NEWS SECTION, 1

MOSCOW HIERARCH SPEAKS OUT AGAINST THE PAPALISATION OF ORTHODOXY

IN OUR LAST ISSUE we spoke with some regret of the fact the the Serbian Church was hosting the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church. Yet some good came from that meeting. On 2nd October, Interfax reported from Moscow that the “Moscow Patriarchate’s representative to the European Institutions Bishop Hilarion of Vienna and Austria urged the Catholics not to impose the model of their church order on the Orthodox. ‘Whether the two ecclesiological models, namely, the Catholic one oriented at Rome as the centre of the universal church unity and the Orthodox one that is not oriented at any single centre are compatible, only a full dialogue on the primacy between the Catholic and the Orthodox Churches could reveal,’ Bishop Hilarion’s statement says. However, this dialogue would be possible only if ‘an ecclesiological model in which the Patriarch of Constantinople occupies the place of an “Eastern Pope” is not imposed on the Orthodox Church,’ the Bishop underscored. According to him, there has been no such a model in the Orthodox Church, and for instituting it at least the Pan-Orthodox Council is required and the consent of all local Orthodox Churches. ‘Until a convocation of this Council, and as long as the Orthodox teaching on the Church remains as it has been for many centuries, no delegate is entitled to make alterations. The position of the Moscow Patriarchate will remain hard-line,’ he remarked. Earlier he voiced his protest to the head of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity Cardinal Walter Kasper who put a document on the authority of the Ecumenical Council to the vote at the 9th session of the Joint Commission for the Theological Dialogue between the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church held in Belgrade. The document said inter alia that after the severance of communion between the East and the West in the 11th century, a convocation of an ‘Ecumenical Council’ in the strong sense of the word became impossible, but ‘both Churches continued to hold “general” councils gathering together the bishops of local Churches in communion with the See of Rome and the See of Constantinople.’ Bishop Hilarion raised some principal objections on this issue. He said that in the Orthodox tradition ‘communion with the See of Constantinople’ has been never perceived as a binding term of conciliarity like ‘communion with the See of Rome’ was perceived by the Western Churches.… The Orthodox Church has no universal primate, or ‘supreme pontiff.’ There is a bishop primus inter pares, the position held before the schism of 1054 by the Bishop of Rome, and afterwards de facto kept by the Patriarch of Constantinople. However, the Orthodox Churches vary in their understanding of the Patriarch of Constantinople’s role and primacy. ‘Some rather regard this primacy as purely honourable, while others give certain coordinating functions to the patriarch of Constantinople and see him as highest court’, the bishop said. The recent case of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Diocese of Sourozh’s former administrator, who was received in Constantinople’s jurisdiction without a canonical release, is ‘a visual illustration of the dilemma.’ It shows that Constantinople probably ‘thinks it has a right to be the supreme authority to which all clergy who do not like their Local Churches may appeal,’ Bishop Hilarion added. However, the Moscow Patriarchate believes ‘on the solid basis of the canons of the Early Church’ that no Patriarchate, including that of Constantinople, has a right to receive in its jurisdiction clergy from other Local Churches without canonical release, he said.” In his own publication, Europaica (No 106), Bishop Hilarion also adds: “Bishop Hilarion's remarks were strongly opposed by Metropolitan John of Pergamon (Patriarchate of Constantinople), who insisted on the necessity of mentioning the See of Constantinople alongside with the See of Rome in the document. As a compromise Metropolitan John proposed the following amendment: ‘those in communion with the See of Rome or, though it was understood differently, those in communion with the See of Constantinople.’ From the viewpoint of the Moscow Patriarchate’s representative the amendment does not affect the core of the subject. Yet the Joint Commission’s co-president Cardinal Walter Kasper put a motion to the vote. The majority of the Orthodox participants voted in the affirmative, while the Moscow Patriarchate's delegates voted in the negative.” In this instance the Moscow representative has stood firmly for a fundamental Orthodox understanding.

WCC PLEA FOR JERUSALEM PATRIARCH

THE WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES has called for “the prompt and unqualified recognition of His Beatitude Patriarch Theophilus III as the primate of the Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem by the Government of Israel. In a letter sent to Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at the end of September, the WCC General Secretary, the Rev Dr Samuel Kobia, urged Israel to recognise the new Patriarch. Under long-standing agreements, the election of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, the oldest and largest church in the Holy Land, is endorsed by the Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian authorities. The Israeli authorities have, however, declined to validate the August 2005 election of Theophilus, and have thus prevented the church from fulfiling its regular functions.