leaders two hundred years after_they bad been formulated than did the protest which Markos Eugenikos had made ogainst them. There were indeed isolated attempts in Rome in the course of the seventeenth century to go beyond the Florentine basis and to present those Orientals from the Osman territories who were willing to enter a union with confessions of faith enriched with the teachings of Trent. But these were always abandoned again, Thus it was considered possible in Rome -even though under the force of facts, and thug Only in the sense of 2 way that the Bishop ot ‘everywhere as the first among the fome wished for more than this form of union must nevertheless have put into ice what the popes and the Congregs who accepted such union agreemen structure which the Lord hac important to keep this in mind when we of the necessary effects on everyday life the papal dogma of the ighly_placed representatives of the Orthodoxy of the seventeenth century, who either took this step themselves or (even if noK doing it personally) protected clergy who had taken this step, dyproved the attempt te_satablish communio_between East_and fr ven for decades after the Union of Brest, Orthodoxy id not maintain the position that a division was caused when in the Church Catholic Church. “4 | for them even before a total union became possible. Tt wi te" be necessary to include this in the discussion about the f°" Pastoral work that prepares the unity of our Churches.‘ The m9" Roman Church and the Greek Church in the seventeenth century did not exclude the possibility that, until we a global communio of both Churches which re-establ 2 res sie nana Prerrrceniane grace of ecclesiality which had been given in the same way to the Greeks and to the Latins.2¢ ) Accordingly, there existed a co-operation between Catholics and Orthodox in pastoral ministry in the seventeenth (4 century which included hearing confessions and administering Communion. We have even evidence in many cases of mutual help in the ordinations of priests and bishops in the seven- teenth century. From its foundation in 1622, the Roman Co for the spreading of the faith had sent members Orders to many pl ‘welcomed these missionaries because of their spiritu their superior level of education compared with the situation in the countries to which they stration of the sacraments, ed virtually the same way as the did alongside the Catholic paroc! © The norms of our for” although the ‘explicit jurisdict dependence on the Roman Congregation which had sent them 4 r-J¥¢ and on the Generals of their Orders, their work was really (although in_a_manner_not_clearly defined_in canon Taw) Unt Utn incorporated into the life of the local Eastern Churches. We lt f Ch can observe how for several generations highly placed and most highly placed Oriental prelat just as much as on the monks of their own Church, In order not to go into too much detail, let us take out of the great number of accounts which ¢) ‘This examp! nce of the co-operation id not always take plac: atmosphere free of complaints. The French J Fr Richard® tells of a Greek bishop who came to Sant In October 1650°as Visitor in the commission of the Ecumet Patriarch. The Visitor heard a Jesuit preach and was so happyeon be ~ ~ for the permission to_preach in the Greek churches of the Preaching. Unfortunately, a conflict soon arose because the —P» fathers of the Society of Jesus came to a one-sided judgement Onieeyy, mn ON, 5 archipelago a document in which he “called upon all the Priests and office-bearers under the jurisdiction of his patri- arch to receive us (i.., the Jesuits) in all their churches as if they were himself, and to allow our fathers without con- tradiction to preach the Word of God everywhere that the fathers wished.” This included the permission to hear con- fessions, since at that period, as the reports of the Jesuits make clear, hearing confessions was integrally linked to about various Greek Church customs, by measuring against the criterion of the theology that they had studied in their colleges at home. In the present case, they obstinately josed_the veneration of Gregory Palamas, because his theology was incompatible im their eyca with their own doctrine of God. Friction with the Greek clergy was the consequence of this, and we learn from a letter of a confrére of Fr Richard that the same Greek bishop who had issued the permission to preach excommunicated a few years later those who continued to go to fesuits’ sermons or to confess to them. The turmoil calmed down. At the turn of the seventeenth century to the eighteenth, the Jesuits once ‘again report from the same mission something analogous to what we have heard from Fr Richard.® Orthodox clergy too could occasionally give help to ics in pastoral ainUiy and” Ta the sdministiation of the sacraments, Thus, we can deduce from a testimony printed in the Perpétuild de la Foi®' that the translator of the diplo- matic representation of Venice in Adrianople lay dying at the time of the plague and that since the Catholic priest attached to the diplomatic representation was absent, G est to him, heard_bi viaticum and held his_solemn funeral service in the Greek Church, although the interpreter explicitly died as a good Catholic.* In 1651, the Orthodox Bishop Simion Stefan of Alba Julia ordained the uniate priest Petr Parfenij Petrovic ‘as Bishop for the diocese of Mukacevo, in order to save the ” | union, that is to say, in order to ensure the local Church of ‘Mukacevo the partnership of the Catholics in the resistance to the Calvinists. In the given circumstances, the Primate of Hungary at that time, Georg Lippay, held the ordination of a uniate bishop by a non-uniate bishop for defensible, and ‘took up the case of the newly-ordained bishop in Rome 80 that he might be absolved from all ecclesiastical censures, testifying that the ordaining bishop knew of the uniate status of the candidate for ordination, The ordaining Bishop Simion himself, in the testimonial letter of the ordination which he wrote for Petr Parfenij, gave as the reason for the ordination the document which the candidate presented from a Catholic bishop which affirmed that the hungerian primate had entrusted him with the pastoral care of the Ruthenians of Upper Hungary. Installations of bishops that crossed over the boundaries that st_in modern canon law between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church took place in Croatia also in the seventeenth century, as has been mentioned in the section about the union of Barca. At the turning of the seventeenth century to the eighteenth century, an Armenian, the hieromonk Mechithar of Sebaste, the founder of the Mechitarist Order, sought to enrich the_monastic life and pastoral care of his Armenian Church through spiritual Impalees fromthe West With the Blessing afthepope, he founded + monary in Venice and understood this as an action that was done for the benefit of his own original Church, the Catholicosate of Etchmiadzin. The new monastery, which was founded in the territory under the juriadietion of the Patrarch of the West-and with Wis blessing. and with the adoption of western spiritual experience, was intended as a spiritual centre for the entire Armenian native Church of the founder. He had nothing to do with the coming into being during his own lifetime of a special hierarchy for Armenians who converted to Catholicism, and for the conse- quent transformation of his community into an Order of the Armenian Church which was united to Rome, and this took place against his advice. ¢) Unfortunately, the