallel structures in order to emphasize that it recognized the Orthodox Church as a 'sister Church'. In 1992, Rome issued a document entitled 'General Principles and Practical Norms of Coordinating Evangelism and the Ecumenical Work of the Catholic Church in Russia and other CIS Countries', which stated that instead of accepting those deprived of pastoral care into the Catholic Church, the Catholic clergy should help the Orthodox Church as much as it can. Besides, the document urged Catholic bishops to see that no activity in the areas under their jurisdiction could be interpreted as a 'parallel evangelising structure'.

In spite of these assurances, the strategy of a gradual Roman Catholic 'conquest' of Russia was being developed. It consisted not only of expanding Catholic parochial structures, but also of undertaking various missionary, educational and charity projects. Sometimes these projects were carried out contrary to the wish of the Orthodox Church and at its expense. Ten years of activity resulted in the creation, at the beginning of 2002, of four Catholic dioceses in the 'canonical territory' of the Russian Orthodox Church. This decision by the Vatican administration fuelled a deep crisis in the relations between Moscow and Rome. The visit of an official delegation headed by Cardinal Kasper, the Chairman of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, to Moscow was cancelled. Instead, an exchange of statements between Cardinal Kasper and Archbishop Kondrusiewicz on the one hand, and the Chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad on the other, took place. This indicated the high degree of hostility and mutual dissatisfaction felt by the two sides.

In his letter to Metropolitan Kirill, as well as in a number of interviews that he gave both in Russia and abroad, Archbishop Kondrusiewicz expressed his disappointment at the reaction of the Russian Orthodox Church to the creation of the Catholic dioceses. In one interview he stated that the Orthodox oppose Catholic missions in Russia because they 'fear that pastoral work may end in emptying their churches' (Avvenire¸ 18 March 2000). Cardinal Kasper, for his part, stated: 'The Russian Orthodox Church feels her own pastoral and evangelical weakness and thus is afraid of the Catholic presence, which is far more effective on the pastoral level, though smaller numerically' (Civilta cattolica, 16 March 2002). The Cardinal further declared: 'It has become clear that the debate on the principle of canonical territory and proselytism conceals arguments of basically ideological nature'. The Russian Orthodox Church, he added, 'defends not only a reality which is longer existent, but also the relations between the Church and the people which are problematic theologically'. He accused the Russian Orthodox Church of 'ecclesiastical heresy', meaning its 'failure to recognize the Catholic Church's missionary aspect for the sake of a conception of proselytism unduly extended in its meaning'.

These statements by two leading Catholic officials were regarded by the Russian Orthodox Church as direct challenges made deliberately and consciously. They were commented on by Metropolitan Kirill in an open letter, in which he said, in particular, that 'the principal problem of dialogue between the Russian Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Churches lies in the fact that all good intentions expressed by the Catholic side at various official meetings and negotiations have not been substantiated by concrete actions. The Catholic side stands up for dialogue with our Church in its public statements, but, unfortunately, acts in Russia in such a way as if no dialogue had ever existed'.

The most comprehensive response, however, came not from Metropolitan Kirill himself, but from the Department for External Church Relations, headed by him, in an official statement dated by June 2002 . For the first time, the position of the Russian Orthodox Church on the questions of proselytism, of 'canonical territory', of the missionary and charitable activities of the Catholic monastic orders was presented in a detailed and systematic way. The statement begins with the definition of proselytism and an explanation of why the Catholic Church is accused of it:

Proselytism carried out by the Catholics among the traditionally Orthodox population in Russia and other countries of the Commonwealth of the Independent States devalues the Roman Catholic Church's attitude to the Orthodox Church as her 'sister Church' declared by Vatican II...

The problem of proselytism is aggravated by the fact that the Catholic side denies flatly its very existence, referring to its own interpretation of the term 'proselytism' as enticement of people from one Christian community to another through 'dishonest' means (for instance, bribery). At the same time, it alludes to the preaching of the gospel to 'non-believers and non-baptized' people who come to Catholic churches exercising their freedom to choose a religion that suits them. The Catholic side would often voice this question: 'Would it be better if these people remained atheists rather than become Catholics?'

