Stolen Churches or Bridges to Orthodoxy?: Volume 1: Historical and Theological Perspectives on the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Dialogue (Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue) 3030554414, 9783030554415

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PATHWAYS FOR ECUMENICAL AND INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE

Stolen Churches or Bridges to Orthodoxy? Volume 1: Historical and Theological Perspectives on the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Dialogue Edited by

Vladimir Latinovic Anastacia K. Wooden

Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue Series Editor Mark Chapman Ripon College University of Oxford Oxford, UK

Building on the important work of the Ecclesiological Investigations International Research Network to promote ecumenical and inter-faith encounters and dialogue, the Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue series publishes scholarship on such engagement in relation to the past, present, and future. It gathers together a richly diverse array of voices in monographs and edited collections that speak to the challenges, aspirations, and elements of ecumenical and interfaith conversation. Through its publications, the series allows for the exploration of new ways, means, and methods of advancing the wider ecumenical cause with renewed energy for the twenty-first century. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14561

Vladimir Latinovic  •  Anastacia K. Wooden Editors

Stolen Churches or Bridges to Orthodoxy? Volume 1: Historical and Theological Perspectives on the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Dialogue

Editors Vladimir Latinovic University of Tübingen Tübingen, Germany

Anastacia K. Wooden The Catholic University of America Washington, DC, USA

Academy DRS Stuttgart, Germany

ISSN 2634-6591     ISSN 2634-6605 (electronic) Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue ISBN 978-3-030-55441-5    ISBN 978-3-030-55442-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55442-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Dedicated to Prof. Bernd Jochen Hilberath, my mentor and teacher in ecumenism. V. L.

Preface

This first of Christian unity has gained much through various bilateral ecumenical dialogues. Today there is almost every possible combination of such dialogue one could imagine. Yet, a rare exception is an absence of dialogue between the Orthodox and the Catholic Eastern Churches. Throughout their shared history, these two traditions have lived through a very complex and sometimes tense relationship—not only theologically but also politically. In most cases these tense relationships remain to this day; indeed, some have even increased in difficulty (e.g., in Ukraine). The main contention in this relationship remains the interpretation of the historical events surrounding the birth of the Eastern Catholic Churches and the subsequent understanding of their ecclesial status. Regardless of the historical accuracy, many Orthodox still refer to these churches as “stolen,” while many Catholics see them as bridges to the Orthodox traditions—a perspective which, again, many Orthodox strongly reject. Naming is of course the smallest problem in the relationship between these churches. Historically, relationships between them have been all but non-problematic. To address these issues, the Academy of the Diocese of Rottenburg-­ Stuttgart as part of the project “Treasure of the East”1 and in cooperation with the Ecclesiological Investigations Research Network2 decided to give impulses for the much-needed theological dialogue between these 1 2

 See https://www.akademie-rs.de/projekte/schatz-des-orients/  See http://ei-research.net/

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Churches by organizing the conference titled “Stolen Churches or Bridges to Orthodoxy? Impulses for Theological Dialogue Between Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches,” which took place from 19th to 21st July 2019 in Stuttgart, Germany.3 This conference brought together representatives of the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches, as well as theologians from different geographical contexts where tensions are greatest. This truly unique gathering—the very first of its kind—brought together Eastern Catholic and Orthodox Christians from diverse backgrounds with an in-depth and sustained level of engagement. Nearly 90 delegates from 12 different countries were present, including the official representatives of both these Christian Churches and scholars (theologians and historians). A special effort was made to include many younger academics—the voices of tomorrow’s dialogical encounters. Diversity of participants was reflected in the variety of historical and ecclesiological perspectives presented in the scholarly papers delivered at the conference. Collectively those present delved deeper into the question of what shapes and maintains their differing positions, what constitutes essential features of their traditions, and what serves as perpetual sources of division. As a result, partners in dialogue came to appreciate the sensitivities involved in dealing with ecclesial stand-offs of key historical moments as well as of recent decades. But they also acknowledged the similarities between the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic traditions and moved closer to finding ways to build new relationships. This building of concrete relationships was perhaps the biggest achievement of the conference. The organizers from the start wanted this gathering to be a venue where people of opposing views can meet face to face in search for the ways if not to reconcile but to transcend their differences in brotherly love. For that purpose, the conference offered different types of engagement in addition to the scholarly dialogue. The respective liturgies from the differing traditions which took place during the conference were truly moving experiences and highlights for all present. In the Eastern Catholic liturgy, the eucharistic prayer was recited by nine different priests, each in his own native language—including Ukrainian, Russian, and Hungarian. The harmonious interactions throughout the duration of the conference inspired still greater mutual engagement and understanding— often amidst laughter and merriment.  See https://oec.dialogue.group/stuttgart2019/

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In general, the conference was characterized by the high academic standards of materials presented, a willingness to engage in dialogue, general openness to new ideas, and the courage to deal with problems and wounds that we have inherited from the past. Two key outcomes of the conference deserve a special mention. First, in order to facilitate the continuation of the vital dialogue started there, a formal group called the Orthodox-­ Eastern Catholic Dialogue Group was established and entrusted with carrying forward this pioneering work.4 Second, the papers presented at the conference were put together in the two volumes in order to make its insights available to the wider audience. This first volume that came out of this event explores historical and theological themes that should serve as impulses for the beginning of the dialogue between the Orthodox and the Eastern Catholic Churches. The first chapter of this volume, titled “A First Step Toward the Dialogue Between Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches,” also serves as an introduction, and gives the readers an overview of how the initiative for this conference has begun.5 The purpose of this introduction is not only to provide a “historical material”—should anyone one day explore what came out of this project and the dialogue—but to demonstrate how small actions of individuals can contribute in unexpected ways to the creation of wider events and even movements. Since further conferences between Orthodox and Eastern Catholics are already being planned, organizers of these conferences can offer similar overviews such as this one which can serve as a progress report of the dialogue. Opening the first, historical, part of the present volume is the chapter titled “Caught in the Crossfire: Toward Understanding Medieval and Early Modern Advocates of Church Union” written by Yury P. Avvakumov. This chapter critically engages modern historical research on a series of Later Medieval and Early Modern intellectuals and ecclesiastics who advocated for the union of Eastern Christians with the Roman Church and the pope. Although faithful to their own traditions, these persons were literally and figuratively ostracized for trying to transcend ecclesiastical, political, and cultural boundaries of their time. The author suggests that the proper evaluation of the “unionist” thinking can only be done outside the

 See https://oec.dialogue.group/  Please note that the following is compiled based on the formulations from authors abstracts. 4 5

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narrow confessional boundaries that are a product of the relatively recent historical and theological developments. Anastacia K. Wooden in the chapter titled “A Brief History of the Union of Brest and Its Interpretations” seeks to provide an overview of the events leading to the establishment and elimination of the Union of Brest (1595–1596) and address seemingly irreconcilable nature of the stereotypical interpretations of these events. This chapter shows that these interpretations are conditioned not only by confessional belonging but also by the contemporary political preferences of the interpreters. This finding is demonstrated by the examples provided in the chapter “Union of Brest: Saints or Villains?” written jointly by Anastacia K. Wooden and Natallia Vasilevich. It is devoted to the two persons who perfectly symbolize conflicting narratives in the evaluation of the significance of the Union of Brest: the sixteenth-century Uniate Bishop Josaphat Kuncevich, who is revered in the Catholic Church for his role in the establishment of the Eastern Catholic Church (ECC) on proto-Belarusian and Ukrainian territories, and the nineteenth-century Metropolitan Joseph Siamaška, who is held in high regard by the Orthodox Church for his equally important role in the elimination of the ECC in the same lands. Although the two parts of this chapter differ greatly in their approach (the first being sociopolitical and the second being theological-ecumenical), they share the same desire to find a way to look at Siamaška and Kuncevich in a way that transcends uncompromising, confessionally predetermined titles of saints or villains. Echoing the concerns of the previous two chapters, in the chapter titled “‘Kyivan Christianity’: Early Modern Cultural History and Impulses for Dialogue Between Churches in Ukraine,” Ivan Almes examines cultural history as an inclusive approach to study the history of the church in the multireligious early modern Eastern Europe in general and Ukraine in particular. He tries to show that the emerging concept of “Kyivan Christianity” remains promising not only for the evaluation of the historical events surrounding the Union of Brest but also for the up-to-date analyses of the religious and cultural processes in contemporary Ukraine. The next chapter “Identity and Institutional Allegiance in Romanian Uniate Church History (1700–1900)” written by Laura Stanciu reemploys the synodal documents of the Romanian Greek Catholic Church (eighteenth to nineteenth centuries) to examine the current institutional memory of the church. The collection and analysis of this significant archival material allows the author to discuss certain important aspects of

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institutional history, religious life, and anthropology of religion as part of the church history of Transylvanian Romanians in the modern age. In a similar way, Paul Brusanowski in the chapter titled “The Judicial and Canonical Situation of the Romanian Byzantine Catholics in Hungary Around 1900” analyzes the legal and canonical situation of the Romanian Byzantine Catholics in Hungary at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. It demonstrates how favoring of the Latinization of their church in the three provincial councils under consideration secured the support of the papacy in disputes with the Hungarian Roman Catholic clergy and thus, paradoxically, preserved the individuality of the Romanian Eastern Catholic Church. In the next chapter of this part, titled “The Bulgarian Orthodox Church and Its Perception of the Bulgarian Uniates,” Vladislav Atanassov describes the apparent lack of interest in the Eastern Catholic Churches in Bulgaria and in the related painful memories. He interprets this indifference in a positive light as a factor contributing to the present nearly conflict-free relationship between the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church. The chapter “The Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Bishops at the Second Vatican Council: The Participation in the Council and Contribution to the Discussions of Conciliar Documents” written by Mariia Ivaniv shows not only how participation of the Ukrainian bishops in the Vatican II influenced Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church life and activity at that time but also how they made an influence on the work of the Council. In the wider narrative of this volume, this chapter shows how the Eastern Catholic Churches, often treated with disregard by the Roman Catholic tradition, played a vital role in the formation of the theological vision of the contemporary Catholic Church. The final chapter of this historical part “The U.S.S.R., Greek Catholics, and the Vatican ‘Ostpolitik’ in the 1960s–1970s: Grey Zone and the Stumbling Blocks” written by Nadezhda Beliakova examines the lack of cohesion in the perception of the Vatican’s Eastern policy between different governing bodies in the U.S.S.R. during Brezhnev’s era. It highlights the role of the representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church in formulation of the Soviet policies toward the Catholic Church. Beliakova’s findings may contribute to the development of the new perspectives of Soviet heritage in contemporary relations between the Vatican, the Russian Orthodox Church, and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.

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The second part of the volume, which deals with theological topics, opens with the contribution by Theodoros Alexopoulos titled “The Filioque Issue in the Light of the Catechism of the Ukrainian Catholic Church and in Dialogue with V.  Bolotov’s ‘33 Theses’.” This chapter analyzes whether 33 Theses of the famous Russian Orthodox Church Historian Vasily Bolotov (1854–1900) can be used to bridge the differences between the Orthodox understanding of the procession of the Holy Spirit and the Catholic position as it is expressed in the Catechism of the Ukrainian Catholic Church. In full awareness of all the complexities involved, the author sees Bolotov’s approach as a source of potentially constructive points in need of further reflection. The following three chapters continue the theme of ecumenical contributions from the Russian Orthodox theology. The second chapter of the theological part “Eastern Catholicism and the Reunion of the Churches in Vladimir Soloviev’s Political Ecclesiology” written by Nathaniel Wood examines theology of Orthodox-Catholic reunion of Russian religious philosopher Vladimir Soloviev (1853–1900) in connection with his broader philosophical notions of “Divine-Humanity” and “all-unity,” arguing that Soloviev’s controversial practice of intercommunion is rooted in the radicalness of his ecumenical proposal: the restoration of a universal “Orthodox-Catholic” Church that liberates both the Eastern and Western churches from their one-sidedness. The third chapter of this theological part “Eucharistic Ecclesiology in the Russian Religious Renaissance as Instruction in Orthodox - Eastern Catholic Ecumenism” by Daniel Kisliakov looks at the notion of spiritual communion as developed by Sergius Bulgakov (1871–1944). This notion which recognizes the existence of ecclesial communion even in the absence of eucharistic intercommunion became a prevailing paradigm among Russian diaspora theologians, including the eucharistic ecclesiology of Nicholas Afanasiev. The author claims that this understanding of spiritual communion as part of the eucharistic ecclesiology can be instructive in ecumenical engagement between Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholics. Then, in the chapter “Paul Evdokimov and Una Sancta: A Russian Orthodox Theologian in Search of Ecumenical Unity,” Peter C.  Phan gives a brief account of Evdokimov’s life (1901–1970) in following of his spiritual vocation to work for the unity of the One Church. Applying Evdokimov’s guiding theological principles of ecumenical unity, Phan examines how Evdokimov deals with three hotly debatable theological issues, namely, Filioque, the Marian dogmas, and papal primacy and infallibility.

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In the fifth chapter “The Specificity of the Greek-Catholic Ecclesiology in the Thinking of the Romanian Theological School,” Alexandru Buzalic explores the ecclesiological differences and similarities between Eastern theologies and the new Catholic magisterial vision that paves the way for a possible ecumenical theology and for the restoration of unity. He shows that the new synthesis of Greek Catholic theology links the tradition of the Greek Catholic school with the new theology of unity in affirming its own spirituality in the pluralism of the Catholic theological schools. The sixth chapter “Synodical Principle as the Key to Church Unity” by Georgian scholar Irakli Jinjolava turns to the role of synodality in the search for ecclesial unity. Through his analyses of the documents of the Holy and Great Council of Orthodox Church (Crete 2016) as well as the Chieti document “Synodality and Primacy During the First Millennium,” 2016, the author shows that rediscovery of the “synodical principle” is both a challenge and a chance in deepening of ecumenical relations. The seventh chapter titled “Church as Koinonia: Exploring the Ecumenical Potential of John Zizioulas’s Communio Ecclesiology” by Tihomir Lazić provides a systematic exposition of the basic claims, prospects, and limitations of John Zizioulas’s communio ecclesiology. His contribution shows how Zizioulas’s imitatio Trinitatis approach can be used as a platform for a meaningful and fruitful ecumenical dialogue between Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches. This chapter is also interesting since Lazić is an Adventist theologian, who provides an “outsider” insight into the values of contemporary Orthodox ecclesiology. In the eight chapter titled “Theological Reflections on the Dialogue with the Orthodox Church from an Eastern Catholic Perspective,” Thomas Mark Németh presents methodological and thematical considerations for a dialogue between the Orthodox Church and Eastern Catholic Churches. He argues for the need to seeing the Catholic Church as a communion of churches which includes the Eastern Catholic Churches. He suggests that search for complementarity and the development of a dialogue of life could help the churches to reexamine theological issues and their relationship. Building upon the insights of the previous two chapters, the final contribution of this part titled “The Question of ‘Uniatism’ in the Framework of the Orthodox-Catholic Dialogue and the Ecclesiological Option of Communio” by Dimitrios Keramidas analyzes two official statements

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produced by the Orthodox-Catholic theological dialogue (Freising 1990 and Balamand 1993), both of which condemned proselytism and jurisdictional conversions as a method and model for unity. In light of the ecclesiology of communion and the eucharistic theology this chapter suggests that Orthodox and Byzantine Catholics can coexist side by side on the local level and exchange their synodal experience. We hope that you will enjoy reading this volume as much as we enjoyed putting it together. If you would like to continue to explore these topics together, please do get involved: subscribe to the newsletter of the Orthodox-Eastern Catholic Dialogue Group,6 visit and contribute to some of our future conferences,7 recommend this book to your colleagues, or do anything else that would move this dialogue forward. Let us do it with the guidance of the Holy Spirit in following the exhortation of Apostle Paul from 1 Corinthians 1:10: “Now I exhort you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be made in the same mind and in the same judgement.” Tübingen and Stuttgart, Germany Washington, DC, USA

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 https://oec.dialogue.group/newsletter  We plan to hold the next event in Lviv, Ukraine, in 2021.

Vladimir Latinovic Anastacia K. Wooden

Contents

 First Step Toward the Dialogue Between Orthodox and A Eastern Catholic Churches  1 Vladimir Latinovic Historical Impulses  17  Caught in the Crossfire: Toward Understanding Medieval and Early Modern Advocates of Church Union 19 Yury P. Avvakumov  Brief History of the Union of Brest and Its Interpretations 41 A Anastacia K. Wooden  Union of Brest: Saints or Villains? 63 Anastacia K. Wooden and Natallia Vasilevich  “Kyivan Christianity”: Early Modern Cultural History and Impulses for Dialogue Between Churches in Ukraine 87 Ivan Almes

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 Identity and Institutional Allegiance in Romanian Uniate Church History (1700–1900)101 Laura Stanciu  The Judicial and Canonical Situation of the Romanian Byzantine Catholics in Hungary Around 1900117 Paul Brusanowski  The Bulgarian Orthodox Church and Its Perception of the Bulgarian Uniates141 Vladislav Atanassov  The Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Bishops at the Second Vatican Council: The Participation in the Council and Contribution to the Discussions of Conciliar Documents161 Mariia Ivaniv  The U.S.S.R., Greek Catholics, and the Vatican “Ostpolitik” in the 1960s–1970s: Grey Zone and the Stumbling Blocks185 Nadezhda Beliakova Theological Impulses 201  The Filioque Issue in the Light of the Catechism of the Ukrainian Catholic Church and in Dialogue with V. Bolotov’s “33 Theses”203 Theodoros Alexopoulos  Eastern Catholicism and the Reunion of the Churches in Vladimir Soloviev’s Political Ecclesiology219 Nathaniel Wood  Eucharistic Ecclesiology in the Russian Religious Renaissance as Instruction in Orthodox - Eastern Catholic Ecumenism239 Daniel Kisliakov

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Paul Evdokimov and Una Sancta: A Russian Orthodox Theologian in Search of Ecumenical Unity261 Peter C. Phan  The Specificity of the Greek-Catholic Ecclesiology in the Thinking of the Romanian Theological School281 Alexandru Buzalic  Synodical Principle as the Key to Church Unity301 Irakli Jinjolava Church as Koinonia: Exploring the Ecumenical Potential of John Zizioulas’s Communio Ecclesiology317 Tihomir Lazić  Theological Reflections on the Dialogue with the Orthodox Church from an Eastern Catholic Perspective339 Thomas Mark Németh  The Question of “Uniatism” in the Framework of the Orthodox-Catholic Dialogue and the Ecclesiological Option of Communio355 Dimitrios Keramidas Index375

Notes on Contributors

Theodoros  Alexopoulos is Professor of Dogmatics, Patristics, and Ecumenical Theology at the University College of Teacher Education Vienna/Krems (KPH), Austria. He worked as an academic assistant, a visiting lecturer, and a research fellow at the Universities of Athens, Heidelberg, Bern, Fribourg, Vienna, and Munich. His research is focused on many dogmatic topics with ecumenical relevance such as Filioque, primacy, and distinction between essence and energies. He belongs to the Orthodox Church. Ivan Almes  is a senior lecturer in the Department of Modern Ukrainian History at the Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU), Lviv, Ukraine. His research interests include religious history, history of monasticism, and cultural history of early modern Ukraine. He is an academic coordinator of the research program “Kyivan Christianity” at UCU.  He is a member of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. He is one of the co-authors of the book At Cultural Crossroads: The Holy Trinity Shrine and Monastery in Vilnius (2017). Vladislav  Atanassov  studied theology and history at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski.” He worked as an ecumenical scholar of the “Diakonisches Werk der EKD” at the Theological Faculty of Heidelberg and as an intern at the Konfessionskundliches Institut Bensheim. He is member of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. He is a freelance writer for church media. His research focuses on church history and the ecumenical relationships of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. He is prexix

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paring for publication of the Dictionary of Bilateral Dialogues Between the Evangelical Church of Germany and the Orthodox Churches in Bulgarian. Yury P. Avvakumov  is Associate Professor of Theology and History of Christianity at the University of Notre Dame, USA, and a priest of the Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church. A native of St. Petersburg, Russia, and a naturalized German, he graduated in Orthodox Theology from the Orthodox Theological Academy, St. Petersburg, and received his doctorate in Catholic Theology from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich. Prior to coming to Notre Dame, he served as Professor and Dean of Humanities at Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, Ukraine. His publications include Die Entstehung des Unionsgedankens (Berlin, 2002); Mytropolyt Sheptyts’kyi i hreko-katolyky v Rosii (Lviv, 2004); and Vytoky uniinoho bohoslovia (Lviv 2011). Nadezhda Beliakova  is a senior research fellow at the Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Science, and an associate professor at First Moscow State Medical University, Moscow, Russia. She also teaches Sunday school in the Russian Orthodox parish of St. Alexander Nevsky. Her research interests include communication between the Christians from the Soviat Union and abroad during the Cold War and gender in religious communities in the USSR.  She co-authored “Es gibt keinen Gott!” Kirchen und Kommunismus. Eine Konfliktgeschichte (2016); Zhenshchiny v evangel’skikh obshchinakh poslevoennogo SSSR (2015); and Zhenshchina v pravoslavii: tserkovnoe pravo i rossiiskaia praktika (2011). Paul  Brusanowski  is Professor of Church History at the Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania. He serves as director of the Department of Orthodox Theology in Sibiu, where he also received his doctoral degree in 2004. He is President of the Theological Commission of the National Council for Attesting Titles, Diplomas and Certificates (CNATDCU) in Romania. His area of interest is the relationship between state and religion in Southeastern Europe. His recent publications include Rumänisch-orthodoxe Kirchenordnungen. 1786–2008: Siebenbürgen  Bukowina  - Rumänien, Böhlau Verlag Köln (2011). He belongs to the Romanian Orthodox Church. Alexandru Buzalic  is Professor of Dogmatic Theology at the Faculty of Greek-Catholic Theology, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. He serves as a priest of the Romanian Church United with

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Rome, Greek-Catholic. He graduated from Babeș-Bolyai University (Cluj) and from the University of Bucharest. His recent publications include Twilight of Civilizations. The Meta-analysis of the Spirituality of Cultural Transitions (2017), Migration and Religion (2016), Christian Demonology. Revelation, Tradition and Reason (2010), Psychology of Religion (second edition 2010), and Ekklesia. From the Issues of Contemporary Ecclesiology (2005). Mariia Ivaniv  is a Ph.D. student at The Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies, the University of St. Michael’s College, Toronto, Canada. She is a Ukrainian Greco-Catholic laywoman. She holds a Re.M.A., M.A., and S.T.L. in Theology and Religious Studies from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, and M.A. and S.T.B. in Theology from the Ukrainian Catholic University, Ukraine. Ivaniv was a lecturer at Three Holy Hierarchs Kyiv Theological Seminary, Kyiv, Ukraine, and a teaching assistant in the Theology Department at the Ukrainian Catholic University, Lviv, Ukraine. Irakli Jinjolava  is a Doctoral candidate in Theology at the Institute of Orthodox Theology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU), Munich, Germany. After studying at Tbilisi Theological Seminary, he continued studying theology in Germany (Eichstätt and Munich) and in Greece (Thessaloniki). He received his Master of Advanced Studies (M.A.S.) in Ecumenical Studies from the University of Geneva, Ecumenical Institute at Bossey, Switzerland. Tonsured as a monk in 2017, he serves as deacon of the Orthodox Church of Georgia since 2018. Dimitrios Keramidas  is Adjunct Professor of Ecumenism at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum), Rome, Italy. He also teaches Orthodox theology at Hellenic Open University. He is a Greek Orthodox (Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople). He has studied Missiology at the Pontifical Gregorian University. His research interests include mission theology, theology of religions, ecumenical theology, and inter-Christian dialogue. He is a member of the Center of Ecumenical, Missiological and Environmental Studies “Metropolitan Panteleimon Papageorgiou” (CEMES). His recent publications include Ortodossia greca ed. Europa (2016) and Orthodoxy and Gospel in the 21st Century: Testing Missionary Self-Awareness (in Greek; 2017).

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Daniel  Kisliakov  is a Doctoral candidate at the University of Divinity, Melbourne, Australia. He is completing a thesis on the development of eucharistic ecclesiology, focusing on Sergius Bulgakov, Nicholas Afanasiev, and other theologians. He has also completed an M.A. by research and a Graduate Diploma in Theology. He teaches topics related to the Russian Orthodox Church, while his research is focused on the Russian Religious Renaissance, Ecumenical Movement, as well as Orthodox diaspora in Australia. Vladimir  Latinovic  lectured Patristics at the University of Tübingen, Germany, and he is currently project manager of the project “Treasure of the East” at the Academy DRS, Stuttgart. He holds an undergraduate degree from the Faculty of Orthodox Theology at the University of Belgrade and a Ph.D. from the Catholic Theological Faculty at the University of Tübingen. He serves as director and vice-chair of the Ecclesiological Investigations International Research Network and as cochair of the Network’s American Academy of Religion unit. His latest monograph is titled Christologie und Kommunion: Liturgische Einführung und Rezeption der homoousianischen Christologie published by Aschendorff in 2020. He belongs to the Serbian-Orthodox Church. Tihomir  Lazić  is Senior Lecturer in Systematic Theology at Newbold College of Higher Education, England, and Director of Public Campus Ministry at the Trans-European Division of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. He completed his Doctorate in Theology from the University of Oxford, specializing in contemporary ecclesiology. His recent publications include Towards an Adventist Version of Communio Ecclesiology: Remnant in Koinonia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). Thomas Mark Németh  is Professor of Theology of the Eastern Churches at the Faculty of Catholic Theology, the University of Vienna, Austria. He holds Doctoral degrees in Theology and Law from this university and habilitated there in the theology and history of the Christian East. He is a consultant of Pro Oriente Foundation and co-chair of the Orthodox-Eastern Catholic Dialogue Group. His areas of research and interest include history of Eastern Churches in Central and Eastern Europe (especially in Ukraine), the notion of tradition, Byzantine liturgy, art, and canon law. He serves as a priest of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.

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Peter C. Phan  is the inaugural holder of the Ignacio Ellacuria Chair of Catholic Social Thought at Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA. His research deals with the theology of icon in Orthodox theology, patristic theology, eschatology, the history of Christian ­missions in Asia, liberation, inculturation, and interreligious dialogue. A priest of the Roman Catholic Church and a holder of three doctorate degrees, he is the author and editor of over 30 books and over 300 essays. He was the first non-Anglo to be elected President of Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA) and President of American Theological Society (2001–2002) and a 2010 recipient of the John Courtney Murray Award— the highest honor bestowed by the CTSA. Laura Stanciu  is associate professor in the Department of History at the “1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia, Romania. She also held internships at Pro Oriente Foundation, Vienna, and at the Institute of History, Budapest. An Eastern Catholic, she is interested in church history and interconfessional relations in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Her latest publications include Entre Oriente y Occidente. Sobre la Iglesia de los rumanos de Transilvania (Madrid, 2014); Die Union der RumÄnen Siebenbürgens mit der Kirche von Rom (Bucureşti, 2010, 2015); and The Romanian Uniate Church History Through His Synodal Acts (1782–1900): Volume of Documents (Budapest, 2017). Natallia Vasilevich  is Director of Centre Ecumena, Minsk, Belarus. She is completing her Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Bonn, Germany, on the social doctrine of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church. She holds an M.A. in Political Sciences from the Belarusian State University and Ecumenical Studies from the University of Bonn, Germany. She belongs to Greek Orthodox Metropolis in Germany (Ecumenical Patriarchate). She is a member of the Task Reference Group on ecclesiology of the Conference of European Churches. Nathaniel Wood  is Associate Director of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center of Fordham University, USA.  He attends a parish of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. He received his Ph.D. in Systematic Theology from Fordham University and Master of Theological Studies from Emory University. His recent research and publications have focused on Orthodox political theology, particularly on Russian Orthodox engagement with democracy, political liberalism, and human rights theory.

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Anastacia  K.  Wooden  is Managing Director of the Institute for the Study of Eastern Christianity at The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, USA, where she also teaches systematic theology. Her research interests include ecclesiology, ecumenism, Vatican II, and especially the interaction between the Russian Orthodox and the Catholic theologians in Paris in the 1930s–1960s. She is a member of the Adult Faith Formation Team at St. Francis of Assisi Parish (Roman Catholic Church). She is completing a monograph on the life and theology of the Russian Orthodox theologian Nicholas Afanasiev.

A First Step Toward the Dialogue Between Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches Vladimir Latinovic

How does a dialogue between the two separated Christian churches begin? At present we have several larger and smaller bilateral ecumenical dialogues1 and we also have a multilateral dialogue that takes place at the World Council of Churches.2 These dialogues are led by powerful church 1  On different bilateral dialogues see Angelo Maffeis, Ecumenical Dialogue (Collegeville, MI: Liturgical Press, 2005), 39–48. 2  On different documents produced during this dialogue see Lukas Vischer and Harding Meyer, eds., Growth in Agreement: Reports and Agreed Statements of Ecumenical Conversations on a World Level (New York: Paulist Press, 1984); Jeffrey Gros et  al., eds., Growth in Agreement 2: Reports and Agreed Statements of Ecumenical Conversations on a World Level 1982–1998 (New York: Paulist Press, 1992); Jeffrey Gros et al., eds., Growth in Agreement 3: Reports and Agreed Statements of Ecumenical Conversations on a World Level 1998–2005 (New York: Paulist Press, 2007); Thomas F.  Best et  al., eds., Growth in Agreement 4.1: Reports and Agreed Statements of Ecumenical Conversations on a World Level 2004–2014 (Geneva: World Council of Churches Publications, 2017); Thomas F.  Best et  al., eds., Growth in Agreement 4.2: Reports and Agreed Statements of Ecumenical Conversations on a

V. Latinovic (*) University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany Academy DRS, Stuttgart, Germany © The Author(s) 2021 V. Latinovic, A. K. Wooden (eds.), Stolen Churches or Bridges to Orthodoxy?, Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55442-2_1

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leaders and esteemed and highly educated theology professors. Hundreds or even thousands of pages of ecumenical documents are discussed, drafted, produced, and signed (although in most cases, unfortunately, not enforced). Scholarly books and articles in journals are written analyzing them and exploring their potential for the good of the church and world. Theology students learn about them in their classes and bemoan the fact that there are so many that need to be memorized. And finally, in some cases, if they are successful, these dialogues open new perspectives for Christian collaboration and joint action. But, how does a new dialogue begin? At the University of Tübingen, where I taught for many years, there is a story about the university founder Count Eberhard (1445–1496), who decided he wanted to have his own university.3 At that time, it was a matter of prestige to have one so everyone understood why he wanted this. The real surprise came when he said where he wanted to establish it. Everyone was shocked at the announcement of his choice for Tübingen. At that time Tübingen was nothing but a small village far away from the main roads and with no real historical or political significance. Of course, his advisors tried to persuade him against such madness by warning him of the strategic liability of the town that no one would want to study there and so on. But, despite the criticism, he stood firm by his choice. When asked to explain his decision, he simply responded with “attempto” (Latin for “I dare”). With this phrase, he meant that one must take risks in order to succeed. The Count went on to establish the university where he wanted. And, not only did it work but it became one of the most eminent universities in Germany and one of the most respected across the world. “Attempto” to this day remains the motto of the University of Tübingen,

World Level 2004–2014 (Geneva: World Council of Churches Publications, 2017). In addition to the bilateral and multilateral dialogues we also have the so-called interreligious dialogue, which although it is a dialogue it is not considered an ecumenical dialogue because its goal is not unity between different religions but tolerance between them. On the achievements of interreligious dialogue see Catherine Cornille, ed., The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Inter-Religious Dialogue (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2013); Douglas Pratt, Christian Engagement with Islam: Ecumenical Journeys Since 1910 (Leiden: Brill, 2017); Francis X.  Clooney, The Future of Hindu–Christian Studies: A Theological Inquiry (Oxon/New York: Routledge, 2017.). 3  About the foundation of the University of Tübingen see Waldemar Teufel, “Die Gründung der Universität Tübingen. Wagnis und Gelingen—Anstöße und Vorbilder.” In: Beiträge zur Geschichte der Universität Tübingen 1477 bis 1977, edited by Hansmartin Decker-Hauff et al., Vol. 1 (Tübingen: Universität Tübingen, 1977).

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encouraging generations of scholars to think “outside the box” and boldly try new things, especially those which others perceive as impossible.4 So, what is the point of this story and how does this help us answer the question of how a new dialogue begins? Any dialogue, in my opinion, begins with a small group of overconfident and slightly eccentric people, or even a single individual, who decide to try something new, something that most of the “normal” people think to be impossible. Once they try, they either fail and fall into oblivion or, and this happens frequently enough, realize that the undoable thing can actually be done and even done quite well. From that moment on such people are called “visionaries” but they are just normal people that were not afraid of trying. The point I wish to make is if we don’t dare to try new and sometimes even impossible things, then we are definitely bound to fail. If you know that without trying you are going to fail, why not try anyway and take a risk of succeeding? And this is the answer to our question of how a new dialogue begins: It begins with someone who decides to try! In this introductory chapter I would like to say a few words about the conference “Stolen Churches or Bridges to Orthodoxy: Impulses for the Dialogue between the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches,” which took place in Stuttgart in 2019 and which is a try to start a new dialogue.5 The purpose of such an overview is to provide the historical timeline of the events which led to this conference and material, should anyone one day explore what came (or didn’t came) out of this project. Since we are already planning further conferences between Orthodox and Eastern Catholics,6 perhaps their organizers or the editors of future volumes can do the same so that we have some sort of a progress report of this dialogue. I also hope that insight into how such a large international conference is organized will benefit younger scholars who could see how complex but also how exciting the entire process of organizing such an event really is. 4  This is what distinguished Tübingen from other universities also in the field of theology. The most famous case is of course that of Hans Küng who, for his rejection of papal infallibility in his book Unfehlbar? Eine Anfrage (Zürich/Einsiedeln/Köln, Benziger Verlag, 1970), was stripped of his missio canonica—a license to teach as a Roman Catholic theologian. Nevertheless, the University of Tübingen decided to keep him as tenured professor and for that purpose separated the Institute for Ecumenical Investigations from the Catholic Theological Faculty. 5  On more about the conference see https://oec.dialogue.group/stuttgart2019/. 6  If all goes well, the next conference should take place in Lviv, Ukraine, in 2022.

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The idea for the first Orthodox-Eastern Catholic conference in Stuttgart arose under rather unusual circumstances. In 2016 when I was working as a lecturer for patristics at the Catholic Theological Faculty of the University of Tübingen, I was approached by the director of the Catholic Academy in Stuttgart Dr. Verena Wodtke-Werner with the question if I would be interested in leading a project at her institution.7 The project would have had something to do with the Oriental and Orthodox Churches. When I asked for additional details on the project, she responded: “That would be completely up to you. We just want to do something that would help Orthodox and Oriental Christians and Churches in Germany.” I was quite taken by her reply for two reasons. First, it is extremely rare for someone to make an offer of this nature, giving complete freedom to a scholar to do things his/her own way, without setting at least some kind of boundaries.8 Second, this proposal came from the director of a Catholic Academy, who thought she needed to do something to help the Oriental and Orthodox Christians and Churches in Germany, which shows how far the ecumenical relationships between the two churches have improved. I would like to focus on this second aspect a bit more. Historically, relationships between the Catholic and the Orthodox Churches have been, to put it mildly, problematic.9 The Catholic Church has throughout history carried out multiple attempts to assimilate Orthodox Christians into its structures,10 often with the use of financial

 For more about the Academy see http://akademie-rs.de  This practice is generally a good thing, because if scholars were left to decide what to do themselves, we would, probably, have a bunch of silly or, even worse, unusable and inapplicable projects. 9  On the history of the division between Western and Eastern Churches see Aidan Nichols, Rome and the Eastern Churches: A Study in Schism, 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010). On attempts to mend this division and increase dialogue between the two churches see John Borelli and John H.  Erickson, The Quest for Unity: Orthodox and Catholics in Dialogue: Documents of the Joint International Commission and Official Dialogues in the United States, 1965–1995 (Crestwood: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996). 10  On the problem of Uniatism in general and its history see Taras Khomych, “Eastern Catholic Churches and the Question of ‘Uniatism’,” Louvain Studies, 31 (2006) 214–237. On the Orthodox perspective about Uniatism see Cyril Korolevsky, Uniatism: Definition, Causes, Effects, Scope, Dangers, Remedies (Fairfax, VA: Eastern Christian Publication, 2001). See also Joint International Commission for the Theological Dialogue Between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church (7th plenary session, 24 June 1993), Uniatism, Method of Union of the Past, and the Present Search for Full Communion. 7 8

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and political pressure, infiltration methods,11 and sometimes even with the use of violence.12 The Orthodox, on the other hand, at first chance pushed back and tried to reclaim some of their lost “canonical territory” and their former faithful and churches, and while doing so they deployed methods that could hardly be described as Christian.13 This relationship started improving first at the beginning of the century due to ecumenical contacts and it significantly improved after the Second Vatican Council. These churches after the Council came to a point where they started calling each other “sister Churches.”14 Today we are obviously in the situation in which these churches are trying to help each other without any apparent selfserving interest. I am not merely referring to this particular gesture of the Academy director, but to the manifestation of what appears to be a new “post-Vatican-II” generation of Catholics who wish to help their Oriental and Orthodox sisters and brothers with very little personal benefit—“for the good of their hearts.”15 And this is the true achievement of the ecumenical dialogue: genuine wish to help the other to prosper and to survive.

11  The Catholic Church had created entire institutions that were tasked to train priests of the Byzantine-Slavonic rite such as the Pontifical College Russicum. 12  For the methods of the Catholic mission, for example in Russia, see Robert Geraci and Michael Khodarkovsky, Of Religion and Empire: Missions, Conversion, and Tolerance in Tsarist Russia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018). A good overview of the Catholic mission among the Oriental Christians can be found in Eleanor H. Tejirian, Reeva Spector Simon, Conflict, Conquest, and Conversion: Two Thousand Years of Christian Missions in the Middle East (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 25–44. 13  As an example, see the case of the Orthodox Church cooperation in the liquidation of the Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine in the 1940s: Bohdan R. Bociurkiw, The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Soviet state (1939–1950) (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 1996). More personal accounts on suffering of Eastern Catholic individuals can be found in the three appendixes of the following: Constantin Simon, S.J., Pro Russia: The Russicum and the Catholic Work for Russia (Orientalia Christiana Analecta 283) (Rome: Pontifical Oriental Institute, 2009). It was not only communists who persecuted Greek Catholics in Russia. Nicolas I for example forcefully converted Catholics to Orthodoxy. For this and for other forceful persecutions, see a truly excellent article: Robert Taft, “Perceptions and Realities in Orthodox-Catholic Relations Today: Reflections on the Past, Prospects for the Future,” in G. Demacopoulos and A. Papanikolaou, eds., Orthodox Constructions of the West. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013). 14  See Will Cohen, The Concept of Sister Churches in Catholic-Orthodox Relations Since Vatican II (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2017). 15  Some more skeptical Orthodox would say “sure, just wait and see, Catholics are all wolves in sheep’s hide. They always have some motive when they are helping us,” a sentiment that reflects just how deep the historical wounds and the mistrust between the Churches are.

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To come back to the proposal to run a project at the Academy: I considered it for a while because this meant that I would have to divert some of my time from my research to the practical considerations that running such a project would normally entail. Ultimately, I said yes, and this is how the project “Treasure of the East” came to existence.16 I identified poor visibility of the Oriental and the Orthodox Churches in Germany as their main disadvantage,17 and the project team (me and few assistants) started working on this. This entailed organizing several conferences with the goal of helping people realize what a great treasure they have in these ancient Churches and Christians.18 For the same purpose, we created a first German Oriental and Orthodox internet news portal (ostkirchen. info) which is intended to inform the public about the activities of these churches both in their homelands as well as in Germany.19 Besides that, we started continuous education courses with the intention of supporting Oriental and Orthodox religious leaders (priests), helping them integrate better into society, and filling the educational gap which exists between them and their Catholic or Protestant colleagues. The Catholic diocese Rottenburg-Stuttgart, to which the Academy belongs, was happy with how the project was developing and so was its bishop, Dr. Gebhard Fürst. He was apparently so proud of the fact that his diocese and Academy had a project run by an Orthodox theologian to help Oriental and Orthodox Churches that he wanted to do even more. In April 2018, the auxiliary bishop Matthäus Karrer contacted me and But I genuinely believe that most of the Catholics today don’t have hidden agendas, and I would go so far to say that this applies even to the current pope, Francis. 16  The name of the project comes from the wording of the decree Unitatis Redintegratio 14. More about the project (in German) can be found here: https://www.akademie-rs.de/ projekte/schatz-des-orients/ 17  Their main problem is that hardly anybody knows about them so they are not involved in any project that the state is conducting. This means that they have very little access to any state funding which other Churches are getting for social projects. 18  This was also in accordance with the name of the project. The phrase “Treasure of the East” comes from Vatican II’s decree on the ecumenism Unitatis Redintegratio 14 which states: “Similarly it must not be forgotten that from the beginning the Churches of the East have had a treasury from which the Western Church has drawn extensively—in liturgical practice, spiritual tradition, and law. Nor must we undervalue the fact that it was the ecumenical councils held in the East that defined the basic dogmas of the Christian faith, on the Trinity, on the Word of God Who took flesh of the Virgin Mary. To preserve this faith these Churches have suffered and still suffer much.” 19  Already in the first year this portal had a huge success, with 35.000 unique readers (IPs) and over 2 million clicks.

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told me that the bishop wanted to offer me another responsibility: to represent the diocese in a body of the German Conference of Bishops (Deutsche Bischofskonferenz—DBK) which is in charge of the Eastern Catholic Churches. The Academy director was excited with this prospect and she hoped I would accept this honor. But, as flattered I was with this prospect, it was clear to me from the start that I could not accept it. As Orthodox theologian I could not sit in the commission with the representatives of the Eastern Churches, which the many Orthodox have almost no contact with and who they see as “stolen Churches.” I would, so to say, sit on their side of the table of my own Church. Furthermore, I would be seen from my fellow Orthodox as a “traitor.” Such challenges would ultimately mean that I could not properly represent the Eastern Catholic Church in such a commission, because I am not one of “them” and I do not know enough about them. I politely rejected the offer for which the bishop had a lot of understanding. While rejecting it though, I mentioned how much I wished I could have been in a position to accept it and that I would like to do something about this troubled relationship between the Orthodox and the Eastern Catholic, and I really meant it. I spent long hours thinking of what could be done to improve the relationship between these Churches. The problem was that the official dialogue could only be started by formally recognized leaders of these Churches, and they either dislike or avoid each other or they are doing nothing to improve the state of affairs, which is in my opinion even worse. I realized that if we (theologians) don’t do something ourselves (like we did with the ecumenical movement) we could end up waiting fifty or hundred years until our leaders decide to move things forward. But I was also thinking a lot about what I could do personally, because I am still a young and emerging scholar, and I am not (and probably will never be) part of any official dialogue commission.20 In addition to that, I have very little influence over Orthodox leaders nationally or internationally and very few in the Eastern Churches know my work. On paper, the situation seemed to be rather desperate. There was no solution for the conundrum of what could be done. But then I decided that I needed to think more positively and try focusing on things that we could do instead on things that we could not. And it dawned on me that

20  It seems to me that some of those who are part of such commissions are usually politically not interested in moving things forward.

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I could organize a conference. This is something I knew how to do21 and this would not hurt the relationships between the Orthodox and Eastern Catholics and it might even end up improving them. I imagined there might be other people who are in the same situation as I am, people who would like to see Orthodox and Eastern Catholic relationship get better but probably also don’t know how. These were the people who I hoped would participate in the conference. Admittedly, the conference would not take the place of an official dialogue between the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches, but it could provide first impulses for such a dialogue. And so, I started making plans for the conference in Stuttgart. At approximately the same time, in July 2018 (now late) Gerard Mannion,22 chair of the Ecclesiological Investigations International Research Network (EI),23 wrote an email to Mark Chapman and me,24 asking us if we had any ideas for the next annual EI conference in 2019. Up to that point, EI had held twelve large ecumenical conferences in places like Assisi, Oxford, Washington (DC), and Hong Kong but had also founded projects in some countries with Orthodox or Oriental presence such as Kerala (India) and Belgrade (Serbia).25 When I received his email it dawned to me that the conference that I began to organize and which I already announced to some people could be co-organized with the EI as their annual event. So, I suggested this to Gerard and Mark. They both accepted this idea with great enthusiasm but also with a bit of skepticism because they thought the topic might be “a bit too special and narrow in order to appeal to the regular EI customers.” Nevertheless, they were keen to have this as an annual conference, which in the next few weeks we also officially announced. The minor problem that they had with the idea of the conference being an EI event was the title. I wrote to them from the start and told them that I named the conference “Stolen Churches or Bridges to Orthodoxy? Impulses for the Theological Dialogue Between the Orthodox and the Eastern Catholic Churches” and that I already announced it under that name. Tolerant and sensible ecumenical theologians as they were/are,  Up to that point I had (co)organized seven large international conferences.  Prof. Mannion, who was a dear friend, unexpectedly died at the age of forty-eight in September 2019. See https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/visual_stories/gerardmannion-profile-of-a-connected-scholar. 23  See http://ei-research.net/. 24  Mark Chapman and I were, at that point, and still are, vice-chairs of the EI. 25  See http://ei-research.net/past-events/. 21 22

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they were not so comfortable with that title. Gerard thought that “the term stolen is just too negative and also perhaps the title may be just a touch esoteric for wider audiences” and suggested to go with “Obstacles to Ecumenism or Bridges to Orthodoxy” or something similar. Mark thought that people might misunderstand the title, as if we are claiming that these Churches were stolen. Both were of course right to a point, but I remained stubborn and insisted to keep this title for several reasons. This is what I wrote to them: “Stolen Churches” is what Orthodox consider these Churches to be—literally—and the term is not even negative enough if it should express their feelings about this. On the other side Catholics talk about them as “Bridges to Orthodoxy.” Trying to soften that now would only aggravate the Orthodox (and it is crucial that they get involved). Sorry to take that example and sorry for being emotional but the Irish would be annoyed if someone would talk about the centuries-long English oppression as “mild misunderstanding.”

The Irish reference worked, especially with Gerard who himself was Irish, so we agreed to keep this “nicely controversial title” as Mark described it later, but only under the condition that we explain what we meant by it in the call for papers.26 At this point we also considered who we wanted to involve in this conference and how to keep representative balance. We wanted approximately an equal number of speakers from both sides (Orthodox and Eastern Catholic) so everyone would get the same opportunity to voice their opinions regardless of how painful or radical they were, provided that they stay within the boundaries of good behavior and mutual respect.27 We would invite both theology professors and church leaders so that all groups of these churches are represented and we would have people from other denominations because they could offer us examples of how their churches managed to resolve conflicts of the past. Unfortunately, dealing with hierarchy and professors of the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches meant that not too many women would be 26  Our call for papers included this crucial explanation: https://oec.dialogue.group/ stuttgart2019-call-for-papers/. 27  I realize this could sound strange to the “Western” reader, but both Orthodox and Eastern Catholics are very emotional, and it is sometimes hard to keep emotions under control. The volatile temper is beside a big part of theology, liturgy, and practice just another thing that Orthodox and Eastern Catholics share.

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present at the conference.28 We tried compensating for this by inviting as many female theology students as we could, and many (but still not enough!) of them participated. Our next task was to inform the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic church leadership on about our plans. Gerard Mannion was a good friend to Bishop Brian Farrell who, besides being a Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (PCPCU) is also Irish. Gerard wrote an email to the bishop inviting him to take part in the conference. This is what Bishop Farrell wrote in his answer from 8th October: Thanks for your letter about the next EI Conference. I talked to Cardinal Koch about it and we would feel honored for the PCPCU to be a sponsor. Thanks for the kind invitation to such a timely event, altogether very relevant in the present circumstances. It is too soon for me to be able to answer but I do hope that I can finally take part in one of your conferences.

We were all a bit taken by this response because we received more than we asked for, but we were also incredibly happy. Without even planning it we ended up with the official sponsorship of the event by the PCPCU.29 At the same time I was personally also slightly worried. We wanted to have a balanced event, a conference at which Orthodox and Eastern Catholic would be equally represented, and now we had the PCPCU officially endorsing the conference. To restore the balance, we needed the official Orthodox support. I wrote a letter to the German Orthodox Bishops’ Conference (OBKD) asking them if they would be willing to accept an equal role as a partner and patron of the event. Thanks to the understanding of the chair of OBKD Metropolitan Dr. Augoustinos Lambardakis and with endorsement of the other bishops, this suggestion was accepted. Remarkably, with the organization of the impossible conference only two weeks from its start, we already had two such very important patrons. The event had become much more official than we would have ever thought possible!

28  Orthodox have barely begun a discussion of including women in the leadership structures or of having a higher percentage of female professors at their educational institutions. This is because they have many other urgent problems that are still not resolved and seem to grow as time passes and secondarily because the Orthodox Church changes more slowly than the other churches. 29  PCPCU did not support the conference financially but was only a patron of the event.

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At this point I also thought it would be wise to inform other Orthodox Church leaders about the conference, not so much to seek their participation (it was clear to us from the start that they will not come) but to either obtain their approval or at least establish their indifference for the conference.30 I hoped that by having invited them they would at least not prevent their clergy or/and theology professors from participating at the conference. I wrote emails to the Synods of all Orthodox Autocephalous Churches31 asking them to send representatives to the conference. For a long time, nobody answered, and this did not make me worried since I am used to the Orthodox, to which I belong, not responding to the emails and other correspondence,32 to which I don’t belong. To improve our chances, I also decided to send invitations to every single Orthodox theological faculty in the world and invite their professors to take part too. Silence… This was already December, and the conference was planned for July, so I started to get worried. Is it possible that no one is interested in such a “relevant event” as Bishop Farrell described it? Can it be that there is really no one who is interested in discussing and improving relationships between Orthodox and Eastern Catholic? At one point I was so anxious that I decided to write an email to a very esteemed German professor, who is also one of the most eminent experts on the Orthodox and their Churches, and who I only consult in rare and most complicated situations. I explained the situation to him and I also told him what I was planning to do with the conference. At the end of my email, I mentioned that so far nobody had responded to my invitations and asked him what, in his opinion, I was supposed to do. This is what he wrote back: Thanks for the mail. As soon as I got the first invitation, I was surprised at your optimism to host such a large conference about a topic that is so heavily debated. Even very open Orthodox theologians are not very willing to talk. 30  The alternative to that would be their direct opposition, which we wanted to avoid at any cost. 31  For non-Orthodox and non-Eastern Catholic readers: Orthodox Churches in most cases have two governing bodies. The largest and the most important one is the Council, which usually meets twice a year and at which every bishop is obliged to participate. This body could be compared to the parliament. The second one is the Synod, which is sort of a local church government. It usually consists of four or five bishops headed by the patriarch or archbishop. They are allowed to make daily decisions in the life of the church. 32  I guess being Orthodox entitles me to say this and it counts as self-criticism.

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You can understand that too, I think, because they cannot “solve” this problem and the positions are pretty clear. That has to happen on another level […]. I would advise you to cancel the big conference and try a different format—a small group of open-minded people, off the records, and not public. If such a group has met over several years, perhaps one can make a public event out of it.33

You can see from his response that experience guided his advice. But experience is tricky, and although in most cases it can be incredibly helpful, sometimes it is limiting and can intimidate us from trying new things, because we are so sure of the outcome. Instead of following this advice, I decided to resend all the invitations and reminded the recipients that they needed to respond. And, to my surprise and utter joy—they actually did! In no time we had almost eighty people who confirmed their participation and among them some very eminent Orthodox and Eastern Catholic theologians.34 Some others expressed their regret that they could not take part but almost all univocally said that they were very interested in the initiative. Not a single person wrote back and said that they disliked the idea about the conference, and almost all who could not attend wrote back to say that they would like to be involved in the future events, should there be any. But the real surprise was yet to come. I did not expect any Orthodox Church leader to respond so I was rather surprised when I received a letter from the Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, the chairman of the Department of External Church Relations and a permanent member of the Holy Synod of the Patriarchate of Moscow.35 In a very polite answer, he thanked us for the invitation but also felt the need to criticize our efforts (which is of course also acceptable and welcomed). He wrote: In this regard, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that until recently the Russian Orthodox Church participated in the work of the Joint Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church, within the framework of which all the theological issues concerning the relationships between the Orthodox and the  Translation mine.  For a full list of speakers see https://oec.dialogue.group/stuttgart2019-speakers/. 35  Metropolitan Hilarion earned his Catholic habilitation (advanced PhD) from the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). Among other things, he is also a member of the Joint Orthodox-Catholic Dialogue Commission. 33 34

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Catholics are discussed. The Eastern Churches that are in union with Rome adhere to the Catholic doctrine of faith and therefore there is no sense in a separate theological dialogue with these Churches.

In our opinion this answer reflected very much the core of the problem between the Orthodox and the Eastern Catholic. Orthodox always assumed that Rome speaks in name of the Eastern Catholic Churches, which to a degree it does. But the high level of autonomy exercised in these Churches gives them the right to have their own voice, which is not always the same as the voice of the Catholic Church and which is often not heard enough. Besides, if the Orthodox want to get closer to the Catholics, they can do this either directly or they can get closer to the Eastern Catholics, which would result in better relationships also with the Catholics.36 We (Gerard, Mark, and myself) sent our answer to Metropolitan Hilarion’s letter in which we said that, while fully appreciative of his perspective, we believe that a more direct dialogue and contact between the Orthodox and the Eastern Catholic Churches is necessary for the following reasons (direct quote from our letter): 1. Theological dialogue alone is simply not enough to reach unity, because theological differences were not the only reason behind the schism between the Eastern and Western churches [and removing them will not solve the schism]. With this conference, we want to help establish cordial contacts, channels of communication and therefore, perhaps, increased and better understanding between the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Christians.37 2. Regardless of the historical length of time the Eastern Catholic Churches have enjoyed union with the Roman Catholic Church, these churches have preserved many [I would now say “the most”] of the original Orthodox features with regard to their liturgy, substantial aspects of their ecclesiology (recognition of papal primacy excepted, of course) and, we might add, a significant “ecclesial mentality” akin to that of the Orthodox churches. We firmly believe that  See the article of Edward Siecienski on this: P. X.  This is the purpose of a “dialogue of love” in ecumenical methodology (as opposed to the second phase which is the “dialogue of truth”). On what such dialogue has already achieved in the relationship between the Orthodox and the Catholic Churches, see John Chryssavgis, Dialogue of Love: Breaking the Silence of Centuries (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014). 36 37

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deepening the contacts between these Churches will in the long run also bring additional benefits to the dialogue between the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Church. 3. We also feel that there is a possibility that if the canonical Orthodox churches do not engage in closer dialogue directly with the so-called Uniate Churches, they might risk the danger of leaving the space open for some other (non-canonical) Churches to work in this field. We understand how sensitive this example is for the Moscow Patriarchate, but as soon as the so-called Ukrainian Orthodox Church created their own structures, they began signaling their openness to dialogue with the Eastern Catholics. We did not receive any further answer to our letter from the Metropolitan, but several participants from the Russian Orthodox Church (including some very close to him) took part in the conference, so our explanation obviously bore some fruit. Later at the conference someone voiced his preference for not having Metropolitan or any other bishops there because people are usually more careful about what they say around bishops, making the atmosphere more tense. The closer we got to the conference date, the more it seemed that our event might work, and work well. What we were missing now were the finances. Since most of the speakers were coming from Eastern Europe, the financial hardships of travel and fees were severe. And this is where Renovabis38 (a charitable organization of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany, established to help people in Eastern and Central Europe) entered the scene and saved the day. They generously offered to cover costs for participants whose institutions would not cover these, and in addition to that they accepted my proposal to invite young (doctoral) students from these countries to participate in the conference. My plea was that these young people are the future of any dialogue. To our joy, we had over forty young scholars applying for these funds and, thanks to Renovabis, we were able to cover the costs for twenty theology students from Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Serbia, and Montenegro. Since they could not cover the costs of those who came outside of Eastern Europe, we had to find some other sponsors, which eventually we did.39  See https://www.renovabis.de/en/.  I would like to use this opportunity to mention them by name and to thank them: Orthodox Christian Studies Center, Fordham University; Berkley Center for Religion, 38 39

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The conference itself was, in the words of all the participants with which I talked with about this, a major success.40 We had almost ninety delegates from twenty-two countries including representatives of almost all major Christian denominations. We had fifty speakers coming from every Orthodox and Eastern Catholic country and Church and a very good line up of papers.41 Attendees collectively delved deeper into the question of what shapes and maintains differing ecclesiological perspectives, and partners in dialogue came to appreciate the sources of divisions and the sensitivities involved in helping to overcome ecclesial stand-offs of key historical moments as well as those of recent decades. The scholarly papers and presentations at the conference were of high quality, reflecting the earnest efforts of their authors in preparing for these vital exchanges. The harmonious interactions throughout the duration of the conference further demonstrated the fruits of those exchanges and in turn inspired still greater mutual engagement and understanding—often amidst laughter and merriment. The conference was characterized by a willingness to engage in dialogue, general openness for new ideas and opportunities to deal with problems and wounds that we inherited from the past. Participants also acknowledged the many similarities between the two traditions and ways to build new relationships. Respective liturgies from differing traditions which were celebrated during the conference were truly moving experiences and highlights for all present. In the Eastern Catholic liturgy, the Eucharistic prayer was recited by nine different priests, each in his own native language. This showed the remarkable diversity of the Eastern Catholic Churches. A few months before the event, I also started thinking about the long-­ term effects such a conference might have. While one conference is a step in the right direction, also because of published proceedings such as these,42 it is yet an isolated event and in itself not enough to secure a future Peace, and World Affairs; Chair for Roman-Catholic Ecclesiology and Ecumenism, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven; Collegium Orientale, Eichstätt; and finally Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies in Toronto. 40  This is not my evaluation but that of all the participants and media that covered the conference afterward. 41  See the list of speakers here: https://oec.dialogue.group/stuttgart2019-program/. 42  There are two volumes produced from this conference. The second is Vladimir Latinovic and Anastacia K. Wooden, Stolen Churches or Bridges to Orthodoxy? Ecumenical and Practical Impulses for the Dialogue Between Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).

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for change. If we want to initiate a new bilateral dialogue and improve the relationship between Orthodox and Eastern Catholics, one conference is just a single drop in the ocean. What else can we do? The answer to that question is to generate more “drops” and make as many as we can! And this is exactly our plan. We wish to continue this vital dialogue into the future by organizing further events that will provide additional opportunities for encounters between members of these churches. In order to facilitate this, a formal group called the “Orthodox-Eastern Catholic Dialogue Group” has been formed.43 The leadership of this group consists of both Orthodox and Eastern Catholic members.44 Our next conference is already being planned to be held in Lviv (Ukraine) in 2022. But this is in the future, and we do not know what the future will bring. Instead of pointless speculation, I would like to conclude this overview with something more concrete. If you are reading this volume, you are probably interested in the dialogue between these churches. We invite you to get involved in any way you see fitting. Please join our next conference, join our group, organize your own conference that would further the dialogue between these, or any other, churches.45 If you are Orthodox, go ahead and meet your local Eastern Catholic sisters and brothers and vice versa. Whatever you do, combined with the efforts of other people, will accumulate enough force which will hopefully move things forward.46 The time of quarrels and accusations is behind us. This is the time to get closer to each other and to fulfill the Lord’s command to love our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22:39). And who are these neighbors if not Orthodox and Eastern Catholics?

 Our website is https://oec.dialogue.group/.  See https://oec.dialogue.group/leadership/. 45  We would be happy to put information about it on our website. 46  See footnote 8. 43 44

HISTORICAL IMPULSES

Caught in the Crossfire: Toward Understanding Medieval and Early Modern Advocates of Church Union Yury P. Avvakumov

This chapter is an attempt to bridge historiography and ecclesiology. It critically engages modern historical research on a series of Later Medieval and Early Modern intellectuals and ecclesiastics who advocated for the union of Eastern Christians with the Roman Church and the pope. Late Byzantine adherents of union called themselves ἑνωτικοί (“united”). It seems possible to trace a “henotic,” or unionist, tradition as a religious movement spanning centuries and geographic regions. Despite undeniable differences of cultural contexts, there are a few essential features that unite all the “united” Eastern theologians and church leaders irrespective of their time, ethnicity, and culture. By exploring the interplay of continuities and discontinuities in their history and theological legacy, historians can contribute to a better ecclesiological understanding of the “Uniates” of our own day and thus to contemporary ecumenical discourse involving both Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Christians.

Y. P. Avvakumov (*) Department of Theology, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA © The Author(s) 2021 V. Latinovic, A. K. Wooden (eds.), Stolen Churches or Bridges to Orthodoxy?, Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55442-2_2

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1   Byzantine ἑνωτικοί: Prosopography Efforts to achieve reconciliation between the Roman Church and Byzantine Christianity began almost simultaneously with the rise of their disagreements and conflicts. Clashes between Old and New Rome (such as those in 867, 1054, and 1204, to mention only the best-known textbook dates) produced a vast amount of heated polemical literature, but also works of a more discreet and conciliatory nature. Starting from at least the thirteenth century, a group of ecclesiastical personalities and intellectuals slowly emerged on both sides who advocated for “peace” and “union” between the churches (pax/unio ecclesiarum, ἡ εἰρήνη/ἡ ἕνωσις τῶν ἐκκλησιῶν). Attempting to cross the borderline of their own ecclesiastical culture, many of them devoted their time to the study of the language, traditions, and theological writings of their counterparts. Most of them traveled between East and West and made acquaintances and friends among Christians of the other church. Their literary activity provided the theoretical backdrop for the formal act of union between Rome and Constantinople concluded in Florence in 1439. For the Byzantine period (prior to 1453), there were three “waves” of henotic movement among the Byzantines. The first one was connected with the union concluded at the Second Council of Lyon in 1274. The most prominent advocates of that union were Patriarch John Bekkos of Constantinople (ca. 1225–1297)1 and his associates Georgios Metochites (ca. 1250–1328)2 and Konstantinos Meliteniotes (d. 1307).3 The second wave came in the mid-fourteenth century with the figures of Barlaam of Calabria (d. 1348)4 and particularly Demetrios Kydones (c. 1324–c. 1397/1398).5 The latter was a high-ranking imperial official, a mesazon with personal ties to at least two Byzantine emperors (John V and John VI), in addition to being a bright intellectual and translator of Thomas Aquinas and other Latin authors into Greek. Demetrios stands in the 1  Erich Trapp (ed.), Prosopographisches Lexikon der Palaiologenzeit (Wien, 1976–1996; henceforth, PLP), 2548. 2  PLP 17979. 3  PLP 17856. 4  PLP 2284. 5  PLP 13876; Judith R. Ryder, The Career and Writings of Demetrius Kydones. A Study of Fourteenth-Century Byzantine Politics, Religion and Society (Leiden and Boston, 2010); Frinz Tinnefeld, “Einleiting,” in Demetrios Kydones, Briefe. Übers. und erläutert von Franz Tinnefeld. Vol. I, 1 (Stuttgart, 1981), 1–87.

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center of the fourteenth-century unionist movement. A series of intellectuals, aristocrats, and high officials belonging to his intellectual circle joined the union with the Roman Church under his influence or with his intellectual and practical support and advice, among them John V (Emperor in 1341–1391),6 Manuel Chrysoloras (c. 1350–1415),7 Manuel Kalekas (d. 1410),8 John Laskaris Kaloferos (d. 1392),9 Simon Atumanos (d. between 1383 and 1387),10 George Gabrielopoulos (d. 1383 or later),11 and others. The third and the last wave of Byzantine unionism arose with the negotiations between Latins and Greeks at the councils in Basel in 1431–1437 and in Ferrara-Florence in 1438–1439 which resulted in the union signed in Florence in 1439. The impact of this union proved to be particularly strong among the Greek participants of the council of Ferrara-­Florence and among the numerous Greek émigrés who came to the West, primarily to Italy, seeking refuge from the Ottomans in the decades before and immediately after 1453.12 Cardinal Bessarion (1399/1400–1472)13 and Metropolitan Isidore of Kyiv (c. 1390–1462)14 were the two most prominent personalities among the united Greeks of that period, many of whom made unique contributions to the rise of humanistic learning and the study of Greek language and literature in Western Europe in the fifteenth century; numbered among them were

6  On his conversion in Rome in 1369, see Oscar Halecki, Un Empereur de Byzance à Rome. Réimpression de l’édition originale et étude annexe (London, 1972) [Orig. ed.: Warszawa 1930]. 7  PLP 31165; Lydia Thorn-Wickert, Manuel Chrysoloras (ca. 1350–1415) (Frankfurt am Main, 2006). 8  PLP 10289. 9  PLP 10732. 10  PLP 1648. 11  PLP 3433. 12   On Greek émigrés, see: Jonathan Harris, Greek Emigres in the West 1400–1520 (Camberley, Surrey: Porphyrohenitus, 1995); Monfasani, John, “The Greeks and Renaissance Humanism,” in David Rundle (ed.), Humanism in Fifteenth-Century Europe (Oxford: The Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature, 2012), 31–78. See also Ihor Ševčenko, “Intellectual Repercussions of the Council of Florence,” Church History 24 (1955) 291–323. 13  PLP 2707; Claudia Märtl, Christian Kaiser/Thomas Ricklin (eds.), “Inter graecos latinissimus, inter latinos graecissimus.” Bessarion zwischen den Kulturen (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2013). 14  PLP 8300; Marios Philippides/Walter K. Hanak, Cardinal Isidore, c. 1390–1462. A Late Byzantine Scholar, Warlord, and Prelate (London and New York: Routledge, 2018).

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also personalities such as George of Trebizond (1395–c. 1471),15 Theodore Gazes (ca. 1400–ca. 1475/6),16 John Argyropoulos (ca. 1415–1487),17 Michael Apostoles (ca. 1420–ca. 1474 or 1484),18 and Demetrios Chalkokandyles (1423–1511).19 In the late thirteenth to  fifteenth centuries, there was also a number of Mendicants of Greek origin who overall seem to be more Latinized than members of secular clergy due to the education they received in their order and their involvement in its activities, but who nevertheless, to a greater or a lesser degree, cherished their Greek identity and worked for the union of Greeks and Latins. Among them, Franciscan John Parastron (d. 1275),20 as well as Dominicans Manuel Kalekas (already noted earlier among the friends and protégés of Demetrios Kydones), and the three Chrysoberges brothers—Maximos (d. between 1411 and 1429),21 Theodore (d. before 1430),22 and Andrew (d. 1451)23—deserve to be mentioned.24

2   The Byzantine Henotic Movement in Historical Context The motivations that led these people (together with numerous others not mentioned here because of space constraints) to a union with the Roman Church were diverse. At least three factors contributed to the rise of the henotic tendencies in late Byzantium. The first one was the relentlessly growing threat of Muslim conquest. The fear of the Turks was for the Byzantines a powerful motive for seeking reconciliation and union with the Roman Church, in the expectation that the pope and Western rulers would be more prone to provide military aid against the Ottomans to 15  PLP 4120; John Monfasani, George of Trebizond. A Biography and a Study of His Rhetoric and Logic (Leiden: Brill, 1976). 16  PLP 3450. 17  PLP 1267. 18  PLP 1201. 19  PLP 30511. 20  PLP 21910. 21  PLP 31123. 22  PLP 31113. 23  PLP 31106. 24  On the activities of the Mendicants in the East, see: Delacroix-Besnier, Claudine, Les Dominicains et la chrétienté grecque aux XIVe et XVe siècles (Rome: École française de Rome, 1997); Tsougarakis, Nickiphoros I., The Latin Religious Orders in Medieval Greece, 1204–1500 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012).

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Christians in full ecclesiastical unity with Rome. The second factor was the internal Byzantine conflict over the theology of Gregory Palamas which culminated in the condemnations of his adversaries by the councils summoned in Constantinople in 1341, 1347, and 1351. After these condemnations, everyone who publicly expressed disagreement with Palamas’ teachings was seen as a heretic. Adversaries of Palamite theology were thus, in effect, forced out of their native church;25 a number of them— especially those who resented the harsh anti-Latinism of most Palamites— sought refuge in union with Rome. The third factor was the rise of the interest in Latin scholastic theology and philosophy, particularly Thomas Aquinas, among the Byzantines. This interest developed simultaneously with growing dissatisfaction over the state of theological knowledge and education at home. The slighting attitude toward Frankish “barbarians” which was so typical for the Byzantines in the eleventh and twelfth centuries gave way in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to admiration before the Latin theological and philosophical achievements among the humanistically minded26 Byzantine intellectuals. One of the catalysts of this interest was the missionary work of Latin Mendicants in the East. In particular, Dominicans from the convent in Pera, founded in 1299, were able to establish close personal ties with high-ranking Byzantine officials and intellectuals like Demetrios Kydones and supply them with the authoritative texts of Latin scholastic theology.27 The movement toward the Roman Church was countered—and on the Byzantine territory mostly outweighed—by the opposite tendency among clergy and monks promoting aversion towards the Latins and blaming them for grave theological errors and ecclesiastical as well as political offenses. This loathing of the Latins was inherited from the conflicts of the ninth, eleventh, and particularly thirteenth centuries, when a series of charges against them arose, which by the fifteenth century had crystallized into five main theological points (πέντε διαφοραί): the procession of the Holy Spirit (the issue of the Filioque); Eucharistic bread (leavened in the Greek Church, unleavened in the Latin); purgatory; the question of the 25  This has been well shown recently by Marcus Plested, Orthodox Readings of Aquinas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 115–120. 26  This aspect has been underscored by Gerhard Podskalsky, Von Photios zu Bessarion. Der Vorrang humanistisch geprägter Theologie in Byzanz und deren bleibende Bedeutung (Wiesbaden, 2003). 27  Delacroix-Besnier, Les Dominicains, 435; Tsougarakis, The Latin Religious Orders, 186–189.

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beatitude of the saints; and papal primacy. Along with this, however, the political and military offense of the conquest and plundering of Constantinople by the crusaders in 1204 played a prominent, if not the decisive, role in the estrangement and conflict. Taking into consideration both the anti-Latin and the unionist tendencies in the Greek Church and society, one is tempted to say that the Byzantines of the Palaeologan period overall seem to have displayed a sort of a love-hate relationship toward the Latin Church and Latin theology. Resentment generally prevailed; but sympathy and admiration never extinguished, and the henotic movement, even if not numerically predominant, was influential enough and intellectually appealing to many. Love, however, could easily turn into hatred at times, as happened in the celebrated case of Gennadios Scholarios (1400–1473), the first post-1453 Patriarch of Constantinople. An outspoken admirer of Thomas Aquinas in his earlier days, he initially supported the union of Florence but later became one of the leading Greek anti-­ unionists.28 In the eyes of anti-Latin polemicists, everyone who expressed agreement with or even sympathy for the Latins was suspect of heresy. The word λατινόφρονες (“Latin-minded”) was employed as a weapon against the unionists who were accused of being heretics and traitors to the Greek cause. The Palamite controversy added fuel to this conflict: everyone who disagreed with Palamas also ran the risk of being accused of pro-Latin sympathies, which is precisely what happened with Prochoros Kydones (c. 1333–1369/1370), who was condemned as a heretic for his anti-Palamite and pro-Latin views, even if he himself—contrary to his senior brother and devoted friend Demetrios—never came into union with the Roman Church.29 In the West, Byzantine advocates of union and sympathizers with the Latin Church confronted an equally difficult reality. Byzantine approaches to peace and union between the churches could differ substantially from the attitudes of the Roman popes, the curia, and Latin theologians. These attitudes too have their history. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, despite disagreements and conflicts with the Byzantines, the Latins tended to eschew clear-cut canonical qualifications of Christians of the other church: accusations of schism and heresy were extremely rare. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, ecclesiological judgments about the Greeks became much more intolerant. Beginning with the Latin conquest  PLP 27304.  PLP 13883.

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of Constantinople in 1204, those Greeks who resented the Latin rule and did not recognize the Latin bishop installed by the pope as the Patriarch in Constantinople began to be systematically referred to as “schismatics” by Latins, and the notion of the “Greek schism” (schisma Graecorum) gained wide use in Latin theology. In 1274, the Second Council of Lyon contributed to further ecclesiological estrangement by pronouncing condemnation over “all who presume to deny that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son,”30 which began to be employed against the Greeks who did not accept the addition of the Filioque to the Creed. But this process of growing ecclesiological estrangement was by no means straightforward. The spectrum of Latin attitudes toward the Byzantine ecclesiastical “other” remained broad even in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The most rigid approach conceived church unity as a reductio Graecorum ad oboedientiam (“forcing the Greeks to return into obedience of the Roman See”) and demanded from the Greeks that they abandon all their “errors” in dogma, ritual, and discipline in order to join the true Church of Christ, understood to be identical with the Roman Church. In effect, such a “reductionist” approach meant not “union” but complete assimilation, the absorption of the Greeks and Christians of other Eastern traditions by the Latin Church. In such a manner was the unification conceived at the Second Council of Lyon in 1274. The failure of this “union,” or, rather, “reduction,” was predetermined by the course of its preparations and by the council itself. No theological debates took place at the Council; the Greek delegation signed, without discussion, the creed proposed by the pope, in which controversial issues were determined in accordance with the Roman teaching. At the opposite pole of ecclesiological “reductionism” stood a conception of a union in which each church has the right to cherish her own individuality, provided she agree to reserve for the Roman Church the universal rights of primacy, appeal, and commemoration (primatus, appellatio, commemoratio)—the conception that I call here “unionist” or “henotic.” The councils of Basel in 1431–1437 and of Ferrara-Florence in 1438–1439, despite all their problems, appear to be closer to this latter pole. Their crucial achievement lies in the sheer project (in Basel) and fact (in Ferrara and Florence) of a common council bringing together representatives of both churches, ready to discuss issues dividing them without imposing any preconditions on either partner. For 30  Norman P. Tanner (ed.), Decrees of Ecumenical Councils. Vol. 1: Nicea I to Lateran V (London; Washington DC, 1990), 314.

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the papacy, such a policy meant a radical course shift compared to what had been in effect since 1204, particularly from the extremely rigid attitudes of the Avignon period (1309–1376).31 This shift became possible due to the rise of the Conciliarist movement in the decades of the Great Schism in the West (1378–1417). Laetentur coeli, the final document of the union, addresses both partners equally as “churches,” abstains from ascribing the fault of division to one side only, and contains a clear recognition of the diversity in the one Church of Christ. This was no small achievement for the medieval context.32

3   Early Modern Unionists and the Unionist Tradition Following this foundational period for the henotic movement, the entire epoch from the union of Florence until at least the late seventeenth century can be called “the era of church unions.” Even if the union of Florence met with serious resistance in Constantinople and remained without direct consequences in Byzantium, it spurred unionist activities in subsequent decades and centuries. Unions of Eastern Churches with Rome were established repeatedly and in different ecclesiastical and cultural contexts, both on the level of national/local communities and on the personal level; they were, too, repeatedly renounced, forsaken, and forgotten, and again retrieved and renewed. These unions occurred not only between Rome and Greek Christians (the majority of whom were, from 1453 on, under the Turkish domination), but also between the papacy and other Eastern Churches, including pre-Chalcedonian communities. The long series of union attempts from this period include the union of Rome with the Nestorians (Chaldeans) in 1552, the Jacobites in Syria in 1576, the Ruthenians (Ukrainians and Belarusians) in 1595–1596, the Syro-Malabar  Wilhelm De Vries, “Die Päpste von Avignon und der christliche Osten,” Orientalia Christiana Periodica 30 (1964) 85–128. 32   I attempted to show this in my book: Georgij Avvakumov, Die Entstehung des Unionsgedankens. Die lateinische Theologie des Hochmittelalters in der Auseinandersetzung mit dem Ritus der Ostkirche (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2002). On the Florentine decree in the light of the medieval controversies on ritual issues, see ibid., 373–381. On the ritual aspects of dogmatic issues like the Filioque, see: Georgij Avvakumov, “Die Fragen des Ritus als Streit- und Kontroversgegenstand. Zur Typologie der Kulturkonflikte zwischen dem lateinischen Westen und dem byzantinisch-slawischen Osten im Mittelalter und in der Neuzeit,” in Rainer Bendel (ed.), Kirchen- und Kulturgeschichtsschreibung in Nordost- und Ostmitteleuropa. Initiativen, Methoden, Theorien (Münster, 2006), 191–233, here: 216–222. 31

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Christians in India in 1599, the Serbs and the Ruthenians in Croatia in 1611, the Ethiopians in 1622, the Armenians in Poland in 1635, the Romanians in Uzhgorod in 1646, and the Romanians in Transylvania in 1697–1701.33 In light of the Florentine legacy, the distinction between the adherents and adversaries of union, that is, between “united” or, in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, “uniate” (Lat.: uniti; Slav.: unity and uniaty) and “non-united,” “disunited” (Lat.: disuniti; Slav.: dysunity) Eastern Christians played an important role in the discourse of the Early Modern period, although the boundary between the two groups was much more fluid than it became in later centuries, and could be more easily traversed. For Greek Christianity after 1453, the unionist intellectual tradition was represented by such figures as Leon Allatios (1587–1668), Petros Arkudios (1562/1563–1633), and Neophytos Rhodinos (1576/1577–1659), to name just a few.34 For the Eastern Slavic area, the personalities and works of the Ruthenians Ipatii Potii (1541–1613), Meletii Smotryc’kyi (1577–1633) in his later years, Iosyf Velamin Ruts’kyi (1574–1637), and Petro Mohyla (1597–1647) in his earlier years could be seen as the most prominent. What constituted a “unionist”? There were at least two points on which all of them agreed: first, they recognized a special position for the Roman Church among Christian churches and deemed the Roman pope to be the first hierarch in the Christendom. Secondly, they insisted on the freedom of Eastern Churches to follow their own liturgical rites and disciplinary regulations. In the formulation of these points, I intentionally avoid using strict canonistic terminology. Of course, the issue of primacy was at the core of the first point. But unionists’ views on this question varied: some of them, like Andreas Chrysoberges or Petros Arkudios, for instance, came more closely to the juridical understanding of papal supremacy in the spirit of Innocent III and Boniface VIII.  Others, like John Bekkos or Iosyf Velamin Ruts’kyi, remained closer to the understanding of primacy as a primacy of honor. With the second point, on the recognition of the rites, rules, and customs of the Eastern Churches, views also differed: some of the unionists expressed concern only about some specific rites and opined, together with the Roman Curia, that the final word on the liturgical and disciplinary practices of their church should belong to Rome. Others 33  A helpful collection of the sources on the history of unions, see: Ernst Christoph Suttner, Quellen zur Geschichte der Kirchenunionen des 16. bis 18. Jahrhunderts (Freiburg, 2010). 34  For the basic information on them, see: Podskalsky, Griechische Theologie, 156–160; 213–219; 201–205.

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viewed the problem in a much broader light and defended the right of the Eastern Church to stay faithful to her own liturgical and theological traditions in their entirety (including the Creed without Filioque). The interplay of these two points—the issue of Roman primacy, on the one hand, and the problem of the theological, liturgical, and cultural specificity of Eastern Churches, on the other—generated in the thought of the unionists an inherent tension between two poles: that of unity and that of diversity. For all of them, however, the establishment of peace and union with the Roman Church had the pragmatic priority and urgency, be it on a personal or on a general ecclesial level. I would argue that church and theology historians should consider later advocates of church union from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries not only against the backdrop of the confessional struggles of their period but also within the context of the unionist intellectual tradition that began as early as the thirteenth century. To be sure, these centuries witnessed dramatic changes in religious and political spheres. Of course, the ethnic and cultural context is different if we compare, say, the Byzantine Greeks with the Greeks under Turkish or Venetian domination, or with the Ruthenians in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and any responsible historian should account for these differences seriously. However, there is definitely something common to all these different figures; there is a fascinating continuity here spanning centuries and cultural spaces. Contemporary ecumenically minded discourse on East-West relations has developed a phobia of expressions like “church union,” “unionist,” and “uniates” because of their (real or supposed) lack of ecumenical “political correctness.” For the history of Later Medieval and Early Modern theology, however, the neglect of historical “church unions” and unionist thinking is unjustifiable. As imperfect as the “unions” of that period were, the history of unionist thought often exhibits fascinating engagement with intercultural issues and ecumenical problems.

4   Modern Approaches to Unionists: A Critical Note Research on the advocates of union had a curious history in the course of the last century. The unionists came into the focus of denominationally charged discussions between Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic scholars. Their contradicting value judgments on the unionists are

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especially conspicuous in the ecclesiastical historiography of the first half of the twentieth century that was formed by Neo-Scholastic and NeoThomistic era of Roman Catholic education and academy. For a denominationally committed Roman Catholic scholar of that period, the Byzantine unionists were allies of Catholicism in its apologetic effort. The very existence of Byzantine unionists proved the truth of the Roman Catholic confession and testified that papal supremacy and other fundamental dogmas of the post-Tridentine Roman Catholic Church were always recognized in the Byzantine East, at least by its “best” representatives. A classic example of such approach was Martin Jugie (1878–1954). An author of epoch-­ making works in Byzantine studies whose numerous publications are still worth reading and studying,35 he regarded his research as a contribution to Catholic missionary work. In the eyes of a scholar like Jugie, Patriarch John Bekkos, for instance, was clearly a Catholic, and the example of his life and work could be helpful for the conversion of Eastern “dissidents” (dissidentes). The heritage of Thomas Aquinas played a special role in such perceptions of the unionist movement. The very fact that the unionists translated and admired Aquinas’ works guaranteed, in the view of the Neo-Thomists and Neo-Scholastics of the early twentieth century, that their theology was truly Catholic (in the post-Tridentine sense). A fundamental shift in the Roman Catholic perception of the Byzantine unionists occurred with the ecumenical turn of the Second Vatican Council and the dismantling of the Neo-Thomistic system of education in the 1960s. In the post-conciliar period, the official tenor of Roman Catholic scholarship changed and became increasingly ecumenical and sympathetic toward Eastern Orthodoxy. This resulted in a fading of interest among Roman Catholic scholars toward the unionist tradition. Not that the unionists remained fully without attention—Gerhard Podskalsky’s important work in the 1970s–1980s36 being one example—but the main momentum and enthusiasm of post-conciliar Catholic research on the Christian East belonged undoubtedly to the Eastern Orthodox legacy and 35  Particularly important among his works are the following: Martin Jugie, Theologia dogmatica christianorum orientalium ab ecclesia catholica dissidentium, 5 vols. (Paris, 1926–1935); Martin Jugie, De processione Spiritus Sancti. Ex fontibus revelationis et secundum orientales dissidentes (Rome, 1936); and Martin Jugie, Le Schisme byzantin. Aperçu historique et doctrinal (Paris, 1941), as well as his articles in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, 15 vols. (Paris, 1923–1959). 36  Considerable attention to the advocates of union is devoted, in particular, in Gerhard Podskalsky, Theologie und Philosophie in Byzanz (München, 1977).

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not to those historical figures whose views and actions ran the risk of being perceived as “anti-ecumenical” by contemporary Orthodox partners in an inter-confessional dialogue. The attitude of Eastern Orthodox theologians and church historians, at first glance, seems to be diametrically opposed to the Catholic judgments of the Neo-Scholastic era. This attitude was to a considerable degree determined by the Neo-Patristic movement in Orthodox theology that emerged in the period from the late 1930s to the 1950s, with Georges Florovsky (1893–1979)37 and John Meyendorff (1926–1992)38 being respectively the leading figures of its two generations. Reduced to four concise points, the Neo-Patristic approach could be summarized as follows: 1. The Byzantine theological legacy, “Byzantinism” (Florovsky), “Byzantine Patristics” (Meyendorff), represents the genuine, authentic Orthodox theology. 2. The theology of Gregory Palamas is the highpoint of “Byzantinism,” Byzantine Patristics, and it is one of the best fruits of Orthodox theology. 3. The authentic Orthodox and Byzantine theology is defined as antithetical to those Byzantine and post-Byzantine theologians who did not accept Palamite theology and who criticized it. The rejection of Palamite theology, according to Neo-Patristic thought, went together with a dependency on Western Latin influences. In almost every case, when the Neo-Patristic theologians find anti-Palamism, they also detect Western/Latin influences. In other words, contrary to authentic, true Byzantium, there was also an inauthentic Byzantium, its “pseudomorphosis” (Florovsky), a sort of anti-Byzantium, represented by the ­theologian agents of the Latin West, alien to the true Byzantine spirit. To this inauthentic Byzantium belonged all the Byzantine advocates of church union. 4. The unionists were converts from Eastern Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism. They converted to Catholicism mostly on political grounds—at best, in order to save the Eastern Christian Empire 37  For our topic, particularly relevant: Georges Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology. Part One. Vol. 5 in idem, The Collected Works (Belmont, MA, 1979), esp. 1–2; 33–113. 38  Relevant for our topic: John Meyendorff, Introduction à l’étude de Grégoire Palamas (Paris, 1959); idem, Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes (New York, 1979); idem, The Byzantine Legacy in the Orthodox Church (Crestwood NY, 1981).

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politically by attracting military help from the West (in the pre-1453 Byzantium), at worst, for their personal benefit and privileges (like in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth). Byzantine and post-Byzantine unionist theology was in full agreement with the Roman Catholic theology of the period, and it simply repeated Roman Catholic theology and possessed little or no content besides the idea of the full subordination of Eastern Christians to the pope (Florovsky). Despite the appearance of being mutually opposed, both perspectives on Byzantine unionists—the Roman Catholic Neo-Scholastic and the Eastern Orthodox Neo-Patristic—are at their core very similar. In both cases the scholarly position is determined by two assumptions. First, the standpoint of the scholar is regulated by a certain eternal norm, a kind of theologia perennis—the Thomistic in the Roman Catholic case, the Palamite in Neo-Patristic theology. Compliance with this norm is held to be absolutely necessary to be a true Catholic or a true Orthodox, and any deviation from it is considered detrimental. Secondly, this perennial norm functions, ultimately, to legitimize the “Catholic” and the “Orthodox” denomination (Konfession) of the day. Thus, Neo-Scholastic and Neo-­ Patristic interpretations are opposite in their value judgments but similar in their pattern of thinking: both sides see the unionists as Roman Catholics and as adversaries, even enemies, of Eastern Orthodoxy. Exactly this understanding was the reason why in the second half of the twentieth century—in the period of the institutionalization of the ecumenical movement and the growth of sympathies toward the Orthodox in the Catholic and Protestant West—research on Byzantine unionists was almost abandoned: they were held to be fighters for a clearly hopeless cause. Only in the recent two decades has this situation begun to change. At least four studies deserve particular mention here. Borys A.  Gudziak in 2001,39 Gerhard Podskalsky in 2003,40 Alexandra Riebe in 2004,41 and

39  Borys A. Gudziak, Crisis and Reform. The Kyivan Metropolitanate, the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and the Genesis of the Union of Brest (Cambridge, Mass., 2001). 40  This is the last small book by the outstanding German scholar who died in 2013: Gerhard Podskalsky, Von Photios zu Bessarion. Der Vorrang humanistisch geprägter Theologie in Byzanz und deren bleibende Bedeutung (Wiesbaden, 2003). 41  Riebe, Alexandra, Rom in Gemeinschaft mit Konstantinopel. Patriarch Johannes XI. Bekkos als Verteidiger der Kirchenunion von Lyon (1274) (Wiesbaden 2005).

