Reconciling East and West

822019 Reconciling East and West

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Reconciling East and West Richard John Neuhaus

It is no secret that the quest for Christian unity hascome upon hard times As a Catholic ones firstduty is to make it clear that the Catholic Church is

neither wearied nor disillusioned about the quest forunity To the visible unity of the one Church of Christunderstood as full communion the Catholic Churchis as the present pope and his predecessor have repeatedly said irrevocably committed Irrevocably as inunshaken and unshakeable I have sometimes

observed only half-whimsically that the only thinglacking for full communion between East and West isfull communion It is a goal so very close and yet or soit seems so very far

For Catholics recent years have made full communion with Protestants seem a receding hope This isnotably the case with the Lutherans and the Anglicanswith whom ecumenical dialogue once appeared to holdsuch high promise of reconciliation The hope for unityamong all Christians is also formidably challenged bythe fissiparous growth of thousands of new Christiancommunities in the Global South

Between the Catholic Church and the OrthodoxChurch however there are powerful continuities ofapostolic ministry doctrine and devotion that bind ustogether in our division It is between us that thewounds in the Body of Christ began and it is notunreasonable to believe that it is between us that thehealing must begin Catholicism and Orthodoxy havea unique responsibility as stewards of an understandingof ecclesial unity that is faithful to the apostolic tradition from which all authentic Christianity is derived

RICHARD JOHN NEUHAUS is editor in chief of FIRST THINGS

This article is adapted from a lecture delivered this summer at StVladimirs Orthodox Seminary in Crestwood New York

We have no sure plan or program for the healing ofthe division between East and West We have only theimperative the call to obedience to the will of ChristFr Alexander Schmemann was fond of saying thatecclesial reconciliation between East and West wouldrequire a pan-Orthodox council and he added a pan-Orthodox council is an eschatological concept In asimilar vein Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger has writtenover the years that hope for full communion among allChristians partakes of the eschatological We must hesays be open to a mighty movement of the Holy Spirit which we cannot anticipate and which we most certainly cannot schedule or control But to speak of theeschatological is not to despair On the contrary escha-tology is filled with hope and entails our readiness torespond to the unforeseen and unforeseeable breaking-in of possibilities not of our own devising We workwe pray we hope we wait In ecumenism as in allendeavors that surpass our direction readiness is allFaithfulness is all

Faithfulness is commitmentmdashirrevocable commit

ment Once in conversation with John Paul II I askedhim When you were elected pope and not knowingwhether your pontificate would be long or short whatwas the one thing that you most wanted to achieveWithout a moments hesitation he said Christianunity He then went on to explain why Christian unitymeans first of all and above all reconciliation betweenEast and West The healing must begin where the divisions began This understanding was set forth in 1995 inthe great encyclical on Christian unity Ut Unum SintmdashThat They May Be One Ut Unum Sint togetherwith the decree on ecumenism from the Second Vatican

Council forms the magna carta of the CatholicChurchs irrevocable commitment

23



24 FIRST THINGS

Truth to tell many Orthodox like many Protes

tants in the West do not need to be persuaded that

Rome is irrevocably committed to ecclesial unity That

is precisely what they worry about The Catholic

Church is often seen as the threatening giant of the

Christian world Of the more than two billion Christians in the world over half are Catholic and for all the

diversities and tensions they are united through a vast

network of ministries and institutions under the leader

ship of the bishop of Rome There is an understandable

fear reinforced by long and bitter memories of Romes

ecclesiastical imperialism There is the understand

able suspicion that for the Catholic Church ecclesial

reconciliation means ecclesial capitulation by non-

Catholics Such fears and suspicions were centuries in

the making and it may be centuries before they are

overcome if they are ever overcome entirely

Writing in FIRST THINGS in March 2001 theOrthodox theologian David Hart put it blundy As