Carrying out precisely preaching and mission in Russia, not at all caring only for their traditional flock (Poles, Lithuanians, Germans), the Catholic side often refers to the 'missionary nature of the Church' and to the Lord's commandment to preach the gospel...

This view, very popular among the Russian Catholic clergy, can raise a great deal of serious objections.

Firstly, Catholic clergy, who come mostly from abroad as we will see below, do not have to preach in some obscure 'missionary territory', nor to a heathen or non-religious population. They come to a country with a millennium-old Christian culture imbued with the Orthodox tradition. Therefore, the very fact of conducting Catholic mission here, among the local population who do not have any historical or cultural relation to the Catholic Church, and the presence of Catholic missionaries in the Russian land provokes the perfectly legitimate question: Do the Catholics believe the Orthodox Church to be a Church?..

Secondly, it is has been evident for a long time that the object of the Catholic mission in Russia and other CIS countries is the traditionally Orthodox population. These people were forcibly torn from their Orthodox roots in the decades of atheist regime, but they cannot be called non-believers or atheists. Many of them have found themselves at a crossroads, in a spiritual search, but as we can see from practice, most of them return to the faith of their fathers and find their spiritual path in Orthodoxy. It is unthinkable to deny the profound spiritual, cultural and historical bonds of our people with Orthodoxy. It is bewildering that the Catholics, who themselves belong to a Church in which the notion of tradition is one of the fundamental ones, should doubt the traditional nature of Orthodoxy for Russia. For many of them, Russia is a missionary field for 'evangelization' of the local population. In other words, the attitude of the Roman Catholic Church to Russia differs little from that of various sectarians who seek to 'Christianize' the post-Soviet space and to build up here a 'religious market' in which religious organizations act as competitors struggling for the 'customer'. The ensuing logic is clear: those who are larger and more powerful, who were the first to seize a particular 'market sector,' are in the right.

The statement by the Department for External Church relations points to the revival of faith in Russia, which has taken place owing to the efforts of the Russian Orthodox Church. 'Unfortunately, no such thing is happening in the West, the territory of the historical pastoral responsibility of the Roman Catholic Church. Neither effectiveness, nor aggiornamento, helps here. The West is growing ever more secular and atheistic'. While recognizing that the West is the 'canonical territory' of the Roman Catholic Church, the statement explains what it means by 'canonical territory':

The notion of canonical territory is not an invention of the Russian Church developed for some ideological reasons. It follows from the canonical tradition of the Early Undivided Church. There is an ancient rule in both the Eastern and Western Churches: 'one city-one bishop'. This means that a territory entrusted to the care of one bishop cannot be ruled by another legitimate bishop. This principle has been observed to this day in both the Orthodox and the Catholic Church. An exception is a confessional diaspora, that is, the Orthodox who live in a territory where Catholic bishops have historically exercised their jurisdiction, and vice versa. The pastoral care of such a diaspora by its own bishops and clergy has never raised any objections from local bishops. A vivid example in Russia is the status of the Catholic Church before the 1917 Revolution, while in Western Europe the status of various jurisdictions of Local Orthodox Churches, including the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church.

The question of the Catholic search for 'vocations' in Russia is also discussed. It is stated that 'one of the principal priorities for the RCC's work in Russia is training local Catholic clergy, and probably clergy and the religious for Western Europe'. According to Archbishop Kondrusiewicz, 'The Catholic Church is extremely interested in having Russian, not foreign clergy, to take care of the Catholics in Russia and will do everything possible for it'. In accordance with this guideline the Catholic bishop Jerzy Mazur of Eastern Siberia is drafting some kind of 'pastoral program' for the formation of the fully fledged local clergy.

The activity of the Catholic monastic orders in Russia is regarded as something 'artificially spread through the efforts of foreign monks'. It is noted that 'monasticism has always been a result of the spiritual aspirations of believers themselves, that is, it would emerge from among them in a natural way. This is not the case, however, in today's Russia. Catholic monastic communities have been organized by visiting foreigners in the hope to convert an increasing number of the Orthodox or "unbelieving" Russians'.

