Pope Francis’s address to Religious Leaders

Wednesday, 20 March 2013

First of all, heartfelt thanks for what my Brother Andrew told us. Thank you so much! Thank you so much!

It is a source of particular joy to meet you today, delegates of the Orthodox Churches, the Oriental Orthodox Churches and Ecclesial Communities of the West. Thank you for wanting to take part in the celebration that marked the beginning of my ministry as Bishop of Rome and Successor of Peter.
Yesterday morning, during the Mass, through you, I recognised the communities you represent. In this manifestation of faith, I had the feeling of taking part in an even more urgent fashion the prayer for the unity of all believers in Christ, and together to see somehow prefigured the full realisation of full unity which depends on God’s plan and on our own loyal collaboration.

I begin my Apostolic Ministry in this year during which my venerable Predecessor, Benedict XVI, with true inspiration, proclaimed the Year of Faith for the Catholic Church. With this initiative, that I wish to continue and which I hope will be an inspiration for every one’s journey of faith, he wished to mark the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council, thus proposing a sort of pilgrimage towards what for every Christian represents the essential: the personal and transforming relationship with Jesus Christ, Son of God, who died and rose for our salvation. This effort to proclaim this eternal treasure of faith to the people of our time, lies at the heart of the Council’s message.

Together with you I cannot forget how much the council has meaning for the ecumenical journey. I like to remember the words that Blessed John XXIII, of whom we will soon mark 50 years since his death, when he gave his memorable inauguration speech: “The Catholic Church therefore considers it her duty to work actively so that there may be fulfilled the great mystery of that unity, which Christ Jesus invoked with fervent prayer from His heavenly Father on the eve of His sacrifice. She rejoices in peace, knowing well that she is intimately associated with that prayer”.

Yes, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all be intimately united to our Saviour’s prayer at the Last Supper, to his invocation: ut unum sint. We call merciful Father to be able to fully live the faith that we have received as a gift on the day of our Baptism, and to be able to it free, joyful and courageous testimony. The more we are faithful to his will, in thoughts, in words and in deeds, the more we will truly and substantially walk towards unity.

For my part, I wish to assure, in the wake of my predecessors, the firm wish to continue on the path of ecumenical dialogue, and I thank you, the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, for the help it continues to offer in my name, for this noble cause. I ask you, dear brothers and sisters, to bring my cordial greetings to the Churches and Christian communities who are represented here. And I ask you for a special prayer for me so that I can be a pastor according to the heart of Christ.

And now I turn to you, distinguished representatives of the Jewish people, to whom we are bound by a very special spiritual bond, from the moment that, as the Second Vatican Council said, “thus the Church of Christ acknowledges that according to God’s saving design, the beginnings of her faith and her election are found already among the Patriarchs, Moses and the prophets”.(Decree Nostra Aetate, 4). I thank you for your presence and trust that with the help of the Almighty, we can continue that fruitful fraternal dialogue that the Council wished for. And that it is actually achieved, bringing many fruits, especially during the last decades.

I greet and thank cordially all of you, dear friends belonging to other religious traditions; firstly the Muslims, who worship the one living and merciful God, and call upon Him in prayer. I really appreciate your presence, and in it I see a tangible sign of the wish to grow in recipricol trust and in cooperation for the common good of humanity.

The Catholic Church is aware of the importance of the promotion of friendship and respect between men and women of different religious traditions – this I wish to repeat this: the promotion of friendship and respect between men and women of different religious traditions – this is attested evident also in the valuable work undertaken by the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue.

The Church is equally aware of the responsibility that each of us bring towards our world, and to the whole of creation, that we must love and protect. And we can do a lot for the good of the less fortunate, for those who are weak and suffering, to promote justice, to promote reconciliation, to build peace. But above all, we must keep alive in our world the thirst for the absolute, and must not allow the vision of the human person with a single dimension to prevail, according to which man is reduced to what he produces and to what he consumes: this is one most dangerous threats of our times.

We know how much violence has been provoked in recent history by the attempt to eliminate God and the divine from the horizon of humanity, and we feel the need to witness in our societies the original openness to transcendence that is inherent in the human heart. In this we feel the closeness also of those men and women who, while not belonging to any religious tradition, feel, however the need to search for the truth, the goodness and the beauty of God, and who are our precious allies in efforts to defend the dignity of man, in the building of a peaceful coexistence between peoples and in the careful protection of creation.

Dear friends, thank you for your presence. To all, I offer my cordial and fraternal greetings.
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 Story reprinted from Catholic Herald 2013. Registered in England and Wales

Vatican Directive on the Phrase "Sister Churches"

All deacons and formation candidates should read this before the coming Weel of Prayer for Christian Unity.

http://www.doctrinafidei.va/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20000630_chiese-sorelle_en.html

2013 Week of Prayer for Christian Unity Theme

   
A worldwide fellowship of 349 churches seeking unity, a common witness and Christian service

Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

At least once a year, many Christians become aware of the great diversity of ways of adoring God. Hearts are touched, and people realize that their neighbours' ways are not so strange.  

The event that touches off this special experience is something called the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Traditionally celebrated between 18-25 January (in the northern hemisphere) or at Pentecost (in the southern hemisphere), the Week of Prayer enters into congregations and parishes all over the world. Pulpits are exchanged, and special ecumenical worship services are arranged. 

Ecumenical partners in a particular region are asked to prepare a basic text on a biblical theme. Then an international group with WCC-sponsored (Protestant and Orthodox) and Roman Catholic participants edits this text and ensures that it is linked with the search for the unity of the church.  

The text is jointly published by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and WCC, through the WCC's Commission on Faith and Order, which also accompanies the entire production process of the text. The final material is sent to member churches and Roman Catholic dioceses, and they are invited to translate the text and contextualize it for their own use.

Theme for 2013

"What does God require of us?"      (cf. Micah 6:6-8)

New Anglican Ordinarate

LONDON, JAN. 15, 2011 (Zenit.org).- Here is a statement, published Tuesday, from the general secretary of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, regarding the establishment of a personal ordinariate for groups of faithful and their clergy from the Anglican Communion entering into full communion with the Catholic Church.
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Introduction

On or before 15 January 2011, it is expected that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith will publish a Decree which will formally establish a 'Personal Ordinariate' in England and Wales (from here on referred to as 'the Ordinariate') for groups of Anglican faithful and their clergy who wish to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church.

The establishment of this Ordinariate will be the first fruit of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus, issued by Pope Benedict XVI on 4 November 2009. The Constitution and the Complementary Norms published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith provide the essential norms which will enable members of the Ordinariate to preserve within the Catholic Church those elements of Anglican ecclesial prayer, liturgy and pastoral practice (patrimony) that are concordant with Catholic teaching and which have nurtured and nourished their Christian faith and life.

In time, it is expected that further Ordinariates will be established in other parts of the world to meet the desire of those Anglican communities who in a similar way seek to be united in communion with the Successor of St Peter.

As a new structure within the Catholic Church, there will be many 'frequently asked questions' about the Ordinariate. Some of these are:

Why did Pope Benedict XVI publish Anglicanorum coetibus?

As the Holy Father stated when he published Anglicanorum coetibus, he was responding to petitions received "repeatedly and insistently" by him from groups of Anglicans wishing "to be received into full communion individually as well as corporately" with the Catholic Church.