unfair as it may seem to Orthodox Christians it often

appears as if from the Catholic side so long as the

popes supremacy is acknowledged all else is irrelevant

ornament Which yields the sad irony that the more the

Catholic Church strives to accommodate Orthodox

concerns the more disposed many Orthodox are to see

in this merely the advance embassy of an omnivorous

ecclesial empire

I am convinced that the dynamic that drives the

Catholic Churchs irrevocable commitment to Christ

ian unity is not an exercise of power or desire for

aggrandizement never mind ecclesiastical conquest

Quite the opposite is the case It is not power but

weakness that impels the quest for unity That is to say

the Catholic Church frankly admits that she cannot be

fully what she claims to be apart from other Christians

and most particularly apart from the Orthodox

Remember John Pauls frequent references to the

Church once again breathing with both lungs East

and West That is a metaphor but it is not merely a

metaphor We need one another to be fully who we are

It is different with the self-understanding of the var

ious Protestant denominations and ecclesial

communities They generally have a different ec-

clesiology a different understanding of what it means

to be the Church They believe as indeed do Orthodox

and Catholics in the invisible Church of all believ

ers living and dead but here on earth their churches are

viewed as human constructs of voluntary association

While most of them agree that greater unity among

Christians in terms of understanding and cooperation

is highly desirable it is not necessary to being what

they believe they are An exception must be made forsome Anglicans such as those in the Fellowship of St

Alban and St Sergius but it seems increasingly and

sadly obvious that they do not represent the future of

the Anglican communion

For Catholics and Orthodox it is very different

While it is true that the sacramental fullness of the

Church is present in every righdy ordered particular orlocal church the constitution of the one holy catholic

and apostolic Church is comprehensive as in universal

The Church is the apostolically ordered community of

faith and worship through time until the end of time

That understanding is grievously violated and weak

ened by our disunity depriving each of us of spiritual

gifts intended to be shared with all This combined

with obedience to our Lords will that we be visibly

one is the driving dynamic of the Catholic Churchs

irrevocable commitment to Christian unity under

stood as full communion

To be sure there are Catholics as there are alsoOrthodox who are content to say that theirs is the one

true Church and in their inflated sense of self-suffi

ciency they reject the ecumenical imperative For

them ecumenism is too often an optional interest to be

indulged only up to the point that it threatens to dis

turb their contentment with the way they are This way

of thinking is alien to the ecclesiology of both Catholic

and Orthodox Christiansmdashfor whom the Church as

apostolically constituted by our Lord himself is in its

visible unity to be the witness through time of Gods

saving purposes for all mankind Our divisions are a

skandolon a stumbling block a snare and a trap an

evidence of our disobedience For this reason Ut

Unum Sint repeatedly insists that genuine ecumenism

requires conversion John Paul writes

Here once again the Council proves helpful Itcan be said that the entire Decree on Ecumenism is permeated by the spirit of conversion In the Document ecumenical dialoguetakes on a specific characteristic it becomes adialogue of conversion and thus in thewords of Pope Paul VI an authentic dialogue

of salvation Dialogue cannot take placemerely on a horizontal level being restrictedto meetings exchanges of points of view oreven the sharing of gifts proper to each Community It has also a primarily vertical thrustdirected towards the One who as theRedeemer of the world and the Lord of history is himself our Reconciliation This verticalaspect of dialogue lies in our acknowledgment

jointly and to each other that we have sinnedIt is precisely this acknowledgment which creates in brothers and sisters living in Communities not in full communion with one anotherthat interior space where Christ the source of

the Churchs unity can effectively act with allthe power of his Spirit the Paraclete



DECEMBER 2008 25

John Paul like his predecessor Paul VI candidlyacknowledged that the primacy of Peter established byChrist for the unity of his Body has in the eyes ofmany become a chief obstacle to reconciliation Hetherefore asked the churches not in communion with

Rome to join with the bishop of Rome in seeking tofind a way of exercising the primacy which while in noway renouncing what is essential to its mission isnonetheless open to a new situation

The response to this invitation has been to put itgendy mixed In 1999 the Anglican-RomanCatholic International Commission published

a noteworthy document Authority in the Churchwhich recognized the need for a primacy in the universal Church and recognized also the ways in whichRome has supplied that need in the past Regrettably

recent developments have raised the question ofwhether the members of that commission are reflective of the identity and direction of the Anglicancommunion