activity of the missionaries ted in the long run to the formation of parties in_the Eastern Chur- ches. For no attempt was made to discover how the pastoral B neChristians would have contributed their own charisms and work could_be carried out in the correct way in a mutual {ech ‘and receiving In whlch The mtsslonaries andthe Toeal . »| as people say today - to renew itself by dividing Ho none pow ‘expressed what they desired. The Congregation for the spread {i ‘the faith worked out the directives for the pastoral_work- in Rome. It demanded that the Orthodox side become similar in many respects to the Latin model. The more plainly the centre of the missionaries showed the way, the less possibility remained for the missionaries to listen to what appeared important and Tight to the Eastern Christians. Ultimately, things went so far that the only ones who could support the missionaries were those who fulfilled the Roman conditions to the letter_and turned into their father’s house, the true Church” from which once “the fathers of the Orthodox Christians hed depa- rated’’-this was how the Catholics gradually began to describe the breaking-ofl of the communio. As we shall see, the work of ‘the missionaries, which had been intended in the seventeenth century as a help for the Eastern Churehes in the Osman empire, led from the eighteenth century onwards to the collapse of these Churches. When the present Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch was Metropolitan of Lattakia, he held a lecture in Vienna in which {he said: “There is insufficient understanding in the Catholic Church of the wounds which these last three centuries have inflicted on the hearts of the Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churehes. We were, and are still today, weakened Churches both economically and culturally. Our Sister Church sent legions of missionaries into our lands, who were often very highly qualified. The trust with which we received them was disappointed. Instead of helping us to renew ourselves, the mighty Churches of the West attempted to ‘convert’ us, and set up uniate Churehes at our expense, both Latin Uniates and Protestant Uniates. Does one help a Church ~a ‘Sister Church’ s 4) Fora tong period after the bitter experiences of which this quotation spenks, when the canon Taw had become more precise and no longer permitted any double link both to aa otacephalous Eastera Church and to ie Ronin Cheb, iy the 7% twentieth century, the priest Ghiverghis (George) Panikar, who favoured reform, called into life among the Thomas Christians an Order for men and an Order for women modelled on the Western religious Congregations. His later name as a bishop ‘was Mar Ivanios. Both Orders continued in existence in the Syrian Orthodox Church when Mar Ivanios and the majority of hig monks and nuns united with the Roman see In 1030 because of grave disorders in their Church. We shall return to this union later. 12) A Catholle Metkite Patriarchate comes Into existenco a) Many circumstances contributed to the birth of this patriarchate.” Not least because of the position as chief of the ethaic group in civil law which the Grst bishop of each Chureh enjoyed in the Osman empire, rivalries often occurred in the patriarchal elections in the Melkite Church between the northern dioceses and their centre Aleppo on the one hand, and the southern dioceses with their centre Damascus on the other hand, at the turning-point from the seventeenth century to the eighteenth. Further tensions were caused by ‘the influence which the Western missionaries had gained over ‘many bishops, priests and laity of this Church ~an influence ‘that varied in strength ~ so that there begen to be a division of the spirits among the Melkites with regard to particular theological, liturgical and pastoral questions, all the more so, because various Church leaders not_only co-operated with ‘the missionaries, but had also_studied in their houses, some indeed _in Western countries; their thought was very clearly different from that of others of their colleagues. Besides this, particular cendidates were promoted, for various reasons and in various forms of the influence exercised, by (first) national and local Turkish authorities, (second) the Patriarch of Constantinople as the authority superior to all the Orthodox in the Osman empire in terms of civil law, (third) the French and English diplomats who were active in the business centres of the Near East, and (fourth) the Western missionaries who enjoyed great respect in many places; these various groups algo sought to prevent the promotion of other candidates. 7One of these conflicts arose after the death of Patriarch Athanasius III, who had resided in Aleppo, on 5 August 1724 We The Melkites in Damascuis elected and ordained Cyril Tenas a3 his successor on 20 September 1724, Supported by the local Osman authorities, they wanted to make Damascus once again in their function as civil ethnarchs upon the Uniates in sécular, but-also. occasionally also in ecclesiastical questions. >) When one speaks of one_means primarily those events in our history one Church, which enjoyed bh Srpater_weight thanks to Ristorical circumstances, “did not ~~ Wait for a [ree consensus to be found in a dialogue of partners f°", about the controversies at issue, but instead attempted tom >* of Constantinople, together with the Synedos Endémousa, elected and ordained likewise a successor for Athanasius IIL, a oe Eastern patriareh in union wi yman see. swintne eee ee in the person of the Athos monk Sylvester, who came from Cyprus and was the candidate of the Aleppo group. Apart {rom French and English diplomats, many Western missionaries supported him, especially the Franciscans of Aleppo. The Sublime Porte too recognised Sylvester. Cyril, whom the Patriarchate of Constantinople excommunicated, had to with- draw with his adherents to Lebanon, where the Osman authorities were not able to exercise their authority to the full, so that ‘those who were excommunicated were able to escape the civil sanctions there; in terms of the civil order of the osman empire, an act of excommunication by the first hierarch of their Church brought sanctions with it. ‘The canonical validity of the elections of the year 1724 remained a matter of debate. After almost five years, on 8 July 1729, Pope Benedict XIII recognised the election of Cyril. His next-but-one successor, Benedict XIV, bestowed the pallium on him in 1744, It was only the bestowal of the pallium that signified, according to the canonical norms valid at that period, which went back to the time of the Crusades, ‘the_definitive acknowledgment of Cyril by the Pope From Cyril onwards, the line of the Catholic Melkite Patriarchs has continued without a break until the present. These patriarchs and their local Church had to struggle for a full century against discrimination in the sphere of public law, since Sylvester and his successors secured for themselves alone the investiture by the state as ethnarchs of the core Only in 1848, when the Catholic patriarch too was recogni the Osman authorities, did the Orthodox Melkite hierarchs lose the right and the possibility of bringing influence to bear 8 the centre of their Church. One week later, Patriarch Jeremiah bring parts of the other Church to obedience to its own solution to those questions. They united these paris to themselves in the hope that they would soon win over the other parts of that Church to join them. The_price of such a union was a schism in the Sister Church, since it was necessary