www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Books New Book: His Broken Body by Fr. Laurent Cleenewerck

Dear Father,

This is basically true and well put. When non-polemical elements are found in the past, even though not at the irenic level of the present, I believe they should still be appreciated, even as we would hope our present feeble attempts would be appreciated and properly evaluated. Those past polemics cut both ways; presently it seems to me only one side of the knife is losing its edge.

Yes and no, and I would shy away from being overly simplistic. Things such as the 2007 meeting in Ravenna show that much has changed on both sides. Against Ravenna we could mention the monks of Mount Athos, perhaps the Church of Jerusalem and the Church of Greece, but personally (speaking as a monk myself) I appreciate the ultra conservative balance and restraining influence which the Athonite monks and Jerusalem exhibit.

The next meeting of the "Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue Between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church" commences in a month's time on Cyprus. It will be very interesting to follow its discussions and whatever statements it publishes. Its topic is the role of the Pope of Rome in the first millennium Church.

That indeed is welcome news.

You share this misunderstanding with Cardinal Kasper so you are in eminent company. :-)

The Cardinal would like the Patriarch of Constantinople to take on the role of global "pope-like" figure. I suppose that if this were accomplished it would make the transition easier to accepting the universal authority of the Pope of Rome.

There was that extraordinary statement from Cardinal Kasper: "The Orthodox Church does not really exist" !!!

His exact words were: "We are increasingly conscious of the fact that an Orthodox Church does not really exist"

On the face of it, it's a rather unusual lapse in good manners and diplomacy by the President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. :-)

Of course, what he probably had in mind and wanted to say was that he wishes that the Orthodox had the same ecclesiological paradigm of "church" as his own does. This would make ecumenical business so much easier if it were so, if we were all moulded in the Roman Catholic mould, if we had a centralised authority in Istanbul to whom the whole Church were obedient. But the fact is that the "structure" of the Orthodox Church (maybe better to say Churches) is not the same as the Roman Catholic Church.

There is a small essay penned in response to the Cardinal's moment of confusion. I don't know if he has ever seen it but it may help towards mutual understanding...

An Orthodox Reply to the Opinion of Cardinal Walter Kasper:
'The Orthodox Church does not really exist.'

http://www.orthodoxengland.btinternet.co.uk/cardinal.htm

I actual think we (the Cardinal and I) differ (vide infra).

I do not agree with Card. Kasper if this is his view. What I wrote should not be interpreted in this way.

This sounds like some of that desired honesty. I too use the term Orthodox churches rather than (e.g.) The Orthodox Church intending thereby to defer to Orthodox sensibilities.

Could be, or again, just that honesty thing.

"...from Cardinal Kasper: "The Orthodox Church does not really exist" !!!" [see context above]

My point is that the "paradigm," what I call the essential element/structure (1), would not be expected in the Orthodox communion since it is in the Catholic communion and is unique: there are not two One Body of Christ.

I hope to read it. Again, perhaps on the Cardinal's part it was confusion, perhaps honesty. I couldn't say on the basis of what's presented.

I agree that you will not find the concept of a papacy in the Orthodox Church, But the reason is that it is not a part of the Church's apostolic structure but an extraneous element which developed in the West.

In what way has the Orthodox Church suffered without a papacy?

Pope Benedict himself has acknowledged that our faith is pristine and unchanged and that we are one with the Church of the Fathers. What more is necessary?

"While the West may point to the absence of the office of Peter in the East—it must, nevertheless, admit that, in the Eastern Church, the form and content of the Church of the Fathers is present in unbroken continuity."

~"Principles of Catholic Theology," Cardinal Ratzinger, Ignatius Press, 1987.

If anything the steadfast witness and adherence to the Apostolic faith by the Orthodox since Rome parted company is startling proof that neither the Papacy nor the Magisterium (seen as so essential by Rome) are at all necessary for the preservation of the Faith. The very existence of the Orthodox and their remarakable maintenance of the Faith and their cohesion in the Faith is evidence that the papacy (or any other global primacy) is NOT an essential element or structure.

ROME, March 7, 2002 (Zenit) -- The ecumenical movement risks losing young people unless it can produce a vision for the future, says the cardinal who oversees the cause.


Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, recently delivered an address evaluating ecumenism. The address appears in the latest edition of the Italian biweekly Il Regno.


"To a certain degree, the crisis of the ecumenical movement is the consequence of its success," the German cardinal writes.


"The more we come closer to one another, the more painful is the experience of not yet being in full communion among ourselves, which creates a certain dissatisfaction and frustration," he states.


Moreover, "the new generation of faithful and priests has not lived through the council and does not understand how things have changed," Cardinal Kasper observes.


In this context, he mentions three key challenges:


--"In the first place, we must promote ecumenical formation and the reception of ecumenical results. The results of ecumenical progress have yet to penetrate the heart and flesh of our Church and of the other Churches."


--"In the second place, we must clarify and renew the ecumenical vision. We need a new ecumenical language and impulse. We run the risk of losing a whole generation of youths if we are not capable of giving them a vision."


--Third, Cardinal Kasper appealed for the harmonizing of dialogue and identity. In this context, he emphasizes, "One can see what the problem and advantages of ´Dominus Iesus´ are, which highlighted the question of identity."


"Dominus Iesus" was the August 2000 declaration by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on the uniqueness and salvific universality of Jesus and the Church. Though criticized for sounding less than ecumenical, it basically reiterated magisterial teaching on the nature of the Catholic Church.


"We must underline clearly that serious ecumenism is something totally different from confessional indifference and relativism; it tends to gravitate around the highest common denominator," Cardinal Kasper states.