As for the Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew ofConstantinople at one point flady stated to the surprise of many that Christ gave Peter no higher authority than that given to all the apostles At a symposiumin Rome in 1997 however several Orthodox theologians addressed the Petrine ministry with ProfDumitru Popescu suggesting that there are four main

and not mutually exclusive interpretations of thewords of Jesus in Matthew 16 You are Peter Thefirst is that Peter himself is the rock on which Christwould build his Church the second is that the promiseis given to all the aposdes who share Peters confessionof faith the third is that the rock is the faith confessedby Peter and the fourth is that the rock is Christ himself whom Peter confessed

After tracing the history of these different interpretations Propescu suggested Orthodoxy accepts aprimacy of the bishop of Rome but a primacy of ser-vicemdash The government of the Church is synodal or

colleacutegial The experience of the papacy can be of greatimportance for Christian unity but in order to beaccepted by everyone it has to be exercised in the context of an ecclesiology which situates communion bothat the visible level and at the invisible level of theChurch that is which relates communion to the institutional aspect of the Church In making the distinction between the two aspects of the Church communion and institution Propescu referenced the greatDominican ecclesiologist Yves Congar

At the same symposium Metropolitan John ofPergamon (John Zizioulas) declared that it would be a

grave error to reduce the popes primacy to his status aspatriarch of the West Such an understanding of the

Roman primacy he said would lead to a scheme ofdivision of the world into two parts the West and theEast Among other problems that leaves unaddressedthe question of who holds primacy over parts of theworld that were unknown at the time of Rome

Alexandria Antioch Constantinople and JerusalemIn Propescus view a universal primacy would be notonly useful but also necessary in a unified Church governed by an ecclesiology of communion Such a primate he explained would be the President of all headsof churches and the spokesman of the entire Church inpromulgating decisions reached by consensus

In another contribution to the symposium NicolasLossky of Saint Sergius in Paris contended that the primacy of Rome cannot be reduced to a mere primacy ofhonor which he says means practically nothingPrimacy and conciliarity he says necessarily imply

each other Were communion to be restored betweenRome and the Orthodox churches Rome could againserve as the final court of appeal in disputes amongbishops Most Orthodox theologians he believeswould accept the primacy of Rome as it was exercisedduring the first millennium

The most thorough response to the invitation ofJohn Paul II in Ut Unum Sint is that of OlivierClement also of Saint Sergius in his 1997 book

translated under the title A Different Rome An

Orthodox Reflects on the Papacy As Avery CardinalDulles wrote This book solidly rooted in theOrthodox tradition is I suspect almost exacdy thekind of response for which Pope John Paul II washoping Dulles connects Clements argument to thethought of Hans Urs von Balthasar and notes that Inany discussion of office and primacy care must betaken not to let that one question dominate the wholefield of ecclesiology Balthasar it will be remembereddistinguishes four archetypal dimensions of theChurch the Petrine representing hierarchical officethe Pauline representing charismatic mission the

Johannine representing contemplative love and theMarian representing virginal fruitfulness and the universal call to holiness Since he is addressing the primacy Clement naturally accents the Petrine but he keepsall four dimensions in play

In his Trinitarian theology Clement depicts theChurch in familiar terms as the House of the Father the

Body of the Son and the Temple of the Holy SpiritThe universal Church exists as a plurality of localchurches in each of which the whole Church is mystically present This is of course in full accord with theSecond Vatican Councils Constitution on the Church

Lumen Gentium which says The Church of Christis truly present in all legitimate local congregations of



26 FIRST THINGS

the faithful which united with their pastors are themselves called churches in the New Testament As thecouncil added in its decree on bishops in each diocesanchurch the one holy catholic and apostolic Church istruly present and operative

Clement holds as does Vatican II that the primacyaccorded to Peter is primacy within not over the college of bishops He insists that the preeminence ofRome from early times was based not on geographicalpolitical or economic considerations but on the persons of Peter and Paul who conducted their ministriesin Rome and there died as martyrs He holds that thethree famous Petrine textsmdashMatthew 16 Luke 22 andJohn 21mdashclearly accent the person of Peter WhilePeter is reprimanded by the Lord and on one occasionrebuked by Paul this is nothing to the point since it isnever suggested that Peter and his successors are with

out sin Indeed John Paul writes in Ut Unum Sint Itis important to note how the weakness of Peter and ofPaul clearly shows that the Church is founded on theinfinite power of grace