During his address to the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales at Oscott last September, Pope Benedict was therefore keen to stress that the Apostolic Constitution "should be seen as a prophetic gesture that can contribute positively to the developing relations between Anglicans and Catholics. It helps us to set our sights on the ultimate goal of all ecumenical activity: the restoration of full ecclesial communion in the context of which the mutual exchange of gifts from our respective spiritual patrimonies serves as an enrichment to us all."

In this way, the establishment of the Ordinariate is clearly intended to serve the wider and unchanging aim of the full visible unity between the Catholic Church and the members of the Anglican Communion.

Will members of the Ordinariate still be Anglicans?

No. Members of the Ordinariate will be Catholics. Their decision is to leave the Anglican Communion and come into the Catholic Church, in full communion with the Pope.

The central purpose of Anglicanorum coetibus is "to maintain the liturgical, spiritual and pastoral traditions of the Anglican Communion within the Catholic Church, as a precious gift nourishing the faith of the members of the Ordinariate and as a treasure to be shared". Members of the Ordinariate will bring with them, into full communion with the Catholic Church in all its diversity and richness of liturgical rites and traditions, some aspects their own Anglican patrimony and culture.

It is recognised that the term Anglican patrimony is difficult to define but it would include many of the spiritual writings, prayers, hymnody, and pastoral practices distinctive to the Anglican tradition which have sustained the faith and longing of many Anglican faithful for that very unity for which Christ prayed.

The Ordinariate will then bring a mutual enrichment and exchange of gifts, in an authentic and visible form of full communion, between those baptised and nurtured in Anglicanism and the Catholic Church.

Do all Anglicans who wish to become Catholics now have to be members of the Ordinariate?

No. Any individual former Anglican who wishes to be received into full communion with the Catholic Church, may do so without becoming a registered member of the Ordinariate.

As stated above, the Ordinariate is being established essentially for groups of former Anglican faithful and their clergy who wish to maintain as members of the Catholic Church, within the canonically approved and structured ecclesial life of the Ordinariate, those aspects of their Anglican spiritual, liturgical and pastoral tradition which are recognised as authentic by the Catholic Church.

What is the 'Ordinariate' then?

The Ordinariate will be a specific ecclesiastical jurisdiction which is similar to a diocese and will be led by its own 'Ordinary' (see below) who will be a bishop or priest. However, unlike a diocese its membership will be on a 'personal' rather than a 'territorial' basis; that is, no matter where a member of the Ordinariate lives within England and Wales they will, in the first instance, be under the ordinary ecclesial jurisdiction of the Ordinariate and not the diocese where they are resident.

The Ordinariate will be made up of laity, clergy and religious who were formerly members of the Anglican Communion. Following reception into full communion with the Catholic Church, the laity and religious will become members of the Ordinariate by enrolment in a register; with ordination as priests and deacons, the clergy will be directly incardinated into (placed under the jurisdiction of) the Ordinariate.

Will the Ordinary of the Ordinariate be like a diocesan bishop?

Each diocesan bishop is the Ordinary for his diocese (this does not mean 'ordinary' in the sense of common or normal but is an ecclesiastical term which means someone who exercises power and has jurisdiction by virtue of the office they hold). The power which the diocesan bishop exercises is ordinary (related to his office as a diocesan bishop), proper (exercised in his own name, not vicariously) and immediate (directed toward all in the territory of his diocese).

The power exercised by the Ordinary of the Ordinariate will be ordinary (related to the specific office entrusted to him), vicarious (exercised in the name of the Roman Pontiff) and personal authority (directed to all who belong to the Ordinariate).

As the Ordinary of the Ordinariate (from here on referred to simply as 'the Ordinary') has similar authority and responsibilities in Canon Law to a diocesan bishop he will therefore be an ex officio member of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales. As a member of the Conference, the Ordinary will, like a diocesan bishop, take a full part in its discussions and decisions. The Ordinary will exercise collegiate responsibility for implementing the resolutions taken by the Conference within the life of the Ordinariate in the same way that a diocesan bishop does so within his diocese.

Like diocesan bishops, the Ordinary will be also be required to make a visit to Rome every five years (traditionally called the ad limina Apostolorum - to the threshold of the Apostles) and present a report on the status of the Ordinariate to the Pope through the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and in consultation with the Congregation for Bishops.

Who will be the Ordinary of the Ordinariate?

The Ordinary of the Ordinariate must be a bishop or a priest and he will be appointed directly by Pope Benedict XVI. All subsequent Ordinaries will be appointed by the Roman Pontiff from a terna (list of three names) presented by the Governing Council of the Ordinariate (See below).

A married former Anglican bishop or priest who has been subsequently ordained as a Catholic priest cannot however be ordained as a Catholic bishop whilst their spouse is still living.

How will the Ordinariate be governed?

The Ordinariate will have a Governing Council of at least six priests, presided over by the Ordinary. Half of the membership is elected by the priests of the Ordinariate. The Ordinariate must also have a Pastoral Council for consultation with the laity and a Finance Council.

The Governing Council will have the same rights and responsibilities in Canon Law that the College of Consultors and the Council of Priests have in the governance of a Diocese. Unlike a diocesan bishop though, and out of respect for the synodal tradition of Anglicanism, the Ordinary will need the consent of the Ordinariate's Governing Council to: admit a candidate to Holy Orders; erect or suppress a personal parish; erect or suppress a house of formation; approve a program of formation.

The Ordinary must also consult the Governing Council concerning the pastoral activities of the Ordinariate and the principles governing the formation of clergy.

The Governing Council will also have a deliberative vote when: choosing a terna of names to submit to the Holy See for the appointment of the Ordinary; proposing changes to the Complementary Norms of the Ordinariate to present to the Holy See; when formulating the Statutes of the Governing Council, the Statutes of the Pastoral Council, and the Rule for houses of formation.

Will the Ordinariate have parishes and deaneries?

The Ordinariate will have parishes within the dioceses where it has groups of members but they will be 'personal' parishes and not 'territorial' like a diocesan parish. Membership of a diocesan parish comes from living within the defined territorial boundaries of that parish; to be a member of a 'personal' parish in the Ordinariate a person must be a member of the group for which that parish was established, i.e. a former Anglican who is a member of, or has joined, a specific group within the Ordinariate.

After consulting with the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales and obtaining the consent of the Governing Council, the Ordinary may erect territorial deaneries for a number of personal parishes which will be supervised by a delegate of the Ordinary.

Who will look after the Ordinariate parishes?

The Ordinariate parishes will be served by priests of the Ordinariate, appointed by the Ordinary. They may be assisted by a parochial vicar (assistant priest) and/or a deacon. Pastoral and finance councils will also be established in the parishes. Diocesan clergy and religious, with the consent of their diocesan bishop or religious superior, may also assist in the pastoral care of the Ordinariate under the supervision of the Ordinary when and where it is deemed suitable. Similarly, clergy incardinated into the Ordinariate should also be available to assist in the pastoral care of the faithful in the local diocese.

What liturgy will the members of the Ordinariate celebrate?

The Ordinariate will not be a Ritual Church; that is, the Ordinariate will not be principally defined by the liturgical rites it uses. In addition to the Roman Rite, some of the liturgical rites of the Anglican tradition which have been adapted and approved by the Holy See may be used by the members of the Ordinariate.

It is expected that in due course, suitable rituals (Sacramentary, Divine Office, etc.) will be promulgated for Ordinariates across the world. However, as it will be fully a part of the Latin Catholic Church (as distinct from the Byzantine, Maronite, Chaldean Catholic Church, etc.) the Ordinariate will always be able to use the Roman Rite.

