How much weight John Paul II’s successor will give to unity with the Orthodox remains to be seen. If the new Pope comes from Africa or Latin America he may put little or no weight on this question. Indeed the Orthodox may find that John Paul II was their best opportunity for unity; when they had the chance they refused to take it. History rarely offers a second chance. ~Paul Weyrich
Mr. Weyrich is not a theologian or a student of theology, so I did not expect him to understand why the schism has occurred and, more importantly, why it has persisted. It is a bit disappointing to find the Orthodox Church blamed for “refusing” to take the opportunity for unity, as if the Orthodox are the ones who have been the losers thereby. Schism is lamentable and a scandal, but it will persist as long as Rome holds to the two great stumbling-blocks that have ever prevented union in faith and truth: papal primacy, with its added difficulty of the claim of infallibility, and the addition of the filioque. The initiative always remains with the innovating party to renounce innovation, even if it is centuries old. Orthodox efforts to seek unity with Western confessions without regard to truth has caused the deeply painful upheavals within the Orthodox Church of the last 80 years, but even now it is not we, the Orthodox, who have failed to embrace union with non-Orthodox, but all others who have failed to embrace God’s revelation in Orthodoxy in all its fullness, which we can find securely only in the Orthodox Church.
In light of the election of the new Pope, Benedict XVI, it is instructive to see how he viewed the matter from a Catholic perspective in his role as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith only a few years ago in the statement Dominus Iesus. The statement reads: “Therefore, there exists a single Church of Christ, which subsists in the Catholic Church, governed by the Successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him. The Churches which, while not existing in perfect communion with the Catholic Church, remain united to her by means of the closest bonds, that is, by apostolic succession and a valid Eucharist, are true particular Churches. Therefore, the Church of Christ is present and operative also in these Churches, even though they lack full communion with the Catholic Church, since they do not accept the Catholic doctrine of the Primacy, which, according to the will of God, the Bishop of Rome objectively has and exercises over the entire Church.”
The rather wobbly ecclesiology aside, which manages to imagine unity on the basis of apostolicity and a “valid Eucharist” in churches that at the same time essentially lack catholicity in the view of Rome, it is clear that the historical distortion of a reasonable understanding of a Roman primacy of honour has become a non-negotiable matter for Rome. If this is the case, union is as far away as ever. This is very much to be regretted, but it is not the Orthodox who have set up barriers to union.
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April 20th, 2005 at 8:52 pm
Jim Newland
I don’t think Weyrich is claiming that the Orthodox have set up barriers to union; just that you didn’t take the opportunity when it arose. However, it’s kind of hard for me to see his point, since if the terms for achieving unity were not acceptable to you, why in the world would anyone expect you to jump at the opportunity?
April 21st, 2005 at 8:12 am
Daniel Larison
That’s a fair point, Jim. My remarks about barriers didn’t address Weyrich’s article as much as I had thought. I was addressing, more for my own benefit than anyone else’s, the Orthodox view of why the schism will not soon end and why there is little reason to expect the Orthodox to concede positions they have rejected as innovations for centuries. What I was aiming at was that Weyrich seemed to think Pope John Paul II had made some sort of substantial concessions to the Orthodox Church that would have made reunion the obvious course of action, but that the Orthodox, for whatever reason, still refused. At the time I equated the supposed refusal with barriers to union, but they are not exactly the same thing. As you say, his point still doesn’t make much sense. The other thing I wanted to get across (now I’m not sure that I did) was that Weyrich seemed to be saying that the Orthodox somehow deeply need union with Rome, which is an understandable position for a traditionalist Catholic theologian to take but not the sort of thing I expect from a Republican economist. Is Weyrich Catholic? If he is it would help make more sense of his article.
December 2nd, 2005 at 2:46 pm
Nicko
Sir,
Though this is an old blog I thought I might still comment. In your rebuke to Paul Weyrich’s commentary regarding the late Pope JP II’s desire to see reunion between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, you state that he, Weyrich, is no “theologian” or student of “theology.” While you are partially correct, he is not a theologian, he is quite an active student of theology, and could probably lecture you on the reasons for the split between the Catholics and the Orthodox. You see, in addition to being the head of a think tank, he is also a deacon in the Melkite Greek-Catholic Church: a Catholic Church that follows the liturgical and theological disciplines of the Orthodox Church.
Paul, Protodeacon Paul, rather, is a longtime friend of mine. (I also worked for him for a good number of years.) In fact, he introduced me to the Eastern Church and Orthodox theology. Were you ever to sit down and talk with him, you would find that his sympathies often lie more with the Orthodox than the Catholics, especially with regard to the Great Schism.
As you noted, Paul’s commentary seemed to be especially desirous of unity between the two Churches. And why shouldn’t it have been? Unity should be the goal of all Christians. In the Divine Liturgy, do we not pray for the “union of all”, again and again? In the Gospel of Matthew, does not Jesus pray that “all may be one”?
Schism is a scandal to God. John Paul II, though he did many things I disagreed with, cannot be faulted for his efforts to reach out to the Orthodox. Unlike his predecessors, Paul VI and John XXIII, he put the Primacy of Rome on the table. It is the Orthodox who have, as of yet, failed to respond to this challenge.
December 2nd, 2005 at 5:23 pm
Daniel Larison
I apologise for underestimating Mr. Weyrich’s concern for and familiarity with theological matters. It is clear that I went too far in my original statement, and that I was quite wrong there.
What I objected to in Mr. Weyrich’s concluding remarks was the implied suggestion that it was somehow to the detriment of the Orthodox to have failed to take John Paul II up on his “offer.” I do not fault John Paul II for making efforts to reconcile with the Orthodox Church, but I would point out simply that the basis for reconciliation was still far, far away from any of his initiatives. It is only partially true that Orthodox hierarchs have not made similar gestures and efforts in response. The vital point is that for many Orthodox local churches whatever efforts at reconciliation there have been have been profoundly marred by the shoddy ecclesiology that imagines that the the Orthodox and Catholic Churches are “two lungs” of the One Church and so forth. Something beginning from such unfortunate assumptions will not win the confidence of many Orthodox bishops, nor would I expect it to. It is surely news to me that Pope John Paul II “put the Primacy of Rome on the table.” I would be very interested to know what this means.
As I understand ecclesiology, properly speaking we cannot say “unity between two Churches,” because there is only one Church and the Church is One. It is with respect to the unity of this one Church that we make the petitions in the Liturgy and it was for the unity of the Church that the Lord was praying.
I believe that it is because of the historically unusual modern Catholic view that the Orthodox are in some kind of communion with the Catholic Church that these reunion discussions have taken place at all. If I understand correctly, it is simply not possible for Christians who do not confess substantially the same Faith to be in communion, and so desiring unity without the important qualification of that substantial homonoia strikes me as mistaken. Perhaps Mr. Weyrich intended to say no such thing, but as I read the article at the time I saw it as another example of privileging reunion and unity over substantial agreement.
Of course, schism is a scandal, as I said in my original post. There is nothing wrong in sincerely striving to undo that schism and desiring that it be brought to an end, but as long as the causes of the schism on the Catholic side were not eliminated I remain perplexed as to what Mr. Weyrich believes the Orthodox could or should have done in John Paul’s lifetime.