www.byzcath.org Forums News & Events Church News Bartholomew: With Francis, we invite all Christians to celebrate

I see it as Orthodox strength.

St Mark of Ephesus pray for us!

You can but then as a Catholic I have to tell you that you're wrong.

P.S. Well, okay "have to" is a little strong. More precise would be "am supposed to".

LOL!

I see it as a flaw. Some Orthodox are so afraid of the Papacy that any effort by one or more hierarchs to assert some sort of leadership or vision is typically shot down by the naysayers who apparently prefer disorder and chaos and arguments about dyptychs and small parishes in Muslim countries.

Nonsense. Some (many) Orthodox do not appreciate ecumenistic compromise.

How can any Orthodox Christians be comfortable with the ecumenism of today? Even our most recent saints were opposed to the emptiness of ecumenism, whereas the major leaders of Orthodox Ecumenism have never found widespread support. May the prayers of St. Mark of Ephesus turn the Ecumenical Patriarchate away from this silly ecumania.

(emphasis added)

Are Orthodox so different from the rest of us? (Granted that doesn't answer your question.)

With respect to ecumenism, there is certainly more than one form.

St Mark of Ephesus is honoured as a pillar of Orthodoxy who refused to compromise the Orthodox faith at Florence.

However, a closer look at St Mark Eugenikos before he came to Florence indicates that he himself was very much in favour of the reunion of the Churches. (Fr. Prof. Meyendorff goes into this point at some length in one of his books, the title of which escapes me and I no longer see it on my bookshelves as I glance at them now.)

St Mark went to Florence, yes, at the precise command of the Byzantine emperor (as did all the Greek theologians) to try and effect a church reunion as a way to obtain military aid from the West. But there was much more to him than that.

He believed that Church reunion, rather than theological agreement on everything, would be the key to establishing true unity of the Body of Christ.

He did indeed believe the Filioque was heretical. But as long as the Latins agreed to remove the Filioque from the Creed that was always intended to express the faith of the universal Church, then unity was possible.

Not theological argument, but the power of God was required to heal the schism. By being reunited to the Orthodox Church, the West would be able to experience that Grace that would, in time, heal what was required to be healed.

The Latins at Florence not only refused to return to the original Creed of the first millenium, they insisted that the Eastern Churches agree that their interpolation was not heretical, indeed complimented it - something the Orthodox East could not do (and St Mark of Ephesus soon became the lone voice for the authentic position of Orthodoxy in this regard).

Then followed arguments about the papacy, purgatory etc. where the Latin theological position became, for the RC side, the sine qua non of church reunion.

St Mark opposed all of that. But we should remember that he came to Florence as a Unionist under the condition that the West, at the minimum, remove the Filioque.

The West wouldn't do that and so Florence came to epitomize the confusion of Latin theological positions with the faith once held in common by East and West for the first millenium.

St Mark of Ephesus was an ecumenist without compromise as he wanted to maintain the store - not give it away.

In fact, St Mark could be seen as going beyond the often emotionally charged arguments for and against ecumenism of today.

Church reunion would be useless not primarily because it would lead to compromise, real or perceived, on doctrine, but because the emphasis on theology might turn the attention away from the one thing needful for the restoration of the broken communion of Christ's Holy Church - the Grace and power of the Most Holy Spirit.

May St Mark of Ephesus pray for us indeed.

Alex

Dear Brother Marduk,

What you say is all true. But today only an order to return to the original Creed of the earliest Councils would be normative for the Latin Catholic Church.

The Roman Church indeed recognizes and will use, within certain proscribed boundaries, the original Creed without the Filioque.

But that is really not "best practices" to follow with respect to a Creed that was always intended to express the faith of the universal Church of Christ, West as well as East.

One should never tamper with such and I believe the general consensus among RC theologians today is that the Filioque should be removed for that reason especially. The Creed should not be recited differently in different dioceses etc.

In addition, there are direct scriptural links to each and every verse of the Nicene Creed - the Filioque stands alone as having no such direct scriptural link.

I believe Pope Francis should exercise his authority to return to the original Creed as the most credible and authentic expression of the Latin Church's desire to truly restore the lost unity with the East.

Alex

Dear DMD,

Certainly, I believe that the way the Orthodox Churches have their process of glorification/canonization established is most definitely a strength.

Tsar St Nicholas' liturgical cultus need not be accepted everywhere within Orthodoxy, and indeed it may not be a going concern in various regions etc. His cultus would be most "relevant" to the ROC and ROCOR in the first instance.

That different Orthodox Churches glorify their own saints is proper without the expectation that all other Orthodox Churches must place them in their calendars. In fact, the UOC-MP would often discuss accepting this or that Orthodox Saint, glorified elsewhere, into its own calendar. Patriarch St Gregory V the New Hieromartyr was so included in the Ukrainian Orthodox calendar, primarily because his relics were protected and venerated for years at Odessa following his martyrdom.