What churches will the Ordinariate use?

Because the previous places of worship used by the clergy and groups who will form the Ordinariate were in the ownership of the Church of England, it is unlikely that it will be possible for them to continue to be used by the Ordinariate members. In most cases therefore, Ordinariate congregations will probably use their local diocesan Catholic church for the celebration of Mass and other liturgies. In some places there may be a diocesan church which is no longer needed to serve the needs of the local parish community; these could prove suitable for use by the Ordinariate. Essentially, the needs of each Ordinariate group will be carefully assessed by the Ordinary and the most suitable pastoral arrangements will be made by him in collaboration with the local diocesan bishop.

Will any Catholic be able to attend a Mass celebrated within an Ordinariate parish or by an Ordinariate priest?

Yes. Any Catholic, whether a member of the Ordinariate or a member of a diocese, will be able to attend Mass, receive Holy Communion and participate in the liturgies of an Ordinariate parish or celebrated by an Ordinariate priest. However, they would not be registered members of the Ordinariate and would remain under the ordinary jurisdiction of the diocesan bishop where they are resident.

Similarly, registered members of the Ordinariate are free to attend Mass, receive Holy Communion and participate in the liturgies of any diocesan parish but they would remain under the ordinary jurisdiction of the Ordinariate.

How will the Ordinariate be funded?

The Ordinariate, like every diocese, is expected to support financially its own clergy both when they are in ministry and when they have stepped down from public ministry. It will, like a diocese, need to make plans to ensure that it is financially secure and that its pastoral needs can be met. Just as every diocese in England and Wales depends upon the contributions that each parish receives from Sunday collections to finance not only the running and maintenance of the parishes but also its central services, so too the Ordinariate will need similar support. Just as some diocese have good financial reserves, investments and endowments, so too a fund has already been established to enable the Ordinariate to begin its work from the day it is erected. The Catholic Bishops of England and Wales have already contributed a quarter of a million pounds to the fund and other charities are being asked to assist.

In those areas where groups are likely to be established, local Catholic dioceses are helping to find housing for the clergy who will serve in the Ordinariate and are providing whatever other practical support they can, e.g. provision or use of churches, use of diocesan curial services, assisting with the identification of salaried chaplaincy roles, etc.

When will all this take place?

The formal erection of the Ordinariate will take place with the publication of a Decree by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith and the announcement of the name of the first Ordinary appointed by the Holy Father.

Already, three former Anglican Bishops have been received, together with some members of their families and three former Anglican women religious, into full communion with the Catholic Church on 1 January 2011. With the permission of the Holy See, they will also be ordained as Catholic Priests on 15 January 2011. A further two retired former Anglican Bishops will be received into full communion with the Catholic Church and proceed to Ordination as Catholic Priests in due course.

At the beginning of this Lent (Ash Wednesday falls on 9 March in 2011), a number of groups of former Anglican faithful together with their clergy will be enrolled as candidates for the Ordinariate. Then, at a date to be agreed between the Ordinary and the local diocesan Bishop, they will be received into the Catholic Church and confirmed. This will probably take place either during Holy Week, at the Mass of the Lord's Supper on Holy Thursday or during the Easter Vigil. The period of formation for the faithful and their pastors will continue to Pentecost.

Around Pentecost, those former Anglican clergy whose petitions for ordination have been accepted by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome will be ordained to the Catholic Priesthood. Ordination to the Diaconate will precede this at some point during Eastertide. The formation of these clergy in Catholic theology and pastoral practice will continue for an appropriate amount of time after their ordination.

Why are priests for the Ordinariate being ordained so quickly and without the normal length of preparation being observed?

A key aspect of the establishment of the Ordinariate by Pope Benedict is that it enables groups of former Anglicans and their clergy to stay together. This is quite new as previously former Anglican clergy seeking ordination in the Catholic Church were separated from their communities, even if some members of those communities also became Catholics. A different timetable is required if this new aspect is to be achieved. For this reason, the ordinations of the first priests for the Ordinariate will take place while their formation is still in process so as to enable them to minister to their communities within the full communion of the Catholic Church. The ordinations of the former Anglican bishops are taking place at this time with the expressed permission of the Holy Father so that they can play a role in the very first stages of the development of the Ordinariate.

Conclusion

The decisions taken by those Anglican clergy and faithful to leave the Church of England and seek full communion with the Catholic Church have been the fruit of much prayer and a long reflection on their personal and communal spiritual pilgrimage. Pain will be felt by those leaving the Anglican Communion and by those with whom they have shared an ecclesial life. Our resolve to continue to work and pray for the unity of Christians therefore must not diminish.

The establishment of the Ordinariate is something new, not just in the life of the Catholic Church in England and Wales but in the universal Church as well. As such there will doubtless be more questions that will arise and challenges to be met as Ordinariates are established and grow. It is important therefore, particularly for those who will form the first groups within the Ordinariate in England and Wales, that our welcome is warm and our support is strong.

Please pray for all those who are trying to discern what path the Lord is calling them to follow, for those who are preparing to be received in to the Catholic Church and for those who are preparing to begin their ministry of service to the Lord as Catholic priests, deacons and religious.

11 January 2011

Fr Marcus Stock
General Secretary, Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales

Steps Towards a Reunited Church

The North American Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation recently held its annual meeting and has just released the text of two statements: one on the date of Easter, and the other entitled “Steps Towards a Reunited Church: A Sketch of an Orthodox-Catholic Vision for the Future”. The latter statement is reproduced below

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STEPS TOWARDS A REUNITED CHURCH: A SKETCH OF AN ORTHODOX-CATHOLIC VISION FOR THE FUTURE

The North American Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation
Georgetown University, Washington, DC
October 2, 2010


1. Prologue. For almost forty-five years, the North American Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation has been meeting regularly to discuss some of the major pastoral and doctrinal issues that prevent our Churches from sharing a single life of faith, sacraments, and witness before the world. Our goal has been to pave the way towards sharing fully in Eucharistic communion through recognizing and accepting each other as integral parts of the Church founded by Jesus Christ.

2. A Central Point of Disagreement. In the course of our discussions, it has become increasingly clear to us that the most divisive element in our traditions has been a growing diversity, since the late patristic centuries, in the ways we understand the structure of the Church itself, particularly our understanding of the forms of headship that seem essential to the Church’s being at the local, regional and worldwide levels. At the heart of our differences stands the way each of our traditions understands the proper exercise of primacy in the leadership of the Church, both within the various regions of the Christian world and within Christianity as a whole. In order to be the Body of Christ in its fullness — to be both “Orthodox” and “Catholic” — does a local community, gathered to celebrate the Eucharist, have to be united with the other Churches that share the Apostolic faith, not only through Scripture, doctrine, and tradition, but also through common worldwide structures of authority — particularly through the practice of a universal synodality in union with the bishop of Rome?

It seems to be no exaggeration, in fact, to say that the root obstacle preventing the Orthodox and Catholic Churches from growing steadily towards sacramental and practical unity has been, and continues to be, the role that the bishop of Rome plays in the worldwide Catholic communion. While for Catholics, maintaining communion in faith and sacraments with the bishop of Rome is considered a necessary criterion for being considered Church in the full sense, for Orthodox, as well as for Protestants, it is precisely the pope’s historic claims to authority in teaching and Church life that are most at variance with the image of the Church presented to us in the New Testament and in early Christian writings. In the carefully understated words of Pope John Paul II, “the Catholic Church’s conviction that in the ministry of the bishop of Rome she has preserved, in fidelity to the Apostolic Tradition and the faith of the Fathers, the visible sign and guarantor of unity, constitutes a difficulty for most other Christians, whose memory is marked by certain painful recollections” (Ut Unum Sint 88).