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Judith Ryder in 201042 all suggested new approaches to the Byzantine and post-Byzantine unionists. These studies avoid denominational grand narratives; they approach unionist figures not from a confessional standpoint but within the broad panorama of their intellectual and cultural context. This change of paradigm consists of at least three aspects. First, these studies question the thesis that the unionists were “agents of Catholicism” in the East, alien to “genuine” Greek or Slavonic ecclesiastical culture (Gudziak, Riebe). They make an attempt to look at the advocates of union as an indispensable, organic part of the later Byzantine and post-Byzantine intellectual and cultural legacy (Riebe) and its humanistic tendencies (Podskalsky). Secondly, these scholars do not agree with the thesis of a purely political motivation for the Byzantine unionists. Rather, they come to the opposite conclusion: the advocates of union were people who often acted on idealistic grounds (Riebe, Ryder), envisioning as their ultimate goal a sweeping reform in their church (Gudziak). Finally, these scholars underscore not only the first of the two aspects constituting the henotic movement—the recognition of papal primacy—but also its second aspect, the plea for diversity in the Christian world (Gudziak, Riebe). But this is only the beginning of a long overdue turn in the study of the henotic tradition. Much still has to be done to establish the prosopography of the unionists and to explore and edit related manuscript sources, although the new foundations for this work have been laid by the highly erudite publications of Claudine Delacroix-Besnier43 and Chris Schabel.44 The overall approach to the advocates of union, however, remains haunted by confessionalism and denominational terminology. Discussions of Byzantine and post-Byzantine unionists often still operate with the notions of “Catholic” and “Orthodox” when reduced to their denominational meaning. “There’s much in a name”—as has been elegantly shown by John O’Malley in one of his studies on the Reformation period.45 There 42  Ryder, Judith R., The Career and Writings of Demetrius Kydones. A Study of FourteenthCentury Byzantine Politics, Religion and Society (Leiden and Boston, 2010). 43  For a detailed prosopographic study on Byzantines in union with the Roman Church in the fourteenth century, see: Claudine Delacroix-Besnier, “Conversions constantinopolitaines au XIVe siècle,” in: Mélanges de l’École française de Rome. Moyen-Age, Temps modernes, T. 105, N°2 (1993), 715–761. 44  See, particularly: Christopher D.  Schabel, Greeks, Latins, and the Church in Early Frankish Cyprus (Burlington VT, 2010), among numerous Schabel’s publications. 45  John O’Malley, Trent and All That. Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era (Cambridge MA, 2000), see the introduction (“What’s in a Name?,” pp.  1–15) and the conclusion (“There’s Much in a Name,” pp. 119–143).

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are examples when the discourse seems to be determined by an anachronistic vocabulary of denominational “isms.”46 Even the studies that I have laudably mentioned are at times not bold enough to completely abandon traces of confessionalist terminology. This situation is the consequence of a few peculiar developments in the historical-theological research of the last hundred years.

5   Moving Beyond the Neo-Scholastic and Neo-Patristic Paradigms Historical-theological research, like any historical research, is to a considerable degree determined by the picture of the world in which we live. We imagine our political world as being formed, at least since the late eighteenth century, of “nations” and “nation-states.” The world of contemporary Christianity, on the other hand, is comprised of “denominations” or “confessions.”47 It consists of solid, self-sufficient blocs: “Roman Catholic,” “Eastern Orthodox,” and “Protestant,” among them. In the minds of most Christians in the East and West, these blocs mutually exclude each other. Denominationalism remains the framework even for the contemporary ecumenical movement. Institutional ecumenism lives by and nourishes itself on denominationalism: the obvious parallelism between the Organization of United Nations founded in 1946 and the World Council of Churches founded in 1948 bears salient witness to this. It is instructive to compare the role of confessions/denominations in ecclesiastical historiography with the role of modern nations and nation-­ states in secular, primarily political, history. With the birth of Romantic historiography in the early nineteenth century, Medieval and Early Modern history became a realm of enthusiastic interest in the rising modern nations; it began to function as one of the instruments of nation-building in Europe. Modern nations were the main promoters of Medieval and Early Modern studies in those geographical and political areas which they considered “their own.” Thus, the creators of Russian national history Nikolai Karamzin (1766–1826) and Sergei 46  Tia M.  Kolbaba, “Conversions from Greek Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism in the Fourteenth Century,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 19 (1995) 120–134. 47  I take both words here basically as synonyms, “denominations” being applied more often in the North American and “confessions” in the European context.

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Solovyov (1820–1879), following contemporary historians in France, Germany, and Britain, made precisely medieval history the basis for their grand narratives: they sought the origins of Russia in the medieval principalities of the Kievan Rus’ in the period from the tenth to fourteenth centuries. The Russian historical narrative provoked responses from the neighboring nations—newcomers aspiring to build their own nation-­ states and their own political histories. Thus, the Ukrainian Mykhailo Hrushevsky (1866–1934) created an alternative historical vision which regarded Kievan Rus’ as an indispensable and foundational part of the history of Ukraine. The two grand narratives—the Russian and the Ukrainian—clashed and contended (and, actually, still contend) with one another. The relations of historians toward grand narratives of national history have changed after the catastrophic experience of World War II, however. The French Annales school also contributed to the reorientation of historiography from political to social, economic, and cultural aspects.48 Today, laying nationalist claims over the Medieval and Early Modern past is generally regarded with suspicion among professional historians. Not that the issue of nations and nation-building ceased to be a topic of historical research, of course, but the place this topic occupies has altered. North American medievalists in particular have played an important role in this reorientation, since they, for obvious reasons, have been much less dependent (even if not quite independent) from the paradigms of European national history. The situation in European ecclesiastical historiography looks curiously similar. In the late nineteenth to first half of the twentieth century, each confession/denomination attempted to establish its own historiographic priorities, possibly even to monopolize certain aspects of Medieval and Early Modern history and to make its own confessional/denominational interpretation of it the standard one. Thus, the history of the popes and medieval scholastic theology became the foundation of the Roman Catholic grand narrative. The history of medieval spiritual movements, popular heresies, and the so-called Pre-Reformers occupied a similar place in medieval history written from the Protestant perspective. The history of the popes came into special focus for both Roman Catholic and Protestant historiography, producing two divergent narratives which competed with

48  Peter Burke, The French Historical Revolution. The Annales School, 1929–2014 (Stanford, 2015).

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each other: the names of Leopold von Ranke49 and Ludwig von Pastor50 illustrate the rivalry well. Confessions/denominations were trying to project modern denominational relations back onto Medieval and Early Modern periods, in order to construct a history legitimating their own modern confessional being. This situation began to change in the mid-­ twentieth century due to the rise of the ecumenical movement in the Protestant world and the impact of the Second Vatican Council in the Roman Catholic Church. Today, even if the topics of historiographic research may at times be—quite legitimately—guided by a sympathy toward a specific confessional tradition (Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, etc.), the general ecumenical atmosphere prohibits denominational rivalries and confessionalism from affecting the historian’s work in the area of European religious history.51 The historical theology produced in Eastern Europe and/or by Eastern European émigrés in the West seems to have developed with a certain temporal lag. Exactly when Western Christians began in the mid-­twentieth century to seek a common heritage in the Middle Ages and Early Modern period, denominationalism in its Neo-Patristic form happened to be on the rise in the Orthodox theology. It sought to monopolize Byzantine and East Slavic religious history and, as it were, to “confessionalize” or “denominationalize” it, to regard it as a legitimation of the confessional being of the modern Orthodox Church. Here, ultimately, lie the roots of the tendency to refuse the Greeks united with the Roman Church—as well as all the adversaries of Palamite theology in the fourteenth century—the 49  Leopold von Ranke, Die römischen Päpste in den letzten vier Jahrhunderten. 3 vols. (Berlin, 1834–1836). 50  Ludwig Freiherr von Pastor, Geschichte der Päpste seit dem Ausgang des Mittelalters, mit Benutzung des Päpstlichen Geheimarchives und vieler anderer Archive. 16 vols. (Freiburg, 1893–1933). 51  This, among other things, has resulted in the refusal to apply the term “Roman Catholicism” to Medieval history. No serious historian would today call Medieval Latin Christianity “Roman Catholic.” It is symptomatic that a similar rule does not seem to apply to Medieval Byzantine Christianity: it continues to be pertinaciously identified as “Orthodox Christianity” and “Orthodoxy,” both names functioning as an opposition to the Latin West; see, for example: Jonathan Sheppard (ed.), The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire, c. 500–1492 (Cambridge, 2008), 852–880. It is also curious that in a recent (very useful) study exploring Byzantine identity only the Byzantine religious identity is not perceived as a problem; it is presented from the very start as a solid monolith of “Byzantine Orthodoxy” opposed to “western Catholic faith”; see Gill Page, Being Byzantine. Greek Identity Before the Ottomans (Cambridge, 2008), 52–58.

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right to be regarded as genuinely Byzantine. Here we also find the origins of the practice of labeling the Ukrainian and Belarusian theology of the Early Modern period, including its unionist representatives, with the derogatory name “pseudomorphose.” The contribution of the Neo-Patristic school to the historical and theological research of Patristic and Byzantine theology is outstanding and uncontestable. Figures like George Florovsky and John Meyendorff will remain the giants of the twentieth-century Russian émigré thought. But as with any intellectual achievement, the time sooner or later comes to go beyond it and to examine it critically. Some aspects of Neo-Patristic theology look similar to the Roman Catholic Neo-Scholasticism of the late nineteenth to early twentieth century. The achievements of the latter are as uncontestable as those of the Neo-Patristic school: the Leonine Thomistic renaissance stimulated the rise of historical theology and the Ressourcement turn of the middle of the century would hardly have been possible without it. However, the rigidity, the Ultramontanism, and the anti-Modernism of the Neo-Scholastic theological and educational system inevitably led to its disintegration after the Second Vatican Council. The Neo-Patristic theologians entered the stage later than the Neo-Thomists; they were lucky to have developed their thought in contact and dialogue with the French Ressourcement theology and they were much more sensitive toward historical thinking than many Neo-Thomists. Nevertheless, I think that their overheated denominational concern makes the Neo-­ Patristic movement typologically closer to Neo-Scholasticism than to the French Ressourcement.52

52  Thus, the dogmaticism and heresy-hunting of Vladimir Lossky (recall his role in the condemnation of Sergius Bulgakov in 1935–1936) makes him more akin to a Louis Billot than to Yves Congar or Henri de Lubac, who had to lead the lives of silenced dissidents in the decade prior to the Second Vatican Council. On Bulgakov’s condemnations and the role of Lossky and Florovsky, see: Igumen Gennadii Eikalovich, Delo prot. Sergiia Bulgakova. Istoricheskaia kanva spora o Sofii (San Francisco 1980). The condemnations have been recently explored theologically in: Roberto De La Noval, The Theological Condemnations of Fr. Sergius Bulgakov: Sophiology in Suspension (Notre Dame Dissertation, 2020). On the negative impact of the encyclical Humani generis (1950) on the Ressourcement theologians in the decade before the Second Vatican Council, see: Joseph A.  Komonchak, “Humani Generis and Nouvelle théologie,” in Gabriel Flynn and Paul D. Murray (eds.), Ressourcement. A Movement for Renewal in Twentieth-Century Catholic Theology (Oxford, 2013), 138–156.

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6   The Impasse of the Catholic/Orthodox Dichotomy and the Problem of Confessionalization I consider the use of the Catholic/Orthodox dichotomy misleading, if not detrimental, for the historical study not only of the unionists but of East-­ West relations in the Later Medieval and Early Modern periods more generally. In the Medieval period, the words catholicus/καθολικός and orthodoxus/ὀρθόδοξος were ecclesiological synonyms, not opposites. In the Early Modern period, there still existed a salient asymmetry between the system of denominational identities established in the process of confessionalization (Konfessionalisierung) in the West53 and the fluid and at times elusive world of Eastern Christianity—or, perhaps better, “Eastern Christianities.” It would be misleading to subsume Medieval and Early Modern Christians in the East under the category of the “Orthodox Church” or “Orthodoxy” (with a capital “O”), as regrettably often happens in scholarship and, even more often, in popular accounts. To apply the dyad “Roman Catholic/Eastern Orthodox” to the Medieval period and the triad “Roman Catholic/Protestant/Eastern Orthodox” to the Early Modern would mean to posit a distinct “Orthodox” denomination constituted along lines more or less similar to those of the Western “confessions.” But the realities of both periods show that the relations between Western and Eastern Christianity displayed a complex dialectical process that involved tension and conflict, on the one hand, and interaction, cooperation, and even fusion and synthesis, on the other. Even after the formation of the Western confessions in the period from the mid-sixteenth to mid-seventeenth centuries, disagreements, divisions, and clashes were often more pronounced within Eastern Christianity, among its different cultural versions and theological projects, than between Eastern Christianity as a whole and the Western denominations. The process of

53  The concepts Konfessionsbildung and Konfessionalisierung were coined by German historians in the 1960s and 1970s; foundational is E. W. Zeeden, Die Entstehung der Konfessionen (Munich, etc.: Oldenbourg, 1965). Further discussions and debates: Wolfgang Reinhard/ Heinz Schilling (eds.), Die katholische Konfessionalisierung (Münster: Aschendorff, 1995); Thomas Brockmann/Dieter J.  Weiss, Das Konfessionalisierungsparadigma. Leistungen, Probleme, Grenzen (Münster: Aschendorff, 2013); Markus Gerstmeier/Anton Schindling (eds.), Ernst Walter Zeeden (1916–2011) als Historiker der Reformation, Konfessionsbildung und “deutschen Kultur” (Münster: Aschendorff, 2016).

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confessionalization in the East, catalyzed by interaction with Western “confessions,” began later and lasted longer than in the West.54 Among the steps that pushed Eastern Christianity toward confessionalization was the establishment of a parallel non-united hierarchy in Ruthenia by Patriarch Theophanes of Jerusalem in 1620. This event split the Ruthenians between the two rival Byzantine-rite churches—the “united” (unity) and the “disunited” (dysunity). This in turn led to a radicalization of the conflict that had existed previously between the adherents and the adversaries of the Union of Brest of 1596, and it unleashed a real war on the Ukrainian and Belarusian territories that can for good reason be called “confessionalist.” In the 1630s, both rival hierarchies were recognized by the Polish-Lithuanian state. Around this time, the words “pious” (Slav.: blagočestivyj, from the Greek εὐσεβής) and “orthodox” (Slav.: pravoslavnyj, pravověrnyj, from the Greek ὀρθόδοξος) came to be preferred as designations for Greek-rite Christians opposed to union with Rome in the Polish-­ Lithuanian and Muscovite contexts; it is from this usage that the name “Orthodox” as a denominational designation emerged.55 Later highpoints on the way to denominational Orthodoxy were the confessions of Orthodox faith published by Metropolitan Petro Mohyla of Kyiv in 1640–164256 and by Patriarch Dositheos of Jerusalem (1641–1707) in 1672–1690.57 The latter also convoked a council in Jerusalem in 1672 which issued a number of decrees that emphasized denominational demarcation from Western confessions. The figures of Petro Mohyla and Dositheos bridge the Early Modern era and the later, Enlightenment period in which the frontier between the East and the Western confessions 54  The concept of the “second confessional age” introduced by Olaf Blaschke can be illuminating for the understanding of the place of the nineteenth century in the process of confessionalization; see: Olaf Blaschke, “Das 19. Jahrhundert. Ein Zweites Konfessionelles Zeitalter?” in Geschichte und Gesellschaft 26 (2000) 38–75. See also Martin Friedrich, “Die frühneuzeitliche Konfessionalisierung und das 19. Jahrhundert,” in Brockmann/Weiss, Das Konfessionalisierungsparadigma, 265–282. 55  Many examples can be found in the sources collected in: L. V. Zaborovskii, Katoliki, pravoslavnye, uniaty. Problemy religii v russko-pol’sko-ukrainskikh otnosheniiakh konca 40-kh – 80-kh gg. XVII v. Vol. 1 (Moscow 1998); see, for example: 33, 36, 42, 43, 75, 111, and passim. 56  On Mohyla, see: Podskalsky, Griechische Theologie, 229–236; the more recent literature in: Enciklopediia istorii Ukrainy. Vol. 7 (Kyiv, 2010), 12–14. 57  On Dositheos, see: Podskalsky, Griechische Theologie, pp.  282–294; Klaus-Peter Todt, “Dositheos II. von Jerusalem,” in Carmelo Giuseppe Conticello/Vassa Conticello, La théologie byzantine et sa tradition, II (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), 659–720.

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became much less fluid and the denominational boundaries much more clear-cut than they had been in the prior periods. The fully established Eastern Orthodox “imagined community” (to quote that celebrated phrase of Benedict Anderson)58 appeared, in fact, no earlier than the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with the rise of Nationalism, the beginning of the Greek and Slavic fight for independence, and the shaping of the Slavophile movement in the Russian Empire. Thus, it makes sense to speak of a “confessionalization lag” or “protracted confessionalization” with respect to Eastern Christianity.59 To summarize: the confessional dichotomy between “Roman Catholicism” and “Eastern Orthodoxy” which confronts us today means something much more formidable than the meandering maze of clashes and truces, quarrels and reconciliations, disagreements and agreements, enmities and friendships that determined the life of Christians in the Medieval and Early Modern periods. Rather, this denominational dichotomy presupposes a history of systematic state regulation, social disciplining, ideological alliance with political and nationalist agendas, and the building of confessional cultural systems—that very history which became possible only in the Modern period and which has received in scholarship the name of the “process of confessionalization.”

7   Conclusion: The Ecclesiological Liminality of the Henotic Tradition Let me conclude by returning to my main point: the case of Byzantine and post-Byzantine advocates of union—call them “united Eastern Christians” or “unionists” or “henotics” or “uniates”—is highly instructive precisely because they do not fit into the clear-cut confessional/denominational picture to which we all, including professional historians and theologians, are so accustomed today. By no means were the unionists converts “from Eastern Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism”: neither of these categories existed in their day. But the advocates of union were, indeed, Grenzgänger who transcended ecclesiastical, political, and cultural boundaries. As such, they not only were caught in the crossfire of religious disputes of their own 58  Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London, 1983). 59  For helpful discussion on the factors and the chronology of the transition to the confessional age in the East, see: Suttner, Quellen, 237–257.

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time but, in effect, have remained in the crossfire of diverging, often opposing, approaches in modern historical and theological research. In a theological perspective, this fact testifies to one of their foundational features which I would call “ecclesiological liminality.” This liminality presents a challenge for church historians who explore their knotty history, for theologians who attempt to make sense of the “scandal and folly” of their maverick ecclesiological existence, and for contemporary ecumenists who aspire to work for the mutual understanding of the two parts of Eastern Christianity unhappily separated by the militant confessionalism of the modern era. This challenge, however, may mean also discovering new opportunities for a common future in a Christian world no longer torn apart by denominationalism.

A Brief History of the Union of Brest and Its Interpretations Anastacia K. Wooden

1   Introduction: Statement of Intent This chapter on the historical context of the Union of 1595–1596 is not a result of a dedicated historical research but, rather, a survey of widely used sources and most frequent interpretations.1 The idea to write this historical overview came as a result of an engagement with a project about bishops Josaphat Kuncevich and Joseph Siamashka, presented in this volume. Even before the start of the project, it was expected that evaluation of these controversial historical figures will differ greatly along 1  The main sources include the following: Francis Dvornik, The Slavs in European History and Civilization (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1962); Uladzimir Arlou, Zmicier Hierasimovic, Belarus: The Epoch of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Minsk: Technalohija, 2018). (This book is intended as a popular, not scholarly, edition. I found it acceptable to use it as a reference because it is written by the eminent Belarusian scholars and is the only book on Belarusian history very well translated into English.) Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (www.encyclopediaofukraine.com) hosted by Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. Православная Энциклопедия под редакцией Патриарха Московского и Всея Руси Кирилла www.pravenc.ru

A. K. Wooden (*) The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, USA © The Author(s) 2021 V. Latinovic, A. K. Wooden (eds.), Stolen Churches or Bridges to Orthodoxy?, Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55442-2_3

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confessional lines. After all, as a distinguished historian of the church in Ukraine, Sophia Senyk observed, “almost everything that has been written about the Union of Brest in the last four hundred years has been partisan.”2 However, what came as a surprise is that the way the story of these two persons is told today largely depends not only on confessional but also on political preferences of a teller. In Belarus, for example, the preferences roughly summed up as pro-Russian or pro-Western often run deeper and cannot be simply seen as corresponding to such confessional leanings as pro-Orthodox or pro-Catholic. These preferences are recognizable even in the works of professional historians.3 As a result, those readers or researchers who are not closely familiar with the specific historical complexities behind the Union of Brest and who have no intention to pick sides in the ongoing debate often do so without knowing. This chapter is written mostly with this group. Its goal is not to speak in favor of any position but to make the readers aware of the complexities of the Union’s history and its interpretations. To achieve this goal, this chapter will be divided into two sections: one devoted to the establishment of the Union and one to the elimination of it. Within each of these sections, a simple chronology of events will be given followed by an analysis of their stereotypical interpretations. The goal is not to discredit any of those interpretations but, rather, to show that none of them can be seen as decisive and unequivocal without deliberately ignoring parts of history. Geographically, the survey is centered on the proto-Belarusian territories. Often the events under consideration, spanning the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, are described using the names of political units as they exist today: Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania. This chronologically inconsistent usage obscures the fact that these events took place on the territory of a large multinational state, Grand Duchy of Lithuania 2  Sophia Senyk. “The Union of Brest: An Evaluation,” 1–16. In Four Hundred Years Union of Brest (1596–1996): A Critical Re-evaluation. Edited by Bert Groen and Wil van den (Bercken. Leuven: Peeters, 1998). P. 1. Sophia Senyk is a former professor of church history at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome; now she is a nun living at the ecumenical monastic community in Bose, Italy. 3  It is not an intention of this chapter to actually classify concrete historical works as belonging to certain “ideological camps.” Rather, the goal is to alert the readers to the likelihood of ideological as well as confessional bias and trust that readers themselves will recognize the bias where it exists.

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(GDL), that in 1569 (without losing its original name and significant autonomy) became part of a federated state called in English-­language publications Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (PLC). Therefore, even if the names of the modern political units on this territory existed and were used during this period, it is certain that they did not signify (geographically, politically, or ethnically) what they do today. Using them to relate past historical events creates anachronistic juxtaposition that distorts our understanding of the motives of those involved.4 Therefore, this chapter will use a term “proto-Belarusian lands” to refer to the territory that currently known as Belarus.5 As for ethnicity, it will use “Ruthenians” as a later definitive division of these cultural heirs of Kyivan Rus’ into Belarusians, Ukrainians, and Russians was still going on during the events under consideration. Even the English spelling of Slavonic proper and geographic names can be interpreted as ideologically biased because transliteration can be made from modern Russian, from Polish, and (rarely) from Latin versions. The selection may be seen as an attempt either to distance from or relate to the neighbor from the East (Russia) or from the West (Poland). In this chapter, simple phonetic transliteration from contemporary Belarusian versions of proper names and places will be used.

2   Establishment of the Uniate Church6 In general terms, the Union of Brest of 1595–1596 denotes a decision of the Orthodox Metropolitanate of Kyiv to switch its jurisdiction from the Patriarchate of Constantinople to the Bishop of Rome under the condition of preservation of its ecclesial autonomy and byzantine liturgical 4  The clearest example is the use of the word “Lithuania.” Today this Latin language rendition of the original word “Litva” denotes a small Baltic nation. However, during the events under consideration, Litva marked a large territory of mostly Ruthenian population that today includes all of Belarus. Historians are still not sure about the origin of the latter word. What is clear is that its Latin version, Russia Alba (White Rus’), was applied by Western cartographers to a variety of territories from Novgorod and even including Muscovy (there is one map that contains phrase Russia Alba sive Moscovia). This term was more or less stably applied to eastern territories of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania only in the early seventeenth century. Arlou/Hierasimovic 163. 5  As it is done in Arlou/Hierasimovic. 6  In the modern context, the word “Uniat” or “Uniate” received a negative connotation and therefore it is used here only as a historical designation. Today the churches that emerged from  the  Union of  Brest and  other similar Unions are commonly called Eastern Catholic

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practices. Before coming to the questions of motives and contexts, it is necessary to give a brief overview of the events connected with the adoption of the Union of Brest on the proto-Belarusian territories. Gradually throughout the 1580s–1590s, the Orthodox Ruthenian nobility and bishops that represented overwhelming ethnic majority of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania developed a desire for a change in the life of their church, Orthodox Metropolitanate of Kyiv. Beginning in the 1590s, the Church of Kyiv held a series of councils where various issues of the inner church life were discussed and where the idea of a union with Rome was crystallized. Proponents of the union insured support from King Sigismund III7 who was informed of a desire of Ruthenian bishops to move under the Pope’s jurisdictional authority in June 1590. However, bishops were not able to assure lasting support from the most influential Ruthenian Orthodox magnate Kanstancin Astrozhski.8 Initially interested in the idea of the union, Astrozhski wanted to include Byzantine and Muscovite hierarchies into the talks. Since his conditions were not met (probably in order to expedite the events), he withdrew his support and eventually became one of the most ardent opponents of the Union. In his struggle against the Union he even formed alliances with the Protestants who just like him also opposed Roman Catholic authorities.9 As a result of their conciliar activity, Ruthenian bishops formulated what is now called Brest Articles (total of thirty-three) which were signed by all nine Ruthenian bishops on June 12, 1595, at the synod in Brest. These articles were sent in a letter to Pope Clement VIII declaring the bishops’ readiness to negotiate church union. Although initial negotiations were conducted in strict secrecy, the plans became known to a wider public. In the spring of 1595, under the leadership of Astrozhski, Orthodox Churches (ECC), specifically in Ukraine and Belarus—Byzantine Catholic or Greek-Catholic Churches. 7  King Sigismund III, also called Sigismund Vasa, was a King of Poland, Grand Duke of Lithuania, and a ruler of the united Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from 1587 to 1632. At the same time, he was also a King of Sweden and a Grand Duke of Finland from 1592 until his deposition in 1599. 8  The first hetman (the second-highest military commander) of the GDL, Kanstancin Astorozhski (Konstanty Ostrogski) (1526–1608) was a major landowner with enormous political and public influence. A tireless promoter of Ruthenian culture, he established Astrog Academy in 1576 and facilitated the publishing of the first complete printed edition of the Bible in Old Church Slavonic (Ruthenian), the so-called Astrog Bible, in 1581. 9  Ironically, all of his children, three sons and two daughters, converted to Roman Catholicism.

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brotherhoods and a great number of lower nobility and clergy launched a public campaign to prevent the union. In August 1595 the exarch of Patriarch of Constantinople Nikifor called the Orthodox faithful not to follow their bishops and to install a parallel hierarchy. Amidst this public outcry, Bishops Balaban of Lviv and Kopystensky of Peremysl withdrew their support of the union. Despite the public disapproval, Bishops Pacej of Brest/Volodymyr and Terletsky of Astrog/Lutsk, following directives of the Brest Synod, went to Rome to deliver the aforementioned letter that was composed and signed in Brest. The agreement was discussed and approved by Pope Clement VII on December 23, 1595, and then confirmed by the Papal bull Magnus Dominus. Its terms were laid out in the bull Decet Romanum Pontificem in February 1596.10 On October 6–10, 1596, proponents of the union, including five bishops and the metropolitan of Kyiv, held a council in the Brest’s cathedral that formally accepted the terms of the agreement, thus officially establishing the so-called Union of Brest. At the same time, opponents of the union (among them bishops Balaban and Kopystensky, Astrozhski, Nikifor, and representatives of Patriarch of Alexandria, brotherhoods, and monasteries) held their own council.11 Each group condemned and anathematized the other. As expected, King Sigismund III issued a proclamation supporting the Union. Next followed a long and bitter domestic struggle for implementation of the Union. In general, it was done speedily, without any explanatory work among the lower clergy and faithful. It is hard to evaluate in a nonpartisan way the extent of popular resistance to this process. In general, parish priests tended to continue to liturgically commemorate their bishops that had accepted Union while monasteries resisted the Union. As Senyk summarizes, Except for a small group of persons committed to the Union and an equally small group actively opposed to it, most people were probably indifferent, if at all aware of it. The bishops remained in their sees, the priests in their parishes. In parish churches and in monasteries prayers continued to be offered for their pious founders. The liturgical rites remained unchanged. People made pilgrimages to the same icons as before.12 10  The bull Decet Romanum Pontificem of 1596 should not be confused with at least two other bulls of the same title—of 1521 (excommunication of Martin Luther) and of 1622. 11  This council was held in the house of the anti-Trinitarian Protestant nobleman. 12  Senyk 11–12.

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No matter the magnitude of the resistance, the force and coercion were used in enforcement of the Union. The proper bloodshed was rare, mainly because the power structure of the PLC did not allow the king to use military force outside of his own landholdings.13 Instead, the state power was used to exercise a different kind of pressure: from locking up churches until clergy accepted the Union to civil persecution of Orthodox citizens. The struggle sometimes escalated to the use of arms by resisting those who rejected the Union, sometimes even leading to their execution (as e.g. during “Mahileu revolt” in 1619). Although anti-Union opposition lost its leader after the death of Astrozhski in 1608, his work continued especially by the monks of the Kyiv Lavra and the Cossacks. Their efforts led to the establishment of a parallel Orthodox hierarchy in 1620 which split Metropolitanate of Kyiv into two juxtaposing jurisdictions. Naturally, this resulted in an increase of sectarian violence over the ownership of church properties. The pinnacle of the struggle was reached in 1623 in Vitsebsk, where the Uniate Archbishop of Polacak Josaphat Kuncevich (1580–1623) was killed by a mob.14 These events prompted state authorities to not only take decisive measures in putting out the rebellions but also in seeking common ground. In 1632 the Diet15 adopted the Points of Reconciliation of the Subjects of the Crown and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania of the Ruthenian nation and Greek religion. In particular, the final division of the Kyivan Metropolitanate into the Uniate and Orthodox churches was recognized and the Orthodox received guarantees of their free existence and property assurance. They were entitled to build churches, schools, and hospitals and to open printing shops. Their hierarchy was also completely restored. At the same time, the Uniate hierarchy changed their methods. In 1613 the Kyivan Metropolitanate was led by Josyf-Veliamyn Rutsky (1574–1637) who, among his primary objectives, sought to raise the educational level of the clergy and the level of theology in Ruthenian church by reforming the monasteries, which he also accomplished in 1617.16 This and a simple  http://www.pravenc.ru/text/153419.html  For more on Kuncevich, see “Union of Brest: Saints or Villains?” in this volume (p. 63). 15  Diet (Sojm)—a deliberative and legislative assembly. 16  It was basically a reorganization of existing individual monastic communities living according to the rules of St. Basil and St. Theodore Studite into a single congregation—the Order of St. Basil—with a structure similar to the Western Rite monastic orders. Therefore, 1617 is often considered the year of founding of the Basilian Order. 13 14

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change of generations ensured that by the end of the eighteenth century three-quarters of total population of Belarus were Uniates while only 6% were Orthodox. Of the thirteen monasteries and convents in Minsk only one was Orthodox; both the famous Zyrovicy Monastery and the Cathedral of St. Sophia in Polacak became Greek Catholic.17

3   Points of Diversion in Interpretation A thorny question of what in the historical context served as key motivating factors for the events described above is hard to address without betraying confessional preferences. Was it a break with the tradition caused by the corruption of the involved bishops and plotting by Polish authorities and Roman Catholics, especially by the Jesuits, as it is often emphasized in the Russian Orthodox sources? Or, were the bishops moved by their dogmatic persuasions to restore communion with Rome and by realization that Ruthenian ways were somehow backward in themselves and the only way to improve the dire situation of their flock was to get closer to the superior Polish culture as some Roman Catholic, especially Polish, sources suggest? Or, were the actions of the bishops a result of their concern for the bleak pastoral reality which they attributed to both the failure of the Greek patriarchs to protect the Metropolitanate from the onslaught of the Reformation and a threat to the Ruthenian identity posed by polonization, as Byzantine Catholic (Ukrainian) authors tend to see? Diversions between these three discourses run deep but all three have some truth in them. It is not our intention to comprehensively address them but to try to bring out nuances that can soften any categorically formulated assertions. 3.1   Was the Union a Break with Tradition? The opinion that the Union was a break with tradition implies that there was one unified tradition in the Ruthenian church. However, the Orthodox in Kyivan Rus’ and GDL seem to have different views on the issue than the Orthodox in Muscovy. Latin preachers were allowed in Kyiv already during the reign of Princes Olga (baptized in 957). At the conversion of Great Prince Vladimyr in 988 the churches of Rome and Constantinople were still in communion and the knowledge of the schism of 1054 did not  Arlou/Hierasimovic 229.

17

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reach Kyiv until the end of the eleventh century. Even then, Kyivan Metropolitan Petro Akerovych went to the First Council of Lyon in 1245 to inform of the destruction of Kyiv by Batu Khan in 1240. Kyivan Metropolitan Isydor (1436–1441) was the most enthusiastic proponent of the Union signed at the Council of Florence in 1439. Upon his return from the Council he was cordially greeted by Ruthenian nobility and the Act of Union of Florence was read in Cathedral of St. Sophia in Kyiv. However, his attempt to liturgically commemorate the Bishop of Rome during his trip to the Moscow Kremlin caused such strong resentment of the Muscovite royal authorities that he was arrested. Subsequently, these events resulted in the election by the Moscow Council (1448) of another metropolitan without the permission of the Mother-Church, Patriarchate of Constantinople, and a definitive split of Muscovy from the Kyivan Metropolitanate. This clearly demonstrates the existence of two different “traditions” concerning the idea of a Union with Rome. Reformation manifested another example of difference in tradition. The beginning of what is now known as a Protestant Reformation (a schism within the Western Church) dates to 1517 when Augustinian monk Martin Luther posted his famous ninety-five theses. His actions were prompted largely by the general decline in ecclesial life of the Catholic Church manifested in abuse of liturgical practices by the faithful, absence of education for lower clergy, and moral corruption and financial abuses of episcopal authority, especially the abuses of the worldly power by the Bishop of Rome. The Catholic Church quickly launched anti-Reformation efforts. The Council of Trent (1545–1563), in addition to clarifying doctrinal issues, adopted decisive long-awaited measures for reform of internal life and discipline of the clergy: it required every diocese to provide for the education of its clergy in seminaries and bishops to reside in their diocese, brought under control financial abuses, and made provisions for the establishment of stricter forms for liturgical practices and music. It revitalized ecclesial and cultural life, filled it with new energy and strength. The ideas of the Reformation reached GDL already in the times of Jan Hus (1372–1415). It is not surprising then that the Reformation—mostly in the form of Calvinism and often flavored with anti-Trinitarianism— spread incredibly quickly in the GDL. After Chancellor Mikalaj Radzivil “The Black” became its supporter, almost all large landowning and princely families joined the Reformation movement. Already in 1572, sixteen out of twenty-two senators of the Diet were Protestant. Since the Diet of 1573 banned persecution on religious grounds, the Reformation

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spread unencumbered. However, since it did not penetrate among the general population of the GDL, counter-Reformation succeeded just as easily as Reformation: “the massive conversion of the nobles back to Catholicism” was accomplished without pressure or force18 mostly by Jesuit missionaries through creation of educational opportunities for both magnates and lower nobility and burghers. By 1718 there was only one remaining Protestant member in the Diet. In contrast, very little of the Protestant preaching reached deep into Muscovy where confessional fluidity of the GDL was completely foreign. The tsars were very intolerant of the Reformists’ ideas. When Polacak was taken by Ivan IV in 1579, he ordered an arrest of the Protestant preacher Thomas and, “after beating him with a stick, ordered him to be drowned in the icy waters of the Dzvina.”19 This suggests that while the ideas of the union with Rome constituted a break with a tradition of the Russian Orthodox Church, the situation with the Church of Kyiv was not so straightforward. 3.2   Was Union a Plot by Rome and the Jesuits? It is impossible to deny that the Union was viewed favorably by Rome and by the royal authorities. The question remains to which extend both of these parties can be implicated in actively “plotting” for the Union. A careful answer to this question should first of all take into account that both Rome and the king had bigger projects on their agenda: the Pope was more interested in building an anti-Ottoman alliance of Christian states20 and King Sigismund III, who in 1592 inherited a title of a king of Sweden, got involved into a lengthy war there as well as attempted different plots of annexing Muscovy to the Commonwealth through placement of his “man” on a throne. There is no historical evidence of any direct deliberate actions by the pope and the king to manufacture and promote the idea of the Union. In fact, at least initially, “the union was not viewed favorably by any of the three parties—Rome, the Poles, and the Jesuits— traditionally indicted” as perpetrators of the Union.21 All of them were  Dvornik 416.  Dvornik 429. 20  Appeal was made even to Tsar Basil III (1505–1533) in 1519 but he showed no interest in such a cooperation. Dvornik 272. 21  Robert Taft, S. J. “Anamnesis, Not Amnesia: The ‘Healing Memories’ and the Problem of ‘Uniatism.’” p. 15. This 21st Kelly Lecture, University of St. Michael’s College, Toronto, 18 19

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more interested in personal conversions to Roman Catholicism. The king had potential benefits from the union of the Ruthenian Church with Rome as it had a promise of establishment in GDL of the desirable principle of “one country, one faith” that was dominant in Europe. However, the Union with its preservation of the Ruthenian hierarchy parallel to the Latin one could hardly accomplish the desired effect of national unification. At  this point Latin theology strictly maintained that salvation can be accomplished only in the Catholic Church. As Papal nuncio to the PLC Antonio Possevino wrote, “[T]he fundamental and greatest error of Greeks and Ruthenians is that they believe that they can be saved outside the Roman Catholic Church.”22 This no doubt inspired a great missionary impulse of the Jesuits to “save” the Ruthenian population of the GDL. Extensive polemical activity of the local Jesuits is often illustrated by the work of the influential Jesuit polemicist Peter Skarga (1536–1612) who was a strong proponent of the union of the Orthodox Church with Rome. His vision of this union was presented in the book that received wide popularity O jedności Kościoła Božego pod jednym pasterzem (On the Unity of God’s Church Under One Shepherd, 1577). In this book Skarga called local Ruthenian bishops and nobility to consider a model of a union that they eventually accepted: a local union agreement without the involvement of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Skarga himself participated at the Brest synod where he delivered a closing address. It is less clear whether Skarga’s ideological basis for the union was as influential as his model. Nobility could not have been pleased with Skarga placing a bulk of the blame for a low level of religious culture among Ruthenians on the oppression by Latin magnates and especially his call for a large-scale reform in favor of absolute monarchy. It is doubtful that bishops identified the source of the decay of ecclesial discipline as Skarga did: in existence of the married clergy and use of Ruthenian liturgical language and ritual practices. One historical anecdote well illustrates these disagreements: originally, Skarga’s book was dedicated to Prince Astrozhski who was interested in discussing the possibility of a union. However, the Canada (Dec. 1, 2000) can be found at https://www.americancatholicpress.org/Father_ Taft_Anamnesis_Not_Amnesia.html 22  Antonii Possevini Societatis Iesu Moscovia, et alia opera (Cologne, 1587), p. 44. Quoted in Senyk 2. This is Possevino’s account of his visit as a papal legate to Muscovy to help mediate a treaty between Tsar Ivan the Terrible and Polish King Stefan Batory. A well-traveled diplomat, Possevino was the first Jesuit to visit Moscow.

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caustic tone of the book (which was softened in the second edition in 1590) and Skarga’s suggestions aggravated Astrozhski so much that he tried to buy out and burn the whole first edition. It is reasonable to suggest then that the arrogant and patronizing attitude of the Jesuits and especially of the Polish Roman Catholic clergy toward Ruthenians was more conducive for individual conversions than it was for attempts of preservation of Ruthenian identity in the framework of the church union. 3.3  Were Pro-union Bishops Dogmatically Motivated? There is no doubt that jurisdictional primacy of the Bishop of Rome was of great importance to the Roman Catholics as was manifested in Skarga’s book. It is doubtful, however, that this dogmatic concern motivated Ruthenian Orthodox bishops. Out of thirty-three articles of the letter to the Pope signed in 1595 only two articles were related to dogmatic questions. First, procession of the Holy Spirit was accepted based on the agreement of the Council of Florence as “through the Son.” Second, bishops accepted current Latin teaching on purgatory. For them, tacit acceptance of the teaching on purgatory did not constitute a radical shift in dogmatic positions because, despite the absence of the teaching on purgatory in the Orthodox theology, both Latin and Eastern practices included prayers for the dead.23 3.4  What Is the Meaning of the “Superiority” of Polish Culture in the Sixteenth Century? The question of what constitutes “superiority” of one culture over another is fundamentally flawed. If “culture” is understood as a sum total of customs, worldviews, arts, and social institution of a particular people, then each culture by definition has its own unique value that cannot be quantitatively measured and easily compared. However, historically speaking, cultures do not go through stages of rise and decline simultaneously and some of them at any given time may manifest collectively recognizable 23  According to the analysis of the thirty-three articles in Sophia Senyk, “The Background of the Union of Brest,” Analecta OSBM, Section II, Volume XV (XXI) 1–4, 1996, pages 103–144. Available online in two parts https://www.stnicholaschurch.ca/content_pages/ osbm/osbm.3.Senyk.1.96.An.htm and https://www.stnicholaschurch.ca/content_pages/ osbm/osbm.3.Senyk.2.96.An.htm

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higher levels of intellectual and artistic achievement. Their influence impacts other neighboring cultures in two ways: positively, the higher can enrich and elevate the lower; negatively, it can deform the lower by attempting to replace it with a version of itself. The latter trend usually dominates if political power and privilege come into play. Both of these trends can be identified in GDL. As it happens, in the sixteenth century Western European nations enjoyed a higher level of intellectual and artistic development than their Eastern neighbors. In the GDL, West was represented by the Polish Kingdom that served as a conduit of European achievements to the East. As a preeminent scholar of Eastern Slavs, Francis Dvornik noted, The spread of Polish civilization in the Ukraine and Belo-Russia [sic] raised considerably cultural level of the Russian [sic] burghers, and this class took the leadership in the defense of Orthodoxy and of the national life. The old religious confraternities which had existed in the Orthodox parishes were transformed into mighty organizations on the pattern of the guilds and started to found schools and printing presses in order to make the nation more resistant to Polish cultural influences. This activity spread over the whole Ukraine and Belo-Russia, and the cultural level of the Russian population reached unexpected heights.24

The brightest manifestation of this positive development of Orthodox Ruthenian culture is in the translation and publication of the Bible in Ruthenian language: twenty-three books published by Francysk Skaryna in Prague in 1517–1519 and the first full text, known as “Astrog Bible,” published by Ivan Fedorov in 1581 in Lviv.25 The negative imposition of the elements of Polish culture, in particular of the Polish language, generally referred to as “polonization,” was precipitated in GDL by two political events. First event is the so-called Union of Kreva in 1385, when Grand Duke Jagajla agreed to marry thirteenyear-old Queen Jadwiga and be crowned a King of Poland as Wladyslaw II 24  Dvornik 308. It is important to note that Jesuits did not have marked ethnic preferences as they were motivated by their service to the pope and pursuit of anti-Reformation agenda. In GDL, they used local Ruthenian language in their educational establishments. 25   Although Fedorov (1525–1583) was born in Moscow, he graduated from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow in 1532. After his first printing yard in Moscow was burned by the competing scribes, he was forced to flee to GDL and ended up working under the auspices of Astrozhski.

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Jagiello. Pagan for most of his life, Jagajla was first baptized as an Orthodox but then as Catholic for the marriage to take place. One year later the pagan population of the Grand Duchy was converted to Christianity as Roman Catholics followed by a massive program of building Catholic churches and monasteries in proto-Belarusian lands. Nobility received additional rights and freedom if they were baptized Catholic. This started a steady growth of association of Catholicism and Polish culture with increased prestige and social status. Second event is the Union of Lublin of 1569, which restructured the relationships of the GDL and Polish Kingdom into one Commonwealth: they had common king elected by common diet26 that made decisions on foreign policy while GDL retained its autonomy. The spread of Polish culture really expedited after this union: magnates were attracted by the glamor and vast privileges of nobility in the Polish lands, the Polish language was increasingly used in state documents, and the vast opened lands in proto-Ukraine were settled by farmers from central Poland. As a result, a peculiar cultural disparity between the ruling and lower classes formed in GDL: mostly Orthodox Ruthenian population was ruled by pagan or Roman Catholic princes with nobility increasingly accepting Catholic faith and Polish culture. This put an Orthodox Ruthenian majority in a politically, culturally, and economically disadvantaged and vulnerable position. However, any attempt to attribute this unfortunate situation to the inherent “backwardness” of Orthodox faith and Ruthenian culture betrays historical ignorance and narrowmindedness. 3.5  How Desperate Was the Pastoral Situation of the Orthodox Church in GDL? At the end of the sixteenth century the Orthodox Church in GDL (Kyivan Metropolitanate) was in a state of institutional, moral, and cultural decline, characterized by the lack of even basic education of clergy, corruption and moral decay among hierarchy and clergy, decline of monastic life, and general demoralization among the Orthodox exacerbated by the pressure from Polish culture as well as lack of consistent political equality with the Catholic Church. Many factors contributed to this crisis, some of which 26  It was for reasons of common convenience that the Diet assembled not in the Polish capital, Krakow, but in a place closer to the border with the GDL—in the border city of Warsaw.

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were already described above. On the institutional level, Kyivan Metropolitanate lost any practical and theological support of its Mother Church—Patriarchate of Constantinople—after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The need to pay tax to a sultan for the approval of the patriarchal appointment gave rise to serious corruption among the Orthodox hierarchy.27 In these circumstances, Kyivan Metropolitanate led almost independent existence from Constantinople,28 while Greek hierarchs visited Muscovy and GDL only to collect taxes. It left Ruthenian Orthodox utterly unprepared to the challenges of Reformation and competition with the Catholic Church in the GDL. The re-energized Catholic Church provided especially striking contrast in education of clergy and ecclesial discipline. Positively, ideas of the Reformation gave rise to a strong lay fraternal movement. Lay brotherhoods paid particular attention to education and publishing. Through their activity they often came in conflict with the stagnant hierarchy leading  to cases of serious insubordination. One instance of this subordination had a particular deep impact on the growth of pro-Union sentiment among the bishops. Reform-minded Patriarch Jeremias visited Kyivan Metropolitanate in 1589.29 Among other things, he deposed Kyivan Metropolitan Onesiphorus Divochka because of bigamy. More importantly, he sided with the Lviv Brotherhood30 against the local bishop Balaban and effectively recognized the highly non-­traditional right of the brotherhoods in the Orthodox Church to control the activity of the bishops. This decision greatly increased the rift between the Constantinople and the Ruthenian bishops. 27  According to www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/pages%5CH%5CI%5CHistoryoftheUkr ainianchurch.htm, “from 1463 to 1466 five patriarchs either themselves resigned or were removed. Overall in the second half of fifteenth century, patriarchs were changed 18 times, in the sixteenth century 22 times, and in the seventeenth century 54 times.” 28  There were many attempts by the GDL rulers to create an Orthodox Metropolitanate separate from its political rival, Muscovy, but Constantinople never supported these initiatives. 29  It is on this visit that he was forcefully held in Muscovy for six months until he approved the creation of the new Moscow Patriarchate. 30  Lviv Brotherhood was most active and educated, with many wealthy Greek members that had an inherent dislike of Rome. In striking similarity with the ideas of Reformation, this brotherhood sought to limit hierarchical supervision of their bishop Balaban in favor of their own right to oversee and appoint clergy. Although described as “hotheaded and tactless” in his efforts to uphold the canons, Balaban was devoted to the Ruthenian Church and even spent his family money for printing of liturgical books. Senyk 4–5.

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Although the situation of the Ruthenian Orthodox in GDL was truly dire, the argument that the pro-union bishops were motivated purely by the pastoral concerns is not very convincing considering that the faithful were not in any way involved in making decisions concerning the union. Even taking into account that in the sixteenth century listening to the “voice of the people” was not a standard modus operandi, the fact that lay brotherhoods were not only ignored but sometimes directly confronted by the hierarchy shows a distance between the pastors and their flock. Concluding the review of the establishment of the Union of Brest, it is important to stress once again that this Union came to life due to the complex interplay of all discussed factors: internal crises of Constantinopolitan Patriarchate, institutional, moral, and cultural decline of the Kyivan Metropolitanate, convincing pro-union polemics on already receptive soil, politically disadvantaged position of the Orthodox Church in the GDL, and even unorthodox actions of Patriarch Jeremiah. Nevertheless, none of these factors can and should be overemphasized as singularly decisive.

4   Elimination of the Uniate Church The elimination of the Uniate Church on the territory of modern Belarus is connected with a steady decline of the GDL and the whole Commonwealth in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These centuries are marked by almost ceaseless devastating wars—most of them with Muscovy (later to become Russian Empire) that engaged in a struggle with the GDL often on a pretext of defending the Orthodox from the Catholics and the Uniates. The perennial adversaries of the Commonwealth—Prussia and the Russian Empire—eventually overtook the crumbling state in a series of partitions, commonly referred to in English-language literature as “partitions of Poland” (of 1772, 1793, and 1795). Already after the first partition most of the proto-Belarusian lands fell under the rule of the Russian Empress Catherine (1762–1796). Immediately after that, a large number of Uniate parishes were transferred to the jurisdiction of the Holy Synod of Moscow Patriarchate that placed a ban on Uniate publishing activity and at the same time started closures of Basilian monasteries whose monks were not even allowed to preach. In 1795 Uniate dioceses were abolished altogether and the last Uniate Metropolitan, Theodor Rostotsky, was sent to St. Petersburg where he died in 1805.

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The situation of the Uniate Church temporarily improved under the Emperor Paul I (1796–1801), who not only opposed the forcible annexation of the Uniate parishes but also restored three dioceses. However, the next emperors, Alexander I (1801–1825) and Nicholas I (1825–1855), took a different approach to the matter. They were actively involved in the affairs of both the Uniate and the Roman Catholics under their jurisdiction. In 1827, an auditor of the Roman Catholic Collegium in St. Petersburg, Joseph Siamashka, submitted—upon request of his superior— a report on the state of the Uniate Church. He proposed measures that would “de-latinize” the Uniates and bring them closer to the Russian Orthodox Church. This was not a theological treatise but a document submitted by a state official which caught the attention of the authorities, probably because it proposed measures aimed at increasing loyalty to the state of the Uniate population. Siamashka’s plan did not propose elimination of the Uniate Church; instead, it included changes of the Uniate ritual practices to correspond to the Russian Orthodox ones, administrative reorganization that entailed liquidation of the Metropolitanate, education of a new generation of clergy lenient to the Russian Orthodox Church, and measures to curtail the influence of the Basilian monasteries. His ideas were well received by the authorities and in 1829, on the recommendation of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, Siamashka became a Uniate bishop of Mstislav. Uniate support of the anti-Russian uprising of 1830–1831 increased the urgency of the Uniate question. Eventually, the imperial government took more radical steps than the ones envisioned by Siamashka’s plan including use of troops to transfer parishes, deportation of recalcitrant priests to Siberia, and burning of Uniate service books and destruction of ritual objects that did not correspond to the Orthodox tradition. Finally, on February 12, 1839, three Uniate bishops (Siamashka, Antonij Zubko, and Vasily Luzhynsky) and other clergy gathered in Polacak and officially declared their transfer to the Russian Orthodox Church. The council adopted the Act which consisted of two points: by the first point, unity with the Orthodox Church was proclaimed, and in the second, participants in the council asked Emperor Nicholas I to facilitate the speedy unification of the Uniates with Orthodoxy. After the signing of the Act, Bishop Siamashka  celebrated in Polacak’s St. Sophia Cathedral and he commemorated all Orthodox patriarchs instead of the pope. Adoption of the Act by the imperial authorities effectively eliminated the Uniate Church in the Russian Empire. In preparation for this

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event, imperial authorities in January 1839 sent the 29th Cossack regiment to the Vitebsk province. Those Uniate clergy who refused to join the Russian Orthodox Church (593 out of a total of 1898  in Ukraine and Belarus) were exiled to the Russian interior or Siberia. About 1.5 million Uniates were officially re-registered as Orthodox. Newly Orthodox Bishops Siamashka and Luzhynsky organized celebratory processions with ringing of bells and solemn services. The promulgation was fairly calm due to heavy military presence and beforehand assurance of loyalty of influential clergy through removal of the disobedient ones. Notably, the Vatican tried—unsuccessfully—to use diplomacy to prevent the destruction of the Uniate Church. After the events of the Polacak Council, Pope Gregory XVI accused the converted Uniate episcopate in apostasy but he did not condemn the tsarist government in order not to threaten the position of the Roman Catholic Church in the Russian Empire.

5   Points of Diversion in Interpretation 5.1  Were Belarusian Orthodox Actually “Re-united” with the Russian Orthodox? This is the main point of divergence in evaluation of the historical fate of the Uniate Church in Belarus. It appears that this is not one question but two: one about confessional and one about national belonging. Confessionally speaking, one may say that Belarusian Uniates were “returned” to the Orthodox Church. Even though after 200 years of the adoption of the Union none of the living Uniates were actually Orthodox in their lifetime, in a historical sense, it can be said that they were returned to the faith of their ancestors. However, it should be remembered that the Orthodox population of Belarus was never part of the Russian Orthodox Church—they were always in the jurisdiction of Patriarchate of Constantinople as part of the Kyivan Metropolitanate.31 In this sense one cannot talk of return or reunification. 31  Even if one interprets a 1686 transfer of the Orthodox Kyivan Metropolitanate under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate by the ecumenical Patriarch Dionysius IV as a definitive canonical act (this being a very highly contested interpretation in present day), the Uniate Kyivan Metropolitanate of GDL was not affected by this measure and the names of Moscow Patriarchs were not liturgically commemorated in GDL until it became part of the Russian Empire.

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As for national belonging, the proponents of the reunification interpretation rely on the common patrimony of Kyivan Rus’. However, since the fall of the Kyivan Rus’, proto-Belarusian lands were never part of Muscovy or the Russian Empire until the partitions of Poland. In fact, after the fall of the Kyivan Rus’, GDL and Muscovy were in an almost continuous state of war with each other. There were major military campaigns in 1492–1494, 1500–1503, 1507–1508, 1512–1522, and 1534–1537. After the end of Golden Horde32 in 1502 its successor and ally of the Muscovy Tsar Ivan III—Khanate of Crimea—continued raids to the south of GDL, protoUkraine, and south of Belarus through the whole first quarter of the sixteenth century. After the Union, in the first half of the seventeenth century the fighting continued in 1609–1618 (when Moscow was occupied by the GDL troops in 1610) and in 1632–1634. After Ukrainian Cossacks, long unhappy with Polish domination in the GDL, decided to pass under the hand of the Muscovy monarchy in 1654, they assisted Tsar Alexei in invading the weakened Commonwealth. The Tsar’s troops employed the scorched earth tactics especially against the Uniates, Jews, and the Catholics, and they did also not favor the Orthodox population. For example, in Vilnia they robbed and burned Orthodox churches and half of townspeople perished, while the rest abandoned the city. Bishop of Vitebsk Kallist lamented this campaign: “Why is so much wrong being done to the people, why are there so many thefts, torments and murders in the towns and villages, in the forests and in the open fields, why do we everywhere behold wailing and shredding of tears?”33 Tsar Alexei also conceived a plan to resettle 300,000 inhabitants of the GDL’s lands. Muscovy landowners could come to proto-Belarus and buy as many prisoners as they wanted. This campaign, during which the unburied bodies of both humans and animals led to an outbreak of plague accompanied by famine, left the land completely devastated. Human losses were catastrophic: population was reduced from 2,900,000 in 1648 to 1,350,000 in 1667.34 Almost all towns laid in ruins. A major European grain exporter in the past, GDL could now hardly feed itself. When the Commonwealth got 32  Golden Horde refers to four westernmost khanates of the Mongol Empire that in 1227 were given to rule to Batu Khan by his dying father Genghis Khan. It flourished from midthirteenth to the end of the fourteenth century as it consolidated all conquered western territories, including Kyivan Rus’. The original capital of Golden Horde was located in the present-day Russia about 120 kilometers north from Astrakhan on River Volga. 33  Arlou/Hierasimovic 247. 34  Arlou/Hierasimovic 252.

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dragged into the Great Northern War with the Sweden35 king’s ally Tsar Peter I deployed 70,000 troops in Belarus. The Russian allies behaved as invaders. In 1705 Russian troops plundered the ancient Cathedral of St. Sophia in Polacak, used it for storage of gunpowder, and blew it up upon their withdrawal on May 1, 1710. Many other towns were set to fire: Vitebsk, Mahiliou, Vorsha, Amscislau, Dubrouna, and so on. All these graphic examples of wartime behavior of Russian troops are given here not to emphasize their brutality—for this behavior was not unique in its time. These examples are given to underscore to which extent the two nations—GDL and Muscovy/Russian Empire—treated each other as enemies throughout their history. After the partitions of Poland, the situation did not change: the population of the former GDL was treated by the Russian authorities as hostile and different measures were taken to control this hostility.36 There is no evidence that the Orthodox population of the former GDL was treated differently than the rest. It is not surprising, then, that the advancement of the Russian troops did not increase the numbers of the Orthodox population but, rather, many Uniate faithful converted to Roman Catholicism. In 1795 200,000 Uniates became Roman Catholics in Minsk governorate alone.37 Earlier, as a reaction to Tsar Peter’s campaign, the Uniate Metropolitanate was joined by Lviv Stauropegion Brotherhood (in 1708), the Pochayiv monastery (in 1712), and the Krekhiv monastery (in 1721). In summary, although Muscovy and the Russian Empire often claimed protection of the Orthodox population as a pretext for military invasion, they treated the conquered native population of the GDL without confessional distinction and, in response, the native population treated them as invaders. The difference in historical fortunes following the end of the Kyivan Rus’ created deep-seated divergencies in religion and cultural orientation between the people of the proto-Belarusian lands and its Eastern neighbors. This history of mutual hostility does not fit well into the narrative of reunification of the proto-Belarusian lands with the Russian Empire.

35  It was a result of the unfortunate politics of the Great Duke and King Augustus II the Strong (reign 1697–1706, 1709–1733), a native of Saxony. 36  For example, it was done through excessive taxation or higher than average compulsory conscription rates. 37  Arlou/Hierasimovic 312.

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5.2  Did Elimination of the Uniate Church Help to Protect Belarusian Population from Complete Polonization and Thus Protected Its Unique Cultural Diversity? Polonization of the Ruthenian population in the GDL that was discussed earlier was a real threat to local Ruthenian identity. The best indicator of it was the growth of the use of Polish language. For example, already in 1630 Orthodox brotherhood of Vilnia published an alphabet book using Polish as its language.38 In 1696 the Commonwealth Diet replaced state language from Ruthenian to Polish. Educational establishments and even Orthodox priests and fraternities were now using Polish. Although Ruthenian language was used by the Uniates in preaching and education, they also could not resist the growth of Polish influence. No doubt that inclusion into the Russian Empire limited Polish cultural influence to the confines of the Roman Catholic Church. In this case, however, polonization was replaced not by growth of local culture but by russification. Although Russian language shares the same roots with Belarusian and Ukrainian, already by the time of the Union of Brest these three languages acquired unique distinguishing features. Therefore, the change of the Polish language for Russian in administration and education did not benefit Belarusian identity. For example, when the Uniates were re-registered as the Orthodox in the Russian Empire, their recorded names were changed into their Russian form (Jazep to Iosif, Tamash to Foma, etc.) and surnames were given Russian endings. Consequently, if Union is being considered a channel of polonization then it is only logical to consider transfer of the Uniate population to the Russian Orthodox Church as means of russification. 5.3  Was Siamashka a Hero or an Imperial Puppet? The answer to this question directly depends on one’s answer to the two questions reviewed above and, more significantly, on how one views the relationships between Belarusian and Russian states today. Even the Orthodox proponents of Belarusian independence tend to use restraint in celebrating his role in elimination of the Uniate Church while the proponents of deeper integration between Russia and Belarus enthusiastically hail it. Siamashka’s ecclesial carrier was closely connected with his service  Arlou/Hierasimovic 273.

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to the Russian Empire for which he was rewarded with lifelong pension from the Russian government as well as with numerous state and ecclesiastical awards. For some, just the fact of this service serves as a sufficient (even if unsupported by other historical evidence) foundation for speculations on a selfish nature of Siamashka’s ulterior motives. Others emphasize his personal modesty and sincere love of Orthodoxy. However, as in the case of bishops behind the Union of Brest, speculations of someone’s inner motives are often ideologically conditioned and impossible to prove definitively.39 In conclusion of this historical overview, it is interesting to note significant similarities in historical events that lead to establishment and elimination of the Uniate Church on the territory of modern Belarus. Firstly, both processes were motivated primarily not by theological but by sociopolitical motives. In both cases converted churches and their hierarchies were underprivileged and impoverished. Although the bishops behind the Union of Brest hoped to improve the life of their church by becoming a part of the decision-making elite, the Union did not bring desired parity.40 Secondly, both processes were conducted not in a missionary way— through the conversion of hearts and minds of all the faithful—but through manipulation of hierarchy. This included sincere theological conversions as well as desire for political or material gain and fear of persecution. Finally, in both cases the “winning” side—that in both cases was outside of the developing Belarusian ethnic group—attempted to assimilate “primitive” proto-Belarusian population into its own culture and language. Paradoxically, it is an intersection of these conflicting cultures that, over the centuries, made Belarusian people distinct from both its Western and Eastern neighbors. 39  For a deeper analysis of different interpretations of Siamashka’s activities, see an essay by Natallia Vasilevich “Joseph Siamaška: Will the Icon of the Westernrussianism Become a Saint of the Orthodox Church?” in this volume (p. 64). 40  As Dvornik describes it, “Polish Catholic hierarchy never regarded the Uniat bishops as being completely their equal in dignity and rights and continued to treat the Uniats as inferior to Roman Catholics. The Uniat bishops were not admitted to the Polish Senate and were supervised by the Polish native bishops, and the faithful had to pay the tithe not only to their Uniat priests, but also to the Polish Latin priests. Latin churches and parishes were often endowed at the expense of Uniat ecclesiastical institutions, while nothing was done for the Uniat clergy. So the Uniats had to fight on two fronts for their rights, against the Orthodox and against the Polish Latin clergy. […] The authorities in Rome tried vainly to remedy this sad situation.” Dvornik 474.

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As a preeminent scholar of Byzantine liturgy, late Robert Taft put it, “History is not the past but a vision of the past […] to recount only that half of the story that favors one’s own side is not history but confessional propaganda.”41 If at times the readers will get an impression that this chapter has lost the intended balance of evaluations and sounded as “confessional propaganda,” please be assured that it was not done deliberately because the goal of this work is to facilitate a discussion that can bring the opposing sides closer. Let it serve as an invitation to all sides to continue the writing of a non-selective history of the Union of Brest—a process that requires not only integrity of historical research but courage, self-criticism, and “courtesy of tone and language even in disagreement.”42

 Taft 7–8.  Taft 10.

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Union of Brest: Saints or Villains? Anastacia K. Wooden and Natallia Vasilevich

1   Introduction As a collaborative effort, this chapter is born from two papers devoted to two key figures in the process of establishment and demolition of the Union on proto-Belarusian territories: Bishops Josaphat Kuncevich (Sects. 4 and 5) and Joseph Siamaška (Sects. 2 and 3). No other characters better symbolize the seemingly irreconcilable differences in evaluation of the significance Union of Brest. Kuncevich is revered in the Catholic Church as a “hero” who played an important role in the establishment of the Eastern Catholic Church (ECC) in what today is Belarus and Ukraine while Siamaška is seen as a “hero” by the Orthodox Church for the equally important role he played in the elimination of the ECC in the same lands. At the same time, they are both considered villains by each other’s churches. While these papers differ greatly in their approach (one being socio-political and another theological-ecumenical), they share the same desire to find a way to look at these characters in a way that transcends uncompromising confessionally predetermined titles of saints or villains. A. K. Wooden (*) The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, USA N. Vasilevich (*) Centre Ecumena, Minsk, Belarus © The Author(s) 2021 V. Latinovic, A. K. Wooden (eds.), Stolen Churches or Bridges to Orthodoxy?, Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55442-2_4

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2   Joseph Siamaška: Will the Icon of the Westernrussianism Become a Saint of the Orthodox Church?1 This first part takes an in-depth look at the canonization initiative of the Metropolitan Joseph Siamaška of Vilnia which was launched in 2011 by the Belarusian Orthodox Church. As was already mentioned in the essay “A Brief History of the Union of Brest and Its Interpretations,”2 Siamaška played a key role in the events leading to the Polacak Council of 1839 that abolished the Union of Brest of 1596 and effectively made the Greek-­ Catholic (Uniate) Church in the Western Rus’ (Belarus) part of the Orthodox Church of Russia. Despite of his role in these events, until now the name of Siamaška was known mostly to historians specialized in this narrow topic and there was no spontaneous veneration (cult) by the faithful or devotions connected with his body and relicts interned in the crypt of the cathedral of the Holy Spirit Monastery in Vilnius. The chapter aims to analyze what motivated the canonization initiative and to explore if those motives could lie outside of theological sphere and pertain to ideology of national politics. 2.1  Canonization Initiative Although very sensitive to the question of venerating converted Orthodox as individuals, Orthodox Church itself venerates a number of saints whose earthly activities contributed to the conversion of the Uniates to Orthodoxy. The best-known example is, perhaps, that of Saint Alexis (Toth)3 of Wilkes-Barre who is honored with the title “Confessor and Defender of Orthodoxy in America.” As a priest in the Ruthenian Catholic Church, Fr. Toth came into conflict with his Latin bishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese Fr. John Irish4 over the attempts of the latter to Americanize all the Catholics under his jurisdiction by eradication of their ethnic traditions. In addition to that, Bishop Irish openly denied full equality of the Roman and Ruthenian Catholics and obstructed Fr. Toth’s pastoral ministry. Perceiving his church to be under the threat of  This part of the chapter is authored by Natallia Vasilevich.  See chapter “A Brief History of the Union of Brest and Its Interpretations.” 3  https://oca.org/fs/st-alexis-toth. 4  There were no Byzantine rite bishops in the US at this time. 1 2

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elimination, Fr. Toth decided to join the Russian Orthodox Church in 1892 and through his tireless preaching in favor of Orthodoxy he was followed by about 20,000 of the US Ruthenian Catholics in the course of the next fifteen years. Although Siamaška’s efforts similarly resulted in a multitude of conversions of Uniates to Orthodoxy—about 1.5 million in total—his case differs from that of Toth. Toth accomplished conversion through preaching and was followed by the faithful gradually, according to their free will without any coercion. In the case of Siamaška the decision was taken for “the flocks entrusted to us,”5 that is, it was imposed from the top down by the bishops, enforced in one concerted effort, and therefore received diverse reactions from clergy and laity, including enthusiasm, neutral acceptance, and open resistance.6 Still, it came as a no surprise that the February 2011 Commission on Canonization of the Belarusian Orthodox Church issued a press release on the results of their discussion of life and activities of Metropolitan Joseph Siamaška, thanks to whom “1.5 million of Belarusian and Lithuanian Uniates joined to the Orthodoxy.”7 Considering Siamaška’s historical importance for the Orthodox Church in Belarus, a decision was made to publish Siamaška’s works and to promote his figure in the media. Initially, intentions to start a canonization process were not publicly mentioned. However, in April of the same year the Synod of the Belarusian Orthodox Church referred to the February event as a “working group of the Commission on the case of glorification of Metropolitan Siamaška as a locally venerated saint.”8 The Synod decided to discuss the possible ­canonization of Siamaška with the Archbishop Innokenty of Vilnius and to appeal to the Patriarch Cyril of Moscow concerning glorification of the Metropolitan among the locally venerated saints. Even before the official 5  This formulation was used in the Conciliar Act of the Polacak Council. See: Соборный акт о воссоединении униатской церкви с Православною в Полоцке, 12 февраля 1839 г. Cост. В. А. Теплова, З. И. Зуева, (Минск: Лучи Софии, 1997), 487–489. 6  On resistance and repressions see: С. В. Марозава “Сваёй веры ламаць не будзем …”: Супраціў дэўнізацыі ў Беларусі (1780–1839 гады): манаграфія, (Гродна, 2014); А. М. Філатава, “Хрысціянскія канфесіі пасля далучэння Беларусі да Расійскай імперыі (1772–1860)” in Канфесіі на Беларусі (канец XVIII–XX ст.) В. В. Грыгор’ева, У. М. Завальнюк, У. І. Навіцкі, А. М. Філатава. Навук. рэд. У. І. Навіцкі, (Мінск: ВП Экаперспектыва, 1998), 5–57. 7  http://church.by/news/10-fevralja-2011-gsostojalos-zasedanie-komissii-po-kanonizacii-v-belorusskoj-pravoslavnoj-cerkvi. 8  Журнал № 133, Заседание Синода Белорусского Экзархата от 4 апреля 2011 года, http://exarchate.by/resource/Dir0301/Dir0302/2011/Page3608.html.

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glorification, Synod adopted measures concomitant with veneration. It was decided to introduce two compulsory memorial days: one of Siamaška, to be celebrated on December 6 with a requiem, and one of the Polacak Council, to be celebrated on February 25 with a thanksgiving service to celebrate “achieving historical justice and spiritual unity of the Belarusians.”9 It is beneficial to pause for a moment to reflect on the formulation of the achievements attributed to Siamaška’s activity worthy of him being recognized as a saint, namely, the “spiritual unity of the Belarusian nation (народа).” The Holy Synod seems to consider that only the Orthodox faithful belong to the Belarusian people. This is seen even better in a synodal statement from 2016 which specifies that a “spiritual unity of the Belarusian nation” happens “in the womb of the Orthodox Church.”10 Historically speaking, this statement is not accurate because Belarusian people never were and still are not a mono-confessional entity.11 Nevertheless, as it will be shown later, concern for the “nation” became inseparable from Siamaška’s canonization initiative. Ironically, public reaction to the publication of the synodal decision shows that the Orthodox hierarchs clearly overestimated “the spiritual unity of the Belarusian nation.” Normally, media does not cover mundane parts of the life of the Belarusian Orthodox Church seeing it as irrelevant to the life of the society at large. In contrast, Siamaška’s case received abundant coverage. It is safe to say that no other synodal decision elicited such hot public debates. Controversy unfolded not only in the public secular domain but also inside the Belarusian Orthodox Church. As the main proponent of Siamaška’s canonization archpriest Aliaksandr Romanchuk lamented: “Today there is a rather large group of people and clergy who are against of the canonization of Siamaška.”12 9  Журнал № 169, Заседание Синода Белорусского Экзархата от 3 сентябя 2012 года, http://church.by/news/zhurnaly-zasedanija-sinoda-belorusskogo-ekzarhata-ot-3-sentjabrja-2012-goda “В этот день была восстановлена историческая справедливость и достигнуто духовное единство белорусов.” 10  Журнал №7, Заседание Синода Белорусского Экзархата от 19 апреля 2018 года, http://church.by/news/zhurnaly-zasedanija-sinoda-belorusskogo-ekzarhata-ot-19-aprelja-2018-goda. 11  Канфесіі на Беларусі (канец XVIII–XX ст.). 12  h t t p s : / / z a p a d r u s . s u / 2 0 1 2 - 0 4 - 1 1 - 1 4 - 5 9 - 4 3 / 2 0 1 2 - 0 4 - 1 1 - 1 5 - 0 7 - 2 1 / 2012-05-02-16-44-55/629-l-r-133.html Александр Романчук, прот. видео: https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjjDEn0AJQs&t=1s.

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Despite public debates, in September 2012, two new dates were introduced into the liturgical calendar of the Belarusian Orthodox Church: December 6 as the day of Siamaška’s repose and February 25 as the memorial day for three bishops of the Polacak Council—Siamaška, Lužynsky, and Zubko, designated for commemoration of the “return of the Belarusian Uniates to the Orthodox Church.”13 The Holy Synod also decided “to promote the historic truth on Polacak council of 1839” through seminars and round table discussions throughout different parts of the Belarusian Orthodox Church.14 Further, the Belarusian Orthodox Church dedicated 2016 to the memory of Metropolitan Siamaška. It also identified a number of important dates to be commemorated:15 –– in 2017, 300th anniversary of Georgy Konisski, archbishop of Mahilou, a head of the Orthodox Church in the Polish-­Lithuanian Commonwealth (PLC) in the last decade of its existence and after its partition. His actions ensured that the Orthodox diocese in the PLC was not forcefully merged with the Greek Catholic Church; –– in 2018, 220th anniversary of birth and 150th anniversary of repose of Siamaška; –– in 2019, 180th anniversary of the Polacak Council. There is a puzzling absence on this list of the anniversary of Baptism of Rus’ (988) or the centennial of the Moscow Council (1918)—despite the fact that number 100 looks much nicer for a jubilee than 220. Without resorting to conspiracy theories, it is clear that three jubilee dates in a row that directly refer to the Uniate “return” to the Orthodox Church look like a systematic promotion of this issue. The topic of Siamaška’s canonization was discussed at the general gathering of the clergy of the Minsk diocese which took place in December 2017 and where Archpriest Romanchuk was a keynote speaker. A decision was made to “entrust a Synodal commission on the canonization of the saints of the Belarusian Exarchate to explore life, works, and spiritual legacy of Metropolitan Joseph (Siamaška) in order to initiate his glorification 13  http://church.by/news/zhurnaly-zasedanija-sinoda-belorusskogo-ekzarhata-ot3-sentjabrja-2012-goda. 14  Let’s note on the margins that the “truth” here is to be promoted, not discovered. 15  Журнал № 31, Заседание Синода Белорусского Экзархата от 16 августа 2016 года http://church.by/news/zhurnaly-zasedanija-sinoda-belorusskogo-ekzarhata-ot-16-avgusta-2016-goda-2.

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among the holy hierarch, by whose works and concerns age-old painful division in our fatherland was healed and overcome.”16 It is notable that this formulation speaks of division “in our fatherland,” but not “in our church.” Finally, in 2019, Metropolitan Pavel devoted a special encyclical on the Council of Polacak. In it, the head of the Belarusian Orthodox Church described the Council as “the sign of reconciliation and harmony, the source of spiritual and cultural revival of our nation, that manifested in its fullness the beauty and glory of the Orthodox Church and Slavic civilization.”17 2.2  Analyses of the Pro and Contra Arguments Concerning Canonization of Siamaška As was already mentioned, canonization initiatives were met with a public outburst of support and resistance. Although most of these reactions were polemical in their nature, some tried to look at the issue more systematically. The supporters of canonization tended to use arguments provided in the work of its biggest promoter, Archpriest Romanchuk.18 Romanchuk sees Metropolitan Siamaška as a positive figure for Belarus because through his efforts Orthodox Church enjoys a status of a majority church in the country and because people of Belarus became closer with Russian culture. Those who opposed canonization emphasize the use of violence in liquidation of the Union,19 the political character of the so-called

16  http://church.by/news/itogovyj-dokument-obshego-sobranija-minskoj-eparhii20-dekabrja-2017-goda. 17  Послание Митрополита Минского и Заславского Павла, Патриаршего экзарха всея Беларуси архипастырям, клиру, монашествующим и мирянам Белорусской православной церкви в связи со 180-летием Полоцкого церковного собора 1839 года, 22 февраля 2019. http://church.by/news/poslanie-mitropolita-minskogo-i-zaslavskogopavla-patriarshego-ekzarha-vseja-belarusi-arhipastyrjam-kliru-monashestvujushim-i-mirjanam-belorusskoj-pravoslavnoj-cerkvi-v-svjazi-so-180-letiem-polockogo-cerkovnogo-sobora-1839-goda. 18  See for example the book Андрей Романчук, прот., Иосиф (Семашко), митрополит Литовский и Виленский: жизнь и служение. https://zapadrus.su/bibli/geobib/2012-0328-20-41-32/594-l-r-112.html. 19  See for example Вольга Сяховіч, “БПЦ прапануе зрабіць новага святога з ліквідатара ўніяцтва на Беларусі,” www.ej.by/news/sociaty/2011/11/15/bpts_predlagaet_sdelat__ novogo_svyatogo_iz_likvidatora_uniatstva_v_belarusi_.html.

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reunification, and saw Siamaška’s cultural effect as russification of Belarusian Church.20 In his in-depth analyses of these arguments, Belarusian Greek-Catholic priest Andrei Krot21 notes that both those for and against canonization of Siamaška refer to a number of arguments which are not theological in nature. Krot identifies four groups of what he calls “ethical criteria” around which all pro and contra arguments can be grouped. First is the criteria of sincerity and selflessness of Siamaška’s intentions. It is hard to argue that Siamaška was sincerely convinced in the truth of Orthodoxy and the necessity of the Uniate Church to be united with the Orthodox one. Moreover, in reading Siamaška’s personal diaries Krot finds at least three instances when Siamaška considered and even tried to personally join the Orthodox Church: in 1822, 1833, and 1836. The question is why he actually never did so and whether his motives were free of selfish career goals especially considering how remarkably successful and rewarding this career turned out to be. The second criterion is Siamaška’s contribution to the national culture. According to Krot, all the parties agree with the fact that Siamaška was guided by sincere intention to bring Belarusian people closer to Russia and its culture. Disagreement comes in evaluation of the ensuing russification. Some view russification positively as a protection from polonization enabled by the Union of Brest. Romanchuk, who supports this interpretation, sees Siamaška as one of the fathers of Belarusian nation. Others interpret this fact negatively: colonization by Polish culture was simply replaced by another culture while the church itself that had certain autonomy as a Kievan Metropolitanate or a Uniate Church finally lost this autonomy to the Russian Orthodox Church. Therefore, the Orthodoxy in Belarus after liquidation of the Union was distinctly Russian and as such obstructed a development of the authentic Belarusian national identity. Third criterion is collaboration with the state authorities. Here the parties disagree on whether Siamaška pushed for elimination of the Union on his own merit or whether his efforts became part of a well-orchestrated plan prepared by minister of interior of the Russian Empire and whether 20  See for example Сяргей Абламейка “Кананізацыя Сямашкі. Скон народу.” www.svaboda.org/content/article/24568627.html, Абламейка С. “Кананізацыя Сямашкі. Скон народу-2,” www.svaboda.org/content/article/24583811.html. 21  Андрэй Крот “Багаслоўскія і этычныя падставы працэса далучэння да ліку святых (на прыкладзе мітрапаліта Літоўскага Іосіфа Сямашкі).” http://krytyka.by/by/page/science/sacialnyia-navuki/13420.

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he acted in the interest of the state authorities or the interests of the people. Although, Siamaška in his diaries lamented the lack of understanding and support from the state representatives, the elimination of the Uniate Church was clearly a state-sponsored project guaranteed by its financial and military power. For example, one of Siamaška’s opponents, the leader of Belarusian Greek-Catholic Church Fr. Alexander Nadson (1926–2015) characterized Siamaška in the following way: “They [Russian imperial authority] rightly saw in the Uniate Church as the main obstacle to the Russification of the Belarusians, and decided to destroy her. For this they found a willing tool in the person of Joseph Siamaška, who, first as a Uniate priest and then as a bishop for twelve years prepared the destruction of his own Church by weakening it from inside and breaking her spirit.”22 Finally, fourth criterion is the use of violence. Supporters of Siamaška try to underemphasize violence and repressions during preparation and liquidation of the Uniate Church, while his opponents try to highlight forced deportations, tortures, and other violations of freedom of religion. In conclusion, after the analyses of the arguments that have been proposed so far Krot calls the Russian Orthodox Church to caution in canonization of Siamaška because in doing so it would fall short of the traditional Orthodox criteria for canonization: existence of popular cult and blameless life in accordance with the evangelical values. Interestingly, the formulations that we find in the official documents such as contribution to “the glory of Slavic civilization,” “unity of Belarusian people,” “cultural revival,” and “overcoming divisions of our fatherland” are only pale reflections of the arguments used by Romanchuk whose research and tireless efforts made it possible to even talk about Siamaška’s canonization. Back in 2005, when he started to study Siamaška, Romanchuk wrote an article called “Reunification of the Uniates and Historical Fate of Belarusian People.”23 In this article he brought up the ideas of Oswald Spengler’s Der Untergang des Abendlandes (The Decline of the West) on the culture as an expression of the collective soul of the nation. In Romanchuk’s vision, Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL) was a Western state, and the Uniate Church was designed as an instrument “to change 22  Alexander Nadson. The Belarusian Greek Catholic (Uniate) Church. Zapisy BINIM http://belarus8.tripod.com/ZapisyBINIM/unija.htm. 23  Александр Романчук “Воссоединение униатов и исторические судьбы белорусского народа.” http://www.pravoslavie.ru/arhiv/050513111111.htm#rel2.

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spiritual and cultural self-identification of nations.” He refers to Roman Catholicism as a Polish religion, alien to Belarusian people, and as something separating them from unity with their brotherly Russian nation. Belarus is a land where civilizational struggle between the West (Poland) and Russia took place, and Uniate Church was the main instrument of Poland “to influence Belarusians and Ukrainians.” Romanchuk refers to those Uniates who had pro-Russian and pro-Orthodox intentions (first of whom was Siamaška) as “pillars of Russia.” He thinks that Siamaška’s work toward establishment of Orthodoxy in Lithuania and Belarus had a larger overarching goal of bringing these lands back to the sphere of influence of the Eastern Christian Civilization and reestablishment of Russian (!) Orthodox self-identification of Belarusian people. The liquidation of Union, according to Romanchuk, led to unification of the Belarusian people in a homogeneous entity through the defeated positions of polonization and Catholicism. It gave an impulse to development of national identity reflected in appearance of literary works in Belarusian language, cultural revival of Belarusian people, and growth of interest in history, ethnography, and folklore. In a way, liquidation of the Union was a key event in the history of Belarusian people. To summarize it, Romanchuk holds that pro-Russian orientation of Western Ruthenians was an important part of forming of authentic Belarusian identity. He adds that without Siamaška an ethnopolitical ideology of Western-Ruthenianism would not have been developed. It is for this reason that it is necessary to “bring out of oblivion the name of this Orthodox hierarch and to demonstrate his merits to Belorussia, Ukraine, and the whole Russian World.”24 As for the “zealots of Uniate antiquity,” using a phrase chosen by Romanchuk to call his opponents, their nostalgia for the union with Rome of the Belarusian Church is fed by a myth that such a union connected Belarus to Europe. They think that it was Uniatism (and not Orthodoxy) that was a central “culture-forming religion of Belarusians.”25 Contrary to this view, Metropolitan Siamaška, who had an insider knowledge of the Union, saw it as “a medieval attempt of the West, primarily Poland, to strengthen itself at the expense of the Orthodox Church, making our

 https://zapadrus.su/rusmir/istf/80-l-r.html.  https://zapadr us.su/2012-04-11-14-59-43/2018-g/k-220-letiyu-iosifasemashko/1859-religiozno-nravstvennye-aspekty-deyatelnosti-mitropolita-litovskogo-ivilenskogo-iosifa-semashko-1798-1868-po-vossoedineniyu-uniatov.html. 24

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people their ethnic material regardless of their historical interests.”26 Therefore, all the attempts to denigrate the person of Siamaška are fueled by a desire to avenge the defeat of polonization and Catholicism. It appears that in the event of the Belarusian Uniates joining the Russian Orthodox Church the word “Russian” is of particular significance to Romanchuk. In his zeal he even forgets that the Union of Brest was concluded on the basis of the Kyivan Metropolitanate of Constantinopolitan Patriarchate and not the Russian Orthodox Church. Romanchuk is not the only one for whom ethnopolitical framework of Siamaška’s personality clearly dominates over the theological one. His supporters also interpret the history of Belarus as “century-old struggle” of Belarusians against longstanding pressure of the West in which they are “strengthen by the whole crowd of their saint heroes—heavenly protectors of White27 and All Rus’.”28 Siamaška, “Belarusian prophet,” is one of the outstanding heroes of this struggle.29 Some, like Kirill Florov, already went a step further and called him “equal to apostles.” Calling for his canonization and proclamation of February 12 and March 13—days of reunification—as the feast of the whole Russian Orthodox Church,30 Florov predictably gives the ethnopolitical significance to the canonization: “The return of the name of Metropolitan Joseph happens in an important historical moment when anti-Orthodox, anti-Russian forces again try to destabilize situation in White and in Great Russia, to destabilize our union.”31

3   Evaluation of the Canonization Process The project of Metropolitan Siamaška’s canonization is in its essence clearly a political project. For the political groups that seek identification of the Orthodox Church with West-Ruthenian national project Siamaška’s  https://zapadrus.su/rusmir/istf/80-l-r.html.  “Belarus” can be translated as “White Rus’.” 28  Игорь Зеленковский, “O книге Александра Романчука Иосиф (Семашко), митрополит Литовский и Виленский: жизнь и служение.” Предисловие. https://zapadrus.su/bibli/ geobib/2012-03-28-20-41-32/594-l-r-112.html. 29  Зеленковский. 30  https://zapadrus.su/rusmir/pubru/595-2012-03-29-08-50-29.html. 31  Кирилл Фролов, “Пророк Западной Руси,” рецензия на книгу о.Александра Романчука Иосиф (Семашко), митрополит Литовский и Виленский: жизнь и служение. https://zapadrus.su/rusmir/pubru/595-2012-03-29-08-50-29.html. 26 27

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canonization adds a special spiritual and religious meaning to this project. The national project they propose for Belarusian people is based on the dynamics of West-East controversy, in which non-Orthodox Christians are seen not only as excluded from the Belarusian nation but also as its voluntary or involuntary “enemies” and agents of the Western civilization. Being quite marginal on the ideological and political scene, this group seeks to receive additional publicity and support—a goal they try to accomplish through their efforts in promotion of Siamaška’s figure as a saint of the Orthodox Church. However, those in the Orthodox Church who would like its theological, civilizational, and political identity to be inclusive and ecumenical, see Siamaška’s canonization as a risk for the Church to become further and unnecessary involved in a national ideological controversy. In their opinion, this risk would be justifiable only in the case of indisputable confidence in the holiness of his life, which is not yet the case. Interestingly, in one of his latest interviews Metropolitan Pavel of Minsk tried to step back from the familiar geopolitical or ethnopolitical argumentation for Siamaška’s canonization.32 Metropolitan stated that it’s too early to speak of this canonization because historically recognized merits of Metropolitan Joseph are not enough to fulfill the criteria to be counted among the saint of the Church. Those criteria include an impeccable life of an ascetic, service to the Church, preaching or missionary works, and, importantly, existence of veneration of the ascetic among the people of God. Hierarch also remarked that in case of canonization Siamaška should be a saint of the whole Church (общецерковный святой) and not simply a saint of the local church. It appears that in this interview Metropolitan expressed a need for Siamaška’s life and its significance to transcend the concerns of Belarusian nation-building. Otherwise his canonization would be seen as a judgment of the historical events that still remain contradictory both for the history Belarusian Orthodoxy and for the history of the Russian Orthodox Church. Polatsk Council of 1839 and events surrounding it are not only a triumph of Orthodoxy but also a historical wound, which shall be critically accessed by both historians and theologians. The same critical assessment is also required for the Brest Council of 1596. In this process let us be

32  http://church.by/news/mitropolit-pavel-stavit-vopros-o-kanonizacii-mitropolitaiosifa-semashko-poka-rano.

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guided by the words of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church that took place in June 2016 on Crete: Honest interfaith dialogue contributes to the development of mutual trust and to the promotion of peace and reconciliation […]. The oil of faith must be used to soothe and heal the wounds of other, not to rekindle new fires of hatred.33

The same Council also stated that the mission of the Orthodox Church “must be carried out not aggressively or by different forms of proselytism, but in love, humility and respect towards the identity of each person and the cultural particularity of each people.”34 This teaching of the Council should be applied to the discussion of canonization of such controversial figure and event as Metropolitan Joseph Siamaška and the Polacak Council initiated by him.

4   St. Josaphat Kuncevich and Other Saints of the Divided Church: Can They Go Beyond the Walls That Separate Us?35 After analyzing the problematic aspects of the canonization initiative for Siamaška, let us look at the ecumenical implications of Kuncevich’s life and canonization by the Catholic Church. There is a beautiful saying that ecumenical publications often roughly paraphrase as “the walls that divide us do not reach out to heaven.” The full quote, attributed both to Metropolitan Platon (Gorodetsky) of Kiev (1803–1891) and to Metropolitan Filaret (Drozdov) of Moscow (1782–1867), is mentioned by Metropolitan Evlogy (Georgiyevsky) of Paris (1868–1946) in the account of his meeting with Paul Couturier: Men such as St. Seraphim, St. Francis of Assisi and many others have accomplished in their own lives the union of the churches. Are they not citizens of the same church, holy and universal? At the height of their spiritual lives have they not gone beyond the walls which separate us but which, according 33  Encyclical of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church (2016), 17. https:// www.holycouncil.org/-/encyclical-holy-council. 34  Mission of the Church in Today’s World, The Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church (2016), §5. https://www.holycouncil.org/-/mission-orthodox-church-todays-world. 35  This part of the chapter is authored by Anastacia K. Wooden.