The final section of the document deals with the creation of the new diocesan structures in the canonical territory of the Russian Orthodox Church:

Evidence that the Vatican intends to extend the Catholic mission in Russia is to be seen in its recent decision to elevate the status of its church structures in Russia, apostolic administrations, to that of dioceses and to form them into a 'church province' headed by a 'metropolitan'. If this development is to be assessed in terms of the Orthodox canonical tradition, it can be stated that Rome has declared the existence of a Russian Catholic Church understood as a church for the Russians whatever their cultural and ethnic roots may be. This step shows that Rome, acting one-sidedly and without any dialogue with the Orthodox Church, has fundamentally changed the nature of the Catholic presence in Russia. With the establishment of dioceses, the Catholic Church in Russia has ceased to be a pastoral structure for ethnic minorities linked with the Roman Catholic tradition and declared itself a church of a given place whose duty and responsibility is mission towards all the people living in Russia. This step of Rome has not only moved away the prospect for settling the problem of proselytism, but also created a system of competition, hence confrontation, with the Orthodox Church in Christian witness so important for the entire Russian society. All this has certainly weakened the integrity and effectiveness of this witness and thus worked against the Christianization and inchurching of the people.

Responses coming from the Russian Orthodox Church to various accusations and actions of the Roman Catholic Church may seem to be excessively harsh, hostile and inadequate. One would admit that some of them do not correspond to the Western rules of 'political correctness'. However, one has to bear in mind that they stem from the very critical situation in which the Russian Church finds itself vis-à-vis the Catholic Church. They also proceed from a deep concern about the integrity of the Christian message that is to be brought to a country still recovering from many decades of the most severe religious persecution. 'Freedom of conscience' must be respected, and this is why the Orthodox Church would not oppose individual cases of conversion to Catholicism. But when the question is about a missionary strategy developed in order to attract Orthodox, or potentially Orthodox, people to Catholicism, the Russian Church opposes this very strongly. The principle of 'freedom of conscience', moreover, presupposes the right of every individual to make a choice between various equal options, such as, for example, between adhering to this or that branch of Christianity, between being religious or an atheist. In post-Soviet space, however, this is not quite the case. Most people are still 'spiritually uprooted' and need to rediscover their own roots before they may freely consider other options.

One issue that has emerged in the correspondence between the senior Catholic and Orthodox officials is the nature of the Russian Orthodox presence in the West. It has been argued by the Catholic side that the existence of the Orthodox dioceses and parishes in the West does not differ in nature from the existence of the Catholic dioceses and parishes in the East. The response coming from the Russian Church is that our dioceses and parishes were created by the Russian emigration to serve the Russian-speaking people living in the West, who are rooted in the Orthodox tradition, while the Catholic structures in Russia have been created in order to attract Russian people to Catholicism. The Russian Church does not aim at converting the West into Orthodoxy through its mission, while the Catholic Church does have a 'missionary strategy' in the East. This argument echoed with a discussion within the Russian Orthodox diaspora about the missionary imperative of Orthodoxy in the West. The matter, in my opinion, needs to be clarified.

The Russian Orthodox Church does not consider itself to be an ethnically 'Russian' entity, as kind of a national ghetto. It is not the Church 'of Russia', or 'of Russians': it does have an international character. The use of the Russian language (or of Church Slavonic, as far as the liturgy is concerned) has never been regarded as obligatory: on the contrary, the use of vernacular languages is encouraged wherever appropriate. Moreover, as a local expression of world Orthodoxy, the Russian Church shares the universalist ecclesiology peculiar to Orthodox Christianity in general. As Bishop Kallistos Ware states in his classic manual: 'The Orthodox Church claims to be universal. Not something exotic or Oriental, but "simple Christianity"'.

How does this claim correspond to the notion of 'canonical territory'? If we, the Orthodox and the Catholics, divide the world into 'spheres of influence', are we not going to lose this universalist vision of the Christian mission and undermine the very missionary imperative of the Christian Church? It seems to me that the answer to these questions has still to be found. Perhaps the present conflict between the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Churches can be regarded as a clash between two universalist ecclesiologies, which inevitably come into conflict when put into practice. Were this the case, could this crisis result in a kind of fruitful discussion, both within the Orthodox and the Catholic Churches and between them, lead to a redefinition of a whole range of issues relating to the Christian presence in the modern world?

Where do we go from here?