3. Divergent Histories. The historical roots of this difference in vision go back many centuries. Episcopal and regional structures of leadership have developed in different ways in the Churches of Christ, and are to some extent based on social and political expectations that reach back to early Christianity. In Christian antiquity, the primary reality of the local Church, centered in a city and bound by special concerns to the other Churches of the same province or region, served as the main model for Church unity. The bishop of a province’s metropolitan or capital city came to be recognized early as the one who presided at that province’s regular synods of bishops (see Apostolic Canon 34). Notwithstanding regional structural differences, a sense of shared faith and shared Apostolic origins, expressed in the shared Eucharist and in the mutual recognition of bishops, bound these local communities together in the consciousness of being one Church, while the community in each place saw itself as a full embodiment of the Church of the apostles.

In the Latin Church, a sense of the distinctive importance of the bishop of Rome, as the leading although not the sole spokesman for the apostolic tradition, goes back at least to the second century, and was expressed in a variety of ways. By the mid-fourth century, bishops of Rome began to intervene more explicitly in doctrinal and liturgical disputes in Italy and the Latin West, and through the seventh century took an increasingly influential, if geographically more distant, role in the Christological controversies that so sharply divided the Eastern Churches. It was only in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, during what is known as the Gregorian reforms, that the bishops of Rome, in response to centuries-old encroachments on the freedom and integrity of Church life by local secular rulers, began to assert the independence of a centrally-organized Catholic Church in a way that was to prove distinctive in Western society. Gradually, a vision of the Church of Christ as a universal, socially independent single body — parallel to the civil structure of the Empire, consisting of local or “particular” Churches, and held together by unity of faith and sacraments with the bishop of Rome — developed in Latin Christianity, and became, for the West, the normative scheme for imagining the Church as a whole.

Even in the Middle Ages, however, this centralized vision of the universal Church was not shared by the Orthodox Churches. In April, 1136, for instance, a Roman legate – the German bishop Anselm of Havelberg — visited Constantinople and engaged in a series of learned and irenic dialogues on issues dividing the Churches with the Byzantine Emperor’s representative, Archbishop Nicetas of Nicomedia. In the course of their conversations, Nicetas frequently expresses his love and respect for the Roman see, as having traditionally the “first place” among the three patriarchal sees – Rome, Alexandria and Antioch – that had been regarded, he says, since ancient times as “sisters.” Nicetas argues that the main scope of Rome’s authority among the other Churches was its right to receive appeals from other sees “in disputed cases,” in which “matters which were not covered by sure rules should be submitted to its judgment for decision” (Dialogues 3.7: PL 1217 D). Decisions of Western synods, however, which were then being held under papal sponsorship, were not, in Nicetas’s view, binding on the Eastern Churches. As Nicetas puts it, “Although we do not differ from the Roman Church in professing the same Catholic faith, still, because we do not attend councils with her in these times, how should we receive her decisions that have in fact been composed without our consent — indeed, without our awareness?” (ibid. 1219 B). For the Orthodox consciousness, even in the twelfth century, the particular authority traditionally attached to the see of Rome has to be contextualized in regular synodal practice that includes representatives of all the Churches.

By the mid-nineteenth century, the Western emphasis on the Church’s political and social autonomy had become a central feature of a distinctively Catholic ecclesiology. Reformation disputes about the nature of the Church’s institutions and the importance of ecclesial traditions had led Catholic theology to emphasize the Church’s institutional self-sufficiency in a way unprecedented in patristic thinking, and unparalleled in the Christian East. The challenges of the Western Enlightenment to religious faith, and the threats of the new secular, absolutist forms of civil government that developed in nineteenth-century Europe, challenged the competence and even the right of Catholic institutions to teach and care for their own people. In this context, the emphasis of the First Vatican Council’s document Pastor Aeternus (1870) on the Catholic Church’s ability to speak the truth about God’s self-revelation in a free and unapologetic way, and to find the criteria for judging and formulating that truth within its own tradition, can be understood as a reaffirmation of the apostolic vision of a Church called by Christ to teach and judge through its own structures (see, e.g., Matt 16:18; 18.15-20; Lk 10.16). Yet Vatican I’s way of formulating the authority of Catholic Church officials — particularly its definition of the Pope’s “true and proper primacy of jurisdiction” over each local Church and every Christian bishop (DS 3055, 3063), and its insistence that the Pope, “when acting in the office of shepherd and teacher of all Christians… possesses… that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed his Church to be endowed in defining doctrine” — shocked critics of the Catholic Church, and has remained since then a focus of debate and further interpretation within the Catholic world. Despite the attempt of the Second Vatican Council (Lumen Gentium 23-25 [1964]) to contextualize and refine this portrait of papal authority and Church structure, the Catholic Church’s vision of a teaching authority and a practical decision-making power vested in the Pope, who faces few wider institutional checks, has been a principal cause of division between it and the Churches outside its communion.

In the Eastern world, structures of authority and community in the Church developed in a somewhat different pattern from the fourth century onwards. The bishop of Constantinople was recognized in 381 as “patriarch,” and second in order of precedence after the bishop of “the old Rome”; after the Council of Chalcedon (451), he exercised supra-metropolitan authority in the northern part of the Eastern Empire, and was responsible for Christian missionary efforts outside the imperial borders. His see, along with the patriarchates of Rome, Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem, was recognized in the legislation of the Emperor Justinian, in the sixth century, as forming a “pentarchy” of primatial leadership among all the Churches. But while the Western Church went on to develop its own institutional independence in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages under the headship of the bishop of Rome, the Eastern Churches remained fully integrated into the religious and political fabric of the late Roman Empire, even as the Empire’s territory dwindled under the domination of Arab and Turkish peoples. The Church’s main doctrinal definitions remained imperial law; maintaining Christian unity was an important imperial priority. And when the Eastern Roman Empire finally fell before the Turkish invaders in 1453, the Churches of the eastern patriarchates shared the political and social role of unifying and protecting the Christian minorities in lands dominated by a variety of Muslim rulers. In the Slavic territories to the north and east, new metropolitan sees and new patriarchates continued to develop after the fall of Constantinople, carrying out the mission of unifying newly converted Christian peoples, who largely shared the same geographical, linguistic and ethnic characteristics. Primacy had a less supra-national character than it had acquired in the Latin Church; what we presently call autocephaly — ecclesiastical independence correlative to the emerging nation-state — had become the underlying pattern for ecclesiastical organization.

Custom and habit, in all human societies, tend to become law. Structures that had come into being gradually, under the pressures of changing cultural and political conditions, came to be seen in both Eastern and Western Christianity as normative for the life of the Church. Yet precisely in our times, when centralized power is increasingly felt to be oppressive, and national identities and traditions are increasingly overwhelmed by the complexities of migration, mass communication, and supranational forces, questions continue to be raised about the enduring value of these structures. In our discussions, and indeed in discussions within our two Churches, such basic questions about the normativity of our current structures are inescapable.