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to the beautiful expression of Metropolitan Platon of Kiev, “do not reach up to heaven.”36

This ecumenically optimistic conclusion can be quickly tempered by the historical examples of “divisive” saints—that is, the heroes of one church that are specifically considered to be villains by another church. The clearest example of such a saint is St. Josaphat Kuncevich. A sixteenth-century Eastern Catholic bishop, Kuncevich was martyred by the Orthodox for the role he played in the propagation of the Union of Brest. Formally canonized in 1867, Kuncevich is revered in the Catholic Church as a Martyr or even as an Apostle of Unity,37 while in the Orthodox Church he remains a deplorable figure as a persecutor of Orthodoxy. These two competing attitudes are so emotionally charged that even a mention of Kuncevich’s name in certain ecumenical environments may raise hostile feelings and put an end to any desire to politely discuss theological or historical aspects of Christian divisions. The goal of this chapter is to attempt the impossible: to try to transcend this hostility and find an end to the “wall” that his person—and especially his canonization—presents to the relations between the faithful of the Catholic (especially Eastern Catholic) Churches in Ukraine and Belarus and the Russian Orthodox Church. This chapter will approach this difficult task from a historical and theological perspective. 4.1  History: “Persecutor of Orthodoxy” or “Apostle of Unity”? Future Bishop Kuncevich was born as Jan (Yan) in 1580,38 in a family of a Ruthenian merchant in Vladimir Volynski (in what is now a part of Ukraine). In 1596—the year of the official promulgation of the Union of Brest—either his whole family moved to Vilnia (in what is now Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania) or he was sent there alone for an apprenticeship. 36  Maurice Villain, SM, The Life and Works of Abbe Paul Couturier, Apostle of Unity (Charles Clarke Ltd), 4. For full French version of this biography see M.  Villain, L’Abbé Paul Couturier, Apôtre de l’unité chrétienne (Paris, 1957), 51. For another rendition see My Life’s Journey: The Memoirs of Metropolitan Evlogy (NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2014), 656. 37  Kuncevich was declared a heavenly Patron of Reunion between Orthodox and Catholics by Pope Pius XI in 1923. 38  http://www.pravenc.ru/text/2462261.html mentions 1584 as a birth year and mentions that his original last name “Kunchic” (Кунчиц) was replaced in signatures by a more noble-sounding “Kuncevich” at around 1617.

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In 1604, he entered Holy Trinity Monastery in Vilnia and for the next three years voluntarily did not leave the monastery, spending time in reading and ascetic practices. Being a self-taught man, Kuncevich was fluent in Polish, but he did not know Latin or Greek. He had a particular passion for reading since childhood. There are indications that he read works by Simeon New Theologian, Nil Sorski, and hesychast elders of Mt. Athos. In his monastic discipline, Kuncevich had a tendency for harsh asceticism including strict fasts (never eating meat or drinking wine), mortifications of flesh by self-­flagellation, and wearing of iron weights and rough hair-shirts. He was ordained in 1609. All of Kuncevich’s biographers remark on his exceptional piety and devotion to the cause of the Union. Together with then Archbishop of Kyiv-Halich Ipacij Potiej (1599–1613), he conceived and accomplished the creation of the Basilian order.39 He began his work in the Zhyrovichy monastic community,40 before becoming an archimandrite of the Holy Trinity Monastery in Vilnia in 1614. Ordained as a bishop in 1617, he became the archbishop of Polacak in 1618. Selfless and energetic, Kuncevich implemented a wide array of improvements in the life of his eparchy. He instituted daily liturgies in Polacak churches and himself daily listened to confessions; he rebuilt a number of churches (including St. Sophia Cathedral41), sometimes using his own financial resources for this and other charitable activities. Attentive to the education of his flock, Kuncevich opened many parish schools and even wrote a Catechesis. He uncompromisingly enforced clerical discipline, removed all clerics of immoral behavior, and even wrote a special rule for the clergy in his eparchy. These efforts, his adherence to the ancient 39   See footnote 18  in the essay “A Brief History of the Union of Brest and Its Interpretations.” 40  Today Zhyrovichy Monastery holds the same place in spiritual heritage of Belarus as Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius (Tроице-Cергиевская лавра) in Russian and Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra (Киево-Печерская лавра) in Ukraine. It houses a miraculous icon of the Mother of God of Zhyrovichy which, according to tradition, appeared on a pear tree of a local noble in 1470. It is revered by both the Orthodox and the Cathoslicin in Belarus. 41  Built in the end of the eleventh century, the Cathedral of the Holy Wisdom is probably the oldest church in Belarus. Kuncevich rebuilt it in 1618–1620 following the fire of 1607. In 1705 its narthex was used as a gun powder storage by the Russian troops lead by the Tsar Peter the Great; the storage exploded in 1710 as the troops were leaving Polacak. It took a Uniate bishop Florian Hrebnicki almost thirty years to rebuild it in 1738–1765.

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liturgical traditions, and his passionate effective preaching made Kuncevich especially popular with his faithful. From here the stories told by the Catholics and the Orthodox about Kuncevich differ to the point of sometimes being complete opposites of each other. A lot of what follows in this narrative will be constructed not only from verifiable historical facts but also from traditional mythologies, since the latter often leave a more profound impression in the collective memory than the former.42 Incredibly passionate for the cause of the Union, Kuncevich had a daunting task of changing the hearts and minds of the local population that resisted it. In some areas he faced a stiff opposition, especially among the monks. Kuncevich took to this task with his usual uncompromising fervor. Although he himself strictly adhered to the Eastern tradition, he was absolutely convinced of the heresy of those who refused union with Rome. His passionate and erudite defense of his belief verbally and in writing was very effective, earning him a nickname of “soul thief” (душехват) among his opponents. The remaining opposition was often just as passionate in resisting Kuncevich, who gave his eparchy six months to join the Union. After that he would methodically enforce the transition by force: mostly by locking resistant churches and forbidding non-Uniate priests from conducting sacraments—even if it meant leaving people without baptism or communion. Some extreme storytellers mention the use of torture to break recalcitrant priests. Kuncevich staunchly would not allow the burial of Orthodox in the Uniate cemeteries which, although not having confessionally “mixed” cemeteries was a normal custom of the time, meant that in some cases people remained without a designated place to be buried in their own locality. This measure probably gave rise to a number of fantastical accusations that Kuncevich ordered the excavation of dead bodies and had them thrown to the dogs. In all these cases, the use of military force was rare due to the particular authority structure in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (PLC) where the king was not allowed to use military forces outside of his own

42  In using “opposing” sources, preference was given to accounts that appear to be more balanced. For example, see a compilation of the Catholic account https://sib-catholic. ru/12-noyabrya-svyatoy-iosafat-kuntsevich-episkop-i-muchenik-pamyat/ and the Orthodox account http://www.pravenc.ru/text/2462261.html.

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landholdings.43 However, a few cases of armed resistance to Kuncevich’s methods were broken by military force. Two examples from 1618 are the most telling in this respect: an eleven-day siege of the Polacak Monastery of Borys and Gleb and, especially, the Magileu confrontation. When Magileu’s citizens locked the city gate in protest of Kuncevich’s visit, their resistance was broken by military force followed by a few executions. Some accounts of Kuncevich’s activities mention his court battles with obstinately disobedient monasteries for their landholdings, specifically accusing him of doing so for his personal financial gain. These accounts, however, seems to be completely out of character and contradicted by Kuncevich’s known ascetic character. In his zeal Kuncevich even came into conflict with the Grand Chancellor of the GDL, Lev Sapieha (himself a Roman Catholic), who according to Kuncevich was making too many concessions to the Orthodox. Kuncevich’s opponents today often bring in evidence a March 1622 letter by Sapieha in which the Grand Chancellor laments the force with which the Orthodox were coerced into the Union. In his response, Kuncevich denied the accusations of force as undocumented slander and brought up the cases of St. John Chrysostom and St. Ambrose of Milan who also closed the doors of their churches to heretics. It is not surprising that there were multiple attempts made on Kuncevich’s life. The attempt that succeeded forever determined the perception of his life and work. It happened in November 1623 during a pastoral visit to Vitebsk. To understand the situation fully, it is important to mention that Kuncevich was not the first Uniate bishop in Vitebsk. Ruthenian faithful had no reported problems with the previous one, elderly bishop Gedeon Brolnitskyj (1601–1618), who was ninety years old and lacked in oversight of his clergy when Kuncevich replaced him. The real problems in Vitebsk arose in 1620, after the creation of a parallel Orthodox hierarchy in the Kyivan Metropolitanate. Newly appointed Orthodox Bishop of Polacak, Melecij Smatrycki, sent his emissaries to Vitebsk to organize resistance to Kuncevich, part of which included spreading exaggerated rumors of Kuncevich’s “atrocities.” Eventually, a group of sincere opponents of the Union, joined by some clerics disciplined by Kuncevich, and even local Calvinists in the city government, grew large enough that Smatrycki’s letters were read out loud from the Town Hall and in this way greatly influenced public opinion. After  http://www.pravenc.ru/text/153419.html.

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Smatrycki excommunicated Kuncevich and called the Vitebsk Orthodox to substitute the names of Pope Paul V and Sigismund III in the liturgical commemoration with those of the Patriarch of Constantinople Timothy II and the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire Osman II,44 Kuncevich headed to Vitebsk. On November 12, 1623, he was resting in his house after serving the liturgy. At some point an angry mob, possibly provoked by the earlier arrest (and subsequent release) of an Orthodox priest, broke into his house and started to batter his servant. The Catholic sources describe Kuncevich’s response with particular affection (even if out of character): Josaphat meekly went to meet them, and accosted them kindly, saying: “My little children, why do you strike my servants? If you have any complaint against me, here I am.”45

Upon this, according to the most restrained accounts, Kuncevich was beaten, his skull split open with an axe-blow, and his naked body was dragged through the streets, tied to a stone, and sunk in the Dzvina River while his house and adjacent Uniate church were plundered and destroyed. The repercussions followed immediately: as a result of the quickly organized court proceedings, around 100 of his offenders were sentenced to death (but only 10–19 of them were actually executed). Much harsher punishment was imposed on the city itself: it lost its Magdeburg rights (not fully restored until 1641), its Town Hall was demolished, and church bells were removed for a period of time. Furthermore, the local community was ordered to build a Uniate church (of which, supposedly, they did a very bad job). The townsmen very quickly exhibited signs of remorse for their harsh actions. Apparently, one of the perpetrators committed suicide the same day and many of the participants of these violent events walked in a solemn burial procession for Kuncevich. Some say that all but one of those who were executed received communion from a Uniate priest before their death. Catholic sources also insist that the 1627 decision of Bishop Smatrycki to transfer to the Uniate Metropolitanate was caused by his repentance.46  Please note that the name of the king was not replaced with that of the tsar of Muscovy.  https://catholicism.org/two-patrons-for-true-ecumenism.html. 46  The Orthodox contest this interpretation and claim that Smatrycki joined the Union in search of money and prestige. Some commentators also mentioned that when, hiding from prosecution, Smatrycki visited other Eastern Orthodox Churches, including in 44 45

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According to Kuncevich’s hagiographical tradition, the remorse and repentance were connected with the miraculous signs and healing miracles which appeared shortly after his death. For example, his body was found in the river on the sixth day after the appearance of the light shining from it. His incorrupt relics were brought to the Vatican in 1946, where they are kept now in St. Peter’s Basilica at the altar of St. Basil the Great.47 Although Pope Urban VIII beatified Kuncevich in 1643, his canonization waited until 1867. From the ecumenical point of view, this canonization continues to evoke painful memories and bitter resentment in the Orthodox Church. 4.2  Theology of martyrdom: “Ecumenism of Blood” It is clear then that in Kuncevich’s case history can provide only a limited path for reconciliation. Therefore, there is a need for a new theological interpretation of his canonization. Perhaps, his canonization can be seen not as an attempt to enshrine the historical Uniatism of the sixteenth century, but rather as a recognition of his martyrdom. The question here is whether the Orthodox can possibly consider Kuncevich as a martyr. Following Tertullian (d. 240), many Christian authors stated that “the blood of martyrs is the seed of Christianity.”48 These authors looked at martyrdom not as an inspirational moral state, but as theologically equal or even superior to sacraments in building up the Body of Christ. In baptism we are “grafted” into this Body, irrevocably changing our ontological state. Early Fathers agreed that martyrdom, seen as “baptism by blood,” is Constantinople, he witnessed such decay and corruption that it convinced him of the propriety of the Union. 47  Kuncevich’s body was initially buried in Vitebsk, but after it was discovered to be incorrupt, the relics were moved to Polacak. During the catastrophically devastating invasion of the PLC by Tsar Alexei of Muscovy (prompted by the Cossack uprising in 1648–1654 led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky), the relics were hidden in different locations in what is today Poland, Ukraine, and Lithuania. In 1705, when Peter the Great brought Russian troops to Polacak as part of the war with Sweden, he ordered the troops to find and destroy them, but even under torture and execution Basilian monks did not betray the location. The relics reemerged in 1765 when they were moved to a Basilian church in Biala Podlaska. They were kept there until they needed to be hidden again in 1839 following the elimination of the Union on what had become the territory of the Russian Empire. In 1915, the relics were moved to Vienna and stayed in the Uniate Church of St. Barbara until they were moved to Rome. 48  Tertullian. Apologeticus. Chapter 50.

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equal or even superior to baptism in achieving this ontological state. For example, as St. Cyprian of Carthage stated: “The same Lord declares in the Gospel that those who are baptized in their own blood and sanctified by suffering are perfected.”49 An analogy between the sacramental baptism and baptism by blood can be extended further: if martyrdom accomplished full koinonia, then one can be theologically justified in speaking about the analogy between sacramental reconciliation and “reconciliation by blood.” In his book Ecumenism of Blood: Heavenly Hope for Earthly Communion,50 Hugh Somerville Knapman, OSB, convincingly shows that by the analogy of faith (analogia fidei) “reconciliation by blood” can be seen as a legitimate elaboration of the concept of “baptism by blood.” As in baptism by water and sacramental reconciliation, “baptism by blood also removes inherited sinfulness and establishes an unbaptized martyr in communion with the church, reconciliation by blood for non-Catholic Christians reconciles them to full communion with the church that was, in fact, established at their sacramental baptism.”51 Therefore, since “Christ’s blood reconciled humankind to God; blood spilled for faith in him can surely reconcile anyone to the Body of Christ, even amid personal or ecclesial messiness and failure.”52 This understanding of martyrdom is fully consonant with the earliest Christian traditions that did not change with time. What changed, however, is who was considered as a Christian martyr. In Enzo Bianchi’s analysis, in apostolic times, all members of the Body of Christ were called saints. Very quickly, however, this designation was replaced by the word “Christians,” while the concept of sainthood continued to develop in the context of martyrdom. In Scripture, martyrdom was applied to all men and women who gave a public testimony of faith in God and Jesus Christ, “a testimony that does not shrink even before violent death.”53 In short,

49  Cyprian of Carthage, Ep. 72.22 “To Jubianus, Concerning the Baptism of Heretics,” nos. 40–41. http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050672.htm. 50  Hugh Somerville Knapman, OSB, Ecumenism of Blood: Heavenly Hope for Earthly Communion (New York/Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2018). 51  Knapman xvii. 52  Knapman xii. 53   Enzo Bianchi, “Witness and Martyrdom in the Bible” in A Cloud of Witnesses: Opportunities for Ecumenical Commemoration, 26–34. 26. Interestingly, Jesus is never designated as a “martyr” in the Scripture.

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when martyrdom was suffered from the hands of non-Christian authorities, it (martyrdom) simply meant violent death for confessing Christ. Bianchi notes that things became more complex with the onset of the time of heresies, when martyrdom was suffered from the hands of Christians of conflicting doctrinal beliefs. Now, the definition of martyrdom included suffering not simply for Christ but for “true” faith in Christ.54 As St. Cyprian eloquently put it, “And yet even this baptism does not benefit a heretic, although he has confessed Christ, and been put to death outside the Church [… for] not even the baptism of a public confession and blood can profit a heretic to salvation, because there is no salvation out of the Church.”55 The categorical tone of this statement is based on at least three assumptions that need to be critically examined. The first assumption is that we, the members of the Church, explicitly know what the correct faith is at all times. In reality, it is hard to judge the correctness of certain expressions of this faith before the formal definition is found and confirmed by the mind of the Church through a conciliar process. Judgment by majority or even by majority of the episcopate failed spectacularly at a few crucial junctions in the formation of Christian doctrine. One just needs to recall the history of the Arian controversies of the fourth century when the Church was divided over the question of the substantial relationship between God the Father and God the Son, disputes between monothelite and dyothelite factions over the divine and human will of Christ (when future Saint Maximus the Confessor was twice convicted as heretic and subsequently maimed in 662 for holding a position opposite to the officially held at the time of his trials), or the iconoclastic controversies of the eighth century. These examples demonstrate that our definitions of “true” faith have a historical lag built in them that always leaves a space for some of today’s heretics to be seen as tomorrow’s martyrs.56 The second assumption that conditioned the categorical tone of St. Cyprian’s position of the baptism of heretics is that he sought to express the faith of the Church. However, no church ever accepted this teaching in its extreme form. Already in 256, Pope Stephen I, in arguments with Cyprian, sharply spoke against the rebaptism of those baptized outside the visible communion of the church saying that “even heretics themselves are 54  With disappearance of visible enemies, further development of the definition of sainthood largely moves into the area of fighting of invisible enemies and moral perfection. 55  Cyprian of Carthage, no. 21. 56  Besides, the very the very notions of heresy and orthodoxy were a lot more unstable in the first Christian millenium than they are today. See Vladimir Latinovich, “Who Do You Call a Heretic? Fluid Notions of Orthodoxy and Heresy in Late Antiquity,” in M. D. Chapman, V. Latinovic (eds.), Changing the Church: Transformation of Christian Belief, Practice, and Life (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 21–28.

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right in not baptizing other heretics who come over to them.”57 This teaching was consistently affirmed by Pope St. Innocent I (d. 417) and Pope St. Gregory II (d. 731), while the Council of Trent (1547) anathematized those who deny the validity of baptism in the name of the Trinity conferred by heretics.58 The third assumption is that all the heretics freely and willingly chose to stand against the teaching of the Church. Cyprian (even if we think he is correct) does not consider a situation of those who are born into divisions and are “heretics” or “schismatics” due to an accident of particular sociocultural context.59 In response to this realization, Catholic theology developed the concept of “inculpable ignorance” (sine culpa ignorantes), started already in the eighteenth century by Cardinal Prospero Lambertini, future Pope Benedict XIV (1740–1758).60 As Knapman notes, it is in line with this position that after Vatican II the terms apostasy, heresy, and schism are not used of those born outside of visible communion with the Catholic Church.61 Moreover, papal language from Benedict XIV to John Paul II, without ambiguity or tentativeness, confirms that “in martyrdom, inculpable non-­ Catholic Christians of good faith achieve a perfect communion with the church in their ‘truest […] possible’ communion with Christ which is the fruit of martyrdom.”62 Based on this traditional Catholic teaching that martyrdom is a final validation of faith in Christ, Pope Francis many times spoke of the “ecumenism of blood” in regard to the persecution of Christians without the reference to their denomination, just as he did in relation to the twenty-one Egyptian Copts who were kidnapped and beheaded in Libya in February of 2015 simply for being Christian.63 There still remains a question of whether canonization by one church of persons martyred by the members of another church can be acknowledged as appropriate by the latter. Apparently, it is possible: as Rowan

 Pope Stephen, “Letter to Cyprian Bishop of Carthage,” as quoted in Knapman 51.  Knapman 51. 59  Knapman 25. 60  Knapman 35–37. 61  According to New Commentary on the Code of Canon Law edited by John P. Beal, James A. Coriden, et al. (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2000), 915. 62  Knapman 39. 63  For example see https://www.thetablet.co.uk/news/1753/pope-francis-says-mass-for21-slain-copts-martyrs-and-brothers-. 57 58

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Williams points out,64 “[i]n Britain, the calendar of the Church of England commemorates those who died as ‘Protestant heretics’ under the persecution of Queen Mary Tudor; it also commemorates those, like John Bunyan and Richard Baxter, who were persecuted by Anglican authority” and they have a celebration of all the saints and martyrs of the Reformation era, indirectly acknowledging “those who died for their loyalty to the Pope at the hands of the British state.”65 To provide a theological basis for this practice, Williams proposes that to be fully drawn into the life of the Body of Crucified Christ, Christians need to be drawn not only into his suffering, rejection, and humiliation but also into the suffering of our enemies. Although it is hard, we do so by following Christ who is ahead of us in this task: To claim the name of Christ is to be committed to a willingness to see ourselves as victimizers as well as victims—as sinners as well as holy people united with the Son of God […]. Thus, when we are confronted with the martyr who has suffered at the hands of our own ecclesial body, there is a very particular kind of judgement and gift involved. To the extent that our victim has met his or her death in the conviction that they are obedient to the law of Christ, they address to us a word from Christ, an invitation to acknowledge our complicity in violence and the skewed perspectives that both generate and feed violence.66

This perspective allows us to acknowledge the theological value of martyrdom of those with whom we still disagree. 4.3  Conclusion Our historical overview of Kuncevich’s life showed that the two competing and mutually exclusive narratives of the events that are equally convincing to their respective followers cannot be fully reconciled by simple attempts to reconstruct historical events, however faithfully attempted. Still, whether one considers Kuncevich wrong or right, Christian teaching did not warrant the manner of his death and he died believing he was 64  Rowan Williams served as an Archbishop of Canterbury in 2002–2012; he is a prominent theologian, ecumenist, and a poet. 65  Rowan Williams, “On Witness and Holiness” in A Cloud of Witnesses: Opportunities for Ecumenical Commemoration, 22–25. 23. 66  Williams 23–24.

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following Christ to the end. In this way he fits into a definition of a martyr for faith—a status that acknowledges his full reconciliation and incorporation into a glorified Body of Christ. The main question then is whether both Catholic and Orthodox Churches can consider Kuncevich as a martyr. This question is formulated here not as covert reprimand but as a humble suggestion to consider it as a possibility in full realization that the very formulation of the question may offend some Orthodox readers. This question is addressed not only to the Orthodox readers but also to the Catholics, especially Eastern Catholics. The proposal to consider Kuncevich as an ecumenical martyr requires of them significant “humbling” in dropping Kuncevich’s title as a promoter and enforcer of the Union. It is a painful suggestion to the churches which already suffered much for being seen as “inconvenient” in ecumenical dialogue by their own Catholic Church. With this in mind, this proposal should not be seen as an attempt to once again attack the historical identity of the Eastern Catholic Churches, but rather as an invitation to transcend this identity through full and humble identification with the Cross. It is a hope that the mutual acknowledgment of the martyrdom of Bishop Kuncevich may provide a starting point not only for historical and theological but also for emotional healing and reconciliation by fostering a new way of discernment of whether the mystery of the Spirit is present or absent in each other. So, while the institutional, visible bodies of the churches are divided, this saint and many others unite us in Christ by the work of the Holy Spirit that often surprises and catches us off guard.

“Kyivan Christianity”: Early Modern Cultural History and Impulses for Dialogue Between Churches in Ukraine Ivan Almes

Cultural history remains one of the most popular research areas in the Western historical studies of the last decades. It explores inter alia the ways in which people in the past orientated themselves as individuals and groups toward other individuals or groups. New religious and cultural issues arising in contemporary Ukraine, as, for example, the cultural identity of Ukrainian churches, require up-to-date interpretation. The answers to modern controversial questions can be found in the early modern cultural history (specifically the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in this research). It’s worth noting that Christianity closely relates to culture, and, moreover, the topic of Christianity and culture is represented well enough in historiography and has been studied by theologians as well as historians, especially concerning the Middle Ages

I. Almes (*) Ukrainian Catholic University, Lviv, Ukraine © The Author(s) 2021 V. Latinovic, A. K. Wooden (eds.), Stolen Churches or Bridges to Orthodoxy?, Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55442-2_5

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and early modern period.1 In Christian understanding, humanity creates culture by God’s will and providence. This pattern is consistent with the idea that cultural activity relates to Christian soteriology.2 That is why a comprehensive study of the church is impossible without the work of historians who investigate primarily not ecclesiastical but cultural processes within the church.3 Among different approaches to religious and cultural studies of processes in premodern time, the concept of “confessionalization” became one of the most widespread and convenient tools for historical research, primarily concerning Latin Europe.4 In the paradigm of confessionalization, religion is taken as a cultural system and, consequently, ecclesial topics are investigated first of all as cultural activities (not as religious in themselves).5 It’s worth noting that applicability of this paradigm for the Eastern European context was carefully discussed and confirmed by different studies.6 For example, researchers have noticed how the “Orthodox confession” in Eastern Europe, with the features that distinguish it from the Catholic and Protestant confessions, was formed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.7 1  The treatise written by Protestant author and one of the most outstanding and widely discussed works on the problem of Christianity and culture was authored by a Protestant thinker Richard H.  Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1951). Also see: Carter A.  Craig, Rethinking Christ and Culture. A Post-Christendom Perspective (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2006). 2  George Florovsky, “Faith and Culture” in Christianity and Culture. Volume two in the Collected Works of Georges Florovsky (Belmont: Nordland Publishing Company, 1974), 14–21. 3  See, for instance: C.  T. McIntire, ed., God, History, and Historians. An Anthology of Modern Christian Views of History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977). 4  For example, see: Ute Lotz-Heumann, “The Concept of ‘Confessionalization’: A Historiographical Paradigm in Dispute,” Memoria y civilización 4 (2001): 93–114. 5   On this shift, see: Kaspar von Greyerz, Religion und Kultur. Europa 1500–1800 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), and Kaspar von Greyerz, Manfred Jakubowski-Tiessen, Thomas Kaufmann, and Hartmut Lehmann, ed., Interkonfessionalität – Transkonfessionalität  – binnenkonfessionelle Pluralität. Neue Forschungen zur Konfessionalisierungsthese (Heidelberg: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2003). 6  Joachim Bahlcke and Arno Strohmeyer, ed., Konfessionalisierung in Ostmitteleuropa. Wirkungen des religiösen Wandels in 16. und 17. Jahrhundert im Staat, Gesellschaft und Kultur (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1999), and Alfons Brüning, Unio non est unitas. Polen-Litauens Weg im konfessionellen Zeitalter (1569–1648) (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2008). 7  Suttner Ernst Christoph, “Orthodoxe Kultur in Ost- und Südosteuropa im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert” in Religion und Kultur im Europa des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts, edited by Peter Claus Hartmann (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2004), 215–231, and

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Applying the concept of confessionalization to the history of Ukraine, Serhii Plokhy has posited that the Cossack uprising of 1648–1657 can be interpreted as a religious war.8 Similarly, Piotr Wawrzeniuk has pointed to the confessional civilizing within the Kyivan Metropolitanate, in the Lviv eparchy particularly, during the last decades of the seventeenth century, that was provided by the Orthodox bishop Iosyf Shumliansky.9 Barbara Skinner used confessionalization to give a new interpretation of the religious war of 1768, “Koliyivshchyna,” noting that the border in early modern Ukraine had become “by the mid-eighteenth century a confessional border carrying political and cultural ramifications.”10

1   Kyivan Christianity: New Inclusive Concept? The subject of the inclusiveness of church history within the Eastern European context, particularly Ukraine, remains a necessary issue. The Kyivan Christianity is a field of research mostly for Ukrainian historians, although it appears in Polish and Lithuanian historiography as well. Since Kyivan Christianity is a new concept without a final definition, its methodology of research has yet to be fully scrutinized and utilized. The main centers for the study of the Kyivan Christianity are the academic institutions in Kyiv and Lviv, in particular, the Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) and Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (KMA). Institutionally, the project of Kyivan Christianity has been underway at UCU since 2012, as the common project of the Faculty of Humanities and the Faculty of Philosophy and Theology. The program is coordinated by historian Ihor Skochylyas. The project emphasizes interdisciplinary research and its academic objective lies in the critical study of theological, canonical, social, and cultural sources of the Kyivan Metropolitanate Mihai-D. Grigore and Florian Kührer Wielach, ed., Orthodoxa Confessio? Konfessionsbildung, Konfessionalisierung und ihre Folgen in der östlichen Christenheit Europas (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018). 8  Serhii Plokhy, The Cossacks and Religion in Early Modern Ukraine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 9  Piotr Wawrzeniuk, Confessional Civilising in Ukraine. The Bishop Iosyf Shumliansky and the Introduction of Reforms in the Diocese of Lviv 1668–1708 (Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2005). 10  Barbara Skinner, “Borderlands of Faith: Reconsidering the Origins of a Ukrainian Tragedy,” Slavic Review 64, no 1 (Spring, 2005): 115. Also see: Barbara Skinner, The Western Front of the Eastern Church. Uniate and Orthodox Conflict in 18th-Century Poland, Ukraine, Belarus and Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2009).

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tradition in the fuller comparative context of the Byzantine tradition and the traditions of the Latin West. As a result, during the last six years twenty-three volumes have already been published by the project.11 Among a great number of conferences organized by the research project, the 2017 conference in Radomyshl was dedicated to the definitions of “Kyivan tradition,” “Kyivan Christianity,” and “Kyivan Church.”12 The event was organized by UCU and KMA, with participation of historians, theologians, and philologists from other institutions. The term Kyivan Church was discussed the least13 while the term Kyivan tradition caused academic discussion that provided meaningful and valid consideration. In this respect, the work on Kyivan tradition by Ihor Skochylyas (UCU) and Natalya Yakovenko (KMA) is of particular importance for this chapter. In the last decades the concept of Kyivan Christianity was productively studied by Ihor Skochylyas. According to him, it means a regional subcultural pattern characterized by the following peculiarities: liturgy (Slavic-Byzantine rite), common territory (Kyivan Metropolitanate, originally the Church of Kyivan Rus’ and later only the part of the Metropolitanate that was within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth), “collective memory” about a common past, Church Slavonic (language as a code of specific culture), distinctive theology, and spirituality. The codified patterns of Kyivan Christianity, according to Ihor Skochylyas, were spread out usually from Kyiv, as the political and religious center of Eastern Slavs, into every eparchy of the Kyivan Metropolitanate, even after the decline of the Ruryk State (Kyivan Rus’). This is because the Kyivan Metropolitanate continued to exist as a religious institution of the Polish-­ Lithuanian Commonwealth. The second term, Kyivan Church, according

11  Ігор Скочиляс, “Київське християнство та унійна традиція: десятилітня програма церковно-історичних студій (2012–2021 роки),” Історія релігій в Україні: наук. щорічник 1 (2012): 804–813. See the official website of the Kyivan Christianity research project http://kyiv-christ.ucu.edu.ua/ 12  For a brief report about the conference in Radomyshl see: Іван Альмес and Юліана Татьяніна, “‘В пошуках релігійного’: в Радомишлі відбувся міжнародний міждисциплінарний науковий семінар про релігійну культура ранньомодерної України,” http://www.historians.in.ua/index.php/en/institutsiji-istorichnoji-nauki-v-ukrajini/2197-ivanalmes-yuliana-tatyanina-v-poshukakh-religijnogo-v-radomishli-vidbuvsya-mizhnarodnijmizhdistsiplinarnij-naukovij-seminar-pro-religijnu-kulturu-rannomodernoji-ukrajini 13  On this shift, see: Ігор Ранця, “Поняття Київської Церкви в історіографії та еклезіяльній свідомості” Наукові записки УКУ. Серія: ‘Богослов’я’ 8 (2016): 171–196.

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to Ihor Skochylyas, exists primarily as the ecclesiological category.14 Consequently, Kyivan Christianity can be regarded as cultural and religious phenomenon of the essentially Kyivan tradition. It should be clarified again that Kyivan Christianity in Ihor Skochylyas’ interpretation is territorially limited only to the Kyivan Uniate Metropolitanate in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, while the eparchies of the Hetmanate, that is, Ukrainian territories that in the seventeenth century were included into Muscovy and, consequently, into the Moscow Patriarchate, are not regarded as Kyivan tradition.15 But it is by no means certain that the Kyivan tradition was only present in the Uniate Metropolitanate. On the contrary, another Ukrainian historian Maxym Yaremenko posits that the Kyivan Orthodox Metropolitanate remained culturally until the late eighteenth century as the “old” tradition and, surprisingly, was not a part of the Moscow Synodal Church. Moreover, he fits the history of the Church in the Hetmanate into the paradigm of Kyivan Christianity.16 Thus, the question of the territorial extent of the Kyivan tradition remains controversial. Natalya Yakovenko (KMA) has suggested another interpretation of the Kyivan tradition, but her findings are not directly correlated with the idea of Kyivan Christianity. She emphasizes that concepts such as Kyivan tradition and Kyivan Church can become essential by itself, challenging and escaping  comprehensive and academic examination. She points out that the concept of Kyivan tradition was invented by Kyivan theologians in the 1620s. Moreover, she insists that Kyivan Christianity is permanently modified according to the changeable cultural code of a certain period. That is why this concept should be examined within specific historical conditions. As for the Kyivan Church, Natalya Yakovenko presents this term as a self-contained phenomenon only beginning from the late sixteenth century. According to her, it will be very meaningful to study the Kyivan tradition with further consideration of Balkan church history

14  Ігор Скочиляс, “Особливості історіописання київського християнства. Радянські реалії, діаспорна інтеграція та українська реабілітація,” in Україна: культурна спадщина, національна свідомість, державність 29 (2017): 25. 15  Andrzej Gil and Ihor Skoczylas, Kościoły Wschodnie w państwie polsko-litewskim w procesie przemian i adaptacji: metropolia kijowska w latach 1458–1795 (Lublin; Lwów: IEŚW, 2014), 48–49. 16  Максим Яременко, Перед викликами уніфікації та дисциплінування: Київська православна митрополія у XVIII столітті (Львів: Видавництво УКУ, 2017), 15, 229.

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because that broader context will better explain cultural processes on the early modern Ukrainian lands, including the church history.17 Kyivan Christianity has one more remarkable peculiarity, which is noticed by most researchers. For many years, the Kyivan tradition existed (and still exists) between East and West.18 This existential “in-between” provided intercultural relations and exchanges, when “alien” practices were adopted without assimilation as their “own” or “familiar” into a particular culture.19 That is precisely what Giovanna Brogi Bercoff calls the “polymorphism” in early Ukrainian modern culture.20 This pattern of findings is consistent with the idea that, according to Natalya Yakovenko, “West” was adjusted to “East.” For instance, the adaptation of the educational programs for Latin ones21 is seen in the early modern Kyiv-­ Mohyla Academy that was structured according to the Jesuit educational models. Further, recent research suggests that Bishop Ioanykiy Galatowsky, one of the Kyivan Orthodox intellectuals and one of the most read authors in Ukrainian territories in the seventeenth century expressed an essentially “Greek” faith but in Latin categories.22

17  Наталя Яковенко, “Київська традиція / Київське християнство / Київська Церква: проблема коректності цих понятійних конструктів,” Релігійна культура ранньомодерної України: поняття, символи, практики (conference presentation, Radomyshl Castle, Radomyshl city, May 5, 2017). 18  See Ihor Ševčenko, Ukraine Between East and West: Essays on Cultural History to the Early Eighteenth Century (Edmonton; Toronto: CIUS Press, 1996). On the history of Ukraine as borderlands studies see Lilya Berezhnaya, “A View from the Edge: Borderland Studies and Ukraine 1991–2013” in The Future of the Past. New Perspectives on Ukrainian History, edited by Serhii Plokhy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016), 43–68. 19  Ihor Skochylias, “La Ucrania de la Edad Premoderna en el diálogo de civilizaciones con Occidente: recepción de la cutura latina por parte de la cristiandad oriental como perspectiva de la investigación,” in Santa Teresa de Jesús y Ucrania, edited by Bohdan Chuma (Lviv: UCU Publishing House, 2017), 44. 20  Compare with, for instance, Giovanna Brogi Bercoff, “Plurilinguism and Identity: Rethinking Ukrainian Literature of the Seventeenth Century,” in Ukraine and Europe. Cultural Encounters and Negotiations, edited by Giovanna Brogi Bercoff, Marko Pavlyshyn and Serhii Plokhy (Toronto; Buffalo; London: University of Toronto Press, 2017), 45–71. 21  Наталя Яковенко, “Українська культура XVII ст. як пошук ‘третього шляху’,” in Шлях у чотири століття. Матеріали Міжнародної наукової конференції “Ad fontes – До джерел” до 400-ї річниці заснування Києво-Могилянської академії (12–14 жовтня 2015 року), edited by Наталя Шліхта and Наталя Яковенко (Київ, HaУKMA, 2016), 12. 22  Наталя Яковенко, У пошуках нового неба. Життя і тексти Йоаникія Галятовського (Київ: Лаурус; Критика, 2017).

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It was already mentioned that Kyivan Christianity remains insomuch a concept of the Ukrainian historiography, but recently it has become known in Western historiography as well. For instance, Alfons Brüning fittingly uses the term “Ukrainian Christianity” to analyze the contemporary Ukrainian Church and its history.23 However, he uses the term “Kyivan Christianity” to analyze the religious processes in the Ukrainian lands after the Brest Council of 1596 and by that to underline the longue durée of the ecclesiastical tradition in the Ukrainian lands from the Middle Ages (Kyivan Rus’) until the early modern period. He notes that “this continuity is especially claimed by the Greek Catholic historians, who emphasize the religious and cultural impact of the mentioned model.”24 To summarize, the following main features of the concept Kyivan Christianity should be emphasized. Firstly, the designation “Kyivan” is central to the concept. Founded in the early Middle Ages, Kyiv remains a symbolic center of Christian culture for the East Slavic in general and contemporary Ukrainians in particular.25 That is why the word “Kyivan” is at the very heart of the concept. Secondly, it is about tradition, not about Kyivan culture or Kyivan civilization, even though the categories of civilization and culture are often used by academics to explain or outline some Christian phenomena.26 Thirdly, according to historiography, Kyivan Christianity includes only Eastern Christian Churches, particularly Orthodox and Uniate (Greek Catholic). The Roman Catholic Church or Latin tradition usually is not regarded as a part of the studied concept, because it is another spiritual and cultural tradition.

23  Alfons Brüning, “Orthodox Autocephaly in Ukraine: The Historical Dimension,” in Churches in the Ukrainian Crisis, edited by Andrii Krawchuk and Thomas Bremer (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 80. 24  Brüning, “Orthodox Autocephaly in Ukraine,” 90. 25  More about Kyiv as “Second Jerusalem”: Наталя Яковенко, “Символ ‘Богохранимого града’ у пам’ятках київського кола (1620–1640-ві роки),” in Наталя Яковенко, Паралельний світ. Дослідження з історії уявлень та ідей в Україні XVI–XVIII ст. (Київ: Критика, 2002), 296–332. 26  Alfons Brüning, “The Empire and the Desert. Eastern Orthodox Theologians About Church and Civilization,” in The Law of God. Exploring God and Civilization, edited by Pieter Vos and Onno Zijlstra (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2014), 84–104.

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2   Monasteries of Kyivan Christianity Tradition: A Case Study To study Kyivan Christianity as cultural history means to research cultural implementations of this tradition. According to investigations of spiritual experience, inter alia religious action is revealed by the word or language.27 That is why it seems reasonable to present the cultural history of the Orthodox and Uniate (Greek Catholic) monastery libraries according to the concept of Kyivan Christianity. This case might clarify how to study the cultural history of different confessions within the Ukrainian context. This analysis applies only to the history of Ukrainian early modern monasteries, but the concept of Kyivan Christianity is not limited only to the Ukrainian background. Monasteries are chosen as a topic of this study because they were and still are the “lungs” of the church culture.28 That is why the communities of monks in certain respect represent peculiarities of their larger cultural community. Usually the talk about cloisters evokes the image of medieval monks in dark monasteries inspired by popular literature and culture. This image generally represents the Latin tradition of monasticism, including different religious orders and congregations like Jesuits, Franciscans, Benedictines, and so on—that is, the well-known tradition of monasticism, well studied in historiography, as well as in an Eastern European context. Perhaps, the following three features of Latin monasticism distinguish it from any other: its strong organization, scholastic or educational emphasis, and socially oriented activities.29As for Eastern monasticism, the image of the Athonites, referring to the monks at Mount Athos, can be regarded as one of the most common images of Eastern monasticism.30 It represents well 27   Robert C. Kimball ed., Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture (London; Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 42–43. 28  Mark Sheridan, OSB, “Monastic Culture: A Comparison of the Concepts of Askesis and Asceticism,” in Monasticism Between Culture and Cultures. Acts of the Third International Symposium (Rome, June 8–11 2011), edited by Philippe Nouzille and Michaela Pfeifer (Roma: EOS - Editions Sankt Ottilien, 2013), 17–34. 29  Marek Derwich, “Monastycyzm w Polsce średniowiecznej i nowoěytnej. Uwagi terminologiczne,” in Christianitas et cultura Europeae. Księga Jubileuszowa profesora Jerzego Kłoczowskiego Volume 1 (Lublin: Instytut Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej, 1998), 256, and Gillian R.  Evans, The I.B.  Tauris History of Monasticism. The Western Tradition (London: I. B. Tauris, 2016). 30   See: chapters “Eastern Christian Monasticism” or “Orthodox Monasticism” in Encyclopedia of Monasticism, vol. 2 (Chicago; London: Routlegde, 2000), 976–983, and

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the three main features of Eastern monasticism such as hesychia,31 the liturgical cycle of the monastery life, and strict asceticism.32 This short overview of Latin and Eastern monasticisms should be helpful for our examination of the monastic communities of the Lviv eparchy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Lviv eparchy was located in the western part of the Kyivan Metropolitanate but in the eastern part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Monks of the Orthodox monasteries of Lviv eparchy in the seventeenth century practiced asceticism and lived according to the Byzantine33 and Athonite monastic tradition as can be seen from the orders (statutes) of Krekhiv and Maniava monasteries.34 In the first half of the eighteenth century the monasteries under our consideration became Uniate (Basilian), which brought cultural and religious changes to them. These alternations resulted in the so-called transitional model of monasticism between Orthodox and Uniate, presented, for example, in the acts of the Synod in Zamostia in 1720 and by the Catechism of Metropolitan Leon (Kiszka).35 Basilian monasticism of the second half of the eighteenth century partly adopted Catholic (Latin) practices of

Tom E. Dykstra, Russian monastic culture: “Josephism” and the Iosifo-Volokolamsk Monastery, 1479–1607 (München: Sagner, 2006). 31  Hesychia (literally means silence or quiet)—the central consideration in the prayer of the desert Fathers; the practice of inner prayer, aiming at union with God on a level beyond images and language. 32  For instance, see more on Greek Orthodoxy Paschalis: M. Kitromilides, An Orthodox Commonwealth: Symbolic Legacies and Cultural Encounters in South-Eastern Europe (Aldershot: Taylor & Francis Ltd., 2007). On monasticism in the Bulgarian Orthodox tradition, see: Николова Бистра. Монашество, манастири и манастирски живот в средновековна България (София: Алфаграф, 2010). 33  Інокентій Гізель. Вибрані твори у 3 томах, vol. 1 (Київ; Львів: Свічадо, 2012), 305; Лариса Довга, Система цінностей в українській культурі XVII століття (на прикладі теоретичної спадщини Інокентія Ґізеля) (Київ; Львів: Свічадо, 2012), 167–168, 173–174. 34  Микола Кугутяк, ed., Великий Скит у Карпатах, vol. 1: Патерик Скитський. Синодик (Івано-Франківськ: Манускрипт-Львів, 2013), 252–275. 35  For more on this see: Маргарита Корзо, Украинская и белорусская катехитическая традиция XVI–XVIII вв.: становление, эволюция и проблема заимствований (Москва:  Канон+РООИ “Реабилитация”, 2007), 437–443, and Oleh Duch, “Nurt wschodni i zachodni w postanowieniach Synodu Zamojskiego (1720 r.) dotycza ̨cy monastycyzmu ěeńskiego w unickiej metropolii kijowskiej,” in Między Zachodem a Wschodem. Etniczne, kulturowe i religijne pogranicza Rzeczypospolitej w XVI–XVIII wieku, edited by Krzysztof Mikulski and Agnieszka Zielińska-Nowicka (Toruń:  Adam Marszałek, 2005), 173–185.

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monastic life,36 meaning that the Basilian Order became a strictly organized institution with orderly practices that included education. To demonstrate the peculiarities of the Kyivan Christianity monasteries, the research on female monasticism of the Kyivan Metropolitanate conducted by the Ukrainian historian Oleh Dukh is worth  of  mention. He examined female communities of the Lviv and Przemyśl eparchies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in particular the Orthodox communities in the seventeenth century and Uniate (Basilian) monasteries in the eighteenth century. He emphasized that communities of nuns, despite their confessional conversion (from Orthodox to Uniate), retained most of their religious practices and monastic customs. Dukh states the main feature of female monasteries of the tradition of Kyivan Christianity was the preference of prayer and labor over charitable and educational activities.37 This chapter attempts to test the validity of Dukh’s thesis about the marginality of the educational and intellectual activities as one of the peculiarities of the monasteries of the Kyivan Christianity by studying the reading practices of the Orthodox and Uniate monks—the practices closely related to the issue of monks’ education. Although the Orthodox and Uniate monasteries are studied here simultaneously, it is advisable to represent the monastic book culture by two “reading canons” constructed according to confessional affiliation: Lectio Orthodoxorum and Lectio Basilianorum. Reading canon Lectio Orthodoxorum of the Orthodox monasteries in the Lviv eparchy was represented, apart from liturgical books, by a topical “triad” of patristic, hagiographic, and preaching literature. Secular literature and Classical sources were poorly represented or absent from these monasteries as well as the books in Latin which were considered fundamental for a Western-oriented humanistic educational system. This doesn’t look peculiar because similar literature was preserved at Orthodox monastery libraries in the Russian and Bulgarian regions. Such book repertoire suggests indirect evidence about the degree and type of education obtained by the monks. It can also be inferred that, in general, monks in these monasteries did not need large collections of diverse literature. The liturgical cycle in monasteries determined all their monastic life and they were 36  For more on this see: Beata Lorens, Bazylianie prowincji koronnej w latach 1743–1780 (Rzeszów: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Rzeszowskiego, 2014). 37  Олег Дух, Превелебні панни: Жіночі чернечі спільноти Львівської та Перемишльської єпархій у ранньомодерний період (Львів: Вид-во УКУ, 2017), 29, 376.

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basically concentrated on prayer; therefore intellectual activity, including reading, was probably beyond the scope of their needs. Moreover, the book repertoire certifies the absence of Latin (i.e. Catholic) influence in most monasteries of the Lviv eparchy in the seventeenth century.38 The Enlightenment completely changed the religious life and spirituality in the eighteenth century. It is reflected in the idea of pietas litterata in the mentioned period. The appearance of the Catholic Enlightenment was conditioned by Enlightenment ideas in Latin Europe. The Enlightenment also affected the church life in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; it especially stimulated schooling for the laity provided by the monks.39 It is certain that ideas of Enlightenment spread in the mentioned Polish-­ Lithuanian state, including the Ukrainian lands. However, this research did not reveal considerable influences of the Enlightenment on the Basilian monasteries, which is meanwhile common for religious culture of the Kyivan Metropolitanate. In the eighteenth century, after the conversion of the monks from the Orthodox to the Uniate confession, the monastic reading canon in the Lviv eparchy completely changed. The Lectio Basilianorum consisted of the same literature as in Catholic monasteries of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: the Bible and commentaries to it, treatises of the Fathers of the Church, and various homiletic writings, as well as moral theology and meditative literature. Study of theological educational literature of monks reveals that scholastic discourse dominated in the monasteries. Basilians read books written by Jesuits, Dominicans, Franciscans, but also Protestant authors. They were aware of the basic post-Tridentine theological literature as well as ancient and humanistic treatises.40 In general, the book culture of the Basilians shared much with the Latin (i.e. Catholic) early modern book culture. 38  For more on this see: Ivan Almes, “‘Lectio Orthodoxorum’: Книжкові зібрання православних монастирів Львівської єпархії наприкінці XVI – у XVII столітті,” Київська академія 14 (2017): 115–149. 39  Jeffrey D. Burson and Ulrich L. Lehner, ed., Enlightenment and Catholicism in Europe: A Transnational History (Notre Dame, Ind.: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 2014), and Richard Butterwick, “Catholicism and Enlightenment in Poland-Lithuania,” in A Companion to the Catholic Enlightenment in Europe, edited by Ulrich L. Lehner and Michael Printy (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2010), 297–358. 40  For instance, see: Ivan Almes, “Las obras carmelitanas en las bibliotecas de conventos basilios de la Eparquía de Lviv del siglo XVIII,” in Santa Teresa de Jesús y Ucrania, edited by Bohdan Chuma (Lviv: UCU Publishing House, 2017), 194–213.

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As for the reading practices and book usage in the monasteries under consideration, in the seventeenth century reading was integrated within the liturgical cycle of the Orthodox communities, and it was definitely referred to as “divine praxis.” Subsequently, the meaning of reading changed in the pietas litterata model in the eighteenth century. Besides liturgical and common refectory reading, the process of occidentalization promoted new forms of this practice—the so-called meditative reading and scholar reading. Usually, these new models of reading were applied in the monasteries which provided monastic education. Our research suggests that in the second half of the eighteenth century reading practices and book usage became more regulated as can be seen from the Latin model of lectio librorum which strictly defined what, when, and where the monks should read. This paper suggests that strict control over the readings was caused by two main reasons: an increase in the number of books and an active book usage. To sum up, the reading canon and reading practices of the Basilians in the eighteenth century represent the polymorphism of the Ukrainian early modern culture, which is revealed in the disposition to absorb and synthesize external influences, and simultaneously react to the threat of disintegration. These processes did not mean assimilation of Latinitas in the Basilian monasteries, but a constructive acceptance of the external (extraneous) elements within them. The books served as a channel of westernization of the cultural and spiritual life of the monks because the number of books in Latin and Polish dramatically increased during the 1760s and 1770s and in some monasteries they accounted for 70–90% of the libraries.41 On the one hand, this quantitative change indicates literally the Latinization, but on the other hand, the analysis of the book repertoire shows that it is more appropriate to interpret this in terms of occidentalization. Another pattern of findings is consistent with the idea that texts formed the Uniate identity known as Slavia Unita.42 Book culture was the 41  For more on this see: Ivan Almes, “‘Latinitas Polonice’: ksia ̨ěka polska w monasterach bazyliańskich eparchii lwowskiey XVIII wieku,” Z Badań nad Ksia ̨ěka ̨ i Księgozbiorami Historycznymi 11 (2017): 59–69. 42  On this shift, see: Ihor Skoczylas, “Slavia Unita – the Cultural and Religious Model of the Archidiocese of Kiev in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (the Discussion on Christian Heritage of the Nations of Eastern Europe),” in East-Central Europe in European History: Themes and Debates, edited by Jerzy Kłoczowski and Hubert Łaszkiewicz (Lublin: IEŚW, 2009), 243–254.

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approved way to construct cultural and religious systems. Common liturgical books, especially the Missal published by the Univ and Pochaiv printing houses, provided means of unification of church practices. Besides liturgical books, Uniate identity was also determined by hagiography and partly by moral theologies. Consequently, it should be emphasized that this research observes an intensive and widespread confessionalization within the Basilian monasteries of the Lviv Eparchy only from the 1760s. This specific case study of the monastery libraries attempted to contribute to a wider research of Kyivan Christianity in the early modern period. The cultural history in longue durée of the monasteries, which were initially Orthodox and later Uniate (Basilian), demonstrates that despite of their confessional conversion and cultural alternations, these monastic communities were preserving their Eastern Christian ritual and ecclesiastical memory.

3   Conclusion To summarize, this investigation presents only partly the problem of cultural history and how it can stimulate a dialogue between churches in contemporary Ukraine, but the objective of this investigations was to outline the main problems and perspectives of the Ukrainian church history and to demonstrate how to study it through a specific research topic. This chapter presented an alternative approach to study the church history of multireligious early modern Eastern Europe in terms of early modern cultural history. It is not a confessional history focused on certain confessional communities. Indeed, it is about an inclusive research concept that considers the cultural history of the specific religious communities with all their problems and achievements, favorable and inconvenient historical facts. Such an inclusive pattern is exactly the concept of Kyivan Christianity, the concept that remains promising for long-term research issues. Cultural history of the Kyivan Church can become an inclusive pattern and a convenient concept for contemporary Ukrainian churches. There is hope that the paradigm of Kyivan Christianity not only can provide a new convenient way to synthesize the church history of Ukraine but also will stimulate a dialogue between different Ukrainian churches.

Identity and Institutional Allegiance in Romanian Uniate Church History (1700–1900) Laura Stanciu

1   Introduction The History Department of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest initiated an international interdisciplinary project studying the documents of the Catholic synods in the kingdom of Hungary for the period 1790–1920.1 The project focused on a systematic research of the Roman-Catholic diocesan synods in the Hungarian provinces.2 The 1  For more about the project see: A katolikus egyház zsinatai és nagygyűlései Magyarországon (1790–2010)/NKFI-EPR: Synods and Assemblies of the Catholic Church in Hungary (1790–2010); Principal Investigator Balogh Margit. 2  It is about the former Hungarian provinces of Cenad (Csanád), Eger (Erlau), Alba Iulia (now Karlsburg/Gyulafehérvár, Romania), Esztergom (Strigoniu), Győr (Raab), Kalocsa, Kassa (Košice, Slovakia), Oradea (Nagyvárad, Romania), Nyitra (Nitra, Slovakia), Pannonhalma (Győrszentmárton), Pécs (Beci), Pozsony (Pressburg/Bratislava, Slovakia), Rozsnyó (Rosenau/Rožň ava, Slovakia), Sătmar County (Szatmár, Romania), Székesfehérvár

L. Stanciu (*) University of Alba Iulia, Alba Iulia, Romania © The Author(s) 2021 V. Latinovic, A. K. Wooden (eds.), Stolen Churches or Bridges to Orthodoxy?, Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55442-2_6

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research naturally also included the systematic analysis of the Greek-­ Catholic synods of Blaj-Făgăraş (Romania), Hajdúdorog (Hungary), Munkács (Munkatsch, Ukraine), and Szamosjvár (Gherla, Romania). This chapter is an integral part of this larger project and studies the relationship between state and society in the eighteenth to twentieth centuries, particularly how the Uniate Church contributed to the modernization of society through the decisions taken at these synods. The analysis of its institutional history is conducted through the examination of synodal acts and decrees of the church beginning in 1782, when Ioan Bob, who at the institutional level prepared the church for the modern age, was elected Bishop, and continuing to 1900 and the decisions taken by the provincial synod in that year. These synods were forums in which participants debated and made decisions about the internal administrative and canonical organization of the Romanian Uniate Church. In the second part of the seventeenth century,3 when the negotiations for the Union started, the Romanians in Transylvania had found that religion was the most efficient social mediator. Religion transmitted ethical and moral values, and the role of the church was (and is) to provide practical guidance and norms of application for establishing and spreading these values. This guiding role was also the reason for the success of the Transylvanian Church. As a result, the decisions of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, such as synodal decrees, were a source of authority for the lower clergy, who were expected to apply as quickly and efficiently as possible the decisions of the church leaders. Analysis of the synodal acts also reveals the balance between the continuity and the discontinuity in the messages of Union/Unity and the preservation of the so-called Byzantine tradition4 (called by the peasants “the Law of the Fathers”).5 (Stuhlweißenburg), Szepes (Zips/Spiš, Slovakia), Szombathely (Steinamanger), Vác (Waitzen), and Veszprém (Weißbrunn). 3  Keith Hitchins, “The Fact that, in accordance with the Social Order of European States at the End of the 17th Century, a Close Connection Existed between the Religious Affiliation/Non-affiliation of Subjects to the Religion of Their Rulers and the Civic Rights Enjoyed by Subject” in: Johann Marte et al., eds., Die Union der Rumänen Siebenbürgens mit der Kirche von Rom/Unirea românilor transilvăneni cu Biserica Romei (Bucureşti: Editura Enciclopedică, 2010): 152–165. 4  Cristian Barta, Autoritate, comuniune şi sinodalitate: coordonate fundamentale ale drumului Bisericii Române Unite cu Roma în comuniunea catolică (Cluj-Napoca – Gatineau: Argonaut Publishing – Symphologic Publishing 2015): 150, 152. 5  Ernst Christoph Suttner, “Legea strămoşească: Glaubensordnung und Garantie des sozialen Zusammenhalts,” OstkStud, 56 (2007): 138–154; Idem, “Legea Strămoşească and

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The progress of the Greek-Catholic Church and its integration into the Church of Rome exhibits the tension between identity—manifested through tradition, liturgy, and canonical rules, the “Byzantine tradition”— and institutional affiliation. This affiliation has a canonical significance as well (hierarchical subordination) expressed by synodality, which is the most obvious way to manifest the autonomy of a local church for the members of both churches and which states the particular rights from sacramental, historical, and legislative perspectives regarding the theological, liturgical, spiritual, and ecclesiological. The synod was the only authority in the history of the Greek-Catholic Church competent to establish the particular right.6

2   About the Institutional Relationship At its meetings in 1697, 1698, and 1700 the synod, the most important institution of the Romanian Eastern Church, decided to the Union of the Eastern Church of Transylvania with the Church of Rome. At the time when the religious Union was concluded by Bishop Teofil (June 4, 1697) and by Bishop Atanasie (1701), Rome treated the Union of the Romanians and that of the Ruthenians as being within the framework of the Council of Trent: the placing of new churches under the jurisdiction of Rome.7 The era recognized the distinction between jurisdictional problems and those related to dogma and ritual and thereby maintained the canonical and disciplinary individuality which characterized the status of the Uniate Church of Transylvania. This reality marked the institutional evolution of the church and regulated the relationship between the Holy See and the Uniate Church in Transylvania.

the Regional Identity of the Transylvanian Romanians,” Laura Stanciu, Popa Gorjanu Cosmin, eds., Transylvania in the Eighteenth Century. Aspects of Regional Identity (ClujNapoca: Mega Publishing House, 2014): 98–104. 6   William Alexandru Bleiziffer, Ius Particulare in Codice Canonum Ecclesiarum Orientalium. Dreptul particular al Bisericii Române Unite cu Roma, Greco-Catolică  – actualitate şi perspective (Cluj-Napoca: Editura Argonaut, 2016): 13–15, 349. 7  Laura Stanciu “Şedinţele Sinodului român din anii 1697, 1698 şi 1700” in: Johann Marte et al., eds., Die Union der Rumänen Siebenbürgens mit der Kirche von Rom/Unirea românilor transilvăneni cu Biserica Romei (Bucureşti: Editura Enciclopedică, 2010): 178–184. Suttner, Legea (2007): 37–47.

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Post-Tridentine theological views were apparent also at the investment of Ioan Giurgiu Patachi as Bishop of the Romanians in Transylvania.8 By the papal bull Rationi congruit (May 18, 1721), Patachi was appointed to a new episcopal residence in Făgăraș, obtained the confirmation of the autonomy of his Eastern rite Church from the local Latin rite bishop, and acknowledged the subordination of the Uniate Greek-Catholic Church to the Archbishop of Esztergom. Later on, Inochentie Micu Klein, Patachi’s successor,9 was granted a donation from Emperor Charles VI (an annual amount of 3000 forints) in 1738, which enabled him to move the residence of the bishop from Făgăraș to Blaj and develop the human and material resources of the church. Following Bishop Micu’s abdication (1751)10 an electoral synod was summoned (November 4, 1751)11 and the Viennese Court appointed a new bishop, Petru Pavel Aron (February 25, 1752). In the confirmation bull (November 25, 1752), Pope Benedict XIV also stipulated the maintenance of a Roman Catholic theologian appointed by the Court or the Archbishop of Esztergom, to whom the Bishop owed obedience and subordination.12 This provision reiterated Rome’s position that supported both the autonomy of the Greek-Catholic Church of Transylvania from the Roman-Catholic Church—as Cardinal Kollonich decided in 1701—and its ultimate subordination to the Curia through the Archbishop of Esztergom. The institutional structure of the Uniate Church of Romania remained unaltered throughout the eighteenth century, thanks to bishops like Petru Pavel Aron and Grigore Maior. They managed to maintain the individuality of the Uniate Church in its relations with the Holy See in Rome and the Archbishopric of Esztergom. For instance, the witnesses in the canonical trial of Bishop Aron (October 10–11, 1752) wrongly believed that the Blaj Diocese was directly subordinated to the Holy See and was not 8  Octavian Bârlea, Ostkirchliche Tradition und Westlicher Katholizismus. Die rumänische Unierte Kirche zwischen 1713–1727 (München:  Societas Academica Dacoromana, 1966): 33–55. 9  Francisc Pall, Inochentie Micu-Klein. Exilul la Roma (1745–1768). Documente inedite (Cluj-Napoca: Centrul de Studii Transilvane, 1997): 6. 10  On the complicated confessional and political situation of the time in Transylvania, see Stanciu et  al., eds., Despre Biserica Românilor din Transilvania. Documente externe 1744–1754 (Cluj-Napoca: Editura Mega, 2009): documents no. 253; 279; 288; 324; 325; 326. 11  Stanciu, Despre Biserica, documents no. 336; 338; 339; 344. 12   Bârlea “Biserica Română Unită şi ecumenismul Corifeilor Renaşterii culturale”, Perspective V (München, Nr. 3, 1983): 94–100.

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suffragan to any other diocese.13 The diploma of appointment of Bishop Maior (October 27, 1772) made no reference to the Greek Catholic bishop subordination to the Archbishop of Esztergom, nor to the existence of a Jesuit theologian beside the Greek Catholic bishop. It was not until 1783, with the canonical trial of the new bishop Ioan Bob, that the declarations of the witnesses specified that the Diocese of Făgăraș was canonically subordinated to the Archbishopric of Esztergom.14 During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the objective of both Rome and Esztergom was the strengthening of post-Tridentine Catholic confessional identity. Aiming at the consolidation of the Union and the development of Catholicism among Romanians, special attention was given to the education of priests, the support of schools, and the improvement of the financial situation of the clergy. These directions were naturally completed by the regular, customary reports of hierarchical subordination usual in the Catholic world to solve the current problems in church governance. One of these was the discussion connected to appeals in ecclesiastical courts of justice. In the Eastern discipline the immediate courts were the protopopial courts, from which appeals went to episcopal jurisdiction and from there to the Holy See. Any change to this rule harmed the Eastern Church tradition and discipline of the Greek-Catholic Church, therefore the Transylvanian Greek-Catholics opposed any alteration.15 With the introduction of the institution of the episcopal consistory (1807) in the time of Bishop Ioan Bob, this became the primary court, with the court of appeal now the consistory of the Archbishopric of Esztergom.16 Although this had also been the case earlier, in the tenures of Bishops Pataki and Klein, it was most obvious during the trial of Lemeni 13  Stanciu et al., eds., Despre Biserica, 288–293. Stanciu, “Power and Consciousness from the Perspective of Romanian Interconfessional Controversies: Relations of Greek-Catholics and the Orthodox in Mid-18th Century Transylvania”, Laura Stanciu, Popa Gorjanu Cosmin, eds., Transylvania in the Eighteenth Century. Aspects of Regional Identity (ClujNapoca: Mega Publishing House, 2014): 105–123. 14  Daniel Dumitran, Un timp al reformelor. Biserica GrecoCatolică din Transilvania sub conducerea episcopului Ioan Bob 1782–1830 (Cluj-Napoca: Argonaut, 2007): 183, 185–186. 15  Greta-Monica Miron “… porunceşte, scoale-te, du-te, propovedueşte …” Biserica Greco-catolică din Transilvania. Cler şi enoriaşi 1697–1782 (Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2004): 172; Nicolae Bocşan, Ion Cârja, Biserica Română Unită la Conciliul Ecumenic Vatican I (Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2001): 118, 143, 163. 16  Dumitran, Un timp, 269; Ciprian Ghişa, Episcopia greco-catolică de Făgăraş în timpul păstoririi lui Ioan Lemeni: 1832–1850 (Cluj-Napoca: Argonaut, 2008): 328–329.

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(1843–1846).17 On Rome’s decision the court of appeal became the consistory of the Archbishopric of Esztergom, a situation maintained after the First Vatican Council (1869–1870), when the right of third instance became the privilege of the Archbishop of Esztergom, and the second instance appeal of the Bishop of Oradea.18 The competences of the episcopal consistory in the administration of the Diocese of Făgăraș had been established by Emperor Joseph II (1765–1790) on December 12, 1781; in addition to other regulations, Joseph II’s decree also gave the right of jurisdiction and the obligation of instating the vicar to the Archbishopric of Esztergom in case of the vacancy of the Bishopric of Făgăraș, as happened in 1830 and in 1848. Rome had jurisdiction in canonical decisions over the organization of the Uniate Church, including the issuance of the confirmation bulls for the bishops appointed by the synods and invested by the Emperor in Vienna. This procedure was the usual canonical process followed for every bishop in the Roman Catholic world, which in the case of Transylvania was the duty of the apostolic nuncio to Vienna. Rome also supported the Greek-Catholic Church before the Viennese state authorities. The Holy See had the duty to canonically supervise the life of Eastern rite Catholic believers. After the Episcopal See of Făgăraș was elevated to the rank of Metropolitanate (Archeparchy), two new eparchies were founded (Lugoj and Gherla), and the Metropolitan See of Blaj was directly subordinated to the Holy See (by the bull Ecclesiam Christi, November 26, 1853), the hierarchical connection between Rome and Blaj mainly involved canon law and church discipline. The dominant issues in the age (1856–1872) were the maintenance of the specific role of synods in church government, the attributions of bishops and protopopes in the church, and the regulation of the marriage of priests. Rome imposed its views on church government by reviewing and approving the synodal decisions taken at the provincial synods of the Transylvanian Greek-Catholic Church, as in 1872, 1882, and 1900.19 The organization of apostolic missions in Transylvania in order to survey the spiritual life of the province—like the mission led by

 Ghişa, Episcopia, 329–330.  Bocşan, Cârja, Biserica, 112–118, 163, 215. 19  Ana Sima “Între centralizare şi autonomie ecleziastică. Sfântul Scaun şi Bisericile Catolice Orientale în secolul al XIX-lea”, Biserică, Societate, Identitate. In Honorem Nicolae Bocşan (Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2007): 111, 115–117. 17 18

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nuncio Antonino de Luca in 185820—were also meant to enhance the organization of the church. In order to stabilize and enforce the Union, the Metropolia of Esztergom also had the duty to mediate the solution of situations caused by appeals to the spiritual power (Rome) or secular authority (Vienna), for example in the case of the organization of election synods (1830, 1850). Another case was a letter of April 9, 1831, written by Bishop Ioan Lemeni to Archbishop Alexander Rudnay asking for his support before the County of Hunedoara to solve confessional tensions between Greek Catholics and the Orthodox in the Hat ̦eg region.21 In general, the Archbishopric of Esztergom had to mediate in usual cases of organizing canonical trials or obtaining papal confirmation. There were special cases as well, related to marriage22 or even extraordinary dispensations, such as in the case of the Lemeni trial, when Archbishop Kopácsy played an active role in appeasing the situation (December 1843).23 In addition, the Archbishop of Esztergom also mediated relations with other suffragan bishoprics of his jurisdiction and took care that the problems of Transylvanian Greek-­ Catholics be discussed in the episcopal conferences (1850) or national synods in Hungary (such as that of 1822 and one planned for 1848 which eventually failed to take place). An illustration of the hierarchical subordination between the Metropolia of Esztergom and the Diocese of Făgăraș appears at the General Council of Bratislava (September 8–October 16, 182224), which involved representatives of the Churches of Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, and Transylvania, as well as of religious orders, and delegates of schools, numbering eighty participants in total. Representatives of the Greek-­ Catholic Church in Transylvania who participated in the synod were Dimitrie Caian, Junior (as a delegate of Bishop Ioan Bob); Samuil Vulcan, Bishop of Oradea; and Mihail Muntean, delegate of the Chapter of Oradea.25 Comparing the results of this gathering with the debates and 20  Sima, Vizitele nunţiilor apostolici vienezi în Transilvania 1855–1868 (Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2003): 65–275; Bocşan, Cârja, Biserica, 112–118, 143–144. 21  Ghişa, Episcopia, 328–329. 22  Ghişa, Episcopia, 322. 23  Ghişa, Episcopia, 324–325. 24  Details on the organization and development of the synod of the Catholic Church from Hungary from 1822 are tackled in the volume, Fejérdy András, Az 1822 évi magyar nemzeti zsinat története. Dokumentumgyűjtemény. (Budapest:  MTA Bölcsészettudományi Kutatóközpont Történettudományi Intézet, 2018), passim. 25  Dumitran, Un timp, 290.

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decisions of the Romanian Diocesan Synod of 1821, organized in order to convoke the Council, it can be seen that the decisions taken at Blaj were compatible with the synodal discussions and the decisions taken in the five committees of the Council of Bratislava of 1822. Aspects covered were those related to the duties of bishops, the morality of the clergy, the renewal of social morality, the organization of schools and theological seminaries, and the reform of religious orders and church courts. The improvement of the material situation of the clergy or the need for immediate translations of the Holy Scriptures and the Bible in the vernaculars were other preoccupations of the age that were debated in the Council. Interest in the finances of the clergy was a constant preoccupation, as shown in the memoranda sent to the Archbishop of Esztergom by the vicar forane of Silvania, Alexandru Șterca Șulut ̦iu, supported by Bishop Ioan Lemeni (September 25, 1839; March 15, 1840; October 17, 1840; March 2, 1842; April 12, 1843). The Greek-Catholics asked for the Bishop’s intercession with the Emperor to increase the vicar’s salary and obtain financial support for building a church and the vicar’s house.26 Bishop Lemeni’s request for the translation of liturgical texts into Hungarian in Odorheiul Secuiesc is interesting because Romanians had kept their own language in church, together with other traditions and the Eastern rite. The Archbishop’s response (May 16, 1841) stated that liturgical books would only be translated into Hungarian for those who were not familiar with the Romanian language, and only for those who lived amidst non-Catholics, so they would not become apostates. The second important phase of the relations between the Metropolia of Esztergom and the Greek-Catholic Bishopric of Blaj occurred during the bishopric of Ioan Lemeni, especially between the years 1848 and 1850. The “Memorandum” of Bishop Lemeni, prepared to be presented at the national (general) Catholic synod of Hungary in 1848, is worth analyzing against the background of the great political changes brought about by the Revolution of 1848.27 As the synod failed to occur because of the Revolution of 1848, we know that the Bishop’s “Memorandum” was eventually addressed to the Minister of Cults and Public Instruction,  Ghişa, Episcopia, 195, 218, 331–333.  To understand the conflictual relation between the Romanians and the Hungarians during the revolution from 1848 from Transylvania, see Hitchins, The Identity of Romania (Bucharest: The Encyclopaedic Publishing House, 2009): 119–132; idem, A Concise History of Romania (London: Cambridge University Press, 2014): 97–100; Liviu Maior, 1848–1849 la români. Românii şi ungurii în revoluţie (Bucureşti: Editura Enciclopedică, 1998): 68–127. 26 27

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József Eötvös, and presented to him on August 5, 1848, by Lemeni, who was in Pest for the proceedings of the Regnicolar Committee.28 The document raised real interest among the members of the Hungarian government and also captured the attention of the Archbishop of Esztergom, Prince Primate of Hungary, János Hám.29 The Greek-Catholic Bishop summarized the main aspects of the institutional history of the Romanian Church of Transylvania (the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries) and emphasized the territorial administrative changes following the promulgation of the administrative legislations of the Diet of Bratislava (March 15, 1848). The administrative restructuring affected the Roman-­ Catholic and Greek-Catholic dioceses of Transylvania, as the boundaries of the dioceses did not coincide with the boundaries of the districts. In this context Bishop Lemeni underlined the importance of founding new Greek-Catholic Bishoprics at Lugoj and Baia Mare and elevating the Greek-Catholic Bishopric of Făgăraș to the rank of Metropolia.30 The third significant moment in the hierarchical relation between Hungary (including Transylvania), Slavonia, Croatia, and Dalmatia is discussed in the conference in 1850. The debate and the proposal to elevate the Bishopric of Făgăraș to the rank of Metropolia and found the Bishoprics of Baia Mare and Lugoj were formulated by Bishop Lemeni in 1848, reiterated in the proposals of the committee led by Vasile Erdelyi in June 1850, and repeated once more at the Esztergom conference in August 1850. The project was supported by the entire Uniate clergy in the period of 1848–1850, summarized in the conclusions of the committee of Oradea (June 1850), and achieved by the Imperial decision of April 1850. In the private conference in Esztergom in August 1850, the Romanian clergy’s desire, formulated in the protocols of the commission led by Bishop Erdelyi and forwarded to the Archbishop of Esztergom, came into

28  For debates on organization of a synod of the Catholic Church from Hungary around the revolution from 1848, see Tamási Zsolt, Az 1848-as és 1849-es magyar nemzeti zsinatok előkészítése. Nemzeti zsinati és közgyűlési tervezetek. Monográfia (Budapest, 2019): passim. 29  Idem, “Mediator între Stat si Biserică: sinodul naţional din Ungaria de la 1848 şi reorganizarea Bisericii Greco-catolice din Transilvania”, Laura Stanciu, ed., Petru Maior şi prietenii (Cluj-Napoca: Editura Mega, 2015): 179–200. 30  Stanciu, “The Antidote of Conflicts. Institutional Dialogues in the Age of Unilateral Claims. The 1850 Episode”, Brukenthalia. Romanian Cultural History Review. Supplement of Brukenthal. Acta Musei, 5 (2015): 701–712.

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being. The Imperial decision of April 1850 was ratified, as usual, by the appropriate ecclesiastical forum.31 With the aim of balancing the number of Greek-Catholic dioceses in Transylvania with those outside it, after discussions with the Romanian clergy assembled in the election synod of Blaj on September 30, 1850,32 the ministerial conference of Vienna on November 18, 1850, with the participation of Ioannes Scitovsky, Vasile Erdelyi, Alexander Bach, Leo Thun, Eduard Bach (Imperial civil commissar with full power for Transylvania), and session councilor Pivizer formulated the proposal to reorganize the Greek-Catholic Church of Transylvania. Consequently, on December 12, 1850, the Imperial Decree was issued to elevate the Bishopric of Blaj to the rank of Metropolia and found two new bishoprics at Gherla and Lugoj.33 By the consent and insistence of Romanian Greek-­ Catholic prelates, Vienna—with, as always, the help of the Holy See— rewarded the loyalty of the Romanians and addressed their demands during the 1848 revolution, resulting in the foundation of the Romanian Greek-Catholic Metropolia of Blaj. This truly successful attempt to cooperate with the Empire was Rome’s pragmatic, institutional one, aiming at the good functioning of the Catholic Church, the security and consolidation of Catholicism in this part of Europe, where the commandments of the Council of Trent were still valid. In this part of Europe, the period 1848–1849 tested, once again, the efficiency of cooperation between Vienna and Rome. This is how the Holy See decided, in December 1853, during the treaties for the Concordat between Austria and the Vatican (in 1851–1852 and 1855), the foundation of the Metropolia of Alba Iulia and Făgăraș, despite Rome’s concerns regarding the Catholicism of the Romanians and despite the reluctance of the Archbishop of Esztergom.34 The Metropolia had as suffragans the Bishoprics of Oradea, Lugoj, and Gherla; the Greek-­ Catholic Church was thus removed from under the jurisdiction of Esztergom and directly subordinated to Rome. The electoral synod of 1868 and especially the archdiocesan synod of 1869 of the Greek-Catholic  Ibidem.  Stanciu, ed., Az erdélyi görögkatolikus egyház története zsinatai tükrében (1782–1900). Dokumentumok/Istoria Bisericii Române Unite din Transilvania prin sinoadele sale (1782–1900). Ediţie de documente (Budapest: MTA Történettudományi Intézet 12, 2017): 498–523. 33  Ion Mircea, “Demersurile prelaţilor români greco-catolici pentru statutul mitropolitan” Anuarul Institutului de Istorie, XXXV (1996): 192–193. 34  Stanciu, The Antidote, 701–709. 31 32

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Church in Transylvania regulated questions concerning the practices and procedures of the church, such as the marriage of priests, the authority of the synod in leading the church, the attributes of protopopes, the role of laymen in the church, the organization and canon law specific to the Eastern Catholic Church, and the election of the metropolitan and bishops. These questions were raised by Greek Catholic representatives from Transylvania who took part in Vatican Council I (1869–1870). The delegation of the Greek-Catholic Church assumed responsibility for presenting and defending the specific nature of the Greek-Catholic Church before the Council. The subjects under discussion were those referring to tradition, practices and procedures, canon law, and dogma in relation to the Latin Church, as well as the Eastern Catholic individuality of the Romanian Church, its hierarchical relations with the Latin Church, and its autonomy in the Catholic world.35 As a consequence of the work of Vatican Council I, the provincial synod of the Greek-Catholic Church was held in 1872.36 The purpose of the synod was the preservation of the individuality and the specific character of the Eastern tradition of the Greek-Catholic Church, but also the need to align the church with the ecclesiology of the Vatican Council. The acts and decisions of the provincial synod of 1872, modified and approved by the Holy See, respected the above-mentioned coordinates and assured the Romanian Church a constitution, a proper organization, and a clear identity, which was perfected in the provincial synods of 1882 and 1900.

3   The Fight for the “Byzantine Tradition” in the Synodal Documents The process of the Union of Romanians with the Church of Rome was marked during the period 1697–1882 by the relationship between the canonical authority (institutional subordination to Constantinople and Bucharest, and later Rome and Esztergom) and its cultural, spiritual, and 35  With regard to the autonomy of the Greek-Catholic Church from Transylvania from the Catholic Church of Hungary between 1848 and 1900, see Adriányi Gábor, Documenta Vaticana historiam autonomiae catholicae in Hungaria illustrantia, Argumentum (Dissertationes Hungaricae ex historia Ecclesiae 18, Budapest, 2011), 9–21, 43–56; Bocşan, Cârja, Biserica, 106–107, 120–121,123–127, 149–223, 259–293. Idem, “«Die Rumänische Unierte Kirche» am Ersten Vatikanischen Konzil”, Neue Forschungen zur Ostmittel- und Südosteuropäischen Geschichte 4 (Frankfurt a. M.-Berlin-Bern: P. Lang Verlag, 2013): passim. 36  Stanciu, Az erdélyi, 89–91.

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canonical affiliation. For instance, maintaining the “autonomy” of the Greek tradition in the liturgy of the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church was apparent in all liturgical books published in Blaj beginning with 1756, the year of publication of the first Greek-Catholic missal, until 1870, when Timotei Cipariu published his missal. It was this latter book which introduced the Latin or Latinate terminology into the church ritual. If, in the eighteenth century, the general synod met an average of once every three years, in the following century we have a period of thirty-six years in which the diocesan synod did not meet (1833–1869).37 This situation was partly due to the intervention of an absolutist political regime, which was cautious about permitting the gathering of a Uniate clerical elite attached to the national cause of the Romanians of Transylvania. On the other hand, the centralizing pressure of the Roman-Catholic Church steadily caused the synod to lose its importance in the leadership of the church, all at the expense of the consistory and the chapter of canons. We may note, on the other hand, the increasing role of the canons in the various synodal commissions. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, they were responsible, along with the bishops, for providing the plenum of the synod with normative texts for debate. For the period analyzed (1782–1900) we may note the persistence of the Uniate clerical elite in regulating essential aspects of internal church life through the synod, especially those relating to discipline, dogma, the liturgy, and organization.38 The acts and decisions of ordinary synods focused on five important aspects: 1. The state of the Union in Transylvania (1701, 1707, 1711, 1713, 1728, 1744, 1750, 1766, 1768, 1821, 1838, 1868, 1872, 1882, 1899, and 1900); 2. Concern for the proper functioning of central and local ecclesiastical institutions, including schools and economic bodies (1779, 1821, 1833, 1869, 1889, 1896, and 1899); 3. Close attention to the discipline and morality of the clergy (1703, 1725, 1869, and 1889); 4. The status of the priest in his community through proper attention to improving his financial situation and the systematic education of the clergy (1702, 1738, 1821, 1833, 1869, 1889, 1896, and 1899);  Stanciu, Az erdélyi, 112–113.  Stanciu, Az erdélyi, 83–90, 94–110.

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5. Concern for the maintenance intact of the Eastern tradition and of the autonomy of the Romanian Uniate Church in its relations with the Roman-Catholic Church and the State. The Uniate elite was largely successful in achieving its goals and preserving the Eastern individuality of the Greek-Catholic Church through its rites and liturgy, the form of its houses of worship, and a coherent policy in matrimonial questions (1701, 1702, 1732, 1734, 1742, 1754, 1833, 1872, 1882, 1889, and 189639), including the specific Eastern practice of the married priest (1872). The inclusion of proposals from parishes, which originated in debates in the synods of protopopiates, on the agenda items of archdiocesan and provincial synods, suggests something about the vision and involvement of the local clergy and the interest of parishioners in the ecclesiastical reform of the Uniate Church, as is clear in the synods of 1869, 1889, 1896, and 1899.40 From the perspective of church practices and procedures, the fundamental difference in the organization of synods between Latin and Eastern Christians resides in the fact that while Eastern Christians preserved the important role of laymen in the synods, the Latins did not accept their involvement in the governance of the church. These differences were occasions for debate at Vatican Council I in 1870. The acts of the protopopiate synods, to the extent that they are preserved in the archives, reveal the preoccupation of the clergy and parishioners with a variety of problems, from matters of dogma to practical issues of everyday life such as the formation of temperance societies and associations for pensions for invalid priests, the overseeing of accounts of church and school funds, and celibacy, along with a consistent concern for improving morality among both the clergy and the faithful. The majority of themes discussed in these synods took practical form in proposals passed on to archdiocesan synods to be transposed into normative acts. The procedure was repeated in the case of demands coming from local bodies that were discussed in archdiocesan synods in 1904, 1906, and 1909. In this context, the debates of the synod as recorded in the minutes reveal both the principles of internal functioning of an institution at a time of reform and modernization and the dynamics of the inter-institutional relationship among the Uniate Church, the State, and the Roman-Catholic  Stanciu, Az erdélyi, 185–189, 269–312, 313–337, 338–352, 361–387.  Stanciu, Az erdélyi, 243–268, 338–352, 361–409.

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Church. The acts of the synod contain the main organizational and canonical problems on which the clergy of the protopopiates of the Eparchy of Blaj and Făgăraș had to decide. All these acts present the substance of the issues to be debated and decided upon at the highest level of church leadership. The questions posed for debate at the synod offer us a horizontal perspective on the adoption of canonical regulations. At the same time, we may also form an idea from a vertical perspective on the way in which the decisions taken at the synod were applied to the day-to-day life of the protopopiates, as may be seen in the reports of synodal commissions in 1869, 1889, 1896, and 1899.41 The archdiocesan synod of 1899 was noteworthy for its celebration of the 200th anniversary of the Union, its reiteration of the attachment of the Greek-Catholic Church to the Holy See, and its robust protest against Hungarian Catholic autonomy. It is evident in the acts and decisions of these last three synods how greatly the Greek-Catholic Church had evolved and how much progress it had made in the church administration. Those synodal debates which did not result in final decisions clearly reveal the limits of such representative institutions. This lack of accomplishment is partly due to the extenuating circumstances created by the complex situation of the time: the double pressure exercised, on the one hand, by the canonical supervisors of the Holy See (as is evident in the case of the decisions of provincial synods in 1872 and 1882) and, on the other hand, by the secular authorities, who were prone to interfere in the administration of the church. The synod constituted an expression of church autonomy and was the sole institution that could make decisions regarding the governance of the church. The synod reached decisions on the improvement of the relation of state and church (1869, 189942), issued official statements on the policies of the state toward the church (1872, 1882, 190043), and remained the forum which was empowered to transmit the desires of Uniate Transylvanians for institutional and canonical autonomy in relation to Hungarian Catholicism (189944).

 Ibidem.  Stanciu, Az erdélyi, 243–268, 388–409. 43  Stanciu, Az erdélyi, 269–337, 410–432. 44  Stanciu, Az erdélyi, 388–409. 41 42

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4   Conclusions This research analyzed the local specificities (tradition, rite, dogma, and synodal organization) and the universality of the Catholic faith manifested by the rules of the synods. It started from the fact that the spiritual realities mentioned above overlapped with the canonical (as we would say today, the relationship between the common and particular right) and legal situation of the age (the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries). Reference was made to the pressure of the post-Tridentine Catholic hierarchy (the Latinizing tendency), which exerted its authority mainly from Rome and to a lesser degree from Esztergom, culminating in politically influenced canonical interference (a tendency toward Magyarization45 by the authorities of the Metropolitanate of Esztergom), and the additional constraining influence of state politics, first of the Austrian authorities (1700–1867), and after 1867, the Hungarian ones.46 The acts of the synods may serve a double purpose as instruments for probing and understanding the past. They reveal a realistic desire to carry out institutional reform to the extent allowed within the political and canonical context of the moment, but at the same time they may also offer an indication of the way in which decisions reached at the synods were transformed into everyday practice. Today, the Greek-Catholic Church faces a paradoxical situation, mirrored also in its current synodal decisions. As a result, while it should be in the best situation in its entire history, as it now has the greatest autonomy of a local church in relation to the Holy See certified by Code of Canons of Eastern Churches (199047), indicated by the phrase “Churches called to live their own values authentically”,48 and subject to no legal pressure from the state authorities, the Greek-Catholic Church is 45  To understand how the Hungarian state related to the nationalities from the AustrianHungarian monarchy, see Hitchins, The Rumanian National Movement in Transylvania, 1780–1849 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969): 219–256; Sorin Mitu, National Identity of Romanians in Transylvania (Budapest-New York, Central European University Press, 2001): passim; Marius Turda, The Idea of National Superiority in Central Europe, 1880–1918 (New York: The Edwin Mellen Press Ltd., 2005): 67–152. 46  Barta, Autoritate, 152–153. 47  Iuliu Vasile Muntean ed., Codul Canoanelor Bisericilor Orientale. Pro manuscripto [Code of Canons of oriental Churches] (Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2001); Gabriel Buboi, Liviu Ursu, Codul Canoanelor Bisericilor Orientale (Bucureşti: Editura Hamangiu, 2016). 48  Bleiziffer, Ius Particulare, 14.

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paradoxically in its worst situation ever. This state of affairs is due to Romania’s former communist regime. This church was decimated during the forty years of its illegality (having been formally dissolved and existing underground 1948 and 1989) and has not recovered. Though it was erected to the rank of Major Archbishopric (2005), its congregation is old, small, and mostly urban, while this church historically had strong rural traditions specific to a mostly agrarian population (conservative, with a strong spiritual bond between the priests and the congregation). Synodality, as an expression of confessional identity, acted as a force for social modernization; the synodal decisions, as a result of debates and consensus, illustrated in the end the social dimension of faith. The relevance of this analysis lies in the understanding that the synodal documents and decisions (1) are authentic sources of inspiration for the leadership and regulations of the Greek-Catholic Church throughout the ages; (2) show the institutional development and functioning of this local church and its hierarchy from the bishop to the local priests in a political context (1700–1900); and (3) emphasize the role of the church in the social, and implicitly also cultural and political, modernization of the Romanians in Transylvania.