Pope St John Paul II canonized and beatified many saints during his numerous trips to reawaken the sense of the "Local Church" in this same way (albeit without returning the ability of the local Latin Bishops to beatify their own saints for their dioceses).

In talks with the Oriental Orthodox Churches, EO theologians discussed anew the practice of the veneration of Saints within world Orthodoxy and that, while after a possible future reunion of the EO and OO Churches, neither side would be obliged to accept the other's Saints and Teachers within their respective liturgical calendars (indeed, while the anathemas would be withdrawn against the Oriental Orthodox Saints and Teachers - that doesn't mean one would go from "anathema!" to "pray for us, Holy Father" over night, if ever, although this is possible in time.

The same thing holds true with the Old Believers in Russia who would balk at having to adopt the liturgical cultus of saints like St Dmitri of Rostov who actively opposed the Old Believer movement and wrote against it.

What I like about the Orthodox praxis in this regard is that the most local saint is called just that, "Saint." And he or she could be a saint in the opinion of a few villages, or of a monastery, and nothing more than that. Or his or her cultus could, in time, develop to embrace an entire region or even an entire Patriarchate and then the Church world-wide.

But in all cases, he or she remains a "Saint."

Alex

Quite an illuminating piece by O.C. on St. Mark of E. Ecumenism, then is best approached with trepidation...which seems to be how the clearer and more informed heads do it. One can understand the strong opposition both in some RC and EO circles ecumenism especially when all one is going on is a tabloid bogey man of the other. Alas, this is perhaps most virulent in the United States, where all of us in one way or another have drunk the poison of Puritanism and are apt to define ourselves by protest and opposition to some bete noire.
I do not quite undertand how the question of beatifying Pat. Athenagoras became a topic unto itself. I know John Paul II was very heroic and all that, but this need to canonize popes and hierarchs ad infinitum smacks a bit of oneupmanship (otherwise John XXIII would not have been caononized the same day to placate two assumed parties). One can be a great man of the Church without having to make every single one a saint.

Hi Alex,


True, but what is to prevent slight differences between patriarchates?

(An open-ended question.)


I'm afraid I'd have to disagree that there is no scriptural backing at all for the filioque. John 15:26 says, "When the Advocate comes whom I will send you from the Father...". And this, of course, is what the West is referring to when it speaks of the Spirit "proceeding from" the Father and the Son. It isn't that we believe that there are two "ultimate sources" for the Spirit, only that - from a human vantage point - the Spirit indeed proceeds "ultimately" from the Father, but more "proximately" from the Son as well since He is the one actively doing the sending to the human race.


...*shrug*

I guess I don't have strong feelings about it one way or the other, personally (while concurrently having very strong feelings in favor of reunion). On the one hand, I can totally see how this would be a very welcome development to the East and I would be very happy with it as a matter of deference to our Eastern brothers and sisters.

However, on the other hand, isn't that sort of precisely the point at the same time? Back to my question at the top of this post. From an Eastern vantage point, is it really the prerogative of someone outside a given patriarchate to tell another patriarch what to do, in the absence of the pronouncement of an ecumenical council? It doesn't seem so. So, why the felt need to tell the patriarch of the West to rescind something that is "properly Latin", if you will?

Peace.

You confuse the pre-eternal "spiration" of the Spirit from the Father with the "mission" in time of the Spirit by the Son!

Dear Learned Talon,

You raise a number of interesting points!

Just two comments from me.

There is broad agreement that the Nicene Creed was established to confess the common faith of the universal Church. If that is so, then it cannot be altered or changed by patriarchates etc. And there is no reason it should be. Certainly, Local Churches may have their own theological traditions of interpretation - but that doesn't enter into the question of additions/subtractions from the original, universal Creed.

I did not say there was no scriptural backing for the Filioque (more referring to scriptural phrases which were lifted directly from scripture in the construction of the Creed).

In terms of the Son sending the Spirit to the Church by way of the temporal procession - as Otets Nastoiatel, that great devotee of Pope Paul VI, wrote - the East accepts that, but doesn't see how that affects the eternal procession of the Spirit from the Father alone.

So the scriptural references that go to make up the Nicene Creed are about direct quotes rather than things that are interpreted differently by both Churches in the later debates on the Procession of the Most Holy Spirit.

Alex

Dear Mark,

Certainly, the ancient Eastern tradition saw in its Primates true men of God who devoted themselves to prayer for their faithful, in this life and the next. Unless such a Primate was a heretic etc., many were glorified as saints.

And the Coptic Orthodox Church has glorified every single one of its Popes from St Mark the Evangelist until the most recently glorified Pope St Cyril VI.

So there is precedent for that.

Alex