The cardinal then reviews the situation of relations between Catholics and other Christian confessions.


"We are increasingly conscious of the fact that an Orthodox Church does not really exist," he contends. "At the present stage, it does not seem that Constantinople is yet capable of integrating the different autocephalous Orthodox Churches; there are doubts about its primacy of honor, especially in Moscow."


He continues: "With Moscow, dialogue at the universal level at present is very difficult; the situation is improving with Greece; in the Middle East, in the territory of the ancient See of Antioch, the situation is completely different and there already is almost full communion."


Cardinal Kasper points out the tensions within the Lutheran world on the question of ministries as well as tensions in the realm of the Anglican Communion.


Given the above, he believes that over the next few years, ecumenism must progress "at two, or even more, speeds."


However, he cautions, "we must avoid giving the impression of ´divide et impera.´ We would engage in bad ecumenism if we created new divisions in the other Churches or confessional families, or if we tended to a new form of ´Uniatism.´"

The latter -- considered a pejorative term in the East -- signifies the Eastern Christians who left the Orthodox Church to join Rome.


"A two-speed ecumenism is something very delicate. However, in the present situation there is no realistic alternative," Cardinal Kasper concludes.

Thanks for providing this. Given my quoted words, after reading it in full, I respond:

I think Kaspar is right to say there is no "Orthodox Church" per se. But then, I don't like to speak of the Catholic Church, either, if by that all we mean is those Churches in communion with the Bishop of Rome. I prefer to use the plural whenever I speak of families of Churches--the Eastern Orthodox Churches, the Catholic Churches, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, the Assyrian Churches, and so forth. As an alternative, I prefer to use the word communion. There may not be an Eastern Orthodox Church, but there is an Eastern Orthodox communion (even if some of its members are barely on speaking terms with each other). There is a Catholic communion. There is an Oriental Orthodox communion. There is an Assyrian communion.

If we thought in these terms, perhaps we could circumvent the problems that using the word Church in reference to families of particular Churches entail.

We do agree (as stated) but not to anything I wrote. It seems you have terribly miss-read my words; you have read into them what is not there but what you want -- the issue you want -- to make of them. Except for the last phrase, the post, in relation to what I wrote, is a non sequitur: It is an issue but a derivative issue. I said nothing of Papacy or magisterium or primacy let alone "global primacy". What I did say is that there is "an essential element or structure," three actually for the term church, one of the three being the One Body of Christ, unity as communion.

You are more than welcome to your comments but realize they are quite tangential to my quoted words and the concepts I put forth. To illustrate, I add the concluding phrase (not given above) to what I said, giving my remark in full:

[/quote]

The concept of a global institution or tier of hierarchy is unknown in the Orthodox Church because it is simply not part of the Church called into existence by Jesus Christ, not part of the Apostolic Church (considered normative by the Orthodox) and not part of the 1000 years when we were one.

Cardinal Kasper, speaking about Ravenna 2007:

"But the real breakthrough, he said, was that "the Orthodox agreed to speak
about the universal level -- because before there were some who denied that
there could even be institutional structures on the universal level. The
second point is that we agreed that at the universal level there is a
primate. It was clear that there is only one candidate for this post, that
is the Bishop of Rome, because according to the old order -- "taxis" in
Greek -- of the Church of the first millennium the see of Rome is the first
among them."


The response of the Orthodox Church of Russia:

Bishop Hilarion, speaking to "Inside The Vatican", 15 November 2007:

"We do not have any theology of the Petrine office on the level of the
Universal Church. Our ecclesiology does not have room for such a concept.
This is why the Orthodox Church has for centuries opposed the idea of the
universal jurisdiction of any bishop, including the Bishop of Rome.

"We recognize that there is a certain order in which the primates of the
Local Churches should be mentioned. In this order the Bishop of Rome
occupied the first place until 1054, and then the primacy of order in the
Orthodox Church was shifted to the Patriarch of Constantinople, who until
the schism had been the second in order. But we believe that all primates of
the Local Churches are equal to one another, and none of them has
jurisdiction over any other."

From
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1925822/posts

I'm not sure what's your basis or point. Mine is the Creed's "one, holy catholic and apostolic church," St. Paul's RSV Romans 12:5 so we, though many, are one body in Christ...; RSV Ephesians 5:23 ... Christ is the head of the church, his body; and John's NAB John 17:21 so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you.

I am confident that point is found in Catholic ecclesiology and my quoted words and the ecclesiology I discussed in a previous post from which those words are excerpted. As VC II says, "This Church constituted and organized in the world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church." I accept what you've written about the Orthodox.

This says that Card. Kasper is quite pleased that in the Ravenna document the Orthodox are now willing to discuss what you say they do not have. As I read the same document, I think that is what it says.


This says that Bishop Hilarion, and I presume you, are not pleased with the words of Card. Kasper and, possibly, the Ravenna document itself. Both of you either are oblivious to or deny the first point he makes, which is also my item (1). You both readily focus on the second point, the Papacy, a topic where controversy, dissension and polemics are known to occur.

Much should be revealed when the 11th Plenary Session of the "Joint International Commission for the Theological Dialogue Between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church" opens on Cyprus in less than a month. The Russian Commission studying the role of the Archbishop of Rome in the Church of the first millenium has been at work for three years. Let us hope they have produced something concrete which the Russian delegation can take to Cyprus.

Ut omnes unum sint!

Putting it in those words the rapprochement could not but be understood, acknowledged and appreciated.

There have been many interesting posts in this thread. Most of the posts have focused on the issues involved, which the book covers. Have others obtained the book? Any thoughts on the book's perspective?