4. What We Share. Despite disagreement on the place of the bishop of Rome in the worldwide cohesion of Christianity, however, it seems to us obvious that what we share, as Orthodox and Catholic Christians, significantly overshadows our differences. Both our Churches emphasize the continuity of apostolic teaching as the heart of our faith, received within the interpretive context of the historical Christian community. Both believe our life as Churches to be centered on the Divine Liturgy, and to be formed and nourished in each individual by the Word of God and the Church’s sacraments: baptism, the anointing with chrism, and the reception of the Eucharist mark, in each of our Churches, the entry of believers into the Body of Christ, while ordination by a bishop sets some of them apart for permanent sacramental ministry and leadership, and the marriage of a Christian man and woman within the liturgical community forms them into living signs of the union of Christ and the Church. Both our Churches recognize that “the Church of God exists where there is a community gathered together in the Eucharist, presided over, directly or through his presbyters, by a bishop legitimately ordained into the apostolic succession, teaching the faith received from the apostles, in communion with the other bishops and their Churches” (Joint International Dialogue, Ravenna Statement [2007] 18). Both our Churches, too, recognize the importance of various kinds of primacy, as the Ravenna statement further affirms: “Primacy at all levels is a practice firmly grounded in the canonical tradition of the Church,” even though “there are differences of understanding with regard to the manner in which it is to be exercised, and also with regard to its scriptural and theological foundations” (ibid. 43). Both our Churches venerate Mary, the Mother of God, as the foremost among those transformed by the grace of Christ’s redemption, and both also honor a whole range of holy men and women from every age, many of them common to our two traditions. Both our Churches cherish ancient practices that help the faithful grow in holiness, value personal asceticism and fasting, reverence sacred images, promote the monastic life, and set a high value on contemplative prayer. In all of these ways, our lives as Churches are enriched by the same spiritual resources. A significant degree of communion already exists between us.

5. A Matter of Urgency. In light of the divine gifts that we share, then, it seems all the more urgent to us that our Churches grow closer together, in ways that the men and women of our time can see. The fact that our two Christian families have been separated in some central points of theology and Church discipline for almost a thousand years, and as a result no longer share in the sacramental communion that bound us together during the first millennium, is not only a violation of the will of God, as expressed in the prayer of Jesus at the Last Supper that his disciples “may be one” (John 17.21), but is also a serious impediment to effective Christian engagement in the world, and to the effective realization of our common mission to preach the Gospel. Marriages involving members of both our traditions are increasingly common, especially in ethnically pluralistic countries, creating serious problems in Christian education and practice for the families involved. All of these factors urgently call our Churches to overcome their division. As our largely secular world reaches constantly for new technical means of communication, and for mutual understanding within all its cultural and political diversity, it is urgent that Orthodox and Catholic Christians find an effective way to realize our common tradition of faith together, and to present the world with a unified testimony to the Lordship of Jesus. To be what we are called to be, we need each other. In the words of the Second Vatican Council, “The divisions among Christians prevent the Church from realizing in practice the fullness of catholicity proper to her” (Unitatis Redintegratio 4). To become what we are, effectively and permanently, we cannot stop short of re-establishing full Eucharistic communion among ourselves. Clearly, this cannot be achieved without new, better harmonized structures of leadership on both sides: new conceptions of both synodality and primacy in the universal Church, new approaches to the way primacy and authority are exercised in both our communions.

6. The Shape of Communion. It is difficult to predict what a structure of worldwide ecclesial communion, sacramental and spiritual, between our Churches, might look like. Some of its main features, however, would include the following:

a) Mutual Recognition: the larger units of Orthodox and Catholic Christianity, including patriarchates and other autocephalous Churches, would explicitly recognize each other as authentic embodiments of the one Church of Christ, founded on the apostles. This would include the recognition of our fundamental agreement on central Christian dogmas, as revealed in Scripture and articulated in mutually recognized ecumenical Councils, despite variations in our theological and liturgical traditions.

b) A Common Confession of Faith: both our Churches would confess the same basic Christian faith, as expressed in the Christian canon of Scripture and in the Churches’ traditional creeds. The “faith of Nicaea,” professed by the ancient councils as the foundation of Christian faith and practice, is received most fully in the original form canonized at the Council of Constantinople in 381, as understood through the canons and prescriptions of the other ecumenical councils received by Orthodox and Catholic Christians. As we have suggested in our 2003 statement “The Filioque: a Church-Dividing Issue?” the original Greek form of the Creed of 381, because of its authority and antiquity, should be used as the common form of our confession in both our Churches.

c) Accepted Diversity: different parts of this single Body of Christ, drawing on their different histories and different cultural and spiritual traditions, would live in full ecclesial communion with each other without requiring any of the parts to forego its own traditions and practices (see Unitatis Redintegratio 16).

d) Liturgical Sharing: members of all the Churches in communion would be able to receive the sacraments in the other Churches; priests and bishops would express their unity in concelebration, and the heads of the other Churches would be commemorated liturgically in the diptychs. In addition, other forms of common liturgical prayer would be encouraged as a regular practice involving both our Churches.

e) Synodality/Conciliarity: the bishops of the reunited Churches would meet regularly in regional synods, which would regulate the common life and relationships of the Churches in a particular region and provide an occasion for mutual correction and support. Bishops of all the Churches would be invited to participate fully in any ecumenical councils that might be summoned. Synodality would operate at various levels of ecclesial institutions: local, regional and worldwide. Aside from episcopal structures of synodality, the laity would be active participants in this dimension of Church life.

f) Mission: all the Churches would share a common concern for what directly affects their unity, as well as for their mission to non-Christians. As sister Churches, they would also engage in common efforts to promote the realization of a Christian moral vision in the world.

g) Subsidiarity: following the ancient principle recognized as normative for well-organized human structures, “higher” instances of episcopal authority would only be expected to act when “lower” instances were unable to make and implement the decisions necessary for continuing union in faith. This would mean, among other things, that in the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches, at least, bishops would be elected by local synods or by other traditional methods of selection. Those elected to major episcopal or primatial offices would present themselves to other Church leaders at their level, to their own patriarch, and to the bishop of Rome as first among the patriarchs, by the exchange and reception of letters of communion, according to ancient Christian custom. The bishop of Rome would also inform the Eastern patriarchs of his election.

h) Renewal and Reform. Ordered growth is essential to the health and well-being of the Church, and this means both continuity and change. For the Church, an essential aspect of this growth is renewal: the continual rediscovery of its fundamental identity as the Body of Christ, based on its experience of the Paschal Mystery, in the constant readiness to take on new forms of common life and witness and to adapt itself to new historical situations. In the words of a late medieval aphorism, “The Church is always in need of reform (ecclesia semper reformanda).” By making their catholicity concrete through full communion, the Catholic and Orthodox Churches would be realizing this life of reform in a new, undreamed-of way, and would be committing themselves to continuing renewal and growth – but now together. Life in communion with each other would be a life lived in readiness for a new Pentecost, in which people of many nations and cultures are formed anew by the living Word of God.