The Judicial and Canonical Situation of the Romanian Byzantine Catholics in Hungary Around 1900 Paul Brusanowski

1   Romanian Greek Catholicism Between the Oriental Tradition in Transylvania and the Latinising Tendencies in Hungary The Hungarian State before 1918 had a multi-ethnic and multi-­ confessional character. The Hungarians represented about 54% of the whole population of the country and were mostly Roman Catholics. The Romanians represented 17% of the population and were divided into two different Churches: Orthodox and Greek Catholic. There also existed 11% Slovaks, 11% Germans (Catholics and Lutherans), 5% Serbs (Orthodox), and a small number of Ruthenians/Ukrainians (Greek Catholics). The Orthodox believers made up about 13% of the population and were divided into two different de facto autocephalous (i.e. self-­governing) churches: the Romanian Metropolitanate of Sibiu and the Serbian

P. Brusanowski (*) Faculty of Orthodox Theology, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Sibiu, Romania © The Author(s) 2021 V. Latinovic, A. K. Wooden (eds.), Stolen Churches or Bridges to Orthodoxy?, Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55442-2_7

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Metropolitanate of Sremski Karlovci. The Greek Catholics made up approximately 10.9% of Hungary’s1 population. Most of them (58.84%) were Romanians, and the rest were Ruthenians, Magyars, and Slovaks.2 Ruthenian Greek Catholicism took shape by the middle of the seventeenth century.3 Replacing the old Orthodox Bishopric in Mukachevo, a Ruthenian Greek Catholic vicariate under the authority of the Roman Catholic Bishopric of Eger was instituted. A Ruthenian Greek Catholic Bishopric was only reinstated in 1771 in Mukachevo and moved in 1776 to Užhorod. In 1816 a second Ruthenian Greek Catholic Bishopric was established with its seat in Prešov (to shepherd the Western Ruthenian territories), while the Bishopric of Užhorod maintained its jurisdiction over the Eastern territories, including Maramureș, Ugocea, and Sătmar that were also shared with Romanians.4 The Greek Catholic Romanians were organised in a metropolitan province, established in 1853. This comprised two already existing dioceses (the Archdiocese in Blaj and the Bishopric of Oradea) together with other two newly instituted dioceses (Gherla and Lugoj). For one thing, these four dioceses were not of equal sizes; they differed very much in terms of a number of parishes (and members of congregations). If the Archdiocese in Blaj could count 706 parishes (with 406,330 members), the Archdiocese in Gherla had 489 (474,538), in Lugoj 159 (97,566), and the Diocese in Oradea only had 168 parishes (217,891).5 Yet, even more important was the fact that “the new ecclesial territory was bringing very different traditions, customs and norms of canonical justice under the same roof.”6 The big separation line that was still in place was the old border (maintained until 1867) between Hungary and the Principality of Transylvania. 1  “Ungaria” in Enciclopedia Română publicată din însărcinarea și sub auspiciile Asociat ̦iunii Pentru Literatura Română și Cultura Poporului Român, edited by C. Diaconovich (Sibiu: W. Krafft, 1904), III, 1156. 2  Moritz Csáky, “Die Römisch-Katholische Kirche in Ungarn,” in Die Habsburgermonarchie. 1848–1918, edited by Adam Wandruszka, Peter Urbanitsch (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1985), IV 283. 3  Michael Lacko, The Union of Užhorod (Cleveland: The Slovak Institute, 1966). 100–113, 150–153. 4  Albert Ammann, Abriß der ostslawischen Kirchengeschichte (Wien: Morus Presse, 1950), 656–659. 5  “Ungaria,” 1161. 6  N. Bocșan, “Ortodocși și unit ̦i în Transilvania în a doua jumătate a secolului al XIX-lea,” in Identitate Nat ̦ională și Spirit European. Academicianul Dan Berindei la 80 de ani. (București: Editura Academiei Române, 2003). 600–601.

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The religious unification in the Principality of Transylvania took place between 1698 and 1701 when the clergy of Transylvania’s Orthodox Bishopric consented to the union, under the condition spelled out as follows: [A]ll our law, the Service of the Church, the Liturgy and the fasting times and our calendar should remain as they are, and if they are not to remain as they are, then neither shall these seals have any power over us.7

In Hungary, the religious unification spread through the Ruthenian bishoprics and through the Roman Catholic bishopric of Oradea. In the Greek Catholic Church of old Hungary, “the Latinisation process was more advanced, and the Tridentine principles more rigorously institutionalised.”8 Hence, canonical norms that were applied here differed from those that were in force on the territory of the old Transylvanian Principality (i.e. the Bishopric in Blaj), where the Eastern influence was stronger. The situation became even more complicated after the Metropolitanate was established. The Blaj Bishopric initially comprised the entire territory of the Transylvanian Principality. In 1853, the northern part of Transylvania, as well as the Romanian south-eastern part of the Ruthenian Užhorod bishopric made up the new Romanian Bishopric of Gherla. And the newly founded Lugoj Bishopric in the Banat region took over the south-west Transylvania as well (Hunedoara). Therefore, even on the territories of bishoprics Gherla and Lugoj there existed different legislative norms, due to the old political borders, between the parishes in the old Principality of Transylvania and the ones in old Hungary. In other words, the former political divides found their reflection in different canonical norms. These differences came to light already in the first years following the establishment of the new Metropolitanate. 1.1   The Apostolic Visit to Transylvania (1858) On October 8, 1856, the emperor issued an order regarding marriage issues and imposed the so-called Instructions of Cardinal Rauscher (archbishop of Vienna), demanding that first-instance courts in cases of divorce be established at the diocese levels. Sterca Șulut ̦iu, Metropolitan of Blaj, refused to apply the Instructions, since in both Romanian Churches of  Zenovie Pâclișanu, Istoria Bisericii Unite (Târgul Lăpuș: Galaxia Gutenberg, 2006), 106.  N. Bocșan. Ortodocși și uniți. 600–601.

7 8

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Transylvania (Greek Catholic and Orthodox alike) the first instance of trial in such cases had been constituted by the Deans’ Chairs and not the bishopric. Therefore, Șulut ̦iu sent letters of dissent to the Pope and the Minister of Religious Affairs in Vienna. Șulut ̦iu believed that the new measure was not an issue of faith, but rather a question of law.9 On January 14, 1858, the Sacred Congregation for the Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs (CEEA) came together to debate canonical issues within the new Romanian Metropolitan province. Among other issues, it discussed the archbishop and the suffragan bishops’ election, the manner of appointing bishops, their attributions, the provincial and diocesan synods, the church councils, and the matrimonial law (particularly the issues concerning divorce and cross-cultural marriages). The debates ended with a decision to send to Transylvania an apostolic mission consisting of five clergymen, led by the apostolic nuncio from Vienna. Between September 13 and 22, 1858, the delegation had nine meetings (conferences) with the Romanian delegation (four Greek Catholic bishops and four assisting theologians). The conferences revealed the differences in rite and discipline that existed on the territory of the new metropolitan province. Șulut ̦iu stood out clearly with his devotion to the Eastern tradition, heavy reliance on Byzantine Pravila (Codex), as well as his strong opposition against any canonical and disciplinary alteration. Therefore, he was accused of “returning to the abuse committed by the Orthodox.”10 As Ana Sima stated, “The Pravila was one of the most controversial Romanian realities. The reports submitted to the Holy See by the members of the apostolic delegation have only strengthened the conviction about the necessity to abandon it, as a first step towards this church’s purification of the errors and abuse committed by the Orthodox.”11 The main controversies were related to the church courts, especially in issues of divorce. Another controversy was stirred around the election of the priests. In the Oradea bishopric, the church patrons would propose several candidates to the position of the priest, and eventually the archbishop would choose one of them. In the Transylvanian territories, parishes had preserved their right to choose their own priests and to send 9  Nicolae Bocşan, Ion Cârja, Biserica Română Unită la conciliul ecumenic Vatican I (ClujNapoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2001), 110. 10  Ana Victoria Sima, Vizitele nunt ̦iilor apostolici vienezi în Transilvania. 1855–1868 (Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2003), I. 201 11  Ana Victoria Sima, Vizitele nunt ̦iilor apostolici vienezi în Transilvania. 1855–1868 (ClujNapoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2003), I. 201–202.

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these to the bishopric to be ordained. Most of the times, bishops were not in a position to oppose the requests coming from parishes.12 The reports submitted by the apostolic mission were discussed in the CEEA in the coming spring of 1859. The resolutions, adopted and approved by Pope Pius IX, requested measures aimed at the establishment of uniformed practices that would be as close as possible to the Roman regulations. According to Ana Sima, “among the instructions sent to nuncio De Luca, a special place was granted to those referring to the elimination of the Pravila and its substitution by a new canonical codex for the Greek Catholics in Transylvania united with Rome, ‘that should be exact, complete and made in such a way that it may contain no errors.’”13 Coincidence or not, it was exactly in 1859 that Iosif Papp Szilagyi, a canon from Oradea, known for the rigour of his Catholic ideas, was finishing a manual of canonical law dedicated to the Catholics of Byzantine rite. The manual was sent to Rome and submitted to scrutiny. As Sima wrote, In spite of all expectations and of the reputation that Szilagyi enjoyed, his contribution, known under the name of Enchiridion juris ecclesiae orientalis, was only in part satisfying the requirements of the Catholic ecclesiology. This explains the numerous corrections, deletions of paragraphs and completions that Panebianco applied to the text, to obtain a work that was perfectly aligned to the doctrinal principles professed by the Catholic Church.14

The tome was published in Latin in 1862. The same year, Szilagyi was appointed bishop of Oradea, where he continued to serve until his death in 1873. 1.2  The Transylvanian Movement for the Defence of Eastern Traditions: Votes Expressed at the 1869 Synod in Favour of Establishing a Mixed Ecclesiastic Congress After the issue of the Imperial Patent of October 20, 1860,15 and the onset of liberal constitutionalism, the Greek Catholic laypeople took the liberty to lead the fight for the defence of Eastern traditions. The influence of  Ana Victoria Sima, Vizitele, 227.  Ana Victoria Sima, Vizitele, 271. 14  Ana Victoria Sima, Vizitele, 272. 15  The Patent of October 20, 1860, ended the absolutistic rule in the Austrian Empire and reintroduced the older constitutional bodies of each province. 12 13

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liberal ideas from the West was, from this point of view, overwhelming, since the debate shifted towards the realm of ecclesial justice and constitutionalism, of defending synodality and democracy in the Church. Ioan Micu Moldovan, canon of Blaj, was the most active defender of Eastern traditions from the Greek Catholic Church in Blaj. He believed that the religious unification of 1697–1701 had been achieved solely on the basis of the Florence Council (more specifically, on grounds of the Four Florentine Points)16 and not on those of the Council of Trent. Yet, according to Moldovan, the Latins had not been content with the four points alone, but, as Moldovan stressed, they wanted to grab us quickly in their claws and then to assimilate us entirely. The Eastern discipline that had been guaranteed to us ceremoniously by the pact of unification was a thorn in their eyes. […] Discipline, as most theologians from everywhere are confessing, has nothing to do with dogmas. We had done the dogmatic union with the old Church of Rome, and the Eastern discipline we had reserved in everything. […] But they […] they started again to level the differences, they took up the big work of assimilation, in other words the assassination of our Church.17

The way in which Latins operate, according to Moldovan, was reflected in a shrinking synodal organisation of the Church. All innovations that had appeared in the last decades in the Romanian Church United with Rome (RCUR) were allegedly illegitimate and non-canonical, since they had been imposed by bishops without consultation of the synod. The solution Moldovan proposed to help the Church out of the crisis that it was in was to adopt a synodal/constitutional ecclesiastic life: that is, to reactivate the old institutions, “to eradicate the abuse induced by the Westerners,” and to return “to herself.”18 Similar ideas were upheld by the Barbareum Greek Catholic theological seminary’s vice-rector from Vienna, Grigorie Silași.19

16  The Four Florentine Points are the main differences (from Orthodox view) between the Orthodox and the Catholic Churches: accepting the papal primacy, accepting the dogma of filioque, using of unleavened bread for the Eucharist and accepting the existence of purgatory. 17  I. M. Moldovan, “Afaceri bisericești,” Federatiunea 1, no. 47 (1868): 182–183. 18  I. M. Moldovan, Afaceri, 191. 19  G. Silași, “Despre sinoade, cu privire la românii greco-catolici” Federat ̦iunea, 1, no. 100 (1868): 393.

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On August 10–11, 1868, the electoral synod came together to elect Șulut ̦iu’s successor at the head of the RCUR. By the old tradition of the Transylvanian church, the electoral synod voted from among several persons proposed for the metropolitan’s position. Ioan Vancea, Bishop of Gherla (ex-canon in Oradea), received the most votes (59 out of 215) and was appointed metropolitan.20 Yet, before the election, at the suggestion of the vicar of Făgăraș, Ioan Antonelli, the synod voted for ten conditions that the future metropolitan was due to respect. Among these were (1) protection of the constitutional and synodal autonomy of the RCUR, (2) the necessity to give a testimony that “our union with the Roman Catholic Church is and shall remain in the centuries to come solely dogmatic in the known four points and nothing else,” (3) interdiction to file appeals in trials at the Roman Catholic courts, (4) the election of future metropolitans to be made in mixed synods, made up of clergymen and laymen, (5) the right of participation by laymen “with decisive vote in all businesses concerned with the administration of estate, funds, church furniture and also the youth education” but not in “drafting up strictly dogmatic decisions and everything else reserved to the hierarchical clergy through ecclesiastic law,” (6) annual synod convention, and (7) reestablishment of dean’s chairs.21 In the following year (on October 20, 1869) metropolitan Vancea called a diocesan synod. This synod passed an Electoral Law for the Congress of the RCUR, which stated the establishment of the “long yearned for” congress, with the envisioned participation of hierarchs, of two representatives of each capitulate of the four dioceses, representatives of the priests and the laypeople (in a proportion of one-third ministers and two-thirds laypeople), representatives of faculties of the confessional schools, as well as one representative of each of the two monasteries. For the representatives of clergy and parishioners, electoral circumscriptions were instituted.22 The congress that had been planned by the 1869 synod was never able to convene. The political and religious events in Hungary determined a different evolution of the RCUR. 20  Stanciu, Az erdélyi görögkatolikus egyház története zsinatai tükrében (1782–1900) Dokumentumok. Istoria Bisericii Române Unite din Transilvania prin sinoadele sale (1782–1900) Ediţie de documente (Budapest: MTA Bölcsészettudományi Kutatóközpont, 2017). 539–540. 21  Stanciu, Az erdélyi, 529–530. 22  Stanciu, Az erdélyi, 561–563.

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2   Provocations Posed by the Movement for “Catholic Autonomy” in Hungary The idea of establishing a mixed ecclesial congress, made up in two-thirds by laypersons, was not an invention of Greek Catholic Romanians, but had been a desire of Catholic liberals in Hungary ever since 1848. 2.1   The “Broad” Sense of Church Autonomy in a Hungarian Context In the context of Catholic liberalism in Hungary, a Hungarian meaning of church autonomy was much broader than the proper sense of the word, also encompassing “the participation of the lay element in the administration of material, foundational and educational affairs of the Church.”23 By far the best explanation of what Hungarians understood under church autonomy was given by the very Minister of Religious Affairs of the Hungarian Government, Jozsef Eötvös.24 In his view, autonomy translated into the following:25 . The Church receives a status of autonomy. 1 2. In order to give her own laws and be able to manage her affairs autonomously, the Church must possess material resources, that is, she must be reinstated by the State into her right to administer funds; these funds had belonged to the Church in the past but had been taken over by the State in its endeavours to modernise state and society. 3. These funds of the church are granted to an autonomous church by the state authority on the sole condition that laypeople can participate in a transparent way in their management, by means of autonomous church corporations meant to function inside the Church in a way similar to the State. 23  Augustin Bunea, Discursuri, Autonomie bisericească, Diverse (Blaj: Tipografia Seminariului Archidiecesan, 1903), 283. 24  Johann Schneider, Der Hermannstädter Metropolit Andrei von Șaguna. Reform und Erneuerung der orthodoxen Kirche in Siebenbürgen und Ungarn nach 1848 (Köln Weimar Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 2005), 53–59. 25  Paul Bödy, Joseph Eötvös and the Modernization of Hungary, 1840–1870. A Study of Ideas of Individuality and Social Pluralism in Modern Politics (Boulder: Columbia University Press, 1985), 121.

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4. By granting autonomy to the church under these conditions, the Church-State relation was established upon the principle of subsidiarity, while the Church was becoming an autonomous society in front of the State, with a similar organisation, functioning with the same bodies as the State (executive, legislative, and judicial, all separate from one another).

2.2  The Congresses for Hungarian Catholic Autonomy in the Years 1870–1871 and 1897–1902 Eötvös wished that the Catholic Church become autonomous. Hungary’s prime archbishop Simor accepted the autonomy as a principle, but only in a form of the Church’s right to self-management while firmly rejecting any participation of the laypeople. At the same time, he asked for a restitution of Catholic funds from the Government to the Church and requested that the Minister of Religious Affairs should not be involved in the appointment of bishops.26 In November 1867 a Catholic bishops’ conference was held, and its result was a denial of any right to participation by laypeople, especially after the events in Transylvania, where the Roman Catholic laypeople had instituted a specific Transylvanian body called Catholic Status against the bishop’s will (this topic will be given consideration in the next pages). This Catholic Status was in fact an assembly composed of two-­ thirds laymen and one-third priests. Yet, the public opinion’s pressure was mounting. The Minister of Justice, Francisc Deák, requested the convocation of a “mixed conference” on October 1868 to draft an electoral regulation for a future Congress of Catholic Autonomy, with an envisaged majority made up of laypeople. The participants in the October 1 conference put the bishops in charge with elaborating a provisional regulation in accordance with Deák’s requests.27 The hierarchs acted fast, so that at the beginning of June 1869 the elections for the preparatory Congress had already taken place, and the Congress was called in for June 20! The electoral regulation was quite interesting. It stated that the future preparatory Congress was going to be 26  Gabriel Adriányi, Geschichte der katholischen Kirche in Ungarn (Bonn: Bonner Beitrage Zur Kirchengeschichte, 2004), 206; Csáky, Die Römisch-Katholische Kirche. 271. 27  Johann Heinrich Schwicker, Die Katholiken-Autonomie in Ungarn. Wesen, Geschichte und Aufgabe derselben (Ofen: 1870), 54–59.

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comprised of 26 bishops, 25 lower clergymen, and 103 laypersons (therefore accepting the principle of two-thirds laypersons and one-third clergymen). The preparatory Congress opened its works on June 24, 1869. By June 28, a Commission of 18 persons was elected (6 clergy and 12 laypersons), entrusted with the elaboration of a definitive electoral regulation. This included the following principles: (1) participation of laypeople in a proportion of two-thirds of the total assembly; (2) universal secret vote for the election of all deputies of the assembly; (3) division of dioceses in electoral circumscriptions (so that in each circumscription one single deputy may be elected through uninominal vote); and (4) separate election of laypersons and clergy. The very Congress of Catholic autonomy was inaugurated on October 26, 1870. On March 25, 1871, the draft of the Statute of Hungarian Catholic Autonomy was put to the vote. Emperor Franz Josef I (1848–1916) sent the draft of Statute to the Hungarian Government in a quest for their opinion. Yet, at the request of the Bishop’s office, the Government hesitated to answer, practically blocking the process of obtaining the Catholic autonomy.28 The draft of the Catholic statute was grounded on the following principles: (1) autonomy for the church; (2) constitutional principle (separation of powers, universal and uninominal vote every three years for the diocese Congress, and every five years for the General Congress of the country); and (3) participation of laypeople to the administration of material and cultural matters, in a proportion of two-thirds compared to one-­ third clergymen.29 As for the internal structure of Catholic autonomy, there were legislative and executive departments established at each level of church organisation (parish, district, diocese, and the whole church). The legislative organs were tasked with issuing regulations and also with supervising and controlling the activity of the executive organs, thus ensuring the control of the legislative over the executive branch, exactly as in constitutional-parliamentary state organisations. Hierarchs were to be appointed by the Hungarian king, from among three candidates proposed by the General National Congress.

 Adriányi, Geschichte, 207–208.  Ion Cârja, Biserică şi societate în Transilvania în perioada păstoririi mitropolitului Ioan Vancea. 1869–1892 (Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2007), 179. 28 29

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What were the reasons for not sanctioning the Catholic statute in Hungary by the king? Bödy lists five major ones: (1) the Catholic bishops’ fear of losing their privileges; (2) the Government’s fear of losing its influence upon the Church, particularly in the business of appointing bishops; (3) the Government’s fear of losing its influence upon the Catholic confessional schools; (4) the authorities’ refusal to give up on controlling Catholic financial funds; and (5) abandonment of liberal politics (sponsored by Eötvös) and adoption of more centralising and Magyarising politics.30 From this list, the most important was the fourth reason. Indeed, the Catholic funds were a hot issue for the Hungarian polity; a proposal was even made to secularise them. Eventually, in 1877 the Emperor became involved in this question and tried to solve it by setting up a nine-person Commission, whose task was to research on the status of Catholic funds. The Commission concluded that the funds belonged indeed to the Roman Catholic Church and had to be given to her in administration. Yet, the Emperor refused to apply the Commission’s solution and decided (in 1880) that the fund continue to be administered by the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Public Education. However, he appointed a church commission (consisting of 15 members) with the right to control the way in which the Government was using the funds. This commission remained in existence until 1918. A mention must be made here that the solution was only applied to Catholic dioceses of Hungary and not of Transylvania.31 In 1897 elections took place for a new Congress of Catholic autonomy (after the rules of the electoral regulation issued in 1869). Five years later, on March 6, 1902, a Constitutio Autonomiae Ecclesiasticae Romano-­ Catholicorum ritus latini ac graeci in Hungaria was released. Nevertheless, not even this draft got to be sanctioned.32 2.3  Church Autonomies Accepted by the Hungarian Government The church autonomy in a Hungarian sense became possible in three different cases only: the Romanian Orthodox Church in Transylvanian and

 Bödy, Joseph Eötvös, 123–124.  This situation will be dealt with later in more detail. 32  Cârja, Biserică, 221. 30 31

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Hungary, the Serbian Orthodox Church in Hungary, and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Alba Iulia (Transylvania). The Romanian Orthodox from Transylvania and Hungary succeeded in 1864 in obtaining the de facto autocephalous statute for their own metropolitan province when the bishop of Sibiu, Andrei Șaguna,33 was promoted to the rank of metropolitan. For each of the two Orthodox Churches of Hungary (the Serbian and the Romanian ones) the Parliament in Budapest decided to call a constituent church congress, made up of two-thirds laypersons, in order to vote on a statute for each of these Churches.34 In October 1868 the Romanian National Church Congress (RNCC) adopted the so-called Organic Statute (in Rom. Statutul Organic) of the entire metropolitan province,35 based on three fundamental principles which in a broad sense overlap with those of church autonomy:36 1. Autonomy of the church (and as a result of this autonomy the Government returned to the Bishopric of Transylvania the church funds it had been administering so far); 2. Synodality was interpreted in a constitutional sense, by affirming the separation between legislative and executive powers. At all levels of church organisation (parish, district, diocese, and metropolitanate) were instituted executive and legislative organs, which in all levels except for the parishes, consisted of 2/3 laypersons and 1/3 clergymen. Deputies in the dioceses’ legislative bodies (the diocese synods) and in the Metropolitanate (RNCC) were to be elected by uninominal vote in electoral circumscriptions. In order to respect both the separation of powers and the bishop as principle of the Church, hierarchs were granted positions of honourable presidents 33  P.  Brusanowski, “Über das Leben des Metropoliten Andrei Freiherr von Șaguna anlässlich seiner Heiligsprechung în der Rumänisch-Orthodoxen Kirche,” in Ostkirchliche Studien 60. No. 2 (2011): 235–254. 34  Thomas Bremer, Ekklesiale Struktur und Ekklesiologie in der Serbischen Orthodoxen Kirche im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Würzburg: Augustinus-Verlag, 1992). 38–40; Radoslav Edler von Radić, Die Verfassung der orthodox-serbischen Particular-Kirche von Karlovitz (Prag: Verlag der Buchhandlung von G. & F. Dattel, 1880), 58–66. 35  Paul Brusanowski, Rumänisch-orthodoxe Kirchenordnungen. 1786–2008. Siebenbürgen – Bukowina – Rumänien (Köln Weimar Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 2011), 40–97. 36  Paul Brusanowski, Rumänisch-orthodoxe, 24–39; Schneider, Der Hermannstädter Metropolit, 188–210.

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of executive and legislative bodies (i.e. with no right of final decision or veto); 3. Clear separation between financial and cultural issues in the Church (that were also under the management of laypersons) and the administrative, canonical, and dogmatic ones (from which laypersons were excluded). Therefore, at the metropolitan level there were two interconnected leading bodies, the RNCC and the Bishops’ Synod (the Holy Synod) with clearly delineated competences.37 In the Serbian Orthodox Church seated in Sremski Karlovci misunderstandings occurred between laypersons and bishops; therefore, it was impossible to vote for a unique statute; several regulations concerning executive and legislative church leading bodies were adopted in its stead.38 Overall, however, they adopted an organisation somewhat similar to the one in the Romanian Metropolitanate, with a separation of powers and participation of laypersons in the administration of finances and schools or cultural life.39 Given the permanent conflict between laypersons and the bishops, finally in 1912, based on an agreement with the bishops, the Hungarian Government terminated the activity of constitutionally elected bodies and thus suspended the autonomy of the Serbian Metropolitanate.40 A notable exception existed within the Hungarian Catholic Church— The Transylvanian Diocese in Alba Iulia. As Thomas Bremer puts it, The only one in the entire world that is not abiding by the general norm of organisation for the Catholic Churches is the Roman Catholic Church in Transylvania, which is being organised on totally different grounds, closer to the Orthodox Church. The Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese in 37  P.  Brusanowski, “The Principles of the Organic Statute of the Romanian Orthodox Church of Hungary and Transylvania (1868–1925),” Ostkirchliche Studien 60 no. 1 (2011), 110–138. 38  Bremer, Ekklesiale Struktur. 41–51. 39  Isidor Silbernagl, Verfassung und gegenwärtiger Besand sämtlicher Kirchen des Orients. Eine kanonistisch-statistische Agnandlung (Regensburg: Verlaganstalt vorm. G.J.  Manz, Buch- und Kunstdruckerei A.-G., 1904), 180–192 (the Serbian Church) and 193–207 (the Romanian Church). Also Radoslav Edler von Radić, Die Verfassung der orthodox-katholischen Kirche bei den Serben in Oesterreich-Ungarn. Zweiter Theil. Diöcesan und Kirchengemeinderegiment (Werschetz: Selbstverlag des Verfassers, 1880/1), 60–62. 40  Bremer, Ekklesiale Struktur, 62–63; Onisifor Ghibu, Viat ̦a și organizat ̦ia bisericească și școlară în Transilvania și Ungaria (București, Institutul de Arte Grafice Nicolae Stroilă, 1915), 94.

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Transylvania only holds in his hand a part of the power in church. He only has potestas ordinis, and is solely in charge with dogmatic, moral, liturgic and hierarchical issues. In the administrative problems, he is helped by clergy and the people in the congregation. To this purpose, ever since ancient times, the Church has been functioning as a Catholic Transylvanian State.41

The problem of this Transylvanian Catholic Status42 had concerned the public opinion in Great Romania a lot during the interwar period. As Valeriu Pop noted, The Catholic Status is a body consisting of clergy and laypeople, elected by all believers of the Catholic diocese of Alba-Iulia, in order to help the bishop to administer certain funds and foundations and to lead the cultural institutions. Therefore, issues of a strict ecclesiastic hierarchical nature are not among the attributions of the Catholic Status. It is incontestable that there is no any similar institution to be found anywhere within the Catholic Church.43

During the time Eötvös was having discussions with the Catholic hierarchy in Hungary on the issue of accepting the Catholic autonomy, between February 9 and 15, 1868, in Alba Iulia took place the Transylvanian Autonomist Congress. Two organisational proposals were discussed here, one supported by Bishop Fogarassy Miklós, and the other by laypeople from Cluj. The latter ones wanted that the lay element attained a growing degree of independence from the Hungarian Government, as well as from the bishop. Therefore, a serious conflict emerged between bishop and laypersons, the former being disgruntled by what he considered to be Protestant influences over the laypeople’s enterprise. The bishop’s project received majority of votes, due to the fact that the majority of participant members belonged to the clergy. The lay minority submitted a protest to the minister Eötvös who decided however not to take it into consideration, since he was waiting for the approval of Catholic autonomy in entire Hungary.  Onisifor Ghibu, Viat ̦a, 87.  Kálmán Petress, “Vom österreichisch-ungarischen Ausgleich zu den kirchenpolitischen Gesetzen. 1867/1894,” in Kirche – Staat – Nation. Eine Geschichte der katholischen Kirche Siebenbürgens vom Mittelalter bis zum frühen 20. Jahrhundert, edited by Joachim Bahlcke and Krista Zach (München: IKGS Verlag, 2007), 237–246; Béla Jánossy, “Der Status Catholicus in seiner heutigen Struktur,” in Kirche – Staat – Nation, 383–390. 43  Valeriu Pop, Acordul de la Roma (Cluj, Editura Dacia Traiana, 1934), 67–68. 41 42

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The situation was resolved in 1873 when, out of his own initiative, the Transylvanian bishop called in a gathering of the Catholic Status from Transylvania on May 12. The participants to the gathering declared that they were determined to create their own autonomous body to lead the Transylvanian diocese, called the Transylvanian Catholic Status, “as an integral part of the entire Hungarian Catholic state,” even before the Catholic Church of Hungary was to receive her autonomy status. Being faced with a fait accompli, Trefort, the Minister of Religious Affairs, was forced to grant it recognition on June 16, 1873.44 The institution of Catholic Status, by which the Catholic autonomy had been uniquely applied in Transylvania, existed until 1932. On May 30, 1932, the Holy See and the Romanian Government adopted an Agreement (the so-called Rome Treaty of May 30, 1932) concerning the interpretation of Article IX of the Concordat of May 10, 1927. The first Article of this Agreement stated: The institution known as Status Romano-Catholicus Transylvaniensis will hereby become an body of the Catholic Diocese of Latin Rite in Alba-Iulia, and is to take the name of Council of the Catholic Diocese of Latin Rite of Alba-Iulia. (Art. 1 of the Treaty)45

3   The “Romanian Church United with Rome” (Also Called Romanian Greek Catholic Church), from Transylvania and Hungary: Between Budapest and Rome It can be ascertained that the entire movement towards the establishment of a mixed congress took place in the Greek Catholic Metropolitanate, along with the more or less fruitful discussions inside other churches of the Hungarian state. Yet, in the case of Greek Catholics, the movement was stalled mainly due to nationalistic reasons. These people feared that they might be integrated into the wider Hungarian Catholic Church.

44  Onisifor Ghibu, Catolicismul unguresc în Transilvania şi politica religioasă a statului român (Cluj: Institutul de Arte Grafice Ardealul, 1924), 70. 45  Pop, Acordul, 61.

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3.1  Budapest’s Tendencies to Integrate the RCUR into the Hungarian Catholic Autonomy At the preparatory Congress in 1869, the leading bishop of Hungary, Simor, had also invited the representatives of the Romanian and Ruthenian Greek Catholic dioceses. Romanians have mostly protested against the intention to integrate the RCUR into the Catholic Church in Hungary. Therefore, on behalf of the RCUR, only participants from Oradea (i.e. Ruthenian Greek Catholic diocese) were present. This preparatory Congress decided that 204 delegates that should have participated in the Congress of autonomy (68 clergy and 136 laypeople) also should include representatives of the Romanian United Church specifically: the representatives of the Archdiocese of Blaj, two priests and six laymen; from the Oradea bishopric, one priest and two laymen; from the bishopric of Gherla, two priests and seven laymen; and from the one of Lugoj, one priest and two laymen. Yet, for the very Congress of autonomy of 1870–1871, elections were organised solely in the Oradea diocese. The three deputies of the diocese (one priest and two laymen) declared in the name of the entire RCUR that they would not participate in the sessions of the congress. Yet, the draft of Statute of Catholic autonomy of March 25, 1871, also included the Greek Catholic Churches, and on March 30 the Congress forbade the establishment of a separate Romanian Greek Catholic Congress. Under these conditions, 50 priests and 85 Romanian Greek Catholic laymen organised a protest conference in Alba Iulia (April 13, 1871) where they requested from the emperor not to sanction the statute of Catholic autonomy but approve the establishment of a provincial Council of the RCUR.46 As shown above, the project of obtaining the statute of Catholic autonomy was later resumed. In 1897, the leading bishop of Hungary (Kolos Ferenc Vaszary) decreed that beginning with June 24, 1897, all Catholic believers with a right to elect deputies to the following Congress in Budapest should be “conscripted” (the Greek Catholics were also included). Alerted by this measure, the bishops conferred in Blaj on June 23, 1897. Here, a letter was addressed to the Hungarian leading bishop and the king, in which the position of the RCUR was highlighted. On June 29, 1897, in Cluj, 57 Catholic priests and 131 laypeople came together in another conference. However, the Congress’ working  Bunea, Discursuri, 288–298.

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Commission had concretely provisioned for the incorporation of the United Church into the “autonomous body of the Catholic Church,” sustaining that this incorporation would be in the best interest of Greek Catholic believers. Consequently, the Romanian hierarchs convened on May 14, 1899, and drafted a letter of protest addressed to the Hungarian primate bishop, the Holy See, as well as to the king. With all these issues on the table, the congress session of May 10, 1902, did not take the Romanian protests into consideration either.47 3.2  The Latinising Measures Adopted by Provincial Councils One year after the synod of 1869 that provisioned for the establishment of the mixed congress of the RCUR, metropolitan Vancea and the Oradea bishop Szilagyi participated in the Vatican Council I in 1870. Once again, the differences inside the Greek Catholic hierarchy could be noticed: while Vancea rejected the project of the Pope’s dogmatic infallibility, the bishop of Oradea readily accepted it.48 Back home, metropolitan Vancea attempted to get closer to the Holy See, in order to avoid as much as possible the danger of incorporation of the RCUR into the Hungarian Catholic Church. Consequently, he summoned two provincial councils (May 5–14, 1872, and May 30–June 6, 1882), in which only clergymen and no laypeople were present. The first provincial council adopted ten fundamental decrees for the organisation and function of the Transylvanian United Church, accepted by the Holy See: I About Faith, II About the Church, III About Synods, IV About Church Benefits, V About the Holy Sacraments, VI About the Divine Worship, VII About the Life of the Clergy, VIII About the Monastic Order of Saint Basil the Great, IX About the Institution of Juniorship, and X About Church Courts.49 The decisions of the Vatican Council I were accepted, by the adopted creed testimonies: “the entire teaching of the Roman Catholic Church was accepted, and full obedience declared to the Pope.”50

 Bunea, Discursuri, 419–460.  Bocșan, Ortodocși, 608–609. 49  Stanciu, Az erdélyi, 100. 50  Mircea Păcurariu, Politica statului ungar faţă de Biserica românească din Transilvania în perioada dualismului. 1867–1918 (Sibiu: Editura Institutului Biblic și de Misiune Ortodoxă, 1986), 100. 47 48

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Moreover, already starting with the 1872 Council, its members were forced to swear that they would keep all discussions and decisions secret.51 On August 10, 1872, Metropolitan Vancea sent the decisions to the competent authorities in Rome. The De Propaganda Fide congregation decided that the documents be kept strictly secret until a final decision of the Holy See. In February 1874, the congregation summoned a commission of seven cardinals, tasked with analysing the documents. Eventually, the Polish monk Pjotr Semenko was put in charge as an expert to write a report referring to the documents of the Romanian council. Semenko turned in his almost 100-page long study on June 29, 1876, and the cardinals debated over the entire question in 11 sessions, between February 19 and July 9, 1877, in which time there was an intense exchange of letters between Rome and Blaj (metropolitan Vancea being repeatedly asked to provide explanations). The congregation produced a final decision in six points, among which were as follows: (1) although the Province Council was recognised, not everything they had decided was approved; (2) referrals to “heterodox or schismatic”, that is, Byzantine canonical authors such as Balsamon and Zonaras were eliminated from the text; (3) the collection of laws called Pravilă was prohibited from further use “since it is schismatic and full of errors.”52 Only on March 19, 1881, did Rome communicate the recognition of the Council and “the Council’s entirely printed and verified 321+163pages long text was sent to Blaj, without mentioning the printing house or the place of printing. This version was printed later in 1882 by the Metropolitanatetanate of Făgăraș, under the title Concilium provinciale primum provinciae ecclesiasticae graeco-catholicae Alba Juliensis et Fogarasiensis celebratum anno 1872, this edition also containing the Romanian translation of Rome’s official version.”53 Also, in 1882 (May 30–June 6) took place the second Provincial Council of the RCUR, followed by the summoning of the first diocesan synods in the other bishoprics of the Metropolitanate (November 1882). According to Laura Stanciu,  Stanciu, Az erdélyi, 573.  Cârja, Biserică, 123–124; Adrianyi, Geschichte, 43–44 53  Gábor Adriányi, “Date privind istoria Bisericii Române Unite din Transilvania,” in Az erdélyi görögkatolikus egyház története zsinatai tükrében (1782–1900) Dokumentumok. Istoria Bisericii Române Unite din Transilvania prin sinoadele sale (1782–1900) Ediţie de documente, edited by Laura Stanciu (Budapest: MTA Bölcsészettudományi Kutatóközpont, 2017), 44. 51 52

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[o]n this occasion, too, Rome’s desire to impose regulations specific to the Western canonical law is most evident. In the annex to the publication of this synod’s decrees, for example, are to be found the instructions of the Holy Office addressed to all Catholic Churches of Eastern Rite, regarding matrimonial causes, or even the text of a Pope’s indication (1883) regarding matrimonial questions, where the functioning norms of matrimonial courts, along with different kinds of interdictions are given. In return, the influence of the Latin Church is to be noted in the formulation of the creed of faith (Title I), by adopting the “profession of the Catholic Faith, as prescribed by the Holy Apostolic See for Easterners, in 29 points” issued by Pope Urban VIII.54

In the year 1900, when RCUR celebrated its 200th anniversary of unification, the third Provincial Council was convened. In lieu of an answer to the claims of the Hungarian Catholic hierarchy, the Council of Blaj of 1900 adopted the document titled About the Rights and Integrity of the Romanian Greek Catholic Church Province of Alba-Iulia and Făgăraș, which “practically reaffirmed the independence and peculiarity of the Romanian United Church within the framework of Catholic universalism and in her relations with the Catholic Church of Hungary.”55 3.3  The Persistence of the Desire to Adopt Autonomy in a Broad Sense Within the RCUR As the historian Ion Cârja mentions, provincial councils have been “the only possible alternative to the Congress of Hungarian Catholic Autonomy.”56 Indeed, Vancea had led a policy of compromise in order to salvage the RCUR’s autonomy as much as possible. On the one hand, in spite of all submitted protests, he himself subdued many times to the claims of Hungarian Bishops, while participating in Congresses and Conferences of Catholic bishops of Hungary (along with the other suffragan bishops). On the other hand, he was loyal to the Holy See and facilitated the United Church’s Latinisation in the form of three provincial councils. Only through these measures he was able to secure the Pope’s support in his disputes with the Hungarian hierarchy in the struggle to maintain the Romanian character of his Church.  Stanciu, Az erdélyi, 108.  Stanciu, Az erdélyi, 109. 56  Cârja, Biserică, 208. 54 55

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He did not abandon, however, the idea of a church congress with mixed participation of clergy along with laypersons. Consequently, in 1873, the very next year after the provincial council, without asking for permission, he summoned a mixed Congress of Schools at the archdiocese level. Its members, two-thirds laypersons and one-third clergy, were elected in 12 electoral circumscriptions. In the centre of discussions was the issue of organisation of Greek Catholic confessional schools.57 Two years later (between July 16 and 21, 1875), the metropolitan summoned a second mixed congress around the topic of endowing the poorer parishes.58 After metropolitan Vancea’s death, Victor Mihalyi of Apșa benefitted from 82 out of the 202 votes of the participants to the Electoral Synod (second in the race, Ioan Micu Moldovan, received only 49 votes). Mihalyi was also appointed as metropolitan of the RCUR. But the members of the Synod decided to adopt a Manifesto in Defence of the Church Autonomy. By opposing the integrating tendencies of the Hungarian Roman Catholic hierarchy, the Romanian clergy requested, on the contrary, from a competent place, a quickest application in practice of an autonomous and separate body should be operated, in every way in conformity with our legitimate and just aspirations, so many times emphasized by the clergy and the Romanian people, and in this autonomous body, the lay element to be given the influence deemed necessary by requirements of today’s circumstances , also allowing the education and the cultural foundations to prosper, and creating all material means deemed absolutely necessary for the endowment of Romanian Greek Catholic churches and schools and of our so miserable clergy, without harming through this the constitution given to the Holy Church by its very Divine Founder.59

3.4  Interconfessional Polemics In the last decade of the nineteenth century, the claims of the Hungarian Catholic hierarchy had become very hard to bear, not only for the Romanian Greek Catholic clergy, but also for some intellectuals within this Church. In 1893 it resulted in a harsh polemic between the editors of Gazeta Transilvaniei from Brașov (particularly Nicolae Densușianu) and Unirea, the official publication of the RCUR from Blaj (particularly  Cârja, Biserică, 153–157.  Cârja, Biserică, 91. 59  Stanciu, Az erdélyi, 654. Emphasis mine. 57 58

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Augustin Bunea and Alexandru Grama). In the same year, Densușianu published his articles in a brochure titled Independent ̦a bisericească a Mitropoliei române de Alba Iulia [Ecclesial Independence of the Romanian Metropolitanate of Alba Iulia], and Bunea and Grama published theirs in two small volumes named Cestiuni din dreptul și istoria Bisericii românești unite. Studiu apologetic din incidentul invectivelor “Gazetei Transilvaniei” ș i a dlui Nicolau Densuș i anu asupra mitropolitului Vancea ș i a Bisericii Unite [Questions of the Law and History of the Romanian United Church. An Apologetic Study on the Incident of the Attacks of the Gazeta de Transilvania and Mr. Nicolau Densusianu Against Metropolit Vancea and the United Church]. Densușianu brought to the attention of the public the two provincial councils of 1872 and 1882: We are entirely convinced that a great part of our people has no complete knowledge about the hardness of the situation in which the Romanian nation of Transylvania is today, as a consequence of the unhappy decisions that were voted in secret in the 1872 and 1882 councils. We are entirely convinced that not even those who have helped metropolitan Vancea in this destructive work against our national Church are yet aware of what they have done, that even today they have not woken up from the confusion in which they were thrown by the Catholic fanatism on one side, and by metropolitan Vancea’s absolutist leadership on the other side.60

Densușianu considered that the two provincial councils had been summoned illegally, since only the suffragan bishops had been called, and a few theologians without right to vote had been invited while there were no representatives of the lower clergy and laity. He also criticised the oath of secrecy sworn by the participants and the fact that the Pope sanctioned the adopted decrees only at a much later date. Obviously, he could not know about the evolution of discussions that led to the approval granted by the Holy See in 1881. Densușianu expressed his concern that the United Church from Transylvania was amidst a process of Latinisation, being in danger of losing its Eastern character. Given the fact that in 1879 he had himself discovered in the Budapest archives the official document of the religious unification of October 7, 1698, that was mentioning a 60  Nicolae Densușianu, Independent ̦a bisericéscă a Mitropoliei române de Alba Iulia (Brașov: Tipografia A. Mureșianu, 1893), 2.

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religious unification solely on grounds of the Council of Florence points, Densușianu concluded that metropolitan Vancea had been the true author of the unification of the Romanian Church in Transylvania with the Church of Rome, betraying or annulling the founding document from 1698. In his reply, Grama tried to demonstrate the legality of the two provincial councils summoned by Vancea in 1872 and 1882, by bringing up arguments from dogmatics and canon law, such as the papal primacy and his jurisdiction within the United Church; the Church’s infallibility; the role of lay element in the church; and the synodal institution. He considered that the religious unification of 1698–1700 had been a dogmatic union between the Romanian Church in Transylvania and the Church of Rome and that through this union all dogmas of the Catholic Church had been accepted implicitly (although only four points of the Council of Florence had been mentioned) and that in this way the provincial councils had done nothing else but simply formalise the Catholic Church’s teachings that had already been accepted on the occasion of the unification. It is worth noting that exactly in 1893, the year in which the Electoral Synod adopted the Manifesto to the Defence of the RCUR’s Autonomy and also requested the involvement of laypeople into the autonomous body of the Greek Catholic metropolitanate, Grama upheld the conviction that such participation of the laypeople was non-canonical and of Protestant origin. And he considered the participants in the 1868–1869 synods, who had voted the Ten Conditions (1868) as well as the establishment of the mixed Congress (1869) as being victims of a great confusion, into which they had been thrown by the Orthodox Metropolitan of Sibiu, Andrei Șaguna, who in the National Orthodox Church Congress in Sibiu had imposed the above-mentioned Organic Statute: Șaguna, with his idea embodied in the Organic Statute, has caused a lot of confusion in the public opinion about the Church. Our electoral Synod of 1868 […] and other appearances in our public life are the very signs of this confusion, at which Șaguna, then and today, if he were alive, would laugh if he could see the fruits of his seeds so quickly.61

61  Alexandru Grama, Cestiuni din dreptul și istoria bisericei românești unite, studiu apologetic din incidentul invectivelor Gazetei Transilvaniei și a domnului Neculae Densușanu asupra Mitropolitului Vancea și a bisericei unite. Partea I (Blașiu: Tipografia Seminarului gr.cat. din Blașiu, 1893), 151–152.

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It might look like Grama was set into confusion himself, when he was accusing the synods in the generation of his parents of confusion, seeming not to be able to understand them. Accused by Grama as heretic and falsifier of canons, Șaguna had imposed in the Orthodox Church the very principles that were laying at the foundation of the Hungarian Catholic autonomy, as well as at the foundation of the mixed church congress envisaged by the Diocese Synod in Blaj in 1869. The problem for the Romanian Greek Catholics was that the Hungarian Roman Catholics could not conceive an individual Romanian United Church, distinct from the Hungarian one, and wished to impose a unique Catholic autonomous body in Hungary, a single ecclesial assembly that would include both the Hungarian Roman Catholics and the Romanian Greek Catholics. In the face of this danger, the Greek Catholic hierarchy found support with the Holy See and in return was obliged to accept the principles of the rigid clericalist organisation imposed by Rome. And indeed, in the framework of this rigid clericalist organisation, the participation of laypeople in the church leadership could not be accepted and was considered to be of Protestant origin. Only by understanding this dilemma does it make sense that in the same year the Greek Catholics were requesting the involvement of laypeople, while Grama was considering this involvement as being canonically impossible. In the context of the Hungarian Catholic hierarchy’s maintaining their claims, some proposed even the conversion to the Orthodox Church: Other more radical ones believe that in face of the danger of Hungarian autonomy that is threatening our Church, we must “work with all our strength, so that in the moment when they (the Hungarians) would affirm the death of our national United Church, we may rise to a new life within our national non-united Church”. So did Dr. Alexandru de Vaida Voevod advise us (in the Tribuna magazine of Sibiu, issue of October 7, 1899) and he was also followed by Mr. Lucian Bolcaș in the following year 1900, saying: “let us too prepare to erase that Church, that would not be our Church any more, but only a path to destruction.” What is proposed to us today through the quoted utterances seems a moral impossibility.62

It is no wonder that under these conditions, the involvement of Greek Catholics in the Romanian national(ist) movement was obvious. Much easier to understand is the fact that in the years before the outbreak of  Bunea, Discursuri, 464–465.

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World War I, and even during this conflagration, the canonist of the Greek Catholic Metropolitanate in Blaj, Iuliu Maniu, was the main representative of the Romanian National Party in Transylvania. If in the years 1910–1914, amidst the negotiations led by Hungary’s Prime Minister Istvan Tisza with the Romanian nationalists, Iuliu Maniu was requesting for the RCUR a similar autonomy status with the Orthodox Church of Hungary, then on November 14, 1918, during the last negotiations with the Hungarian state leaders in Arad, he was uttering clearly that the Romanians’ aim had become “a complete separation” from Hungary.63

4   Conclusion This chapter hopefully made it clear that there have been certain connecting points between the two Romanian Churches in Hungary (the Greek Catholic and the Orthodox Church), going back to their common Eastern tradition. This tradition was even more powerful in the very territory of Transylvania. With a history that was different from that of the other surrounding territories, the old Principality of Transylvania favoured the development of the so-called churches of the people (Volkskirchen), both with Lutheran Germans (Saxons) and with Calvinist Hungarians, as well as the Romanian Orthodox. The democratic aspects (particularly the right to elect their clergy and church synods) had a capital importance in the Transylvanian church tradition. By the Organic Statute, the Orthodox Metropolite Șaguna amplified the democratic characteristics of the Romanian Orthodox Church in Hungary, transforming it into a true Volkskirche. The same happened with the Hungarian Roman Catholic Diocese in Transylvania that managed to institute a mixed church assembly (Status Catholicus) which took over the diocese foundations and schools (a unique case in the Catholic world). In this context, only the Romanian Greek Catholics found themselves in impossibility to ground their own autonomy and had to accept Latinising measures in order to remain a National Church and not be integrated against their will into the wider Hungarian Catholic Church. And in this process of self-definition, the Romanian Greek Catholics have always had the status of the Romanian Orthodox Metropolitanate in Sibiu as a guiding beacon.

63  Alexandru Ghișa, România și Ungaria la început de secol XX. Stabilirea relat ̦iilor diplomatice (Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2002), 51, 118.

The Bulgarian Orthodox Church and Its Perception of the Bulgarian “Uniates” Vladislav Atanassov

The question of whether the Bulgarian Church belonged to the Eastern or Western Church and thus of its independence arose at the baptism of the Bulgarians in the ninth century, when the then ruler Boris I (who bore the baptismal name Mikhail) addressed both Rome and Constantinople and wanted to see the status of the newly established church regulated at the Council of 870. The Council decided in favor of Constantinople, but already his son Simeon I tried to realize his father’s wish for a Patriarchate of his own. Petâr I, the son of Simeon, succeeded in obtaining the official recognition of this Patriarchate. After the conquest of Bulgaria by Byzantium (1018), the Patriarchate temporarily ceased to exist. When the Bulgarian Empire was restored at the end of the twelfth century, the question of the status of the Church in Bulgaria arose again. In view of the political situation at that time, Tsar Kaloyan decided to sign a union with Rome. It had a purely formal character and lasted barely 30 years. It was ended by the recognition of a Bulgarian Patriarchate at the Council of

V. Atanassov (*) Bulgarian Orthodox Church Stuttgart, Nuertingen, Germany © The Author(s) 2021 V. Latinovic, A. K. Wooden (eds.), Stolen Churches or Bridges to Orthodoxy?, Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55442-2_8

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Lampsak in 1235, in which many bishops from the Patriarchates of the East took part. After its status and autonomy had been consolidated by such a high forum, the Bulgarian Church showed no interest in the Lyon Council of 1274 and stayed away from it. The Ottoman conquest of Bulgaria put an end to ecclesiastical autonomy, and most Bulgarians came under the jurisdiction of Constantinople.1

1   Origin and Development of the Catholic Church of the Eastern Rite in Bulgaria Nationalist, pastoral, and pragmatic reasons contributed to the emergence of the Bulgarian “Uniates”.2 The struggle for national identity and freedom played a dominant role in the nineteenth century. At that time the Bulgarians were subjects of the Ottoman Sultan and the church was under the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Constantinople. Since the clergy often consisted of Greek priests and bishops, many Bulgarians had to hear the liturgy in Greek and were exposed to several attempts at Hellenization. As a result, a combative movement arose for its own church, which gained much momentum in the middle of the nineteenth century. In their disputes with the Patriarch of Constantinople, the Bulgarians often had to learn that he was supported by Russian diplomacy, which saw the Bulgarian efforts as a danger to the Orthodox cause in the Ottoman Empire. Therefore, some of the leaders of this struggle were using pressure to persuade their opponents to compromise: an alliance with the Pope and the support of the Catholic superpowers like it was the case with Tsar Kaloyan. Especially from 1859 the idea of the Union began to 1  More literature on the described developments and on the Bulgarian church and state in the Middle Ages in general in the following: Kiril Petkov, The Voices of Medieval Bulgaria, Seventh-Fifteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2008); Alexandru Madgearu, The Assanids. The Political and Military History of the Second Bulgarian Empire (1185–1280) (Leiden: Brill, 2017); Gerhard Podskalsky, Theologische Literatur des Mittelalters in Bulgarien und Serbien 865–1459 (München: Beck, 2000); Lothar Heiser, Die Responsa ad consulta Bulgarorum des Papstes Nikolaus I. (858–867) (Trier: Paulinus Verlag, 1979); H.D. Döpmann, “Zum Streit zwischen Rom und Byzanz um die Christianisierung Bulgariens,” Palaeobulgarica no. 5 (1981) p. 62–73; Todor Sâbev, Samostojna narodnostna Tsârkva v srednovekovna Bâlgaria (Sofia: Sinodalno izdatelstvo, 1987); Vasil Giuzelev, Papstvoto i bâlgarite prez Srednovekovieto (Plovdiv: Fondatsia Bâlgarsko istorichesko nasledstvo, 2009). 2  In my chapter, I often use the term “Uniates” to describe believers of the Eastern Orthodox churches for brevity. I am aware of the negative connotation with which this term is sometimes used, and I want to emphasize that I do not use it that way. For this reason I have always put this term in quotation marks.

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germinate, mainly among the more radical fighters against the Patriarchate of Constantinople. The printing house of Dragan Zankov, who was supported by the Catholics (especially from France) and who quickly established himself as one of the leading figures of the Union movement, played a major role in this. The year 1860 proved to be a fateful year for the development of the church in the region: in April 1860 the head of the Bulgarian parish in Constantinople, Bishop Ilarion Makariopolski, did not mention the ecumenical patriarch during the Easter liturgy, which many Bulgarian believers interpreted as a sign of their independence from the patriarch. This action turned out to be a beacon for the process of dissociation of many Bulgarian Christians from the Patriarchate. But the hopes that the Ottoman government, which until then had often shown itself sympathetic to the Bulgarian efforts, would support and legalize the foundation of a Bulgarian church did not come true. At the same time, the reserved reaction of the Russian diplomacy, which tried to reconcile both conflicting parties, was rather perceived by the fighters as a hindrance to an independent Bulgarian church.3 This development poured even more water on the mills of the Union movement. More and more radical fighters recommended the Union as the only solution with a promising chance of acceptance by the Ottoman government.4 On December 18, 1860, numerous followers of the Union, led by priests and prominent representatives of the idea of Union, came to the house of the Apostolic Vicar in Constantinople. There they declared that they were addressing the Vatican with the intention of restoring the independence of the Bulgarian Church, which had been given by the Papacy in the ninth and thirteenth centuries and later abolished by the Patriarchate of Constantinople.5 As a condition they demanded the retention of the church customs and dogmas. For this they would recognize the Pope as a head and include the Filioque in their creed. Thereby the terms “Catholic” and “Catholicism” were avoided and the formulation “Bulgarians united with Rome” prevailed.6 Their petition was approved by the Pope as early 3  Vera Boneva, Bâlgarskoto tsârkovnonatsionalno dvizhenie 1856–1870 (Veliko Târnovo: Za bukvite – O pismeneh, 2010), 251. 4  The Sublime Porte feared at this time that an independent Bulgarian church would promote Russian influence over them, especially in view of the Slavophile movement. It hoped through the Union movement to weaken Russian positions and reassure Bulgarians. 5  In this case the supporters of the Union hoped that Rome will play the same role as it did in the abovementioned events of the baptism of Bulgaria in the ninth century, and later the Union which Tsar Kaloyan had concluded with Pope Innocent III. 6  Boneva, Bâlgarskoto, 302.

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as January 1861. He allowed them to submit to the jurisdiction of Rome while retaining the previous rites. The Ottoman government also promptly legalized the new religious community. Even before the official papal approval the Uniate Bulgarians were allowed to celebrate on 25 December 1860 the Christmas liturgy in Bulgarian in a chapel handed over to them in Constantinople. On 14 April 1861 in Rome, Pope Pius IX consecrated Archimandrite Josif (1786–1879), until then an Orthodox abbot of the Sokolski Monastery, as an archbishop and an apostolic vicar of the Bulgarian “Uniates”. But shortly thereafter Russian diplomacy managed to lure Josif to Russia, where he was forced to remain until the end of his life. After that the “Uniates” felt insecure. This Russian intervention ended a brief period that the American researcher Denis Vovchenko described as the fear of Russian foreign policy of the Union in Bulgaria.7 This action of Russian diplomacy, however, did not prevent the further development of the Bulgarian Union movement. Vovchenko sees it as “a great example of how active minority movements can play locally involved outside forces off against each other to gain more leverage.”8 Apart from the national-political reasons there were also other motives for a change to the Union. These reasons can be divided into pastoral and pragmatic ones. The pastoral ones were the desire for a celebration of the liturgy in the familiar Church Slavonic language9 and the need to have a new type of pastorally minded clergy who would turn to the people and carry out their ministry responsibly. The pragmatic considerations were the possibility of saving the church tithes or other church fees, but also of claiming for oneself the social activities of the Catholic Church, especially in the area of educational opportunities for children. In his correspondence with Prince Gorchakov, then a Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia, the Russian Ambassador in Constantinople, Aleksey Lobanov-Rostovsky, very aptly stated that many Bulgarians were tempted by the perspective of finding in the Catholic Church an educated, honest, and disciplined clergy which possessed great material resources, 7  Denis Vovchenko, Containing Balkan Nationalism: Imperial Russia and Ottoman Christians, 1856–1914 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 144. 8  Vovchenko, Containing, 144. 9  The problem of the liturgical language mainly concerned these Bulgarians, who lived in a multiethnic environment such as in larger cities where Greek was the predominant language used in worship.

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developed charity, and also promised other material support and participation in the advantages of Western civilization. On the other hand, there are often ignorant, greedy, and blind Orthodox clerics who are more concerned with their own advantages than with the interests of the whole Orthodox Church and its pastoral tasks.10 And indeed, immediately after the Ottoman government recognized the “Uniate” Bulgarians as a religious community, they could communicate more easily with the local authorities than their Orthodox fellow citizens, which brought certain advantages especially for the business activities of craftsmen and traders.11 Even Orthodox priests took advantage of the offers of the Catholic Church: the best example in this respect is the story of the later leader of the Bulgarian “Uniates”, Lazar Mladenov. In 1864 his father, an Orthodox priest in Bansko, handed him over to the Lazarist Mission in Thessaloniki so that he could receive six years of education at their school for Bulgarian children.12 Nevertheless, the Union idea never reached a broader basis. There were many reasons for this. The most important of them is that from the beginning the Union was perceived by the majority of Bulgarians as religious and national division while in a time of fiercest confrontation over an independent church one wanted to show unity. In this polemically waged struggle, financial means were also used by the Orthodox Christians to win back the wavering Bulgarians for their own cause. Another reason was the social isolation and defamation that threatened the converts, especially those living in the countryside or in small towns where society was very homogeneous and conservative. The antipathetic conservatism that the Bulgarians displayed in the religious sphere for centuries served as a success factor in preserving their Christian identity in a Muslim empire. It is true that, unlike Muslims, Catholics were Christians. But the attitude of many Bulgarian believers, especially the clergy, toward Rome had already been very critical and even anti-Latin since the middle of the thirteenth century. In the cultural memory of the Orthodox Bulgarians the narrative about the martyrdom of the Athos monks in the Zograph Monastery has found an important place and continues to have

 Vovchenko, Containing, 114–115.  Boneva, Bâlgarskoto, 303. 12  R.  Zaimova, “100 godini ot smârtta na episkop Lazar Mladenov (1853–1918),” Hristianstvo i kultura 138 (2019): 26. 10 11

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an effect to this day. According to tradition,13 in 1276 these monks were burnt alive in their own monastery by the supporters of the Union of Lyon (1274). Together with the usual anti-Latin polemic, which was widespread in the Orthodox world after the schism of 1054, it determined this relationship of mistrust toward the Catholics. The idea of union was not internalized on a religious level, but was considered only as a means of pressure in the struggle for an independent Bulgarian church and as participation in certain social advantages (education, access to the West, better status with the Ottomans, and financial support). Therefore, when in the 1860s the material support of the Catholic foreign powers diminished and a tendency toward the Latinization of the Bulgarian “Uniates” emerged, the growth of the unified church stopped and the opposite trend began: some clerics, especially converted clergy, left the Union because they saw better material possibilities in the Orthodox Church. In such cases the willingness of Russian diplomacy to spare no financial resources played a major role. Most, however, returned to the Orthodox Church because they feared that the Uniate Church would soon lose its character as an Eastern Church and that they would only exchange their dependence on Constantinople for that of Rome. At the same time, in the second half of the 1860s, the Orthodox Bulgarians had high hopes of a positive solution to the conflict with the Patriarchate of Constantinople within the framework of Orthodoxy. Internal power struggles and quarrels among the “Uniates” and the lack of Bulgarian clerics did the rest and contributed to the fact that the Union could not win compact population masses. By the time the Bulgarian Church was recognized by the Sultan in 1870,14 the main arguments in favor of the Union already lost its importance. The idea to recognize the pope as head of the church was only of some relevance to those of the Bulgarians who were still under the jurisdiction of the Constantinople Patriarchate, making it an appropriate 13  Petkov, The Voices, 444–446; Hans-Dieter Döpmann, “Die Bulgaren und das ZografKloster,” in: Deutsch-Bulgarischer Kultur- und Wissenschaftstransfer, edited by Helmut Schaller, Rumjana Zlatanova (Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2013). 14  Although the Sultan legalized the newly established Bulgarian Exarchate by a firman (edict of the Ottoman ruler), this church was not recognized within Orthodoxy. After the Bulgarian church leadership proclaimed the independence of the Bulgarian Church on 11 May 1872 on its own authority, a council in Constantinople in the same year declared the Bulgarian Church schismatic and accused it of heresy of phyletism. This decision was not abolished until 1945.

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means for them to preserve their national identity. In this respect the liberation of Bulgaria in 1878 played a supportive role for the Union, as the new Bulgarian state was far from encompassing the territories of the Bulgarian Exarchate, so that many Bulgarian believers continued to live in the Ottoman Empire and found themselves in a fiercely competitive situation with the Patriarchate of Constantinople, which regarded the Bulgarian Church still as schismatic and not canonical. Therefore, the Bulgarian Uniate Church concentrated its efforts on building its structures more in the areas of the Ottoman Empire where many Bulgarians still lived. After the Bulgarians saw their longing for their own church fulfilled through the establishment of the Exarchate in 1870, they paid less attention to the Union. But this also meant that they no longer considered it so dangerous. They hardly noticed the Union and showed no particular fear of contact to the “Uniates” in the following decades. It was only in the few places where the number of Union followers grew to such an extent that it concerned the local Orthodox clergy. The years in which the Orthodox background of the “Uniates” still played an immense role can be described as a period of fluctuating confessional boundaries: many of the faithful were not particularly aware of the differences between the Orthodox and the “Uniates”. For example, the faithful of both confessions attended each other’s worship services. Orthodox Christians got married in the Uniate churches, where they had to pay less fees. Some church regulations were not so strict there either. Uniate Christians agreed to marry with their Orthodox partners in an Orthodox church. These circumstances were a thorn in the side of the Catholic priests of the Western rite. Thus the French priest Galabert, who was sent in 1865 to assist the new head of the Bulgarian “Uniates”, Rafail Popov, and to advise him in his new office, warned the Bulgarian bishop that one had to instruct the faithful consistently not to go to the Orthodox services. Even 20 years later the Italian Jesuit Paolo Pierling critically remarked that in the time when Bishop Nil Izvorov was the head of the Uniate, the transition to the Union took place without conditions and without catechetical preparations, just as in the early years of the Uniate Church.15 Nil Izvorov himself who as an Orthodox Bishop converted to the Union in 1874 for reasons of church politics broke with the Union in the 15  Ivan Elenkov, “Katolicheskata Tsârkva v Bâlgaria i obstnostnite identichnosti na prinadlezhastite kâm neia verni prez XIX i pârvata polovina na XX vek.” https://balkansbg.eu/ bg/content/b-identichnosti/136-k-tzarkva.html#_ftnref197/

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spring of 1895 and returned to the Orthodox Church. Already in 1894, for reasons of internal quarrels, another bishop retired from the ranks of the Uniate Church—Lazar Mladenov, who had been very active and successful until then.16 Thus the Catholics of the Eastern rite had lost two of their three bishops. Even though Lazar Mladenov in 1896 returned to the Union, he was then sent to the Vatican. In contrast to the Union priests of the first hour, who were mainly former Orthodox clergymen, Lazar Mladenov belonged to a new generation of priests who were educated in the Catholic institutions and were not orthodox clerics before. At the end of the nineteenth century the old generation of priests was gradually replaced by the new clergy who either came from abroad or, like Lazar Mladenov, were sent as children by their families to the Catholic educational establishments. A turning point in the development of the Catholic Church of the Eastern rite was the end of the First World War, which triggered great migrations among the Balkan peoples. Almost all unified Bulgarians from the former Ottoman Empire fled to Bulgaria, giving rise to the necessity of a structural reorganization of the Uniate Church. The papal envoy Angelo Roncalli,17 who stayed in Bulgaria in 1925–1934, played a particularly important role in this respect. In view of the migration processes Sofia began to establish itself in the post-war years as an administrative center of the Uniate Church while the seat of the Archbishop in Constantinople fulfilled only a representative function. The Uniate clergy tried to avoid the dispersion of their faithful throughout the country and to control immigration in such a way that the refugees settled as groups in certain places, so that this would facilitate the later development of the church congregations. When Roncalli came to Bulgaria in 1925 as an apostolic visitator, he made a significant contribution to solving the question of the status of the Uniate Church in Bulgaria. During his stay, Roncalli pursued the goal of reorganizing the “Uniates” in Bulgaria under an exarch whose seat would be in Sofia.18 His project was realized in 1943. Roncalli’s other achievement was the episcopal 16  Friedrich Heyer, Die orientalische Frage im kirchlichen Lebenskreis: das Einwirken der Kirchen des Auslands auf die Emanzipation der orthodoxen Nationen Südosteuropas 1804–1912 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1991), 296. 17  Angelo Roncalli (1881–1963) later became Pope John XXIII (1958–1963). 18  Rumen Vatashki, Bâlgarskata Pravoslavna Tsârkva I rimokatolicheskata propaganda v Bâlgaria i na Balkanite (IX–30-te godini na XX vek) (Veliko Târnovo: Faber, 2011), 416.

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consecration of Kyrill Kurtev who later became one of the most important persons in the history of the Uniate Church.19 Kurtev formulated the new goals that stood before his church: building an efficient administration, focusing on liturgical life and ascetic practice, and encouraging lay activities. As a result, in the next few years the Uniate Church established its own educational institutions. The “Uniates” actively participated in religious, cultural, and charitable events and initiatives. During this time, there developed a new generation of clergymen who were raised as “Uniates”, had a very good education, and were engaged in the field of social concerns.20 But in 1944 the communists came to power and the churches in Bulgaria were repressed. At the beginning of the 1950s, the Catholic Christians suffered heavy losses when some of them—especially the priests—were executed or sentenced to prison. The main blow was directed against the Catholics of the Western rite, so the Eastern Catholic Bishop Kurtev had to care also for them. For years he remained the only Bishop for the Bulgarian Catholics of both rites. A certain reprieve from the persecution began at the end of the 1950s and in the 1960s. The priests sentenced to prison gradually were released and contributed to the consolidation of the structures of their church. In addition, new bishops were ordained. The election of Angelo Roncalli as Pope John XXIII (1958–1963) played an important role in this process. Many Bulgarian Catholics knew him personally and hoped to improve their situation thanks to his support. As early as 1959 their church leadership took the courage to draw in official way the attention of the Bulgarian government to the violations of religious freedom caused by local authorities.21 The reports of the agents of the State Security from this time period reflected a general revival and new hopes among the Catholics in response to the election of the new Pope.22 The security forces reacted by deciding to recruit persons who had already enjoyed the trust of John XXIII during his stay in Bulgaria. They were to be sent to him to obtain secret information. Another measure was to expand the network of agents among the Bulgarian Catholics.23 19  Elenkov, “Katolitsite ot iztochen obriad sred katolicheskite obstnosti i identichnosti v Bâlgaria,” Hristianstvo i kultura 58 (2011): 64. 20  Elenkov, Katolitsite, 64. 21  Svetlozar Eldârov, Bâlgaria i Vatikana 1944–1989: Diplomaticheski, tsârkovni i drugi vzaimootnoshenia (Sofia: Logis, 2002), 36. 22  Eldârov, Bâlgaria, 56, 57. 23  Eldârov, Bâlgaria, 167.

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Nevertheless, there was a loosening of the regime in the 1960s and 1970s, especially as the Bulgarian government sought to normalize its relationships with the Vatican (but without an establishment of the official diplomatic relations). As a result of this normalization, the Catholics in Bulgaria were allowed to carry out regular official communications with Rome. They were even allowed to send representatives to the Second Vatican Council in 1964. Soon afterward Metodi Stratiev, who was imprisoned from 1952 to 1963 for political reasons, was ordained as another Uniate bishop. In the 1970s he became a permanent member of the Synod of Bishops. Also in this decade visitors from the Vatican were allowed to bring along church literature and small financial sums to their Bulgarian fellow believers. In 1975 “something remarkable and unthinkable” happened—Bulgarian Catholics, laypeople and clergy, were allowed to go on a pilgrimage to Rome.24 By 1980 (one year before the assassination attempt on John Paul II) the department of the Bulgarian State Security, which was responsible for the nonOrthodox denominations, had only four agents (all “Uniates”) among the Catholics.25 However, after the Italian public prosecutor’s office accused a Bulgarian citizen of being involved in the assassination attempt, relations with the Vatican became frosty again. After the collapse of the communist regime in Bulgaria in 1989 the “Uniates” could fall back on the international support of the Catholic Church. New priests and monks came from abroad and gradually replaced the aging Bulgarian clergy; they still make up the majority of the clergy. Bishop Christo Projkov as the chairman of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference in Bulgaria heads the Bulgarian “Uniates” since 1995.

2   The Relationship of the Bulgarian Orthodox Christians to the “Uniates” At first the relationship of the Orthodox Bulgarians to the “Uniates” was decisively determined by the circumstances of the struggle for their own church. Later, after decades of Latinization, the “Uniates” were regarded more as Catholics and no longer as former Orthodox. For a long time, it has been a strong determining factor for the self-perception of the Bulgarian “Uniates” and for their perception by the Orthodox. The development of this process is presented next.  Eldârov, Bâlgaria, 163.  Eldârov, Bâlgaria, 229.

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2.1  The Latinization Process and the Change in the Self-­Perception of the “Uniates” in Bulgaria From the very beginning the Union movement was heavily dependent on the material and organizational support of the Roman Catholic Church. As soon as this support dwindled, there arose a critical situation especially with the lack of well-educated clergy. Since the number of “Uniates” remained rather small, they did not have sufficient resources and constantly needed the help of the local or international structures of the Catholics of the Western rite. This situation has not changed significantly to this day in time it led to a strong dependence on the Catholic Church of the Western rite and accordingly to an ever-greater adaptation to it. It is worth mentioning that until the 1930s the Catholic Church leadership, and especially the Western rite, pursued a policy of integrating Bulgarian Catholics with Rome and not with other Bulgarian social groups. For a long time belonging to Rome was strongly promoted as an essential part of the identity of Bulgarian Catholics while their belonging to a wider Bulgarian community was neglected. This changed the Uniates’ understanding of their identity. The change manifested itself especially clearly in the generations that were born and raised as “Uniates”. While in 1874 the Superior of the Lazarist Mission in Thessaloniki, Bonetti, and other Catholic clergy worried whether the “Uniates” would ever internalize Catholicism,26 the young Bishop Kurtev, in his first Letter to the Chief Pastors of April 1927, marked a turning point in the Uniates’ self-image. In this letter the affiliation to Rome was no longer justified by historical arguments but by the nature of Catholicism: the Catholic Church had a divine origin, it realized the divine ideal, it was transnational, and it stood above the interests of the individual states. Ten years later in a public speech Bishop Kurtev described the term “Uniates” as “unsuitable.” This was a term which in the middle of the nineteenth century described the Orthodox Christians who recognized the papal primacy.27 However, when the famous publicist Madsharov on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the signing of the Union asked the question of whether it was the time that the “Uniates” return to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, one of the leading intellectuals of the Bulgarian “Uniates” clearly replied:  Heyer, Die orientalische Frage, 81.  Ivan Elenkov, “Katolicheskata Tsârkva v Bâlgaria i obstnostnite identichnosti na prinadlezhastite kâm neia verni prez XIX i pârvata polovina na XX vek.” https://balkansbg.eu/ bg/content/b-identichnosti/136-k-tzarkva.html#_ftnref197/ 26 27

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“We are not Uniates by chance, but we are so educated by our fathers and grandfathers and also our descendants will remain Uniates!”28 This revealed the advanced stage of change in the self-perception of the “Uniates”: if formerly they were the Orthodox Christians united with the Papacy, some decades later they regarded themselves as first of all as the Catholics but of the Eastern tradition. The identity oriented toward Rome was meanwhile strongly consolidated (so-called horizontal integration), so that one could without hesitation initiate a process in the 1930s: a so-­ called horizontal integration.29 The horizontal integration manifested itself in an approach to the other layers of Bulgarian society, which took place above all on the basis of a common national consciousness. Even during communism, when Bulgarian Catholics were isolated from the Vatican for a long time, Rome remained their point of orientation and a source of hope for the future. The reprisals of the communist regime had some beneficial effects on the convergence between the Catholics of the Eastern and Western rites: faced with the lack of priests and destruction of ecclesial structures they had to cooperate more intensively. Paradoxically this process was also promoted by a “de-latinizing” measure: an introduction of the Bulgarian as a worship language for the Catholics of the Western rite which happened in the late 1960s. Before that the use of Latin in Mass was an essential distinguishing feature of the Roman Catholics from the “Uniates”. When, after the fall of communism in 1989, the Catholic Church was able to freely support its Bulgarian faithful the attachment to Rome grew even more. Particularly attractive was the opportunity to study abroad thanks to financial support from Catholic organizations. New priests coming from abroad also strengthened the connections to Catholic structures of the Western rite. In the meantime, there was a crisis of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. After the fall of communism it experienced a schism and failed to deal with its communist past even until today. Above all it did not engage in pastoral and social work. All of these circumstances strengthened the “Uniates” perception of belonging to Catholicism.  Ibid.  Elenkov, Katolitsite, 62. Elenkov uses two terms: “vertical integration” and “horizontal integration.” First one was promoted, that the Bulgarian Catholics should identify themselves exclusively with Rome; this was the so-called vertical integration. After this identity was consolidated, the identity of the Bulgarian Catholics with the rest of the Bulgarian society began to be consolidated and this is the so-called horizontal integration. 28 29

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2.2  Dynamics of the Relationship Between the Two Churches Already at the beginning of the Union movement a passionate debate arose of whether the Union supporters were splitting the nation and betraying the traditions. Mutual accusations and insults were exchanged. The opponents of the Union tried to keep the people away from this idea by political and religious arguments: while the secular press warned against the division of the nation and the fragmentation of the movement for an independent church, the Orthodox clerics started to qualify the conversion to the Union as a crime against the Church; they threatened the converts with excommunication or demanded their repentance.30 Also, from the middle of the 1960s there was an increase in the number of Orthodox publications. Still, the line between Uniates and Orthodox remained rather fluid for a long time. It was common to change one’s denomination multiple times in accordance with the change in the economic situation. For this reason, some Orthodox bishops decided to use a sharper tone against the “Uniates” as well as to strengthen the confessional consciousness of their people. For example, at the end of the nineteenth century the Metropolitan of Stara Zagora, Methodij, developed the thesis that the “Uniates” were Bulgarians in blood, but not in spirit. Only the Orthodox faith could form the spiritual foundation of the Bulgarian nation while the Bulgarian Muslims would feel themselves as part of the Muslim community and the Bulgarian Catholics would see themselves as belonging to Rome and sympathize with the Catholic nations.31 Thirty years later, the Metropolitan of Sliven went even further in the derogatory qualifications: he called the “Uniates” “renegades” who were misled by money.32 But these extreme reactions were an exception. They were triggered by the fear of proselytism of the Uniate Church because it built new churches in some places where there were no Catholic believers of the Eastern rite. Most of the Uniate communities were in the mentioned eparchies of Stara Zagora and Sliven anyway. In order to succeed in this religious competition, the Sliven Metropolis of the Orthodox Church began in the late 1920s to provide material support to those priests who were actively  Zaimova, 100 godini, 27.  Ivan Elenkov, “Katolicheskata Tsârkva v Bâlgaria i obstnostnite identichnosti na prinadlezhastite kâm neia verni prez XIX i pârvata polovina na XX vek.” https://balkansbg.eu/ bg/content/b-identichnosti/136-k-tzarkva.html#_ftnref197/ 32  Vatashki, Bâlgarskata, 209. 30 31

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engaged in the struggle against the Union idea. In addition it agreed to co-finance a school canteen in the town of Malko Târnovo where the “Uniates” were particularly active and attractive to many poor people by their active social work.33 In the places where communities of the Byzantine Catholics offered the ecclesial services free of charge, the Orthodox clergy decided also to stop demanding money for them. The measures against the “Uniates” were not limited by the financial ones. For example, the individual metropolitans and the entire Holy Synod turned to politicians with the request to obstruct the activities of the “Uniates”. In 1922 the Synod also decided to initiate a program for the publication and dissemination of anti-Catholic literature.34 On behalf of the Synod, the professor of theology Dimitâr Diulgerov came to Malko Târnovo to get to study directly the propaganda methods of the “Uniates”. The Metropolis of Stara Zagora recommended its priests to devote themselves more intensively to educational and pastoral activities.35 A very interesting episode in the relations between the Orthodox and the “Uniates” took place in 1913. After Bulgaria suffered heavy losses in the Balkan War, the Orthodox Exarch had to leave his seat in Constantinople.36 The Orthodox Bulgarians in the ex-Ottoman territories thus remained without their ecclesiastical head. Some of them fled to Bulgaria, but some remained in the old territories which were now divided between Greece, Serbia, and the still existing Ottoman Empire. In order for these Bulgarians to preserve their national identity, a number of Bulgarian intellectuals and publicists initiated a discussion as to whether it would not be better for these Bulgarians to join the Union and thus enjoy the protection of the West. At the end of 1913 the Holy Synod sharply rejected such ideas. But the whole episode showed that under certain circumstances the Union was not seen as a taboo even for the Orthodox bishops. Likewise, mixed marriages between the “Uniates” and the Orthodox were also acceptable. The most interesting example is the  Vatashki, Bâlgarskata, 184.  Vatashki, Bâlgarskata, 168. 35  Vatashki, Bâlgarskata, 251 36  Already at the beginning of the Exarchate in 1870, it was decided that the seat of the exarch should be in Constantinople, because it was the capital and there were also many Bulgarians living there. In order to support the national identity of the remaining Bulgarians in the Ottoman Empire, it was decided to leave the seat of the exarch in Constantinople after the foundation of the Bulgarian state in 1878. After the Balkan Wars (1912–1913) the seat was moved to Sofia. 33 34

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marriage between the sister of Bishop Kurtev and the son of the Orthodox priest from his birthplace Dripchevo, a village near Svilengrad. In this case, both clergymen were very friendly to each other.37 These ambivalent relations also characterized Roncalli’s stay in Bulgaria as an apostolic visitator. Soon after his arrival he contacted the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and visited its Synod. One year later, he initiated a large charity campaign for the refugees from southern Thrace and Macedonia in which the Bulgarian Orthodox Church also participated. In 1928 Roncalli visited villages with the Orthodox population in the region of Plovdiv which were affected by a big earthquake. At his request the Vatican sent donations worth 1 million leva to the victims of this disaster. Nevertheless, the Orthodox hierarchy followed Roncalli’s energetic commitment with mistrust and suspicion of proselytism. In 1926 the aforementioned Prof. Diulgerov and the renowned professor of Canon Law and active ecumenist Stefan Tsankov sharply criticized the apostolic visitator. Despite all the tensions the Bulgarian Orthodox Church never tried to develop specific activities for the re-conversion of the Uniates. This can be interpreted as a sign that already at the end of the nineteenth century she perceived the “Uniates” more as Catholics rather than as a lost part of the Orthodox Church. In contrast to other countries with Orthodox majority the Bulgarian “Uniates” were not forced to return to the Orthodox Church during communism, which proved to be positive in relation to the Orthodox Church after the fall of the Wall. Moreover, in the 1960s there was a display of signs of mutual respect when in 1964 Bishop Kurtev was invited as a guest of honor to the Orthodox liturgy on the occasion of the visit of the Serbian Patriarch to Sofia. In a conversation with the head of the “Uniates” the Bulgarian Patriarch Kyrill (1953–1971) expressed his wish for more intensive contacts.38 In the same year Cardinal Bea successfully asked the Bulgarian Synod for the admission of a Bulgarian Uniate to study at the Orthodox Spiritual Academy in Sofia.39 In a meeting in 1967 Patriarch Kyrill assured Bishop Kurtev that he had changed his opinion on Catholics in a positive sense even though previously he was very critical of Rome. In  Vatashki, Bâlgarskata, 154.  Rumen Vatashki, Bâlgarskata Pravoslavna Tsârkva I Vtoriat Vatikanski sâbor (1962–1965) (Veliko Târnovo: Faber, 2014), 80. 39  Vatashki, Bâlgarskata, 81. 37 38

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his book on the emergence of the Union in Bulgaria, the Patriarch evaluated Uniatism as a negative phenomenon that strained the relations between the Orthodox and the Catholics.40 He even considered the abolition of the Uniate Church as a condition of the Orthodox Churches before the beginning of a dialogue with Rome.41 He wanted the “Uniates” to merge with the Catholics of the Western rite. These considerations of the Bulgarian Patriarch also show how much the “Uniates” were perceived as the Catholics: it was not their return to Orthodoxy but their final fusion with the Catholics of the Western rite that would heal the sorrowful memories and contribute to reconciliation with the Vatican. 2.3  Current Perceptions The engagement of Patriarch Kyrill with the “Uniates” in the late 1960s was a last sign of the interest of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church in them. After his death the topic finally lost importance for the Orthodox Church. His successor Maxim (1971–2012) was not interested in ecumenical affairs. The rapidly growing anti-ecumenism in the ranks of the Bulgarian Church after the fall of communism still complicates relations with all non-Orthodox denominations42—the relations which at their best amount to disinterested ignorance (as in the case of the Catholics of the Byzantine rite) rather than accusations. There are many reasons for the current rigid anti-ecumenical attitude of the Bulgarian Church. The following two are of the highest significance. First, during communism the State Security instrumentalized the ecumenical activities of the Church.43 Therefore, many Bulgarian believers considered the ecumenical cause as compromised. Second, the fall of communism brought about the search for true Orthodoxy—a trend that continues to get stronger even today and that often culminates in an isolationist 40  Kyrill Patriarch Bâlgarski, Katolicheskata propaganda sred bâlgarite prez vtorata polovina na XIX vek, Vol. 1 (1859–1865) (Sofia: Sinodalno izdatelstvo, 1962), 5. 41  Eldârov, Bâlgaria, 77. 42  After the Bulgarian Orthodox Church left the World Council of Churches in 1998, it keeps away from all ecumenical activities. More information about this development: G. Vlantis, “Die orthodoxe Kirche Bulgariens und die ökumenische Bewegung,” Orthodoxes Forum 27, no 1 (2013), 57–69; V. Atanassov, “Die Bulgarische Orthodoxe Kirche und die Ökumene,” Materialdienst des Konfessionskundlichen Instituts Bensheim 50 (1999), 34–37. 43  Momchil Metodiev, Meshdu viarata I kompromisa. Bâlgarskata pravoslavna tsârkva I komunisticheskata dârshava (Siela: Sofia, 2010), 222, 340.

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attitude not only toward other denominations, but also in dealing with other Orthodox Christians. The call for the removal from the Orthodoxy of any modern influences, of everything that does not correspond to tradition and is not perceived as a 100 percent Orthodox, makes a dialogue with the “Uniates” almost impossible because they are seen as an example of syncretism. The ultra-Orthodox, who exert much influence in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church in the field of interdenominational relations today, see in the Uniate Church a ruse by the Vatican, a mimicry that is only there to seduce the Orthodox and lead them into the bosom of Catholic Church. In order to guard against this the ultra-Orthodox demand to focus on demarcation instead of dialogue, which would only increase the danger of such temptations. Nevertheless, one can say that nowadays the subject of Uniate Church is no longer inflammatory. The Catholic Church’s renunciation of proselytism and the Vatican’s friendly gestures toward the Orthodox Churches in recent decades seem to have led to certain healing of memories. Another reason for the absence of confrontations between the two churches is their preoccupation with problems brought about by the fall of the totalitarian regime such as the reconstruction of destroyed church buildings, lack of priests, restitution for expropriated church properties, past collaboration with the state security, and so on. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church experienced a dramatic split in the 1990s when it was suggested that Patriarch Maxim had been elected with the help of the communist power.44 These contemporary painful experiences suppressed the memories of the disputes between Orthodox and “Uniates” in the distant past. But small numbers of the “Uniates” also played an important role in the relatively relaxed relationship between Orthodox and Uniates. Realistically, all those “Uniates” with Orthodox leanings already returned to Orthodoxy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The rest are the “Uniates” with their own identity and tradition, whose point of orientation is Rome. Therefore, they do not represent a threat to the Orthodox

44  For more information on this split see EkkehardKraft, “Vergangenheitsbewältigung in der Bulgarischen Kirche? Zur kirchenpolitischen Auseinandersetzung um Patriarch Maxim” in Horizonte der Christenheit. Festschrift für Friedrich Heyer zu seinem 85. Geburtstag, edited by Michael Kohlbacher, Markus Lessinski (Erlangen: Lehrstuhl für Geschichte und Theologie des Christlichen Ostens, 1994), 516–530.

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Church which itself is overburdened with the challenges of the present and hardly manages to care for its own faithful. In summary, one cannot expect that in the foreseeable future the Catholic Church of the Eastern rite can fulfill a bridging function in the dialogue of Bulgarian Orthodoxy with Catholicism as it was seen about 90 years ago by the papal envoy in Bulgaria, Angelo Roncalli, later Pope John XXIII. The Bulgarian “Uniates” would like to see themselves in such a bridging function and often express their positive attitude toward the Orthodox Church. A few years ago the Uniate Bishop Christo Projkov emphasized that there are more similarities with the Orthodox than there are differences and that it is his wish to follow the example of his predecessors who maintained good relations with the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.45 Yet for the future shaping of the relations of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church with the Catholics the Bulgarian Uniates themselves will not play a major role. In this regard, it seems that the Bulgarian church does not see any benefit from the Uniate Church. It is questionable whether it has any strategy at all about how to deal with the “Uniates”. It is also not recognizable that the Bulgarian Church wants to intensify its contacts with the Catholics. It seems that Bulgarian bishops are content with the present state of the relations. A small exception in this context is to some degree the Metropolitan of Western and Central Europe Antonij (Michalev). In regard to the use of Catholic Churches abroad, he meets with high clergymen of the Catholic Church in different countries. He also criticized the hostility shown by Orthodox fundamentalists when Pope Francis visited Bulgaria in May 2019 and said that the pope can be an example regarding the pastoral and diaconal service.46 In general, it seems that the Bulgarian Church is satisfied with the current state of relations with the Vatican. Especially important for the direct contact with the Vatican is the tradition, which has existed for half a century, of sending representatives of the Bulgarian Church to Rome every year. There they celebrate the patronage of the Slavic apostles Cyril and

45  Christo Projkov, “Nie ne sme strannitsi v tazi zemia,” Katolicheski novini, November 13, 2010, http://www.catholic-news.bg/?p=9211/ 46  Standart, “Diado Antonij:Da ne se strahuvame ot papata!,” Standart, Mai 7, 2019 https://www.standartnews.com/papa-frantsisk-v-blgariya/dyado-antoniy-da-ne-se-strakhuvame-ot-papata-391499.html

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Methodius at the tomb of Cyril. As a rule, these representatives, together with Bulgarian diplomats, are received by the Pope. With regard to inter-confessional dialogue, the situation at home is much more difficult. Because of the strong anti-ecumenical sentiments in the Orthodox Church the bishops at home are afraid to show too much closeness to the Catholics. This became particularly clear during the visit of Pope Francis in May 2019 when he was shunned by the Bulgarian bishops. This fragile situation is another reason why the Bulgarian Church is not interested in contacts with the Uniate Church. On its own initiative, it would not discuss the issue of relations between Orthodox and Uniate Christians. Perhaps it could be persuaded to express its opinion on this issue at a pan-Orthodox forum dedicated to this question. But her absence at the Council of Crete in 2016, when she shied away from dealing with questions of an ecumenical nature,47 does not allow for great optimism in this respect.