This leads me to the final point of my paper: the future of Catholic-Orthodox relations. It is clear that there is a deep crisis between the Orthodox and the Catholics, probably the deepest in the modern history of Christianity. But is there a way out? Are there any signs of hope for the future? And what has to be done in order to find some solution to existing problems?

It seems to me that every care should be taken to avoid unnecessary false accusations, which are now being circulated in great number. For example, when the state authorities of the Russian Federation refused visas to some Catholic priests, senior Catholic clergy accused the Orthodox Church of influencing the state's decision. Archbishop Kondrusiewicz even spoke of 'persecutions' of Catholics by the Orthodox Church in Russia with reference to these incidents (this sounds especially offensive and ridiculous after several decades of real persecution when millions of believers were imprisoned or executed). Needless to say, the Russian Church is much less influential than one may imagine, and certainly has nothing to do with issuing or refusing visas by the Russian Federation. Sometimes the Russian state authorities refuse visas even to the Russian Orthodox priests who have no Russian citizenship and who live abroad: even in these cases no explanation is in such cases given to the Church. Occasionally, other countries, too, refuse or delay visas to Orthodox clergy from Russia: again, no explanation is normally given, but we do not accuse such states of 'persecuting' the Russian Orthodox Church.

Some unfortunate decisions taken lately in order to expand the Catholic presence in traditionally Orthodox territories should be reconsidered. Among them, the transformation of the apostolic administrations in Russia into dioceses headed by a 'Metropolitan'. The recent decision of the Ukrainian Greek Catholics to transfer their headquarters from Lvov to Kiev, their ambition to create a 'Patriarchate' in Ukraine, as well as their numerous attempts to establish permanent episcopal structures in Russia, do not help in solving the existing problems either. On the contrary, the further expansion of Uniatism, which is underway in spite of the condemnation of this movement at Balamand and in other official statements, makes the way to reconciliation even more problematic.

Uniatism should be thoroughly dealt with from historical, theological, ecclesiological and pastoral points of view. Balamand's practical recommendations ought to be put into practice. We must, in fact, go further than Balamand and declare that Uniatism is unacceptable not only as a fact of the past but also as a reality of the present. Without, of course, denying the right of the Greek Catholic Church to exist and to exercise its ministry, we must agree that Uniatism is still a bleeding wound, a cause of serious discord among the Orthodox and the Catholics, an obvious impediment to the normalisation of the situation in Catholic-Orthodox relations.

The issue of proselytism must also be addressed. There is no agreement between the Orthodox and the Catholics as to what the notion of 'proselytism' entails and what the difference is between proselytism and mission. It seems to me that by 'mission' one should understand missionary activity of a particular Christian Church in its own 'canonical territory' or in other places where Christianity was not preached before. If mission is carried out by a particular Christian group in a place where a local Christian Church already exists, it must be carried out with the permission, in close contact, and in collaboration with this local Church. Proselytism, on the contrary, implies missionary activity in territory traditionally belonging to another Christian Church, at the expense and to the detriment of this Church.

The notion of 'canonical territory' must be clarified. Perhaps, the expression itself is not particularly meaningful, but the idea behind it is vital for the co-existence of various Christian communities. There are, using a phrase from Balamand, 'regions which traditionally form part of the jurisdiction of the Orthodox Church', and there are also countries and regions which traditionally belong to the Catholic sphere of influence. This reality has to be acknowledged and its practical implications should be drawn.

In general, different countries and territories have different religious histories. Some countries, like the USA, were from the very beginning multiconfessional and multireligious: hence the absence of any 'national' faith in America. Some other countries and regions, however, had and still have 'national' faiths, i.e. those to which the majority of their population belongs. There are, for example, Islamic countries (like Afghanistan or Iran), Buddhist regions (like Tibet or Bashkortostan), a Jewish country (Israel) etc. There are indeed many countries whose whole history has been deeply influenced by Christianity and in which most people still identify themselves as Christians (even though not necessarily 'practising'). Evidently, no religion can 'claim' a particular territory. But every religion which is dominant in a given place has the right to be recognized and respected in that place: other religions, while legally permitted to exist and to develop, must find appropriate ways of showing their respect to the dominant religion. If, therefore, a particular Christian Church is considered to be 'national' by a particular people, those faithful should not be proselytized by missionaries from another Christian confession. One would not deny that there are countries with a centuries-old Orthodox tradition (Russia, Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, et al.); why, then, should these countries be subjected to intensive activity of Catholic missionaries? Why should a search for Catholic 'vocations' be undertaken in them? Rather, let us look for vocations wherever we are already prominently established. If we do not find them, let us intensify our missionary efforts among our own people, and let others do their job and take care of their flock.