Clement is a master of the patristic tradition andmarshals an extraordinary collection of testimoniesfrom the early centuries to the transmission of Petersoffice of primacy to the bishops of Rome The testimonies to the primacy extend well into the second millennium as is evident in the distinguished Byzantinetheologians of the eleventh twelfth and even fifteenth

centuries who were critical of popes precisely becausethey held them responsible as the successors of Peterfor the direction of the universal Church It is by nomeans adequate says Clement to describe this merelyas a primacy of honor or to say that the pope is thefirst among equals

But the primacy is always to be exercised collegial-ly This truth says Clement was obscured by Vatican Ibut recovered by Vatican II which he says restored tothe episcopal ministry its full sacramentality andreestablished the common responsibility of pope andbishops for the leadership of the universal Church

This correction was crucial to the establishment of thedialogue of charity initiated by Paul VI and PatriarchAthenagoras I of Constantinople and the later dialogueof the mixed commission that whatever the difficulties encountered must be viewed as a sign pregnantwith hope for eventual reconciliation

One notes that the pontificates of John Paul IIand Benedict XVI have continued to build onthe initiatives of Paul VI While Benedict has

not to date issued new teaching documents on theCatholic Churchs relationship with the East one notes

that he as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger was John Paulsclosest collaborator in statements such as Slavorum

Apostoli (1985) Euntes in Mundum (1988) Orientale Lumen (1995) and of course Ut Unum Sint WhileClements book was published eight years before theelection of Benedict the trajectory of Catholic teachingand action that he examines with critical appreciation

has only accelerated in subsequent yearsAt the same time Clement is critical of certain

developments in Orthodoxy He is most particularlycritical of the autocephalism of national churches thatbecame a prominent feature of Orthodoxy in the pasttwo centuries Catholics will recognize disturbing parallels with Gallicanism which practically withdrewFrench churches from their allegiance to Rome for several centuries along with similar nationalistic movements in Germany and Austria The papal revival ofthe nineteenth century entailed the rejection of whatmight be described as a Western version of autocephal

ism by which nationalism and civil government controlled the direction of the Church In the West thiscircumstance was called and many still call it today theancien reacutegime but of course there was nothing ancientabout it It was rather a distorted moment of history inwhich nationalism and the unbridled ambitions ofnation states radically disordered the apostolically constituted leadership of the Church of Christ

Fr Schmemann wrote that the need for and thereality of a universal head that is the bishop of Romecan no longer be termed an exaggeration If the Church

is a universal organism she must have at her head a uni

versal bishop as the focus of her unity and the organ ofsupreme power The idea popular in Orthodox apologetics that the Church can have no visible head becauseChrist is her invisible head is theological nonsense Ifapplied consistendy it should also eliminate the necessity for the visible head of each local church ie thebishop Schmemann continued The principle ofautocephaly has indeed been for the last few centuriesthe unique principle of organization in Orthodoxyand therefore its acting canonical rule The reason isclear Autocephaly with this particular meaning is

fully adequate to the specifically Eastern form ofChristian nationalism or reduction of the Church tothe natural world All the deficiencies in the eccle-siological conscience of the East can be ascribed to twomajor sources the close identification of the Churchwith the state and religious nationalism Bothexplain the unchallenged triumph of the theory ofautocephaly

T

he contentions suspicions and rivalries generated by autocephaly sometime lead Catholics toview Orthodoxy with a certain condescension

As David Hart explained Often Western Christians justifiably offended by the hostility with which their



DECEMBER 2008 27

advances are met by certain Orthodox assume that thegreatest obstacle to reunion is Eastern immaturity anddivisiveness The problem is dismissed as one of psychology and the only counsel offered is one ofpatience Fair enough Decades of Communist tyran

ny set atop centuries of other far more invincibletyrannies have effectively shattered the Orthodoxworld into a contentious f ederacy of national churchesstruggling to preserve their own regional identitiesagainst every alien influence and under such conditions only the more obdurate stock survives