47  M. Illert, “Die Bulgarische Orthodoxe Kirche und die ‘Große und Heilige Synode,’” G2W 11 (2016), 16.

The Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Bishops at the Second Vatican Council: The Participation in the Council and Contribution to the Discussions of Conciliar Documents Mariia Ivaniv

The first part of this chapter will focus on the condition and activities of the Ukrainian Bishops’ Conference before and during the Second Vatican Council and the obstacles which it faced during the Council. Also, the participation and activities of the bishops in preparatory and conciliar commissions will be presented. The second part of the chapter focuses on the analysis of the ideas of Metropolitan Maxim Hermaniuk who actively supported the concept of collegiality. The third part is dedicated to the discussions of opinions of the Ukrainian bishops about the first part of the

M. Ivaniv (*) Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies, University of St. Michael’s College, Toronto School of Theology, Toronto, ON, Canada © The Author(s) 2021 V. Latinovic, A. K. Wooden (eds.), Stolen Churches or Bridges to Orthodoxy?, Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55442-2_9

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third chapter of the decree Unitatis Redintegratio as well as the speech of Metropolitan Josyf Slipyj and written observations of Bishop Volodymyr Malanczuk on the decree Orientalium Ecclesiarum.

1   Activity and Development of the Ukrainian Bishops’ Conference During the Second Vatican Council The condition of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) before the Second Vatican Council was quite difficult. All the bishops in Ukraine were imprisoned, clergy and laity were persecuted, and the UGCC itself was forbidden and liquidated as a church during the pseudo-council in Lviv in 1946.1 At the same time, the situation in the diaspora was better. Two metropolitanates were established in North America: in Winnipeg, Canada, and in Philadelphia, the United States. Also, eparchies and exarchates were created in other parts of the world, namely, in South America—the Exarchate in Brazil and an Apostolic Visitation in Argentina; in Europe—the Apostolic Exarchate for Germany and Scandinavia, the Exarchate for France, Benelux and Switzerland, the Exarchate in Great Britain, and the Eparchy of Križevci in Bosnia; and the Exarchate in Australia. Therefore, only the Ukrainian diaspora bishops had the opportunity to participate in the Second Vatican Council. 1.1  The Ukrainian Bishops at the Beginning of the Second Vatican Council In his book about this Council2 Fr. Atanasij Welykyj, O.S.B.M., who actively participated in its work, mentions seventeen Ukrainian diaspora bishops who were active on January 25, 1959, when the Council was announced. Eleven of them were diaspora bishops, namely Constantine 1  It was pseudo-council because an Initiative Group, with Father Hryhorii Kostel’nyk as a leader, organized the “reunion” of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church with the Russian Orthodox Church. This movement was forced by the Soviet regime and NKGB (People’s Commissariat of State Security). This event led to the destruction of all UGCC structures. After this event the Church in Ukraine was forced to go underground. For more about this “council,” see Bohdan R. Bociurkiw, The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Soviet State (1939–1950) (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1996), 164–178. 2  Atanasiy Welykyj, R. Holowackyj, ed., Diyannya Vatykans’koho Soboru (Rome: Edizioni dei P Basiliani, 1966), 272–273.

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Bohachevsky (Philadelphia), Isidore Borecky (Toronto), Havryjil Bukatko (Križevci), Ivan Bucko (Rome), Maxim Hermaniuk (Winnipeg), Josyf Martynetz (Curitiba), Ivan Praško (Melbourne), Andrew Roborecky (Saskatoon), Neil Savaryn (Edmonton), Ambrosij Senyshyn (Philadelphia), and Joseph Schmondiuk (Stamford). At that time, two bishops from the eparchy of Prešov—Pavlo Goidych and Basil Hopko—were imprisoned, as well as the Metropolitan of Lviv Josyf Slipyj, who was in in the Soviet labor camp in Siberia. Protoarchimandrite Pavlo Mys’kiv, O.S.B.M., also was among the Ukrainian participants.3 Fifteen Ukrainian bishops were present during the first session of the Council, October 11–December 8, 1962. In Andrej Sapelak’s opinion, the number of Ukrainian hierarchs at this Council was the largest compared with previous councils.4 Among them were five newly ordained diaspora bishops: Augustine Hornyak (London), Jaroslav Gabro (Chicago), Platon Kornyljak (Munich), Volodymyr Malanczuk (Paris), and Andrej Sapelak (Buenos Aires). Furthermore, Father Atanasij Welykyj mentioned the bishop for the Slovak Greek Catholics Michael Rusnak, C.SS.R., personal auxiliary to Bishop Isidore of Toronto, and the two bishops for the Ruthenian Greek Catholics in the United States, John Kocisko and Nicholas Elko from the Pittsburgh Eparchy.5 The latter two did not have strong relations with the Ukrainian hierarchy during the Council, and they were present just a few times at the Ukrainian Bishops’ Conference meetings.6 The Ukrainian Bishops’ Conference was finally formed in 1963 when Metropolitan Josyf Slipyj returned from his eighteen years’ exile in Siberia.7 He and Bishop Joakim Segedi from Križevci were the last two bishops 3  Mys’kiv was archimandrite until 1963, so he participated only in the first session of the Council. Welykyj, Diyannya, 273. 4  Andrej Sapelak, Ukrains’ka Tserkva na II Vatykans’komu Sobori (Rome, Buenos Aires: Selezians’ke Vydavnytstvo, 1967), 13–43. 5  Welykyj, Diyannya, 275–276. 6  Metropolitan Maxim Hermaniuk, in his conciliar diaries, mentioned just one example when these bishops were present at a common meeting. It was on September 28, 1963, when Metropolitan Josyf Slipyj had the first meeting with the Ukrainian Bishops’ Conference. See: The Second Vatican Council Diaries of Met. Maxim Hermaniuk, CSsR (1960–1965), transl. Jaroslav Z. Skira, Eastern Christian Studies 15 (Leuven: Peeters, 2012), 123. 7  Slipyj came to Rome on February 9, 1963. Milena Rudnycka, Nevydymi stygmaty (Rome, Munich, Philadelphia: Logos, 1971), 3. For more about the process of liberation see Karim Schelkens, “Vatican Diplomacy After the Cuban Missile Crisis: New Light on the Release of Josyf Slipyj,” The Catholic Historical Review 97, no 4 (2011): 679–712.

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who became council fathers.8 Two Ukrainian monks, Meletij Vojnar O.S.B.M. and Mykhayil Hrynchyshyn C.SS.R., also participated in the Council and were experts in conciliar commissions.9 Atanasij Welykyj, who became archimandrite of the Basilian order in 1963, also participated in the Council. In general, twenty-five Ukrainians took part in the work of the Second Vatican Council. Thus, we can see that the presence of Ukrainians at the Second Vatican Council was not very numerous. Less than 20 Ukrainian fathers, in comparison with more than 2000 other conciliar fathers, do not look like a compelling force.10 However, their ideas and actions made a valuable contribution to the work of the Council. Vatican II became the moment when all Ukrainian Greek-Catholic bishops could meet together and start to work as one entity. So, a creation of the Ukrainian Bishops’ Conference and its work during the Council will be presented in the next part. 1.2  The Ukrainian Bishops’ Conference and Its Formation The Ukrainian Bishops’ Conference as a structure was finally formed just at the time of the Second Vatican Council. It was an excellent chance for all Ukrainian hierarchs of the diaspora to come together for a more extended time and have an opportunity to build stronger relations. All of them lived all around the world and the Conference was built not on the basis of territory but on the rite. 1.2.1

 he Attempts of Formation of the Ukrainian Bishops’ T Conference Before the Second Vatican Council The history of the formation of the Ukrainian Bishops’ Conference is closely connected with the creation of the Ukrainian Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Canada. Metropolitan Maxim Hermaniuk invited all the Ukrainian Canadian bishops for the first conference, which took place on October 11–12, 1951, in Ottawa.11 The next step in the development of  Sapelak, Ukrains’ka Tserkva, 115.  Welykyj, Diyannya, 276. 10  For another example of small group that made a great impact consider the work of Belgian bishops and experts, the so-called powerful Squadra Belga. See Karim Schelkens, “Une recherche critique à propos de la soi-disant ‘squadra belga,’” Oecumenica Civitas 3 (2003), 233–238. 11  David Motiuk, Eastern Christians in the New World: An Historical and Canonical Study of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Canada (Ottawa: Saint Paul University, 2005), 82. 8 9

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the Conference was a gathering of the Canadian and the US bishops for Ukrainians on October 25, 1954, in Washington.12 Not all the bishops accepted that invitation. Two bishops, Metropolitan Ambrose Senyshyn and Danylo Ivancho (Exarch of Pittsburgh for the Ruthenians), decided not to attend this meeting.13 The next stage in the development of the Ukrainian Bishops’ Conference was the creation of a Conference of the Ukrainian Episcopate of the Free World, which was established on February 12, 1957, in Winnipeg.14 In general, this Conference was convened five times before the Council, scilicet every year. Later, in 1960, the Ukrainian bishops approved the “Statutes of the Ukrainian Catholic Conference,” which had been prepared by Metropolitan Maxim Hermaniuk and described the purpose and the aim of the Conference.15 Bishop Andrej Sapelak wrote that although the work of the Ukrainian Bishops’ Conference was not particularly active, it allowed them to effectively represent the Ukrainian Catholic Church on the Second Vatican Council and not to be a ritual addition to its locally dispersed episcopate.16 1.2.2

 he Difficulties in the Work of the Ukrainian Bishops’ T Conference at the Time of the Council There were three convocations of the Conference during the Second Vatican Council.17 The Ukrainian Bishops’ Conference met every Thursday during each session of the Council.18 Its work was a necessary but complicated process because not all bishops supported its development and its work. Metropolitan Maxim Hermaniuk wrote that during Council’s first session Bishops Ambrose Senyshyn and Josyf Martynetz of the Basilian order were in opposition to some questions about a common pastoral letter to the Ukrainian faithful where the bishops wrote against the presence  Motiuk, Eastern Christians in the New World, 83.  It is significant to mention this because later Bishop Senyshyn will also, for some time, refuse to participate in the meetings of the Bishops’ Conference during the Council. 14  Motiuk, Eastern Christians in the New World, 83. 15  Motiuk, Eastern Christians in the New World, 85. See the details about the “Statutes” and its articles on 85–87. 16  Sapelak, Ukrains’ka Tserkva, 57. 17  Motiuk, Eastern Christians in the New World, 88. The next three synods were held in 1969, 1971, and 1973. 18  Metropolitan Maxim Hermaniuk wrote in detail about those meetings in his Council Diaries. See: Hermaniuk, Diaries. 12 13

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of two Russian observers on the Council.19 Apparently, objections from the members of the Basilian order were not unique: a year later, Hermaniuk mentioned in his diary a conversation with Metropolitan Slipyj about “[t]he politics of the Basilian Fathers against our Bishops Conference.”20 For example, in 1964, during the Second Archiepiscopal Synod, Metropolitan Maxim Hermaniuk presented a project for the creation of the Lviv-Halych patriarchate to the Ukrainian bishops. At that time, the Basilian bishops did not attend the meetings, and they continued to be in opposition and did not agree with the desire to establish a Ukrainian Catholic patriarchate.21 Moreover, they were critical of the person of Metropolitan Slipyj, and did not trust him. According to Metropolitan Hermaniuk, Metropolitan Ambrose Senyshyn was “the main instigator of this division.”22 There are many different explanations of the reasons for these divisions. Hermaniuk suggested that the Metropolitan Senyshyn from the United States became “a victim of some sort of political, pro-Russian agitation.”23 Jaroslav Skira, a researcher and a translator of Metropolitan Hermaniuk’s diary, suggests three reasons for internal order such as “a lack of a clear system of governance, differing visions of ecclesiology and personal conflict.”24 Peter Galadza gives a different explanation. According to him the main reason was external because “the Congregation for the Eastern Churches was notorious for dividing the Ukrainian Catholic episcopate in order to promote curial agendas.”25 So, we can see that the Ukrainian bishops were not united and some of them accepted only the authority of Rome, instead of being united with others and accept the authority of their Major Archbishop. That is why the  Hermaniuk, Diaries, 78; 85. Notes on October 31, and November 9, 1962.  Hermaniuk, Diaries, 143, notes on October 31, 1963. 21  Hermaniuk, Diaries, 184, notes on September 13, 1963. 22  Hermaniuk, Diaries, 220, notes on December 30, 1964. Also, Metropolitan Hermaniuk mentioned Bishops Avhustyn Horniak and Josyf Martynetz as Senyshyn supporters against the Ukrainian patriarchate. See: page 225, notes on January 24, 1965. 23  Hermaniuk, Diaries, 220, notes on December 30, 1964. 24  Jaroslav Z. Skira, “‘A Great Historic Day’: The Conciliar Diaries of Metropolitan Maxim Hermaniuk,” in Vatican II: Canadian experiences, edited by M.  Attridge, C.  E. Clifford, G. Routhier (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2011), 322–340, 338–339. 25  Peter Galadza, “The Council Diary of Metropolitan Maxim Hermaniuk and Turning Points in the History of the Catholic Church: An Interpretation,” in Vatican II: Canadian experiences, edited by M. Attridge, C. E. Clifford, G. Routhier (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2011), 226–238, 237. 19 20

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work of the Ukrainian Bishops’ Conference had some inner obstacles caused by misunderstandings among the bishops, which were also supported by external factors. 1.3  The Activity of the Ukrainian Bishops During the Council This section is devoted to the work of the Ukrainian hierarchs in the preparatory commissions and the conciliar commissions. Besides, the bishops’ oral and written contributions to the conciliar documents, interventions, and speeches will be represented as part of their active work during the Council. 1.3.1 The Work of Ukrainian Bishops in the Preparatory Commissions The Second Vatican Council was proclaimed on January 25, 1959, and was opened on October 11, 1962.26 Before it began, the preparatory commissions actively worked to prepare all the necessary documents and schemas for the Council. Ukrainian bishops started to participate in the Council beginning with its preparatory stage. Five Ukrainian bishops and two priests also took part in these preparations. Bishop Platon Kornyljak and Metropolitan Maxim Hermaniuk were members of the Preparatory Theological Commission.27 Bishop Havryjil Bukatko was a member of the Preparatory Commission for the Apostolate of the Laity. Bishops Constantine Bohachevsky (died before the start of the Council on January 6, 1961) and Ivan Bucko were members of the Preparatory Commission for the Oriental Churches. Atanasij Welykyj was an expert (peritus) and the secretary of that commission. Father Meletij Vojnar also was an expert at the same commission. The work of the preparatory commissions started on November 13, 1960, in St Peter’s Basilica, with a Divine Liturgy in the Ukrainian-Byzantine rite with Bishop Ivan Bucko as chief celebrant and bishops Havryjil Bukatko and Platon Kornyljak as concelebrants.28

26  Acta Synodalia Sacrosancti Concilii Oecumenici Vaticani II. Vatican Council (2nd: 1962–1965) (Vatican City: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1970–99), 155–203. See also: Sapelak, Ukrains’ka Tserkva, 76–77; Welykyj, Diyannya, 277. 27  Welykyj, Diyannya, 274. Atanasij Welykyj gave the list of all Ukrainians who were members of Preparatory Commissions. 28  AS I/1, 135–136; Sapelak, Ukrains’ka Tserkva, 59–60.

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1.3.2

 he Participation of the Ukrainian Bishops T in the Conciliar Commissions Only six out of seventeen Ukrainian bishops were members of two conciliar commissions. Also, two priests were experts, and one was a secretary in one of the commissions. Bishops Ambrosij Senyshyn, Havryjil Bukatko, Ivan Bucko,29 and Andrej Sapelak were elected by the council fathers as members of the Commission for the Oriental Churches.30 Later Metropolitan Josyf Slipyj, after his return from exile, was nominated by Pope Paul VI as a member of that Commission.31 Atanasij Welykyj was the secretary of the Commission for the Oriental Churches, and two Ukrainians—Meletij Vojnar and Mykhayil Hrynchyshyn—were experts in that commission.32 In general, the Commission for the Oriental Churches consisted of twenty-five members, and five of them were Ukrainians.33 Metropolitan Maxim Hermaniuk was elected by 1641 votes as a member of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity (SPCU).34 Three Ukrainian council fathers, as members of those commissions, made contributions on projects that were prepared in their commission. Atanasij Welykyj, the secretary of Commission for the Oriental Churches, drafted a document On the Unity of the Church on November 25, 1962.35 Metropolitan Maxim Hermaniuk, as a member of the SPCU, presented a draft of the first part of the third chapter of the decree On Ecumenism on October 7, 1964.36 Bishop Havryjil Bukatko, as a member of Commission for the Oriental Churches and its vice president, made three relationes. The first one was on the third chapter of the decree On Ecumenism on November 11, 1963.37 His second relatio was on the project of the decree On the Eastern Churches, on October 15, 1964.38 The third one was also on the decree On the Eastern Churches on October 20, 1964.39 29  About the work of Bishop Bucko as members of Commission for the Oriental Churches see: Myroslav Marusyn, Arkhipastyr skytal’tsiv arkhiyepyskop Ivan Bucko (Lviv: Naukovovydavnychyj tsentr Opillya-L, 2008), 165–172. 30  AS I/1, 226. 31  AS II/1, 221. 32  Diyannya Vatykans’koho Soboru, 277. 33  Sapelak, Ukrains’ka Tserkva, 77. 34  AS II/6, p. 307. See also Hermaniuk, Diaries, 158. Notes on November 29, 1963. 35  Welykyj, Diyannya, 278. 36  AS III/4, 10–13. See also: Hermaniuk, Diaries, 196–197. 37  AS II/5, 480–481. 38  AS III/4, 520–527. 39  AS III/5, 112–115.

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Therefore, nine Ukrainians were actively involved in the Council’s work, especially in the work of the Commission for the Oriental Churches and Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity. 1.3.3

 he Contribution of the Ukrainian Bishops to Six T Conciliar Documents The Ukrainian hierarchs had the opportunity to speak nearly thirty times during the four sessions of the Second Vatican Council. Their interventions represented not only their own opinions but they defended the viewpoints of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, especially on the questions of the Eastern Churches and religious freedom.40 The Ukrainians filed the highest number of additions and contributions to the following three conciliar documents: Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Decree on Ecumenism, and Decree on Oriental Churches. Six Ukrainian Council fathers made eleven contributions to the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church.41 Also, ten interventions and written contributions were made to the conciliar Decree on Ecumenism by six Ukrainians.42 Decree on Oriental Churches was an essential document for the Ukrainians, but just three bishops contributed to it by giving a speech in the conciliar aula.43 The Ukrainian bishops also contributed to the Dogmatic Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy,44 Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World,45 and Decree on the Pastoral Office of Bishops.46 From the previous overview, it is evident that not all Ukrainian bishops were active participants of the Council. Some of them never spoke at 40  The list of the interventions is taken from the personal notes of Atanasij Welykyj, Diyannya, 280–281. 41  Slipyj AS II/2, 442. Hermaniuk AS II/1, 370–74; AS II/4, 216–218; AS III/1, 391–395. Sapelak AS II/4, 51–52; AS III/1, 09–11. Malanczuk AS II/2, 177–79; AS II/4, 253–56; AS III/2, 138. Bucko AS II/4, 114–116. Welykyj AS II/1, 747. 42  Hermaniuk AS I/3, 715–717; AS II/5, 793–95; AS II/6, 350–354; AS III/4, 10. Senyshyn AS II/5, 816–17. Sapelak AS II/5, 602–605. Malanczuk AS II/6, 235–38. Roborecki AS II/6, 363. Welykyj AS II/5, 908; AS II/6, 139. 43  Slipyj AS III/5, 19–21. Bukatko AS III/4, 520–527; AS III/5, 112–115. Kocisko AS III/5, 89–90. 44  Hermaniuk AS I/2, 236; AS I/2, 368. Malanczuk AS I/2, 728–729; AS I/2, 372. Sapelak AS I/2, 660–661. 45  Hermaniuk AS III/5, 296–98; AS IV/2, 50–54. 46  Slipyj AS II/5, 28–32. Hermaniuk AS II/4, 513–16.

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general sessions or commissions.47 Fr. Ivan Hrynioch, one of the priests who was present at the Council, criticized the Ukrainian hierarchs because they were not prepared enough for the Council to make a better contribution.48

2   Metropolitan Maxim Hermaniuk: Ukrainian Father of Collegiality The Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium is one of the essential documents for the Roman Catholic Church and, also, for the Eastern Catholic Churches. Council fathers had to struggle with certain ideas which, in some way, were new for the Council. Episcopal collegiality was among such actively discussed concepts. Of all Ukrainian participants, Metropolitan Maxim Hermaniuk was the one most interested in the idea of collegiality.49 He developed his idea about a college of bishops even before the Council. Hermaniuk presented it during a meeting of the Preparatory Theological Commission of March 6, 1962, which he attended in his capacity as a member. He connected it with the infallibility of the pope which can be exercised in a college of bishops under his authority. Below is the text of his motion, from his conciliar diary: The subject of the infallibility of the Church is in a College of Bishops under the authority of the Roman Pontiff. This infallibility is exercised in two ways: 1. ordinary: in the authentic teaching of the magisterium. 2. extraordinary: (a) collegial—in an ecumenical council; (b) principal—by highest Pontiff as the head of the apostolic college.50

 For example, Bishops Platon Kornyljak and Ivan Prashko.  Ivan Hrynioch, Sobor yakyj dlya nas ne vidbuvsya (Munich: Suchasnist’, 1967), 14–15. Father Ivan also made a comparison with the activity of the Melkite Catholic Church, which is smaller than Ukrainian but did more during the Council. 49  It can be seen from his conciliar diary. The analysis of the diary can be found here: Jaroslav Z.  Skira, “‘A Great Historic Day’: The Conciliar Diaries of Metropolitan Maxim Hermaniuk,” in Vatican II: Canadian experiences, edited by M.  Attridge, C.  E. Clifford, G. Routhier, (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2011), 322–340. 50  Hermaniuk, Diaries, 49. 47 48

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Therefore, in this proposition, Metropolitan elevated college of bishops and made it the subject of infallibility, which gives to the College power on the level of the Universal Church. Also, Hermaniuk presented to the bishops a different and, as he named it, extraordinary kind of infallibility which would be more understandable for the mentality of the Eastern Churches. According to him, the group of Leuven theologians and the Germans immediately supported that idea, and Cardinal Ottaviani was also interested in it.51 Father Congar supported him as well, and he mentioned this in his conciliar diary.52 So, Metropolitan Maxim was encouraged by other theologians and continued to develop this idea. In the second session of the Council, Metropolitan Maxim Hermaniuk had two interventions in which he mentioned the idea of collegiality. The first one was made on De Ecclesia, and the second one was on the Decree De Episcopis ac de Diocesium Regimine. 2.1  Intervention on De Ecclesia Metropolitan Hermaniuk made an intervention on October 1, 1963, and mentioned four defects of the schema De Ecclesia. The first one and the last two had a direct connection with the idea of collegiality.53 The Metropolitan saw the absence of any reference about the power of the episcopal college over the Universal Church as the first defect of the schema. He made four points in support of his position. Hermaniuk used biblical argumentation; underlined that this power should be exercised not only by the Ecumenical Councils; said that the limitation of the bishops’ power on the universal level, as representatives of their faithful, is contrary to the will of the Lord; and, lastly, that power is to be given to the college of bishops with the Pope as its head.54 In this way, Metropolitan Maxim underlined the dual nature of bishops’ power which is active both on particular and on universal levels.

 Hermaniuk, Diaries, 49. Footnotes 73–75 give more details about the reactions of other theologians. 52  Yves-Marie-Joseph Congar, My Journal of the Council, ed. Denis Minns, trans. Mary John Ronayne (O.P.), and Mary Cecily Boulding (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2012), 74; 78. 53  AS. II/1, 370–374. 54  For the more detailed text of the arguments, see: AS. II/1, 371. 51

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Further, Hermaniuk criticized the frequent usage of phrases such as “the college of bishops together with its head the Roman Pontiff,” “the body of bishops together with the Roman Pontiff,” and “all the bishops together with the Pope.” In his opinion, this gives the impression that the Pope is outside the college of bishops. For Metropolitan Maxim, the expression “college of bishops” automatically means all Catholic bishops together with the Pope, so the addition “with the Pope” is excessive.55 Finally, the Metropolitan critiqued the too frequent usage of the title “Roman Pontiff” in the schema because, in his opinion, it puts too much emphasis on the Roman Church. He proposed other titles that would have been more open to other Churches and would have provided a more ecumenical spirit—for example, “Supreme Pontiff,” “Successor of Peter,” “Vicar of Christ,” “The head of the college of bishops,” and “Pastor of the Universal Church.”56 Language and usage of titles may not look so important in the discussion about collegiality, but they indicate the problems in the distribution of power and responsibilities among the Pope and the bishops. 2.2  Interventions on the Decree De Episcopis ac de Diocesium Regimine On November 6, 1963, Metropolitan Maxim made an intervention on the De Episcopis ac de Diocesium Regimine.57 In the speech, Hermaniuk emphasized that the schema had a direct connection with De Ecclesia and proposed to add the following aspects in the general introduction to that decree: that the bishops as Episcopal College have at the same time with its head, the Supreme Pontiff, full and universal power of teaching, sanctifying, and governing over the whole Church of Christ; as the pastors of the particular churches they enjoy the power of their apostolic limitation by common good of the whole Church and the needs of the particular churches.58

It was essential for him to emphasize the power of the bishops on both the universal and the particular levels. He also supported the idea that the  AS. II/1, 372.  AS. II/1, 372. 57  AS II/4, 514. 58  AS II/4, 514. 55 56

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apostolic power is given to bishops in ordination when they become a part of the college of bishops.59 These ideas are present in the final text of the conciliar decree Christus Dominus, 3–4. In the end, Hermaniuk gave his definition of the college of bishops: “Such a college is both the visible sign and an efficacious sign of the true catholicity of the Church of Christ, since the college is representative for all people, and comes from all languages and the entire Christian world.”60 Therefore, collegiality was a matter of the unity of the Church for him, and it shows to all the diversity of the Church and her faithful. The idea of collegiality was not supported by all Ukrainian bishops. For example, Metropolitan Josyf Slipyj outlined his views on the question of episcopal collegiality in the third paragraph of his first speech on the Council on October 11, 1963, as follows: The bishops did not create the college, because this requires juridical power. The Pope received his mission, and all authorities connected with it, from Christ, not from the episcopal college. His authority directly relates to the Universal Church; and the power of bishops refers primarily to individual Churches and only secondarily to the Universal Church.61

With this intervention, Metropolitan Slipyj supported those bishops who did not agree with the idea of the college of bishops. Yves Congar commented on this: “[…] he gave a very Latin lesson on the pope and the bishops. The same infallibility is in the pope and in the bishops.”62 Melkite bishop Neophytos Edelby had an interesting suggestion about this in his diary. He interpreted Hermaniuk’s position as the opposite of Slipyj’s.63 As can be seen, Hermaniuk made his intervention two weeks later than the one by Slipyj, and he did not agree with him on the juridical power of bishops to constitute a college, as well as on the fact that they do not have

 AS II/4, 514.  AS II/4, 515. 61  AS II/2, 444. 62  Congar, My Journal of the Council, 364. 63  Slipyj presented his position for the Italian Television on September 14, 1963; see the interview in Ukrainian and Italian: Josyf Slipyj, Tvory Kard. Iosyfa Verkhovnogo Arkhyiepyskopa, ed. I. Homa, vol 12 (Rome: UCU, 1981), 78–85. Néophyte Edelby, Il Vaticano II: nel diario di un vescovo arabo, ed. Riccardo Cannelli (San Paolo: Cinisello Balsamo San Paolo, 1996), 174. 59 60

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power on the level of the Universal Church. Therefore, the observation of Bishop Edelby was not a simple assumption. On the day of the proclamation of the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium Metropolitan Maxim Hermaniuk wrote the following lines in his diary: November 21, 1964 will forever remain a historic day in the history of the Church of Christ. This is the day of the solemn proclamation by Pope Paul VI of the collegiality of the episcopate. In the future, now the entire ­episcopate, represented by a certain number of delegates, will, together with the Pope, decide on all significant matters in the Church of Christ. In this lies the distinct meaning of today’s promulgated constitution On the Church.64

These words demonstrate a great hope. Hermaniuk was content because of collegiality and the renewed and revived role of bishops in the Universal Church. He saw it as a big step in renewing the Church’s life on the level of the communion of bishops.

3   The Ukrainian Commentaries on Selected Sections of the Decrees Unitatis Redintegratio and Orientalium Ecclesiarum This section presents the ideas concerning the decrees Unitatis Redintegratio and Orientalium Ecclesiarum expressed by the Ukrainian bishops. 3.1  Reflections of the Ukrainian Hierarchs on Section 18 of the Third Chapter of the Decree Unitatis Redintegratio The Ukrainian bishops mostly were interested in the third chapter of Unitatis Redintegratio and, in particular, in its first part, which dealt with the Eastern Churches. This interest consisted in the need to emphasize the role of the Eastern Catholic Churches in the dialogue of the Roman Catholic Church with Orthodox Churches.

 Hermaniuk, Diaries, 217.

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3.1.1

 he Comments of Bishop Volodymyr Malanczuk T on Paragraph 18 Bishop Volodymyr Malanczuk made an intervention on November 28, 1963, on the third chapter of Unitatis Redintegratio.65 He concentrated on paragraph 18 of the document describing a wall that divides East and West: the “wall” that separates the Eastern Churches and Western Church; the wall, which only temporarily was removed within the course of history, ­especially in the time of the Council of Florence; but which, unfortunately, again appeared, as the wall which is dividing Berlin in two parts.66

The bishop presented three obstacles, which, in his opinion, form this wall: political motives, religious particularism, and self-sufficiency. Political motives, as the first obstacle, underlined that union with the Roman Church will affect the identity of any given particular church vis-à-vis its national identity. According to Malanczuk these political motives abuse the influence of the Christian religion for the implementation of national ambitions. These motives are in favor of rejection of any religious dialogue, allegedly harmful to the political independence, and which they [the Orthodox] call “dependent on external influence, such as the influence of the Roman See.” They consider religious independence as the high level of patriotism. All the attempts to restore relations with the Holy See they consider as dangerous for the Church and the nation.67

The creation of this obstacle not wholly depended on the church, but as well on the state. Too close of a cooperation between church and state can lead to the elevation of national ideas above the church identity, and it is dangerous for the church.  AS II/6, 235–238.  AS II/6, 236. The final document also has this quotation, but it is modified: “the Council hopes that the barrier dividing the Eastern Church and Western Church will be removed and that at last there may be but the one dwelling, firmly established on Christ Jesus, the cornerstone, who will make both one.” The addition of Berlin is made by the bishop himself because it is not mentioned in the text of the draft: “The wall separating the churches in the East and in the West which the Council of Florence had declared to be entirely removed has been again erected between the two. […] We have the intention to remove this wall.” 67  AS II/6, 236. Italicization added by the author. 65 66

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In the opinion of Bishop Malanczuk, the second problem—that of religious particularism—appeared when the church became a form of national life or Christian nation. It becomes complicated when this nation starts to defend its existence in conflict with other Christian nations. Then the particular church identifies itself with its nation and starts to see the church of another nation as an enemy, and this leads to the deterioration of communication between the churches. If these separations and divisions last for a longer time, then they can develop into real prejudices.68 Therefore, the complete identification of church with nation or country may lead to its insularity and disconnection from other churches. This process is not devoid of political dimensions and can make a church hostage to political games. The third obstacle of self-sufficiency stressed the more egotistic block, which created that dividing wall. It arises when each side of the dialogue considers itself superior and thinks that its language, tradition, culture, and customs are better than those of other churches. Bishop Volodymyr presented an example of this problem and mentioned the Ukrainian Church. He thought it is unacceptable to consider the particular so-called “uniate” Churches as an obstacle to future global unity and, unfortunately, to demand the abolition of these churches from the Roman Church as a necessary condition for any further negotiations with the Church of Rome; as if the uniate particular Churches are false and are not genuine Eastern Churches. Because of this prejudice, our Church suffers heavily at home.69

The third problem, according to Malanczuk, had two dimensions. On the one side, it introduced the obstacle which has a human factor and stops the process of unification. On another side, the example of Uniate Churches was a personal one for the bishop and showed a real and painful problem, which in some way is lasting until today. After these three points, the bishop presented the position of the Eastern Churches and their willingness to break this wall. Now, we Eastern Catholics intend to eliminate, wholeheartedly and sincerely, with the assistance of God’s grace, those motives—the “wall” that separates 68  AS II/6, 236. Now this difficult situation can be seen in the relations of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. 69  AS II/6, 237.

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us from our separated brothers. We want to do this by recognizing everything positive, humane and Christian what their inheritance contains and by making efforts on our part to show them, by our spiritual renewal, the impeccable and unblemished Catholic Church—the true Church of Christ.70

This quotation demonstrates that the Eastern Churches saw their mission not to be an obstacle, but a witness to the unity of the Church by their life together with the Catholic Church. The word renewal is stressed here, and maybe it is made to underline that the Eastern Churches are developing in this unity, and it gives them the opportunity to grow and to be themselves. In summary, Bishop Volodymyr in this speech tried to show the real problems which stopped the process of dialogue and unification as well as to express the position of the Eastern Catholic Churches and their desire to be an example of the fruitful dialogue. 3.1.2

 he Comments of Metropolitan Maxim Hermaniuk T on Paragraph 18 At the beginning of his intervention, made on December 2, 1963, the Metropolitan mentioned the positive aspects of the third chapter of Unitatis Redintegratio, which he supported.71 After this, he underlined a negative aspect, namely the absence of examples of ecumenism, which would be supported by practical decisions. Then Hermaniuk proposed his project, which, in his opinion, would be more practical and useful in ecumenical dialogue. For this, he took two statements from paragraph 18 and proposed two ideas. The first proposition was based on the following principle: “this Sacred Council solemnly repeats the declaration of previous Councils and Roman Pontiffs, that for the restoration or the maintenance of unity and communion it is necessary ‘to impose no burden beyond what is essential.’”72 This quotation of Acts 15:28 had a significant value for Hermaniuk, and he thought that this principle should be the golden rule in the church’s work for preserving the unity of faith in the diversity of traditions. According to William Henn, this quotation can be read “as a New Testament warrant for an understanding of ecclesial unity encompassing some degree of

 AS II/6, 237. Italicization added by the author.  AS II/6, 350–354. 72  AS II/6, 351. 70 71

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diversity.”73 So, according to Hermaniuk, in the question of the necessary burden, which should be put on the shoulders of the Eastern Catholic Churches, the voices of the churches themselves have to be heard.74 For this Metropolitan Maxim proposed the following three things. Firstly, the voice of the Eastern Churches can be heard by the presence of all the Eastern Patriarchs and, if necessary, all the bishops of the Eastern Churches, in the apostolic college, which with the Pope as its head rule the Universal Church. Secondly, in the case of the Orthodox Churches, “this role could be successfully implemented by some mixed theological commission, which can be composed of Catholic and Orthodox theologians.”75 Thirdly, there also should exist “a mixed commission composed of Catholic and Protestant theologians.”76 These practical ideas, in Hermaniuk’s opinion, can help in the development of the ecumenical dialogue and will show real actions and not only words. Hermaniuk based the second proposition on the following quotation of the schema: “the nature of the relationship between the Eastern Churches and the Roman See before the separation, from which the task of the Roman See to preside in charity clearly appears, should also be taken into account.”77 Metropolitan Maxim emphasized that this principle of collegiality was used by the Eastern Churches in the past and should be used in the future for the whole Church. Then he gave five propositions for the better practical implementation of this principle by the Holy Synod: 1. This Holy Synod should declare that the Patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem are enjoying the same dignity, which was given to them by the Ecumenical Councils of Niceae, First Constantinople, and Chalcedon and which was not abolished by any Ecumenical Council. 2. A synodal system of governance should be introduced in the Eastern Churches and, in this way, restored and brought to its former honor. 3. Such Eastern Churches as the Ukrainian, Ethiopian, and others who do not have their own patriarchs should have them together with all rights and privileges of this institution. 73  William Henn, “At the Heart of Unitatis redintegratio. Unity in diversity,” Gregorianum 88, no. 2 (2007): 329–351, 338. 74  AS II/6, 352. 75  AS II/6, 352. 76  AS II/6, 352. 77  AS II/6, 353.

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4. The metropolitans of the Eastern Churches should be involved in the nomination of bishops of their metropolis. 5. Finally, the Code of Canon Law of the Eastern Churches should not be the canon law of the Latin Rite adapted to the needs of the Eastern Churches but should stem from the sources authentic to the Eastern Churches.78 Metropolitan Hermaniuk presented the following conclusions: These and other decisions of the Holy Synod would be a really fruitful dialogue in the form of actions with the separated Eastern Churches. Because, for the separated Eastern Churches, the conditions created now for the Catholic Eastern Churches are the only practical expression of all of those words and of the promises of honor, respect, and special attention, about so much has been said in the Catholic Church.79

In this way, the Metropolitan in this speech stressed the conditions of the Eastern Catholic Churches, which could show to the Orthodox that the unity with the Roman See had a positive influence on their development. For him, it was essential to emphasize the practical way of doing ecumenical dialogue and involve in it all the churches. His advice and propositions about the creation of a special commission for dialogue with Orthodox and Protestants and some canonical changes regarding the Eastern Catholic Churches show his position that the Roman Church should hear the voice of the churches and ecclesial communities for which Unitatis Redintegratio was created. Hermaniuk at this place mentioned the idea of collegiality as well, which he had actively promoted in the discussion of De Ecclesia. In summary, the third chapter of the decree Unitatis Redintegratio tries to show that the diversity of the Church in traditions and prayer one day can be completed in unity. The Ukrainian bishops, in their interventions, mostly defended the place of the Eastern Catholic Churches in the ecumenical dialogue. Moreover, they presented some practical ways of starting this dialogue and breaking the existing walls between the churches.

 AS II/6, 353.  AS II/6, 353.

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3.2  The Ukrainian Positions During the Discussion of Orientalium Ecclesiarum This decree had particular importance for the Ukrainian hierarchy. They saw it as a document that would confirm the dignity of the Eastern Catholic Churches and would provide a basis to the Ukrainian Church to become a patriarchate. An extensive commentary on the decree Orientalium Ecclesiarum, written by the Ukrainian theologian Victor J. Pospishil one year after the Council, can also serve as a great source for a study of the Ukrainian point of view on this conciliar document.80 This chapter will present only an intervention by Metropolitan Josyf Slipyj and a written observation by Bishop Volodymyr Malanczuk. 3.2.1

 he Position of Metropolitan Josyf Slipyj with Regard T to the Decree Orientalium Ecclesiarum Slipyj, as a member of the Commission for the Oriental Churches, participated in the work on this document and formed his own position, which strongly portrayed him as a head of the persecuted church. Slipyj made a plea to raise the Kyiv-Galician Metropolia to the dignity of a patriarchate.81 This was the central concern for Ukrainian hierarchs and faithful at that time.82 However, Metropolitan Hermaniuk wrote that other council fathers were more impressed by that part of the intervention in which Slipyj gave thanks for his liberation and outlined the history of the Ukrainian Catholic Church and its participation in previous Councils.83 The lack of interest in the creation of patriarchate for the Ukrainian Church may be explained by the specificity of this question and lack of familiarity with it among the non-Eastern bishops. On October 16, 1964, Metropolitan Slipyj made an intervention on the decree Orientalium Ecclesiarum.84 The main idea of this speech was to condemn the process of Latinization in the Eastern Churches. He stressed 80  See more: Victor J.  Pospishil, Orientalium Ecclesiarum: The Decree on the Eastern Catholic Churches of the II Council of Vatican (Fordham University: New York, 1965). 81  AS II/2, 442–446. 82  For more information about the idea of the Ukrainian patriarchate, see: Vasyl Markus, “The Role of the Patriarchal Movement in the Ukrainian Catholic Church” in The Ukrainian Religious Experience: Tradition and the Canadian Cultural Context, ed. D. Goa (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 1989), 157–170. 83  Hermaniuk, Diaries, 132. 84  AS III/5, 19–21.

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that the Eastern Churches had suffered heavy losses as a result of this process. The Eastern Churches have lost many of their faithful through the negligence of Western Catholics who tried to drag to the Latin rite faithful of the Eastern Catholic Churches or Orthodox. For this, they use the social benefits of the currently prevailing Latin Rite. By such behavior, they have done a very bad service to the Catholicity of the Church.85

Slipyj underlined that the authors of these unacceptable actions did not think about the consequences for Eastern Churches: All those that for political reasons drew the faithful of the Eastern Churches to the Latin Rite also by using material resources and constant propaganda, no doubt that they not only destroy the Eastern Churches, but at the same time cause considerable damage to the whole Catholic Church. These people do not think that the Universal Church becomes very poor if it is left without the rich tradition, liturgical diversity, and rich patristic and hagiographic inheritance of the Eastern Churches.86

The Ukrainian Metropolitan urged the council fathers to find a way to solve this problem because some missionaries continue to draw the faithful from the Eastern Churches to the Roman Church.87 At the end of his speech, Metropolitan Josyf Slipyj appealed to the council fathers to help the Eastern Churches. Theologian Yves Congar quoted a part of the Metropolitan’s appeal: “In the name of all Ukrainians anud of others. In favor of ensuring the LIFE of the Eastern Churches. They matter to CATHOLICITY.”88 Congar only quoted this single phrase from the whole speech of Slipyj. Undoubtedly, this phrase has touched Congar. Simultaneously, Maxim Hermaniuk mentioned that the whole speech “made a very good impression on the Fathers of the Council […], but the ending [phrase quoted by Congar] made a worse impression.”89

 AS III/5, 20.  AS III/5, 20. 87  AS III/5, 21. 88  Congar, My Journal of the Council, 630. 89  Hermaniuk, Diaries, 201. 85 86

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3.2.2

 emarks of Bishop Volodymyr Malanczuk About Sections 11 R and 24–25 Bishop Volodymyr Malanczuk was not a member of the Commission for the Oriental Churches, but he sent his written recommendations about the decree Orientalium Ecclesiarum. He wrote remarks about sections 11 and 24–25 of the decree and argued in favor of statements made there about the creation of new patriarchates and about the special mission of the Eastern Catholic Churches in the ecumenical dialogue.90 The main goal of Malanczuk’s paper was to provide an answer to two improper complaints of some council’s fathers that firstly “the creation of new ­patriarchates by the Catholic Church would cause a harm to ecumenism and  […secondly] some Eastern Catholic Churches, as some dare denigrate, have a dubious origin and are imbued with the spirit of proselytism.”91 The bishop was outraged by such phrases and gave his counterarguments. Malanczuk wrote on the first one that if patriarchates are in fact the obstacles to ecumenism then “all Catholic patriarchates, which now exist and were created by the Church in the course of time, had to be eliminated because their existence would be an obstacle to effective dialogue with the respective Orthodox patriarchates and churches of the same rite.”92 The second response of the bishop was more emotional and painful rather than theologically argued: It seems not so noble and generous on the part of Catholics to despise the Uniate Churches and consider them like a blain on the Mystical Body of Christ and desire instead that they may have disappeared or returned to the bosom of the Orthodox Churches, in order, as they say, to facilitate the ecumenical dialogue. Precisely those Churches survived such great difficulties to become Catholic, and had so many martyrs as a testimony of the catholicity of Christ’s Church, so many of these churches have suffered difficulties, and persecutions in order to remain in the Eastern faith and tradition, despite the existence of pressures; both from within and from outside.93

This response is full of pain and can be rephrased as “We suffered a lot to be together with you, and now you say that it is better for us not to exist.” This reaction was, probably, caused by the unwillingness of some council  AS III/5, 869–870.  AS III/5, 870. 92  AS III/5, 870. 93  AS III/5, 870. 90 91

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fathers to understand the true identity of the Eastern Churches and their place in the ecumenical dialogue. For the Ukrainians in particular those accusations of being an obstacle to ecumenical dialogue were even more harmful because they sensed the willingness of some Roman Catholics to sacrifice them in order to save the dialogue with the Russian Orthodox Church. On the day of the promulgation of the decree Metropolitan Maxim Hermaniuk wrote in his diary: This decree, though it is not as it could have been, and this on account of the division among the Eastern patriarchs themselves is nevertheless a great achievement for the Christian East. Unfortunately, as it seems, the Eastern representatives of the Commission, who developed this decree, were not at the height of their duties—with a small exception—Patriarch Maximos IV.94

As we can see, Hermaniuk was not satisfied with the contribution of the Ukrainian bishops who worked on the decree because he did not even mention any of them and underlined that the Commission did not do everything it was capable of. In summary, the Ukrainian hierarchs who worked in the Commission mainly wanted to stress their own needs and interests such as the desire to establish a Ukrainian patriarchate, to stop the process of Latinization in Ukraine and the diaspora, and to develop the proper identity of their own Eastern Church.95 In general, in their interventions Ukrainian bishops wanted to emphasize the dignity of their church and to overcome the inferiority complex.

4   Conclusion The participation of the Ukrainian bishops in the Second Vatican Council made a small but meaningful impact on the work of the Council. At the same time, the Council had an impact on the formation of the Ukrainian Bishops’ Conference and allowed them to be together and fostered the realization that they were the hierarchs of one and the same Church. This chapter presented just a few interventions and ideas of the Ukrainian  Hermaniuk, Diary, 217.  More about the identity of the Eastern Catholic Churches, see: Edward Faruggia, “Re-reading Orientalium Ecclesiarum,” Gregorianum 88, no. 2 (2007): 352–372, 367–370. 94 95

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bishops. Some of them, as collegiality and ecumenical dialogue, were important for the whole Church, but others, such as Latinization, request of the patriarchate for the Ukrainian Church, and the defense of its existence had a specific character. Some of the aforementioned themes are still on the agenda. For example, the place of Eastern Catholic Churches in the ecumenical dialogue is rather unconfirmed and unwelcomed in some moments. The meeting of Pope Francis with Patriarch of Moscow Kirill in 2016 and the declaration signed by them showed that Ukrainian Greco-­ Catholic Church is not the partner in conversation between these two and is seen as the obstacle in this dialogue.96 Also, fifty-five years have passed since the end of the Council but the awareness of Roman Catholics about the diversity of rites in the Church still is not very high. So, Eastern Catholic Churches have to continue their activities, development, and research in these fields to make themselves visible and equal on the map of Universal Church.

96   For more details and texts see: http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/ speeches/2016/february/documents/papa-francesco_20160212_dichiarazione-comunekirill.html

The U.S.S.R., Greek Catholics, and the Vatican “Ostpolitik” in the 1960s–1970s: Grey Zone and the Stumbling Blocks Nadezhda Beliakova

How were the Vatican and the Catholic Church perceived by representatives of the states and regimes of the Eastern Bloc, and how this perception of the “other” changed in the post-war period—these are questions that bear a heavy political charge and that are only starting to manifest themselves in the academic field, captivating the attention of historians. The very term “Ostpolitik” of the Vatican’s Eastern policy bears a mark of

The chapter is written as part of a project supported by the Russian Science Foundation (№ 19-18-00482 “Entangled Histories: Russia and Holy See, 1917–1958”) and it is translated from Russian by Sergei Brun. N. Beliakova (*) Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Science, Moscow, Russian Federation © The Author(s) 2021 V. Latinovic, A. K. Wooden (eds.), Stolen Churches or Bridges to Orthodoxy?, Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55442-2_10

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the Cold War and is its product. From the perception of the Catholic Church the so-called Eastern policy remains a matter of discussion.1 According to the Hungarian historian András Fejérdy, [t]he appraisal of the political dialogue and negotiations with the communist regimes of East Central Europe commenced by the Holy See in the 1960s did not provoke only lively debates among contemporaries, but remains to the present day one of the most debated questions of the twentieth-­century history: should it be assessed a fixed path to which no alternative existed, or was it a flawed initiative which merely served the international legitimacy of the communist totalitarian system?2

How was the Vatican’s Eastern policy perceived in the U.S.S.R.? This question, in my opinion, is both politicized and unstudied. An Italian Soviet Studies specialist Prof. Adriano Roccucci underscores the importance of the Vatican in the eyes of the Soviet political leaders. Roccucci notes that Moscow had a keen interest in the Catholic Church as a whole. The question of the relationship with the Holy See concerned issues of major importance for the Soviet Union: not only the international weight of the Church of Rome, with its global reach and the influence of Catholics in the political affairs of many countries, but also, and perhaps especially from the Kremlin’s point of view, the importance of the Catholic Church for the geopolitical balance of the communist bloc and within the Soviet Union itself. These 1  Hansjakob Stehle, Die Ostpolitik des Vatikans, 1917–1975 (München-Zürich: R. Piper & Co Verlag, 1975); Antoine Wenger, Rome et Moscou: 1900–1950 (Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1987); Andrea Riccardi, Il Vaticano e Mosca 1940–1990 (Roma–Bari: Laterza, 1992), Hansjakob Stehle, Geheimdiplomatie im Vatikan. Die Päpste und die Kommunisten (Zürich: Piper, 1993); Alberto Melloni, L’Ostpolitik Vaticana di Agostino Casaroli (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2006); Alberto Riccardi, Il Vaticano e Mosca 1940–1990 (Roma-Bari: Laterza 1992); Giovanni Barberini, L’Ostpolitik della Santa Sede: Un dialogo lungo e faticoso (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2007); Giovanni Barberini, La politica del dialogo. Le carte Casaroli sull’Ostpolitik vaticana (Bologna, Il Mulino, 2008); Philippe Chenaux, L’Église catholique et le communisme en Europe (1917–1989): De Lénine à Jean-Paul II (Paris: Cerf, 2009); Marco Lavopa, La diplomazia dei “piccoli passi”. L’Ostpolitik vaticana di Mons. Agostino Casaroli (Rome: Ginevra Bentivoglio Editoria, 2013); Roberto Morozzo della Rocca. Tra Est e Ovest: Agostino Casaroli diplomatico vaticano (Cinisello Balsamo: San Paolo, 2014). 2  András Fejérdy “New Perspectives in Researching the Vatican’s Eastern Policy” in The Vatican «Ostpolitik» 1958–1978 Responsibility and Witness During John XXIII and Paul VI, ed. András Fejérdy (Rome: Viella, 2015), 10.

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were important aspects (not always adequately studied) of the attention paid by Moscow to the relations with the Catholic world during the Cold War years.3

Yet how did the clear interest of the U.S.S.R. towards the Vatican transform into concrete policy? How were decisions developed and made? Which characters took part in and influenced the decision-making process in the Soviet bureaucratic machine of the 1960s–1970s? Today it is clear for historians that there are many questions in the history of the bilateral relations of the Soviet Union and the Catholic Church. One of the most complex themes is how the external, diplomatic contacts and the directives of the central organs concerning the Catholics in the Soviet Union compare to their execution on the local level. This chapter will focus on the Soviet officials who influenced the situation of the Greek Catholics. It will also present concrete examples of various discourses and communication mediums. On the basis of concrete documents, it will analyse the position of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), which is often seen in historiography exclusively as an instrument of the Soviet regime. It will demonstrate that if the question is addressed from the perspectives of identifying the reaction of the Soviet Union to the Vatican’s Eastern policy on the basis of archive documents from various Soviet agencies, then the perspective of the “totalitarian discourse” begins to crumble. The question about the status of the illegal Greek Catholic organizations in Western Ukraine at the beginning of the 1960s was never brought up in official negotiations between Moscow and the Vatican or in dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church. We see that at the high point of the Eastern policy of Popes John XXIII and Paul VI, during the Second Vatican Council, the Roman Catholic Church saw as a priority the development of positive relations with notable Eastern Orthodox Churches. Yet Nikita Khrushchev’s release of Metropolitan Josyf Slipyi and the latter’s participation in the Second Vatican Council had an unforeseen effect for the Soviet government: Metropolitan Slipyi began to position himself as the primate of the  Adriano Roccucci “Moscow and the Vatican’s Ostpolitik in the 1960s and 1970s: Dialogue and Antagonism” in The Vatican “Ostpolitik” 1958–1978 Responsibility and Witness During John XXIII and Paul VI, ed. András Fejérdy (Rome: Viella, 2015), 68. 3

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underground Greek Catholic Church of Ukraine, oppressed by the Soviet government. Using his status as a media figure he regularly addressed the issue of the status of the Greek Catholic Church of Ukraine into the international level.4 Today the history of decision-making and the realization of political programmes in the Brezhnev-era U.S.S.R. (1964–1982) still has many blank spaces. It is clear that the formation of the official soviet policy towards the Vatican remains in the grey zone: this subject seems to be marginal for political historians and is uncomfortable for the current enablers of the Russian-Vatican relations. The Soviet functionaries archaically viewed the West as a malevolent force, of which the Vatican was an integral part. This is well illustrated by the words of the chairman of the Council for Religious Affairs, Vladimir Kuroedov, spoken in Warsaw in 1979: “Vatican’s Ostpolitik is an important part of the West’s strategy in relation to socialist countries.”5 It is important to understand that this and similar statements aimed at enforcing the perception that religious structures and the faithful pose a threat to the Soviet government not just by themselves, but also as agents of influence of socialism’s political adversaries, reflected a cornerstone of Soviet religious policy. The traditional Soviet fear of Catholicism found such a manifestation in the dichotomic thinking of the Soviet government, which counterposed itself to the collective image of the “West.” The history of how the Soviet institutions viewed the establishment of bilateral diplomatic relations with the Vatican still remains unclear. For example, Olga Vasilieva in her monograph The Russian Orthodox Church and the Second Vatican Council states that the Soviet leadership was ready to establish diplomatic relations with the Vatican by the early 1960s and that was the reason why they released Metropolitan Josyf Slipyi and sent the representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church to the Second Vatican Council. Yet the Vatican’s wish to include the discussion of the state of religious life in Socialist Bloc countries into the negotiation process

4  Bohdan Bociurkiw, The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Soviet State (1939–1950) (CIUS Press, 1996); Jaroslav Pelikan, Confessor Between East and West (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company 1990). 5  Vladimir Kuroedov. Speech at a meeting of heads of state departments for religious affairs of socialist countries in Warsaw October 25, 1979. State Archive of Russian Federation. F. 6991. Op. 6. d.1734. l.5.

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destroyed the initiative.6 However, according to the documents uncovered by the author of this chapter,7 the Soviet government throughout the 1970s regularly and deliberately sought to oppose the establishment of bilateral diplomatic relations between the Vatican and the countries of Eastern Europe. Soviet representatives adamantly stated at the meetings of Socialist Bloc representatives that the “establishment of diplomatic relations are only in the interests of the Vatican.”8 Establishment of the diplomatic relations would undoubtedly strengthen the Catholic Church’s positions in the Socialist Bloc, elevate the international prestige of the Vatican, and open for the Catholic Church the possibility for intervention to U.S.S.R., letting Soviet dissidents flock to its side. We know that this argumentation did not seem convincing in the eyes of Hungarian, Polish, and Yugoslavian leadership, which—because of various motives—systematically refused to recognize the wishes of their hegemon.9 The absence of a balanced position towards the Vatican was a trait evident not only for the Socialist Bloc countries. The internal documents of various Soviet agencies from the 1960s to 1970s show the absence of a clear, unified strategy within the U.S.S.R. itself. The general policy, adopted by the Central Committee of the Communist Party in relation to

6  Ol’ga Vasil’eva, Russkaia pravoslavnaia tserkov’ i Vtoroi vatikanskii sobor (Moscow: Lepta Press, 2004), 179–185. For a more balanced approach see the Russian-language collection of essays: Anatolij Krasikov, Alberto Melloni, ed., Ioann XXIII i sovremennyj mir. Hristianskoe svidetel’stvo, sosushhestvovanie i sotrudnichestvo (Moscow: Interdialekt, 2002). See also the earlier book by Alberto Melloni, ed. Vatican II in Moscow (1959–1965): Acts of the Colloquium on the History of Vatican II. Moscow, March 30–April 2, 1995 (Leuven: Peeters, 1997) 7  The author of the article systematically analysed the documents about the Vatican’s Policy in Archive of Central Committee of Communist Party of USSR and of Council for Religious Affairs by the Council of Ministers of U.S.S.R. 8  See the publication: Nadezhda Beliakova “Voprosy polozhenija religii v SSSR nahodjatsja pod pristal’nym vnimaniem …” Stenogramma vystuple-nija zamestitelja predsedatelja Soveta po delam reli-gij pri Sovete ministrov SSSR P.V. Makarceva 2 fevralja 1977 g. [“The questions on the religion in the USSR are the central target of reactionary circles—both ecclesiastic and secular” The paper given by P.V. Makartsev at the Council of the Religious Affairs Deputes of the U.S.S.R. in Vilnus. 1977] Rossija i sovremennyj mir. 2019–3 (104), 130–156. 9  Gabriel Adriányi, Die Ostpolitik des Vatikans 1958–1978 gegenüber Ungarn: Der Fall Kardinal Mindszenty (Herne: Verlag Tibor Schäfer, 2003); András Fejérdy, ed. La Chiesa cattolica dell’Europa centro-orientale di fronte al comunismo. Atteggiamenti, strategie, tattiche (Roma: Viella, 2013); András Fejérdy, ed. Pressed by a Double Loyalty. Hungarian Attendance at the Second Vatican Council, 1959–1965 (New York: Central European University Press, 2016); Vjekoslav Cvrlje, Vatikanska diplomacija (Zagreb: Školska knjiga 1992).

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the Catholic Church,10 was influenced by one of the three state institutions—the Committee for State Security (KGB), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Council for Religious Affairs. All three provided their analytical reports to the Central Committee. The other agents of influence were the representatives at the Politburo of the Communist Parties of national Soviet republics, the one of which was the Ukrainian S.S.R.11 The Central Committees of the Communist Parties of 14 other republics of the U.S.S.R. often issued their own decrees with relations to the Vatican and the Catholic Church—either in accordance with Moscow directives or with own specifics.12 In this complex system of Brezhnev’s administration, the most radical anti-Vatican position was taken up by the KGB, the most open and friendly—by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The KGB13 maintained that the Vatican was trying to enforce its influence in the U.S.S.R. in order to undermine the socialist system. Thus, the KGB tried to use all of its powers to limit this influence by destroying the channels of the Vatican’s so-­ called religious and bourgeois propaganda, limiting the exchange of information, and looking for spies collaborating with the Holy See. The Central Committee received regular reports about the growing activities of “enemy voices” (a term that was used in reference to radio programmes broadcasting across the U.S.S.R. from abroad) and about numerous shipments of Catholic religious books into the Soviet Union. The KGB fought against the growing influence of Vatican supporters within the country

10  The Catholic Church had institutions in Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus, Russian Federation, and Kazakhstan. 11  The Politburo was actually the highest authority in the Soviet Union. Decisions were made there by finding a balance between the interests of different departments. The permanent members of the Politburo were the General Secretary of the Communist party of Ukraine Petro Shelest and Vladimir Shcherbitsky. 12  Volodimer Pashchenko, Greko-katoliki v Ukraїni (Poltava, 2002); Volodimer Sergiichuk, Neskorena tserkva (Kiev: Dnipro, 2001); Latvijas Romas katoļ u baznı̄cas vēstures materiāli: XX gadsimts, ed. Jānis Cakuls (Rı̄ga: Rı̄gas Metropolijas Kūrija, 2001); Eduard Iarmusik, Katolicheskii kostel v Belarusi v 1945–1990 godakh (Grodno: Grodno State University, 2006); Arūnas Streikus, Sovietų valdžios antibažnytinė politika Lietuvoje (1944–1990) (Vilnius: Lietuvos gyventojų genocido ir rezistencijos tyrimo centras, 2002). 13  About the KGB structure see: Aleksandr Lushin, Ivan Kalinin “Transformacija organov gosudarstvennoj bezopasnosti v period hrushhevskoj ‘ottepeli’ [Transformation of state security agencies in the period of the khrushchev’s thaw],” Gumanitarij: aktual’nye problemy gumanitarnoj nauki i obrazovanija. 2019-19(2)-125–136.

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and searched for agents of influence among Orthodox clergy.14 The archives retained several notes from the KGB, sent to the Central Committee and signed by the head of the KGB—Yuri Andropov—in which the famous Orthodox priest—Father Alexander Men—is called “Vatican’s agent of influence.” The KGB’s attitude towards Metropolitan Nikodim (Rotov)15 and his intense contacts with the leadership of the Catholic Church also was marked by suspicion and tension. Yet, even within the KGB itself there were various trends, manifested in tensions between the KGB’s central office and its republican agencies. The leadership of the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs took a different approach. Officials of the Ministry understood the value of the Vatican and its attempts to improve bilateral relations. Notes and reports from various Soviet embassy workers clearly attest to this. For example, in January 1975 the Soviet Consulate in Genoa petitioned the Soviet Council for Religious Affairs to support their initiative to enable their relations with the Archbishop of Genoa Cardinal Giuseppe Siri, since they saw him as an influential Vatican figure, who played a significant role in the life of Genoa and Liguria. Most notably, the Consulate asked for the approval of the following: 1. The reciprocal visit of the representatives of the Council for Religious Affairs to Italy, in 1975 or 1976, at the invitation of Cardinal Siri, made during his trip to the U.S.S.R.; the official notification of Cardinal Siri regarding the acceptance of his invitation and the time of the planned trip. 2. The question of inviting Cardinal Siri, if he so wishes, to cruise across the U.S.S.R. on a Soviet ship during the tourist season of 1975 […]. It was meant for Siri to be officially invited as a guest by a designated tourist company (and at its expense) or on behalf of the captain of the cruise ship, or by an unofficial invitation of the Consulate. This document also contained Consulate’s observation that, “The Soviet cruise ship tours are quite popular here. It is clear that Siri could 14  The Notes of KGB are in the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History (RGANI). Some of them were used by A. Roccucci in the article “Moscow and the Vatican’s Ostpolitik in the 1960s and 1970s: Dialogue and Antagonism.” 15  The Head of the Department of External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate in 1960–1972.

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undertake that kind of a trip, with a group of Catholics, as part of a regular tourist group, as he did during his previous trip to the U.S.S.R. The designated tourist company will be capable of providing for them.”16 This document is of interest also because it shows the mechanisms of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, through which it sought to secure the loyalty of its counterparts (in this case—in Italy). We see that the representatives of the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs sought to improve their relationship with the representatives of the Catholic hierarchy, assuring their positive disposition especially in the area of peace-making initiatives. Yet the major part of the Foreign Affairs Ministry’s initiatives died in the paperwork of various agencies, not finding the support of other Soviet governing agencies. Nevertheless, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs managed to get across the message of the Council for Religious Affairs to the Catholic Church that while the representatives of the Catholic Church are limited in their ability to receive official invitations from Soviet institutions, they are welcome to visit the U.S.S.R. as private citizens with tourist visas. In turn, the Council for Religious Affairs of the Council of Ministers of U.S.S.R. was supposed to coordinate the varying and imbalanced directives of its superiors. An incredibly complicated task for the Council was the transition into a verbal form of the unarticulated expectations, fears, and doubts of the Soviet leadership towards Catholicism. An attempt by the Deputy Chairman of the Council for Religious Affairs Peter Makartsev to explain the Soviet leadership’s concept about the place of religion in the U.S.S.R. to the senior officials of Lithuania in February 1977 caused wide-scale resonance in the Samizdat opposition press, most likely becoming the cause of Makartsev dismissal from his post. The transcript of Makartsev’s statement sums up the Council’s position: the churches and their leadership in the U.S.S.R. are loyal to the government; moreover, socialist values are shared by the majority of religious figures. Thus, there is no reason to consider religious institutions as the enemies of the socialist system. Moreover, to avoid the use of Soviet religious persecution, brought to light during the Cold War, as an argument against the U.S.S.R., the Soviet state must remain neutral towards religious institutions. Within Soviet society, the process of secularization is inevitable and must be 16  Ivan Nikulin, Consul of the USSR in Genoa, Message to the Chairman of the Council on Religious Affairs of Council of Ministers of the USSR. 10.01.1975. SARF. F. R-6991. Op.6. d. 719. Л.19–20.

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gradual. Any attempts to rush this process in order to show the progress of secularization in the country of “triumphant socialism,” the progress that is measured by the decline of religious communities and the decrease of religious rituals, leads to an opposite effect. Legalization and de-­ politicization of religious life grants new opportunities for control and the gradual neutralization of religious influence in and on the society. Meanwhile, the attempts of Lithuanian authorities to fight religion only lead to growing protests and inflame religious feelings, slow the process of secularization, and turn religious structures into a force of opposition. The use of administrative resources in the fight against religion leads to the growth of fanaticism and extremism. During the last decades the Soviet administration developed the conditions, under which Catholic parishes could exist in the U.S.S.R. while Vatican influence was brought down to a minimum. The goal of the Council for Religious Affairs is not to allow religious organizations in the U.S.S.R. to become a factor in the Cold War. Regarding the Vatican, the strategic line was this: The Soviet government supports the peacekeeping initiatives of the Vatican and is ready to cooperate in all questions pertaining to this field. Nevertheless, any attempt of the Vatican to change the position of Catholic communities in the U.S.S.R. is seen by the Soviet government as a violation of its internal sovereignty. “We do everything in our power to block the Vatican’s direct interference into the inner life of our Catholic Church,” stated Makartsev optimistically.17 In any case, I would like to emphasize that within the Soviet institutions since there was no strategically coordinated course of action towards the Vatican among the Soviet governing agencies, the situation produced tension between these agencies, sometimes causing scandals on an international level. For example, after long correspondence between various agencies, the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Party ordered18 the State Committee of the Council of Ministers in charge of publishing and book sales to confiscate the copies of the book by Igor Bonchkovsky—The Kingdom Not of This World. This 272-page book, 17  The paper given by Peter Makartsev at the Council of the Religious Affairs Deputies of the U.S.S.R. in Vilnus. 1977. SARF.F.  R-6991. Op.6. d. 3442. l.43–65. The text of this speech is published here: Nadezhda Beliakova “Voprosy polozheniia religii v SSSR nakhodiatsia pod pristal’nym vnimaniem …” Stenogramma vy-stupleniia zamestitelia predsedatelia Soveta po de-lam religii pri Sovete ministrov SSSR P.V.  Makartseva 2 fevralia 1977 g. in Rossiia i sovremennyi mir 3 (2019) 130–156. 18  Decision №34 from November 19, 1976.

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100,000 copies of which were published by the Young Guard Press (Молодая гвардия) in 1976, was dedicated to the analysis of Catholicism and the contemporary state of the Vatican. Bonchkovsky was an associate of the Council for Religious Affairs since 1966, having access to its internal documentation. It was these materials that caused the political scandal around the book since they contained information regarding Vatican leadership, with whom proper relations were only recently established. The author of the book was proclaimed guilty of causing an international conflict, was fired from the Council, and quickly plunged down the social ladder.19 Another interesting example of the Soviet agencies’ mis-coordination is the case of the representative of the Catholic Church in Lithuania.20 The Dean of the Kaunas Inter-Diocesan Seminary Professor Viktoras Butkus (1923–1993) addressed the representative of the Council for Religious Affairs of the Lithuanian S.S.R. in an official letter, dated June 18, 1977. The copies of the letter were sent to all diocesan administrators of the Lithuanian Catholic Church. In his letter, Butkus states: On June 12, 1977 the English weekly journal Moscow News and on July 31, 1977 the French Les Nouvelles de Moscou published an interview of the Dean of the Kaunas Theological Seminary, Fr. Butkus Viktoras on the state of the Roman Catholic Church. Soon after, this interview was republished by a series of newspapers in Western Europe and America (“The Evening Post” №124, May 30, 1977), it was also broadcast by the Vatican radio, with harmful comments. I accidently heard the broadcast myself. Regarding the interview, which was attributed to me, I feel necessary to state the following: I never gave any interview neither to the English, nor to the French publications. And I never had any contacts with these newspapers. I am still not aware who wrote my supposed interview. I regret that I am still unable to find the text of the interview in English or French, so I cannot confirm this version with the original. I feel obliged to state that the Vatican broadcast contained mistakes that no priest, let alone a seminary dean, could possibly make.

19  According to the archive specialist A. Kazakevich, Bonchkovsky found work as a loader in a wine store and soon drank himself to death. 20  See about the relations between Church and KGB in Lithuania: Aronas Streikus. “Lithuanian Catholic Clergy and the KGB,” Religion, State & Society. 2006. Vol. 34 (1). 63–70.

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With regards to everything stated above, I implore you to find the person who gave the interview on my behalf and without my consent, to call back the interview, and to take all necessary measures so that such things do not happen in the future.21

From the reply of the editor-in-chief of The Moscow News—Iakov Lomko—it becomes clear that the publication did indeed take place in summer of 1976 and that the interview was prepared by the “associate of the Council for Religious Affairs N.P. Sobolevsky and was approved by the former Deputy Chairman of the Council for Religious Affairs V.N. Titov.”22 In the explanatory report Sobolevsky states that, having received the task from the editors of The Moscow News to prepare the publication in an interview format, he “searched the archives and found an article-transcript of the Dean of the Kaunas Seminary V.I. Butkus, which he gave 10 years ago. It was agreed to print the same questions and answers, only taking into account the main changes that took place in the given period.”23 This simple explanation did not satisfy either side. For the purposes of this study, this document demonstrates what a large number of interested parties were involved in the U.S.S.R.’s relationship with the Vatican, which could not be fully and timely accounted for by the Soviet bureaucratic machine. Such mishaps in relations with the Catholic Church took place regularly, and the lack of coordination explains why the decisions on the participation in varying Catholic events, invitations, and so on that were obtained by some agencies later could have been cancelled at the last minute. Besides the central agencies in Moscow, the Soviet administrative system included republican structures which literally doubled the pan-Soviet agencies and which were sometimes more than reluctant to follow Moscow’s directives.

21  Viktoras Butkus, Prof., Rector of the Kaunas Inter-Diocesan Theological Seminary, Statement to the representative of the Council for Religious Affairs of the Lithuanian S.S.R. 18. 06. 1977. Translated from Lithuanian by Referent P. Raslanas. SARF. f. R-6991. op. 6. d. 1138. l. 102. 22  Iakov Lomko, Editor-in-Chief of The Moscow News, The letter to the Deputy Chairman of the Council for Religious Affairs (by SSSR) Peter Makartsev. 20.9. 1977. SARF. f. R-6991. op. 6. d. 1138. l. 104. Л. 105–109. 23  SARF. f. R-6991. op. 6. d. 1138. l. 110.

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Ukraine was the second largest republic in the U.S.S.R., and it was always in the forefront in terms of the amount and diversity of religious groups—both official and unregistered (dubbed “illegal”). When it came to religious affairs, a steady conflict persisted in the relationship between the top Soviet and local republican authorities. The study of the documents from the Council for Religious affairs in Ukraine shows that its members were in greater agreement with the KGB than the members of its central counterpart. For example, The Chairman of the Ukrainian Council for Religious Affairs Konstantin Litvin stated in his Memorandum to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Ukrainian S.S.R.: Recently, the Vatican—hoping to increase its influence in socialist countries and especially in the U.S.S.R.—actively supports the growing activization of the Greek Catholic Church, with the help of which it hopes to bring the population into the Catholic fold, especially in Western Ukraine where the anti-­ Orthodox Uniates are still strong.24

Such rhetoric can be found in many documents, issued in both the Ukrainian KGB and the Council for Religious Affairs of Ukraine throughout the entire Brezhnev period. A lot of attention was paid to the ties of Uniates with the so-called foreign Catholic circles and the aid provided from abroad. The Ukrainian leadership also refused to register the Catholic communities. Among the notable examples, we can point to the case of the government’s refusal to register the community in the village of Korosten of the Ovruch district (Zhitomir region). The U.S.S.R. Council for Religious Affairs, accepting the plea of the faithful, tried to intervene and change the decision of the Ukrainian authorities because this central agency supported the idea of sustaining a stable number of Catholic organizations in Ukraine. For example, Moscow issued a decision allowing for the acceptance of Ukrainian and Belarusian students into the Riga Catholic seminary, while the local Ukrainian authorities tried to block the appearance of 24  Konstantin Litvin, Chairman of the Council for Religious Affairs under the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian S.S.R. Memorandum to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Ukrainian SSR on the influence of the Vatican on the revitalization of the Greek Catholic Church in the western regions of Ukraine (in Ukrainian). 09.06. 1967. Central State Archive of the Supreme Authorities and Administration of Ukraine (Центральный государственный архив высших органов власти и управления Украины). F. 1. Op. 24. d. 6291. l.14–21.

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the new Catholic clergymen in the republic: they refused to give proper papers to the applicants of the Riga seminary or to register them as clergy after their ordination. By the late 1970s–early 1980s the situation in Ukraine was as follows: the government compiled a large amount of data on the “underground” Greek Catholic Church. The archives of the Ukrainian Council for Religious Affairs (as well as the Soviet Council) contain information on the exact numbers and location of the clergy, monks, house churches, and secret monasteries. Periodically, administrative and legal actions were taken against Greek Catholic activists. Yet no consistent strategic approach was set in motion, save for the Moscow-proposed solution to the Uniate question: whoever cherished the Byzantine Rite should join the Orthodox Church while those that did not want to renounce their allegiance to the Pope must move on to the Latin Rite. Of course, the authorities gave no reasoning for their refusal to register Greek Catholics, save for the traditional accusation of collaboration with Nazis during World War II and retaining ties to the Ukrainian nationalists abroad. The Ukrainian authorities pursued an oppressive and discriminatory policy until the middle of the 1980s, a policy that was aimed at both the Greek Catholics and the Orthodox. Yet the documents that testify to the oppression also bear witness to the existence of a great number of active illegal Catholic religious groups. Aside from the state agencies, which were lost in their relations with the Catholics, there was another important actor, or rather a full-scale member, in the relationship with the Vatican. We know that gradually, in the period between the 1960s and 1980s, personal contacts were developed between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church. Yet the circle which was capable of establishing such contacts remained quite narrow. For example, in the late 1960s and early 1970s the main experts on the situation in the Vatican were priests sent to Rome by the Moscow Patriarchate: Vitaly Borovoy (1916–2008) and Vladimir Rozhkov (1934–1997). They were the primary sources of information for both the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Soviet statesmen, which compiled analytical reports using the data supplied by the churchmen. Today, the majority of the ecclesiastic reports regarding international contacts are available to researchers, thanks to the fact that the Council for Religious Affairs curated the religious organizations in the U.S.S.R.

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Several aspects from a report made by Rozhkov about his stay in Rome in 1970 are worth a closer look. The report was officially sent to Metropolitan Nikodim and its copy is now kept in the archive of the Council for Religious Affairs. Rozhkov spent two years studying Canon Law at Pontificium Institutum Orientalium in 1968–1970  in Rome. Parallel to this, he wrote detailed analytical reports at the request of Metropolitan Nikodim. These reports deserve their own special publication and commentary, and here only a few fragments from one of them will be quoted to show the great variety of subjects addressed. The article of Archbishop Gregory “The Fight of the Ukrainian People against the Union,” published in the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate (№ 11 1968) was met with a highly negative response. Father Mikhail Aranz said that it is in the interest of both parties not to touch the question of the Union, since “The Vatican keeps its silence about the more than questionable actions against the Union in the post-War U.S.S.R.” 25 At the wishes of the Pope, a Philosophical Center will be established at the Gregorian University, to study Marxism (it will basically be a Department of Marxist philosophy). Because of this, Father Andrei Gustav Wetter will move along with his grand library from Russicum down to the Gregorian University. During the fall of last year in Rocca di Papa (near Rome), at a clergy council that deals with Russian affairs, Father John Long spoke of disbanding the Eastern Rite, but this proposal raised immediate protests. Later on, the Jesuits discussed the same issue. Professor Matheos from the Oriental Institute said that the Eastern Liturgy does not reflect the spirit of the Western Church. Later on, during a private discussion with me, Father Michael Arranz (a pupil and friend of Professor Matheos) elaborated on this, stating that the Eastern Liturgy is a brilliant artform, rooted in the Greek Classical Theatre, but the Russians brought more meaning and spiritual sadness to this Rite, which changed the overall resonance of this Liturgy. Meanwhile, in the West, the liturgy/mass is rooted in the Roman cult and Roman psychology […] Father Long asked me, “Can we expect the Pope to be invited to Moscow, since it was announced that the heads of the Churches will be invited to attend the Peace Congress in July of this year?” I explained the situation to him. This is out of the question. Moreover, Father Long asked about the possibility of continuing bilateral discussions, since it was agreed upon during the last session in

25  Vladimir Rozhkov, Archpriest. Report to His Eminence Nicodemus, Metropolitan of Leningrad and Novgorod, Chairman of the Department for External Church Relations. SARF. f. 6991. op.6. d. 268. l.2.

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Leningrad. Father Long was interested in the future themes of these discussions […]. The Moscow Patriarchate considers its contacts with the Vatican far more important than the contacts with Constantinople. The last 10 years have shown great progress in this field. Italy is quite scared of these contacts, since they’re afraid that it will include political questions. Moscow always seemed the preferred partner, but every time we had to consider this delicate matter and meet strong opposition in the Vatican itself. Yet personal intervention by the Pope and his initiatives aided our contacts […]. In the Vatican they pay close attention to our Church’s press, especially those articles that are dedicated to our bilateral contacts. Archbishop Gregory’s ­article on the Union as well as the fleeting mention of the Union in the obituary of Archbishop Panteleimon forces many to think of a new stage of the Russian Orthodox Church’s relationship with the Vatican. […] I was reprimanded because of this. For example, Father Arranz proposed an idea that I think has reason. The events in Czechoslovakia (the question of the Union) were initiated by the State, which raised opposition amongst the Orthodox population, that internally remained loyal to Rome. Similar sentiment can be found in Western Ukraine. That is why, while we have good relations with the Vatican, we should seek to solve the Ukrainian Uniate question in our favor. Pope Paul VI could send an epistle to our former Uniates, calling upon them to remain faithful to their new and legal hierarchy, to remain within the Orthodox Church. Of course, this will require negotiations, but nevertheless, such a document could amend the mistakes of the post-­ war period and provide our hierarchy with legal and ecclesiastic authority. It would quell the ambitions of foreign nationalist groups once and for all, and show the sincerity and consistency of Vatican’s policy towards us.

Thus, according to this report, the Vatican placed great emphasis on the development of bilateral relationships with the Russian Orthodox Church; moreover, the leadership was given a clear signal that the “Uniate” issue can also be brought to a closing in the negotiations with Rome. This approach, in many ways, was directly connected with the critical views on the Eastern Rite shared within the Catholic establishment. One of the conditions for the removal of the Uniate issue from the table was the cessation of anti-Catholic rhetoric in the Soviet press. One way or another, Rome was clearly critical in its assessment of how the forced “reunification”26 26  Forced reunification of the Greek Catholic Church of Galicia into the Russian Orthodox Church in 1946 and the Greek Catholic Church in Transcarpathia in 1949.

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took place in the 1940s. There is another interesting nuance: for the author of the report (as well as for its respondent) it was clear that the Russian Orthodox Church in Western Ukraine needed to boost its authority and legitimacy through Rome as well as through other sources. So, for that generation of the Orthodox clergy, the violence and illegitimacy of the “reunification” of the Greek Catholics with the Russian Church were clear enough. At the same time, the report shows that the Uniate question was unpleasant, but secondary (if not marginal) for the global history of the bilateral relations between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Vatican. It is understandable that the series of reports from Rozhkov explicitly reveals the early stage of the acquaintance of Moscow’s clergy with the Vatican. Yet we do not see any development in this dialogue or the growth of understanding between the Vatican and the Russian Orthodox Church in the 1970s. This was in many ways tied to the fact that the Soviet officials froze the development of the bilateral relations between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church, blocked the initiatives that were aimed at activating the dialogue, and did not allow for the exchange of delegations and students. For example, after Rozhkov came back to Moscow in the 1970s, he never took part in long-term foreign trips again and there would be no full-scale representation of the Russian Orthodox Church at the Vatican. Yet Rozhkov’s reports were thoroughly studied and analysed in the Department of External Church Affairs of the Moscow Patriarchate, as well as in the Council for Religious Affairs. Moreover, they were compared with the reports of his partner—Archpriest Vitaly Borovoy. The differences in assessments and accents of their Vatican reports are yet to be studied by scholars. In summary, this chapter attempted to simply identify points of contention and points in need of further study. It can be concluded that the history of the multi-level relations between the Vatican, the U.S.S.R., and the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church in the 1960s and 1970s still awaits its systematic study. Only then will the uncomfortable issues of the past make it out of the grey zone, and the stumbling blocks will turn into material, fit for building bridges.

THEOLOGICAL IMPULSES

The Filioque Issue in the Light of the Catechism of the Ukrainian Catholic Church and in Dialogue with V. Bolotov’s “33 Theses” Theodoros Alexopoulos

The question of the filioque, without a doubt, remains the thorniest of all the issues to be discussed and examined in the future by the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue Between the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Church. At the very beginning of the twenty-­ first century (2003), the North American Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation dealt with this problem, although without taking in consideration two thorough and innovative German studies on the history of the filioque controversy shedding light into the theological arguments pro and contra  filioque: B.  Oberdorfer’s Filioque. Geschichte und Theologie eines ökumenischen Problems (Göttingen 2001) and P.  Gemeinhardt’s Die Filioque-Kontroverse zwischen Ost- und Westkirche im Frühmittelalter (Berlin 2002). Perhaps this reluctance to engage more thoroughly with

T. Alexopoulos (*) University College of Teacher Education Vienna/Krems, Vienna, Austria © The Author(s) 2021 V. Latinovic, A. K. Wooden (eds.), Stolen Churches or Bridges to Orthodoxy?, Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55442-2_11

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the theological and philosophical arguments of both traditions, Catholic and Orthodox, explains why the efforts of the joint commission were not very successful, for by doing so, they not only diminished the dogmatical weight of the filioque but also the power it has had to divide the Church throughout the centuries. Thus the Joint Commission concluded: “We offer these recommendations to our Churches in the conviction, based on our own intense study and discussion, that our traditions’ different ways of understanding the procession of the Holy Spirit need no longer divide us.”1 In contrast to this statement, renowned church historians and patristic scholars who took part in the international conference in Vienna (15–17.05.1998) dealing extensively with the Vatican document on the procession on the Holy Spirit (issued in Rome 1995)2 have rightly stressed that the filioque still remains an essential dogmatic obstacle on the way of reunion between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches.3 The introducing keynote statement of the Austrian church historian Peter Hofrichter on the dividing character of the filioque is very characteristic: “The procession of the Holy Spirit is probably the most known and historically the most burdened teaching of division between Western and Eastern Christianity.”4 This chapter will, first, focus on the Catechism of the Greek Catholic Church in order to detect and analyze positive and constructive elements for resolving the problem of the filioque. Second, it will discuss how to deal with the issue using selectively the 33 Theses of the famous Russian

1  “The Filioque. A Church Dividing Issue?” http://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/ecumenical-and-interreligious/ecumenical/orthodox/filioque-church-dividing-issueenglish.cfm. On the first critical approach from an Orthodox point of view to this document, see the study T. Alexopoulos, “Der Konsens des Nordamerikanischen Orthodox-Katholischen Beratungsausschusses bezüglich des Filioque: ‘The Filioque: A Church Dividing Issue?’ Der Versuch einer ersten Würdigung aus orthodoxer Sicht,” Orthodoxes Forum 32, no. 2 (2018): 159–175. 2  See title below note 12. 3  See indicative Hans-Joachim Schulz, “Der wissenschaftliche Ertrag der Studientagung.” In Vom Heiligen Geist. Der gemeinsame trinitarische Glaube und das Problem des Filioque, edited by Alfred Stirnemann and Gerhard Wilflinger, 15–21 (Innsbruck-Wien: Tyrolia, 1998), 15. 4  Peter Hofrichter, “Einführung in die Problemlage,” in Stirnemann Vom Heiligen Geist, 36.

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Church Historian Vasily Bolotov (1853–1900)5 who distinguished between “dogma,” “theologumenon,” and mere “theological opinion.” Third, I hope to offer a sustainable dogmatic solution.

1   The Catechism of the Ukrainian Catholic Church on the Procession of the Holy Spirit The Catechism of the Ukrainian Catholic Church6 first appeared in Ukrainian in 2012 and was published in English in 2016. Although it does not present the teaching on the procession of the Holy Spirit clearly and precisely, it does contain many useful and constructive elements that could help us in our inquiry on the filioque. The Catechism first speaks of the Spirit who proceeds from the Father in reference to the Nicene Creed (I.2.C, Par. 91): And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father. With the Father and the Son, he is worshipped and glorified. He has spoken through the Prophets (Symbol of Faith). Through him the Holy Spirit was made manifest the Spirit of truth, the grace of sonship, the pledge of the inheritance to come, the first fruit of the eternal good things, the life-­ giving power, the source of sanctification (Anaphora of the Liturgy of Saint Basil the Great) […]. The Holy Spirit is the Third Divine Person and proceeds from the Father (see John 15:26). The Holy Spirit is a Divine Person that is equally worshipped and glorified with the Father and the Son, proceeding from the Father, coming to rest in the Word, and expressing the Word. (See John of Damascus, Expositio Fidei I, 7: PG 94, 805)

The second part of the section on the Holy Spirit is entitled “The Holy Spirit Who Proceeds from the Father.” Paragraph 97 states: In teaching about the Person of the Holy Spirit, the Fathers of the Church emphasize first and foremost what differentiates the Person of the Holy Spirit from the Persons of the Father and the Son, that is, that the Holy Spirit proceeds (in Ukrainian, iskhodyt; in Greek, exporeutai) from the Father. In conciliar unified fashion, they professed this belief through the Symbol of Faith: I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father. On the procession of the Holy Spirit, Saint Cyril of 5 6

 See note 22.  Available electronically in: http://catechism.royaldoors.net/catechism/

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Alexandria teaches: “The Holy Spirit is the one [who …] pours forth from God the Father, through the Son, and shows to us his existence, in the image of breath of the mouth.” (Cyril of Alexandria, Dialogues on the Holy and Consubstantial Trinity, 2: PG 75, 722–723)

The next paragraph (98) sounds quite interesting, for it touches the subtle issue of the distinction between economy and theology and refers to Cyril of Alexandria as well as to the synods of Ferrara-Florence (1438–1445) and Brest (1596). It states as follows: The Holy Fathers made a distinction between the interior life of the Most Holy Trinity and the revelation of the Trinity in creation. In the Most Holy Trinity, the Holy Spirit proceeds (in Ukrainian, iskhodyt; in Greek, exporeutai) from the Father—the one and only Source of the Most Holy Trinity. When the Holy Fathers spoke about the action of the Persons of the Trinity in creation, they professed that the Father sends the Holy Spirit through the Son. (75 See Gregory of Nyssa, On the Life of Saint Gregory the Wonderworker: PG 46, 912). Saint Cyril of Alexandria, professing this very same faith, explained this sending of the Holy Spirit through the Son as the fact that the Holy Spirit ‘comes from (in Ukrainian, pokhodyt; in Greek, proienai) the Father and the Son’ (See Cyril of Alexandria, Thesaurus on the Holy and Consubstantial Trinity: PG 75, 9-656). This interpretation was emphasized by the Fathers of the Council of Florence: “Some [were] saying the Holy Spirit comes from the Father and the Son, others saying the Holy Spirit comes from the Father through the Son. All were aiming at the same meaning in different words” (77 Council of Florence, Bull Laetentur caeli [Let the Heavens Rejoice] (July 6, 1439). This opinion was also expressed in the Articles of the Union of Brest: The Holy Spirit […] proceeds from one Source, as if from a well-spring, from the Father, through the Son.7

Evaluating these statements, one can detect both positive and problematic elements contributing, on the one hand, to the rapprochement of the Ukrainian Greek Catholics with the Orthodox Church and, on the other hand, paving the way for further estrangement.

7  See Article 1 of the Union of Brest, mentioned in Ernst Christoph Suttner, Quellen zur Geschichte der Kirchenunionen des 16. Bis 18. Jahrhunderts eds. Barbara Hallensleben/ Nikolaus Wyrwoll (Münster: Aschendorff, 2017), 35.

