The Shepherd, November 2009
NEWS SECTION
ORTHODOX - ROMAN CATHOLIC DIALOGUE
AND RESPONSES
A REPORT FROM PAPHOS, Cyprus, dated 23rd October, (Zenit.org) states that the International Mixed Commission for Theological Dialogue Between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church “has progressed in its reflection on the role of the bishop of Rome. The commission issued a joint communiqué … The document is based on a draft prepared by an Orthodox-Catholic committee, which met in Crete last year. At present, the commission is reflecting on the role of the Bishop of Rome in the communion of the Church in the first millennium -- before the Great Schism of 1054.… The meeting was attended by 20 Catholic members; all Orthodox Churches were represented, with the exception of the Patriarchate of Bulgaria.” The report also remarks that “Protests of radical Orthodox opposed to dialogue with the Catholic Church interrupted the work of the week long meeting. The country’s police arrested four citizens and two monks of the monastery of Stavrovunio (sic), … The Orthodox representatives called the protests “totally unjustifiable and unacceptable.”
However, besides the rather unseemly demonstrations mentioned in a report above, there have been more sober objections to the dialogue from Orthodox Christians. The Sacred Community of the Holy Mountain Athos expressed “extreme worry and concern” that the subject of Papal Primacy should be the subject of discussion. “The only prerequisite for a discussion of the Primacy to take place is the return of the Roman Catholics to the Orthodox Faith and the Conciliar polity of the Orthodox Church, and not the ‘unity in diversity’ of dogmas,” the Athonite Fathers unequivocally state. His Grace, Bishop Artemije of Ras-Prizren and Kosovo-Metohija addressed his fellow hierarchs in the Serbian Orthodox Church on 28th September. Anticipating the Commission, he says that it “is methodologically premature and contradictory in its very essence. Why? Because according to theological and patristic teachings, a theological dialogue about the essential dogmatic distinctions between the Orthodox and the Roman Catholics should precede. Filioque, the infallibility of the Pope, and created Grace - all wrong - they continue to support. These dogmatic fallacies display the real identity of the Roman Catholicism baring it its ecclesiology and mysteriology, and depriving the Church of its primary character of «theosis» of a human. Not until the Orthodox and Catholic dogmatic teachings become identical, can a dialogue about governing the Church follow. According to the spirit and decisions of Œcumenical Synods, the main doctrinal distinction between the Orthodox and the Catholics places the Catholics outside the Church, a matter that has been empirically confirmed by a millennium year time interruption of their communal sacramental communication.”
ORTHODOX - ANGLICAN DIALOGUE
MICHAEL HEIDT, special correspondent of “Virtueonline,” reported on 10th October, 2009, that a “decade’s long impasse between Anglicanism and the Orthodox Church has been broken at an ecumenical conference at Nashotah House [An Anglican Seminary in the States]. Signing an historic ‘covenant’ between Nashotah House and St. Vladimir’s Seminary, traditional Anglican leaders and their counterparts in the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) have pledged themselves to work towards unity. Speaking to an international audience of one hundred and seventy people, ACNA (Anglican Church in North America) Archbishop Robert Duncan stated that signing the conference’s inter-seminary covenant, committing Nashotah House and St. Vladimir’s seminaries to mutual prayer and fellowship, ‘lays the groundwork of something very much larger,’ namely ‘serious dialogue’ with the OCA and ‘the resumption of ecumenical discussion between two separated parts of the Church.’ After describing Anglicanism and Orthodoxy as “two streams of one very great river”, Archbishop Duncan outlined several “wonderful commonalities to build upon.” These include reverence for Scripture and the “Great Tradition”, liturgy, art, music, monasticism and veneration of the Saints. His Beatitude, Metropolitan Jonah, a former Anglican, took up this theme, speaking powerfully to the urgency of unity in the face of an increasingly aggressive secularism: ‘We stand at a crisis which threatens to undermine the very basis of our culture... only by standing together, united by one Faith, one Heart one Church, will we be able to withstand the onslaught of licentiousness... and fight against it. There is in materialism, there is in secularism only despair.’ In the face of this, the OCA’s Metropolitan believes ecumenism to be essential, not just as an ‘institutional process’ but as a ‘mutual discernment in one another of our common identity.’ This is under-girded by faith, which is the ‘living knowledge of God implanted by the Holy Spirit, and the ‘common affirmation (of which) is a sign that we share that same vision of the truth.’”
As its name implies, the OCA is recognised by the Moscow Patriarchate and its satellite Churches as the Autocephalous Orthodox Church for America, although its members do not comprise a majority of the Orthodox there and it is not fully recognised as such by all the other Orthodox Churches. The ACNA was inaugurated in December 2008, its members seeing themselves as remaining faithful to traditional Anglican beliefs & moral teaching. It is not a member of the Anglican communion.
The Anglican position can be understood, but that of Metropolitan Jonah has naturally caused deep concern among many Orthodox Christians and not only among those who would consider themselves traditionalists. At the time of going to press, no comment on his extraordinary statements has been made by the OCA’s Mother Church, the Patriarchate of Moscow.
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