Fully aware of such dynamics Olivier Clementnonetheless insists on the special role of Peter in theNew Testament the mystery of the presence of Peterand Paul in Rome and the presidency of love| thatancient Eastern authorities consistently attributed tothe Church of Rome It was Clement believes an anti-

Catholic hysteria that swept over Eastern Orthodoxythat poisoned the atmosphere so that the fifteenth-century Union Council of Florence was misrepresented asa council of capitulation Like Hart he discerns a disturbing degree of such anti-Catholic hysteria in someparts of Orthodoxy only recendy freed from the Sovietimperium

At the same time Clement is sharply critical ofaspects of the Catholic Church and some of his criticisms must be taken to heart by Catholics He highlights historical instances in which popes failed to be

fully faithful to the faith once delivered to the saintseven if they did not invoke the fullness of their authority in support of error And of course Catholics willagree on the exaggerated claims some popes made fortheir office during the Middle Ages especially withrespect to their authority over the secular realm Andnobody should want to deny that in reaction to theProtestant schism of the sixteenth century the CatholicCounter-Reformation sometimes too narrowly construed the Church in jurisdictional and legalistic termswhich stifled the many charisms of the Holy Spirit

In Catholicism the patristic revival of the earlytwentieth century advanced under the banner ofressourcement did much to correct the narrowly

institutional ecclesiology that had dominated for several centuries lifting up a more organic understanding ofthe Church as the Mystical Body These changesdrawing heavily on the previously neglected wisdomof Orthodoxy contributed to the much richer and livelier ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council Without that ressourcement associated with figures such asHenri de Lubac Hans Urs von Balthasar and YvesCongar it is hard to see how Vatican II could have

done justice as it did to a complex and coherent ecclesiology in which the Church is understood both as a

visible community of hierarchical order and as an invisible community of grace animated by the Holy Spirit

Nobody should deny that the Catholic Churchhas at times treated the Eastern churches with insufficient respect and even hostility In his book After Nine

Hundred Years Yves Congar showed how hostilitieson both sides were frequendy driven by political andcultural conflicts In the Middle Ages the papacy wastoo much a party of the Carolingian Empire in itsrivalry with Byzantium Nonetheless Leo III and hissuccessors fearing a break with the East resisted thepressure of Western emperors to insert the filioquemdashthe teaching that the Holy Spirit proceeds from theFather and the Sonmdashinto the creed Finally in theninth century the papacy relented and accepted aie filmiddotioque on the grounds that it was theologically orthodox it guarded against Arian tendencies and it was in

harmony with the sense of the faithful at prayer asexperienced in local churches over three or four centuries Today in the Catholic understanding the filmiddottoque is no longer a church-dividing issue and it isof great importance to note that the Eastern-ritechurches that are in full communion with Rome donot include the filioque in the creed

Yet there are so many memories that reinforcebitterness and alienation Historians disputeprecisely who did what to whom and why but

among such memories is certainly the sack of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade When he visited Athenson May 4 2001 John Paul II addressed ArchbishopChristodoulos with these words Some memories areespecially painful and some events of the distant pasthave left deep wounds in the minds of hearts of peopleto this day I am thinking of the disastrous sack of theimperial city of Constantinople which was for so longthe bastion of Christianity in the East It is tragic thatthe assailants who had set out to secure free access forChristians to the Holy Land turned against their ownbrothers in the faith The fact that they were Latin

Christians fills Catholics with deep regret How can wefail to see here the mysterium iniquitatis at work in thehuman heart

As Cardinal Dulles writes It is important forCatholics and Orthodox to review the past togetherlisten respectfully to one anothers stories and recognize the faults and errors of their own forebears Onlyafter such a candid and painful review says Dullescan we begin to construct a common history in whichthe past of the other community becomes at least to asignificant extent our own past Only then can wehope to achieve a common future

From the Catholic perspective one is tempted tosay that the only thing lacking for full communion