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2   Positive Elements 1. It is very encouraging that the Catechism speaks directly and clearly of the Father as the origin of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and thus one and only source within the Trinity. This decidedly statement on the monarchy of the Father recalls Photios’s8 own view as set forth in his Mystagogy— that is, the Holy Spirit proceeds only from the Father.9 This view excludes any conception of the Son as a second principle equal to Father, safeguards the divine simplicity, and is compatible with the Cappadocian trinitarian model.10 2. The second positive and constructive point is the reference to proceeding from the Father, coming to rest in the Word, and expressing the Word according to John Damascenus’s Expositio Fidei. This point was included not only in the first two documents of the dialogue11 but also in the Vatican clarification on the issue of the procession issued in 1995.12 This idea of the eternal resting of the Spirit in the Son with respect to the consubstantiality and the trinitarian perichorisis (περιχώρησις) was evaluated in a constructive and positive way by several scholars who participated in the 1998 international conference in Vienna focused on the papal clarification. They held it as a point of convergence and mutual understanding

8  Famous Patriarch of Constantinople in two periods, 858–867 and 877–886. He is recognized in the Eastern Orthodox Church as Saint Photius the Great. He decisively influenced the filioque controversy through his famous polemical work the Mystagogy on the Holy Spirit. A new critical edition has recently came up on this work, this of Valerio Polidori. See note below. 9  See Valerio Polidori, ed., Fozio. Mistagogia del Santo Spirito (Roma: Carocci, 2018), 2: οὕτως καὶ τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον ἐκ μόνου καὶ τοῦ αὐτοὺ αἰτίου θεολογεῖται ἐκπορεύεσθαι. 10  See Gregory of Nazianzus “Oratio XLII.15,” in Grégoire de Nazianze. Discourse: 42–43 (Sources Chrétiennes, Volume 384), ed. Jean Bernardi (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1992), 82, 17–18. On the idea of the Monarchy of the Father in the thought of Gregory of Nazianzus, see: C.  Beeley, “Divine Causality and the Monarchy of God the Father in Gregory of Nazianzus,” Harvard Theological Review 100, no. 2 (2007): 199–214. 11  See the Documents of Munich 1982 (Nr. I.6) and of Valamo 1988 (Nr. I.6), in Dokumente des Offiziellen Orthodox-Katholischen Dialogs (1980–2010), ed. Pro Oriente (Wien: Tyrolia, 2010), 4.25. 12  See “Die griechische und die lateinische Überlieferung über den Ausgang des Heiligen Geistes. Eine Klarstellung in Verantwortung des päpstlichen Rates zur Förderung der Einheit der Christen,” in Stirnemann, Vom Heiligen Geist, 30.

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between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches on the issue of the procession of the Holy Spirit.13 3. The third noteworthy point is the clear distinction made between the interior life of the Most Holy Trinity and the revelation of the Trinity in creation. This distinction is of pivotal importance for both Catholic and Orthodox trinitarian theology. The clarification of the relation between these two levels of “being” (acknowledging that being is for the uncreated God improperly used) has various implications for both Primacy and the filioque.14 Beginning with Karl Rahner, trinitarian theology in the West accepted as an axiom not some sort of correspondence, but an absolute identity between theology and economy.15 This identity found its ultimate expression in Rahner’s grundaxiom: “The economic trinity is the immanent trinity and vice versa.”16 For Jürgen Moltmann, “The pain of the cross defines the inner life of the triune God for ever and ever.”17 This contradicts the Orthodox reading of both patristic and philosophical sources. For example: Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagites There is no exact correspondence between caused things and causes, but while caused things bear within themselves the images of the causes, yet the causes themselves transcend what is caused and surpass them by reason of their own origin.18

13   Waclaw Hryniewicz, “Versöhnung im Trinitarischen Glauben? Zur römischen Klarstellung über den Ausgang des Heiligen Geistes,” in Stirnemann, Vom Heiligen Geist, 65. 14  See T. Alexopoulos, “Auf dem Weg zu einem Konsens zwischen den Schwesternkirchen des Ostens und des Westens? Ein Vorschlag für einen theologischen Konsenstext im Blick auf die Ökumenizität der Synode von 879/80, das Filioque und das Verhältnis zwischen Theologia und Oikonomia,” Catholica 72, no. 3 (2018): 184–214. 15  See A. Vletsis, “Die immanente Trinität ist die ‘doxologische Trinität.’ Die entsprechung von ‘Theologia’ und ‘Oikonomia’ als Voraussetzung einer Annäherung der trintätsmodelle von Ost und West,” Una Sancta 64, no. 1 (2009): 11–12. 16  K. Rahner, “Einzigkeit und Dreifaltigkeit im Gespräch mit dem Islam” in Schriften zur Theologie xiii, edited by Paul Imhof (Zürich: Benzinger, 1978), 139. 17  Bletsis, Die immanente Trinität, 10, note 8. See also Karl Rahner, Mysterium Salutatis. Grundriß heilsgeschichtlicher Dogmatik Band II, eds. Johannes Feiner/Magnus Lohrer (Einsiedlen: Benziger, 1967), 328 and Jürgen Moltmann, Trinität und Reich Gottes. Zur Gotteslehre (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlaghaus, 1986), 177. 18  Dion. Areop., “Divinis Nominibus,” II.8 (Patristische Texte und Studien, Volume 33), ed. Beate Regina Suchla (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1990), 132, 14–17.

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Plotinus We say something about it (the Absolute), but do not state it as such. Rather, our conduct is to talk about it, but not to state it. For, we say what it (sc. the Absolute) is not, but we do not state what it is. In this way, we make statements about It based on what comes after It.19 Consequently, traditional Orthodox understanding of the relation between theology and economy can accept Rahner’s basic hermeneutical principle that in revelation no other God is revealed to us other than the one who is. However, the Orthodox would qualify this statement as follows: In revelation, no other God has shown Himself to us other than the one who really exists. He reveals himself “not in the way that He really exists, but in a way that is befitting and comprehensible to them to whom He (in unspeakable accommodation—δι’οἰκονομίαν ἄφατον) reveals himself (… οὐχ ὡς ἔστιν, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἑκάστῳ τῶν ἐμφανιζομένων δυνατὸν τε καὶ συμφέρον).”20 Therefore, the use of existential terms and categories in order to express the divine remains conditional and incapable of expressing the fullness of God’s trinitarian nature. Everything we speak and think of God, Photius says, we do from the point of view of our created world and use these words analogously: “For the all-holy Trinity is equal and equally powerful, arranging everything, aiming at our salvation, and thus everything that we are able to say theologically has been given to us graciously and out of love for humanity, and at the same time having taken all upon itself.”21

19  Plotinus, “Enneades,” V 3, 14, in Plotini Opera, Volume II, eds. Paul Henry/Hans Rudolf Schwytzer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 227, 1–8: λέγομεν μέν τι περὶ αὐτοῦ, οὐ μὴν αὐτὸ λέγομεν; ἀλλ’ οὕτως ἔχομεν, ὥστε περὶ αὐτοῦ μὲν λέγειν, αὐτὸ δὲ μὴ λέγειν· καὶ γὰρ λέγομεν, ὃ μὴ ἔστιν, ὃ δὲ ἐστιν, οὐ λέγομεν· ὥστε ἐκ τῶν ὕστερον περὶ αὐτοῦ λέγομεν. 20  Photius, “Bibliothèque” Code 222, 189b (Photius. Bibliothèque, Volume III), ed. René Henry (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1959–1991), 176, 17–21: ζητεῖ γὰρ διὰ τι προτέτακται ὁ πατὴρ τοῦ υἱοῦ, εἶτα τὸ πνεῦμα τρίτον συντάσσεται. ὡς ἡ θεία φύσις ἄρρητος οὖσα καὶ ἀκατάληπτος, δῆλον ὡς οὔτε λογισμῷ τινι οὔτε ῥήματι αὐτὸ τοῦτο ὅπερ ἐστὶν ἐκκαλύπτεται ἢ ὀνομάζεται, οἷς δ’ ἂν καὶ ἐμφάνειαν δι’οἰκονομίαν ἀφατον καταστῇ οὐχ ὡς ἔστιν, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἑκάστῳ τῶν ἐμφανιζομένων δυνατὸν τε καὶ συμφέρον, οὕτως αὑτῆς τοῦ κάλλους τὰς μαραμρυγὰς ἐνίησί τε τοῖς εἰς αὐτὴν ἀτενίζουσι καὶ παραπολαύειν παρέχεται. 21  See Photius, Bibliothèque 222, 195b, 192, 23–29: πᾶν γὰρ ὃ λέγομεν περὶ θεοῦ ἢ νοοῦμεν, ἐκ τῶν καθ’ ἡμᾶς πραγμάτων τε καὶ ῥημάτων τὰ περὶ αὐτῆς ἀναλόγως καὶ λέγομεν καὶ νοοῦμεν. Ἰσότιμος δὲ καὶ ἰσοσθενὴς ἡ παναγία Τριάς, πάντα πρὸς τὴν ἡμετέραν σωτηρίαν οἰκονομοῦσα, καὶ ὅσα θεολογεῖν αὐτὴν δυναμούμεθα, αὐτὴ ταῦτα φιλανθρώπως ἡμῖν χαριζομένη πάλιν προσίεται.

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4. The fourth noteworthy point has to do with the phrase that the Spirit is made manifest through the Son. As Bolotov notes in his third thesis22on the filioque, one should not relegate every patristic use of the phrase through the Son to the temporal manifestation alone. On the contrary, Bolotov demonstrates very successfully that many patristic testimonies lay solid foundations of admitting the idea of the eternal manifestation of the Spirit through the Son. Bolotov rightfully refers to Saint Gregory of Nyssa’s account in the Contra Eunomium, in which the Cappadocian Father clearly states that the Holy Spirit is distinct in its one hypostasis from the Son not only by not subsisting hypostatically as the Only-­ begotten from God the Father, but also by the fact of being manifested through Him (δι’αὐτοῦ πεφηνέναι).23 The idea of the eternal manifestation of the Spirit through the Son is also very discernable in the trinitarian speculation of Gregory of Cyprus, who considers the Spirit as the revelatory power of the hidden depths of the Divinity and as the eternal glory of the consubstantial, super eternal, and undivided Trinity. As such, the Spirit shines forth and is revealed through the Son, and is eternally shown forth through him, just as the light of the sun shines forth by means of sun’s rays.24

3   Problematic Elements 1. The Catechism appeals, just as the Vatican’s clarification 1995, to Cyril of Alexandria, who speaks very specifically of the sending of the Spirit through the Son with respect to the creation. And yet Cyril’s trinitarian terminology is not always precise, sometimes leading to confusion. Perhaps this is why the Catechism, as the Ukrainian theologian Daniel Galadza rightly points out, says that this sending of the Spirit through the Son is 22  See Vasily Bolotov “Thesen über das Filioque von einem russischen Theologen,” Révue International de Théologie 24 (1898): 705. 23  See Gregory of Nyssa, “Contra Eunomium,” I 279f (Gregorii Nysseni Opera, Volume II), ed. Werner Jaeger (Leiden: Brill 1960), 108, 9–109, 1. 24  Gregorios Kyprios, “Apologia,” PG 142, 240  BC.  See Aristeidis Papadakis, Crisis in Byzantium: The Filioque Controversy in the Patriarchate of Gregory II of Cyprus (1283–9). (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press 1996), 91; Edward Siecienski, The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 141; Theodoros Alexopoulos, “The Eternal Manifestation of the Spirit ‘Through the Son’ According to Nikephoros Blemmydes and Gregory of Cyprus,” in I, ed. Myk Habets (London: Bloomsbury 2014): 65–86.

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also to be understood as a kind of proceeding from Him.25 Many scholars26 in the past have undertaken a thorough analysis of Cyril’s language, especially those passages allegedly favoring the filioque. Yet as Edward Siecienski emphatically underlines in his recent study, in none of these passages or anywhere in his writings does Cyril clearly say that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.27 Rather, he consistently maintains that the Spirit flows forth (προϊέναι, προχεῖται) indicating the consubstantiality of nature between Son and Spirit. A passage from Cyril’s exegesis of John 15:26 elucidates the distinction between the two concepts: Jesus calls the Paraclete “The Spirit of Truth,” [John 16:12–13] that is to say, his consoling Spirit, and at the same time he says He proceeds from the Father. Thus as the Spirit is naturally proper to the Son, who exists in Him and progresses through Him (δι’αὐτοῦ προϊόν), yet he is at the same time the Spirit of the Father.28

2. The second and in my opinion “fatal” step is the Catechism’s decision to appeal to the dogmatic teachings of Ferrara-Florence, namely that the Spirit “proceeds from one Source, as if from a well-spring, from the Father, through the Son.” This statement is nothing more than an effort to explain in a theologically sustainable way how the Spirit can proceed from both the Father and Son without implying at the same time any double cause (Diarchy) within the Trinity. It bears the stamp of the great Western theologian, Augustine of Hippo, and recalls one of his central arguments in favor of the filioque as put forward in De Trinitate: 25   See Daniel Galadza, “Die Griechisch-Katholischen Kirchen und die liturgische Erneuerung. 50 Jahre nach Sacrosanctum Concilium,” in Erbe und Erneuerung. Die Liturgiekonstitutuon des Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzils und ihre Folgen, eds. Hans-Jürgen Feulner/Andreas Bieringer/Benjamin Leven (Münster: LIT, 2015): 106. 26  For example, see: A. Theodorou, “The teaching on the procession of the Holy Spirit of Cyril of Alexandria and Epiphanius of Cyprus,” ΘΕΟΛΟΓΙΑ. 45 (1974): 80–101; A. de Halleux, “Cyrille, Theodoret et le ‘filioque’,” Révue d’Histoire Écclesiastique 74 (1979): 597–625; Marie-Odile Boulnois, “The Mystery of the Trinity according to Cyril of Alexandria: The Deployment of the Triad and Its Recapitulation into the Unity of Divinity,” in The Theology of St. Cyril of Alexandria, eds. Thomas G.  Weinandy/Daniel A.  Keating (London: T&T Clark, 2003): 75–111; S. Papadopoulos, Saint Cyril of Alexandria. Life, Theology, Christology, Hermeneutics, (Athens: Apostoliki Diakonia, 2004). 27  Siecienski, The Filioque, 49. 28  “Commentatorium in Joannem,” 10.15.26–27, PG 74, 417. See Siecienski, The Filioque, 49.

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One should confess that Father and Son are the principle of the Holy Spirit; not two principles, but, just as Father and Son are one God and with respect to the creation one Creator and one Lord, thus they are one single principle with respect to the Holy Spirit (fatendum est patrem et filium principium esse spiritus sancti non duo principia, sed sicut pater et filius unus deus et ad creaturam relatitue unus creator et unus dominus, sic relatitue ad spiritum sanctum unum principium).29

This specific view had a very deep impact on the dogmatic resolution of the Synod of Lyon (1274) and Synod of Ferrara-Florence (1438–1445)30 and on later theologians such as the great scholastic Thomas Aquinas and Byzantine unionists Constantine Melitiniotis and John Bekkos. It was the cornerstone of their attempt to secure the doctrine of the Monarchy of the Father on the one hand while, on the other, avoid the slip into Diarchy. It is meaningful in this context to quote both sets of writers: Thomas Aquinas: Father and Son are one principle of the Holy Spirit because of the unity of the divine power. They bring in one single action forth the Spirit. The three persons are also one principle of the creatures: in one single action they bring forth the creatures (pater et filius sunt unum principium spiritus sancti, propter unitatem divinae virtutis, et una ­productione producunt spiritum sanctum: sicut etiam tres personae sunt unum principium creaturae, et una actione creaturam producunt).31 Constantine Melitiniotis: Since indeed the Father exists through the Son as creator of the things produced by Him, He is in every way principle of the Spirit through the Son. For He is the one who proceeds the Spirit through 29  Augustinus, “De Trinitate,” V 14, 15, in Sacti Aurelii Augustini De Trinitate Libri XV (Corpus Christianorum, Volume 50), eds. W.  J. Mountain/Franciscus Glorie (Brepols: Turnhout 1968), 223, 30–35. 30  See Enchiridion Symbolorum Definitionem et Declarationum de rebus Fidei et Morum, eds. Heinrich Denzinger/ Peter Hünermann (Freiburg in Breisgau: Herder, 1999), Nr. 850. See also Markos Orphanos, ed., Constantinou Melitiniotou, Antirrhetici Logoi II (Athens: Organismos Ekdôseon Didaktikôn Biblion, 1986), 143, note 2. In a similar way, the Council of Florence has declared in its Union-statement “Laetuntur Caeli”: quod Spiritus Sanctus ex Patre et Filio aeternaliter est, et essentiam suam suumque esse subsistens habet ex Patre simul et Filio et ex utroque aeternaliter tamquam ab uno principio et unica spiratione procedit (DH, Nr. 1300). 31  Summa Contra Gentiles, IV.25, in Thomae Aquinatis, Summae contra gentiles libri quattuor, Book 4, ed/trans. M. H. Wörner (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2005), 194.

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him (ἐπείπερ δημιουργὸς ὁ Πατὴρ ὑπάρχει δι’ υἱοῦ τῶν δι’ αὐτοῦ γεγονότων, καὶ τοῦ πνεύματος δι’υἱοῦ πάντως αἴτιος ὅτι τοῦ πνεύματος προβολεὺς δι’αὐτοῦ ἔστι).32

Great Byzantine figures such as Gregory Palamas (1296–1359) and Nilus Cabasilas (1298–1363) had dealt with this specific view of drawing conclusions from the economy into theology tried to refute Augustine’s aforementioned original argument as follows: (a) Not only the Father and the Son jointly, but also the Holy Spirit, are together in absolute equality (because of the identity of the divine nature) a single principle vis-à-vis the creation. In dogmatic terms that is called a Triadic Monarchy toward the creation.33 That said, why should one exclude the Spirit from the trinitarian joint action ad extra at the very beginning of the argument according to which only Father and Son constitute one single principle with respect to the creation? If there is and should be a direct and exact correspondence between theology and economy, as the traditional catholic theology claims, then the Trias Father, Son, and Spirit at the level of theology should bring forth another, a fourth person, as they do at the level of economy. If we admit that the Holy Spirit, jointly with the Father and the Son, participates in the creation of beings and if we postulate an exact correspondence between the immanent and economic Trinity, what would keep the Spirit from participating in the begetting of the Son from the Father, so that symmetry and equality in the inner-trinitarian relations are maintained? (b) According to the argument of Augustine,34 there is an arithmetic (numerical) equivalence between the one begetter (γεννήτωρ), namely the Father, and the one producer (προβολεὺς), Father and Son, with respect to the Spirit. Thus if the Latin theology based merely on Augustine contends that the Father and Son constitute one producer in the bringing forth of the Spirit, and at the same accept that there is only one begetter of the Son (who is at the same time producer of the Spirit), this entails the possibility of interchangeability (ἀντιμετάθεσις) since things that are numerically equivalent are interchangeable. That consequently means that 32  See Constantine Melitiniotis, Antirrhetici Logoi II, 208, 28–209, 3. Compare with John Beccos, Refutatio libri Georgii Cyprii I.13, PG 141, 885. 33  See Greg. Palamas, “Logos Apodeiktikos,” I.14, in Logoi Apodeiktikoi (Γρηγορίου τοῦ Παλαμᾶ Συγγράμματα, Volume I), eds. Panagiotis Chrestou/Boris Bobrinskoy (Thessaloniki: Kyromanos, 1962–1992), 40, 24–25: ἡ δημιουργικἠ ἀρχὴ μία ἐστίν, ὁ πατὴρ, ὁ υἱὸς καὶ τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον (the creative principle is one, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit). 34  See note 29.

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there would be an equivalence in the defining properties (γεννητικὴ καὶ προβλητικὴ ἰδιότης) of the divine persons. In our case, if there was a numerical equivalence between the one begetter (Father) of the Son and the one producer (Father and Son) of the Spirit, this would force us to conclude that, on the one hand, the one begetter (γεννήτωρ), the Father, should be necessarily regarded as a producer (something admittable) and, on the other hand, the one producer (προβολεὺς), Father and Son, should be regarded as begetter as well, something that is impossible. This argument is clearly discernable in the following syllogism of Nilus Cabasilas: If Father and Son are one cause of the Spirit, as one producer (jointly), and if the Father alone is the cause of the Son, as one begetter, given to this fact, one should consider necessarily two principles and two causes within the deity. This is as follows: it is very clear that the only begetter, namely the Father, is not numerically identical with the one producer namely the Father and the Son. Wherefore? There is in no way a conversion of terms. Things are only interchangeable to each other when they numerically coincide with each other. That they are not interchangeable, that is clear in our case. For, on the one hand the one begetter is necessarily also a producer, on the other hand the one producer, that is to say, Father and Son, is not necessarily also a begetter.35

4   Application of the Bolotov’s 33 Theses As it was stressed above, Bolotov’s third thesis on the eternal and temporal manifestation of the Spirit through the Son is of pivotal importance for getting out of our ecumenical dead end as it concerns the filioque, finally achieving a solution on the issue of the procession of the Spirit. It is important to stress that Bolotov rightly sees the root causes of the filioque problem in the trinitarian speculation of Augustine (see Thesis 16). 35  Nilus Cabasilas, “De processione Spir. Sancti,” I.1.26, Codex Marcianus graecus II 9, f 23v-24. See Konstantinos Liakouras, The Teaching on the Procession of the Holy Spirit according to Nilus Cabasilas (Athens: Symmetria 1997), 258, note 19. Εἰ ὁ πατὴρ καὶ ὁ υἱὸς ἓν αἴτιον τοῦ πνεύματος, ὡς εἷς προβολεύς, αἴτιος δὲ καὶ ὁ πατὴρ μόνος τοῦ υἱοῦ ὡς εἷς γεννήτωρ, πάσα ἀνάγκη τούτου κειμένου δύο ἀρχὰς καὶ δύο αἴτια νομίζειν θεότητος. Ἔχει γὰρ οὕτως· ὁ εἷς γεννήτωρ μόνος, ὁ πατὴρ δηλαδή, οὐκ ἔστι ταὐτὸν τῷ ἀριθμῷ τῷ ἑνὶ προβολεῖ, τῷ πατρὶ καὶ τῷ υἱῷ δηλονότι. Πόθεν; οὐδὲ γὰρ ἀντιστρέφει· ἀντιστρέφει δὲ ἀλλήλοις ὅσα ταὐτὰ τῷ ἀριθμῷ λέγεται. Ὅτι δὲ οὐκ ἀντιστρέφει, δῆλον· ὁ μὲν γὰρ εἷς γεννήτωρ καὶ προβολεὺς ἐξ ἀνάγκης, ὁ δὲ εἷς προβολεὺς, ὁ πατὴρ καὶ ὁ υἱὸς δηλαδή, οὐ πάντως καὶ γεννήτωρ.

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According to Bolotov, the development of the filioque in the West is the result of Augustine’s writing on the subject and as such properly belongs to the sphere of private opinion, even if it was widely accepted in the Latin Church after the sixth century.36 The filioque only became a real problem and acquired a theological validity when the Latins of the eleventh century unilaterally, but synodically, changed this theological formulation into a dogmatic confessional formula by changing the original text of the Creed. If we take into account that the Roman Catholic Church declared the validity of the filioque clause at two very important Synods (in Lyon 1274 and in Ferrara-Florence 1438–1439), both now regarded as ecumenical by the Catholic Church, it would seem difficult (but not impossible) for the Catholic Church to downgrade the importance of the filioque to the sphere of a theologoumenon or of a private theological opinion.37 The fact that within the last 30  years there have been some instances where the popes did not recite the Creed with the filioque in the ecumenical prayer services is itself encouraging and promotes the unity. Nevertheless, it has simply only a symbolical and not a dogmatical weight at all. For, if the filioque was inserted into the Symbol as a clause of faith should be in an equivalent way removed as such, if the circumstances require it. In other words, if the filioque was synodically inserted, it should be also synodically removed. I will focus my attention now on Bolotov’s Theses 25 and 26, which, in my view, are both very problematic and require further investigation. Thesis 26 states: “It was not the question of filioque that caused the division of the Church.” The filioque was surely not the only cause of the Great Schism between East of West, but it was a fundamental one. Its development in the West is firmly associated with political interests and conflicts. However, we should not conclude that the problem is in its very nature a political one.38 The filioque is, at its core, a theological dogmatic problem, and this we know from the primary sources of that period. If one were to take a closer look at the writings of Michael Keroularios, one would find that, as John  See “Thesen über das Filioque,” 710–711.  As a private theological opinion, according to Bolotov, one should not regard the filioque as an “Impedimentum dirimens” for reestablishing communion with the Catholic Church. See ibid., 713. 38  See D. Ritschl, “Historical Development and Implication of the Filioque Controversy,” in Intergerini Parietis Septum: Essays Presented to Markus Bath on His Sixty-Fifth Birthday, eds. Dikran Y. Hadidian/Markus Barth (Pittsburgh: Pickwick, 1981), 300. 36 37

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Karmiris points out, his thought is very much in line with Photios, who considered the filioque both an uncanonical addition to the Creed and a false teaching.39 He considered the interpolation to be an unauthorized violation of a Creed clearly confirmed, ratified, and sealed by all seven Ecumenical Councils.40 Thesis 25: “Photius and his successors remained in communion with the western church, not having received (and apparently not having demanded) from her a conciliar denial verbis explicitissimis of the filioque.” This position is incorrect for the following reasons: (a) In his famous Encyclical letter Photius characterized the filioque as the tip of evil (κορωνὶς τῶν κακῶν).41 According to Photius the Latins falsified the Holy Symbol of faith, whose correctness had been confirmed through the decisions of ecumenical councils.42 The same idea is seen in the work of Michael Keroularios43 in order to stress in an absolute and categorical way the uncanonical insertion to the Creed. (b) If someone compares the early Encyclical letter of Photius with the Horos of the Synod of 879–880 the clear and unequivocal tone of the condemnation is the same: If anyone, however, dares to rewrite and call as a Horos Rule of faith some other exposition besides that of the sacred Symbol which has been spread abroad from above by our blessed and holy Fathers, even as far as ourselves, and to snatch the authority of the confession of those divine men and impose on it his own invented phrases [ἰδίαις εὑρεσιολογίαις] and put this forth as a common lesson to the faithful or to those who return from some kind of heresy, and display the audacity to falsify completely [κατακιβδηλεῦσαι ἀποθρασυνθείη] the antiquity of this sacred and venerable Horos with ille39  See John Karmiris, ed., Dogmatica et Symbolica Monumenta Orthodoxae Catholicae Ecclesiae (Athens: J. Karmiris, 1960), Volume I, 331–348; esp. 333, 337, 342, and 344. 40  See John Karmiris, Ἀπόφασις ἢ Σημείωμα τῆς ἐν Κων/πόλει Συνόδου τοῦ 1054, in Karmiris Monumenta, 344. 41   See Photius, “Epistula 2,” in Photii Patriarchae Constantinopolitani Epistulae et Ampilochia, Volume I, eds. Basil Laourdas/Leendert Gerrit Westerink (Teubner: Leipzig, 1983), 43, 102. 42  Photius, Epistula 2, 43, 102–104. 43  Compare with the Horos of 879/880 next note 44: καὶ τὸ ἱερὸν καὶ ἅγιον σύμβολον, ὃ πᾶσι τοῖς συνοδικοῖς καὶ οἰκουμενικοῖς ψηφίσμασι ἄμαχον ἔχειν τὴν ἰσχύν, νόθοις λογισμοῖς καὶ παρεγγράπτοις λόγοις καὶ θράσους ὑπερβολῇ μὴ κιβδηλεύειν ἐθέλομεν (and we don’t want at all that the sacred and venerable Creed of faith, which has acquired through synodical and ecumenical votes invincible might, to be falsified with false thoughts and illegitimate words as well as with an excess in audacity). See note 40.

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gitimate words (ῥήμασι νόθοις), or additions, or subtractions, such a person should, according to the vote of the holy and Ecumenical Councils, which has been already acclaimed before us, be subjected to complete defrocking if he happens to be one of the clergy, or be sent away with an anathema if he happens to be one of the lay people.44

(c) Thus, in the Horos of the Synod of 879–880 we have, albeit framed more diplomatically, a clear and canonical condemnation of the filioque, even though the word itself neither does nor appear verbis explicitissimis. An Orthodox scholar (J. Meijer) having dealt extensively with the Synod of 879–880 pointed out that there is no doubt that the Horos of the Photian Synod officially disapproved of the filioque’s use by the Frankish missionaries in Bulgaria and that this condemnation was not directed against the Church of Rome, which at that time did not use the addition either.45 The fact that this condemnation has canonical validity and concerns indirectly, but very clearly, the filioque is verified also by the later letter of Photius to the Archbishop of Aquileia, where Photius again spoke of the ratification of the uninterpolated Symbol by the Latin delegation.46 It was only much later that the Roman Church broke with the decisions of the Synod of 879/880 and unilaterally inserted the filioque into the Creed. 44  The translation here has been adapted by the author from the existing translation by G.  Dragas in “The Eighth Ecumenical Council: Constantinople IV (879/880) and the Condemnation of the Filioque Addition and Doctrine,” The Greek Orthodox Theological Review 44, no. 1–4 (1999): 357–369. 45  See A Successful Council of Union. A Theological Analysis of the Photian Synod of 879/880 (Thessaloniki: Analekta Blatâdon, 1975), 185. A similar view is found in E. Siecienski, The Papacy and the Orthodox. Sources and History of a Debate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). 224. 46   See Photius, “Epistula 291” (Photii Patriarchae Constantinopolitani Epistulae et Amphilochia, Volume III), eds. Basil Laourdas/Leendert Gerrit Westerink (Teubner: Leipzig, 1985), 150, 372–151, 378: ἀλλὰ γὰρ καὶ συνόδου συγκροτηθείσης ἐπί τισιν ἐκκλησιαστικοῖς κεφαλαίοις, οἱ ἐκεῖθεν ἀπεσταλμένοι τοῦ ἐν ἁγίοις Ἰωάννου τοποτηρηταί, ὡς αὐτοῦ παρόντος ἐκείνου καὶ συνθεολογοῦντος ἡμῖν τὴν εὐσέβειαν, τῷ συμβόλῳ τῆς πίστεως τῷ διὰ πασῶν τῶν οἰκουμενικῶν συνόδων κατὰ τὴν δεσποτικὴν φωνὴν καὶ κηρυσσομένῳ καὶ κρατουμένῳ ὡς ὁμόφρονες καὶ φωνῇ καὶ γλώσσῃ καὶ ἰδιοχείρῳ γραφῇ καθυπεσημήναντο (But certainly, when a synod was convoked in order to deal with some ecclesiastical questions, the envoyed (from Rome) deputies of John, who belonged to the choir of the saints, as if he himself had been there and proclaimed with us the (same) Orthodox faith, as fully equal-minded in voice and tongue have signed by their own hands the symbol of faith, been proclaimed and affirmed by all the ecumenical synods according to the voice of the Lord [translation mine]).

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5   Points of Rapprochement 1. There should be joint recognition of the Synod of 879–880 as the Eighth Ecumenical Council. This solution entails two benefits for the Catholic Church: (a) the Catholic Church would not need to declare the teaching of filioque as erroneous and heretical; (b) she would demonstrate that she is in accord with the dogmatic trinitarian tradition of the first millennium. 2. One could unreluctantly affirm that the Spirit as uncreated energy and eternal glory47 of the triune God, who is beyond any being, is made manifest eternally through the Son, as the sun unceasingly brings forth its rays. 3. We can all affirm that the Spirit as gift, as charismata, is distributed from the Father as the source of the deity through the Son to creation. 4. We can all affirm that the Spirit abides and rests eternally in the Son. 5. We could eventually grant the Catholic Church the possibility to profess the filioque in certain pastoral circumstances (in explaining the relation of the Spirit to the Son in terms of the eternal manifestation through the Son—the so-called Orthodox filioque ) but not any more in the text of the Creed. 6. At the end we can all affirm (with reference to the Synod of 879–880) that the holy teaching of the trinitarian unity of essence, the Symbol of Faith (NC), which we have received of old as a straight p ­ lumb-­line of guidance for the pure and unblemished faith of Christians, and as a deposit from the Fathers, and which has been clearly and ceaselessly confirmed, ratified, and sealed by all Eight Ecumenical Councils, is—and should be—the absolute, single, unrepeatable, undebatable, unshakeable primordial dogmatic basis for the renewed drawing together and reunion of the Christians scattered about the earth, which basis can be neither changed nor falsified in the future. The one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church recognizes, throughout the centuries, one sole Symbol of Faith, which has ecumenical scope, universal validity, and binding and invincible might.

47  See Gregory of Nyssa, “In Canticum Canticorum,” Hom. VI (Gregorii Nysseni Opera, Volume VI), ed. Hans Langerbeck (Leiden: Brill, 1960), 467, 5.

Eastern Catholicism and the Reunion of the Churches in Vladimir Soloviev’s Political Ecclesiology Nathaniel Wood

This chapter examines the place of Eastern Catholicism in the political theology of Vladimir Sergeevich Soloviev (1853–1900), the man once hailed by his fellow Russian religious philosopher S. L. Frank “the greatest of Russian philosophers and systematic religious thinkers”1 and considered by Hans Urs von Balthasar as “perhaps second only to Thomas Aquinas as the greatest artist of order and organization in the history of thought.”2 Soloviev is best known for his controversial investigations into the

1  A Solovyov Anthology, ed. S. L. Frank, trans. Nathalie Duddington (London: SCM Press, 1950), 9. 2  Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics. Volume III: Studies in Theological Style: Lay Styles, trans. Andrew Louth, John Saward, Martin Simon, et al. (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius, 1986), p. 284.

N. Wood (*) Orthodox Christian Studies Center, Fordham University, New York, NY, USA © The Author(s) 2021 V. Latinovic, A. K. Wooden (eds.), Stolen Churches or Bridges to Orthodoxy?, Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55442-2_12

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metaphysics of Sophia, or Divine Wisdom, but he is also well known for his pioneering advocacy of ecumenical theology and for championing Orthodox-Catholic unity. As Georges Florovsky notes, it was Soloviev’s work that “formally raised” the question of the reunion of the Orthodox and Catholic churches in modern Orthodox circles.3 Although Soloviev never abandoned the metaphysical and anti-positivist interests that defined his early career,4 during the 1880s, the problem of the East-West schism became the central preoccupation of his intellectual efforts. Together with pro-union Catholics with whom he was in communication during this period, Soloviev became a forerunner of the twentieth-century ecumenical movement, and his radical vision of ecclesial unity is still appreciated today. For example, in his address to a 2003 conference on Soloviev’s ecumenical contributions at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, Pope John Paul II expressed deep admiration for the Russian religious philosopher, adeptly capturing the heart of Soloviev’s ecumenical vision: This event, which gathers people of the Eastern and Western cultures, will enable them to compare their reflections on the truth of the one Gospel of Christ and to see the reciprocal fruitfulness that can result, confirming the Church’s need to be able to breathe with both her lungs: the Eastern Tradition and the Western Tradition […]. Especially in his later years, Solovyov harboured the ardent desire that the Churches would likewise enter into a perspective of encounter and communion, each one contributing the treasures of her own tradition and feeling mutually responsible for the unity of the faith and for ecclesial discipline.5

This vision of communion and mutual exchange between the churches is a crucial feature of Soloviev’s religious-philosophical project centered on the restoration of cosmic unity within the divine-human unity of Christ— the doctrine of theosis or deification. For Soloviev, theosis is also the foundation for a Christian humanism and a politics devoted to the freedom and 3  Georges Florovsky, “The Problem of Ecumenical Encounter,” in Rediscovering Eastern Christendom: Essays in Commemoration of Dom Bede Winslow. Eds. E.J.B.  Fry and A.H. Armstrong (London: Darton Longman & Todd, 1963), 69. 4  On the connections between Soloviev’s metaphysics and his ecumenical theology, see Teresa Obolevitch, “The Metaphysical Foundations of the Ecumenical Project of Vladimir Solovyov,” Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 67 (1–2) (2015) 31–43. 5  Address to Conference, “Vladimir Soloviev, Russia and the Universal Church,” Lviv, Ukraine, October 28, 2003, L’Osservatore Romano, Eng. edition (12/10/03).

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flourishing of the human person. His vision of Orthodox-Catholic unity must be understood in connection to this “politics of theosis.” Soloviev’s ecumenical ecclesiology is especially pertinent to the question of the Eastern Catholic churches. To be clear, Soloviev does not focus much on the question of the Orthodox Church’s relationship to Eastern Catholicism specifically. Nevertheless, the nature of his proposals for Orthodox reunion with Rome makes the Eastern Catholic question inescapable in any assessment of his life and thought. In short, there is a question whether Soloviev’s theology ultimately is Orthodox or Eastern Catholic—and to what extent clear lines of demarcation can be drawn between these two. Soloviev is most commonly associated with the Russian Orthodox tradition into which he was born and to which he returned after a brief youthful flirtation with non-belief. His most characteristic contributions to religious metaphysics—his Sophiological speculation and his doctrine of “Divine-Humanity” or “Godmanhood” (bogochelovechestvo)— are typically located within the development of modern Orthodox theology, with their most immediate impact on Orthodox theologians such as Sergei Bulgakov and Pavel Florensky, as well as on Orthodox theologies that reacted against his methods and conclusions (e.g., the neo-patristic synthesis). Beginning during his lifetime, however, there have been Catholic readers of Soloviev, including Eastern Catholics, who have laid claim to the man and to his legacy. Many of these readers considered Soloviev himself a convert to the Catholic faith—treating him, essentially, as an Eastern Catholic. Whatever his personal faith, it is certainly true that his influence was not limited to the Orthodox. His ecumenical theology in particular influenced the fledgling Catholic community in Russia during and after his lifetime, and he was highly regarded among Ukrainian Catholics, including Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky.6 Therefore, there are several Catholic interpreters of Soloviev who stress the “Catholic” spirit both of his theology and of his personal piety. This emphasis on a “Catholic Soloviev” is present, for instance, in his first major biography by his nephew Sergey Soloviev,7 himself an Eastern Catholic convert priest whose conversion was influenced by his uncle’s work. Likewise, an even 6  Igor G.  Vishnevetsky, “Sergey Solovyov as a Historian of Philosophy and Culture.” Forward to Sergey M. Solovyov, Vladimir Solovyov: His Life and Creative Evolution, trans. Aleksey Gibson (Fairfax: Eastern Christian Publications, 2000), xvi. 7  Sergey M. Solovyov, Vladimir Solovyov: His Life and Creative Evolution, trans. Aleksey Gibson (Fairfax: Eastern Christian Publications, 2000).

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stronger Catholic stress is found in the major early study of Soloviev’s work, Vladimir Soloviev: A Russian Newman (1911) by Michel d’Herbigny,8 a Jesuit scholar of Eastern Christianity who later was clandestinely ordained a bishop to head up the Vatican’s efforts to reestablish a secret Catholic hierarchy inside the Soviet Union. Robert Taft once wrote that Eastern Catholic theology is difficult to define, but you know it when you see it.9 However, looks can be deceiving in Soloviev’s case. This chapter argues that there is no compelling evidence to suggest that Soloviev ever understood his religious philosophy to be anything other than a modern interpretation of the living Orthodox tradition, however novel and idiosyncratic many of his specific proposals might have been. At the same time, it is undeniable that much of his ecumenical thought—including his forceful defense of papal primacy and his call for Orthodox reunion with the church in Rome—can be read, and has been read, as making a powerful theological case for a sort of Eastern Catholicism. The following sections will examine both the question of his possible conversion and his theological rationale for reunion, suggesting that the Catholic features of his thought are best understood as emerging from the creative dialogue between the Orthodox tradition and the demands of modern politics. In Soloviev’s view, it will be shown, there is an Orthodox rationale for the turn toward Catholicism, and this Catholic turn is not the abandonment of Orthodoxy but rather the fulfillment of Orthodoxy’s own logic: the logic of Divine-Humanity, which, it will be shown, is also a political-theological logic. The purpose of this chapter, then, is not to dwell on the question of which tradition “owns” Soloviev and his theological legacy, since that would not do justice to the interesting features of his thought. Instead, it will present Soloviev’s political ecclesiology as a proposal for what might be considered an “Orthodox Catholicism,” pointing to the possibility of an Eastern Catholic theology that can serve as a bridge between the Orthodox East and Catholic West.

8  Michel d’Herbigny, Vladimir Soloviev: A Russian Newman (1853–1900), trans. A. M. Buchanan (San Rafael, CA: Semantron Press, 2007). 9  Robert F. Taft, S.J., “Eastern Catholic Theology: Slow Rebirth After a Long and Difficult Gestation,” Eastern Churches Journal 8.2 (2001), 53.

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1   Was Soloviev a Convert to Eastern Catholicism? Although the main purpose of this chapter is not biographical, Soloviev’s ecumenical theology is better understood if one keeps in mind a few significant details surrounding his personal ecclesiological affiliation. Specifically, this section will look at the question “Was Soloviev a convert to Eastern Catholicism?” While there has been debate surrounding this question even among those who were close to Soloviev, the evidence points away from his status as a convert, even though this does not suggest that he did not understand himself to be “Catholic” in an important sense. Looking briefly at his personal ties to Catholicism will help to flesh out his understanding of the nature of the Church and of Orthodox-Catholic reunion. Soloviev’s ecclesiastical affiliation during the latter part of his life was a disputed topic even during his lifetime. His relationship to the Orthodox Church and suspicions of a turn to Catholicism first became a topic of interest during the 1880s, the period during which he undertook the bulk of his ecumenical activity. His first major ecumenical work, The Great Dispute and Christian Politics (1883), demonstrated a remarkable openness toward Catholicism and the papacy, which annoyed some of his Russian colleagues but attracted the attention of ecumenically minded Catholics abroad. Throughout the remainder of the 1880s, he traveled west and made contacts with Catholic clergy and intellectuals, including many committed to the reunion of the churches. Among those impressed by the vision laid out in The Great Dispute was the Croatian Catholic bishop Joseph Strossmayer, an ardent champion not only of reunion but also of the importance of unified (and non-Latinized) Slavic Christianity.10 Strossmayer, much like Soloviev, promoted the reunion of the churches in a manner that would preserve the particularity of each. Anticipating Soloviev’s position, he once wrote: I am publicly trying to demonstrate that between us (both churches) there is not the slightest dogmatic difference; I have in this respect convinced even the Holy See. […] We should remain what we are; the only thing we should endeavor to accomplish is to form a single moral and juridical body in which

10  For more on Strossmayer’s pan-Slavism and promotion of Slavic Christianity in relation to Soloviev, see Ante Kadic, “Vladimir Soloviev and Bishop Strossmayer,” The American Slavic and East European Review 20 (1961), 163–188.

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nobody should lose anything dear to him; on the contrary, from this mutual contact we shall enrich what we already have.11

It was during this period of contact with the Catholics like Strossmayer that Soloviev was most optimistic about the possibility of reunion and during which he published (mostly abroad) his other major ecumenical writings, including The History and Future of Theocracy (1887) and Russia and the Universal Church (1889). One of the consequences of these ecumenical writings and his close association with Strossmayer and other Catholics was that many Catholics had come to expect his imminent conversion to the Catholic Church, while many Orthodox in Russia accused him of shaming Orthodoxy by becoming a propagandist for Catholicism and papalism. Consequently, he faced new difficulties in finding publishing venues in Russia for some of his writings, while others were banned from distribution in the country.12 Facing Orthodox resistance back home and the realization that the position of men like Strossmayer was a minority view in the Catholic Church, Soloviev became disillusioned about the possibility of implementing his ecumenical project in the 1890s, the last decade of his life. By 1890, his writings shifted away from explicit focus on ecumenical topics. Yet debates about his relationship to Catholicism would hardly subside, since events during this decade would complicate the question even more than before. Specifically, in February 1896, Soloviev secretly recited the Tridentine confession of faith and received the sacrament of communion from one of his associates, the Eastern Catholic priest Fr. Nicholas Tolstoy, a recent convert and leader of the small Russian Catholic community in Moscow that gathered in Soloviev’s apartment. (Moreover, according to S. Soloviev, Tolstoy’s conversion had happened under Soloviev’s influence.13) Unsurprisingly, many Catholics interpreted Soloviev’s reception of the sacrament as an indicator of his formal admission into the Catholic Church.14 To many, the event seemed to confirm the long-anticipated  Quoted in Kadic.  Kadic, 178. 13  S. Solovyov, Vladimir Solovyov, 437. Jeremy Pilch affirms this view, noting the Tolstoy was informally a student of Soloviev and formed his ideas about Orthodox-Catholic unity from Soloviev’s influence. See Jeremy Pilch, “Vladimir Solov’ev and the 19th-Century Pioneers of Catholic-Orthodox Reunion,” The Downside Review 135(1) (2017), 49–50. 14  S. Solovyov, Vladimir Solovyov, 437–440. 11 12

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conversion that his ecumenical activity in the 1880s had foreshadowed. Indeed, a letter published in facsimile in 1927 in the Warsaw-based journal Kitezh and signed by Fr. Tolstoy himself explicitly affirms the idea that Soloviev made a profession of the Catholic faith: After his confession heard by Fr. Tolstoy, Vladimir Sergeyevich in our presence read the Profession of Faith of the Tridentine Council in the church-­ Slavonic language and then during the liturgy which was performed by Fr. Tolstoy according to the Greek, or Eastern rite but with the mention of His Holiness, our Father, the Pope, he, Solovyev, received the Blessed Sacrament. Besides ourselves, at the memorable event there was present also a young Russian girl who was helping about the house in Fr. Tolstoy’s family; unfortunately, it has not been possible to ascertain her name. We believe that the publication of this testimony will eliminate all doubts concerning the facts brought forth in the above statement.15

Chrysostom Frank suggests Catholics present at the event clearly understood the event as marking Soloviev’s official entrance into communion with the Catholic Church. This is evidenced even by the fact that he was permitted to receive the sacrament at all. Moreover, Frank surmises that at least some Orthodox who had become aware of the event interpreted it the same way. These included the Orthodox priest Fr. Ivantsov-Platonov, whom Soloviev approached to receive the Eucharist a year after he had received it from Fr. Tolstoy, and who denied him the sacrament.16 It is clear that Soloviev had taken a significant spiritual step toward the Catholic Church in 1896. Did he understand this step as a conversion to Eastern-rite Catholicism or, in other words, as a movement away from Orthodoxy to Rome? This conclusion is doubtful, for reasons that shed light on his understanding of the ecumenical Church and the East-West schism. For one, biographically, we know that Soloviev would go on to die in good standing with the Russian Orthodox Church, apparently having repented of the earlier incident with Fr. Tolstoy and receiving communion from an Orthodox priest, Fr. Sergei Belyaev, on his deathbed. As S. L. Frank observes, it would be understandable for a Catholic convert on his deathbed to seek out an Orthodox priest in a country with such a minimal Catholic presence; it is strange, however, that he would have sought to 15  Quoted in Chrysostom Frank, “The Problem of Church Unity in the Life and Thought of Vladimir Soloviev,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 36 no. 3 (1992): 193–194. 16  C. Frank, 194.

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receive the Eucharist from an Orthodox priest three years before his death, as he had done with Fr. Ivantsov-Platonov, had he understood himself to have abandoned the Orthodox Church.17 Additionally, Chrysostom Frank cites as evidence against conversion a letter Soloviev wrote to Tsar Nicholas II after the Tolstoy incident, in which Soloviev denies conversion and declares Orthodoxy “the purest and most perfect Christianity,” as well as a subsequent letter in which he expresses a desire to “conform entirely with the Orthodox Church” on matters of doctrine.18 What is more, Soloviev appears to have considered individual conversions between the Orthodox and Catholic churches to be not only unnecessary but even harmful to his ecumenical project and had, in fact, discouraged Orthodox from becoming Catholics: “I believe that any individual conversion […] is not only useless but also harmful to the universal faith.”19 Many readers thus conclude that Soloviev’s single reported instance of receiving Catholic communion does not indicate conversion to Catholicism on his part. Instead, Soloviev was, in his own mind, a faithful Orthodox Christian who believed in a possibility of intercommunion with Rome as an Orthodox Christian. As S. L. Frank put it, “His communion in a Catholic church was not the action of a man who had found in Catholicism the only true Church, but the action of a religious free-thinker who in virtue of his faith in the one universal Church considered himself entitled to ignore the actual division of the churches.”20 The main reason Soloviev considered conversion harmful—if not ontologically impossible—was that he did not believe that, strictly speaking, there was any real division between the churches in the first place. The Eastern and Western churches remain mystically and sacramentally united despite their external, institutional division. It is also noteworthy, as Nicholas Lossky observes, that Fr. Tolstoy shared Soloviev’s belief in “the mystical unity of the Eastern and Western Churches, in spite of outward separation,”21 a fact that may help explain Soloviev’s comfort with receiving communion from him. The reason he felt he could receive the 17  S. L. Frank, “Was Solovyov a Convert to Roman Catholicism?” Appendix to A Solovyov Anthology, ed. S. L. Frank, trans. Natalie Duddington (London: SCM Press, 1950), 249. 18  C. Frank, 195. 19  Quoted in Dimitri Stremooukhoff, Vladimir Soloviev and His Messianic Work, trans. Elizabeth Meyendorff (Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1980), 222. 20  S. L. Frank, 253. 21  N.  O. Lossky, History of Russian Philosophy (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd.), 85–86.

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Eucharist from both Orthodox and Catholic priests, then, is that he considered himself to be both Orthodox and Catholic, or, perhaps more properly, “Orthodox-Catholic,” since he was “persuaded that both the Orthodox and the Catholic Churches were parts of the Universal Church, Christ’s Mystical Body, their historical separation never having destroyed their mystical unity.” Thus, according to the Estonian-born scholar Léon Tretjakewitsch, “Even as an Orthodox [Soloviev] considered himself a member of the Universal Church. He regarded the act of 1896 as an external affirmation of a unity already existing within himself and not as a ‘passing over’ from one Church to another.”22 In light of these considerations, Soloviev should not be considered a convert to Eastern Catholicism; however, that is not to diminish the central importance of Catholicism in his thought. Simply put, to treat Soloviev as a convert to the Catholic Church or an apologist for Catholicism does not do justice to his rich understanding of the Church or how it relates to his larger religious-philosophical project; it effectively erases everything interesting he has to say about Catholicism.

2   All-Unity and the Union of the Churches For Soloviev, there is a de jure but not a de facto schism between the Eastern and Western churches. It was for this reason that he could see himself “as a universal Christian, at once Orthodox and Catholic.”23 The significance of his ecumenical thinking lies in how he thought this dual identity was possible and why he considered it necessary for the fulfillment of Church’s mission in the world. Here his ecclesiology ties into his larger metaphysics of “all-unity” and the focus on the reconciliation of differences that is found throughout his writings. Soloviev develops these themes, for instance, in The Great Dispute and Christian Politics. There he argues that the schism stems from the “temporal negative attitude” of each of the churches for the other, which “has to do merely with historical manifestations of the Church and not with its 22  Léon Tretjakewitsch, Bishop Michel d’Herbigny, S.J., and Russia: A Pre-ecumenical Approach to Christian Unity (Wurzburg: Augustinus-Verlag, 1990), 39. Quoted in James Likoudis, “Vladimir Soloviev (‘The Russian Newman’) On Christian Politics and Ecumenism,” The Catholic Social Science Review 16 (2011), n. 28. 23  Paul Ladouceur, Modern Orthodox Theology: Behold, I Make All Things New (London: T & T Clark, 2019), 73.

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true religious essence.”24 The schism is ultimately a moral problem rooted in the cultural chauvinism and exclusivism of each half of the Christian world: Each side felt at bottom that it alone (apart from the other) contained the fulness of the universal Church and was the whole body of Christ. […] The so-called division of the churches, i.e. the violation of the brotherly union between the church people of the East and the West, naturally follows from the false view adopted by each of these main parts of Christendom in recognizing itself separately as the whole and appropriating to itself alone the whole fulness of the Church universal. That is the source both of the self-­ satisfied alienation of the East, and the self-confident proselytizing of the West.25

Soloviev’s argument in the quoted passage and throughout The Great Dispute shows an indebtedness to the Slavophile doctrine of ecclesial sobornost’ or conciliarity—“all-togetherness”—first articulated by Alexei Khomiakov. Notably, though, Soloviev transforms sobornost’ from its original anti-Catholic polemical use into a theological justification for Orthodox-Catholic unity. Khomiakov famously located the unity, truth, and holiness of the Church in the “mutual love” of Christians and in the reciprocal exchange of life-giving spiritual gifts that circulate throughout the Church like blood through the members of a body. However, sobornost’ properly belonged to the Orthodox Church, he thought, whereas the Catholic Church, by arrogantly claiming a monopoly on divine truth through its unilateral insertion of the filioque clause into the Nicene Creed, had denied mutuality with the East and thereby cut itself off from sobornost’ and thus from the true Church itself.26 The Catholic Church, in other words, had effectively declared itself to be the universal Church separately from the East, and it had thereby ceased to be the Church at all. Soloviev turns Khomiakov’s polemic on its head: it is not Rome alone but both the Western and the Eastern churches that have fallen into the error of one-sidedness; indeed, Khomiakov’s own anti-Catholic polemic exhibits a one-sidedness in tension with the mutuality at the heart of his own 24  Vladimir Solovyov, The Great Dispute and Christian Politics, in A Solovyov Anthology, ed. S. L. Frank, trans. Natalie Duddington (London: SCM Press, 1950), 99. 25  Solovyov, The Great Dispute, 100. 26  “Some Remarks by an Orthodox Christian Concerning the Western Communions, on the Occasion of a Brochure by Mr. Laurentie,” in On Christian Unity: A Slavophile Reader, trans. and eds. Boris Jakim and Robert Bird (Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne Press, 1998), 85.

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doctrine. Therefore, the sobornal nature of the Church demands, first of all, not the external reunion of the churches or the conversion of individuals from one church to the other, but a moral conversion of both the Catholic and the Orthodox communions away from mutual hostility and toward mutual love and the mutual recognition that each one is the universal Church only together with the other. The project of reunion, then, is not to create a universal Church, which “already exists in reality,” but, through the conversion of attitudes, “simply to make the visible manifestation of the Church conform to its real nature. The essential unity of the universal Church, hidden from our eyes, must become manifest through the visible reunion of the two ecclesiastical communities divided in history, though indivisible in Christ.”27 Teresa Obolevitch rightly observes that Soloviev’s view of Orthodox-­ Catholic reunion is rooted in his earlier metaphysical notion of “all-unity” or “total-unity” (vseedinstvo) that he had developed in his early critiques of positivism.28 The principle of all-unity expresses in the language of metaphysics the same fundamental commitment to harmonizing unity and particularity that had been central to Khomiakov’s sobornost’ ecclesiology. All-unity overcomes discord through the harmonization of differences within a more encompassing truth, such that these differences come to mutually fulfill each other. This dynamic must be understood also in connection to Soloviev’s larger focus on the harmonization of the divine grace and human action, which is expressed in the Divine-Humanity of Christ, in whom the divine and the human are united without confusion and in whom human freedom, penetrated and deified by divine grace, becomes the means of God’s activity in the world. This understanding of the mutually fulfilling unity of differences shapes Soloviev’s understanding of the mystical union of the Eastern and Western churches: “Each of the two churches already is the universal Church, though not separately from the other but in unity with it,” he writes.29 The vision Soloviev lays out in The Great Dispute is thus one of the churches’ mutual fulfillment of each other, according to which each is what it claims to be—the body of Christ—only together with the other. This means that the very essence of the Church, the divine-human society, is that of reconciliation. In its divine foundation, it is the inner harmony of  Soloviev, Great Dispute, 101.  Obolevitch, 39. 29  Solovyov, Great Dispute, 101. 27 28

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all things in God; in its temporal human manifestation, it is unity in process, the progressive overcoming of empirical division and discord through human freedom. For Soloviev, the deep civilizational differences between the East and the West predate the schism and indeed Christianity. Part of the “good news” of Christianity is that the Church overcomes the civilizational one-sidedness of both East and West by assimilating them into the higher harmony of ecclesial sobornost’, in which each contributes its unique gifts to the whole. Soloviev essentializes the East and West, with each representing one side of Divine-Humanity: the East represents “passive devotion to the Deity,” while the West represents “the independence of man.”30 The universal Church harmonizes the two, delivering each from its one-­ sidedness, into the free union of human and divine action. With the schism, however, the East and West have failed to reach this harmony. Instead, in their civilizational pride, each has identified its separate expression of one-sidedness with the Church as such and thus imposed their natural divisions onto the Church’s historical form. The result is that the historical Church has failed to harmonize the principles of divine truth and free human activity. Although, as we have seen, the Church’s mystical unity remains intact, the schism impedes the Church’s redemptive work of reconciliation. The Christian world becomes split between the rigid dogmatism, passive spiritualism, and political subservience of the Orthodox East, on the one hand, and the struggle between Catholic political authority and Protestant individualist rebellion, on the other hand. The result is a fractured Christianity unable to heal the fractured world. One does not have to accept Soloviev’s reductive, essentialist pictures of the East and West to appreciate the basic thrust of his argument: that the rivalry between the churches and their consequent failure to embody the mystical universality of the Church is, ultimately, a failure of Christian politics. The social mission of the Church cannot be fulfilled if Christianity remains divided against itself. Therefore, the moral “conversion” of the churches toward mutual love and the restoration of a unified Orthodox-­ Catholic Church is an essential part of Christianity’s political task. The demands of Christian politics, as a politics of unity, thus provide a major part of the rationale for Soloviev’s turn to Catholicism. It was not a turn away from Orthodoxy, but rather an attempt to realize in practice Orthodoxy’s own universality in union with Catholicism, for the sake of

 Solovyov, Great Dispute, 75.

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Christian politics. It is helpful now to consider the nature of that politics in connection to Orthodox-Catholic unity.

3   Orthodox Christian Politics and Soloviev’s Catholic Turn Social and political theological concerns permeate Soloviev’s entire religious-­philosophical system. Central to his work is the development of a Christian humanism and the defense of human dignity.31 His Lectures on Divine-Humanity establish his commitment to offering a metaphysical foundation for the “absolute, divine significance” of the human person, which he does on the basis of a creative retrieval of the Orthodox doctrine of theosis.32 Consequently, Soloviev had a generally positive view of various humanistic reforms that were underway in Europe and North America that were advancing the cause of human dignity and freedom: the expansion of religious liberty and freedom of conscience, the abolition of slavery and serfdom, the alleviation of poverty, opposition to torture and capital punishment, and so forth. In such reforms, there is providential movement toward the world’s deification.33 However, the full liberation of the human person, he thought, would have to be carried out on the basis of a correct understanding of the human person; it is precisely such an understanding that is absent from “revolutionary individualism” of secular movements such as the French Revolution, he argues: “[The revolutionaries] perceived in Man nothing but abstract individuality, a rational being destitute of all positive content.”34 Therefore, Christian politics must ensure that humanism is founded not on the rejection of God, but on the affirmation of the God-Man. Soloviev undertakes this task in developing his metaphysics of Divine-Humanity through his creative reimagining of 31  See Randall A. Poole, “Integral Humanisms: Jacques Maritain, Vladimir Soloviev, and the History of Human Rights,” Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Philosophy and Conflict Studies, 35 no. 1 (2019), 92–106; also Randall A. Poole, “Vladimir Solov’ëv’s Philosophical Anthropology: Autonomy, Dignity, Perfectibility,” in A History of Russian Philosophy 1830–1930: Faith, Reason, and the Defense of Human Dignity, ed. G.  M. Hamburg and Randall A. Poole (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 131–149. 32  Vladimir Solovyov, Lectures on Divine-Humanity, trans. Peter Zouboff, rev. and ed. Boris Jakim (Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne Press, 1995), 17. 33  See especially lectures one and two in Solovyov, Lectures. 34  Solovyov, Russia and the Universal Church trans. Herbert Rees (London: Geoffrey Bles – The Centenary Press: 1948), 8.

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the Orthodox doctrine of theosis. It is only through deification, he argues, that the human person is able to attain “positive absoluteness,” or positive divine content, which bestows inalienable rights.35 Soloviev later develops this idea in connection to his understanding of the incarnation as event, promise, and task. As event, the incarnation makes present in history a deified human personality in Jesus Christ and in turn promises a perfect community built on this personality: namely, the Church. The promise of perfect community in turn imposes on humanity the task of cooperating with God in building that community, of “further[ing] the fulfillment of that promise by regenerating all our individual and social environment in the spirit of Christ.”36 This is done, as Soloviev makes clear throughout his major work of moral philosophy, The Justification of the Good, through the gradual expansion of human freedom and dignity. For Soloviev, though, human freedom is not about the subjective self-assertion of the individual will, which fragments humanity and divides it against itself, but about love as the unity of all things. Creation, like the Church, is in its empirical condition divided by egoism. In truth all are one, and God—the absolute unity—is all in all. But the actual life of mankind is not in truth, and the divine all-embracing unity is concealed from us as a kind of mystery by the obvious disruption of the world-­ whole into spatial parts and temporal events, and, still more, by the egoistic isolation of our own minds. Humanity itself, which in its higher nature is the image and likeness of God and should be the unifying and governing reason of the material world, is in fact divided and scattered over the earth.37

Deification as the overcoming of individual egoism by love is a theme that runs throughout Soloviev’s corpus: “The limits of natural egoism, of finite individuality with its exclusive self-assertion, must be burst by love which renders man conformable to God, Who is Love.”38 This also entails a kind of “churching” of the world, since it is within the sobornal unity of the Church that egoism and fragmentation are finally overcome. Therefore, for Soloviev, it is “through the universal alone that the individual person can obtain positive freedom” or positive absoluteness—that is,  Solovyov, Lectures, 17–19.  Vladimir Solovyov, The Justification of the Good: An Essay on Moral Philosophy trans. Natalie Duddington, rev. and ed. Boris Jakim (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2005), 214. 37  Solovyov, The Great Dispute, 187–188. 38  Solovyov, Universal Church, 94. 35 36

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­ eification—and so only within the unity of the universal Church that “the d unconditional significance of each human being” actualized.39 Politically, Christians assist in this work by “bringing the principle of love present in the church into civic life and state affairs,” helping ecclesial love to penetrate into every corner of society and lifting all people up to a more dignified existence.40 Largely, it was this theo-political dimension of the Church, this understanding of the Church as the telos of both spiritual and social development, that motivated Soloviev’s turn toward Rome. The Church is to unite all humanity within itself within the bonds of love; but how can the Church unite humanity when the Church itself is divided against itself? The reunion of the churches, the overcoming of the dueling egoisms of Eastern and Western Christianity, is thus an essential step along the way toward the reunion of humanity. Yet the position Soloviev develops in Russia and the Universal Church goes further than vague calls for unity. It is here that the “Catholic” Soloviev is most clearly on display. The churches must reunite, he argues, under the Roman papacy. With its enthusiastic defense of papal primacy and its excoriating attack on Byzantium’s heresies and on “Orthodox anti-Catholics,” it is in Russia and the Universal Church that Soloviev can most credibly be accused of offering a theological defense of “uniatism.” What is the basis of Soloviev’s turn toward Rome in the book? His argument is as much a critique of the Russian Church’s political impotence and indifference to social reform as it is a justification of papal primacy. Beginning in the Byzantine Empire, he argues, Orthodoxy had essentially forfeited its role in human social development, principally because the Orthodox Church had failed in its calling to be universal or “catholic.” The root problem is the reduction of Orthodox ecclesial bodies to merely national churches and Orthodoxy to a merely national faith. Especially because of its antagonism toward the West, Orthodoxy became the possession of certain nations; it became “Greek,” “Russian,” and so forth, or even broadly “Eastern,” rather than universal. This leads inevitably, he thinks, to their subordination to secular rulers and their becoming little more than handmaids to national interests. Such  Soloviev, Justification, 374.  Vladimir Soloviev, “On Spiritual Authority in Russia,” in Freedom, Faith, and Dogma: Essays by V. S. Soloviev on Christianity and Judaism, trans. and ed. Vladimir Wozniuk (Albany: SUNY Press, 2008), 18. 39 40

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subordination had its origins in Byzantium and was inherited by the Russians. Lamenting the situation in his country, Soloviev writes: The leaders of the Russian Church could not rely on their religious metropolis in the struggle against the overpowering despotism of the State; for the Mother See was itself no more than a national Church which had been long subservient to the secular power. It is not ecclesiastical freedom but Cæsaropapism, which we have inherited from Byzantium, where this anti-­ Christian principle had developed unhindered ever since the ninth century. In every country which has been brought to accept a national Church, the secular government, be it autocratic or constitutional, enjoys absolute authority; the ecclesiastical institution only figures as a special Ministry dependent on the general State administration. In such a case it is the national State which is the real complete entity, existing by itself and for itself; the Church is only a section, or rather a certain aspect, of this social organism of the body politic, only existing for itself in the abstract.41

How had the Byzantine Church fallen under the domination of the emperors? In Soloviev’s view, it did so chiefly as a result of the Greek hierarchs’ rejection of the Roman papacy as the Church’s independent center of unity. “A national Church that does not wish to be subject to the absolute authority of the State, that is to say, to surrender its existence as a Church and become a department of the civil administration,” he argues, requires “a real point d’appui outside the confines of State and nation.”42 The schism with Rome thus robbed the Orthodox churches of their link to a universal principle standing outside the state in relation to which they could claim a moral authority independent of the state. As Soloviev later argues in “Byzantinism and Russia,” the state needs a principle outside itself and higher than itself to direct its activity toward the end of universal justice, but it cannot find such a principle in merely national churches. As the Russian church debased itself into a national church, it thus lost the power to direct the sword of the state toward the promotion of justice and freedom.43 “The Church in Russia, deprived of any point d’appui or center of unity outside the national State, has inevitably come to be subservient  Solovyov, Russia and the Universal Church, 72.  Solovyov, Russia and the Universal Church, 71. 43  Vladimir Soloviev, “Byzantinism and Russia,” in Freedom, Faith, and Dogma: Essays by V. S. Soloviev on Christianity and Judaism, trans. and ed. Vladimir Wozniuk (Albany: SUNY Press, 2008). 41 42

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to the secular power; and the latter, acknowledging no authority upon Earth superior to itself […] has just as inevitably engendered an anti-­ Christian despotism.”44 Simply put, as national churches, the Orthodox churches proved mostly incapable of orienting political power beyond its violent self-preservation and toward the goals of Christian social development. Soloviev argues that Orthodoxy traded its sense of the Church’s essential social mission for a new identity centered on the preservation of dogmatic purity (“orthodoxy”) stripped of its social content, even to the point of being willing to accept subservience to the state in exchange for the state’s aid in coercively enforcing “orthodox” doctrine.45 He writes: The two powers had come to terms and had made their peace, bound to one another by a common idea: the denial of Christianity as a social force and as the motive principle of historical progress. The Emperors permanently embraced “Orthodoxy” as an abstract dogma, while the orthodox prelates bestowed their benediction in sæcula sæculorum on the paganism of Byzantine public life.46

That “paganism” thus remained in place, Soloviev thinks; neither Byzantium nor later Russia was ever truly Christianized, since despite the eventual triumph of Christological orthodoxy, the Christian East never really grasped the social truth of Christ’s Divine-Humanity. The dogmas never became the basis for progressive social reform, but their enforcement provided a justification for political tyranny. In a crucial sense, orthodoxy itself was compromised, since it was deprived of its social content; it became an “orthodoxy” reduced to rigid adherence to the past, no longer containing an anticipation of God’s promised future kingdom of justice. Soloviev’s interest in Catholicism thus stemmed, in large part, from the potential he saw to liberate the Orthodox churches from their political captivity, to allow them to become truly universal rather than national, so they might fulfill their social mission. His turn westward was motivated in part, no doubt, by the more active commitment to social reform he observed among many Catholics. After all, by the 1880s, Catholicism’s history of political engagement was now being channeled into the development of modern Catholic Social Teaching, which resonated in many  Solovyov, Russia and the Universal Church, 73.  Soloviev, “Byzantinism and Russia.” 46  Solovyov, Russia and the Universal Church, 23. 44 45

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ways with his own understanding of social Christianity. Soloviev is known to have had connections with socially minded Catholics in France, such as Henri Lorin, one of the founders of “social Catholicism” who enjoyed audiences with Pope Leo XIII.47 Moreover, the Pope released Rerum Novarum in 1891, only two years after the publication of Russia and the Universal Church. It was certainly this socially engaged Catholicism that Soloviev had in mind in his quest for Orthodox-Catholic unity. More than this, however, Soloviev had become convinced that only if Rome is the center of Christian unity can Orthodoxy escape the state’s domination. The papacy stands outside and above the secular state and therefore possesses greater independence to develop authentic Christian social doctrine that can direct political power toward its proper ends. It is for this reason that Soloviev considered Orthodoxy’s embrace of papal primacy an essential feature of Orthodox-Catholic unity and the principal reason he was suspected of promoting “uniatism.” However, as much as he emphasized papal primacy, he was equally committed to preserving a distinct and essential role for the Orthodox East within the universal Church. Rome, for all its independence, lacked the political instruments needed to realize the Christian social ideal, but the solution is not for the Western church itself to become once again a political power, as it had been in the medieval period, Soloviev thought. Thus, the vision Soloviev lays out in Russia and the Universal Church is an ambitious and, as he would come to understand, altogether unrealistic one: a spiritual alliance between the papacy and the Russian tsars for the promotion of global peace, freedom, and human dignity. However naively optimistic the specifics of this proposal might have been, Soloviev’s core conviction was an admirable one: Orthodoxy must be freed from its national parochialism in order to become a social Christianity, in order to participate fully in the global struggle for human dignity and unity entailed by Christ’s Divine-Humanity, and it can do this only together with the Catholic West. Soloviev’s project, in other words, was one of universalizing the truth of Orthodoxy and allowing that truth to transform the social order. Orthodoxy is not swallowed up by Catholicism here but, instead, in communion with the Roman Catholicism, is freed to actively realize in the conditions of social life the mystical harmony it already possesses in its depths. Soloviev had no doubt that the Orthodoxy, when allowed to become a living tradition, had the  Pilch, 48.

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theological resources to confront the social challenges of the modern world. Concepts such as Sophia, Divine-Humanity, and all-unity, which Soloviev understood to be rooted in authentic Orthodox tradition, would allow the Church to answer the humanistic longings of secular modernity while also surpassing it, paving the way for an alternative Christian modernity without divisions between the sacred and secular, a modernity oriented toward transcendence and the communion of all things in God. Rather than being dissolved into a Catholicism that is already complete by itself, the Orthodox tradition, in Soloviev’s vision, would be empowered to supplement and strengthen the social and political activity of the Western Church: for instance, by fleshing out the metaphysical basis for Catholic Social Teaching through linking the concern for human dignity more firmly to the doctrine of deification. In order for this to happen, both churches must undergo the moral conversion that Soloviev places at the heart of his ecumenical project: the mutual recognition that both churches need the unique gifts of the other. Only when such recognition is achieved will the Church be able to fulfill its social mission in the world.

4   Conclusion Did Soloviev offer an Eastern Catholic theology? This chapter has argued that Soloviev was not a convert to Eastern Catholicism, and his theology, in that case, was not an Eastern Catholic theology in the traditional sense. Nor did Soloviev’s theology offer an apologetic for the Eastern Catholic churches as distinct ecclesiastical bodies, given his rejection of conversion—whether individual or collective—as a path to reunion. Soloviev is clear that he considers the missionary conversion of Orthodox dioceses to Catholicism a symptom of the Roman church’s “aggressive conceit,” a sign of Rome’s one-sided belief that it alone is the universal Church and a denial of the unbroken mystical unity of East and West.48 Nevertheless, because he recognized no real division between the churches, Soloviev blurs the lines between Orthodox and Eastern Catholic theologies. The critic might argue that Soloviev offered a theology that is neither Orthodox nor Catholic, but—considering its heavy reliance on controversial doctrines like Sophiology and Divine-Humanity—a theology of a different religion entirely. A more charitable reading, however, will understand Soloviev’s work as a sincere, if imperfect, exercise in Orthodox theology.  Solovyov, Great Dispute, 101.

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Yet it is an Orthodox theology that at once tries both to develop the living Orthodox tradition in light of modern challenges to human dignity and to develop that same tradition into what might be considered a kind of “Eastern Catholicism” that is equally fully Orthodox: an Orthodox Catholicism. It is noteworthy that Fr. Tolstoy, the Eastern Catholic priest at the center of Soloviev’s “conversion” scandal, apparently understood himself to be—no doubt under Soloviev’s influence—both Catholic and Orthodox, having never renounced his Orthodoxy upon joining the Catholic Church. Fr. Tolstoy shared Soloviev’s belief in the mystical unity of the two churches despite their empirical separation.49 In this case, Fr. Tolstoy represents, in his person, a bridge between the Christian East and Christian West, a testament to their mystical unity and their mutual need for each other. Similarly, whatever controversies surround their creation, the Eastern Catholic churches stand in a unique position to bear witness to the complementarity of the Christian East and West. Soloviev’s ecumenical political theology, as embodied by Eastern Catholics like Fr. Tolstoy, offers a provocative way that members of the Eastern Catholic churches might envision their Catholicism in continuity with Orthodoxy, and that continuity as an essential feature of the one universal Church.

 Pilch, 49–50.

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Eucharistic Ecclesiology in the Russian Religious Renaissance as Instruction in Orthodox - Eastern Catholic Ecumenism Daniel Kisliakov

Much took place in ecumenical engagement between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism in the mid-twentieth century; by any measure, this was one of the most productive encounters in the history of modern ecumenism. Less has been written, however, about the engagement between the Eastern Orthodox and the Eastern Catholics. Largely this is a result of the historically difficult relationship between Russia and Ukraine, as well as other places in which Orthodoxy and Eastern Catholicism feature strongly. However, in light of the connection to the Eastern Christian tradition that both of these groups share, it is proper to question whether this should actually be the case. It might be argued that, overall, the potential for ecumenism between these two established traditions of the East is greater than that of the Christians of the East and of the West. To date little has been accomplished in this regard. This chapter constitutes an attempt to make a contribution to this need by focusing on the history of early Orthodox participation in the

D. Kisliakov (*) University of Divinity, Kew, VIC, Australia © The Author(s) 2021 V. Latinovic, A. K. Wooden (eds.), Stolen Churches or Bridges to Orthodoxy?, Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55442-2_13

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ecumenical movement and, in particular, the notion of eucharistic ecclesiology as it manifested in the writings of Sergius Bulgakov (1871–1944) and Nicholas Afanasiev (1893–1966). Acknowledging the differences but also drawing attention to the similarities between these two theologians, the chapter argues that eucharistic ecclesiology, which also featured strongly in the ecumenical engagement between the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics in the twentieth century, is helpful in establishing engagement between the Eastern Orthodox and the Eastern Catholics. There are less significant theological differences with this interface compared to the earlier dialogue between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, which met with considerable success. Historically, there is also a precedent of rapprochement between the Eastern Catholics and Eastern Orthodox to learn from, and this has been related to eucharistic ecclesiology. This, it will be argued, is helpful in overcoming obstacles such as ethnophyletism, which hinders the proper activity of the Church. Thus, recognizing the value of eucharistic ecclesiology in ecumenical encounter is instructive in developing an approach to ecumenical engagement between Eastern Orthodoxy and Eastern Catholicism. To demonstrate this, the chapter will firstly consider the value of the study of the history of early ecumenism, in particular the productive historic encounters between East and West. It will stress the value of spiritual communion in situations in which fraternal eucharistic communion is not yet possible. Ecumenical initiatives involving Eastern Catholicism will also be considered. The chapter will then look at the development of a eucharistic focus in Bulgakov’s ecumenical theology, considering it in light of Afanasiev’s eucharistic ecclesiology. Finally, it will consider the scope of potential ecumenical engagement between Eastern Orthodoxy and Eastern Catholicism, and in conclusion, some thoughts will be presented about the potential for a eucharistically focused approach to this particular ecumenical interface.

1   The Value of Early Ecumenism On the whole, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the twentieth century was one of the most destructive in the history of human civilization. The advent of modern warfare led to a situation in which human grievances played out with the most devastating consequences. Empires fell and new nations emerged in their stead, resulting in an unprecedented level of human displacement. People’s sources of security in respect of

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concepts such as nationhood simply vanished, creating new responsibilities for the institutions of society such as the Church, as well as academic disciplines such as philosophy and theology that provided meaning in a world that was increasingly starved of hope. It is a paradox of human existence, however, that deeper catastrophes also result in greater potential for good things to emerge. It stands to reason, then, that a paradox of the history of Christianity in the twentieth century is that it was uniquely destructive, yet productive and hopeful at the same time. Such aspects are reflected in the historical dynamics emerging out of the study of the history of modern ecumenism. In recent decades, however, this part of history has been obscured somewhat by the apathy of the so-called winter of ecumenism,1 or by the motivations of modern ecumenism, which has changed much since the activities of its original protagonists. Among some Orthodox, for example, the word “ecumenism” continues to be problematic, and this is probably the result of an absence of accurate knowledge of the movement’s historical complexities. This absence, however, might also be corrected if the significance of the early history of ecumenism is better understood and if the lessons from what was, at its core, an experimental movement working toward Christian unity are better harnessed as a result. Thus, another value of the present chapter is its consideration of the history of ecumenism, extracting critical aspects of its history, helping foster better engagement between Christians and, ultimately, Eastern Orthodoxy and Eastern Catholicism. The beginning of Orthodox participation in ecumenism—mostly by the protagonists of the “Russian Religious Renaissance”—was an exciting affair. Coming out of the rubble of the Russian Revolution, its intellectuals, now in exile, stood at the vanguard of a new ecumenical theology—part of which was shared between Christians of the East and the West. The eucharistic focus of ecclesiology became prominent in that theological discourse. To this end, the chapter will utilize the term “eucharistic ecclesiology” generously, incorporating not only its original iteration by Afanasiev but, more broadly, the focus on unity in the Church being in the eucharist. The ecumenical movement set as its goal the overcoming of sectarianism and the restoration of Christian unity. History may have shown this to have been an overly ambitious, idealistic goal; however, the evidence cited in this chapter also reveals it to 1  G. R. Evans, Method in Ecumenical Theology: The Lessons So Far (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 118.

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have been fruitful. It resulted in a deeper understanding of early Christianity, which altogether helps Christianity contend with the needs of modernity. Presently, it is also instructive in considering the potential for meaningful ecumenical engagement between Eastern Orthodoxy and Eastern Catholicism.

2   Productive Encounters Between East and West Historically, active Orthodox participation in the ecumenical movement began shortly following the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. Standing in the way of radical changes that the Bolsheviks were implementing, most of the intellectual class was expelled from Russia. A few years later, Paris became the functioning center of theology in the Russian diaspora after the establishment there of the St. Serge Orthodox Theological Institute.2 Ecumenism, however, did not take off as productively as theology did; Roman Catholicism was still opposed to ecumenism at that point in time.3 Another example of an ecumenical engagement which was successful, however, occurred under the auspices of the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius (FSASS), based in England.4 Testament to the success of this particular engagement is evidence of the active participation there by theologians of the Russian diaspora who were living in Paris. Reading the journals Sobornost, published by the FSASS, and Put, published by Russian emigres in Paris, one senses that scholarly discourse between the Paris-based Orthodox and the Anglicans was more advanced than discussions between Orthodox and Roman Catholics. Among the Orthodox participants at the FSASS were Sergius Bulgakov and Georges Florovsky (1893–1979). While there were well-­ documented disagreements, such as over Bulgakov’s proposal to establish “partial intercommunion,”5 as well as the “Sophia Affair,”6 overall, the history of this engagement reveals it as having had exceptional qualities. 2  “Fondation et rayonnement.” Website of the St. Serge Orthodox Theological Institute. http://saint-serge.net/presentation/histoire.html. Accessed 6-2-2019. 3  Nikolai Afanasiev, “Dve Idei Vselenskoi Tserkvi,” Put 45 (1934), 16. 4  “Our History.” The Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius. http://www.sobornost. org/about.php. Accessed 29-6-2019. 5  Anastassy Gallaher, “Bulgakov and Intercommunion,” Sobornost incorporating Eastern Churches Review, 24, no. 2 (2002): 9. 6  Paul Gavrilyuk, Georges Florovsky and the Russian Religious Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 137.

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The quality of this early engagement, for example, is clear from the writings of two of its early protagonists, whose similar experiences bring insight to the subject because they came from different environments: Nicolas Zernov (1898–1980) of Keble College in Oxford and Myrrha Lot-Borodine (1882–1957), wife of the noted French medievalist Ferdinand Lot (1866–1952), who resided in Paris. As one of the founders of the FSASS, Zernov was well regarded for his work in facilitating Orthodox-Anglican engagement. His writings testify to the fact that the encounter between Orthodox and Anglican participants of the FSASS was warm and serendipitous, especially given the way in which historical circumstances brought them together. For example, observations Zernov later made about encounter between the Orthodox and the Anglicans at the FSASS spoke of the “oneness” experienced by all who gathered at prayer.7 Zernov’s sentiments about ecumenical engagement were echoed by Lot-Borodine. In a letter to Vasily Krivosheine (1900–1985), an Athonite monk, she wrote that she “initially treated the ecumenical movement quite negatively, for the reason that it calls upon the Orthodox consciousness to find compromises.”8 However, her initial skepticism changed when in 1937 she attended a conference in England of the Russian Society of the Rapprochement of the Anglican and Orthodox Churches. Later, in the same letter to Krivosheine, she wrote that earlier thoughts on ecumenism as being a vehicle for theological compromise changed after witnessing the call to prayer at this conference. The suggestion was also made to organize a Benedictine retreat to teach young Russians meditation and to read scripture, many of whom had not engaged in these activities much before.9 Like Zernov, Lot-Borodine saw the unique and timely potential of the ecumenical movement, which thus demonstrated a capacity to facilitate fellowship between Christians who were estranged by history and were no longer in eucharistic communion. It also created hope that unity in the Church might be able to be realized, which was and still remains elusive. 7  Nicolas Zernov, “The History of the Fellowship of St. Alban & St. Sergius: A Historical Memoir by Nicolas and Militza Zernov (1979).” Website of the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius. www.sobornost.org/Zernov_History-of-the-Fellowship.pdf. Accessed 4-6-2019. 8  T.  Obolevitch, “Myrrha Lot-Borodine  – the First Female Orthodox Theologian,” “Unfading Light” Conference at the University of Oxford, 7 March 2019. 9  Ibid.

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The pace of ecumenical activity that emerged at this time did not escape Eastern Catholicism. Without being directly involved in ecumenical engagements in Western Europe, a similar desire to transcend confessional boundaries was palpable in Ukraine. A notable figure in this particular history was Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky (1865–1944), the primate of the Ukrainian Catholic Church. In 1907, he wrote of the need for unity among the Eastern Churches in Ukraine,10 calling for joint action between the Eastern Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, noting that any one-sided desire for unity is inadequate. He also noted the unique potential for unity in Ukraine, mainly because differences between the respective Churches there were not necessarily contemporary, but historic and originating outside Ukraine.11 Overcoming such differences might therefore bring unity to the local Church.12 And, contrary to some Orthodox fears, Sheptytsky did not advocate for a unified Ukrainian Church to come under the authority of Rome, but rather, he proposed autocephaly under a patriarchate based in Kiev, even if the source of its canonical authority—whether it would come under Rome or be in communion with the Eastern Orthodox—was unclear at the time.13

3   Spiritual Communion in the Ecumenical Movement Other factors contributed to fruitful encounters between Christians at this time. These are critical in understanding why the experience of early ecumenism gave rise to the thought that unity in the Church might eventually be attained. The notion of spiritual communion, which appears in Bulgakov’s writings several times, deserves special consideration. While it appears less prominent in present theological discourse, it was an understanding that contributed strongly to early ecumenical awareness. Historical evidence demonstrates the extent to which it penetrated Anglican consciousness earlier on.14 Broadly speaking, spiritual communion is the communion that exists when the ability to commune fraternally 10   Oksana Volinets, “Ekumenychni Initsiatsivi Mitropolita Andreya Sheptitskogo,” Politichny Nauki 3:1 (2017), 13. 11  Volinets, Ekumenychni Initsiatsivi, 14. 12  Volinets, Ekumenychni Initsiatsivi, 16. 13  Volinets, Ekumenychni Initsiatsivi, 17. 14  C.  J. Wood, A Form of Spiritual Communion (Auckland: Wilson & Horton, 1916). http://anglicanhistory.org/oceania/wood_communion1916.html. Accessed 7-6-2019.

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is absent. Before the ecumenical movement even began, the question of the possible unity of the Church, as well as how it might come about, was already an interest of the Oxford Movement, which influenced the Anglicans that Bulgakov eventually encountered at the FSASS. In the Tracts for the Times, John Henry Newman (1801–1890) wrote about an already existing unity between Christians—essentially spiritual communion—as follows: This is not an abstract definition of a Church but a description of the actually existing One Holy Catholic Church diffused throughout the world. […] These illustrations of the phraseology of the Article may be multiplied in any number. And they plainly show that it is not laying down any logical definition what a Church is, but is describing, and, as it were, pointing to the Catholic Church diffused throughout the world; which, being but one, cannot possibly be mistaken, and requires no other account of it beyond this single and majestic one.15

In this regard, the Oxford Movement’s interest in the possible unity of the Church is significant, principally because it acknowledges the existence of communion in situations in which, for various reasons, eucharistic communion of a fraternal nature is not yet possible. This perspective was ripe for the ecumenical movement, which, given the circumstances, successfully harnessed a unique moment in history in which Christians of different confessions were able to meet after years of estrangement. Unsurprisingly perhaps, Bulgakov’s writings also reveal a keen interest in spiritual communion, not only in his writings on ecumenical theology. For example, in the second of his two major essays on eucharistic theology, “The Eucharistic Sacrifice” (Evharisticheskaya zhertva), Bulgakov referred to the spiritual communion in which the saints participate and which, according to Bulgakov’s reading of Nicholas Cabasilas,16 “is acceptable in eucharistic theology […] generally in regard to the dead.”17 Elsewhere, Bulgakov commented on spiritual communion in light of the absence of  John Henry Newman, Tracts for the Times 1 (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1840), 22.  Nicholas Cabasilas is a saint of the Orthodox Church from the fourteenth century. A contemporary of Gregory Palamas, he is known for his writing on the Divine Liturgy. “Nicholas Cabasilas.” Website of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, https:// www.goarch.org/chapel/saints?contentid=2161. Accessed 16-2-2020. 17  Sergei Bulgakov, “Evharisticheskaya Zhertva,” in Prot. Sergei Bulgakov. Evharistia (Paris: YMCA Press, 2005), 82. http://ivashek.com/fr/texts/theology-texts/papers/926evkharisticheskaya-zhertva. Accessed 30-6-2019. 15 16

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the Mother of God at the Last Supper, when Christ instituted the sacrament of the eucharist. Bulgakov noted that because of her place, the Mother of God, as the “human vessel” of the God-Man, did not partake of the eucharist at the Last Supper because she already carried within herself the unity of the divine and the human,18 albeit not hypostatically. Thus, the Mother of God occupies a special place among the saints, and by being one in Christ according to His nature, “personal unity is possible in Christ in a certain spiritual communion.”19 Such references to spiritual communion by Bulgakov are noteworthy. In general, even if spiritual communion is to be regarded as valid in theological terms, at a superficial level, it generally comes across as a compromise to fraternal eucharistic communion. However, we should question whether this is actually the case if the meaning of spiritual communion is properly understood. Historically speaking, a break in eucharistic communion, a schism, typically happens in response to something initiated by people. For example, the Bull of Excommunication laid on the altar of Hagia Sophia in 1054 AD and the long estrangement between East and West before that,20 for better or worse, was initiated at a human level. Schisms do not, by themselves, reflect the life or the will of the Spirit. By way of an example the specific act of schism between East and West did not have specific theological justification at the time that it took place.21 And yet, the Gospel makes it clear that “the wind blows where it wills, and […] so it is with one who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). Does it not, therefore, stand to reason that the work of the Spirit continues in cases in which eucharistic communion of a fraternal nature is broken? Moreover, if it is of the Spirit, could it be determined by humans that it is less than eucharistic communion in its fullness? Such questions are of critical importance in understanding Bulgakov’s ecumenical theology. To his  Bulgakov, Evharisticheskaya Zhertva, 95.  Bulgakov, Evharisticheskaya Zhertva, 95. 20  Although the estrangement of the Christians of the East and of the West took place over many years, the date at which the Great Schism is usually regarded as having happened is 1054 AD, when Cardinal Humbert laid the Bull of Excommunication on the altar of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. Michael Cerularius, the Patriarch of Constantinople, retaliated by excommunicating the Roman bishop. Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church, (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1993), 58–9. 21  Nicolas Afanasiev, “Una Sancta,” in Tradition Alive: On the Church and the Christian Life in Our Time/Readings from the Eastern Church, edited by Michael Plekon (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003), 23. 18 19

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credit, Bulgakov took a constructive approach to the subject, a situation that emerged in a historically unprecedented era of encounter between Christians. If we consider the aforementioned reflections by Zernov and Lot-Borodine, it becomes clear that altogether, the ability to recognize a way in which Christians could coexist was a critical development of the ecumenical movement of the early twentieth century. It also explains why the Eastern Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox in Ukraine might have recognized that unity was a possibility if certain obstacles were overcome. It also speaks of the reality of the spiritual communion that already exists between Christians of the East more broadly.