7. The Role of the Papacy. In such a communion of Churches, the role of the bishop of Rome would have to be carefully defined, both in continuity with the ancient structural principles of Christianity and in response to the need for a unified Christian message in the world of today. Although the details of that role would have to be worked out in a synodal way, and would require a genuine willingness on both sides to accommodate one another’s concerns, a few likely characteristics of this renewed Roman primacy would be these:

a) The bishop of Rome would be, by ancient custom, the “first” of the world’s bishops and of the regional patriarchs. His “primacy of honor” would mean, as it meant in the early Church, not simply honorific precedence but the authority to make real decisions, appropriate to the contexts in which he is acting. His relationship to the Eastern Churches and their bishops, however, would have to be substantially different from the relationship now accepted in the Latin Church. The present Eastern Catholic Churches would relate to the bishop of Rome in the same way as the present Orthodox Churches would. The leadership of the pope would always be realized by way of a serious and practical commitment to synodality and collegiality.

b) In accord with the teaching of both Vatican councils, the bishop of Rome would be understood by all as having authority only within a synodal/collegial context: as member as well as head of the college of bishops, as senior patriarch among the primates of the Churches, and as servant of universal communion. The “ordinary and immediate” jurisdiction of every bishop within his particular Church, would be “affirmed, strengthened and vindicated” by the exercise of the bishop of Rome’s ministry (Vatican II, Lumen Gentium27; cf. Vatican I, Pastor Aeternus 3). In a reunited Church, this understanding of papal and episcopal authority, as complementary and mutually enhancing, would have to be expanded to include the much more complex patterns of local, primatial, and patriarchal leadership that have developed in the Eastern Churches since patristic times.

c) The fundamental worldwide ministry of the bishop of Rome would be to promote the communion of all the local Churches: to call on them to remain anchored in the unity of the Apostolic faith, and to observe the Church’s traditional canons. He would do this as a witness to the faith of Peter and Paul, a role inherited from his early predecessors who presided over the Church in that city where Peter and Paul gave their final witness.

d) His universal role would also be expressed in convoking and presiding over regular synods of patriarchs of all the Churches, and over ecumenical councils, when they should occur. In the Western Church, this same presiding function would include convoking and leading regular episcopal synods. In harmony with the Pope’s universal ecumenical ministry, the Roman curia’s relationship to local bishops and episcopal conferences in the Latin Church would become less centralized: bishops, for instance, would have more control over the agenda and the final documents of synods, and the selection of bishops would again normally become a local process.

e) In cases of conflict between bishops and their primates that cannot be resolved locally or regionally, the bishop of Rome would be expected to arrange for a juridical appeal process, perhaps to be implemented by local bishops, as provided for in canon 3 of the Synod of Sardica (343). In cases of dispute among primates, the bishop of Rome would be expected to mediate and to bring the crisis to brotherly resolution. And in crises of doctrine that might occasionally concern the whole Christian family, bishops throughout the world would have the right to appeal to him also for doctrinal guidance, much as Theodoret of Cyrus did to Pope Leo I in 449, during the controversy over the person of Christ that preceded the Council of Chalcedon (Ep. 113).

8. Preparatory Steps. To prepare for an eventual restoration of full communion within a reunited Church formed from the Orthodox and Catholic traditions, a number of steps might be helpful.

a) Delegations of Orthodox and Catholic bishops in a nation or region could begin to gather regularly for consultation on pastoral issues. Patriarchs and representatives of the autocephalous and autonomous Orthodox Churches could also meet with the Pope and leading Catholic bishops and curial officials on a regular basis for consultation and planning.

b) The Pope and the Orthodox primates could invite all the faithful under their jurisdiction to recognize each other’s Churches as “sister Churches” that fully realize the Apostolic faith in doctrine, sacraments and ecclesial life, despite the historically different forms in which our liturgy is celebrated, our doctrine taught, and our community life structured.

c) Special liturgical services and activities of common prayer and social ministry, involving lay people of both communions, could be organized as a way of drawing Orthodox and Catholic Christians into a deeper practical awareness of their common faith and dependence on God.

d) Ultimately, new structures of authority, in which the relationships of local and regional primates are concretely regulated, would need to be instituted by common consultation, perhaps by an ecumenical council.

9. Outstanding Questions and Problems. Confronted by these long-term prospects of growth towards ecclesial unity, we are aware that many serious theological, liturgical and structural questions remain unsolved, and need to be considered further. For example:

a) To what extent is the distinctive role of the pope rooted in the New Testament? How far is the role of Peter in the New Testament to be taken as setting out a pattern of leadership “inherited” by the bishops of Rome, whose Church rests on the ancient site of Peter’s martyrdom? While some of the Church Fathers present the Peter of Scripture as a model for all bishops, or even for the whole believing community, others – especially some fourth- and fifth-century bishops of Rome – have stressed the unique, even mystical connection between Peter and the later Popes who led Peter’s local Church. To what extent do these Scriptural interpretations simply reflect differing ecclesiologies?

b) What limits should be acknowledged, canonically and theologically, to the exercise of initiatives by the bishop of Rome in a universally reunited Church? What limits should be acknowledged to the authority and jurisdiction of the other patriarchs? Who has the authority to define these limits? To what extent can the formula of Apostolic Canon 34, from the late fourth century, serve as a model for the universal Church as well as for the local Churches: “The bishops of each national group should recognize the one who has first place among them, and consider him as head, and do nothing out of the ordinary without his agreement;… but neither should he do anything without the agreement of all”?

c) What kind of accountability can be canonically demanded of the bishop of Rome in his primatial role? What relevance does the ancient western principle used later by the defenders of papal authority, “the first see is to be judged by no one else,” have in today’s world of constitutionally regulated authority? What does the synodal or collegial dimension of papal authority imply for the Pope’s concrete exercise of his proper jurisdiction?

d) Can the bishop of Rome, as the one responsible for convening synods and councils of the universal Church, compel attendance and participation by representatives of particular Churches? Can he overrule those councils’ initiatives? Can he lay down rules of procedure?

e) What limits should be set to the common Orthodox practice of recognizing the autocephaly or autonomy of particular churches on ethnic, linguistic and geographical grounds? By what primatial and synodal authorities does such independence need to be recognized? Should diversity of national background continue to determine the structures of church life in a world that is increasingly shaped by the migration of peoples? What should the effect of today’s ethnic and cultural pluralism be on the unity and diversity of local Church organization, in countries representing the Orthodox “diaspora”? What aspects of the ancient principle of “one bishop, one place” can be reclaimed in contemporary society?

f) Beyond these technical questions, how much formal agreement on doctrine and Church structure is necessary before the Orthodox and Catholic Churches permit local communities to begin at least some degree of sacramental communion with each other? If diversity within our own Churches on theological issues is usually not seen as a barrier to Eucharistic sharing, should we allow the differences between Orthodox and Catholic Christians to overrule the substantial agreement our Churches already enjoy on most of the fundamental issues of faith, and keep us from receiving each other at the Eucharistic table, at least on some occasions? Would it be acceptable to both of our Churches to allow priests of one Church at least to care for the dying in the other, when no priest of their own is available? The extraordinary practice of shared communion has been carried on, at various critical points of recent history, in some parts of the world, and is occasionally carried on today. Can this serve as a precedent for wider Eucharistic sharing? Can such occasional sharing of communion serve as a concrete step towards deeper and more lasting unity?

10. One Body. In his Commentary on the 17th Chapter of St. John’s Gospel, St. Cyril of Alexandria argues that the unity of the Church, modeled on the unity of Father and Son and realized through the gift of the Spirit, is primarily formed in us through the Eucharist in which the disciples of Jesus share:

For by liturgically blessing (eulogōn) those who believe in him into a single body – namely, his own – through sacramental participation, [Christ] has made them completely one body with himself and with each other. Who, after all, could divide, or alienate from natural unity with one another, those who are bound through the one holy body into unity with Christ? For if ‘all of us partake of the one loaf’ (1 Cor 10.17), all of us are formed into one body. It is impossible to divide Christ. That is the reason that the church is called the Body of Christ, and we are individually his members, as Paul understands it. For since we are all united with Christ through his holy Body – which we take, one and undivided, into our own bodies – we owe our own limbs more to him than to ourselves…

How, then are we all not clearly one [Cyril goes on to ask] in each other and in Christ? For Christ is himself the bond of unity, existing at the same time as God and as a human being…. And all of us who have received one and the same Spirit – I mean the Holy Spirit – are blended together, in a certain way, with each other and with God… For just as the power of his holy flesh forms those to whom it comes into a single body, in the same way, I believe, the one Spirit of God, who dwells in all of us undivided, brings us all to a spiritual unity (Comm. on John 11.11 [ed. Pusey 2.735-737]).