first for those parts of the one Church that were to be united to the ether Church even before a consensus had been achieved between both Churches, to_be separated from their_previous —, Church. In the case_of the Melkites, things went diferent ‘re the solfam stood at the beginning. After they had been ¥4,.2+ divided, and the schism could have threatening consequences for the weaker party because of the legal order of the this_party sought protection and_found it in a large Sister, Church with which it had hitherto not had communio. It adopted in obedience the Roman interpretations of the con- troversies which existed between itself and Rome. The intra Melkite schism with which all this began took on a new and much wider dimension through the union of the one party with ‘the Roman Church, 1t_is possible thus in certain circumstances for a Church .. which itselT does not at all take the inllative to bettie inyolved_in_uniatist actions. This can happen whet a Total Church leaves its previous communio and asks to be received into its jurisdiction, and when this request is granted without ® serious investigation of the motives. In order to make a Good distinction between union and uniatism, it is certainly also necessary to ‘a_thorough inves changes of jurisdiction or conversions of individual dioceses, cxf Parishes or monasteries which have become very frequent in Fecent years. For not a few of these have taken place because ‘those who have made the transition wished to escape the 7 state, she Fae ition of. the Loon 9° PuPlone, nine sits 18YALD at Justified pressure put on them by their previous ecclesiastical ‘authority to correct themselves: they have declared that they are free from this authority and have so to speak sought “cover” in another ecclesiastical authority. 13) In the age of soterioiogical exchsvism a) In the post-Tridentine period, an ecclesiological way of thinking became widespread Tu Catholle centres of formation that became more and more, and ultimately very one-sidedly, determined by the idea that the Church is led_by its Head. Accordingly, the Catholic theology of this period emphasised in the strongest terms that those who have been charged by the Lord to bear responsibility must carry out their ministry in the Church, This ministry belongs to the visible element in the Church. Aga response to the Protestant ecclesiology, and in order to distinguish the Ogtholie Church clearly from this, Great concern was taken ser ‘Trent to give prominence to the_visible element in the Church. Too little attention however was paid to the invisible gift of grace that is given to all the individual believers on the basis of the anointing by the Holy Spirit, and on the likewise invisible spiritual dignity that is present in every local Church because it is permitted to be the sign and means of the sanctification of its members. ‘As with the importance of all that is visible in the Chureh, s0 also in this period the sigaificance of the successor of Peter as the visible representative of the true invisible Head of the Church was emphasised more and more. There wa feness that the Church cannot be where Christ, its Head, is not. Since the anxiety arose that the invisible true Head of the Church was not present except where his visible representative, the pope, watched over the Church, it was helieved that the Church of Christ could be acknowledged only_in the sphere where the successor of Peter carried out hia office. 1t_was indeed not_denied that sacramental spiritual life_exists_even outside the flock of Peter, but wherever explicit obedience was not shown to_the supreme pastor, they Meyrin ATe < saw only mistoken communities that participates - tenis of the Church tara valid but Wiegitieats ate One of the effects of this new ecclesiology, which was not anchored in the tradition, was a dispute among the Catholic missionaries tthe beginning of the eighteenth eentory sy + who were active among the Eastern Christians: was it possibig u™ 2 gy to continue to tolerate the practice whereby the Uniates Gy nie comsunto Thane ith Theat eee gN? opponents of the communicate tm aera held that a scandal threatened, because the view could be reinforced that the “y* ° Priests of the schismatics, who-did not obey the one suprore attor who had been installed in office by Chrisl- celehrated the holy_saeraments legitimately They aay Tenvedaiet it Uniates took part inthe worship of the schismatics, they - could “relapse”. We can see from this that in the meantime 4 kind of rivalry between the priests on both sides had. grown ~ up to secure the mijority of Whe DENEVE tothe owe oe The leading idea of the Catholic missionaries who were convinced of the truth of the new ecclesiology was the con o version to the true Church of those who were outside, ana **S7t € the anxiety thet the converts should not leave the right fold again, and no longer the wish to help to pull down the walls between Church and Church, But since not all the missionaries accepted the new ecclesiology at once, the dispute among them became ever livelier. Alter unsuccessful (29)— attempts to bring calm, the Propaganda Fide isued decree lp = in 1729 that strictly torbade communicalo ta sacri Tor the future ‘Thereby, the escalation of the schism between Latins and Greeks was introduced, In the course of this escalation, as we have mentioned earlier, the Grecks went so far as to say that the Latins were_unbay ‘and_unsanctified. For in that time of erisis, the Greeks who were disturbed by the change taking placing among the Lati kde fisdadinus membership in_ the _vis Perspective without any limitations: i. e., that there exists no working of the Holy Spirit whatsoever unless the correct uf Ci. Us omen 2 IR EOF Shisarhd, BL how” = forks the sehstnrte Stee ae dashes C45 won valid) . tea MAP hopes cb apes = Revste tome mee la Sa onecclesiastical structures are maintained and the appropriate distinction between_union and proselytism. We shall have to ‘obedience is shown to the hierarchs who are legitimately vreturn to these Churches Tater, when we ask about the motiva- installed in their office. ‘tions of the various union agreements, b) In these circumstances, both Catholics and orthodox inevitably became concerned about the prospects of salvation for the faithful of the other side. Zealous pastors of souls on both sides, who did not exclude from their love and concern those who were separated from themselves, had to call these to conversion to their own Church. Thé“daiatism which had josie] existed hitherto, and fad attempted to bring dioceses, parishes . ‘or monasteries of the other Church to obedience to its own ©) Let us draw our attention to only one great pastoral problem of our times. The rejectivn of the soteriological exclusivism by the Second Vatican Council does not mean that all Catholics had already overcome this. One must especi- ” ally bear in mind that in the land where up to forty years ago the largest of the Churches united to Rome lived, the clergy um * and the faithful were prevented by force from hearing suffici- .