4   Bulgakov’s Ecumenical Theology Thus, the historical circumstances of spiritual communion led to questions of how it is best understood and how it relates to ecumenical engagement. They also lead to the question of when there is spiritual communion where fraternal eucharistic communion is absent, which further raises questions of how that might be dealt with. To be sure, Bulgakov first referenced spiritual communion at the time that he proposed the establishment of “partial intercommunion” between the Orthodox and the Anglicans at the FSASS. In 1934, he proposed that “partial intercommunion” be established with a “sacramental blessing” by each side in relation to the other. Under the proposal, participants at the FSASS would have a blessing to commune eucharistically with their counterparts from the other side, and this would take place at the Fellowship.22 The FSASS did not accept the proposal.23 However, Bulgakov’s later sentiments on this subject are interesting. They were related in his correspondence with Fr. Lev Gillet (1893–1980), which was published in Sobornost the following year. Counterintuitively, Bulgakov wrote to Gillet of his acceptance of the outcome at the FSASS, noting an already existing spiritual communion at the FSASS between Orthodox and Anglicans. This, he noted, was a good, temporary consolation in light of the inability to restore fraternal eucharistic communion. Bulgakov expressed his thoughts in relation to spiritual as follows:

22  Henry Hill, “Father Sergius Bulgakov and Intercommunion,” Sobornost 5:4 (Winter 1966), 272. 23  Anastassy Gallaher, “Bulgakov’s and Intercommunion,” Sobornost, 24:2 (2002), 15.

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The principle of Spiritual Intercommunion which has now been born in our fellowship and which gives expression to its nature is certainly novel from a dogmatic point of view. It originates at this particular “historical hour” in the development of the “Oecumenical” Movement. It represents an inevitable attempt to appraise the worth of a new religious experience closely associated with this movement. In this experience confessional limitations are overcome in spite of the walls which separate the confessions from one another. One feels and discerns a true life, a “standing before the face of God,” a unity in Christ, which simply cannot be overcome by confessional divisions.24

To a historian, Bulgakov’s acceptance of the outcome at the FSASS might appear impulsive and confusing, especially given that a few years later he wrote that the notion of intercommunion itself is vague and misses the point of the unity of the Church.25 However, Bulgakov’s correspondence with Gillet is important because it demonstrates a particular dynamic in Bulgakov’s thinking, reflecting a mind that was in a process of development in the ever-changing environment of the 1930s. Later, his thinking evolved into that which he referred to as an “ecumenical theology.”26 Thus, for Bulgakov, spiritual communion became, in effect, the foundation of an ecclesiology that sought to deal with the new “ecumenical” world. For him, recognition of spiritual communion was necessary in order to contend with the new reality of encountering Christians of different confessions that confronted the Church. Bulgakov wrote on this subject more comprehensively in his essay, “By Jacob’s Well,” published in December 1933. The title, referring to the well at which Christ encountered the Samaritan Woman, was also a subtle reference to the reality of exile and emigration, when the Orthodox encountered people who were not, from their perspective at the time, part of the Church.27 This essay actually preceded his proposal for “partial intercommunion” by a few months. Its subtitle, “On the Actual Unity of the Divided Church in Faith, Prayer and Sacraments,” hinted at his developing ecclesiology. It was also similar to Newman’s earlier reference to the  Sergius Bulgakov, “Spiritual Communion,” Sobornost 4 (December 1935), 4.  Prot. Sergei Bulgakov, “Una Sancta (Оsnovaniya Ekumenizma),” Put’ 58 (1938–39), 11. 26  Bulgakov, Una Sancta, 13. 27  Sergius Bulgakov, “By Jacob’s Well – On the Actual Unity of the Divided Church in Faith, Prayer and Sacraments,” Journal of the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius 22 (December 1933), 8. 24 25

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“actually existing One Holy Catholic Church diffused throughout the world.”28 While this essay summed up Bulgakov’s thinking on ecumenical theology, it has been noted that it is indicative of his thinking on the subject of “partial intercommunion” before he submitted his proposal.29 This was also possibly the case in relation to the notion of spiritual communion. On the whole, Bulgakov’s essay stands as a seminal work in the development of ecumenical theology in the Orthodox Church. Echoing the sentiments regarding spiritual communion that he later expressed to Gillet, Bulgakov wrote that “the Spirit of God transcends (confessional differences) through a new kind of synthesis that is brought about, not by means of a new agreement or compromise, but by a new inspiration.”30 He also noted that the position of those who believed that unity could be attained principally by theological discussion was mistaken. Like Newman, Bulgakov argued that authentic and genuine ecclesial unity already existed, and in this essay, he proposed that it was always present in the ecumenical movement. But how did he justify this? Bulgakov’s argument rested on the notion that the Church in its visible form, which he referred to as the “empirical” church, is different from that which properly constitutes the Church, which he referred to as the “ontological” church.31 This was the Church in its “essence, depth and life force.”32 Bulgakov’s emphasis on the “ontological” Church led him to make a momentous pronouncement about the direction of the ecumenical movement, that is, “the way towards reunion between East and West does not lie through tournaments between the theologians […] but through a reunion before the Altar.”33 According to Bulgakov in “By Jacob’s Well,” communion already exists. Whether it is spiritual or fraternal in nature matters less in contrast to the experience of God that encompasses everything and in which communion, spiritual or eucharistic, is manifest. On the one hand, this affirms the primacy of fraternal eucharistic communion; however, it also affirms the fact that the work of the Spirit continues in  John Henry Newman, Tracts for the Times 1 (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1840), 22.  Henry Hill, “Father Sergius Bulgakov and Intercommunion,” 276. 30  Sergius Bulgakov, “By Jacob’s Well – On the Actual Unity of the Divided Church in Faith, Prayer and Sacraments,” 9. 31  Prot. Sergei Bulgakov, “Una Sancta (Osnovania Ekumenizma),” Put’ 58 (1938–39), 13. 32   Prot. Sergei Bulgakov, “Una Sancta (Ostnovaniya Ekumenizma),” Put’ 58 (1938–39), 4–5. 33  Sergius Bulgakov, “By Jacob’s Well: On the Actual Unity of the Divided Church in Faith, Prayer and Sacraments,” 17. 28 29

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cases in which such communion is not yet possible. Thus, for Bulgakov, the hope of fraternal eucharistic communion is not entirely abandoned; however, its absence does not deny the existence of communion itself. For Bulgakov, it was already manifest between the Orthodox and the Anglicans; by this reasoning, it is also present between the Eastern Orthodox on the one hand, and Catholics—Roman and Eastern—on the other, who do not commune fraternally due to their respective historical circumstances. Ultimately, Bulgakov’s argument rests on the primacy of that which he regarded as the “ontological” church. This particular understanding of the unity of the Church, Bulgakov proposed, can and must be realized in ecumenism. This chapter will further consider the possibility that this had something in common with Afanasiev’s notion of “eucharistic ecclesiology,” which he coined in his work “The Lord’s Supper.”34 While terminologically, “eucharistic ecclesiology” is rightly attributable to Afanasiev, it is also clear that the eucharistic basis of ecclesiology had already been explored by others as a theological principle. Bulgakov’s ecumenical theology is an important example of this.

5   “Una Sancta” Over time, Bulgakov’s essay “By Jacob’s Well” inspired those who hope for unity in the Church—an idea that, while well intentioned, has a long way to go if it is to be fully realized. His proposal to establish “partial intercommunion” at the FSASS, however, as well as his impulsive embrace of spiritual communion, altogether suggests that Bulgakov’s thinking yet to completely mature. This is not surprising given that over the course of his life his thinking on a range of subjects varied considerably.35 Several years later, Bulgakov demonstrated a considerably more established approach to ecumenism, ecclesiology, and its eucharistic aspect, in another article, entitled “Una Sancta,” with the subtitle “The Foundations of Ecumenism,” published in November 1938, several months before the beginning of the Second World War.36 In the corpus of Bulgakov’s  Prot. N.  Afanasiev, Trapeza Gospodnia (Paris: Izdanie Religiozno-Pedadogicheskogo Kabineta pri Pravoslavnom Bogoslovskom Institute v Parizhe, 1952), 6. 35  Bulgakov’s thinking demonstrated great variability over the course of his life. Born to a priest’s son, for a period of time he was a prominent Marxist, then ascribed to Idealism, and returned to the Orthodox Church shortly after 1905. Anastassy Gallaher, “Bulgakov’s Ecumenical Thought,” Sobornost, 24: 1 (2002): 27–31. 36  Prot. Sergei Bulgakov, “Una Sancta (Osnovania Ekumenizma),” Put’ 58 (1938–39), 3–14. 34

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writings, this is probably Bulgakov’s most succinct exposition of his ecumenical theology. While Bulgakov’s ecclesiology in “Una Sancta” is not inconsistent with his earlier essay, it has greater clarity. According to Bulgakov, the Church is principally a “divine organism,”37 united in love, sobornost, all of which constitutes an image, or an icon, of the Holy Trinity.38 This, according to Bulgakov, also reflects how the hierarchy, which derives its authority from the eucharist,39 is constituted. However, according to Bulgakov, this is not how the visible, “empirical” Church manifests. Bulgakov noted that a “hiatus happened”—a historical gap, as it were—between the mystical notion of Church as it is known in the New Testament and its “historical-­ hierarchical organization.”40 The manifestation of this became the Church in its institution form, a reality that has now become entrenched. In this form, in modernity, the Church is ravaged by division.41 Responding to this, Bulgakov posited a question that continues to have significance in the present: could this gap, this “hiatus,” ever be bridged?42 Bulgakov stressed that the “call of ecumenism” is to reject confessional exclusionism and to recognize each other as brothers and sisters and as members of the Body of Christ.43 Thus, the challenge for ecumenism is to actualize the notion of the Church as the Body of Christ, as “divine organism.”44 And, given that this question is yet to be dealt with, it continues to be significant in the present ecumenical engagements. This is applicable to the interface between the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholics as it was, for Bulgakov, between Eastern Orthodox and Anglicans. In this regard, it is important to be clear about what Bulgakov meant and what he did not. By supporting ecumenism, Bulgakov was not ignorant of the opposing risks of syncretism and fanatical confessionalism: respectively, a suggestion that all confessions “are equal” or that the Orthodox are “right” and everybody else is “wrong.” For Bulgakov,  Bulgakov, Una Sancta, 5.  Bulgakov, Una Sancta, 6. 39  Bulgakov, Una Sancta, 7. 40  Ibid. 41  Sergius Bulgakov, “By Jacob’s Well: On the Actual Unity of the Divided Church in Faith, Prayer and Sacraments,” 7. 42  Bulgakov, By Jacob’s Well, 8. 43  Bulgakov, By Jacob’s Well, 17. 44  Prot. Sergei Bulgakov, “Una Sancta (Osnovania Ekumenizma),” Put’ 58 (1938–39), 10. 37 38

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neither of these positions constitutes the proper way.45 However, he also maintained that the eucharistic cup of Christ and the Spirit remain one despite human differences.46 He called for Christians—Orthodox, Anglican, or Catholic—to be true to the notion of the Church as the Body of Christ. This bestowed on the Orthodox, who are conscious of themselves as bearers of authentic apostolic tradition, a particular responsibility: to properly manifest the Church as divine organism, steering away from institutionalism.47 Put differently, Bulgakov called for the Orthodox to be truly Orthodox.

6   Ecumenism After Bulgakov To his great misfortune, Bulgakov did not live to see his theology realized. A few months after he wrote “Una Sancta,” the world was once again gripped by war and Bulgakov did not live to see its end. However, the legacy of Bulgakov’s work, as well as his support for ecumenism and its theology, did not go to waste. On the whole, it would be a mistake to argue that the fundamental Orthodox approach to ecumenism that Bulgakov fostered changed markedly in the decades after his death in 1944.48 By the 1960s, changes in attitudes to the ecumenical movement also took place such that Roman Catholicism became more receptive to it and began participating in its engagements. Likewise, the announcement by Pope John XXIII of a Second Vatican Council reawakened hopes of unity in the Church. This was welcome news for Afanasiev, who by the 1960s felt that the ecumenical movement had been dormant for 30 years.49 The fact that several prominent theologians from St. Serge in Paris attended the Council also signified the momentous nature of the event.50 Afanasiev’s work was mentioned in its proceedings,51 while the notion of eucharistic  Ibid.  Prot. Sergei Bulgakov, “Una Sancta (Osnovania Ekumenizma),” Put’ 58 (1938–39), 12. 47  Prot. Sergei Bulgakov, “Una Sancta (Osnovania Ekumenizma),” Put’ 58 (1938–39), 13. 48  Michael Plekon, Tradition Alive: On the Church and the Christian Life in Our Time/ Readings from the Eastern Church, 2. 49  Nicolas Afanasiev, “Una Sancta,” 3. 50  Radu Bordeianu, “Orthodox Observers at the Second Vatican Council and IntraOrthodox Dynamics,” Theological Studies 79, no. 1 (2018), 95. 51  Anastacia K. Wooden, “Eucharistic Ecclesiology of Nicholas Afanasiev and Its Ecumenical Significance: A New Perspective,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies, 45: 4 (Fall 2010), 543. 45 46

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ecclesiology, discussed by Afanasiev in the 1950s,52 became prominent afterward.53 A healthy approach to ecumenism can be fostered by observing this in light of Bulgakov’s earlier work. In scholarship, Afanasiev is seldom associated with Bulgakov. Aidan Nichols’s seminal book on Afanasiev is an exception to this.54 Nichols notes that Bulgakov’s influence on Afanasiev was more as a personal model than as a theological mentor; however, in respect of the sobornost theme, as well as of the Church as a “bodily-sacramental being of Christ in the Eucharist,” several themes are shared.55 Afanasiev certainly had great respect for Bulgakov: Afanasiev’s wife referred to Bulgakov as her husband’s “favourite older colleague.”56 On the whole, the relationship between Bulgakov and Afanasiev deserves consideration. A close reading of their writings suggests that the subject of ecumenism was also one in which they had some agreement. During the years of the Second Vatican Council, Afanasiev wrote an article with the same title as Bulgakov’s earlier essay—“Una Sancta.” The respective articles had similar conclusions on the question of how the ecumenical movement might facilitate unity in the Church. One distinction to bear in mind is that Bulgakov wrote at an earlier time in history, at the end of the interwar period in which Orthodox-­ Anglican fellowship flourished. Afanasiev, by contrast, wrote his “Una Sancta” later, its principal subject being ecumenism between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. There are also fundamental differences between Bulgakov’s and Afanasiev’s respective theologies that need to be taken into account. Reading Afanasiev’s “Una Sancta,” similarities might be drawn between Bulgakov’s and Afanasiev’s perspectives on the unity of the Church. However, Afanasiev did not concur with the elementary distinction that Bulgakov drew between the “empirical” and the “ontological” Church. In his “Una Sancta,” Afanasiev referred back to two of his earlier writings, “The Lord’s Supper” (Trapeza Gospodnia) and “Two Ideas of the  Prot. N. Afanasiev, Trapeza Gospodnia, 17.   Chito Alrevalo “The Eucharist and the Church,” http://www.clerus.org/clerus/ dati/2002-03/25-999999/06SAIIEN.html. Congregation for the Clergy. Accessed 28-11-2018. 54  Aidan Nichols, Theology in the Russian Diaspora: Church, Fathers, Eucharist Nikolai Afanas’ev (1893–1966), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 145. 55  Nichols, Theology in the Russian Diaspora, 145. 56  Mariamna Afanasieva, “Kak Slozhilas “Tserkov Duha Svyatogo Duha,” in Nicholas Afanasiev, Tserkov Duha Sviatogo (Paris: YMCA Press, 1971), IV. 52 53

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Universal Church” (Dve Ideyi Vselenskoi Tserkvi), published in Put in the 1930s, to establish this point. There, he contrasted “universal ecclesiology,” which he attributed to Cyprian of Carthage, with “eucharistic ecclesiology,” drawn from the Pauline Epistles, which he regarded as original to the early Church.57 Both might be considered “empirical” in the sense that they reflected how the Church understood its unity in different times in history, but that is not particularly valid in this situation because they reflected fundamentally different concepts of Church. With universal ecclesiology, unity in the Church is reflected in the actual, visible unity of bishops. In modernity, this is how the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics recognize their unity.58 There is no room for schismatics or heretics in this unity.59 It is, essentially, what is commonly regarded as the institutional unity of the Church. However, this particular view presents challenges for ecumenism because of its rigid understanding of ecclesial boundaries. Afanasiev identified this particular ecclesiology with Cyprian as follows: According to Cyprian, the principle of the unity of the episcopate is the principle of the unity of the universal church. The unity of the Church demands the unity of the bishops, and the unity of the bishops protects the unity of the Church. […] Cyprian’s teaching on the episcopate, insofar as it is the principle of the unity of the universal church, gives us the distinctive, empirical sign of the latter. According to Cyprian, therefore, the bishop is the sign of the local church belonging to the catholica, not the bishop by himself, but rather, the bishop as part of the “multiplicity united by peace” of the bishops.60

Echoing Bulgakov’s earlier views on the institutionalization of the Church, Afanasiev noted that “universal ecclesiology” has predominated in history.61 In Afanasiev’s words, “Cyprian’s thesis on the episcopate as a distinctive empirical sign of one church to the universal church has kept its importance until the present.”62 In modernity, with ecclesial unity defined thus, the Church is deeply divided. But according to Afanasiev, this is inadequate. Even Cyprian maintained that the Church properly  Nikolai Afanasiev, “Dve Idei Vselenskoi Tserkvi,” Put’, 45 (1934), 16–29.  Nicolas Afanasiev, “Una Sancta,” 13. 59  Nicolas Afanasiev, “Una Sancta,” 6. 60  Nicolas Afanasiev, “Una Sancta,” 12–13. 61  Nicolas Afanasiev, “Una Sancta,” 6. 62  Nicolas Afanasiev, “Una Sancta,” 13. 57 58

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understood as the Body of Christ can only be united. Bulgakov63 and Afanasiev64 also agree that the mere notion of a divided Church is incorrect. Moreover, Cyprian’s ecclesiology was formulated for a very different time that bears little resemblance to the modern Church. Something better was needed. In “The Lord’s Supper,” Afanasiev outlined his principles of eucharistic ecclesiology while expressing hope for renewal for the eucharistic unity of the Church to be better manifest.65 According to Afanasiev, all of the necessary attributes of the Church are found in each local eucharistic assembly.66 Following this principle, it has been argued that Afanasiev’s eucharistic ecclesiology might be better referred to as the “ecclesiology of the eucharistic assembly.”67 Drawing on Pauline Epistles and referring to Ignatius of Antioch as an example Afanasiev drew an equivalence between the eucharist and the notion of Church: “Where the Eucharist is, there is the Church of God, and where the Church of God is, there is the Eucharist.”68 Critically, this did not exclude the episcopacy, however, because, in contrast to universal ecclesiology, Afanasiev identified unity in the Church with the Bishop as president of the eucharist within each local assembly. The unity of the broader Church is thus identified in the sum of the respective local assemblies.69 The episcopacy itself is thus eucharistic and, as a consequence, so is unity in the Church. In Afanasiev’s words: In affirming that the eucharistic assembly is the principle of the unity of the Church, the thesis that the bishop is the distinctive empirical sign of the local church is not excluded, because the bishop is included in the very concept of the Eucharist. According to its very nature, the eucharistic assembly could not exist without its president or, according to the terminology established by usage, without the bishop. The foundation of the ministry of the bishop is the one who presides at the eucharistic assembly. Consequently, when we speak of the eucharistic assembly, we are in fact speaking of the bishop.70

 Prot. Sergei Bulgakov, “Una Sancta (Osnovania Ekumenizma)”: 8.  Afanasiev, “Una Sancta,” 6. 65  Prot. N. Afanasiev, Trapeza Gospodnya, 7. 66  Nicolas Afanasiev, “Una Sancta,” 14. 67  Anastacia K. Wooden, “Eucharistic Ecclesiology of Nicholas Afanasiev and Its Ecumenical Significance: A New Perspective,” 543. 68  Nicolas Afanasiev, “Una Sancta,” 14. 69  Nicolas Afanasiev, “Una Sancta,” 15. 70  Nicolas Afanasiev, “Una Sancta,” 14. 63 64

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To be sure, Bulgakov did not speak of the unity of the Church according to the local assembly. However, his point about the “empirical” Church contrasted against the “ontological” Church leads to a similar conclusion about the nature of unity in the Church, as well as the role of the ecumenical movement. This is that the hope for unity in the Church resides in the eucharist, not in the institutional body known as “the Church.” In this, Bulgakov and Afanasiev are in broad agreement. Which brings us back to Bulgakov’s ecumenical theology in relation to spiritual communion, in addition to the enduring primacy of fraternal eucharistic communion, where possible. In “Una Sancta,” Afanasiev expressed doubt about the validity of the practice of excommunication en mass, the general way in which schisms are effected in history. By breaking with another part of the Church—for Afanasiev, a eucharistic assembly where the fullness of Church is manifest—one is actually excommunicating oneself.71 However, inasmuch as the modern Church, in the main, follows universal, not eucharistic ecclesiology, such misplaced breaking of fraternal eucharistic communion is common. The need therefore emerges for terminology to describe communion that is not yet fraternal, but nonetheless exists in the Spirit. In this regard, the notion of spiritual communion is helpful. Inasmuch as it is of the Spirit, it is possible to regard it as not less than fraternal eucharistic communion, except in the fact that spiritual communion accepts the consequences of human failings that resulted in the division of the visible Church. On the whole, there is a strong case for emphasizing the value of the notion of spiritual communion to ecumenical engagement in general. Alluding to this, several years after his “Una Sancta,” Afanasiev proposed a vision for unity in the Church in light of the progress of the ecumenical movement that had been attained until then. Afanasiev wrote this piece in 1965, in the concluding years of the Second Vatican Council. By then, there was already an understanding that division in the Church was not a “separation of […] churches” but a “detachment” of part of it from the Body of Christ. Afanasiev referred to this “detachment” as an “ecclesiological void.”72 However, Afanasiev argued that even this explanation  Nicolas Afanasiev, “Una Sancta,” 17.  Nicolas Afanasiev, “The Eucharist: The Principal Link Between the Catholics and the Orthodox,” in Tradition Alive: On the Church and the Christian Life in Our Time/Readings from the Eastern Church, edited by Michael Plekon (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003), 47. 71 72

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of division in the Church is erroneous because, despite everything, the Church continues to be united in the eucharist. A priest presiding at the eucharist does not constitute a repetition of the Last Supper; the eucharist, rather, is accomplished once and for all and continues to be for all time.73 Thus, it emerges that communion exists even in cases in which eucharistic communion of a fraternal nature is not possible. Thus, the goal of ecumenism becomes the realization of the unity of the Church that exists, but which for various reasons is not yet manifest. While being based on different theological principles, this bears similarities to Bulgakov’s ecumenical theology. Afanasiev summed up the unity of the Church in relation to ecumenism as follows: From its very nature the Eucharist is one in time and space and cannot be divided because the Body of Christ is indivisible. The Eucharist, celebrated no matter where or when, always remain the same. The plurality of the celebrations of the Eucharist do not take away its unity even as the plurality of the local churches does not abolish the unity of the Church of God. In ecclesiology, unity and plurality are not mutually exclusive, but on the contrary, complement each other. When we take part in a eucharistic assembly we are united with all those who at that moment also participate in a eucharistic assembly—not only the assemblies of the orthodox church but also those of the catholic church as well, for always and everywhere one and the same Eucharist is celebrated […]. This why the Eucharist is not only a link between the catholic church and the orthodox church, but also a manifestation of the unity of the churches.74

In this way, an enduring feature of the contributions of theologians of the Russian Religious Renaissance, particularly Bulgakov and Afanasiev, is a particular depth of theological insight that gives hope that in difficult ecclesiological situations, certain obstacles can be overcome with the benefit of eucharistic ecclesiology. Likewise, the original view of Sheptytsky that unity in the Church in Ukraine should transcend confessionalism is supported by the promise of unity that this particular ecclesiological understanding affords. This realization is applicable to the specific challenges of the interface between Eastern Orthodoxy and Eastern Catholicism. Confronting

 Nicolas Afanasiev, “The Eucharist,” 48.  Nicolas Afanasiev, “The Eucharist,” 48–49.

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problems such as ethnophyletism, which is prevalent in both Churches,75 the argument has been made that a way beyond the present impasse does not necessarily reside in the authority of Rome or anybody else in particular, but in harnessing the benefits of eucharistic ecclesiology.76 Echoing Afanasiev, it is argued each eucharistic assembly must “in fact—and not just notionally or nominally—manifest the one Christ.” This, it is argued, is due to the fact that the Church’s catholic unity, its “sobornicity,” exists “because each parish (each Eucharistic assembly) is a revelation of the new humanity […].”77 Echoing both sobornost in Bulgakov and Afanasiev in the unity of the eucharistic assemblies, a way forward in the possible unity of the Eastern Churches thus emerges. On the whole, this path to unity between Eastern Orthodoxy does not differ much from ecclesiological principles that can work to establish unity in the Church more broadly. However, each particular situation requires its own specific initiative, and the eucharistic ecclesiology of the Russian Religious Renaissance is instructive in this particular situation.

7   Conclusion The revival of the principles of eucharistic ecclesiology thus proposed brings us back to the question of ecumenism and its future. Bulgakov and Afanasiev identified in the eucharist the focus of unity in the Church, albeit each in their own distinctive ways. History is also clear that the eagerness for ecumenism originally demonstrated by Bulgakov was maintained by theologians after him into the second half of the twentieth century. Thus, the historic experience of ecumenical engagement demonstrates that after centuries of schism and isolation, Christians are in fact forced to confront questions about the nature of unity—or lack of it—in the Church. Out of this, the eucharist emerges as a focus in which long-standing divisions in the Church might be overcome. It also sharpened theologians’ perspectives about the reality of disunity in the Church, how to deal with it, and what hope, if any, there was that disunity could be overcome and that unity in the Church could be restored.

75  Peter Galadza, “The Structure of the Eastern Churches: Bonded with Human Blood or Baptismal Water?” Pro Ecclesia, CVII:4 (2008), 382. 76  Peter Galadza, “The Structure,” 384. 77  Peter Galadza, “The Structure,” 384.

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In this way, in the ecumenical movement, the notion of eucharistic ecclesiology continues to give hope that Christian unity is not merely a mirage. On the one hand, there is hope that some unity can be restored because of the reality of the spiritual communion that already exists. On the other hand, in Bulgakov and Afanasiev, a hope also emerged that fraternal eucharistic communion might be restored based on how each of them in their respective ways identified the nature of unity in the Church. Neither Bulgakov nor Afanasiev regarded the precise dogmatic agreement as a precondition for unity. This was the case initially in Orthodox-Anglican ecumenism and later between Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics. There is no significant reason why this should be different in ecumenical engagement between the Eastern Orthodox and the Eastern Catholics, who share more in theology, rite, and tradition than most other Christian confessions Accordingly, the recognition of the primacy of the eucharist in ecclesiology becomes instructive in determining a way forward in any potential successful engagement between the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholics. It is possible that any theological fellowship resulting from this might detract away from the other issues that have kept these groups apart. This approach echoes one that Joseph Ratzinger advocated when he wrote that the path to unity between Christians might be forged by deeper engagement with Christian Fathers. In his words: “the teachers of the ancient Church represent a common past that, precisely as such, may well be a promise for the future.”78 Heeding this approach, there is reason to believe that ecumenism between the Orthodox and Eastern Catholics might be at least as successful as with their Roman Catholic counterparts in the latter half of the twentieth century.

78  Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), 140.

Paul Evdokimov and Una Sancta: A Russian Orthodox Theologian in Search of Ecumenical Unity Peter C. Phan

The Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, the official name of what was planned to be the pan-Orthodox council, which met in Kolymvari, Crete, Greece, June 9–26, 2016, has been justly praised for its concern for ecumenical unity.1 It is the fruit of over a century of preparation if we count from the Ecumenical Patriarch Joachim III’s 1920 encyclical urging the Orthodox Churches to come together to consider the relations of their Churches to the Catholic and Protestant Churches. Its proximate preparation was carried out by four pan-Orthodox conferences starting in 1961, a secretariat, several inter-­ Orthodox preparatory

1  This official name of the council is not accepted by all the Orthodox Churches, in particular by those Churches that refused to attend the council, namely, the Church of Antioch, the Russian Orthodox Church, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, the Church of Georgia, and the Orthodox Church in America. The refusal of this title is part of the “reception” of this council in Orthodoxy.

P. C. Phan (*) Department of Theology, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA © The Author(s) 2021 V. Latinovic, A. K. Wooden (eds.), Stolen Churches or Bridges to Orthodoxy?, Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55442-2_14

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commissions, five pan-Orthodox pre-conciliar conferences beginning in 1976, a series of synaxes (meetings of the heads of the Orthodox Churches) starting in 1992, and a special inter-Orthodox commission. From these meetings, six themes were selected and texts drafted for deliberation at the council.2 One of these six texts is entitled “The Relations of the Orthodox Church with the Rest of the Christian World,” which combines into one the two preparatory documents dealing with the relationship of the Orthodox Church to the ecumenical movement and its relationship to the Christian world respectively.3 This combined text was approved by the fifth pan-Orthodox pre-conciliar conference in October 2015, placed on the conciliar agenda by the synaxis in January 2016, and officially approved by the council in Crete.4 Numerous studies have detailed the influence of ecclesiastical bodies as well as individual theologians on the conception, development, and execution of this pan-Orthodox council.5 Among the latter, Paul Evdokimov (1901–1970), a lay Russian Orthodox theologian and émigré in the West, whose activities for church union and theology of ecumenical unity are still understudied compared with his fellow Russian theologians, deserves to be seriously considered in the aftermath of the pan-Orthodox council. This chapter first gives a brief survey of Evdokimov’s life and work, especially what he calls his “ecumenical vocation” in his existence outside his native country. Second, it examines the theological principles that Evdokimov believes should govern ecumenical theology. Third, it expounds some of Evdokimov’s proposals to resolve key issues that were

2  The six themes discussed by the council are mission, diaspora, autonomy, marriage, fasting, and ecumenism. 3  Note that the council uses both the singular and the plural of “Church” (the Orthodox Church and Orthodox Churches). By “Orthodox Church” are meant here the Eastern (Greek/Byzantine/Chalcedonian) Orthodox Churches, the Oriental (non-Chalcedonian) Churches, and the Church of the East (Persian/Nestorian). 4  For the text of the council on ecumenical unity, “Relations of the Orthodox Church with the Rest of the Christian World,” see https://www.holycouncil.org/offical-documents/-/ asset_publisher/VA0WE2pZ4Y0I/content/rest-of-christian-world? 5  See in particular Archbishop Job (Getcha) of Telmessos, “The Ecumenical Significance of the Holy ad Great Council of the Orthodox Church,” The Ecumenical Review vol. 69, no. 2 (2017), 274–287, and Dagmar Heller, “The (Holy and Great) Council of the Orthodox Churches: An Ecumenical Perspective,” The Ecumenical Review vol. 69, no. 2 (2017), 288–300.

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debated in ecumenical dialogue between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches during his lifetime.

1   A Russian Orthodox Theologian in the Western World in Search of Church Unity Three distinctive features define the identity of Pavel Nikolaevich Evdokimov: a Russian, a lay Orthodox theologian, and an émigré in the West in search of Christian unity. First of all, Evdokimov was a Russian. Born on August 2, 1901, in St. Petersburg in a well-to-do aristocratic family, Evdokimov remained a Russian until his death on September 16, 1970. It is indicative of his pride in his Russian identity that he turned down the offer of a teaching career at the University of Bordeaux because acceptance of the post would require him to renounce his Russian nationality. More than national identity, Evdokimov’s russité is expressed in his deep appreciation of Russian literature and culture. From this Russian heritage he draws inspiration for his doctoral dissertation at the University of Aix-­ en-­ Provence and for his works on Russian  literature, philosophy, and theology.6 The second characteristic of Evdokimov’s life and work is his deep roots in Orthodoxy. His Orthodox faith never wavered. Not even the assassination of his father, who was a military officer, by one of his soldiers in 1905, the pains of exile, the horrors of the First and Second World Wars, and the premature death of his first wife Natasha Brunel (1945) could shake his Orthodox faith. It is in the matrix of this Orthodox faith, liturgy, and spirituality that Evdokimov formulates his theological synthesis.7 6  See his doctoral dissertation Dostoïevski et le problème du mal (Lyon: Édition du Livre Français, 1942), Gogol et Dostoïevski ou la descente aux enfers (Paris: Desclée Brouwer, 1961), and Le Christ dans la pensée russe (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1970). Evdokimov also draws on the Russian idea of womanhood to develop his theology of woman in the history of salvation in his La femme et le salut du monde (Paris-Tournai: Casterman, 1958). In terms of Russian spirituality, Evdokimov is deeply influenced by the Russian devotion to the kenotic Christ, the loving, meek, and humiliated Christ and not the Byzantine Christ as the Pantokrator, Emperor, all-powerful Ruler, and Judge, and the devotion to Our Lady of Vladimir. 7  Evdokimov’s major works on Orthodox theology include Le marriage, sacrament de l’amour (Lyon: Édition du Livre Français, 1945); L’Orthodoxie (Neuchâtel-Paris: Delachaux et Niestlé, 1959); Le sacrament de l’amour. Le mystère conjugal à la lumière de la tradition orthodoxe (Paris: Édition de l’Épi, 1962); Les âges de la vie spirituelle: Des pères du désert à nos jours (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1964); La connaissance de Dieu selon la tradition orientale

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Evdokimov’s third characteristic, which is directly relevant to our theme, is his life as a refugee in the Western world and the ecclesial challenges this exile posed to his theology. Evdokimov saw emigration to the West as a God-given opportunity for the Russian Orthodox Church as a whole, and for him personally, to move out of their national confinements, enter into contact with Western culture, and be enriched by a dialogue with other Churches. After his move to Paris in 1923, together with a group of brilliant Russian émigrés who flocked to the French capital from Berlin, Prague, Belgrade, and Istanbul, and assembled at the Institut Saint Serge, Evdokimov expanded the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church and Russian culture and, thus, commenced the providential and fruitful encounter between two worlds: Russian Orthodox Tradition and Western culture. Evdokimov perceived in his life as an émigré a destiny-vocation: Everything told me that the Russian emigration was a providential fact the profound spiritual significance of which should be seen and discovered. Through the active presence of a brilliant elite of Russian religious thinkers, Orthodoxy suddenly came out of its century-old isolation and made its presence felt in all the countries of the world. The confrontation between the Christian East and West was an irreversible fact of history. A call was heard, an exciting vocation was taking shape and soon became a clear duty.8

The “exciting vocation” and “duty” Evdokimov alluded to in the above quotation were that of healing the divisions of the Church of Christ and of gathering the Churches—Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant—into one sheepfold under one Shepherd. Evdokimov was fully aware of the almost insurmountable obstacles that lay on the way; however, inspired by Kierkegaard’s dictum that it is not the way that is impossible but the impossible that is the way, he unreservedly committed himself to that immense task.9 (Lyon: Xavier Mappus, 1968); L’Esprit-Saint dans la tradition orthodoxe (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1970); L’Art de l’icône: Théologie de la beauté (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1970); L’Amour fou de Dieu (Paris: Édition du Seuil, 1973); Le Buisson ardent (Paris: Lethielleux, 1981); and Une vision orthodoxe de la théologie morale (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2009). 8  Paul Evdokimov, “Quelques jalons sur un chemin de vie,” in Semences d’unité, ed. M. Boegner (Paris: Casterman (1965), 89. All the English translations of Evdokimov’s works are mine. 9  For Evdokimov’s appropriation of Kierkegaard’s dictum, see ibid., 84.

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Evdokimov’s sense of the urgency of church unity was sharpened by three events. First, he was the first director of the Students Hostel founded at Sèvres in 1947 under the auspices of the Comité Inter-Mouvements pour l’Accueil des Évacués (Inter-Movement Committee for the Welcome of the Evacuees). The Students Hostel was intended to serve  as the home for “displaced persons” with no distinction of religious affiliation but an “ecumenical chapel” was constructed on its site by Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant students, where, under Evdokimov’s direction, people of all faiths and nationalities gathered every evening to sing Vespers together. The second event that enlarged Evdokimov’s vision of church unity and his own ecumenical calling was his contacts with the Protestants, especially during their liturgical services. He took part in them not as a curious bystander or a private individual, but as an Orthodox, an embodiment of the uninterrupted tradition of the Orthodox Church: I felt that my presence went beyond the personal and the contingent, that I added something to this worship, and that through my Orthodoxy I somehow integrated it into the sacred history of the Church over and above its rupture and separation. Such an integration is still mysterious, not susceptible to theological, much less canonical precision. It is nonetheless mystically real for those who live this experience.10

The third event that shaped Evdokimov’s understanding of his mission as an Orthodox in the Western world was his acquaintance with Catholics, among whom he counted as a great friend Dom Célestin Charlier. This Catholic priest and Benedictine monk used to celebrate Mass in an ancient chapel which he himself had restored. Evdokimov participated in these eucharistic celebrations which for him were “a miracle of Western Christianity,” evoking for him the Eastern liturgical rhythm and the active participation of the whole assembly:

10  Ibid., 87. Célestin Charlier (1911–1976) was a Benedictine monk of Maredsous, Belgium. In 1956, because of ill health, he moved to Pépiole in Provence, France, and established there a center for the study of the Bible. He also restored an old chapel for worship. In the summers of 1956 and 1958, Evdokimov spent several months there and collaborated with Charlier on his journal Bible et Vie chrétienne. On Sundays Evdokimov and his family attended Mass celebrated by the Benedictine monk whose slow, deliberate gestures reminded him of what he called the “Eastern rhythm” of Byzantine liturgy.

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I felt at ease as though I were an Eastern pilgrim paying visit to the Christian West before the separation. In front of the eucharistic presence, nothing prevented me from being one with the priest, his parish, his Mass. The anticipation of possible unity, one of the most overriding expectations of my life, was kept alive. Of course, I could not receive communion. But this pain in the heart of joy seemed to be pregnant with a promise, an ardent, epicletic hope.11

Later, Evdokimov widened the circle of his ecumenical activities. In 1948, he participated in the Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Amsterdam. He was a member of the Board of Directors of the Institut Oecuménique de Bossey until 1964, where he came to know the Greek Orthodox theologian Nikos Nissiotis. In 1953, Evdokimov took part in the foundation of Syndesmos, an organization whose task was to coordinate on the international level various Orthodox youth movements. In 1965, he was an observer at the third session of the Second Vatican Council. Thus, both in his activities and his scholarship, Evdokimov realized his ecumenical vocation as a Russian lay Orthodox theologian in the West.

2   Theological Principles for Ecumenical Unity Out of his personal experiences in ecumenical work as well as his Orthodox theology Evdokimov expressed a number of basic principles for ecumenical theology and for any fruitful endeavor toward Christian unity that can be summarized as follows.12 Admittedly, these insights do not offer a  Ibid., 88.  Studies on Evdokimov’s theology are still comparatively small in number. On his ecumenical work and theology, see Lars Thunberg, “Paul Evdokimov, théologien oecuménique,” Contacts vol. 47, no. 72 (1995), 270–286. General studies include the following: Peter C. Phan, Culture and Eschatology: The Iconographical Vision of Paul Evdokimov (New York: Peter Lang, 1984); idem, “The Eschatological Dimension of Unity: Paul Evdokimov’s Contribution to Ecumenism,” Salesianum 44 (1980), 475–499; idem, “Mariage, monachisme et eschatologie. Contribution de Paul Evdokimov à la spiritualité chrétienne,” Ephemerides Liturgicae XCIII, nos. 4–5 (1979), 354–80; idem, “Evdokimov and the Monk Within,” Sobornost 31 (1981), 53–61; idem, “Gender Roles in the History of Salvation: Man and Woman in the Thought of Paul Evdokimov,” The Heythrop Journal 31 (1990), 53–66; idem, “Paul Evdokimov et la théologie catholique contemporaine: Une perspective eschatologique,” Contacts 63, nos. 235–236 (2011), 417–429; Michael Plekon, “An Offering of Prayer: The Witness of Paul Evdokimov (1901–1970),” Sobornost 17, no. 2 (1995); idem, “Le visage du Père en la Mère de Dieu: Marie dans les écrits théologiques de Paul 11 12

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comprehensive and systematic exposition of all the norms guiding ecumenism, but their incompleteness is largely compensated by their depth and richness. 1. The first principle is contained in Evdokimov’s rather cryptic statement that paradoxically the “mystery of unity” of the Church is strictly conjoined with its “mystery of disunity” and that the former comes into existence only at the end of the latter.13 Indeed, according to him, both mysteries are intrinsic to the nature of the Church and constitute as it were the two faces of the Church. That church disunity or division is an empirical fact is undeniable, but what does Evdokimov mean by calling it a “mystery”? Furthermore, what does he mean when he says that church unity, which is also termed a “mystery,” only comes to be at the end of church disunity? Evdokimov,” Contacts 47, no. 172 (1995), 250–269; idem, “Paul Evdokimov: A Theologian Within and Beyond the Church and the World,” Modern Theology 12, no. 1 (1996), 85–107; idem, “Interiorized Monasticism: A Reconsideration of Paul Evdokimov on the Spiritual Life,” The American Benedictine Review 48, no. 3 (1997), 227–253; idem, “The God Whose Power Is Weakness, Whose Love Is Foolish: Divine Philanthropy in the Theology of Paul Evdokimov,” Sourozh 60 (1995), 15–26; Jean-François Roussel, Paul Evdokimov: Une foi en exil (Montréal-Paris: Médiaspaul, 1999); idem, “Évidence et l’indicibilité apologétique dans Paul Evdokimov,” Contacts 47, no. 172 (1995), 287–307; Michel Stavrou, “Notes biobibliographiques sur l’oeuvre de Paul Evdokimov,” Contacts 53, nos. 235–236 (2011), 276–286; idem, “La place de l’Esprit Saint dans l’oeuvre de Paul Evdokimov,” Contacts 63, nos. 235–236 (2011), 359–374; Frère Richard, “La sainteté selon P.  Evdokimov comme élargissement et liberté,” Contacts 63, nos. 235–236 (2011), 276–286; André Lossky, “Le sacerdoce royal des fidèles selon Paul Evdokimov,” Contacts 63, nos. 235–236 (2011), 287–294; Michel Leplay, “Le marriage sacrement de l’amour,” Contacts 63, nos. 235–236 (2011), 295–305; Bertrand Vergely, “Paul Evdokimov et la théologie morale,” Contacts 63, nos. 235–236 (2011), 306–316; Michel Evdokimov, “L’engagement social d’un contemplatif,” Contacts 63, nos. 235–236 (2011). 317–326; Jean Breck, “Exégèse moderne et herméneutique patristique chez Paul Evdokimov,” Contacts 63, nos. 235–236 (2011), 327–399; Joost van Rossum, “‘La réponse à Job’: Evdokimov comme lecteur de Jung,” Contacts 63, nos. 235–236 (2011), 340–358; Françoise Jeanlin, “La figure de la Mère de Dieu dans l’oeuvre de Paul Evdokimov,” Contacts 63, nos. 235–236 (2011), 375–387; Alexandre Musin, “La théologie de l’icône chez Paul Evdokimov: Une approache ecclésiale de l’art chrétien,” Contacts 63, nos. 235–236 (2011), 388–400; Stavros Yangazoglou, “La beauté de la théologie: L’apport poétique et esthétique de Paul Evdokimov,” Contacts 63, nos. 235–236 (2011), 401–416; Christopher P.  Klofft, “Gender and the Process of Moral Development in the Thought of Paul Evdokimov,” Theological Studies 66 (2005), 69–95; and Olivia Andrei, “Theological and Moral Principles as a Foundation for a Christian Education: The Vision of Paul Evdokimov,” Teologia 68, no. 3 (2016), 60–85. 13  Evdokimov writes: “À côté du mystère de l’union il existe peut-être le mystère de la désunion, le premier ne se trouve qu’au terme du second” (L’Orthodoxie, 339).

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To understand Evdokimov’s thesis, it is necessary to mention his distinction between the historical and eschatological dimensions of the Church. Historically speaking, the Church is a concrete and particular manifestation of both the intra-trinitarian unity of the three divine Persons—Father, Son, and Spirit—and the unity between  God and humanity, that is, of God becoming human (the Incarnation) and humanity becoming God (deification by grace), which he terms “theandrism.” For Evdokimov, every Church is a full historical realization and embodiment of this double unity, each in its own way and each choosing to emphasize one aspect rather than another of this double unity. However, given this ecclesial historical diversity and pluralism, Evdokimov holds that there is, already and inevitably, within the Church itself the reality of “disunity.” This “disunity” is not merely the result of external historical disputes and divisions, past and present, among the Churches, which of course is true, but is rooted in God’s providential will for the necessarily multiple, diverse, and finite realizations of the infinite intra-trinitarian unity and theandrism. To put it in terms of religious pluralism as proposed by Jacques Dupuis, this “disunity” is not simply de facto but also de iure. In this sense, it can rightly be called a “mystery.” On the other hand, from the eschatological perspective, this disunity is counteracted by the presence, also within the Church, of the real ontological unity of the Church rooted in the trinitarian and theandric unity. As with disunity, this unity is also rightly called “mystery.” Hence, Evdokimov rejects the so-called Branch Theory of church unity according to which each Church is only a fragmentary realization of the true Church which is still to come as the result of the Churches joining together at some time in the future. He equally rejects any falsely irenic attitude which adopts dogmatic relativism and minimalism. On the contrary, Evdokimov believes that each Church, conscious of its possession of divine truth and grace, has the right to claim that it is the only true Church of God. However, precisely because other Churches also make claims to being the only true Church of God, all Churches must enter into a sincere dialogue with one another to discover and realize the one true Church, the Una Sancta, which they all claim to embody and manifest. Thus, the unity of the Church is not and must not be thought of as a common, mutually agreeable construction of a Church by participants in the dialogue through negotiations and compromises in Church doctrines and practices. Rather, participants in ecumenical dialogue must discover and bear witness together to the Una Sancta which lies at the hearts of all the Churches,

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not only for the sake of their unity but also for the sake of the world. Ecumenical unity is not for intra-ecclesial benefits but for the salvation of humanity and the world. For Evdokimov, a Christian engages in ecumenical dialogue neither in order to ameliorate the deficiencies of his or her Church nor to save the members of other, allegedly heretical and schismatic Churches. Rather, with the conviction of and commitment to the fullness of truth of his or her Church, a Christian engages in ecumenical dialogue in order to realize the eschatological nature of the Church, or in Evdokimov’s eloquent expressions, to bring about the “pleroma of the Incarnation, the growth toward the stature of Christ, the fullness of the truths of faith.”14 In saying that “the mystery of unity” of the Church will come about after the end of the “mystery of disunity,” Evdokimov implicitly asserts that the total and complete unity of the Una Sancta, just as the reign of God, is “already but not yet.” It is an eschatological reality that will be realized in the unity of humanity and all things in the Trinity. 2. The mention of eschatology brings to the fore Evdokimov’s second principle of ecumenical theology, that is, the theology of the Holy Spirit. Evdokimov believes that excessive Christocentrism narrows the dimensions of ecumenical dialogue and that only a fulsome pneumatology can widen its limits and create a space where the Spirit can breathe life into the Church. Only the Spirit can prevent the hardening of dogmatic positions that separate the Churches. The Spirit is given in response to what Evdokimov terms the “ecumenical epiclesis” which is the essence of the prayer for Christian unity.15 When the Spirit comes, the Spirit will offer the Church the gift of unity and heal the current state of division. The efficacy of this epiclesis for unity was shown, Evdokimov argues, at the Council of Chalcedon (451), where the invocation of the Holy Spirit resolved the conflict between the Alexandrian thesis and the Antiochian antithesis. As a result, each side rediscovered its own truth, now purified of its parochialism and integrated into an altogether new, truly c catholic synthesis. In its messianic and charismatic structure, with the permanent epiclesis, the Church is a “perpetual Pentecost.”16 14  Paul Evdokimov, “Quelques jalons sur un chemin de vie,” in Semences d’unité, ed. M. Boegner (Paris: Casterman (1965), 90. 15  Ibid., 92. 16  Paul Evdokimov, L’Esprit Saint dans la tradition orthodoxe (Paris: Édition du Cerf, 1969), 109.

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Moreover, the ecumenical epiclesis requires a preliminary metanoia on the part of the dialogue partners, a conversion Evdokimov describes as from esse in se to esse ad alterum, that is, from absorption in oneself to movement toward the other. Evdokimov argues that ecumenical unity requires a transparency and purity of heart, which he calls “an ecumenical baptism.”17 This baptism enables partners-in-dialogue to renounce all imperialistic attempts at imposing at any cost on others one’s own ways of thinking, believing, and living. Only in this way can ecumenical dialogue burst forth into what Evdokimov calls “an ecumenical Pentecost,” a definitive transfiguration of history and the cosmos.18 This metanoia is not only a moral and ascetical purification but also an intellectual conversion, a meta-rational and spiritual way of knowing, which would facilitate a formulation of an adequate pneumatology in which the role of the Holy Spirit in the reunification of the Churches is made explicit. Thus, any ecumenical endeavor must examine in depth the theological implications of the ecumenical epiclesis. Only such a pneumatology can help us avoid both excessive Christocentrism and excessive pneumatocentrism and maintain the trinitarian equilibrium, which, as we show later, is for Evdokimov the normative paradigm for the union of the three Churches: Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant, which Evdokimov describes as the Petrine, Johannine, and Pauline traditions respectively.19 Each of these three traditions represents, each in its own distinctive way, the totality of tradition. Unfortunately, the “dogmatization” of the differences among these traditions has  hardened  (s) the divisions among the three Churches. Consequently, Evdokimov urges a “dedogmatization” or “transdogmatization” of these differences, a process made possible by the Holy Spirit. This process does not deny the truth of dogmas but places them in their historical contexts and relativizes the concrete and particular formulations of these dogmas. 3. Evdokimov’s third principle for ecumenical theology is the trinitarian principle. This is proposed by Evdokimov on two levels, historical and theological. Historically, it means that full ecumenical dialogue must be composed of three partners, namely, Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant. 17  Paul Evdokimov, “Quelques jalons sur un chemin de vie,” in Semences d’unité, ed. M. Boegner (Paris: Casterman (1965), 93. 18  Paul Evdokimov, “L’Esprit Saint et la prière pour l’unité,” Verbum Caro 55 (1960), 263. 19  This description of the three ecclesial traditions was much in vogue among ecumenists at the beginning of the twentieth century, in particular Nathan Söderblom.

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A dialogue that is confined within the same ecclesial tradition (e.g., between Lutherans and Reformed), or one in which one of three traditions is absent, is bound to end in an impasse.20 In this connection Evdokimov draws attention to the privileged position of the Orthodox tradition inasmuch as it can offer from its patristic heritage solutions to the problems debated among Catholics and Protestants during his time such as faith and works, grace and freedom, authority and prophecy, and celibacy and marriage. More importantly, on the theological level, the Trinity is the guiding principle for ecumenical unity. Just as the three divine Persons are united in one nature but are not confused with nor subordinated to each other, so the three Churches are united among themselves without confusion nor subordination: In its light [the mystery of the Trinity] the goal intended by ecumenism would be the accord of faith of the three Churches (Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant); their unity and perfect equality would reflect as it were in a mirror the mystery of the three divine Persons. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of communion, will bestow his gift of joy in which the three Churches will take a common delight, and the Trinity will give each Church to the other as gift. The Churches will be united not in order to be confused with each other, but to contain each other. Each Church will be a unique way of possessing the same theandric essence, to receive it from the other, and thus the three Churches will be placed together within the unceasing circumincession of divine love.21

Thus, Evdokimov sees the unity of the three Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant, as reflecting the unity of the three divine Persons in the Trinity itself.

3   Three Theological Issues for Ecumenical Discussion Evdokimov has not only written on theological principles on which ecumenical dialogue should be practiced but also addressed some issues that were hotly debated during his time. Here, only three will be mentioned: the Filioque, Marian dogmas, and the Petrine office. To appreciate the  See L’Orthodoxie, 340.  Paul Evdokimov, L’Esprit Saint dans la tradition orthodoxe (Paris: Édition du Cerf, 1969), 111. 20 21

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import of Evdokimov’s contributions to Christian unity, it is important to recall that he was expounding these ideas some 50 years ago. In the interval, highly significant progress has been made in bilateral and multilateral ecumenical dialogues on these very three issues on both the national and international levels, especially as the result of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). As a result, it has been maintained that today there no longer exist church-dividing doctrinal issues.22 1. It is common knowledge that the Greek and the Latin Churches parted, among other things, over the doctrine of the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit. While the Greek Church maintains that the Spirit eternally from the Father alone and through the Son, the Latin Church holds that he “proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son (Filioque), not as from two principles but from one, not by two spirations but by one only.”23 Given the importance of this article of faith, Evdokimov devotes a detailed

22  The literature on the efforts of various Churches to overcome division and to achieve unity in the aftermath of Vatican II is immense. The following works, highly selective, provide a glimpse into the ecumenical progress that has been achieved so far: Walter Kasper, Harvesting the Fruits: Basic Aspects of Christian Faith in Ecumenical Dialogue (London: Continuum, 2009; Paul D.  Murray, ed., Receptive Ecumenism and the Call to Catholic Learning: Exploring a Way for Contemporary Ecumenism Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); John A. Radano, ed., Celebrating a Century of Ecumenism: Exploring the Achievements of International Dialogue (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012); E. J. Stormon, ed., Toward the Healing of Schism: The Sees of Rome and Constantinople. Public Statements and Correspondence between the Holy See and the Ecumenical Patriarchate 1958–1984 (New York: Paulist Press, 1987); Joseph A. Burgess and Jeffrey Gros, eds., Growing Consensus I: Church Dialogues in the United States (New York: Paulist Press, 1995); Lydia Veliko and Jeffrey Gros, eds., Growing Consensus II: Church Dialogues in the United States, 1992–2004 (Washington, D.C.: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2005); Jeffrey Gros and William Rusch, eds., Deepening Communion: International Ecumenical Documents with Roman Catholic Participation (New York: Paulist Press, 1998); Thomas F, Best et  al., ed., Growth in Agreement IV, Bk 1: International Dialogue Texts and Agreed Statements 2005–2013 (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 2017); Thomas F. Best et al., eds., Growth in Agreement IV, Bk 1: International Dialogue Texts and Agreed Statements 2005–2013 (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 2017); and Thomas F.  Best et  al., eds., Growth in Agreement IV, Bk 2: International Dialogue Texts and Agreed Statements 2005–2013 (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 2017). 23  The Constitution on the Holy Trinity and the Catholic Faith of the Council of Lyons (1274). The English translation is taken from Joseph Neuner and Jacques Dupuis, eds., The Christian faith in the Doctrinal Documents of the Catholic Church (Boston: St Pauls, 2001), 154.

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study of it and attempts to forge a common understanding between the two Churches.24 In his effort to justify the Latin addition of the Filioque in the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit, Evdokimov makes use of Gregory Palamas’s distinction between divine essence and divine energies, that is, the intra-trinitarian and extra-trinitarian modes of being in God, or the plane of nature and the plane of manifestation. For him, in the “energetic,” extra-trinitarian, manifestative plane, it is correct to affirm that the Holy Spirit “proceeds” from the Father and the Son (Filioque), that the Holy Spirit qua energy proceeds ex Patre Filioque, because it is the Son who sends, “manifests” the Holy Spirit in the economy of salvation. In this respect, therefore, the Latin formula Filioque is fully justified. On the other hand, Evdokimov observes, and here he goes further than the Catholic tradition, it is equally true to say that in the same “energetic,” extra-trinitarian, manifestative plane, the Son is generated by the Father and the Holy Spirit (Spirituque) since it is the Holy Spirit who gives birth to Jesus in the souls of the faithful, who comes down upon the Son at his baptism, and who is the Breath of generation when the Father says: “You are my Son, today I have become your Father” (Ps 2:7). Thus, in the economy of salvation Filioque, according to Evdokimov, must be counterbalanced by Spirituque.25 It may be urged against Evdokimov that the Filioque in the Western tradition is understood not on the extra-trinitarian plane but on the intra-­ trinitarian plane. In response to this objection, Evdokimov advances a number of important propositions. First, following the Eastern tradition he suggests that the ground for unity among the three divine Persons is not the one nature that is common to them but the unique hypostasis of the Father. The divine Persons then are not understood as relations of opposition in the divine  nature but relations of “diversity, reciprocity, mutual revelation and communion in the Father.”26 Second, Evdokimov vigorously emphasizes the triadic character of all trinitarian relations: “The Son and the Spirit are related to the Father simultaneously; the innascibility of the Father, the generation of the Son,  See especially his L’Esprit Saint dans la tradition orthodoxe (Paris: Édition du Cerf, 1969).  See L’Orthodoxie, 139: “Le Fils est engendré par le Père (origine) pour, dans, avec, à travers, par L’Esprit saint (manifestation). Ek tou Patros dia tou Hiou correspond à ek tou Patros dia tou Pneumatos. Le Filioque, mais de manifestation seule, s’équilibre par le Spirituque de manifestation seule également.” 26  L’Esprit Saint dans la tradition orthodoxe (Paris: Édition du Cerf, 1969), 41. 24 25

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and the procession of the Spirit are mutually implicated; one is never without the other two. This triadic character of relations suppresses all possibility of reducing them to duality or to the formation of dyads in the Trinity.”27 Third, following Vasily Bolotov’s proposal on the Trinity, Evdokimov urges that the intra-trinitarian relations should be conceived of not as causal relations but as “relations of interdependence and condition because every intra-trinitarian relation is always triple in the eternal circumincession of divine love.”28 Consequently Evdokimov asserts that “the Son is the Trinitarian condition for the spiration of the Holy Spirit by the Father, and the Holy Spirit is the Trinitarian condition for the generation of the Son by the Father. The innascibility, generation, and spiration are without confusion and separation a single triune act of revelation, with the simultaneous and reciprocal participation of the three Persons.”29 On the basis of these propositions, Evdokimov argues that neither monopatrism—the exclusive formula of ek monou to Patros—nor filioquism—the exclusive formula of Filioque— is adequate. Both are correct in what they affirm and wrong in what they deny. The former formula is correct in affirming that the Father is the source of divinity, the principle of unity, and the latter is correct in affirming that the Son has a role to play in the procession of the Holy Spirit but both are wrong in their denial of the triadic character of all Trinitarian relations and their ignorance of the fact that the relations are not causal dependences but conditions.30 Furthermore, Evdokimov proposes that his theory of the trinitarian relations applies even on the intra-trinitarian plane: Filioque can be orthodox if it is balanced by Spirituque and provided that it is kept in mind that intra-trinitarian relations are always triadic and conditions rather than causal relations. The Son is generated ex Patre Spirituque and the Spirit is spirated ex Patre Filioque, and both the Son and the Spirit condition the  Ibid., 42.  Ibid., 49. 29  Ibid., 75. On this point Evdokimov derives much of his trinitarian theology from Vasily Bolotov, a nineteenth-century Russian historian of theology, who first published anonymously in German an essay entitled “Thesen über das ‘Filioque’ von einem russischen Theologen,” Internationale theologische Zeitschrift 6 (1898), 680–712, which he later published in Russian under his own name. The French translation is available in Istina 17 (1972), 261–289. Bolotov’s proposal has been accepted by Evdokimov and Sergei Bulgakov but categorically rejected by Vladimir Lossky. 30  L’Esprit Saint dans la tradition orthodoxe (Paris: Édition du Cerf, 1969), 72. 27 28

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innascibility of the Father inasmuch as they bear witness to him as the unique source of divinity by originating from him. Thus, the Son in his generation receives from the Father the Holy Spirit and therefore in his being is eternally inseparable from the Holy Spirit; he is generated ex Patre Spirituque. In the same way the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and rests on the Son, which corresponds to the per Filium and the ex Patre Filioque. One finds the que, per or dia wherever there exists the hypostatic relation which is always triune. The Father generates the Son with the participation of the Holy Spirit and he spirates the Spirit with the participation of the Son, and even the Father’s innascibility implies the participation of the Son and the Holy Spirit who bear witness to it by originating from him as from their unique source. These relations, however, are not those of production but of correlation between Him who reveals himself and those who reveal him, the triune act of the mutual love of the three Persons.31

Thus, although there is a real distinction between the essential and energetic modes of being in God, there is an identity-analogy between them inasmuch as on either plane there are, both Filioque and Spirituque. 2. Intimately related to the problem of the Holy Spirit is Mariology, since, according to Evdokimov, “the virginal maternity of the Theotokos, according to Tradition, is a figure of the Holy Spirit, the Consoler.”32 Evdokimov’s position on the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, like that of most Orthodox, is on the whole negative.33 He presents two objections to it: First, the dogma of the Immaculate Conception betrays a misunderstanding of the doctrine of original sin inasmuch as it presupposes that original justice is something “above nature” and that the inheritance from Adam’s fall is guilt.34 Second, it also contains an erroneous view of the cooperation between divine grace and human free will inasmuch as its claims that God’s grace operates upon Mary, preserving her from all sins before her cooperation with it.35 By contrast, with regard to the dogma of  Ibid., 72.  Paul Evdokimov, “Panagion et Panagia,” Revue d’Études mariales, 29 (1971), 63. It is significant that Evdokimov treats of the Holy Spirit and Mary in the same essay. 33  See L’Orthodoxie, 150: “En confessant sa virginité perpétuelle, l’Orthodoxie n’accepte pas la notion d’exemption qui pose le dogme romain de l’immaculée conception.” 34  See L’Orthodoxie, 150. 35  See Paul Evdokimov, L’Art de l’icône: Théologie de la beauté (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1970), 218: “Ce dogme met la Vierge à part, l’enlève au destin commun de l’humanité et 31 32

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the Assumption, Evdokimov is receptive to it as he sees it as corresponding to the Orthodox feast of Koimesis [Dormition]. Beyond his discussion of these two dogmas, Evdokimov’s most important contribution to Mariology is his vigorous insistence on placing it in pneumatology, Christology, and ecclesiology, thus correcting the past tendency, sometimes found in Roman Catholic theology, to make Mariology a separate and isolated body of doctrines. Evdokimov perceives an essential link between the Holy Spirit and Mary, precisely in their maternal function and holiness. While the Holy Spirit personalizes divine holiness, Mary personalizes human holiness. Furthermore, the theandric maternity of Mary is the image of the “hypostatic maternity” of the Holy Spirit: “Ontologically linked to the Holy Spirit, Mary appears as vivifying consolation, Eve-Life who safeguards and protects every creature and thus becomes the figure of the Church in her maternal protection.”36 In addition, Mary is essentially linked to Christ inasmuch as by her fiat at the Annunciation she inaugurates the new age, making the economy of salvation go back to its “Mariological root.” Thus, Mariology forms an integral part of Christology. Finally, because Mary is linked with the Holy Spirit and Christ, Evdokimov notes, she is also linked with the Church, precisely in her maternal function. Just as Mary has given birth to Christ historically, she will give birth to him in the soul of each Christian, so that the Church in her mystical motherhood is prefigured in Mary and is the “perpetual Theotokos.”37 Evdokimov’s integration of Mariology into the theology of the Holy Spirit, Christ, and the Church is without doubt a great contribution to the ecumenical dialogue. He rightly rejects the constitution of Mariology as a separate treatise and highlights the connection and relevance of Mariology for the entire life of the Church. 3. There is little doubt that of all the doctrines that have divided the Catholic Church and the other Churches, papal primacy and papal infallibility are the greatest obstacles against Church reunion. Evdokimov has tackled these two issues with frankness and sympathy. The basic theological framework of Evdokimov’s approach is the eucharistic conception of montre une libération du péché originel possible avant la Croix, et donc par le seul moyen de la grâce. Or Dieu n’agit pas sur la Vierge par le don superadditum, mais opère au-dedans même du synergisme entre l’Esprit et la sainteté des ‘justes ancêtres de Dieu.’” 36  L’Orthodoxie, 149. 37  Ibid., 151.

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the Church that was proposed by Nikolas Afanasiev and which he appropriates. According to this view, the fullness of the Body of Christ, the Church, is given in the eucharistic communion that is celebrated by the assembly headed by the bishop, and therefore each eucharistic assembly possesses the fullness of the Church of God in Christ.38 This also means that there can be “only one bishop at the head of one Church in one territory.”39Consequently, there can be no other canonical power superior to that of the bishop in his diocese, a sort of superbishop, an episcopus episcoporum.40 This eucharistic ecclesiology does not however prevent Evdokimov from recognizing a special position to Peter, one that is not juridical but ministerial. For him, Peter is “the first bishop celebrating the first Supper of the Lord; in this sense, he is ‘rock,’ ‘stone,’ the eucharistic foundation which will last until the Parousia.”41 But, by the same token, Evdokimov claims, every bishop who celebrates the eucharist in his diocese is a direct successor of Peter in his witnessing ministry, of the apostolic power to celebrate the eucharist, the witness who confirms the truth of the sacrament.42 Although each local Church in its eucharistic celebration is the Church in its fullness, Evdokimov is well aware that this fullness has not only a vertical dimension but also a horizontal one. In order for each local church in its eucharistic assembly to be identified with the Church of God, it must be in communion with other churches in their eucharistic assemblies because the unity lies in the eucharistic celebration and not in the local churches by themselves. How then should we conceive of the unity of the Church, especially in view of the disunity of the three Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant? Is there any other possible way of understanding papal primacy? Will papal primacy retain its significance for the unity of the Church even if its dogmatic formulation such as proclaimed by the

38  See Paul Evdokimov, “Un ministère pétrinien dans l’Église peut-il avoir un sens?” Concilium, 64 (1971), 111: “C’est parce que l’eucharistie n’est pas une partie du Christ, mais le Christ tout entier que de même toute l’église locale n’est pas une partie de l’Una Sancta, mais sa manifestation plénière, dans ce lieu, le people de Dieu réuni dans son évêque.” 39  L’Orthodoxie, 131. 40  See Paul Evdokimov, “Un ministère pétrinien dans l’Église peut-il avoir un sens?” Concilium, 64 (1971), 110. 41  L’Orthodoxie, 133. 42  See ibid., 134.

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First Vatican Council is rejected? In answering these questions Evdokimov displays a great openness of heart and ingenuity of mind. First, he suggests that we should consider not only one ministry, that of Peter, but three ministries, those of Peter, John, and Paul. Peter represents the authority of service; John, the ministry of love; and Paul, the prophetic charism. These three ministries are all necessary and mutually complementary: “Neither clericalism of the hypostacized power of the Petrine ministry only; nor the prophetic anticlericalism of the Pauline ministry only, but the equilibrium of the three is the image of the Trinity.”43 These  three ministries—Petrine, Johannine, and Pauline—as has been mentioned above, represent for Evdokimov the three Churches—Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant—respectively. The implication is that these three Churches need to be united with one another because only in their unity can they be safeguarded from excesses and deviations. Second, pursuing his trinitarian theology, Evdokimov comes up with another bold suggestion, namely, the unity of the three Churches should be modeled after the unity of the Trinity: Each Church corresponds to this “guiding image,” this shining icon of the absolute divine Church or pre-eternal Trinitarian Council, as a unique vessel containing the same essence of truth, receiving it from the other Churches and giving it to them, thereby containing and setting the other Churches in a continual circulation of ecclesial charity. This polyphonic convergence, always molded to the heavenly image, excludes uniformity, absorption or subordination. The Father, in the strict tradition of Eastern patristics, established royally and magnificently as “he who presides in love,” is the principle of unity in the Trinity, assuring and not destroying the complete equality of the three Persons, which excludes the notion that anyone is subordinate.44

In such a unity of the three Churches, the Church of Rome still maintains its primacy, but it is a primacy of honor the aim and function of which is to foster the unity all the Churches, a charism of love in the image of God the Father, and especially for this reason, stripped of all jurisdictional 43  Paul Evdokimov, “Un ministère pétrinien dans l’Église peut-il avoir un sens?” Concilium, 64 (1971), 110. Note that Evdokimov’s statement here is incomplete since it does not mention the third possibility, that of the deformation of the Johannine ministry. Perhaps to the clericalism of the Petrine ministry and the anticlericalism of the Pauline ministry, we should add the antinomianism of the Johannine ministry. 44  Paul Evdokimov, “Quels sont les souhaits fondamentaux de l’Église orthodoxe vis-à-vis de l’Église catholique?” Concilium 14 (1966), 74.

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power over the other Churches. Evdokimov remarks further that the Pope, as bishop of the diocese of Rome, exercises his Petrine ministry, while as the primus inter pares, he exercises his Johannine ministry, “a universal primacy, the center of unity of all the Churches, solicitude and care for the unity of faith, mission and life.”45

4   Concluding Reflections Reading Evdokimov’s ecumenical theology in the context of today’s dialogue among the Churches, especially in view of the enormous progress toward Church unity that has been  made since Vatican II, reveals both how many of his doctrinal proposals have become points of consensus among theologians of various Church traditions and even official Church authorities and how his principles of ecumenical theology still retain their basic validity and usefulness. Of course, it is easy to critique some particular details of Evdokimov’s ecumenical theology, such as his rather oversimplified description of “Protestants,” who today have become exceedingly varied worldwide. Of course, contemporary ecumenical discussion must take into account the explosion of Pentecostals in recent decades, a fact which Evdokimov could not have anticipated. But such exercise risks missing the forest for the trees. Indeed, reading Evdokimov side by side the document “The Relations of the Orthodox Church with the Rest of the Christian World” of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Churches shows how far the pan-Orthodox Council still has to go to catch up with the Russian lay Orthodox theologian exiled in the West. Among the many aspects of Evdokimov’s ecumenical theology that still are of immediate relevance to the Orthodox-Catholic dialogue is his openness to the role of the papacy within a reunited Christianity. It is commonly acknowledged that the Petrine ministry, or at least its Roman conception and modes of exercise, constitutes the greatest if not the only remaining obstacle to the union between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church.46 In this context, Evdokimov’s insistence on the necessity of three ministries in the Church—service, prophecy, and love—is of  Paul Evdokimov, “Un ministère pétrinien dans l’Église peut-il avoir un sens?” Concilium, 64 (1971), 112. 46  It may be said that the other three doctrines, namely the Filioque and the Marian dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and of the Assumption, no longer constitute an insurmountable obstacle to the reunion between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church. 45

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great consequence for ecumenical unity. No doubt, his attribution of the authority of service, represented by Peter, to the Catholic Church; the ministry of love, represented by John, to the Orthodox Church; and the prophetic charism, represented by Paul, to the Protestant Churches may be criticized as too rigidly schematic. Against Evdokimov it may be argued that any of the three Churches possesses all three ministries, though admittedly not in equal measure. Even so, Evdokimov’s underlying idea that no one Church is fully Church unless it incorporates the ministries of the other two Churches undercuts the exclusive claim by any one Church that it alone is the true Church. Such a claim, as is well known, has been made by the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church, and the more fundamentalist Protestant denominations. In such ecclesiological exclusivism, Evdokimov’s conception of the unified Church as practicing all three ministries opens the door for ecumenical dialogue in order to facilitate the incorporation of the Petrine, Johannine, and Pauline ministries together into the Una Sancta. In the unity of the Una Sancta none of three ministries is eliminated or absorbed, and hence, the three churches with their own characteristic and different ways of exercising their distinctive charism are united with one another but remain distinct in their autonomous structure and life. On the other hand, with the benefit of the other two charisms, each charism is preserved from its excesses and distortions, sadly all too familiar in the history of Christianity: the Petrine ministry of service falling into clericalism, the Pauline prophetic ministry into anticlericalism, and the Johannine ministry of love into antinomianism. To bring about the unity of the Una Sancta, continual ecumenical dialogue is of course indispensable. However, as Evdokimov himself has noted, nothing less than what he calls “ecumenical epiclesis” is required. The Church must invoke a new Pentecost, the descent of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of service, prophecy, and love, upon the many and diverse Churches that they may be gathered into the one Church, the Una Sancta.

The Specificity of the Greek-Catholic Ecclesiology in the Thinking of the Romanian Theological School Alexandru Buzalic

1   Introduction In 1979, in the United States, Father Alexandru Raţiu (1906–2002) published the book Stolen Church.1 American-born, son of Romanian emigrants, he returned to the Kingdom of Romania to study theology, following his philosophical and theological studies in Oradea/Transylvania and then in Rome/Italy. After receiving his doctorate, he started his priesthood in the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church, serving as a priest in the countryside and then in the church of the Theological Seminary in Oradea.

1  Alexandru Rat ̦iu, William Virtue, Stolen Church. Martyrdom in Communist Romania (Huntington, Indiana: Our Sunday Visitor, Inc. 1979).

A. Buzalic (*) Faculty of Greek-Catholic Theology, Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania © The Author(s) 2021 V. Latinovic, A. K. Wooden (eds.), Stolen Churches or Bridges to Orthodoxy?, Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55442-2_15

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In October 1948, declaring that “the will of the people was to join the Romanian Orthodox Church” the Romanian government dissolved the Greek-Catholic Church in the country on Stalin’s orders, who intended to subordinate and supervise ecclesiastical institutions in order to become docile to the Soviet political system. During the Stalinist period, which lasted until 1963–1965, Romania was subordinated to the policy of Moscow, with which it signed a Treaty of friendship and mutual assistance in 1948, which allowed the USSR to get involved in the security issues of Romania.2 Romanian political police, “Securitatea,” and the Communist government confiscated all the Greek-Catholic churches and institutions and gave them to the Orthodox Church. The government then arrested all six bishops of the Greek-Catholic Church, along with many other priests and lay leaders, and attempted to persuade them to declare publicly their allegiance to the Orthodox Church. Refusal would have led to torture and often death, as it was the case with the seven martyred bishops beatified in June 2019, by Pope Francis. Between 1948 and 1964, Raţiu was imprisoned in several prisons: Căldărușani, Sighet prison, Gherla, Jilava, Bătești, and finally sent to different labor camps in different locations, such as Strâmba, Stoenești, and Great Brăila Island. He was subsequently placed under house arrest for another two years. In 1970, the Communist authorities allowed him to leave Romania, and he rejoined his family in the United States in 1971. Raţiu served as a priest in the United States from 1974 until his retirement. Even though he was a Catholic priest and theologian and was serving as a priest in the Romanian Church, he was also living in the “Orthodox” spirituality.3 Through his book Stolen Church, Raţiu wanted to draw attention to the suffering and martyrdom of the Greek-Catholic Church in the dark decades of communism. During communism, the Greek-Catholic Churches of Eastern Europe were “stolen Churches” that called to bear witness to the faith by the restoration of unity among Christian churches. The promulgation of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches (Codex Canonum Ecclesiarum Orientalium) in 1991 and the recognition of the term “church sui iuris”4 opens the way to an ecclesiological vision 2  Dennis Deletant, România sub regimul comunist (București: Fundat ̦ia Academia Civică, 2006), 20–33. 3  Alexandru Rat ̦iu, William Virtue, Stolen Church, 184–185. 4  CCEO, can. 27.

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which has to be found in the unity of the Church of the First Christian Millennium. Dialogue should pave the way for true mutual knowledge, the theology promoted by Greek Catholics being an “ecumenical theology avant la lettre” written by “Greek Catholics.” The Greek-Catholic theology affirm their own Eastern spirituality and canonical laws in a categorical language that is understandable by both Roman Catholics and especially by the brothers of the same Church which remains separated, by Orthodox. As an example of such ecumenical theology, this chapter looks at the Greek-Catholic theology in Transylvania, from the early polemical or apologetic writings to the contemporary ecclesiological vision taught in the Greek-Catholic universities.

2   Theological Basis of the Unity The church schism of 1054 brought about a rupture between Roman Christianity, specific to the West, and Eastern Christianity. The result of the evolution of the theological language in the Latin tradition and, above all, historical, political, and military events, the schism of the church led to a process of coagulation of alterity in the medieval period, after all the geopolitical reconfiguration of the Mediterranean world has exacerbated the specific differences at the expense of unity. The emergence of medieval states introduced ecclesiastical institutions into centripetal and centrifugal powers game of political logic. Apart from the four points of the dogmatic divergence that involves mostly educated theologians, the fragmentation of Christianity has led to the deepening of the affective separation between Christians. A process of alienation caused by the expansion of new state powers in the Balkans progressively developed in the context of cohabitation of Christianity with Arab or Ottoman Islam. Attempts to reconciliation have been made at the synod of Bari (1098) under Pope Urban IX and also at the Second Council of Lyon (1274) under Pope Gregory X.  These councils attempted to start a theological dialogue on the points of dogmatic divergence that has appeared throughout history.5

5  Ernst Christof Suttner, Die Christenheit aus Ost und West auf der Suche nach dem sichtbaren Ausdruck für ihre Einheit (Würzburg: Augustinus Verlag, 1999), 75–76.

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The origin of ecclesiological solutions adopted by Greek Catholics is found in the position of the Florentine Council (1438–1439). In the theological argumentation we observe the Aristotelian-Thomist language and scholastic methodology characteristic to Western thinking, face to face with the traditional patristic synthesis of Oriental theology in general and Greek in particular. The most difficult issue was filioque, a term introduced unilaterally by the Latin Church. Initially, it was done in a catechetical context to counteract the influences of Arianism present in the Hispanic Visigothic culture at the local Toledo Councils (447, 589, 639). The term filioque was introduced into the Liturgical Credo of the territories under the Carolingian dynasty by the prescriptions of the local Councils of Aquileia-Friuli (796) and Aix-la-Chapelle (809) and extended to the entire Roman Church in 1014 by Benedict VIII. This was vehemently contested by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Michael Keroularios.6 By appealing to the patristic writings of the Greek and Latin Fathers, by the Florentine Council the idea of the complementarity of the two pneumatological visions is reached, the Greek school stressing on the term εκπορευομενον (cf. Greek. προέρχομαι—“to come from/be derived from”) a unique Principium from which the Holy Spirit proceeds through the intercession of the Son (δια του υιού) in a linear scheme based on the “order” of origin (δια ταξις). For the Latin school filioque completes the term as a theologoumenon, necessary to express in Latin the equality of the Son’s God with the Father and the Holy Spirit.7 Concerning the liturgical matter of the Eucharist, the validity of the use of leavened bread (hostia) as sacramental bread is recognized by the Florentine Council. Regarding the pope’s position as the successor of St. Peter in the Apostolic See, Florentin Council recognizes his position of primus inter pares specific to the first Christian millennium (in the 6  Silvestru Augustin Prunduș, Clemente Plăianu, Catolicism și ortodoxie românească. Scurt istoric al Bisericii Române Unite (Cluj-Napoca: Casa de Editură Viat ̦a Creștină, 1994), 27. 7  Eduard Ferent ̦, Dumnezeul cel viu, unic în fiint ̦ă și întreit în personae (Iași: Institutul Teologic Ropmano-Catolic de grad universitar, 1997), 363. In Credo—the Profession of Faith, starts from the text: παρα του Πατρος εκπορευεται (In 15, 26), being translated qui a Patre procedit, becoming in Latin liturgical Credo ex Patre procedentem. In the Latin sense, there is one confusion: ekporeusia expresses the relationship of origin with the Father, while processio expresses the communication of the consubstantial divine nature from the Father to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. Of necessity, there were introduced the variants per Filium then filioque.

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following order of precedence: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioquia, Jerusalem) and from the reality of the communion of saints and the prayers of the Church for the souls of the deceased, the similarity of the Eastern vision with the classical language specific to the scholastic theology, which aims at the state of souls still on their way to heavenly happiness with the term “purgatory.” This solution to the dogmatic divergences between the East and the West was formulated by the Council of Florence in the Decree Laetentur coeli8 that was signed by Romanian delegates.9 Unfortunately, this first gesture of the restoration of unity was thwarted by the Synod of Jerusalem on April 1, 1453, because the Eastern Patriarchs canceled the Decree of Florence under the influence of Markos Evghenikos, Bishop of Ephesus. However, the solutions found and the recognition of the ecclesiological model of the first Christian millennium, as a spiritual communion of the patriarchal Churches, remained the starting point for the reconciliation between the Churches of Christ who maintain doctrinal orthodoxy and also for the union of future Churches subsequently called “Greek Catholic.”

3   The Historical Context of Churches Union in the Central and Eastern Europe The subsequent historical events and intellectual trends were unfavorable to the process of the restoration of unity. The Nominalism introduced skepticism about the veracity of the sign. From now on, iconic spirituality would be replaced by a reference to the philosophy of the Modern Age. The West no longer understood the Eastern world. But the most important event was the Protestant Reform (1517) that led inside the Latin Church to the change of relationship between the ecclesial unity and the canon law. To clarify the new divergences and dogmatic changes within the Reformation, the Catholic Church convened the Tridentine Council (1545–1563). The post-Tridentine Catholic ecclesiology is the result of a dialectical reaction to the confessionalization and disintegration of the unity of Christians. The divine and human unity in the Church is akin to 8  Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta (Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniane Bologna, 1991), 2525–2540. 9  Ernst Christof Suttner, Die Christenheit aus Ost und West, 82.

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the identity between the Sacrament and the sacramental sign, expressed in a metaphysical language as Res—Thing. The official ecclesiology proposed a hierarchical unit that overlapped with the model of the medieval world and identified the membership of the Catholic Church with the Roman authority and centralism.10 This kind of vision of the unity of a “Roman Catholic” rather than “Catholic” Church presupposed the Church as hierarchically constituted with the Supreme Pontiff at the very top, followed by the clergy, then the monks and nuns, and finally the laity at the bottom of the hierarchy. Post-­ Tridentine Catholic ecclesiology became a “hierarchology” directly opposed to the Eastern ecclesiological and disciplinary model. To be Catholic meant to enter into a direct canonical and administrative dependence on the Pope and to be integrated into the Roman Catholic ecclesial structures. It was a radicalization of the concept extra Ecclesiam nulla salus, interpreted as “outside the Roman Catholic Church there is no salvation.” It was also a betrayal of the solutions proposed by the Florentine Council. In this context, an Eastern Church in unity with Rome would no longer be an independent Church but would be identified with the Roman Catholic Church. In the following period, the theology was bound to fight against excessive enlightenment and rationalism that undermined the foundations of faith, against materialism and atheism spreading in the context of a pragmatic and skeptical society.

4   Theology of the Declaration of Unification Between the Eastern Churches and the Church of Rome The model of the Florentine union is based on the ecclesiological medieval model, stipulating the restoration of communion between sister churches, which are an integral part of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. The first references to the dogmatic divergence points in the union statements are simple, without argument, having a legal value. In the letter of union signed by Bishop Theophilus, the first signatory of the Romanians’ union in Transylvania (March 21, 1697) the papal primacy is asserted, it is recognized the existence of the process of 10  Alois Schifferle, Bewhrt die Freiheit des Geistes, zur kirchlichen Kontroverse um Tradition und Erneuerung (Freiburg im Breisgau: Christophorus Verlag, 1990), 30.

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purification of the souls, also it is accepted the fact that there is no doubt about the validity of the unleavened Eucharistic bread at the Romano-­ Catholics and that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son.11 The papal primacy is a concept by which the Pope is naturally recognized as the head of the Church, in an iconic value, without the issue of administrative subordination. Recognition of the state of purification of souls is in accordance with Eastern anthropology and conforms to the practice of prayers for the souls of the deceased without the use of the term “purgatory.” Recognition of the validity of the unleavened Eucharist in the liturgical practice of Roman Catholics does not mean changing of traditional practice; on the contrary, any innovations in the matter of liturgy have been and are strictly forbidden to this day. Similarly, the term filioque is recognized in the spirit of the Florentine Council, in recognition of the meaning of the Latin theologoumenon in the sense of the origin of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Symbol. The position of the Apostolic See of Rome vis-à-vis the Eastern Christians has always been clear, for example, in 1742 and 1755 Pope Benedict XIV commanded the Greek Catholics to keep the Niceno-Constantinopolitan formula unchanged without filioque. After the death of Theophilus, Bishop Atanasie Anghel convened a synod of union (October 7, 1698), publishing a “Book of Testimony” in which he took the position of the Council of Florence and of his predecessor. In his Cartea de măr turie—“Book of Testimony”—it is clearly stated that “as before, we should be free from now on, too, to preserve all the ceremonies, the celebrations, the days of fasting, according to the old calendar”12 and that “all of our law, the Church Service, the Liturgy, and the days of fasting should remain unchanged.”13 This statement expresses 11  Acte şi fragmente latine romanesci pentru istori’a beserecei romane mai alesu unite. Edite şi anotate de Tim. Cipariu canonicu gr. Cat. Etc. (Blasiu: Cu tipariulu Semin. Diecesanu, 1855), 80. In the archaic Romanian: “[…] a) Cunoaştem cumcă Papa dela Roma este cap văzut a toată beserica lui Hristos, care peste toată lumea e lăti̧ tă. b) Măr turisim, cumcă afară de ceriu scaunul celor fericiţi, şi afară de iad temniţa celor osândiţi, al treilea loc este, în care sufletele cele ce încă nu sânt curăti̧ te se ţin şi se curătȩ sc. g) Cumcă pânea azimă este destulă materie a cinei Domnului şi a jertfei liturghiei, nu ne îndoim. d) Credem, cumcă Duhul Sfânt, a treia faţă în Treime, dela Tatăl şi dela Fiul purcede. Şi primim, măr turisim, şi credem toate celealalte, care sânta maică beserică romano-catolică primeşte, măr turiseşte şi crede.” 12  In archaic Romanian: toate ceremoniele, serbătorile, posturile cum pân’acuma aşa şi de acum nainte să fim slobozi a le ţinea după călindariulu vechiu. 13  In Romanian: toată legea noastră, Slujba Besericii, leturghia şi posturile să stea pre locu.

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the belief that by “union” they still belong to the same Romanian Church, rejoining themselves in an ecclesial communion following the model of the first millennium. Jesuits missionaries present in Transylvania were required to observe the orders of the Propaganda Fide in Monita ad misionaries in partibus orientalibus—“Instructions for missionaries from the Oriental territories” (1669), which stipulates that this union should be done in faith, that the visible sign of this union is the Pope’s recognition as the supreme head of the Church of Christ in the world, as a direct successor of the Apostle Peter, the leader of the Apostles, that the rite and the discipline of the Oriental Church, the fasting days and periods, the feasts, customs, ceremonies, prayers, and so on should be all respected, and that those who follow the Oriental rite should not be urged to pass over to the Latin rite and such passing shouldn’t be allowed without the special permission of the Holy See. These were expressed in the union documents formulated and signed by Christians of the Byzantine rite in Romania. The analysis of all documents written before 1700 demonstrates that Bishops Theophilus and Athanasius started from the Florentine ecclesiological model, accepting the conclusion of the differences expressed through the four dogmatic points, at the same time preserving the “ancestral law,” that is, theology, liturgical rite, and canon law proper to the Greek-Byzantine tradition (in Romanian: Legea Strămoșească).14 Unfortunately, the post-Tridentine theological orientation of the Hungarian primate in Vienna, Cardinal Kollonitz (1631–1707), has put its mark on subsequent events. Noting the lack of theological knowledge compared to the Latins, he urged the Romanian bishop to bear witness to faith in the Tridentine spirit and obliged the united Romanian Church to have a Jesuit theologian as a supervisor which censored his activity. Kollonitz also had doubts about the validity of Athanasius’ ordination, especially with regard to the apostolic continuity during the period of subordination to the Calvinist superintendents, from the sixteenth to the seventeenth centuries, and that is why he re-ordained him again sub conditione—“under the condition”—without the Vatican’s consent, a fact mentioned in later Orthodox polemic and apologetic literature. These events 14  Ernst Christof Suttner, Înţelegerea noţiunii de unire bisericească de către promotorii şi opozanţii unirii românilor din Transilvania cu Biserica Romei, in Biserica Română Unită cu Roma, Greco – catolică  – istorie şi spiritualitate – 150 de ani de la înfiuinţarea Mitropoliei Române Unite cu Roma la Blaj, Acta Blasiensia II, (Blaj: Editura “Buna Vestire,” 2003), 234.

