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I found the following quote from Patriarch Alexy II at

http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=interview&div=2

I am not sure what public statement by the pope the interviewer is referring to. If anyone knows, please share the information.

That notwithstanding, what do you all think of Patriarch Alexy II's comments?

I believe Alexy II is referring to the document 'Dominus Iesus', which re-affirmed the Church's time old teaching that the fullness of faith subsits (subsistere (Latin)=remains forever) within the Catholic Church. As such the Catholic and Orthodox Churches are not sister churches.

This does not prevent individual churches with our communions e.g. Rome and Constantinople from being sisters. Indeed, they are. However, naturally, the Catholic Church believes that its communion possesses the whole truth and that no other Christians possesses the truth equally to it and for this reason it rejects calling two churches by terms that would seem to make them equal in every way.

Should not then the Eastern Churches make the same claim to the fullness of Churches and insist that neither the Latins nor the Orthodox are "sister Churches?"

Dan L

By "Eastern Churches" do you mean "Eastern Catholic Churches?"

If so, the union of the Eastern Catholic Churches with the Latin Catholic Church makes their claims to possess the fullness of the faith the same claim. Which is to say, the faiths of the Eastern Catholic Churches and the Latin Catholic Church are the same faith (however differently that faith is expressed).

Affirmative

In this case I believe both the Pope and the Patriarch are wrong.

Andrew

Dear John Russell,

The term 'sister churches' was first coined and agreed upon by Pope John Paul II of Rome, and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, at the historic Balamand Agreement in the early 1990's.

In Christ,
Alice

Dear Friends,

Sisters are so because they have the same father and mother.

Then the Catholic and Orthodox Churches are sisters, are they not, because they have the same God the Father and the same Mother in the person of the Most Holy Theotokos?

And the same Brother, Who is also "Other" in OLGS Jesus Christ.

Sounds like real sisters to me . . .

As to which sister the Father prefers, and they each believe He prefers one over the other - I like to think He loves them both equally!

Alex

I'd say they're twin sisters - fraternal, not identical.

That one cousin [initials ROC] is so stubborn and opinionated - she thinks she's right and the others are wrong.

Dear Alex and Pavloosh,

Wonderful and humorous analogies! Thank you!

In Christ,
Alice

The interviewer is off in La-La land. His pants are too big for his breeches.

If you try to make sense out of what he is saying - you too shall enter into La-La land because it is impossible to make sense out of non-sense and you shall hurt your head if you try too hard. If you try to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear - it annoys the sow.

As for Patriarch Alexy II... let us ... let the Lord deal with him. It is really none of our business. He has a master and it is not me. As the same with the Pope of Rome we respect his office and are obedient to his official declarations but we need not raise all his opinions to the classification of infallible. We respect the office because it is Christ's but the personnel holiness of the human - is not guaranteed.

-ray

The ROC laity and clergy outside of Moscow - long for the day. The Russain people continue to suffer.

One day things will change and the Russian people who have clung to Christ - will have a Patriarch that also clings to Christ. In the mean time - the Russian Chruch is the portion of the church that is suffering. It is not a stranger to history that on occations - the offcials of the church (humans) have been the persecution of the saints. We can count the number of saints who were imprisoned by church offcials. East and West.

God will take care of things in his own good time - we need not get too involved. In many ways it is none of our business.

But boy (!) I know how you feel.

-ray

Yet wasn't it Patriarch Alexy II that stated at the death of Pope John Paul II, when seeing the reaction of the whole world that it surely was a movement of the Holy Spirit?

I guess it was a little late for him to realize the personal Holiness of the man. Hopefuly he has repented and realizes that his own death will never bring the same reaction.

The unfortunate thing is that instead of Orthodox Christians seeing that God has spoken through the people, they were envious of his greatness.

Sibling rivalry no doubt.

Zenovia

And does the Father love infidels less? No. Nor Protestants, nor Jews, nor Satanists for that matter. God loves everyone with His Infinite Love. It is we who fail to love Him.

No one posed the question as to whom the Father prefers. God does have His chosen people from whom salvation comes, but I know I am not one of them, except perhaps by adoption.

The question at hand is one of Truth. The Orthodox and the Catholics, sisters or no, are not united. I wish they were. They profess different faiths and different foundations of faith. Both Patriarch Alexy II and the Pope seem to recognize this. How deep or shallow is the rift that separates us?

I for one believe that "the Catholic Church is mother Church that alone has preserved the fullness of the truth, and the Orthodox Church should return to its bosom."

The term is older than that, according to the following source:

CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH
NOTE
ON THE EXPRESSION
�SISTER CHURCHES�



A. LETTER TO THE PRESIDENTS OF THE CONFERENCES OF BISHOPS


+ Joseph Card. Ratzinger
Prefect
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/c...aith_doc_20000630_chiese-sorelle_en.html

.......
I. The origin and development of the expression
The expression sister Churches does not appear as such in the New Testament; however, there are numerous indications of the sisterly relations which existed among the local Churches of Christian antiquity. The New Testament passage which most explicitly reflects this awareness is the final sentence of the Second Letter of John: �The sons of your elect sister send you their greetings� (2 Jn 13). These are greetings sent by one ecclesial community to another; the community which sends the greetings calls itself the sister of the other.
As is well known, the divergences between Rome and Constantinople led, in later centuries, to mutual excommunications with �consequences which, as far as we can judge, went beyond what was intended and foreseen by their authors, whose censures concerned the persons mentioned and not the Churches, and who did not intend to break the ecclesial communion between the sees of Rome and Constantinople.
The expression appears again in two letters of the Metropolitan Nicetas of Nicodemia (in the year 1136) and the Patriarch John X Camaterus (in office from 1198 to 1206), in which they protested that Rome, by presenting herself as mother and teacher, would annul their authority. In their view, Rome is only the first among sisters of equal dignity.
In recent times, the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople, Athenagoras I, was the first to once again use the expression sister Churches. In welcoming the fraternal gestures and the call to unity addressed to him by John XXIII, he often expressed in his letters the hope of seeing the unity between the sister Churches re-established in the near future.
The Second Vatican Council adopted the expression sister Churches to describe the relationship between particular Churches: �in the East there flourish many particular local Churches; among them the Patriarchal Churches hold first place, and of these, many glory in taking their origins from the apostles themselves. Therefore, there prevailed and still prevails among Eastern Christians an eager desire to perpetuate in a communion of faith and charity those family ties which ought to exist between local Churches, as between sisters.
7. The first papal document in which the term sisters is applied to the Churches is the Apostolic Brief Anno ineunte of Paul VI to the Patriarch Athenagoras I. After having indicated his willingness to do everything possible to �re-establish full communion between the Church of the West and that of the East,� the Pope asked: �Since this mystery of divine love is at work in every local Church, is not this the reason for the traditional expression �sister Churches,� which the Churches of various places used for one another? For centuries our Churches lived in this way like sisters, celebrating together the ecumenical councils which defended the deposit of faith against all corruption. Now, after a long period of division and mutual misunderstanding, the Lord, in spite of the obstacles which arose between us in the past, gives us the possibility of rediscovering ourselves as sister Churches.......