#h-€[- an ently about the ecclesiological return 1o_the older ecclesio~ gt pesitonycip order to incorporate them inte its ows Church is made by the Second was no jemented and surpassed by a much more per Vatican Council. Tt would be an inconsiderate impatience on 1 uniatioe WHR Rot Thats Tar order Uo guaran’ the our part, if we were to expect that the clergy and faithful, salvation of the souls of those who were_to_be converted, who have been cut off from the flow of information for a long one ought even to call individuals to convert to one's own time, should now accept the ecumenical insights without delay. Churel ‘They have been able to lift up their heads only for @ short ee time, and they would need time to think through the In the subsequent period, the Catholic missionaries in ecumenical insights. For it has not been possible even in other the East held themselves obliged to build churches for the places, where nothing opposed the flow of information, Uniates and to establish parishes for them, wherever this to remove completely the aberrations of the soteriological had not yet already happened. The period began in which exclusivism. De faclo, apart from many Catholic groups, this the Catholic Church held itself to be strictly obliged to establish Position isstill held by those Orthodox Churches which, particular communities for_those_faithful_who accepted the either in their own native territory or in the worldwide call to conversion, alongside the Oriental communities, whose orthodox diaspora, hold that they must first_baptise western ecelesiality was no longer recognised by them. From now Christians when these convert to orthodoxy. _-p ghwards, the Catholics recognised only these new communities” but_not_the anclent_and_venerable Orthodox communities as the Church of Christ for that particular land and people. “ me neat cae aaa fie yee of St Pee Until very recent times, when the Second Vatican ; . i +P couseit afiialy revoked this position, the_Catholic_chureh poy catynesents Come cubares) there) existed al clobe held officiully to the exclusivist understanding. This led to the birth of sometimes very tiny uniate minority Churches which developed a great zeal to make conversions because of the ecelesiological self-evaluation that only they were the Church of their people, [tis chiefly duoto them that Orthodox groups, who find the zeal of the clergy of these unlate Chu- im Ory swat rohes excessive, no Tonger wish to accept that there—i 82 relationship between the state and the Russian Orthodox Church. But at least from the late eighteenth century onwards, this relationship served primarily the aims of the state; eccl- iastical concerns were furthered when they were welcome to the government of the state. @) The government of the state endeavoured, each time the territory of the state was increased, to incorporate the 8Orthodox faithful of the newly-acquired lands, irrespective to lt which nation and canonical structure they had belonged yye9-9,77, previously, Nato the union of the Russian state Church, 20 Wr nprt that they would be bound to the new state also through the o dy wore ashes Church, As the boundary of the Czarist empire was extended westwards, especially after the partitions of Poland, and those parts of the territory inhabited by Eastern Slavs which had been subject to the jurisdiction of Constantinople were adsorbed bit by bit into the Russian state Church, this was something that happened within Orthodoxy, and thus not a process that ‘affected more than one confession. Nothing happened here that cay be called uniatism, since no non-Orthodox Christians were led to obedience to the Orthodox Church; but these were events in_which little respect was paid to the autonomy of the dio- ceses. For, thanks to the close interconnection of nation and Ghureh in the Orthodox world, much of what happened was ecclesiastical injustice towards those aflected. The absorption into the Russian national Church also meant Russification, ‘The further the new territory extended to the West or South West, the more numerous were the East Slavonic Christians it contained who did indeed confess the Orthodox faith, but_did not feel themselves to be Russians. Even non-Slavonic Orthodox local Churches were absorbed into the Russian Church and exposed to Russification, since the Rumanians of Bessarabia and the Georgians were not treated any different from the White Russions and Ukrainians, who at least are Eastern Slavs like the Russians, b) The absorption into the Russian Church was a reductio in oboedientiam in all those cases in which the Russian govern- ment in the new territories set_about bringing the uniate faithful of the Byzantine tradition into the Orthodox state Church. It_wanted to have the same state oversight over these believers that it had over the Russian Orthodox Church. In the former Polish-Lithuanian territories that had already been annexed to the Czarist empire before the 80- led first parti- tion of Poland (1772), all_uniate Church life had already been destroyed under Catharine II (1762-1796). After the partition of the Poland, The same result was achieved in the annexed territories in 1839 also, and in Congress Poland in 1875. 84 Where the uniates were unwilling to convert to Orthodoxy even after lengthy attempts to persuade them, the police were called in to help. Only after the revolution of 1905, when religious freedom was granted in Russia, was it possible for many descendants of the White Russians who had been forced by the state to become Orthodox, to return to the Catholic Church; but they had to adopt the Latin rite. Catholics of the Byzantine rite had become subjects of the Czar in the case of Russia's annexation of Georgia too. Catholic missionaries had been active in the Caucasus for centuries, and had achieved ogreements of union with Georgians and Armenians and conversions to the Latin Church in the case of other ethnic groups in the Caucasus.” At once the uuniate faithful in Georgia were confronted with the same choice fs those in White Russia, to change their rite or to convert to Orthodoxy. Under compulsion, meny of them renounced theit Georgian patrimony and adopted the Latin rite, while others ‘adopted the Armenian rite” ©) After the Polish rebellions in the second half of the nineteenth century, the Russian government pursued its national and church-political goals with all the greater emph- asis, Even Latin parishes in areas that were not totally Polish, but contained groups speaking a dialect with East Slavonic elements, whose Russification the government desired, were ‘he cbjet of atten to compel_them to beeome Orthodox. ‘went so far that some sacrificed their lives. The graves on ‘martyrs from this period still exist near the eastern border of today's Poland, and the sons and grandchildren of those confessing Christians can still relate the events very vividly. Unfortunately, the horror at the actions of the Russian authorities produced_much hatred, and when Poland had come into being once again after the First World War, those who had hitherto been oppressed took revenge for the previous period’s measures of Russification: many Orthodox churches ‘were destroyed, and there were _acts of violence against Orthodox priests. 