The Shepherd, August 2007
NEWS SECTION
DEATH OF PATRIARCH TEOCTIST
THE HEAD of the Romanian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Teoctist, died Monday, 30th July, at the age of 92. He died of a heart attack following surgery on his prostate gland earlier that day. Teoctist was appointed Patriarch of Romania in November 1986, but three years later briefly stepped down after anti-communist protesters said he had been too conciliatory toward former dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. He had refused to condemn Ceausescu’s destruction of Orthodox churches in Bucharest. He was reinstated a few weeks later. The late Patriarch was also criticized for being opposed to investigating the past of clergymen who were believed to have collaborated with the Communist Securitate secret police. In 2001, Securitate files discovered by a historian said that Teoctist had supported the fascist Legionnaire movement, and was one of several priests who in 1941 helped ransack a synagogue in Bucharest during a Legionnaire uprising against the government. The Church called the information in the files “a simple fabrication.” Patriarch Teoctist was an ecumenist and at his invitation in 1999 Pope John Paul II visited Romania. The fact that he stood down as Patriarch on account of his record of collaboration is much to his credit, and we must hope that he finds mercy before the Lord.
TURKISH COURT REJECTS PATRIARCH’S CLAIMS
HIS ALL-HOLINESS, the Œcumenical Patriarch, Bartholomeos I is rarely mentioned either in the secular or church press, without a reference (erroneous) to his being the “spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians.” This has almost become an additional title for him. Now a court in Turkey - the Patriarch is a Turkish citizen and resident - has rejected this claim, seeing him as only the leader of some three thousand Orthodox Christians within his diocese. It appears that in this instance a court in a largely Moslem country has better insight into the Patriarch’s position than many Orthodox spokes-people. Traditionally the Œcumenical Patriarch has been granted a primacy of honour among all the Orthodox Bishops, and is seen as the first among equals. He does not “lead” those in dioceses other than his own. Such an understanding would lead to a papalizaton of the Patriarch’s position, something contrary to the ecclesiology of the Orthodox Church.
However, the Court’s decision is already being challenged. An Interfax posting from Moscow, dated 26/7/7, while challenging the false claims of the Œcumenical Patriarchate, adds the following news: “A recent joint statement by Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis and the leader of the European People’s Party (EPP) Wilfried Martens voices support for Patriarch Bartolomew I of Constantinople and says that he has been the head of the Orthodox Church (!!!) throughout the world since the 6th century and is the spiritual leader of 300 million Orthodox believers worldwide. Bakoyannis and Martens demand that Turkey recognize the international status and the succession right within [the] Church of the Patriarchate of Constantinople based in Istanbul, as well as recognize its right as a legal entity and return the church’s property.”
CHURCH LEADERS REACTIONS TO THE PAPAL STATEMENT ON THE PRIMACY OF THE ROMAN CHURCH
IN ONE OF HIS LAST ACTIONS, Patriarch Teoctist condemned a Vatican document in which Pope Benedict XVI reasserted the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, describing it, in a statement issued on 12th July, as “brutal” and saying it made inter-church dialogue difficult. “We were stunned by such a statement, which troubles the entire Christian world. Such things do not make God happy,” he said. “With such a brutal statement, it is hard to find a way to continue the dialogue with the Catholic Church, as long as it does not even recognize us as a church.”
Other Orthodox Church leaders have viewed the statement in other ways. Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, one of the leading spokesmen of the Moscow Patriarchate remarked with deeper insight: “It is an honest statement. It is much better than the so-called ‘church diplomacy.’ It shows how close or, on the contrary, how divided we are.” “For an honest theological dialogue to happen, one should have a clear view of the position of the other side,” because “it helps understand how different we are,” he said. Basically, the Vatican’s current document has nothing new and is in “full conformity with the doctrine of the Catholic Church.” “The Orthodox Church is, according to Apostolic Succession, successor and heir to the old, undivided Church. Which is why everything contained in the Catholic document rightfully applies to the Orthodox Church,” the Metropolitan added. Bishop Hilarion of Vienna and Austria (MP) echoes these more sober words: “In my opinion, it brings nothing new in comparison with previous documents of similar kind, such as the ‘Dominus Iesus.’” Sadly he goes on to cloud the matter somewhat, endorsing the ecumenical overtures that the leaders of the two communions make to each other.
The Œcumenical Patriarch and the Archbishop of Athens have both affirmed that a solution to the objection of the Orthodox Church to Papal supremacy is already being formulated.
The one thing that none of these leaders of “World Orthodoxy” seem willing to accept is that there can be no union between Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy, without one or both of them ceasing to be what it is. The Pope’s “honesty” may indeed be refreshing, but it is not matched by a like “honesty” on the part of Orthodox ecumenists.
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