Last Updated:Tuesday - 07/13/2010

Orthodox, Catholics taking steps toward full union

Nobody should expect the reunion of the Orthodox East and the Catholic West during the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI. He is over 80 and the schism between Orthodoxy and Catholicism is nearly 1,000 years old. Nevertheless, significant movement is taking place under the current pontiff.

The Vatican's Council for Promoting Christian Unity recently expressed disappointment that an Italian website posted an October 2008 document of the Orthodox-Catholic commission because the document is not an agreed statement and has no official status.

Still, the document serves as a sign to the faithful that important dialogue is taking place about authority and governance in the Church in the first millennium. The document traces a complex history back to the recognition by St. Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, in the early second century that Rome is the Church that "presides in love."

Over the first millennium, the East and West gradually developed different understandings of the locus of final authority in the Church and yet they remained in communion.

The West slowly came to see the primacy of Peter as embodied in the bishop of Rome. The East did not disagree, but it did not give the same significance to that primacy. Likewise, the East came to see Church governance as more broadly based in the Pentarchy - the patriarchs of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. Again, the West did not disagree, but did not give the same significance to the Pentarchy as did the East.

Even if the current ecumenical commission manages to reach some agreement about authority in the Church in the first millennium, it will still have to examine how authority evolved, especially in the West, during the second millennium.

It is hardly realistic to imagine that the clock could be rolled back to 1054 and that East and West could simply pick up where things left off before the schism. If nothing else, the instantaneous nature of modern communication would make the fluid and diverse nature of Church authority in the first millennium unworkable today.

Further, other issues need to be discussed. There is, for example, the controversy over the filioque clause in the Creed - the East has never accepted (not without reason) the Western Church's insertion into the Creed that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Son (as well as from the Father).

Theological discussions are essential. But ultimately, Church union will be the work of the Holy Spirit. We do not know when or how it will come. We ought to hope for it, pray for it and know that unity is God's will. We need to also know that a Church confused in its faith cannot be united. But a Church that is faithful will, in God's time, surely be one.

Glen Argan

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