85@ come,” aros excommunici Church and the Old Believers, century, the Russian stat aS sought to carried out the ancient ‘edinoverie) this way, the ot put the true beli rchate the great schism, which has not yet been over- the Russian Church in the seventeenth century, ions were uttered between the Russian patriarchal At the end of the eighteenth tes in the unity of faith (in Ru: the Russian Orthodox Church were set up; in lowers of the ancient rites who had entered n_with the Russian Church received The name of ie) The Metropolitan of Moscow, recognition by the Czar of nevertheless a “sufficient appr levers to the Church whic indulgent towards the ignorance of those in danger”. ‘merciful mother, is in error, but does Church attempted to show that id not touch the ancient ut the disobedience to the government of. the Church, From now on, it was possible to try to win Old belie- Z YeTs to cross overs to the Edinoverie; bu * Orthodox to cross over to it, For the E state Church naturall Believers, since it tolerated, not genui was forbidden for erie, which the Preferred to the movement of the Old community united to itself, was only ly recognised. ©) The Synod of St Petersburg also concluded a union with a part of an Oriental Orthodox Church. At the end of the 1830's, after a war between Syro-Chaldaeans (so-called Nestor! settle in the Czarist empire: Orthodox Church and formed seven S Rus were re vro-Chal {n 1859, the idea occurred of uniting to the Russian Church by delays, 86 a the entire Church of the Syro-Chaldaean larch with its seven dioceses in the Osman the Persian empire, paolute studies were conducted however, they were ig Synod took the initiative from 1883 on, It the city of Urmia, which did not belong to the Russian empire, a Russian spiritual mission which was to care for_the Syro-Chaldaeans. It very soon became obvious that there was scarcely any prospect of a union with the entire Church of the Catholicos-Patriarch; so it was thought that the appropriate thing to do for the time being was to_come to the Church which was alread |. Tn May 1897, a union agreement with 9,000 signatures ied in the city of Supugan near Urmia between the local laean bishop and the Russian ssion. On 25 March 1 the Alexander Nevslj St Petersburg, the Syro-Chaldaeans who had separated Previous Chureh and had gone out from the juris- diction of their patriarch in order to unite to the Russian Orthodox Church were so received into Orthodoxy. The Bishop of Supugan had d to the capital of Russia with some of his clergy for this celebration.” 18) Stalin's interference in the problematle of union What_we must discuss in this section is totally different ‘in character from everything else that has beea set out up to now. Here we are not concerned wi i 7 uestion. It is enough to have posed the question and to have set out the events in detail, to reject al with a positive answer. Stalin's new ecclesiastical politics, born under the Pressure of a threatening defeat in the Second World War, 87Awe {Buraces wished to take the Churches into the service of the political goals of the Soviet power, since it was no longer possible to attempt Uneir physical destruction, This goal was capable of realisation to a different extent in the various Churches, and this is why Stalin’s new ecclesiastical polities de faclo treated them very differently.”” There was no change in the irrecon¢ lable_vis-t-vis the Catholic Chuveh Tor it was aot possble to_use_the pope as an_instrument for the goals of Soviet Policy. In order therefore to destroy or at least to weaken the papal influence on the Ukraine and on the satellite states, Stalin had recourse to the old goal of the Czarist ecclesiastical politics in dealing with the Church of the Byzantine rite united with Rome: he_wanted to break it into pieces.’ But Stalin took the Czars’ ecclesiastical politics as his model only in terms of its goal, not in terms of the methods it had used. For whenever the(Czars conversion; the Czarist police, which gladly and very efficiently helped in this, never crushed all freedom of conscience, but ‘measured out the repressive measures in dosesso that it took decades until the second or third generation of the group of Deliver in qoeton nd eome oer te Orthodoxy (alin) oa the other hand imposed his police power at a singe stroke. He wanted to destroy the Uniate-Charch—withis-a few weeks” and he gave the Orthodox Church no time even to attempt to convince the uni Orthodoxy. fe faithful beforehand of the truth of It would have cost @ great effort, and would have been successful only in individual cases, to win uniate faithful to a free conversion to Orthodoxy. ‘There had indeed existed a rend among clergy and intellectuals in Galicia from the beginning of the twentieth century which held the return to Orthodoxy to_be the best_way to maintain the proper chaacter_of Their Eastern Chiro When Their native Tend was detached from Poland in the course of the war and was joined to Orthodox Russia, these groups now held that they ought to fulfil the Lord's commission to unity and love first 88 of all vis-d-vis the Orthodox Chureh. No one can estimate how numerous these were, but it is certain that they were only a very small minority in their Church. The characteristic element of their ecclesiology is that they held the salvation of souls to be guaranteed for all those who belonged either te-the Catholic or to the Orthodox Church When they Went from the Uniate Church to the Orthodox Church, this was not a question involving their faith and their fidelity to the Gospel, but only of the forms of Christian living, the question whether, as members of a particular people and heirs of a particular tradition, they could live their fidelity to the Gospel of Christ better in the one place or in the other. ‘The dogmatic decisions of the First Vatican Council had_been deeply imprinted on the broad majority of the Uniate Catholics through a zealous catechetical activity on the part of the Uniate pastors, No matter what ecclesiological positions may have been maintained in earlier times by the ancestors of the Uniate Catholics, it is clear as regards the first half of the twentieth century that the preponderant ity of the clergy and the faithful in all the Uniate Churches gave the full adherence of faith to the teac of the First Vatican Council. It was the common conviction of_faith that the Lord himself demands faithfulness and attachament to the Pope. feas of those clergy and intelle- ctuals for whom membership of the Catholic Church and 4 membership of the Orthodox Church meant equally membership of the Church of Christ could be grasped by only very few Uniates_at_that time, For the broad majority, only the Catholic Church with the successor of Peter at its head counted as in accordance with the Gospel of Christ. For them, it was_an obligation of conscience, untroubled by any doubts, that_whoever wished fo keep fidelity to God’s holy will must belong to this Church. This was intensified by the oficially- upheld ecclesiology in the Catholic Church before the Second Vatican Council, which found its strongest expressions ever in the papal encyclicals‘Mystici Corporis and fumani generis which are almost contemporary with the events which we are discussing. remocnin i Crmtent O canan metas oF Te Co ot meesenne iE OnMhg Got Payear Varnes GraeThe authorities of the state assembled groups which were not legitimated in ecclesiastical terms, and themselves determined who should be members of these bodies; and they Tequires these bodies to decide and to make known the collective conversion of the Uniates to Orthodoxy, without taking into account the convictions in conscience of the faithful. Then they attempted through innumerable arrest, interrogations, ill treatment, police punishments, trials, exile and deportations, to compel all the Uniate Catholics to submit and to let them- selves be incorporated into the Orthodox Church, But this in vain, The foreible measures brought tremendous suffering ‘on West Ukraine.” Rumania and Slovakia, but instead of crushing the will to resist, they only strengthened it. ‘The life of the Uniate Churches continued in the underground. 