More collaboration, co-operation and mutual trust are needed on a local level between Catholics and Orthodox. As I said earlier, there are already regular contacts between the dioceses, monasteries, parishes, theological schools and other structures of both Churches. These contacts must be developed, in spite of all the difficulties experienced at the official level. Joint charity projects should be encouraged, whereby Catholics and Orthodox could work together for the benefit of the poor and needy. These activities, if carried out successfully and on a large scale, may eventually compel the officials to reconsider their positions and begin to work towards reconciliation.

At some point in the future, when the relationship on a practical level is normalized, the two Churches may resume theological discussions. One of the most important theological questions to be discussed then will be that of primacy. It seems to me that, while the Catholics may wish to revisit this issue in order to make their doctrine more consonant with the tradition of the Ancient Undivided Church, the Orthodox may, on their part, wish to develop further their own comprehension of primacy in the Universal Church. We are accustomed to criticizing the Catholics for their view on primacy, but can we develop our own understanding of it in a way that convinces Catholic theologians? In order to do this, we must agree among ourselves on our interpretation of the relations between the local and the universal Church. In what precisely does the 'universality' of the Church consist? How is this universality to be manifested? Is there any room in Orthodox ecclesiology for a kind of 'universal' leadership? It seems to me that the representatives of the Patriarchate of Constantinople will differ in their response to the last question from the representatives of other Orthodox Churches. The question therefore is not solved and requires further discussion.

Once the divisive issues have been addressed and the existing difficulties resolved, Catholics and Orthodox will be much more amenable in their common response to the challenges of the modern world, such as ever growing secularism, ever increasing globalization, ever more evident loss of moral and ethical values. The Catholic and the Orthodox Churches both belong to the 'traditional' stream of Christianity, and together have much to say to the modern world, where the very notion of 'tradition' is put into question. Their testimony, however, will be successful only if they are able to speak 'with one mouth and with one heart'.

There is, therefore, a long road ahead. But there are always some signs of hope. And there is indeed a common well from which both the Catholics and the Orthodox may draw. As one of my close friends, a Roman Catholic hermit and theologian, said, 'it is sin that divided the Churches and it is sanctity that will unite them again'. The legacy of saints and martyrs is common to both Churches - both have centuries-old experience of martyrdom and sanctity. In the 20th century both Catholics and Orthodox, together with people from other confessions and religions, suffered in Soviet and Nazi camps: many gave their lives for the faith. There are many striking testimonies of solidarity among Christians of different confessional backgrounds in the Soviet camps. These Christians were united not only because they had a common enemy, but also because they shared with each other their love for Christ and for his Church, a love which was not shaken even by the most severe persecutions. There was more that united them than that divided them, because what united them was Christ himself.

* * *

At the time of the Second Vatican Council people spoke of the end of a long ecumenical 'winter' and of the beginning of the spring of cooperation and interaction. Now it seems that winter has come again, since much of what was achieved and declared then is now 'frozen'. I believe that in this critical time we must do whatever we can in order to return to the spirit of that openness, mutual respect and cooperation promoted by Vatican II. It is only in this way that we will be able to move the situation in Catholic-Orthodox relations from the present stalemate.

TOMORROW WE SHALL HAVE A POST ON A NEW ORTHODOX SAINT. ON MONDAY, WE SHALL CONTINUE WITH A HARD-HITTING RESPONSE BY ARCHIMANDRITE ROBERT TAFT S.J. TO RUSSIAN ORTHODOX COMPLAINTS, AS WELL AS A CLEAR STATEMENT ON WHAT SHOULD BE DONE ON BOTH SIDES. ON TUESDAY, THERE WILL BE THE FINAL POST IN THIS SERIES ON THE NEW INITIATIVE IN CATHOLIC-ORTHODOX RELATIONS.