28 FIRST THINGS

with the Orthodox is full communion If there aredoctrinal differences they are few and one can see the

way not around them but through them To be surethere are understandable anxieties about the relation-ship between primacy and jurisdiction Vatican II

and the statements of John Paul and Benedict makeclear that the pope governs as a bishop among bishopsnot as an emperor or king In statements on reconcili-ation with the East there is no suggestion that papal

jurisdiction as it is exercised in the West is a conditionfor full communion In these and other matters it issuggested that such ecclesial reconciliation would insome ways resemble the undivided Church of thefirst millennium rather than the Catholic Church ofthe second millennium

There is of course the question of the ecumenicalcouncils that the Orthodox do not recognize as being

ecumenical One remembers however that the Westdid not view Constantinople I (381) or Nicea II (787) as being ecumenical and for understandable reasons Butthey were subsequendy approved by Rome and became so to speak ecumenical after the fact Dulles writes The dogmatic decrees of the Western ecumeni-cal councils purport to declare truths that should beaccepted by all Christians on the basis of divine revela-tion But unless or until these councils have beenreceived in the East (as re983085read in the light of Orientaltradition) their decrees cannot be binding on Ortho-dox believers Full communion as I understand it willrequire the acceptance by both Catholics and Ortho-dox of all the dogmas that are held by the other com-munity to be matters of faith

Here too one can agree with Orthodox theologianFr John Erickson who has written that in order toreach unity we cannot simply return to the undividedChurch of the first millennium Neither Catholics norOrthodox could live with an agreement that simplyignored the developments of the last thousand yearsThis does not mean that it is necessary to agree on allthese developments The definition of infallibility by

Vatican Council I for instance is a major obstacle

Clement writes that Orthodox and Catholics mustproceed to a common reflection on decisions made inthe centuries of division and especially on a re983085exami-nation of the dogma of 1870 already partially balanced

by Vatican II

It does seem possible that we could agree onrevealed doctrine while as Cardinal Dulles suggestsallowing certain secondary questions to stand as mat-ters for theological discussion Already for instancethere would seem to be no essential dogmatic disagree-ment on the procession of the Holy Spirit as that is pre-sented by thefilioque question And it seems possiblethat the Orthodox could agree on the Bishop of Romeas the successor of Peter with a primacy of teaching andruling authority along the lines suggested by Ut Unum

Sint This assumes that there would be accommoda-tions and differences with respect to how that authori-

ty is exercised in the East and the West and quitelikely different ecclesiological opinions that would bein the realm of theological discussion and would poseno obstacle to full communion

We do not know how much time we have It is pos-sible that in the larger picture of Gods purposes in his-tory we are the early Church As Dulles notes it tookfourteen centuries for Chalcedonians and non983085Chal983085cedonians to begin to realize that they were fundamen-tally in agreement about the divinity and humanity ofChrist We may hope that the deep wounds mutually

inflicted on each other by Orthodox and Catholics atthe dawn of the second millennium will not take four-teen centuries to heal

I cited at the outset the view of Alexander Schme-mann and Joseph Ratzinger that reconciliation

between East and West can seem an eschatologicalhorizon This is not an excuse for procrastination orindolence On the contrary eschatological hope is rea-son for temporal urgency Such hope underscores that

what we do or fail to do matters eternally Because it isthe will of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ that we beone our present work for reconciliation matters

eternally Ξ

Self983085portrait at Fifty

None of this can be denied

crabbyflabby full of pride

hypertensive pensive snide

slowing growing terrified

mdashAM Juster



24 FIRST THINGS

Truth to tell many Orthodox like many Protes

tants in the West do not need to be persuaded that

Rome is irrevocably committed to ecclesial unity That

is precisely what they worry about The Catholic

Church is often seen as the threatening giant of the

Christian world Of the more than two billion Christians in the world over half are Catholic and for all the