Conscience holds us back from celebrating our unity as complete in sacramental terms, until it is complete in faith, Church structure, and common action; but conscience also calls us to move beyond complacency in our divisions, in the power of the Spirit and in a longing for the fullness of Christ’s life-giving presence in our midst. The challenge and the invitation to Orthodox and Catholic Christians, who understand themselves to be members of Christ’s Body precisely by sharing in the Eucharistic gifts and participating in the transforming life of the Holy Spirit, is now to see Christ authentically present in each other, and to find in those structures of leadership that have shaped our communities through the centuries a force to move us beyond disunity, mistrust, and competition, and towards that oneness in his Body, that obedience to his Spirit, that will reveal us as his disciples before the world.
Posted in Catholic Ecumenism, Church History, Communio in sacris, East/West, Eastern Catholicism, Ecclesiology, Filioque, Joint Documents, Mary, News, Orthodox Ecumenism, Primacy, Reunion, Rome, Sacraments, Schism, Scripture, Theology, dogma |

Ecumenism alive and well as Pope Benedict XVI visits Edinburgh

On the eve of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the United Kingdom, three stalwarts of Scottish ecumenism and the “churches together” movement met on Tuesday evening to assess church relations today. The three church leaders were Archbishop Mario Conti (Roman Catholic archbishop of Glasgow), Christine Davis (Religious Society of Friends / Quakers) and the Rev. Dr Sheilagh Kesting (ecumenical officer of the Church of Scotland and former moderator of its General Assembly). They shared reflections about the successes, disappointments and hopes of churches working together in the nation.

The last time a pope visited Edinburgh, Scotland, was in 1982 when the popular Pope John Paul II was welcomed into the heart of Scottish Protestantism and made a visit to New College and the theological faculty at the University of Edinburgh.

At the time there was nervousness in the air, particularly among the leadership of the Church of Scotland who, according to Archbishop Conti, were to meet with John Paul II “on their home turf”.

While the meeting with the pope went perfectly well, the church and ecumenical landscape of Scotland was in for a sea-change over the next three decades. This change has marked an improvement in relations according to these three pioneers of the modern ecumenical movement.

The formal state visit of Pope Benedict XVI will begin when he is received by Queen Elizabeth II in Edinburgh on Thursday, 16 September. There will be a wide variety of church leaders attending the reception, including the Rev. John Cairns Christie, moderator of General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and the Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC).

The three were part of an evening event sponsored by the 20-year-old organization Action of Churches Together in Scotland (ACTS), the national ecumenical instrument. The event was held in conjunction with this week’s meeting of the WCC Executive Committee at Carberry Tower, near Edinburgh.

The presence in Edinburgh of a governing body of the WCC, which represents more than 550 million Christians around the world including Orthodox, Anglican, Old Catholic, independent and many Protestant groups, and its meeting being held at the same time as the Pope’s visit there, is sheer coincidence.

Still, the circumstance could not go unnoticed as the current pope arrives against an ecclesiastical backdrop that reflects growing cooperation between churches. The WCC Executive Committee’s visit to the city in 2010 honours the centenary of the Edinburgh 1910 World Missionary Conference which historians of Christianity identify as the beginning of the modern ecumenical movement.

Ecumenical progress
When the “churches together” model was adopted in 1990 with the formation of ACTS, there “were vociferous and in some places quite unpleasant protests”, said Christine Davis, one of the early participants in the churches together movement. Archbishop Conti was the first convener of ACTS.

Since then the major denominational groups have been working together on a variety of social and ecclesial initiatives. Davis, while not guaranteeing the behaviour of everyone in relation to the pope’s visit this week, feels certain there will not be a repeat of the sorts of protests that occurred in 1990.

She pointed out that today “at one level, the fact we are working together is taken for granted”. In 2009, “we had a very valuable joint conference of everyone involved in the churches in Scotland on Calvin: Catholic and Reformed”, she said. The theme was inspired by the 500th anniversary of Protestant reformer John Calvin’s birth. “Now, that is the kind of event which allowed us to be learning together about a part of church history people don’t normally see as having in common.”

Conti for his part views the work of ACTS as becoming the “title for the engagement of the ecumenical movement”. The role of ACTS is all about “engagement, respect and listening”, he said.

Sheilagh Kesting, who was also involved in the formation of ACTS, talked about landmark developments that grew out of the Swanwick consultation in 1992, with “people reporting afterwards about the moment when Cardinal Hume of England came forward and said the Roman Catholic Church was ready to come into a new ecumenical structure, the churches together, that we now call ACTS”.

The momentum this created, along with the subsequent leadership and grassroots work of the churches together, has led “the Roman Catholic church into the ecumenical movement, and this is not something we wanted to go back on”, Kesting said.

Still, ACTS and the churches together movement have not led to unity in all things; there remain stark differences between churches. But what has happened, according to Conti, is that the churches resist criticizing each other in public and work at respecting their differences and discussing them together.

Today it is more likely churches will consult with each other before they move forward on important matters, according to Kesting. Some of the disappointments the group felt about the churches together movement is that it may not be challenging the churches enough, Kesting added.

Conti said that there remain challenges in regard to issues of morality and ethics, such as family values and homosexuality.

Even with these sort of “mismatches” among churches in the same communities, particularly around ecclesial issues, this sometimes “baffles people” Davis said, “but it doesn’t stop them from getting on”.

Despite these challenges, all three ecumenical stalwarts saw hope in the movement of churches together, with ACTS and agencies like the WCC at the forefront. There was strong participation of the churches in addressing social issues such as poverty, Conti observed.

In conclusion, Davis said that churches have to share their resources better, deal with their own internal divisions, look at broader inter-religious and secular issues and in the end live out the good news of Jesus Christ, “which is to be extended to everyone we meet”.

ACTS website

WCC member churches in the United Kingdom

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The World Council of Churches promotes Christian unity in faith, witness and service for a just and peaceful world. An ecumenical fellowship of churches founded in 1948, today the WCC brings together 349 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches representing more than 560 million Christians in over 110 countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman Catholic Church. The WCC general secretary is Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, from the [Lutheran] Church of Norway. Headquarters: Geneva, Switzerland.

Female Diaconate restored by Greek Holy Synod

Published by Americamagazine.org,
February 7, 2005




'Grant Her Your Spirit' By Phyllis Zagano


The Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church of Greece voted in Athens on Oct. 8, 2004, to restore the female diaconate. All the members of the Holy Synod - 125 metropolitans and bishops and Archbishop Christodoulos, the head of the church of Greece-had considered the topic. The decision does not directly affect the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, which is an eparchy of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. The Greek ecclesiastical provinces of the Ecumenical Patriarchate received their independence from Constantinople in 1850 and were proclaimed the Autocephalous Church of Greece.