16) Spiritual concerns and historial circumstances as motivation {or union agreements A panoramic view of the uniatisms from cirea 1500 years of Church history leaves aad impresijon. For we hear the all too shrill sounds of heate Sand the most strident discords of confessional antitheses. Our Churches must ask one another's forgiveness and must ask God to pardon the injustice that has been done in history. But do not let us only pay attention to the injustice! Let us also reflect that the mistaken events were not_usuall guided by the intention to hurt one another. Almost always, uc positive intentions stood behind them. But they were not aroune!5 Sufciently reflected about. Thus the mistaken result came in ‘sngusanthe historical circumstances of each period. We deplore this ith all our heart, But in order to evaluate it correctly, we ‘must consider not only the painful result, but also the inten- tions and the circumstances that led to it. a) Although the uniatisms increased the tensions and antitheses each time, we have been able to discover that in all the centuries of our Church history the existing state of division has been rejected as something contrary to the will 90, ee ind that the attempt has been made to remove this state of affairs with all vigour. a-1) This means that one can discern an important spiri- tual motivation behind (almost) everything that happened yg the desire to correspond better to the commission given by Christ. Presumably the fact that the local Churches ‘sought: unification, even if they did not achieve ‘it, was the reason why the Almighty God, who is merciful towards our failings, | remained with the Church in eve case of uniatism which demanded obedience in the wrong manner, with the Churches which gave this obedience, and also with the Churches which Fefused it. All the parties involved were permitied ta coatiaue QOS Saeco tener and to administer the holy sacraments, so that their faithful “have access to God the jr through the Son, the Word made flesh, who sufered and was glorifed, in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And so, made ‘sharers of the divine nature’, they enter into communion with the most holy Trinity”.®" ‘The fact that the Churches are divided, although they ought to be one as the Lord Jesus Christ is one with the Father, shows that the history of our Churches is full of errors, The fact that God’s mercy is indulgent to the errors warns us that we should not attribute excessive importance to them. 8-2) We have also been able to discover that the parties in the dispute each preserved with special care one justified agpect_of ecclesiology. Thus the one side cape in ‘@bedience to the Lord, the mission to guide and lead’ the + « people of God that has been given to those who have respon- sibility in the Church, There were also spiritual motivations at work in those who had responsibility in the Churches that were stronger because of historical circumstances, when they sought to bring individual dioceses, sometimes individual parishes, and even indeed sometimes metropolitanates or Patriarchates to remove what their theological understanding took to be a defect, something standing in the way of unity. In the same way, spiritual motivations were at work in the 1Churches which recognised the spiritual seriousness of this + endeavour and showed themselves open for a union agreement under the conditions which were set out for them. In gratitude for the working of the Holy Spirit, the others emphasised the — qutonomy of the local Churches and their responsibility for their own lives, and there were also spiritual motivations in those who did not consider that what was demanded of them ‘was a corrective. On the contrary, it seemed to them to be ‘the concrete attempt e the earthly Church jes its treasure wledge is only itensified the one-sided- ly weaken ' ness of the perspective, so that the one side also on occasion took its mission as a pretext for earthly power-seeking, while pram < the others appealed to the autonomy given them by God's Spirit as a pretext for obstinacy. ) Im the period of the soteriological exclusivism, there were also spiritual motivations for the zeal of the ¢ they were firmly icitly —under_the position commanded ther to which the theology of t ‘They_took the Orthodox Ch 1 t2pelatrcam” Gia beD TRE mists Dae qe eee wt Re ne AD ht f chest whom they won into the fellowship of the Catholic Church is not something that can be rejected always and everywhere ‘as “competition”, but that there was also a motivation behind this which demands our respect. For they were convinced that they communicated membership in the Church of Christ only through this act of recept gical conviction, this Chr Soren r4elese p Cpe me Seok A b-1) As has been noted earlier, the missionaries did not adi.a @ return to Cypria ion. They did not dispute thereality salvation of the Eastern ins “more secure” by view) the sacrament correct way. The Catholic dog attempted through numerous di onducted in the ians of this period ridlogical exelusivism that guided the Catholic missionaries B. Council. But we must take it into account as the theological thinking of the missionaries, when we reflect on the motiv- ations of their activity. ‘Through missionary act Churches united to Rome were cal individual conversions. In many ar been any uniate Churches before, incl stantinople and the kingdom of Gre in this way alongside the Orthodox Church. We must follow the ecclesiology of the Second Vatican se, various into being by means of which there had not the city of Con- all communities of 93tm ye A those persons who were converted from polytheiam_to Council, which overcame the temporary dimming of the eccle- siological tradition of the Catholic Church through a phase of exclusivism by going back to the authentic tradition once more, and which consequently recognised Sister Church _in Orthodoxy, we must say - despite respect for the pastoral enthusiasm of the missionaries - that they divided the Church of Christ in the countries in which they worked wi ey ‘wooed believers from the Orthodox Church and constructed a separate uniate Church out of them. The missionaries of that period would not have been able to understand the accusation which Orthodoxy today makes against them, that they engaged in proselytism, since they were theologically convinced that ‘the Lord himself demanded the conversion of all the baptised to the Catholic Church. They were convinced that they were doing faithfully what the Lord had charged them to do when he said to his disciples; “Go to all peoples and make all of them my disciples; baptise them in the name of their Father and of the Son and of the holy Spirit, and teach them to observe all that I have commanded you" (Matt 28:19-20), b-2) This commission of the Lord results in a grave obligation for our Churches. Each of them must do its best to fulfl the commission. But the Churches fulfil their obli tion only when they do so in the correct way. They must avoid the forms of conduct that are reproached as a prosely- tiem unworthy of the word of God. for. lief in_the one God, the creator of heaven and of earth. Thus the expression has a positive meaning in the New Testament Even in the case of uniatism, especially in the form which aimed at individual conversions, the aim was to make con- (verts = naturally, not from paganism, but the conversions of Christians who were held to be in error, to one’s own Church. ‘Thus Tt is possible to use the term "proselytism” for this. But in recent times, the concept of ‘‘proselytism” has lost all its positive meaning and now means only conversions involving rose ‘The New Testament uses the term [,4sy Means that are unworthy of the message of faith, and this why the use of such a term