diversities and tensions they are united through a vast

network of ministries and institutions under the leader

ship of the bishop of Rome There is an understandable

fear reinforced by long and bitter memories of Romes

ecclesiastical imperialism There is the understand

able suspicion that for the Catholic Church ecclesial

reconciliation means ecclesial capitulation by non-

Catholics Such fears and suspicions were centuries in

the making and it may be centuries before they are

overcome if they are ever overcome entirely

Writing in FIRST THINGS in March 2001 theOrthodox theologian David Hart put it blundy As

unfair as it may seem to Orthodox Christians it often

appears as if from the Catholic side so long as the

popes supremacy is acknowledged all else is irrelevant

ornament Which yields the sad irony that the more the

Catholic Church strives to accommodate Orthodox

concerns the more disposed many Orthodox are to see

in this merely the advance embassy of an omnivorous

ecclesial empire

I am convinced that the dynamic that drives the

Catholic Churchs irrevocable commitment to Christ

ian unity is not an exercise of power or desire for

aggrandizement never mind ecclesiastical conquest

Quite the opposite is the case It is not power but

weakness that impels the quest for unity That is to say

the Catholic Church frankly admits that she cannot be

fully what she claims to be apart from other Christians

and most particularly apart from the Orthodox

Remember John Pauls frequent references to the

Church once again breathing with both lungs East

and West That is a metaphor but it is not merely a

metaphor We need one another to be fully who we are

It is different with the self-understanding of the var

ious Protestant denominations and ecclesial

communities They generally have a different ec-

clesiology a different understanding of what it means

to be the Church They believe as indeed do Orthodox

and Catholics in the invisible Church of all believ

ers living and dead but here on earth their churches are

viewed as human constructs of voluntary association

While most of them agree that greater unity among

Christians in terms of understanding and cooperation

is highly desirable it is not necessary to being what

they believe they are An exception must be made forsome Anglicans such as those in the Fellowship of St

Alban and St Sergius but it seems increasingly and

sadly obvious that they do not represent the future of

the Anglican communion

For Catholics and Orthodox it is very different

While it is true that the sacramental fullness of the

Church is present in every righdy ordered particular orlocal church the constitution of the one holy catholic

and apostolic Church is comprehensive as in universal

The Church is the apostolically ordered community of

faith and worship through time until the end of time

That understanding is grievously violated and weak

ened by our disunity depriving each of us of spiritual

gifts intended to be shared with all This combined

with obedience to our Lords will that we be visibly

one is the driving dynamic of the Catholic Churchs

irrevocable commitment to Christian unity under

stood as full communion

To be sure there are Catholics as there are alsoOrthodox who are content to say that theirs is the one

true Church and in their inflated sense of self-suffi

ciency they reject the ecumenical imperative For

them ecumenism is too often an optional interest to be

indulged only up to the point that it threatens to dis

turb their contentment with the way they are This way

of thinking is alien to the ecclesiology of both Catholic

and Orthodox Christiansmdashfor whom the Church as

apostolically constituted by our Lord himself is in its

visible unity to be the witness through time of Gods

saving purposes for all mankind Our divisions are a

skandolon a stumbling block a snare and a trap an

evidence of our disobedience For this reason Ut

Unum Sint repeatedly insists that genuine ecumenism

requires conversion John Paul writes

Here once again the Council proves helpful Itcan be said that the entire Decree on Ecumenism is permeated by the spirit of conversion In the Document ecumenical dialoguetakes on a specific characteristic it becomes adialogue of conversion and thus in thewords of Pope Paul VI an authentic dialogue

of salvation Dialogue cannot take placemerely on a horizontal level being restrictedto meetings exchanges of points of view oreven the sharing of gifts proper to each Community It has also a primarily vertical thrustdirected towards the One who as theRedeemer of the world and the Lord of history is himself our Reconciliation This verticalaspect of dialogue lies in our acknowledgment

jointly and to each other that we have sinnedIt is precisely this acknowledgment which creates in brothers and sisters living in Communities not in full communion with one anotherthat interior space where Christ the source of

the Churchs unity can effectively act with allthe power of his Spirit the Paraclete



DECEMBER 2008 25

























26 FIRST THINGS



















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DECEMBER 2008 27





















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by Vatican II









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28 FIRST THINGS










by Vatican II









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Reconciling East and West