While women deacons had virtually disappeared by the ninth century, discussion of the restoration of women in the diaconate in Orthodoxy began in the latter half of the 20th century. Two books on the topic by Evangelos Theodorou, Heroines of Love: Deaconesses Through the Ages (1949) and The "Ordination" or "Appointment" of Deaconesses (1954), documented the sacramental ordination of women in the early church. His work was complemented in the Catholic Church by an article published by Cipriano Vagaggini, a Camaldolese monk, in Orientalia Christiana Periodica in 1974.

The most significant scholarship on the topic agrees that women were sacramentally ordained to the diaconate, inside the iconostasis at the altar, by bishops in the early church. Women deacons received the diaconal stole and Communion at their ordinations, which shared the same Pentecostal quality as the ordination of a bishop, priest or male deacon. Despite the decline of the order of deaconesses in the early Middle Ages, Orthodoxy never prohibited it. In 1907 a Russian Orthodox Church commission reported the presence of deaconesses in every Georgian parish; the popular 20th-century Orthodox saint Nektarios (1846-1920) ordained two women as deacons in 1911; and up to the 1950's a few Greek Orthodox nuns became monastic deaconesses. In 1986 Christodoulos, then metropolitan of Demetrias and now archbishop of Athens and all of Greece, ordained a woman deacon according to the "ritual of St. Nektarios"-the ancient Byzantine text St. Nektarios used. Multiple inter-Orthodox conferences called for the restoration of the order, including the Interorthodox Symposium at Rhodes, Greece, in 1988, which plainly stated, "The apostolic order of deaconess should be revived."

The symposium noted that "the revival of this ancient order should be envisaged on the basis of the ancient prototypes testified to in many sources and with the prayers found in the Apostolic Constitutions and the ancient Byzantine liturgical books." At the Holy Synod meeting in Athens in 2004, Metropolitan Chrysostom of Chalkidos initiated discussion on the subject of the role of women in the Church of Greece and the rejuvenation of the order of female deacons.

In the ensuing discussion, some older bishops apparently disagreed with the complete restoration of the order. Anthimos, bishop of Thessaloniki, later remarked to the Kathimerini English Daily, "As far as I know, the induction of women into the police and the army was a failure, and we want to return to this old matter?" While the social-service aspect of the female diaconate is well known, the Holy Synod decided that women could be promoted to the diaconate only in remote monasteries and at the discretion of individual bishops. The limiting decision to restore only the monastic female diaconate did not please some synod members.

The Athens News Agency reported that Chrysostomos, bishop of Peristeri, said, "The role of female deacons must be in society and not in the monasteries." Other members of the Holy Synod agreed and stressed that the role of women deacons should be social-for example, the care of the sick. The vote of the Holy Synod to restore ordination of women to the diaconate under limited circumstances may be the most progressive idea the Orthodox Church can bring to the world. The document only gives bishops the option, if they wish, to ordain senior nuns in monasteries of their eparchies. Bishops who choose to promote women to the diaconate will use the ancient Byzantine liturgy that performs the same cheirotonia -- laying on of hands -- for deaconesses as in each major order: bishop, priest and deacon.

Even so, some (mostly Western) scholars have argued that the historical ordination of women deacons was not a cheirotonia, or ordination to major orders, but a cheirothesia, a blessing that signifies installation to a minor order. The confusion is understandable, since the two terms were sometimes used interchangeably, but other scholars are equally convinced that women were ordained to the major order of the diaconate. The proof will be in the liturgy the bishops actually use. At present there is only one liturgy and one tradition by which to create a woman deacon in the Byzantine rite, and it is demonstrably a ritual of ordination for the "servant who is to be ordained to the office of a deacon." Even the document on the diaconate issued by the Vatican's International Theological Commission in 2002 admits that "Canon 15 of the Council of Chalcedon (451) seems to confirm the fact that deaconesses really were 'ordained' by the imposition of hands (cheirotonia)."

Despite the pejorative use of quotation marks here and elsewhere in the document when historical ordinations of women deacons are mentioned, this Vatican commission seems unwilling to deny the history to which the Church of Greece has now newly returned. Further, the Vatican document points out that the practice of ordaining women deacons according to the Byzantine liturgy lasted at least into the eighth century. It does not review Orthodox practice after 1054. The rejuvenation of the order of deaconess in the Church of Greece is expected to begin during the winter of 2004-5.

The contemporary ordination (cheirotonia) of women provides even more evidence and support for the restoration of the female diaconate in the Catholic Church, which has acknowledged the validity of Orthodox sacraments and orders. Despite the distinction in Canon 1024-"A baptized male alone receives sacred ordination validly"-one can presume the possibility of a derogation from the law, as suggested by the Canon Law Society of America in 1995, to allow for diaconal ordination of women. (The history of Canon 1024 is clearly one of attempts to restrict women from priesthood, not from the diaconate.) In fact, the Catholic Church has already indirectly acknowledged valid ordinations of women by the Armenian Apostolic Church, one of the churches of the East that ordains women deacons. There are two recent declarations of unity-agreements of mutual recognition of the validity of sacraments and of orders-between Rome and the Armenian Church, one signed by Paul VI and Catholicos Vasken I in 1970, another between John Paul II and Catholicos Karekin I in 1996. These agreements are significant, for the Armenian Apostolic Church has retained the female diaconate into modern times. The Armenian Catholicossate of Cilicia has at least four ordained women. One, Sister Hrip'sime, who lives in Istanbul, is listed in the official church calendar published by the Armenian Patriarchate of Turkey as follows: "Mother Hrip'sime Proto-deacon Sasunian, born in Soghukoluk, Antioch, in 1928; became a nun in 1953; Proto-deacon in 1984; Mother Superior in 1998. Member of the Kalfayian Order." Mother Hrip'sime has worked to restore the female diaconate as an active social ministry, and for many years was the general director of Bird' s Nest, a combined orphanage, school and social service center near Beiruit, Lebanon. Her diaconate, and that of the three other women deacons, is far from monastic.

The future Catholic response to the documented past and the changing present promises to be interesting. The tone of the International Theological Commission document reveals an attempt to rule out women deacons, but the question is left remarkably open: "It pertains to the ministry of discernment which the Lord established in his church to pronounce authoritatively on this question."

It is becoming increasingly clear that despite the Catholic Church's unwillingness to say yes to the restoration of the female diaconate as an ordained ministry of the Catholic Church, it cannot say no. Prayer for the Ordination of a Woman Deacon O Eternal God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Creator of man and of woman, who replenished with the Spirit Miriam, and Deborah, and Anna, and Huldah; who did not disdain that your only-begotten Son should be born of a woman; who also in the tabernacle of the testimony, and in the temple, did ordain women to be keepers of your holy gates - look down now upon this your servant who is to be ordained to the office of a deaconess, and grant her your Holy Spirit, that she may worthily discharge the work which is committed to her to your glory, and the praise of your Christ, with whom glory and adoration be to you and the Holy Spirit for ever. Amen." -Apostolic Constitutions, No. 8 (late fourth century)
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Phyllis Zagano, Ph.D. is the Aquinas Chair Professor of Catholic Studies at St. Thomas Aquinas College, Sparkill, NY and Senior Research Associate-in-Residence at Hofstra Universty, Hempstead, NY. She is the author of Holy Saturday: An Argument for the Restoration of the Female Diaconate in the Catholic Church (Crossroad, 2000). America (americamagazine.org), Vol. 192 No. 4, February 7, 2005. Copyright © 2005 by America Press, Inc.