leads easily to misunderstandings- 4 Sadly, the rivalry between Catholics and Orthodox has led ‘also to abuses of proselytism in the negative sense of this word. But a balenced Church history must admit that events hhave sometimes taken place in our Churches for reasons that ‘were sincerely meant but were short-sighted, and that the coumenism of our days must condemn these. In order to avoid misunderstandings, it would be belter to avo work aiming at conversions between the Catholic Church and! the Orthodox Church proselytism, without making any distin. . tions. Before we accuse each other of this, we ought to” examine thoroughly whether perhaps a lack’ of theological? insight has led to the actions that distress us. 12) Tae Angin en nd ttn Pan? from the group of the Oxford Movement is ‘non-suspect Wine tothe ast al fo tan pee ehh ened exclusivism was dominant, theological thou, wan rt ght_pressed forward 4, to_missionary consequences, and that the Orthodox Church, in fidelity to_the ecclesiology which was malntainedat that 7 period, would have had to develop just as_much missio zeal_ols-a-vis_Western Christians. Palmer was initially very reserved in his attitude to the Catholic Church and aimed at communio with the Orthodox Church; later, when he realised that this wish was shared only by very few members of his Anglican Church, he wanted to convert to the Orthodox Church. ‘Then_he found himself confronted in Constantinople with the ! position that all Western Christians were unbeptised. He was told that he must first receive baptism in order to be able to enter the Church. This showed him that in his days not only the Catholics (who said so explicitly), but also the Orthodox - to the extent that they were not willing to recognise a sacramental act of God's grace outside their own communio ~ claimed alone and exclusively to be_the whole Church of Christ. in an exchange of letters with A. S. Chomjakov, ‘who supported fully the contemporary evaluation of the Western Christians that was held at Constantinople, W. Palmer set out inter alia what must be the characteristics of the one true Church. 95 calling every) +) cow * qonhinn Version otek edesonsn(idpemtey tte a aly Daves lt the totality of the true Church, that ly is the depository of the True Faith, says Palmer, then this: “ought always, and under all conceivable disadvantages to be a sufficient motive for the most unwearied energy, both in prayer and action, and for the most confident and unbounded hope of success in the work of evangelising the unbelieving world, and bringing back all heretics or schismaties, whether Romani Fold”, lite", s, Anglicans, Lutherans, or Cal fe shall be drawn towards you by any sign of he writes in the same letter, “se Why does not then the sole true Orthodox Greek Church send af least one Missionary to England? - to Oxford? which now. all the world knows, is the centre of an important ious movement. Seek whichever you please, I repeat, it matters little, ~ either our conversion or our reconciliation: but do one or the other. Do not go on for ever folding your hands in a shocking self-complacency, outwardly showing not tolerance only, but something very like fraternal recognition to worse heretics than either Romanists or Anglicans, while you inwardly say in your heart, ‘We alone are the true Church, and they are all heretics in the way of darkness and destruction,” ~ they, whom you do not so much as move a finger to bring into your exclusive Ark of salvation!" Since Chomjakov would not be shaken in his elaim to exclusivism for Orthodoxy, but sought to meet the accusation of indifference with regard to the spiritual distresses of the Western peoples by pointing to the cultural superiority “of West Europe to Russia, Palmer wrote in the next letter: “Tell me then, can you understand the following? I ‘assert that I have never yet met with a single member of the tern Church herself, whether la st or Bishop, who evinced the faintest sign of real conviction that his own 96 Meh I hee tu? Church was the whole Church. 1 have never found one who did not, on being pressed, allow the true spiritual existence of the Roman and Latin Church; 1 have never found one who 80 much as invited me to conversion from the spontaneous movement of his own faith, far less who used zealous arguments fand prayers, as is common even among the poorest and simplest Roman Catholics, to bring all whom they consider wanderers to their Fold” b-4) A common working group between the Catholic Ghoreh and the(Word Counc of Chuched produced 860 5 “Report on common witness and prosefytism.*” The report ends with the affirmation: “There are fields of tension between Churches that are especially difficult to overcome, because what_the_one considers to be the consequence of theological and_ecelesiological conviction is proselytism in the eyes of the other.”” Among the examples of such tensions, we rea “The ‘existence of the Eastern Churches united to Rome is seen by the Orthodox as a fruit of proselytism. The Catholics make the same accusation against the Orthodox concerning the way in which some of these Churches were re-united with the Orthodox Church.” The Second Vatican Council ended that dimming of ecclesiology which had eaused the missionaries to think it was their duty in conscience to summon Orthodox to convert to the Catholic Chureh. The Orthodox side too is in the process of withdrawing the reaction that had become Brmly established in it as a reaction to the attitude of the missiona- Ties, ‘Therefore the report can continue: “No matter how things were in the past, the Catholic and the Orthodox Churches are resolved not only to reject proselytism, but even the intention of winning the believers of the one Church for the other Chureh; this is attested, for example, by the common declaration of Pope Paul Vi and Patriarch Athenagoras I of 28 October 1967.” The report says however explicitly about the fields of tension that it is necessary to endeavour “to understand the different forms of behaviour on each side.” In the theological dialogue, there will still remain much to be mastered here. c) Now let us turn to the historical cireumnstances that were favourable or disadvantageous to union agreements and 97 rbd oO TL raat raetur F"Thich contributed to a one-sidedness in the effect of the [-€ 22? spiritual motivations in the majority of cases. For whose in ow responsibility often held that, because of urgent problems, whose possible beneficial or dangerous consequences they could not yet foresee, they were obliged to act even before theology had_thoroughly cleared up the spiritual concerns. Here we limit ourselves to unions from the post-Tridentine period, since it is omly their results that must be discussed in the dialogues between the Churches toda; 1) The_state Church system of earlier periods meant that_membership ina religious confession conferred ot preve~ nted_eivil rights. ‘The positive or negative attitude of the Eastern Christians in their relationship to the dominant Chureh influenced in Christian states not only their religious life, but also their Fights in the state. Itis evident that socio-political motivations were_a contributory factor in particular union agreements of local Eastern Churches with the Latins and in many succe- sses of the Catholic missionaries in bringing about individual conversions. In the same way, social and political motivations were a contributory factor in the successes of the Calvinists in Transylvauia'® and in the attempt which they made - which however collapsed at once-to unite the Rumanian diocese in ‘Transylvania with their own Reformed Church after the model of the Union of Brest. In_the Islamic state, all questions of civil law, including that of judgement in civil courts, were transferred to the structure of care exercised by the religious communities, In order _not to be without rights, it_ was necessary for everyone to belong toa religious community, even if was nol religious motivations thal fed himio this. Minorites or ethnic groups in the Osman empire could preserve autonomous rights only ‘a8_communities of faith. The implications for civil Taw and the national implications which membership of the Orthodox Church or the act of joining the Church of the missionaries had, were a factor in the Osman empire that must not be underestimated in the relationship between Orthodox and Catholics, 98, For the Islamic rulers, the highest_clergyman_was_in the truest sense chief of his ethnic group, equipped with a large “number of competences in civil law which he did not Possest under the Christian emperors. The fact that many concerns of the civil daily tife, and not only spiritual matters, were entrusted to the responsibility of the Church leaders contributed substantially to making the boundaries between the Christian Churches more sharply defined, because the faith- ful of two confessions not_omly formed two Churehes in spiri- tualibus, but also two peoples in saecularibus. Europeans must béar ‘this in mind when they wonder why it is that the confessions stand over against one another in the Near East and Middle East in a way that surprises them. The proclamation of the faith, which was as essential 8 desire of the Oriental Churches earlier on as it was to the Western Christians, was possible under Islamic suzerainty only as the preservation of the status quo. The death penalty was the reward for converting a Moslem to Christianity, threatening both the convert and the one who converted him. It was however freely open for a Christian to become a Moslem. All ‘that was allowed in the Islamic state was to prevent this and see to it that the children of Christians were baptised, so that the Church did not lose its members. Churches that in part hhave keen on the defensive for more than a thousand years, and could do no more than preserve what they had, must be deeply wounded when the attempt is made to make converts among their faithful - and this is something that the Western missionaries of the last two hundred years simply did not sce. It is not possible to investigate the accusation of proselytisms which is made against Catholics and Protestants in the Near and Middle East, in an appropriate manner, as long as we continue to consider the question one-sidedly under the pers- Pective of the individual freedom of conscience of the convert, and not also under that of the ecclesial continuance in existence of the Eastern Churchea. On the basis of agreements in international law, the diplomatic representatives of the French king had to order for foreign Catholics in the Osman empire those questions of civil 9%ow Jaw in which the Orthodox hierarchs had to take responsibility for the Orthodox subjects of the Sublime Porte, and they regulated these questions according to French law.” It was no.little support to know that one had the protection of a ‘Western superpower. It was indeed not envisaged in the agree- ments with France that the competence of the French diplomats would extend also to subjects of the Porte who joined the Catholics; but in a period when the Osman power had already Passed its zenith, the representatives of France could sometimes take on competences that they did not have in terms of the letter of the agreements. Thus it was tempting for Orthodox Groups to seek a protection through the induential French Protectors of the missionaries, through close friendship with the missionaries and through an ecclesiastical link to them, ‘The French diplomats for their part undertook much, for readily comprehensible reasons, to grant the protection which was expected of them and to increase their influence in the country. ©-2) We must also bear cultural circumstances in mind. ‘The result of the collapse of the Byzantine empire and finally of the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks was that the cultural leadership which hitherto had been exercised in Cons- tantinople was transferred to the West, No centre living and feeling in the spirit of Orthodox Christianity now worked to develop the fundamental lines of the further intellectual development; this function had passed to centres of the Western tradition of thought and of spirituality. Gradually, though not with the same speed everywhere, the forms of thought and life from Middle and West “Europe became familiar in_the lands with Orthodox Churches. This led to a gradual change in the way people there experienced their lives. It was inevitable that modifications would follow in the religious sphere too. In an account of his experiences from Lebanon,” P. Laffer calls “the fusion of the theological contents of the testimony with culturally determined antecedent understandings and forms of communication a dimension that hhas been overlooked in the ecumenical discussion”. He looks imainly at the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and points to the non-theological factor of a modern cultural transfor- 100 mation in the homelands of the Oriental Churches as something relevant for pastoral work and ultimately indeed for systematic theology. ‘The Western missionaries were among the most important mediators_of the new education in the period studied by Léffler. “Since they displayed along with the cultural goods which they mediated an ecclesiastical life that corresponded to the new education which seemed worth aiming at, many of their students showed themselves open, not only for_their secular knowledge, but also for the spiritual life which they represented. Without wishing to do so, many Orthodox clergy drove the students in the direction of these missionaries, for although they felt the antithesis between their_traditional ecclesiastical patrimony and the way in which the modern West experienced life, their education did_not permit them — and sometimes indeed had no wish — to endeavour to fashion a syathesis out of Orthodox spirituality and the new values by rebogiising the difference between those traits that. brought danger to their traditional identity and the useful elements in what was new. The excessively lapidary rejection of what was new led to the departure of many believers from their previous clergy and their turning to the missionaries.® If one added to this the fact that can be observed in several cases, thal the Western rmissionaries and the uniate clergy whom they had formed were superior to the Orthodox clergy of the country not only in their openness to modern education, but also in pastoral zeal, ig was necessary on the part of the Catholics to ensure a shift in the numbers of members of both i this happened through “voting with the feet” (ive., dissatisfied believers left their previous community and went spontaneously to the uniate community). Such movements of faithful went in theother direction too. Justice requires us not to overlook this, lest we make undeserved accusations against the “more successful” clergy, who could not simply send away people who came looking. 4) In the course of the centuries, the political and cultural contexts of the unions and uniatisms have often changed. Their spiritual and historical causes have combined in many 101