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were the result of the theological and cultural changes of the time, namely the abandonment of the position of the Florentine Council in favor of the position of the Lateran IV and Tridentine Councils, with added influences of the Gallicanism, Febronianism, Iosefinism, and Aufklarung of the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries. We find an example of “Latinization” of theological terms in Athanasius’ 1689 letter to the emperor requesting to grant Romanians civil rights and privileges; the translation of the Jesuit Ladislau Barany introduces the term purgatorium in brackets, while in the Romanian version it is called a “third place” because in Eastern eschatology there was no specific term for the purgatory.15 Talking about changing the conditions of the union of the Romanian Catholic Church, the theologian Octavian Bârlea (1913–2005)16 introduces the theory of the two Unions: the first term of union expresses the Union of Romanians in the spirit of the Florentine Ecclesiology, and the second term of union, which was imposed by the Viennese Court, expresses the union as it is presented in the act of ratification of 1701 in the spirit of the Lateran IV and the Tridentine.17 In the absence of a Patriarch who would be in communion with the Church of Rome and in the spirit of the Counter-Reformation, a direct canonical subordination was applied, which was the guarantee of ecclesiality and catholicity. This guarantee was part of the second union model which was contrary to the model of the first millennium. This second union was not a union between sister churches, but an administrative integration of a suffragan church into the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. This is what this chapter calls “uniatism,” a phenomenon condemned, first of all, by the Greek Catholics themselves.18 However, the Romanian Greek-Catholic bishops from Atanasie Anghel (†1713) to Ioan Lemeni (1780–1861) were signing on official documents with the titles of Archbishop and Metropolitan respectively, despite the  Budapest University Library, Manuscript Section, Hevenessy Collection, n. 32/34.  He was the director of the Romanian section of the Vatican Radio station and a contributor to Voice of America and Radio Free Europe. Since 1978 he was a priest of the United Church in Munich. He founded the magazine Perspective, of the United Romanian Mission in the Federal Republic of Germany. 17  Octavian Bârlea, Biserica Română Unită și ecumenismul corifeilor renașterii culturale (München: Sudostdeutsches Kulturwerk, 1983), 29–30. 18  Octavian Bârlea, Din trecutul Bisericii Românești, de la unire până azi. Problema unirii în cei 300 de ani (Perspective, nr. 24, ianuarie 2000), 22. 15 16

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fact that administratively they were considered as subordinates of the Roman Catholic Primate of Hungary and the Strigonium Archbishopric (Esztergom).19 This situation lasted until the Romanian Church United with Rome was officially recognized as a Metropolitan Church by Pope Pius IX’s Bulla Ecclesiam Christi on November 26, 1853, and, since 2005, the Major Archbishop of the Romanian Church United with Rome is the leader of a Church sui iuris and at the same time he fulfills the position of Archbishop-Metropolitan of Alba Iulia and Făgăraș. In this way the mistakes of uniatism were canonically corrected.

5   The Greek-Catholic Theological Writings in Transylvania Regarding the theological literature, three periods corresponding to the historical-cultural conditions and relations between the Church of Rome and the Sister Orthodox Church can be distinguished in the three centuries of the existence of the Greek-Catholic Church in Transylvania as an ecclesiastical institution. The first stage is the catechetical and apologetically literature and second is the polemical and identical literature of the nineteenth century, followed by the synthesis and theological works from the beginning of the twentieth century. The first catechisms were meant to purify the doctrine from Calvin’s influences which were very virulent at that time. The Bishop of Mukačevo, Joseph De Camillis (1641–1706), apostolic vicar for the Greek Catholics in the Hungarian territories, is the author of the first catechism formulated to raise the level of theological training of the united clergy. The first edition, published in 1698 in Trnava, is written in Russian and Ukrainian; the second edition, published in 1726, was destined for “the Romanian nation, written in Romanian.”20 In this catechism, De Camillis presents theological problems using the definitions specific to the Tridentine Council.21 Concerning the shaping of its own Greek-Catholic theology and identity discourse, the Florentine Council proposed for the first time a viable 19  Octavian Bârlea, Metropolia Bisericii Române Unite proclamată în 1855 la Blaj (Perspective, nr. 37–38, anul X, iulie – decembrie, 1987), 12–13. 20  Catehismul lui Iosif de Camillis 1726 (edition curated by Eva Mîrza, Imago, 2002), 5. 21  Catehismul lui Iosif de Camillis 1726, 11.

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formula of reconciliation, which is highlighted by the way the Eastern Churches accepted the Union. In this context, it is normal for the first theological works to address the Florentine points and some assertions regarding the native liturgical practice in the spirit of the dialogue between Western and Eastern theology. The second aspect supported by the Greek Catholics refers to preserving the cultural identity by observing the ritual and disciplinary heritage. As a starting point specific to the Greek-Catholic theology, one can notice the gradual assimilation of the theological language specific to the Roman Catholic Church for the argumentation of the differences between the schismatics (the Orthodox) and Catholicism and the development of a native theology. For example, in the first theological work defining a discourse on the Greek-Catholic identity, “About the small articles in cause”22 written by Gherontie Cotore in 1746, there is a presentation favorable to the Florentine points, argued on the basis of biblical quotations, but also on the statements of the Tridentine Council. There is a good understanding of the complementarity of the Eastern and Western theological language in how the author speaks about the place of purification of the souls (purgatorium) in the Eastern terms of the “place of detention and imprisonment close to hell” (in Romanian “oprealişte şi temniţă aproape de iad”23) and defines hell as “terrible eternal dungeon” (in Romanian “temniţă rea de veci”24) while at the dogmatic level embracing a priori the Latin position. Regarding the papal primacy, it is noticed the adoption of the opposition of Western theology, including the embracement of the radicalism with regard to the need of the membership in the Catholic Church for salvation (extra Ecclesiam nulla salus).25 Another work emphasizing the Greek-Catholic identity discourse is the Floarea Adevărului—“The Flower of Truth,” printed in Blaj in 1750 and translated into Latin by Peter Paul Aron in 1752, under the name Flosculus veritatis. This work represents “a theological and systematic attempt to substantiate the Florentine points through arguments taken not only from  In archaic Romanian: Despre articuluşurile ceale de price.  Gherontie Cotore, Despre Articuluşurile Ceale de Price (Alba Iulia: edition curated by Laura Stanciu), 2000, 53. 24  Cotore, Despre Articuluşurile, 52. 25  Cotore, Despre Articuluşurile, 85. 22 23

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the Holy Scripture, but also from the Church Fathers of the Orient and from the Romanian liturgical books.”26 The authors of this work assert that “the union in faith and not by administrative subordination to the Church of Rome does not consist of switching to another faith/changing the rite, but in rediscovering its own values from the liturgical and theological heritage.”27 Another theological work of the monks of the Holy Trinity monastery in Blaj is the catechism called “Christian Education” first printed in 1755  in Blaj, translated into Latin in 1757, under the title Doctrina Christiana, ex probatis authoribus collecta ad usum huius scholasticae juventutis cooptata cum adjecto de Sacra Unione colloquio.28 Regarding their own ecclesiological conceptions, Romanian theologians did not abandon the traditional model (as attested by the titles of the Romanian bishops from Athanasius to Ioan Lemeni). The Greek-Catholic ecclesiology of the eighteenth century supports the dignity of the Romanian Church in accordance with the Union model accepted by its signatories (Theophilus and then Athanasius) and maintains a vision according to the disciplinary provisions specific to the Eastern Christianity. A testimony of the support of the Eastern ecclesiological model is found in the books printed in Blaj, especially in the Liturgikon—“Liturghier.” The Bishops of Blaj considered themselves in the relationship with the flock they were leading and were recognized as Metropolitans by virtue of their own disciplinary traditions. Grigore Maior (1773–1782) signed as “Metropolitan” on the consecrated antimis and on one of the bells of Blaj was engraved: “His Excellency Grigore Maior. Metropolitan of Fagaras 1777.”29 The first three editions of the Liturgikon in Romanian, printed in Blaj (1756, 1775, 1807) are the reflection of the original Greek-Catholic ecclesiological thinking. They were reprints of the Liturgikon printed in Târgovişte, in 1713 translated from Greek and Slavonic into Romanian by the Orthodox bishop Antim Ivireanul. This book was used in worship by the Romanian Greek-Catholic clergy in Transylvania until the middle of the nineteenth century. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the  Cristian Barta, Tradiţie şi dogmă (Blaj: Editura Buna Vestire, 2003), 50.  Ibid. 28  Alexandru Buzalic, Ekklesia. Din problematica eclesiologiei contemporane (Blaj: Editura Buna Vestire, 2005), 99. 29  Octavian Bârlea, Metropolia Bisericii Române Unite, 12–13. 26 27

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Greek-Catholic Romanian seminaries used translations of the Roman Catholic theology treaties which made only brief references to the Romanian tradition. The position of the Greek-Catholic theologians of Romania on the ecclesiology and its own specificity can be observed in the documents of the Vatican I Ecumenical Council (1869–1870). In the Council, the bishops Ioan Vancea (1820–1892) and Iosif Papp Szilágyi (1814–1873) fought hard for the autonomy of the United Romanian Church and its governance on the basis of their own canonical legislation.30 A clear ecclesiological vision was expressed by Bishop Iosif Papp Szilágyi of the Diocese of Oradea Mare (1863–1873) in the work Enchiridion iuris ecclesiae orientalis catholicae (1862), the first Greek-Catholic book of canonical law. Here we can see the acceptance of a synthesis between the classical ecclesiology, Eastern ecclesiology, and the post-Tridentine vision by which all three introduced and argued the provisions of the Latin canon law.31 In the theological thinking one can find the principles of ecclesiology at disciplinary level that adopt interpretations in the post-Tridentine spirit. The Roman Pontiff is granted an ordinary direct jurisdiction, a situation disputed by the traditions of the sui iuris churches because this direct jurisdiction constitutes one of the prerogatives of patriarchs. The bishops are universal pastors, doctors, rectors, legislators, and judges, and they fully exercise their magisterial authority together with the Pope through the ecumenical councils. At first glance, in this early catechetical period a priori the official dogmatic language of the Roman Catholic Church was adopted. At the same time, all the claims of the Eastern tradition were argued on the basis of biblical quotations and the statements of the Holy Fathers while using the scholastic terminology, the Aristotelian-Thomistic formulations (material, form, transubstantiation, etc.) or the Tridentine formulations. It is the period during which Romanian Greek-Catholic theologians capitalized on the idea of “Romanity” and the ancestral connections with Rome. Romanian is a Latin language but Romanian Christianity embraced the Greek-Byzantine rite, which, in their vision, the Romanity becomes another reason for the integration of the Romanian Church in the Catholic

30  Nicolae Bocșan, Ion Cârja, Biserica Română Unită la Conciliul Ecumenic Vatican I (Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2001), 98–103. 31  Nicolae Bocșan, Ion Cârja, Biserica Română Unită la Conciliul Ecumenic Vatican I, 109.

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Church as a preservation of the unity of the first Christian millennium, which recognizes a certain primacy of the Patriarch of Rome. In this context, there will always be a tendency in Romanian theology to pendulate between defending one’s own rite as a legitimate cult to God, preserving the theological heritage specific to the dawn of Christianity, and the indigenous spirituality and the acceptance of the Tridentine statements in the theological and cultural language of the time. However, the tendencies of the “Latinization” of the Church continue to take place by adopting some theological positions or changes in liturgical practices and popular piety. The United Romanian Church and the Orthodox Church in Transylvania benefited from the catechetical education and the existence of a pastoral theology interpreted as a “theology of ecclesial action,” which were promoted by the University of Vienna.32 The Provincial Council I of Blaj, in 1872, represented an alignment with the Roman Catholic theology while preserving the elements of identity necessary for practicing the Eastern rite, especially through the redefinition of the dogma of papal infallibility, proclaimed by the Vatican I in 1870. Adopting the Provincial Council I accepted dogma of infallibility as it was expressed in the constitution Pastor Aeternus: it acknowledged that the Pope holds infallibility when addressing ex cathedra in matters of faith and morality. As a sign of belonging to the unity of the Catholic Church, the Provincial Council I introduced canonical obligation for the bishops and priests to commemorate the Roman Pontiff in the liturgy and other services.33 The organization of the United Romanian Church and the liturgical and disciplinary uniformization at the level of the bishops was accomplished by the upcoming Provincial Councils, in 1882 and 1900. The beginning of the twentieth century was characterized by the formulation 32  As a university discipline, the pastoral theology was proposed by the Jesuit Ludwig de Biel in 1752 as a practical subject for the lower level of studies, with the aims directly related to pastoralism. After the abolition of the Society of Jesus (1773), Father Stephan Rautenstrauch OSB taught pastoral theology—which entered into the curriculum in 1774— as an integral part of the course of practical theology, alongside with the so-called polemics and practical morality. Pastoral theology emerged as an autonomous academic discipline in 1777. The pastoral theology is as an autonomous discipline from the time of its appearance in the Viennese university environment and had as its main purpose the formation of pastors. A Greek-Catholic pastoral theology was introduced into education corresponding to the Viennese requirements; this discipline also appears in the Transylvanian Orthodox theological environment. 33  Nicolae Bocșan, Ion Cârja, Biserica Română Unită la Conciliul Ecumenic Vatican I, 269.

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of its own identity discourse, especially through a theology in which the traditional argumentation and the particularities of the sacramental celebrations in the Byzantine rite were made in the spirit of reconciliation of Latin and Eastern positions, using predominantly the scholastic language. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Catholic theology was in a vast process of restoring the authority of the scholastic tradition in order to create a defensive line against the dangers of modernism and positivist science. The modernization of theological thinking began with the decrease of the importance of Catholic apologetics in the European cultural environment, amid the changing attitudes of the audience to the faith in general and the need to develop a viable critique of contemporary heresies. The place of apologetics was taken by the fundamental theology, which presented the revelation and the faith in an interdisciplinary way, in the contemporary language, in and accordance with the requirements of the ahistorical-critical method. By 1948, the year when the Greek-Catholic Church was outlawed, some of the greatest theological works were published. They presented true synthesis expressing the specificity of Eastern Christianity in the complementarity of the traditional Western solutions. Among the theological authors expressing the position of the Greek-Catholic Theological School were the Metropolitan Vasile Suciu (1873–1935), the author of the volumes “Fundamental Dogmatic Theology” (1907), “The Special Dogmatic Theology” (1908), “The General Sacraments. Sacraments in particular” (1908), and so on; Nicholas Flueraş the author of “Moral-Pastoral Treaty on the Use of the Sacraments” (1932); and Nicolae Brânzeu with his courses dedicated to pastoral theology or homiletics and so forth.

6   Greek-Catholic Theology After the 1990s Between 1948 and 1989 the United Romanian Church was outlawed, the churches were seized and given to the Orthodox Church, and the bishops were imprisoned and either exterminated or forced to live in Orthodox monasteries. Priests, monks and nuns, and laymen wrote a true “theology of martyrdom” when the Church continued to operate in the catacombs, led an active resistance against the totalitarian political regime, and gave testimony of faith for unity in the Church of Christ. Also, in the diaspora the Greek-Catholic missions ensured the pastoral care of believers in Germany, France, Italy, and the United States.

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During this time, the Catholic Church underwent great changes through an aggiornamento that prepared it for the cultural changes of the contemporary world. It is the Vatican II Ecumenical Council which led to the opening of theological thinking to contemporary philosophy and the return to the patristic and spiritual patrimony of the Church’s tradition. Taking into account all the historical contributions of the Eastern theologians, the promulgation of the Codex Canonum Ecclesiarum Orientalium (CCEO) provided a common basis for all the traditions of Eastern Christians. The first generations of priests educated and ordained after 1990 ensured the transition between 1948’s generation of theologians and post-Vatican II theology, valuing the tradition of their own Greek-Catholic school in the new contemporary culture. Regarding the critical position on the dogmatic divergence points between Catholics and Orthodox, today the Catholic education has detached from partisan or ideological positions. The solutions proposed by the Florentine Council are complemented by the experience of one’s own rite. The first paragraph of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches says: “A rite is the liturgical, theological, spiritual and disciplinary patrimony, culture and circumstances of history of a distinct people, by which its own manner of living the faith is manifested in each Church sui iuris.”34 And the second paragraph says, “The rites treated in this code, unless otherwise stated, are those which arise from the Alexandrian, Antiochene, Armenian, Chaldean and Constantinopolitan traditions.”35 In summary, the Romanian theological tradition that characterizes the identity of the United Churches, traditionally called Greek Catholic, can be formulated in the following three points. Each point of “dogmatic divergence” can be debated in the spirit of understanding the complementarity and the evolution of thought in Eastern and Western traditions. Mutual recognition does not oblige the adoption of changes in liturgical traditions or any other component specific to their own rites. The papal primacy is not an impediment in itself, but the problem lies in the evolution of the canonical legislative body after the schism, provisions of which were intended to regulate the functioning specifically of the Roman Catholic Church. Application of these provisions until the  CCEO (Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches), can. 28 §1.  CCEO can. 28 §2.

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promulgation of the CCEO led to the situations inappropriate to the traditions of the Eastern Churches, but these were an integral part of the process of modernization and experimentation of the restoration of unity in the cultural-religious context of that time. Today we have other bases for discussing these issues. Second point pertains to the identity of the United Churches. They are not “Catholic Churches of Oriental Rites” but churches sui iuris, belonging to a common Church tradition of a rite. For example, there is only one ecclesial entity of the Romanians that is manifested throughout history, and one “history of the Romanian Church” common until 1700. Then, for three centuries there was a parallel evolution: the Orthodox Sister Church evolved in the world of Eastern Christianity detached from the unity with the Church of Rome, and the United Romanian Church started on the path of the restoration of unity following the model of the first Christian millennium. Even though there have been forms of canonical subordination inadequate to Greek-Byzantine tradition, the Greek-­ Catholic Church has always maintained its synodality within its own ecclesial structure. Today, the Romanian Orthodox Church is a Patriarchal Church. According to the Code of Canons for the Oriental Churches, “a patriarch is a bishop who enjoys power over all bishops including Metropolitans and other Christian faithful of the Church over whom he presides according to the norm of law approved by the supreme authority of the Church.”36 As a sister Church, the United Romanian Church holds the title of “Major Archiepiscopal Church” because “what is stated in common law concerning patriarchal Churches or patriarchs is understood to be applicable to major archiepiscopal Churches or major archbishops, unless the common law expressly provides otherwise or it is evident from the nature of the matter.”37 The restoration of unity can be achieved only in the communion and according to the ecclesiological model specific to the first millennium. Therefore, in the hypothetical situation of the restoration of unity between the Romanian Orthodox Church and the Church of Rome, there would be only one Romanian Church with the structures of the Synodal Greek-­ Catholic Church entering under the patriarch’s subordination.

 CCEO can. 56.  CCEO can. 152.

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Third, even if the principles of the restoration of unity are in a process of correcting the mistakes of the past, the theological dialogue remains necessary in order to find the real forms of expression that are consonant with tradition, but, at the same time, adapted to the age in which we live. The Greek Catholics already have a historical experience during which they went through unfavorable situations but managed to manifest their own identity in the unity of the diversity specific to the Catholic Church. Therefore, the thinking of the Eastern theologians who have restored the full unity with the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church must be revalued. However, we must acknowledge that the restoration of the unity of the Church of Christ is in the hands of divine providence and that the concrete way in which the historical Church will reach the eschatological fullness remains a mystery.

7   Conclusions The “United Churches” are more than bridges between Orthodoxy and Catholicism. They are part of the Orthodox Churches that have already taken a first step toward the restoration of unity. This unity makes them Catholic, an ecclesial identity which defines them as united Orthodox Churches. While the faith is Orthodox, the Church is “Catholic” as we confess in the Creed. His Beatitude Sviatoslav, the Major Archbishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, defines the united Churches as follows: The Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church (like the other united Churches, I add), the largest of the Eastern Catholic Churches is not in any way opposed to the Orthodox Churches. We are an Orthodox Church, with Orthodox theology, liturgy, spirituality and canonical tradition that chooses to manifest this Orthodoxy in the spirit of the first Christian millennium, in communion with Rome. We are witnesses to the fact that Christian East and West not only have an obligation to seek some vague rapprochement, but are called by our Savior Himself to actually live the unity of one Body of Christ, not in the subjugation of one to another, but in the loving union of the Three Divine Persons who live not three lives parallel to each other, but one life: a life of self-emptying love, that gives life rather than take it. It is our mission, as a Church that experienced great persecution and martyrdom

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in the twentieth century, to stand up for those who experience such persecution today: our brothers and sisters the Copts of Egypt, the Melkites, Chaldeans, Syrian Orthodox, Assyrians, and others in the Middle East. It is our duty to help them tell their stories.38

38  “A report of His Beatitude Sviatoslav during the banquet on the occasion of carrying Institute Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky from Ottawa to Toronto University” (September 28, 2016), http://news.ugcc.ua/en/articles/words_of_his_beatitude_sviatoslav_during_ the_banquet_on_the_occasion_of_carrying_institute_meripolitan_andreysheptytsky_from_ ottawa_to_toronto_university_september_28_2016_77610.html

Synodical Principle as the Key to Church Unity Irakli Jinjolava

Tension regarding the issue of synodality has dramatically intensified in the past few years and has become one of the most discussed and crucial issues not only in the Orthodox Church but also in other Christian communities. Two recent ecclesial events, each generating significant documents, may be cited as contributing to this trend: on one hand, the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, with its lengthy preparatory process until which took place in Crete in 2016, and on the other hand, the Chieti Document, which is the common statement of the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, whose members met in September 2016 in Chieti, Italy. For the Orthodox Church, the synodal structure has always been an indispensable part of its ecclesiological existence—from the beginning of its creation until today. From the Apostolic Era through the holding of the apostolic council around the year 49–50 for the solution of the then most

I. Jinjolava (*) The Institute of Orthodox Theology, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, Germany © The Author(s) 2021 V. Latinovic, A. K. Wooden (eds.), Stolen Churches or Bridges to Orthodoxy?, Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55442-2_16

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difficult question of the early church: the dissemination of the Christian message and the inclusion in the Church of all people, including non-Jews without circumcision. The Acts 15 tells us about this charismatic event of the Church, which is considered the biblical foundation of the church’s synodality. The double dimension—that is, the vertical between God and man and the horizontal between believers—is also clearly expressed, in this case through the collegial cooperation of the participants in the apostolic council, namely the apostles and the presbyters. Literally, the Bible says: “The Holy Spirit and we have decided” (Acts 15:28). The synodical principle has as its paradigm the apostolic council of Jerusalem and how the apostles and elders faced with the disruptive problem of circumcision, gathered in Jerusalem and how openly the problem was discussed (Acts 15). Thus, the pneumatological dimension of the synodality of the Church of Jesus Christ is also expressed. This means that we believe that in these synodal decisions, not only the leaders of the Church work together in a collegial way, but above all they work under the guidance and assistance of the Holy Spirit. Synodality itself is based on the principle of communion, starting from Triune God to the last creature. Therefore, the “model and source of all communion is […] perfect communion of Trinitarian Persons in infinite mutual love, self-experience and continually given to the entire creation”.1 In the second millennium, major synods were held in the Orthodox Church, but they did not have the same rank as the joint Ecumenical Councils.2 Also, in the Roman Catholic Church, many synods were convened. The Roman Catholic refer to them as Ecumenical Councils, but the Orthodox Church only as synods of the West. Pope Paul VI seemed to differentiate in a letter between these two types of conciliar meetings: in the first millennium we have the joint Ecumenical Councils. The relevant distinction of Pope Paul VI from 1974 is of great ecclesiological and ecumenical significance. As such, in the second millennium, 1  Irimie Marga, “The Holy and Great Council of the Orthodoxy according to Rev. Prof. Liviu Stan,” Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai Theologia Orthodoxa 62, no. 1 (June 2017): 74, doi:https://doi.org/10.24193/subbto.2017.1.05 2  For example, historically the Church convened Great Councils at the time of St Gregory Palamas (1341, 1351, 1368), in 1484 to refute the unionist Council of Florence (1438–1439), in 1638, 1642, 1672, and 1691 to refute Protestant beliefs, and in 1872 to condemn ethnophyletism as an ecclesiological heresy. Those synods were referred in the Encyclical of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church (Crete 2016) as having “universal authority”.

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there are no recognized Ecumenical Councils in either the West or the East.3 In the East, there were some synods of greater importance, but no ecumenical ones.4

1   General Theological Principles In this article, I can only mention some of the major aspects related to this topic. Let me first of all briefly touch on the terms “synodal” and “synodical”: 1. The former (“synodal”) means decisions made by a Synod of one of the local Orthodox Churches (e.g. synodal decision). 2. The significance of the latter (“synodical”) is the principle that must guide a Synod, that is, the principle of Synodality or Conciliarity. It should be noted that the “Holy Scripture and church tradition bear witness to the fact that church governance is based on a synodal principle as expressed, for example, in the communion of the apostles and the local synods of the early church. This synodal principle must also come to bear on all levels of church life according to the respective area of responsibility.”5 It includes that “Synodality, as a visible expression of the catholicity of the church, is not only related to the church hierarchy but also to the whole people of God. In this way, the unity of the ‘Firsts’ and their faithful can be expressed at different levels in church life, because responsibility for the church resides with all its members. That lay people have been invited as consultants both to the episcopal synods of the Catholic Church on family issues (2015 and 2016) as well as to the Orthodox Council in Crete 3  See Grigorios Larentzakis, “Konziliarität und Kirchengemeinschaft. Papst Paul VI. und die Konzilien der römisch-katholischen Kirche, Zukunftsüberlegungen,” in Haec sacrosancta synodus. Konzils- und kirchengeschichtliche Beiträge, edited by R.  Meßner and R.  Pranzl (Regensburg: FS Bernhard Kriegbaum SJ, 2006), 258–316. Critical approach to this argument with further biography cf. Johannes Grohe, “Das II. Vatikanische Konzil im Gesamt der Ökumenischen Konzilien,” in AHC 43 (2011): 1–18. 4  It was noted at the Council of Crete that “[t]he Conciliar work continues uninterrupted in history through the later councils of universal authority, such as, for example, the Great Council (879–880) convened at the time of St. Photios the Great, Patriarch of Constantinople”; see note 2. 5  “Serving Communion. Re-thinking the Relationship between Primacy and Synodality,” A Study by the Saint Irenaeus Joint Orthodox-Catholic Working Group (Graz, October 2018), §15.

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(2016) is telling evidence of this. Lay people can enrich the synodal deliberations by their spirituality and expertise.”6 Accordingly, in the consciousness of the Orthodox Catholic Church, it is understood as the model of the synodal life of the church par excellence. First Councils as “assemblies of bishops” appeared around 190 A.D. because of the Paschal controversy,7 and canons were developed prescribing biannual Synods of Bishops.8 Synodality occurs at the diverse levels of the (a) Local Church, (b) Provincial, and (c) Universal (or ecumenical).9 Without (a) or (b), the third (c), universal level cannot be reached, and without having (c), the absolute synodality cannot be fulfilled. In the other words, for example, a synodal decision on the provincial level, which is not based on the local level, does not imply a principle of synodality (or synodical principle) and is therefore not a synodical decision. The synodical structure of the Orthodoxy was the sine qua non of the catholicity of the Church,10 but synodality cannot exist without primacy. This is a theological and historical truth and, as a prominent Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas put it, “the simple and obvious fact”.11 Therefore, as the Patriarch Bartholomew noted, the “synodality needs a ‘first’, the Protos: it is not possible to understand synodality without the Protos. It is he who is the one who has the charisma of diakonia at the service of unity. The Protos is the one who seeks for the consensus of everyone.”12 In the words of another Orthodox theologian, “together with primacy, synodality constitutes the backbone of the Church’s

 Ibid., §16.6.  Cf. John Zizioulas, “The Development of Conciliar Structures to the Time of the First Ecumenical Council,” in The One and the Many: Studies on God, Man, the Church and the World Today, edited by Fr. Gregory Edwards (Los Angeles: Sebastian Press, 2010), 196. 8  For example, Canon 19 of the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon. 9  Cf. Evangelos Sotiropoulos, “Assembling in Council: Synodality in Crete,” in Synodality: A Forgotten and Misapprehended Vision. Reflections on the Holy and Great Council of 2016, edited by Maxim Vasiljević and Andrej Jeftić (California: Sebastian Press, 2017), 25f. 10  John Zizioulas, “Primacy in the church: An Orthodox Approach,” in Petrine Ministry and the Unity of the Church: Towards a Patient and Fraternal Dialogue, edited by James Puglisi (Collegeville, MN: Michael Glazier, 1999), 120. 11  John Zizioulas, “Recent Discussions on Primacy in Orthodox Theology,” in The Petrine Ministry; Catholics and Orthodox in Dialogue, edited by Walter Kasper (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2005), 237. 12   Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, in La Civilat à Cattolica, Antonio Spadaro, “Interview of the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I,” April 4, 2015, 3–16. 6 7

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governance and organization.”13 Moreover, primacy or Protos exists in the Church on several levels: bishop as primus on (a) a local level, the metropolitan on (b) a regional level, and a supra-regional primacy on (c) the patriarchal level.14 Before the Holy and Great Council of Crete, it was also discussed if synodality can only be achieved with the attendance of all bishops of all local Orthodox Churches at the Council. Several positions have been raised to determine an attitude between consensus and disunity, or rather unanimity.15 On the one hand, some argued that the Council was valid and that a consensus was reached, despite the fact that four Churches were not present at the Council; on the other hand, because of the absence of those four Churches, some believed that the Council was not valid at all. Since there are different views on consensus and those positions place a high value on synodality, there is hope that the Church will develop a culture of consensus through continued and systematic interaction, commitment, and dialogue. Indeed, consensus as a method was underlined in the canonical tradition,16 but, at the same time, the tradition emphasized that “consensus is a deep and sometimes challenging process”.17 Therefore, the 13  John Chryssavgis, ed., Speaking the Truth in Love: Theological and Spiritual Exhortations of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew (New York: Fordham University Press, 2011), 276. 14  John Zizioulas, “Primacy in the Church: An Orthodox Approach,” in Petrine Ministry and the Unity of the Church: Towards a Patient and Fraternal Dialogue, edited by James Puglisi (Collegeville, MN: Michael Glazier, 1999), 121f. See also Aristotle Papanikolaou, “Primacy in the Thought of John [Zizioulas], Metropolitan of Pergamon,” in Primacy in the Church: The Office of Primate and the Authority of Councils, vol. 1, edited by John Chryssavgis (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2016), 261–279. 15   Cf. Alexander Rentel, “Examining the Rules of Consensus from the Canonical Perspective,” Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai Theologia Orthodoxa 62, no. 1 (June 2017), 18–21, doi:https://doi.org/10.24193/subbto.2017.1.02 16  Here should be noted the Address of His All-Holiness to the Synaxis of the Primates on January 2016: “The tradition of the Church knows numerous examples where conciliarity is applied in Councils, indeed even Ecumenical Councils, when certain Churches were absent— sometimes voluntarily, at other times involuntarily—from the sessions of the Council, without this at all preventing their operation. Many Council decisions were recognized retroactively by those who did not participate in them. So far as we know, dependence of consensus on physical attendance has no historical precedent.” See “Keynote Address By His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew To the Synaxis of the Primates of the Orthodox Churches” (Geneva 22-01-2016), https://www.patriarchate.org/-/keynote-address-by-his-all-holiness-ecumenical-patriarch-bartholomew-to-the-synaxis-of-the-primates-of-the-orthodox-churchesgeneva-22-01-2016- (accessed November 12, 2019). 17  Peter Bouteneff, “The Great and Holy Council and the Implications of the Consensus Method,” Toward the Holy and Great Council: Theological Reflections, Faith Matters Series,

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quantity of bishops participating in the Ecumenical Councils is not a true criterion of its quality or ecumenicity. This means that the delegations of bishops of the local autocephalous Orthodox Churches and their representative character (or principle of representativeness) are in canonical accordance with the Orthodox tradition of the Church and, within councils with synodical principle, they are valid manifestations of the Church and her synodality.18 The holding of synods on local, provincial, patriarchal, and ecumenical levels arises from the synodal constitution, the synodality of the church. Synodality is not a fifth quality of the Church separate from its unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity, but a function proper to its ways of preserving or restoring the Eucharistic Communion; it serves the ecclesiastical order in matters of doctrine, liturgy, and canon law. The highest expression of synodality is an Ecumenical Council; however, it is not a permanent institution of the Church, but an event in the life of the ecclesial community and thus a possible organ for the preservation or restoration of church unity at the ecumenical level.19

2   The Documents of the Council of Crete and the Chieti Document After focusing on laying out the general theological principles, it is appropriate to turn to an analysis of concrete documents on this very principle of synodality, or conciliarity, examining this keyword in selected documents, such as the Chieti Document (“Synodality and Primacy during the First Millennium: Towards a Common Understanding in Service to the

no. 3, edited by Nathanael Syneonides (Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, New York, NY, 2016). 18  Cf. Răzvan Perșa, “The Canonical Tradition of the Orthodox Church and the Holy and Great Council between Reception and Rejection,” Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai Theologia Orthodoxa 62, no. 1 (June 2017), 39–72, doi:https://doi.org/10.24193/ subbto.2017.1.04 19  Cf. Theodor Nikolaou, “Die synodale Verfassung und die Ökumenischen Konzile der Kirche,” in Orthodoxes Forum. Zeitschrift des Instituts für Orthodoxie der Universität München, vol. 1–2, edited by Theodor Nikolaou (1991), 207.

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Unity of the Church”,20 2016) and the Documents of the Holy and Great Council in Crete,21 2016. Compared to the previous texts of theological dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, the Chieti Document is shorter and less theologically daring and does not appear at first reading to offer original ideas. The difficulties encountered in the editorial phase of the text and the failure of some Orthodox Churches to accept the Ravenna Document have probably contributed to the misunderstanding. Wherefore, a more attenuated version of the document, which nevertheless preserves the guidelines of Ravenna and the documents of the 1980s, trying to identify the points of convergence between the Churches.22 Chieti Document examines the relationship between primacy and synodality in the undivided Church of the First Millennium at the local, regional, and universal levels. In particular, there are references to the sacramental and Trinitarian foundations of communion and ecclesial unity (§1), to synodality as “a fundamental quality of the Church as a whole” (§3), to apostolic canon 34 as the basis for the understanding of the relationship between the first and the many of a council (§13), to the recognition of the Eucharistic origin of the episcopal ministry (§§8–10), and to the so-­called pentarchy of the First Millennium (§16). It is affirmed that the ecclesial life springs from a focal element of Eucharistic gathering (gr. σύναξις) in order to gradually evolve up to meet the other local Churches—in the person of the respective bishops—and reach the universal Church, or the Christian ecumenism, in which “the bishops of East and West were conscious of belonging to the one Church” (§20). In other words, these are principles important for both Orthodox and Catholic ecclesiologies that should not create particular difficulties for their reception.

20  The Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, which met on September 21, 2016, in Chieti, Italy, issued the text titled “Synodality and Primacy During the First Millennium: Towards a Common Understanding in Service to the Unity of the Church”. See full text: http://www. vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/ch_orthodox_docs/rc_pc_chrstuni_ doc_20160921_sinodality-primacy_en.html (accessed on June 11, 2019). 21  See the Official Documents of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church: https://www.holycouncil.org (accessed on June 11, 2019). 22  Cf. Dimitris Keramidas, Sinodalità e primato: riflessioni sul documento di Chieti, see http://www.settimananews.it/ecumenismo-dialogo/sinodalita-e-primato-riflessioni-suldocumento-di-chieti/ (accessed on December 12, 2019).

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The Church only exists in its conciliarity,23 and so a synod, as a full expression of the Church unity and catholicity, may be considered as the highest expression and platform to proclaim the truth and the Message of the Gospel, a proclamation of the true doctrine witnessed by the Church. Referring to St. John Chrysostom, the Chieti Document speaks of the “Church” as both a gathering [σύστημα] and a synod [σύνοδος] in Greek, or “council” [concilium] in Latin, which primarily denotes a gathering of bishops, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, for common deliberation and action in caring for the Church. Broadly, it refers to the active participation of all the faithful in the life and mission of the Church.24 Nevertheless, it remains a subject of study what “pseudomorphose” has happened, with regard to the issues of primacy and synodality between East and West in the history of the second millennium, in the consciousness of “belonging to the one Church”.25 Since the Bishop is the head of his local Church, he represents his Church to other local Churches and in the communion of all the Churches. Likewise, he makes that communion present to his own Church. This is a fundamental principle of synodality.26 While the bishop exercises primacy within the local Church, his ministry necessitates the involvement of the laity.27 Synodality should demonstrate the spirit of good will towards 23  Cf. John Behr, “The Holy and Great Council 2016,” in Synodality: A Forgotten and Misapprehended Vision. Reflections on the Holy and Great Council of 2016, edited by Maxim Vasiljević and Andrej Jeftić (California: Sebastian Press, 2017), 13–22; see also John Chryssavgis, “Toward the Great and Holy Council: Retrieving a Culture of Conciliarity and Communion,” in St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 60.3 (2016), 317–332. 24  “Εκκλησία γάρ συστήματος και συνόδου εστίν όνομα,” St John Chrysostom, Explicatio in Ps 149 (PG 55, 493); cf. Chieti Document, §3. 25  Archbishop Job (Getcha) of Telmessos, “Primacy and Synodality: The Challenges of the Second Millennium,” in KANON 25: Yearbook of the Society for Law of the Eastern Churches, Primacy and Synodality: Deeping Insights, edited by Péter Szabó (Metropolitan Church sui iuris of Hungary. St Athanasius Theological Institute, Nyíregyháza, 2019), 86; for whole reflection on these challenges of the second millennium, see ibid., 85–102. 26  See Chieti Document, §10. 27  John Zizioulas, “Primacy in the Church: An Orthodox Approach,” in Petrine Ministry and the Unity of the Church: “Toward a Patient and Fraternal Dialogue”—A Symposium Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Foundation of the Society of the Atonement, edited by James F. Puglisi (A Michael Glazier Book, Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1999), 119. Metropolitan John Zizioulas used a liturgical reference to demonstrate his idea: “Just as he [the bishop] cannot perform the Eucharist without the synaxis of the people, his entire ministry requires the consensus fidelium, the ‘Amen’ of the community.” Zizioulas also stressed the absolute necessity of synodality in the Church, expressing “primacy” as belonging to the

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­ athering together and unity (especially Eucharistic unity) should be demg onstrated and also reverence to something more preeminent than oneself: to the Church—whose head is Christ Himself28—and to her bishops gathered in council.29 It should be noted that despite all kinds of differences, troubles, and misunderstandings between East and West, it is the awareness of belonging to the One Church that shaped the Church of the first millennium. Understanding of authority as a service (diakonia) of love should be especially highlighted.30 Whatever was our common and divided past, it brought us to our present situation. As for the future, it is “the place where we are supposed to look for the appropriate form of synodality for the Church”.31 That new and appropriate form, “a new expression of the Church Synodality, that is born out the synodical Renaissance of the 20th century”,32 seems to be have been found and represented in the Holy and Great Council of Crete. Thus, one of the main contributions of the Crete Council was to rediscover, restore, and truly experience Orthodox Synodality. The Synodical tradition of the Church, the importance of assembling, of partaking of the bloodless sacrifice, was indeed brought to light in Crete in 2016.33 The Holy and Great Council reintroduced the meaningfulness and significance of synodical principle (synodality) for the Orthodox Church. local bishop in several defined territories (regions or provinces), with the bishop as primus at the local level, the metropolitan as primus at the regional or provincial level, and a special primacy extended to a patriarch. He described synodality and primacy as “sine qua non conditio”, in ibid., 121ff. Zizioulas’s model challenges holding together the necessary dialogical character of the one (bishop) and the many (laity) engrained in the Eucharist and the Trinity, while arguing in favour of synodality and various levels of primacy implemented by local bishops in communion with one another; see ibid., 124. 28  Cf. Ephesians 4:15–16. 29  Cf. Evangelos Sotiropoulos, “Assembling in Council: Synodality in Crete,” in Synodality: A Forgotten and Misapprehended Vision. Reflections on the Holy and Great Council of 2016, edited by Maxim Vasiljević and Andrej Jeftić (California: Sebastian Press, 2017), 26. 30  See Chieti Document, §20. 31  John Behr, “The Holy and Great Council 2016,” in Synodality: A Forgotten and Misapprehended Vision. Reflections on the Holy and Great Council of 2016, edited by Maxim Vasiljević and Andrej Jeftić (California: Sebastian Press, 2017), 10–13. 32  Cf. Cyril Hovorun, “Conciliarity and the Holy and Great Council,” in Synodality: A Forgotten and Misapprehended Vision. Reflections on the Holy and Great Council of 2016, edited by Maxim Vasiljević and Andrej Jeftić (California: Sebastian Press, 2017), 81–98. 33  Cf. Evangelos Sotiropoulos, “Assembling in Council: Synodality in Crete,” in Synodality: A Forgotten and Misapprehended Vision. Reflections on the Holy and Great Council of 2016, edited by Maxim Vasiljević and Andrej Jeftić (California: Sebastian Press, 2017), 26.

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The Holy and Great Council was a chance and challenge for the Orthodox Churches to think, consider and reflect, talk, discuss, and act with one voice. “With one voice” would have implied full agreement, unanimously, but, in fact, there was much disagreement and misunderstanding, especially as it was manifested in the absence of four Orthodox Churches at the Council. It made it clear that there is a problem with exercising and truly experiencing the principle of synodality within the Orthodoxy.34 This is the reality that needs to be reflected on. The absence of the four Churches35 in the Holy and Great Council was mainly caused by their deep concerns about the document entitled “The relations of the Orthodox Church with the rest of the Christian World”, which addressed the Orthodox Church’s involvement in inter-Christian dialogue or the so-­ called ecumenical movement. The difference between the positions of the Patriarchates of Russia and Antioch, on the one side, and Georgia and Bulgaria, on the other, since Georgia and Bulgaria has been ecumenically isolated since 1997.36 Three of the four abovementioned Churches were present in Chieti, Italy: only Bulgaria continued to exist in its ecumenical isolation. Interestingly, the attendance of these three Churches of the meeting in Chieti makes it sound unlikely that ecumenical dialogue was indeed the main reason for not partaking in the Holy and Great Council of Crete. The true motives appear to be of a less principled nature—isolation, extremism (or fundamentalism and ultraradicalism), geopolitical tensions, and so on—and they threatened the bond of communion within the Orthodox Church. If one overlooks all of these tensions but only evaluates the work of the Council of Crete, then one must admit that the Council of Crete was much too short to make possible any kind of creative synodal dialogue. Some incomplete and blurred statements in the formulation were inevitable. The reluctance/failure to invite all of the Orthodox bishops, as well as to include spiritual authorities (who have an important pastoral and 34  Cf. Dimitris Keramidas, Sinodalità e primato: riflessioni sul documento di Chieti (Georgian translation by Irakli Vekua, see http://www.orthodoxtheology.ge/sinodalurobaprimati/); for original Italian version see http://www.settimananews.it/ecumenismo-dialogo/sinodalita-e-primato-riflessioni-sul-documento-di-chieti/ (accessed on May 12, 2019). 35  Patriarchates of Antioch, Russia, Bulgaria, and Georgia. 36  On the withdrawal of the Orthodox Church of Georgia from the World Council of Churches (WCC) see David Tinikashvili, “The Orthodox Church of Georgia and the Ecumenical Movement (Before and After 1997),” Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 71 (1–2): 127–159.

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opinion-forming function among the church people), theologians, and laypeople, rightly caused misunderstandings. The fuller composition of the Council would have been of great importance not only for a fruitful synodal dialogue process but also for the later reception of its decisions. In part, the Council proposals were in their structure a tribute to an old, decades-long, and sincere pre-conciliar process. The common participation of the Orthodox Churches’ delegations in Chieti displayed an image of unity; it was the first step towards the reception of the conciliar document on ecumenical relation. Whether one likes it or not, the Orthodox engagement in inter-Christian relations, as well as official theological dialogues with non-Orthodox Christian communities, occurs within the framework of the conciliar document of the Crete Council. As the document “The relations of the Orthodox Church with the rest of the Christian World” declares: “The contemporary bilateral theological dialogues of the Orthodox Church and her participation in the Ecumenical Movement rest on this self-consciousness of Orthodoxy and her ecumenical spirit, with the aim of seeking the unity of all Christians on the basis of the truth of the faith and tradition of the ancient Church of the Seven Ecumenical Councils” (§5). This is definitely what affirmed in Chieti: approval and acceptance of the Orthodox commitment to seek a bilateral dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church, not only as part of the history of rapprochement between these two Churches, but also as a reception of a conciliar decision.37

3   Towards a Common Basis of Synodality It is expected that these two documents of the twenty-first century (Holy and Great Council of Crete, and Chieti Document—as the agreement between Orthodox and Catholic Churches) will create a new common theological basis shared by all of the Orthodox Churches. Indeed, the Chieti Document closes with the following words: Throughout the first millennium, the Church in the East and the West was united in preserving the apostolic faith, maintaining the apostolic succession of bishops, developing structures of synodality inseparably linked with 37  Cf. Nicolas Kazarian, “The First Test for Orthodox Unity After the Holy and Great Council: The Chieti Document,” Public Orthodoxy, see https://publicorthodoxy. org/2016/10/18/the-chieti-document/ (accessed on September 14, 2019).

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­ rimacy, and in an understanding of authority as a service (diakonia) of love. p Though the unity of East and West was troubled at times, the bishops of East and West were conscious of belonging to the one Church. (§20)

May the Holy and Great Council give a new impetus to understanding of synodality within Orthodoxy as well as these two documents of the twenty-first century, that is, in its relation to primacy, and of the interrelation of synodality and primacy. May it strive to achieve a closer rapprochement between Orthodox and Catholic views on the basis of new insights into this relationship between primacy and synodality: from an Orthodox perspective, from the diversity of local and national Churches towards the unity, and from a Roman Catholic perspective, to give new life to structures of synodality.38 The Chieti Document of the Joint International Commission urges the ecclesiastical leaders of both Churches to include the theological community, the laity, the clergy, and the monastic world in the dynamics of theological dialogue. An ecumenism built on the foundation of synodality requires the involvement of the whole ecclesial pleroma—and not only of some theologians—for the development of unity. It appears that this is the main goal that Orthodoxy should pursue in accordance with the official declaration of the Crete Council concerning ecumenism as being “in no way foreign”39 with the nature of the Orthodox Church. The sterile challenge to the fruits of ecumenical dialogue is a renunciation of the universal breadth of Orthodoxy, which legitimizes the divisive mentality of traditionalism and ethnophyletism, invalidates the reception of the Council, and deprives the Church of that prophetic character which is guaranteed by the synodical system. This would be the path that Catholics and Orthodox can take in the future.40 The Holy and Great Council can be regarded as a new opportunity at the inter-Orthodox level (and at the level of universal Orthodoxy) to renew the forgotten tradition of synodality (conciliarity), reminding us of 38  Cf. Pope Francis, the speech given on October 17, on the eve of the final week of the synod on the family in 2015, see https://www.americamagazine.org/content/dispatches/ pope-francis-reminds-synod-he-has-last-word (accessed on September 17, 2019). 39  See the document of the Holy and Great Council, “Relations of the Orthodox Church with the Rest of the Christian World,” §4. 40  Cf. Dimitris Keramidas, “Sinodalità e primato: riflessioni sul documento di Chieti,” see http://www.settimananews.it/ecumenismo-dialogo/sinodalita-e-primato-riflessioni-suldocumento-di-chieti/. (accessed on May 12, 2019).

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belonging to the One Church, One Body. It makes us reflect anew on the Body of the Church that should be reunited. If the Holy and Great Council could become an institution that represents a plurality of local Orthodox Churches within the one Church, within the Church Unity, and it could be the Synod of all Orthodox Churches on the basis of the synodical principle,41 then this would create a solid foundation for a dialogue with other Christian Churches. It would lead to restoration and reconstitution of the lost unity at all the different levels (political, terminological, or theological), the unity that is our common goal and is the One Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. This unity is God’s will, but it requires an active and conscious participation of our free will. Only this synergia would make it possible. If the Council of Crete marks the beginning of a synodal journey of the Orthodox Church in the twenty-first century, its decisions as part of a larger conciliar process could serve as an icebreaker. If, however, this synod and its documents are glorified as the triumphant culmination of a long period of preparation, and the associated crisis of innerOrthodox dialogue is merely regarded as a by-product, then the synod runs the risk of being forgotten. To avoid such negative possibility, the absent churches must honestly strive to deal with the differentiated results. At the same time, all Orthodox churches should try to continue the synodal process. The motto must be: after the synod is before the synod.42 Interesting questions arise in relation to the topic presented here: Do Orthodox and Eastern Catholic understanding of synodality have something in common and that could potentially serve as a source of unity between them? Or does the Council of Crete and document of Chieti offer some solutions that could be applied to the dialogue between Orthodox and Eastern Catholic? Eastern Catholic Churches not only bring the Byzantine (or other Eastern) liturgical rites, or outward forms in general, closer to the Orthodox Church, but they also have much in 41  As the Council of Crete itself proclaims: “It was emphasized and the proposal was made for the Holy and Great Council to become a regular Institution to be convened every seven or ten years.” See “Message of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church,” §1. 42  Cf. Ioan Moga, “Nach der Synode ist vor der Synode,” Redaktion feinschwarz, see https://www.feinschwarz.net/nach-der-synode-ist-vor-der-synode/ (accessed on September 12, 2019).

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common on a theological level. Consequently, their synodal principles are closer to each other than to the Roman Catholic Church. However, there is one major exception that distinguishes them from the other. This is the question of the Pope’s primacy. Although the Eastern Catholic Churches in the dialogue are not represented as a single, independent entity, but under the Roman Catholic Church, our analysis and the reception Council of Crete will help to unite each of them. The solution for each church, and especially for the churches with more theological closeness, like it is with Eastern Catholics and Orthodox, is to follow the way of synodality with more deep reflection. It is appropriate to conclude this chapter with St Grigol Peradze’s hopeful vision of our common future: There will eventually come this glorious time in which the whole of Christendom has one shepherd and is one flock, in which the high priestly prayer of our Saviour experienced this visible achievement. […] The denominations must also unite as one—and it will be a glorious day of our Lord before His coming—not only the Roman [Catholic] and Greek, but also the Protestant faiths, which are at the same time a Church of our Lord that is not only ‘also there’, but is indeed there with their tasks and objectives. How this agreement will be made or what kind of ‘external shape’ it will assume, to ‘talk’ about this is not our job. Here is not a field of ‘scientific research’, but a task for each living Christian who lives in the community of his Saviour and who takes seriously the kingdom of Christ, to understand that it is not in strife, jealousy, envy and friction, but in brotherly love and fellowship of the Holy Spirit, even though invisible, that there is, in mutual understanding and in serious evangelical catholicity, the essence of Christianity, and that those green branches at the tree of our Lord must meet each other on that day today.43

Hieromartyr Archimandrite Grigol Peradze was killed in 1942  in Auschwitz. Before that he was an eminent Georgian churchman, theologian, historian, and one of the figure-heads of the ecumenical movement in the 1920s. He attended the Union Conference in Vienna (1926) as well

43   Grigol Peradze, “Die Unionstagung in Wien,” Der Orient, no. 7–8 (Potsdam, 1926): 117.

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as the Faith and Order Conference in Lausanne (1927) and was actively involved in the ecumenical movement in the decade that followed.44 May the ecumenical openness of this great man help us to better understand the core essence of ecumenical efforts and to guide us in our attempt to achieve our goal: Church Unity.

44   On St Grigol Peradze’s life and ecumenical activities, see Irakli Jinjolava, “The Ecumenical Vocation of the Orthodox Church According to the Georgian Theologian and Saint Priest-Martyr Grigol Peradze,” Ostkirchliche Studien 65 (2016): 237–270.

Church as Koinonia: Exploring the Ecumenical Potential of John Zizioulas’s Communio Ecclesiology Tihomir Lazić

In the aftermath of Vatican II, the concept of koinonia emerged as a key idea in contemporary self-definition of the church.1 The significance of this multivalent concept for the understanding of the church’s faith, life, 1  To understand the centrality of koinonia and different approaches to this concept in the contemporary ecumenical debates, see, for instance: Lorelei F.  Fuchs, Koinonia and the Quest for an Ecumenical Ecclesiology: Foundations through Dialogue to Symbolic Competence for Communionality (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008); Verna Lewis-Elgidely, Koinonia in the Three Great Abrahamic Faiths: Acclaiming the Mystery and Diversity of Faiths (South Bend, IN: Cloverdale Books, 2007); Susan H. Moore, “Towards Koinonia in Faith, Life and Witness: Theological Insights and Emphases from the Fifth World Conference on Faith and Order, Santiago de Compostela, 1993,” Ecumenical Review, 47 (1995): 3–11; Gunther Gassmann, “From Montreal 1963 to Santiago de Compostela 1993: Issues and Results of Faith and Order Work,” Ecumenical Review, 45 (1993): 27–43; “The Unity of the Church as Koinonia: Ecumenical Perspectives on the 1991 Canberra Statement on Unity,” in Faith and Order, No. 163, ed. Gunther Gassmann and John A. Radano (Geneva: WCC Publications,

T. Lazić (*) Newbold College of Higher Education, Binfield, UK © The Author(s) 2021 V. Latinovic, A. K. Wooden (eds.), Stolen Churches or Bridges to Orthodoxy?, Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55442-2_17

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and witness was given special emphasis at the Fifth World Conference on Faith and Order in Santiago de Compostela (1993),2 after which it assumed a critical role in the work of Faith and Order, assemblies of the World Council of Churches, and theological self-understanding of individual churches.3 Because it sought to incorporate all its rival theological proposals, at least partially, koinonia quickly gained a worldwide reputation as one of the most stimulating and promising ideas in the ecumenical dialogue.4 With the passing of time, it became almost impossible to write or talk about ecumenical ecclesiology without employing the term koinonia to express the relational unity of the churches. Nowadays the notion of koinonia, commonly translated as communio in Latin and “communion” or “fellowship” in English, appears ubiquitously in ecumenical literature and is generally used as “an expression of the most profound and all-­embracing [relational] reality that establishes ‘the church of God.’”5 Due to the popularity of its foundational concept, communion ecclesiology has been recognized by some as the ultimate and “the most basic form of ecclesiology.”6

1993); Jean Tillard, “Koinonia,” in Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement, ed. Georges Florovsky (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1991), 56. 2  World Council of Churches, “Towards Koinonia in Faith, Life, and Witness: A Discussion Paper,” Proceedings of the Fifth World Conference on Faith and Order in Santiago de Compostela (Geneva: World Council of Churches Publications, 1993). 3  Fuchs, Koinonia and the Quest for an Ecumenical Ecclesiology, 70–247. 4  Ernest Skublics, Aspects and Implications of Communion Ecclesiology (Cumbria, UK: Theophania Publishing, 2001), 13–34; World Council of Churches, The Church: Towards a Common Vision (Faith and Order Paper No. 214) (Geneva: World Council of Churches Publications, 2013); Miroslav Volf, After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998); Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, “The Church as the Fellowship of Persons: An Emerging Pentecostal Ecclesiology of Koinonia,” PentecoStudies, 6 (2007); Scott MacDougall, More Than Communion: Imagining an Eschatological Ecclesiology (London: Bloomsbury T & T Clark, 2015). 5  Thomas F. Günther, World Council of Churches, On the Way to Fuller Koinonia (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1994). This notion is considered to be “the central and fundamental idea of the Council’s documents.” See Extraordinary Synod of 1985, “The Final Report,” Origins 15 (19 December 1985): 448. 6  When producing the document, “Some Aspects of the Church Understood as a Communion,” Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger openly argued that “communion ecclesiology” represents the ultimate and the most basic form of ecclesiology. See L’Osservatore Romano (English Edition), 17 June 1992, 1. See also Fuchs, Koinonia and the Quest for an Ecumenical Ecclesiology, xxxiii.

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Perhaps one of the main advantages of using this broadly defined koinonia framework is that it provides space for the multiplicity of denominational voices to be expressed and acknowledged. Scholars from different religious traditions can accept the prevailing contemporary consensus that “the church is the koinonia of the faithful” as a formal theological principle, while at the same time making additional specifications in line with their own distinctive theological heritage and priorities. The elements of overlap and difference can then open up the possibility of intelligible critical dialogue among different Christian traditions on ecclesiological matters.7 Over the last few decades, a great number of eminent scholars have joined this quest by formulating their own versions of communio ecclesiology, drawing upon the resources of their particular theological traditions. Within Eastern Orthodox circles, the most coherent and profound version of communio ecclesiology has been developed by the Metropolitan of Pergamon, John Zizioulas.8 The views of this Greek theologian have been widely accepted, commented on, and analysed by a number of Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant theologians. However, no serious attention has been given to critical assessment of the underlying methodological assumptions that shape his theological interpretation of koinonia. This chapter represents an attempt to fill this gap by probing into the method of Zizioulas’s communio ecclesiology to determine its ecumenical potential. After a brief overview of the central features of Zizioulas’s 7  For a more detailed explanation of how communio ecclesiology works, and how it can be used to advance the concept of a church within different Christian traditions, see Tihomir Lazić, Towards an Adventist Version of Communio Ecclesiology: Remnant in Koinonia (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). 8  For more details about the profile and background of John Zizioulas, and his contribution to the Eastern-Orthodox contemporary understanding of ecclesiology, see Douglas H.  Knight, ed., The Theology of John Zizioulas: Personhood and the Church (Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2007); Eve M.  Tibbs, “East Meets West: Trinity, Truth and Communion in John Zizioulas and Colin Gunton” (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Fuller Theological Seminary, 2006), 16–18; and Zenon Skira, “Christ, the Spirit and the Church in Modern Orthodox Theology: A Comparison of Georges Florovsky, Vladimir Lossky, Nikos Nissiotis and John Zizioulas” (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of St. Michael’s College, Toronto, 1998), 2–11; Paul M.  Collins, Trinitarian Theology, West and East: Karl Barth, the Cappadocian Fathers and John Zizioulas (Oxford/ New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, An Introduction to Ecclesiology: Ecumenical, Historical and Global Perspectives (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002).

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communio ecclesiology, there will follow an identification and assessment of the key methodological assumptions that undergird his attempt to articulate a highly relational vision of church that grounds the community of believers in the life of the triune God. It is hoped that this brief appraisal will enable readers to determine whether or not John Zizioulas’s reflection can be used as a coherent, viable, and promising methodological route for creating space for a meaningful and fruitful ecclesiological dialogue between Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches.

1   The Central Features of John Zizioulas’s Communio Ecclesiology Undoubtedly, the leading theological motif that stands at the centre of John Zizioulas’s ecclesiological synthesis is the idea of koinonia.9 It shapes and informs everything he says about the church. For this reason, Zizioulas’s reflection is rightly known as communio ecclesiology—a specific type of theological discourse that describes the church in terms of relationships. Its primary aim is to give a clear articulation to the dynamic interplay that exists between the persons of the Trinity (trinitarian communion), human beings and the triune God (vertical communion), the members of the communion of the faithful (horizontal communion), the local and universal church, and the church and the non-church.10 Zizioulas’s acceptance of the prevailing ecumenical consensus—that the church represents a communion (koinonia) of persons that is mystically united with God in Christ through the Holy Spirit11—defines the ultimate goal of his ecclesiological undertaking, which is to widen the existing social and ecclesial interpretations of the term “communion” (koinonia) by investigating the notion of human communion as a reflection of trinitarian communion. To capture the essence of Zizioulas’s proposal, this analysis will follow the ordo essendi of his theology by beginning with an examination of the 9  John D. Zizioulas, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2004). 10  Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 15; Robert Jenson, “The Church as Communio,” in The Catholicity of the Reformation, ed. Carl Braaten and Robert Jenson (Grand Rapids, MI: 1996), 1; Dennis M. Doyle, Communion Ecclesiology: Vision and Versions (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2000), 12; Fuchs, Koinonia and the Quest for an Ecumenical Ecclesiology, 25–43. 11  Herwi Rikhof, The Concept of Church: A Methodological Inquiry into the Use of Metaphors in Ecclesiology (London; Shepherdstown, WV: Sheed and Ward; Patmos Press, 1981), 233–35.

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ontology of person at the trinitarian and anthropological levels and concluding with an investigation of how Zizioulas applies this overarching principle of koinonia to different aspects of his ecclesiological construction. As this brief analysis of his communio ecclesiology unfolds, it is hoped that the basic contours of his underlying method will gradually emerge, making it possible to identify some areas of his proposal that require further reflection. 1.1  The Ontology of Person Metropolitan John Zizioulas is very careful to specify that the concept of koinonia “derives not from a sociological experience, nor from ethics, but from faith.”12 In other words, he does not set out to develop his ideas about what “communion” might mean in our human experience of relating to others and then to project them onto his understanding of theology. Instead, he begins from faith, or rather, from his understanding of the inner life of the triune God.13 1.1.1 Trinitarian Personhood Introducing this new ontology, Zizioulas states explicitly that he believes “in a God who is in his very being koinonia. God is trinitarian; He is a relational being by definition” and that “without the concept of communion it would not be possible to speak of the being of God.”14 Zizioulas argues that neither the Greek nor the Roman tradition attributes ontological content to the person. Because of the closed, monistic ontology shared by both traditions, the most that can be said is that human beings are personal. Against this backdrop, patristic theology, especially that of the Cappadocian Fathers, brought about what Zizioulas considers to be a “revolution” in thought—the identification of hypostasis with the person.15 12  Zizioulas, “The Church as Communion,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 81, no. 1 (1994): 5. 13  Zizioulas, “The Church as Communion,” 3–5. 14  Zizioulas, “The Church as Communion,” 3–5; Skira, “Christ, the Spirit and the Church in Modern Orthodox Theology,” 136–138. 15  Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 27–35; John Zizioulas, “Human Capacity and Human Incapacity: A Theological Exploration of Personhood,” Scottish Journal of Theology 28 (1975): 401–48, pp. 403–6. My interest in Zizioulas is as a systematic theologian rather than a church historian and so my concern will be with the ideas that lie behind his various analyses rather than whether or not his use of the Fathers is accurate. Some questions have been

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There are two insights that stem directly from this “revolutionary” patristic discovery. Firstly, the phenomenon of being—which is often referred to as “substance” or “nature”—does not exist apart from or prior to relation. In other words, “It is not the case that something first is what it is, and then that it enters various relationships; rather being and relationship are simultaneous.”16 This means that the relationship is not merely an extrinsic or accidental quality or property that is subsequently added to the more foundational reality of being. Being is communion. Another basic principle that emerges from Zizioulas’s trinitarian ontology has to do with the relationship between the person and communion or between “one” and “many” (to use the language of metaphysics). Zizioulas underscores that “the person cannot exist without communion; but every form of communion which denies or suppresses the person, is inadmissible.”17 This emphasis on the simultaneity of being and relation, and on the equality of one and many, is important for Zizioulas’s underlying theological concern to articulate the nature of personal freedom, especially in relation to the notion of otherness. Contrary to individualistically shaped intellectual tradition, Zizioulas maintains that freedom should never be perceived as something that can be restricted by the reality of relationships with other persons; rather, it is enabled by these relationships. According to Zizioulas, the Trinity represents the ultimate model of how the true freedom and the unique personal identity should be actualized within and through the web of interwoven relationships. The divine persons are not isolated units, separable from each other, who must assert themselves against others and against the world as a whole, in order to secure their own identity.18 Being a person-in-relation does not limit the freedom of a particular divine person, but actualizes that person’s true essence. The consequences of such a relational revision of personhood are vast and varied. Arguably, many contemporary scholars from different Christian raised about this, for instance, by John G.  F. Wilks, “The Trinitarian Ontology of John Zizioulas,” Vox Evangelica, 25 (1995): 63–8. 16  Knight, The Theology of John Zizioulas, 2. 17  Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 18; Knight, The Theology of John Zizioulas, 2. 18  Knight uses similar descriptors for summarizing Zizioulas’s theory of personhood. Whereas his particular emphasis is on human personhood, I have modified these phrases and used them in this particular statement to describe the nature and dynamics of inner-trinitarian relationships. Knight, The Theology of John Zizioulas, 1.

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traditions might readily appropriate this profound insight into their articulation of the trinitarian personhood. However, what might cause some reticence are Zizioulas’s structural interpretations of this relational paradigm. According to Zizioulas, koinonia is “always constituted and internally structured by an asymmetrical-reciprocal relationship between the one and the many.”19 As explained by Miroslav Volf, this asymmetry consists of the many [Christ and Spirit] being constituted by the one [the Father], whereas the one [Father] is only conditioned by the many [Christ and Spirit]; although he cannot exist without them, they are not his cause, but rather he theirs.20

It seems that Zizioulas postulates the monarchy of the Father, both for the sake of “preserving the unity of God” and for distinguishing between the three persons.21 In order to maintain “the precedence of person over substance,” the origin of the Son and the Spirit must be the Father, which means that not all the persons of the Trinity can demonstrate “reciprocal causality.”22 Thus, Volf rightly argues that at the very core of Zizioulas’s theology (the Father’s) personhood is ontologically antecedent to (the Son’s and the Spirit’s) communion.23 In light of what has been stated, one can conclude that for Zizioulas it is of immense importance to view the doctrine of the triune God as a bigger theological framework within which the concept of koinonia derives its true essence and shape.24 Only after grounding his vision of koinonia in 19  Miroslav Volf, After Our Likeness (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans 1998), 78 (Volf’s italics). 20  Volf, After Our Likeness, 79 (italics added). Volf offers a useful analysis of this structure (78–81). 21  Volf, After Our Likeness, 79. 22  Volf, After Our Likeness, 79. 23  Volf, After Our Likeness, 79. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 40–6. 24  Zizioulas, “The Church as Communion,” 6. In his writings, Zizioulas is primarily concerned with ecclesiology. However, he sees the basis for ecclesiology, and indeed of all Christian life, as being in the Trinity. As he puts it, “Orthodoxy concerning the being of God is not a luxury for the Church and for man: it is an existential necessity.” As a Greek Orthodox theologian, he seeks to draw heavily from the Eastern tradition, and his work on the Trinity is seen by some to epitomize the contemporary form of that tradition. See, for example, Paul M. Collins, Trinitarian Theology: West and East: Karl Barth, the Cappadocian Fathers, and John Zizioulas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); John Thompson, Modern Trinitarian Perspectives (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 143.

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the trinitarian communion does Zizioulas proceed to articulate ways in which this paradigm can be translated into the realm of human relations. 1.1.2 Human Personhood Following this relational model of trinitarian personhood, Zizioulas argues for a radically open-ended understanding of the human self.25 The concept is defined in terms of relationships rather than other internal and external features that the self may or may not possess.26 The ultimate purpose of human beings as the bearers of the image of God is to reflect and participate in God’s way of being.27 Such “participation” is identified by Zizioulas as theosis, which represents the “quintessence of salvation” and implies the process of the ontological transformation28 of the biological personhood into the ecclesial hypostasis.29 Although the promise of the authentic self—which exists as a person-­ in-­communion, yet completely free—is not fully manifested as yet, a foretaste of its future realization is already accessible through the community-making work of Christ and the Holy Spirit. More specifically, Zizioulas believes that the locus of this transformation from the isolated, self-enclosed, biological, mortal self to the relational, “ecclesial,” eternal 25  Zizioulas, “Human Capacity and Human Incapacity: A Theological Exploration of Personhood,” 407–8. “Personhood is directly related to ontology and in contrast to most Western notions of self, personhood is not a quality that is added to being; rather it is constitutive of being: ‘To be and to be in relation becomes identical.’” (See Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 89.) 26  Zizioulas, “Human Capacity and Human Incapacity,” 405–6. See also Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 46. 27  Zizioulas argues that ekstasis and hypostasis represent the two basic aspects of personhood (Zizioulas, “Human Capacity and Human Incapacity,” 408). Breaking down the main terms further, he writes: “Stasis (being ‘as it stands,’ as it is ‘in itself’) is realized in personhood, both as ek-stasis (communion, relatedness) and as hypo-stasis (particularity, uniqueness). [By way of contrast,] in the perverted state of personhood these become apo-stasis and dia-stasis (separateness and individuality).” (See Zizioulas, “Human Capacity and Human Incapacity,” 425.) 28  Salvation, claims Zizioulas, must consist in an ontological de-individualization that actualizes human personhood (Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 51). 29  According to Zizioulas, after the Fall human personhood became perverted, so that it exists now only as the “individual.” This distinction between “two modes of existence”—the hypostasis of biological existence (individual) and the hypostasis of ecclesial existence (person)—is adopted from patristic theology and stands as the foundation not only of Zizioulas’s anthropology, but also of his Christology and ecclesiology. See Zizioulas, “Human Capacity and Human Incapacity,” 406–7.

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self is found in the ecclesial realm, where communion and freedom, one and many, unity and otherness, differences and togetherness, are not opposed, but mutually co-exist as complementary realities.30 It is in the church, argues Zizioulas, that the trinitarian mode of being is made accessible to human beings. 1.2  The Church Having defined the relational nature of God and human beings, Zizioulas endeavours to apply this profound and overarching principle of koinonia to the various aspects of his “ecclesiology of communion,” such as the church’s identity,31 structure,32 authority,33 mission,34 life throughout history,35 and sacramental life, built around the Eucharist.36 In the following section, the relation of koinonia to the church’s identity, structure, and offices, as well as to the sacraments, will be briefly examined. 1.2.1 Identity Zizioulas makes it clear that he thinks that the church should not be looked upon primarily as an instrument, but more as a “way of being” or “event.” Considering it to be an inseparable part of the “corporate” identity of Christ’s pneumatological being,37 Zizioulas defines the church as “a 30  According to Knight, one of the key aspects of Zizioulas’s thought is his eschatological conviction that “[t]he real freedom and diversity promised to humanity has been inaugurated in the Church, the communion in which all diversity and otherness is being perfected, and through which the diversity and very existence of creation comes.” (See Knight, The Theology of John Zizioulas, 1.) 31  “The Church is a ‘reflection’ of God’s relational way of being” (Zizioulas, “The Church as Communion,” 7). 32  Zizioulas, “The Church as Communion,” 8–11. See also Rodica M. M. Stoicoiu, “The Sacrament of Order in Its Relationship to Eucharist, Church and Trinity in the Theological Writings of Edward Kilmartin and John Zizioulas” (PhD diss, The Catholic University of America, 2004), 132–207. 33  Zizioulas, “The Church as Communion,” 12. 34  See, for example, Zizioulas, “The Church as Communion,” 12–13; James Stamoolis, “Eastern Orthodox Mission Theology,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research (April 1984): 59–62. 35  Zizioulas, “The Church as Communion,” 13–14. 36  Zizioulas, “The Church as Communion,” 14–15. 37  Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 124–25; Zizioulas, “The Church as Communion,” 6. See also Skira, “Christ, the Spirit and the Church in Modern Orthodox Theology,” 187; Volf, After Our Likeness, 84–88. According to Zizioulas, the “church” is the real, eschato-

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set of relationships making up a mode of being, exactly as in the case of the Trinitarian God,”38 or as “a ‘reflection’ of God’s relational way of being.”39 In this interwoven web of relationship, which Zizioulas sees as a pneumatically constituted body of Christ, human beings are to discover their freedom and uniqueness, enabled by the work of the Holy Spirit, who acts as both unifier and diversifier. As unifier, the Spirit brings us all together in the body of Christ, whilst at the same time, as diversifier, establishing our distinctive relational roles. The differences between divine persons are reflected primarily in the variety of gifts and roles that the Holy Spirit assigns to different members of the community, and in the way these members are integrated into the “corporate personality” of Christ.40 These divine variations guarantee that the phenomenon of ecclesial diversity and otherness does not represent an aberration of unity, but rather its true expression.41 1.2.2 Sacraments This ontological participation of a human being in the communal and relational mode of Christ’s existence,42 which begins with baptism, is most perfectly realized in the event of the Eucharist,43 in which the “total

logical body of the Risen Christ. In other words, this implies that the church is a core and inseparable constitutive part of the “corporate” identity of Christ, existing in the “koinonia of Spirit.” This means that the existence of the body (church) is a necessary condition for the head to be a head and the body to be a body. See Skira, “Christ, the Spirit and the Church in Modern Orthodox Theology,” 138, 149. 38  Zizioulas, “The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity: The Significance of the Cappadocian Contribution,” in Trinitarian Theology Today: Essays on Divine Being and Act, ed. Christoph Schwobel (Edinburgh, T & T Clark, 1995), 27. 39  Zizioulas, “The Church as Communion,” 7. This fact, as Zizioulas articulates, “implies also that the Church is by definition incompatible with individualism; her fabric is communion and personal relatedness” (Zizioulas, “The Church as Communion,” 7–8). See also John Zizioulas and Gregory Edwards, The One and the Many: Studies on God, Man, the Church, and the World Today (Alhambra, CA: Sebastian Press, 2010). 40  Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 130. 41  Knight, The Theology of John Zizioulas, 2. 42  Zizioulas, “The Church as Communion: A Presentation on the World Conference Theme,” 104. The Eucharist is an event “in which man ‘subsists’ in a manner different from the biological, as a member of a body which transcends every exclusiveness of biological or social kind” (Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 60). 43  Zizioulas, “The Church as Communion,” 15.

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mystery of Christ” is revealed,44 and authentic personhood achieved.45 The eucharistic synaxis forms the space where the communion does not exist at the expense of freedom. By being ontologically transformed into an “ecclesial” self, the members are able to participate in an eschatological event where both the freedom and communion that “come from God, and [are] taken from God, may be freely enjoyed by man” already in the present age.46 Zizioulas’s particular understanding of the nature of the eucharistic synaxis impels him to conclude that the reality of the universal ecclesial koinonia is visibly realized at the level of the local church,47 which involves a coming together of the whole church at a specific place.48 Insisting on the locality of the presence of the whole Christ, Zizioulas claims that the one universal church enjoys no precedence over the many local churches. Instead, it exists precisely as these churches, where each local church stands in diachronic (apostolic) and synchronic (conciliar) communion with other local churches.49 This physical and historical dimension of the phenomenon of the ecclesial communion attained at the local level further

44  Zizioulas, “The Church as Communion,” 14–15: 163. “For Orthodoxy,” Zizioulas writes, “the church is in the Eucharist and through the Eucharist.” See John Zizioulas, “Die Welt in Eucharistischer Schau und der Mensch von Heute,” Una Sancta 25 (1970): 342. 45  The following sources are useful for exploring how, in the specific version of Orthodox theology that Zizioulas represents, the being of the church is actually grounded in the Eucharist: Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 145; John Zizioulas, “Some Reflections on Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist,” Sobornost 5/9 (1969), 644–52: 651; John Zizioulas, The Eucharistic Communion and the World (London: T & T Clark, 2011); John Zizioulas, Eucharist, Bishop, Church: The Unity of the Church in the Divine Eucharist and the Bishop During the First Three Centuries (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2001). 46  Knight, The Theology of John Zizioulas, 2. 47  According to Zizioulas, the church can be found in all its fullness wherever the Eucharist is celebrated. This eucharistic synaxis, however, can occur only when people come together at a specific place (epi to auto). A circumscribed geographic locality plays a part in defining the church. The church is essentially the church at a specific place, a local church (Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 247). 48  In addition to locality, catholicity is also an essential feature of the Eucharist and involves the coming together of the whole church at a specific place. See Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 144, 247; John Zizioulas, “Die Welt in Eucharistischer Schau und der Mensch von Heute,” 342–49, 343. 49   John Zizioulas, “Die Pneumatologische Dimension der Kirche,” Internationale Katholische Zeitschrift ‘Communio’ 2 (1973): 133–47, 140; Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 133.

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implies the existence of certain visible organizational forms within which these relations are structured.50 1.2.3 Structure and Offices Zizioulas conceives the structure of ecclesial relations in a consistently trinitarian fashion by starting with a non-filioquistic, trinitarian view that accords primacy to the person of the Father and thus implies the asymmetrical-­reciprocal relations between the one and the many.51 The monarchy of the Father and the “subordination” of the Son and the Spirit are thus reflected not only in the dominion of Christ over the church but also in the hierarchical relations within the church itself. For example, the person of Christ, who constitutes the church through the work of his Spirit, is also conditioned by that same church. He “incorporates the many into himself,” making them an essential part of his corporate personality, so that “without the many, he is not the Christ.”52 A similar pattern appears between the bishop (one) and congregation (many). Consequently, according to Zizioulas, the ecclesial person is inconceivable without asymmetrical-­reciprocal relations between bishop and the persons, both categories of whom form the indispensable condition of the ecclesiality of the eucharistic assembly.53 In this episcopocentric model of ecclesial organization, the ordained bishop, as alter Christus, mediates the presence of Christ and secures the catholicity of the local church; as alter apostolus, he also connects all the various local churches in time (apostolicity) and space (conciliarity).54 As some critics have rightly noticed, laypersons, according to this theory, are placed within a hierarchically structured bipolarity of the one and the many in which they not only remain subordinate as an undifferentiated whole,55 but are also virtually insignificant as individuals.56 50  John Zizioulas, “The Bishop in the Theological Doctrine of the Orthodox Church,” Kanon 7 (1985), 23–35, 33; Paul Gerard McPartlan, The Eucharist Makes the Church: Henri de Lubac and John Zizioulas in Dialogue (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1993), 203–11. 51  Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 89; Zizioulas, “Die Pneumatologische Dimension der Kirche,” 141. 52  Volf, After Our Likeness, 85. 53  Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 152–154. 54  Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 164. 55  Volf, After Our Likeness, 215. 56  Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 256; Zizioulas, “The Bishop in the Theological Doctrine of the Orthodox Church,” 26.

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2   Some Critical Assumptions of John Zizioulas’s Ecclesiological Method From this brief overview it is already clear that the primary aim of Zizioulas’s communio ecclesiology is to ground the community of believers in the life of the triune God. To clarify the relationship between the Trinity and the church, Zizioulas follows a standard ecclesiological procedure used by a considerable number of mainline Christian theologians. This procedure, also known as the imitatio Trinitatis approach, focuses on the concept of church as an image or icon of the triune God.57 The principal, axiomatic idea is that the ecclesial relations somehow reflect the intra-trinitarian relations.58 As a result, the inner-trinitarian koinonia, according to Zizioulas and other proponents of this strand of communio ecclesiology, should be used as an ontological and structural blueprint for human koinonia. This kind of stratagem rests on a series of rather problematic methodological assumptions. These need to be addressed constructively, if one is to even consider using Zizioulas’s communio ecclesiology as a coherent, plausible, and viable framework for advancing any ecumenically driven conversation about the nature of church or, in this case, the conversation between Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches. Due to the limited scope of the current study, only those assumptions that can be considered vital to Zizioulas’s implementation of the imitatio Trinitatis approach will be highlighted. The first critical question that emerges when dealing with Zizioulas’s communio ecclesiology is whether the depth of the epistemic gap that we, as human beings, operate with when talking about divine matters is sufficiently acknowledged in his ecclesiological synthesis. Zizioulas’s project “to spell out a vision of the church as an image of the triune God”59 57  For instance, Zizioulas defines the church as “a set of relationships making up a mode of being, exactly as is the case of the Trinitarian God.” John D. Zizioulas, “The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity: The Significance of the Cappadocian Contribution,” in Trinitarian Theology Today: Essays on Divine Being and Act, ed. Christoph Schwobel (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1995), 27. In other words, the church is a “reflection” of God’s relational way of being. See John D. Zizioulas, “The Church as Communion,” St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 38 (1994): 7. 58  Scott MacDougall, More Than Communion: Imagining an Eschatological Ecclesiology (London: Bloomsbury, T & T Clark, 2015), 76. 59  Volf, After Our Likeness, 2.

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­ resupposes that one can have access to exceedingly specific, reliable, and p detailed knowledge of the inner being and workings of God.60 In other words, Zizioulas reasons as one who knows very specific information about the inner being of God—or what God is in himself—from which it is possible to make a series of deductions. I would argue that we as human beings simply do not possess this kind of knowledge, or at least not to the extent to which Zizioulas believes we do. While certain aspects of the complexity and richness of divine being and character are revealed to us, this does not include the structural conjectures that feature prominently in Zizioulas’s trinitarian deliberations. These need to be approached more tentatively. I refer here mainly to his insistence on the asymmetrical reciprocity between the persons of the Trinity, where the one (Father) constitutes the many (Son and the Spirit), whilst in turn being conditioned by them. On the other hand, one could rightly claim that Zizioulas’s attempt to articulate a remarkably detailed account of the “inside” of the ontology of God might not be as problematic or incoherent when viewed against the wider backdrop of his rich theology of revelation. This might be true to a certain degree. He does explain at great length that there is an ongoing ecclesial revelation which goes beyond the prophetic and apostolic witness found in Scriptures and includes the church’s life and tradition. Particularly important for Zizioulas seem to be the doctrinal insights of Cappadocian fathers and the ontologically structured event of the Eucharist. It is thus understandable that Zizioulas turns to the liturgical and sacramental life of the church when explaining the nature of truth. Because truth is found in communion, communion is fundamental to knowledge of truth. This communion has been realized in history, in ecclesial life, and more particularly in the Eucharist, which becomes the fundamental source for knowledge of truth. Nevertheless, although Zizioulas emphasizes the importance of the Eucharist as the most fruitful event of history for elaborating an ecclesiology and as an inseparable part of his theological methodology, he does not offer a way to resolve the question of the possible distortions of the liturgy 60  For a more detailed analysis of the inadequacies of the imitatio Trinitatis approach, see Tihomir Lazić, “Koinonia: A Critical Analysis and Comparison of Koinonia within Joseph Ratzinger’s, John Zizioulas’s and Miroslav Volf’s Versions of ‘Communion Ecclesiology’” (master’s dissertation, University of Wales Lampeter, April 2008), 104–09. For online access, see http://n10308uk.eos-intl.eu/eosuksql01_N10308UK_Documents/Dissertations/ Lazic.pdf

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(and Eucharist) which can affect the communion that the liturgy realizes, and thereby the purity of the epistemic source. Whilst he seems to be aware of this difficulty, he does not provide any further criteria for determining what degree of distortion would mean that the liturgy (or Eucharist) had lost its eschatological and ontological character. The same pattern applies to his treatment of ecclesial tradition, particularly his appropriation of the ontological insights coming from the Cappadocian fathers. This reveals yet another vulnerability of Zizioulas’s method. In order to maintain his idealized understanding of relationality and “high” view of the church’s Eucharist as fully reliable and pure epistemic sources, Zizioulas has had to uphold yet another problematic assumption concerning the ecclesial revelatory authority—its infallibility. It is only on this basis that Zizioulas could coherently claim to have fully reliable insights and exclusive information about what God is in himself. This leads to the conclusion that Zizioulas’s attempt to articulate his version of communio ecclesiology might be coherent in some respects, and is incredibly profound in its reinterpretation of the ancient Eastern-­ Orthodox tradition, yet it reveals a lack of attention to the treatment of the historical reality of the current sinful conditions in which human beings exist in the present world.61 His assiduous preoccupation with translating the perfect trinitarian model for use in the sphere of human relationships has resulted in a vision of church that draws too close a parallel between the communal being of the Creator, neglects the human agency in the process of ecclesiogenesis, and fails to articulate an adequate account of the gravity of sin and its distortive effects on human community. Resembling the classical Platonic and Neo-Platonic philosophical tradition, his ecclesiological outlook is thus characterized by an under-emphasis on the fundamental discontinuity existing between divine and human minds.62 One might then rightly wonder whether the well-known Orthodox theologian was faithful to his initial intention “to spell out a 61  Zizioulas’s absolute reliance on the authenticity of the Eucharistic event and its epistemological purity seems to be closely accompanied by (1) an insufficient attention to human embodiment in the world; (2) an underestimation of the value and importance of the sociohistorical factors present in ecclesial reality; (3) an undervaluation of the gravity of sin; and (4) various inconsistencies brought about by his vaguely defined, over-realized eschatology. See Lazić, “Koinonia,” 104–109. 62  For a more detailed analysis of various weaknesses of Zizioulas’s approach, see Edward Russell, “Reconsidering Relational Anthropology: A Critical Assessment of John Zizioulas’s

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vision of the church as an image of the triune God”63 or whether he projected his ideas about what “communion” might mean in our human experience of relating to others onto his understanding of trinitarian communion. In view of this assessment, it may be claimed that, notwithstanding its popularity as a widespread contemporary communio ecclesiology procedure, the imitatio Trinitatis approach—followed by Zizioulas, Ratzinger, Volf, and many other communio ecclesiologists—is not the most suitable starting point for developing a vision of a church that will do justice to its dynamic and multidimensional relational nature. Zizioulas has produced remarkably rich and noteworthy communio ecclesiology that expresses some crucial insights from his own religious tradition in a fresh and existentially relevant way. Nobody questions that. Yet, certain aspects of his reflection do not fully avoid some of the tendencies that mark almost all communio ecclesiologies that follow imitatio Trinitatis approaches. These include a propensity to create an overly idealized, abstract, static, ahistorical, romanticized, and docetic vision of the church. This kind of vision certainly cannot, without further critical amendments, serve as an adequate account of church that acknowledges the messy, historical, dynamic, and concrete everyday reality of the pilgrim community of believers, constantly on the move towards a fuller participation in the life of the triune God. Neither can its full ecumenical potential be realized without further systematic efforts to enhance it by addressing the afore-indicated methodological inadequacies critically and constructively. Conceivably, the same critical remarks might apply to any other similar attempt to capture the richness and diversity of the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches—along with the range of their very different liturgical, theological, and canonical traditions—by articulating their distinctive versions of communio ecclesiology. Those who wish to pursue such a task should be mindful to avoid drawing too close a structural parallel between the trinitarian and the human community. Given the lack of the knowledge that we, as humans, have about the inner life of God, this project will inevitably become a mere guessing game, a projection onto our understanding of the dynamics of trinitarian communion of human

Theological Anthropology,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 5. 2 (July 2003): 169–186. 63  Volf, After Our Likeness, 2.

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ideas about what communio might mean in our experience of relationships with others. Joseph Ratzinger’s version of communio ecclesiology is a prime example of how the aforelisted inadequacies not only are unique to Zizioulas’s reflection but can also be found in other Christian traditions—in this particular case, a Roman Catholic one—that follow the imitatio Trinitatis approach. Ratzinger too starts with the Trinity when articulating the nature of koinonia. Yet his vision of the structure and dynamics of trinitarian communion is radically different from the one developed by Zizioulas. As demonstrated earlier, Zizioulas’s insistence on the hierarchical bipolarity between “the one” (the person of the Father) and “the many” (Christ and the Spirit) has resulted in an ecclesial account that affirms the asymmetrical-­reciprocal relationship between bishops and laity. By contrast, Ratzinger’s understanding of the structure of trinitarian relations that is characterized by the pyramidal dominance of “the one” over “the many” (precedence of divine substance over non-accidentally conceived persons) has been used as a theological justification for a monolithic, hierarchical vision of the relationship of the Pope to cardinals, of the cardinals to bishops and, in turn, of the bishops to the laity.64 Because only “the one” can ensure the unity of the totality, the Pope must rank above a bishop, just as a bishop must rank above his congregation. According to Ratzinger, “[o]nly this hierarchical model of church’s structure, which is willed by the Lord and which emerges from the church’s communal nature itself, allows Christ to act within the church and thus, in the life of each individual believer.”65 The presence of the head of the universal church and the representative of Christ (vicarious Christi), the Pope, as the successor to the Roman Petrine office, is, in Ratzinger’s opinion, indispensable for the unity of the Catholic Church. As a consequence, the life of the triune God, or trinitarian koinonia, is accessible to humans only through the multiple ecclesial mediation, involving “the narrow portals of Petrine office,” the Episcopal collegium, the bishop, and other members 64  Furthermore, by following the same structural pattern that endorses the primacy of substance over persons, Ratzinger concludes that one universal church (the whole) takes precedence over the many local churches. Consequently, these local churches can claim their full ecclesial status only insofar as they continue to exist from and towards the whole. See Lazić, “Koinonia,” 57; Volf, After Our Likeness, 72. 65  Lazić, “Koinonia,” 57.

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of the local church, all of whom have derived their identity in the celebration of the Eucharist, which expresses and constitutes the ultimate sacramental essence of the church, seen as Christus totus.66

Clearly, Ratzinger’s entire communal view of what is Christian is a view conceived from the perspective of the whole. Put simply, his thinking “seeks first the whole, and then the individual within the whole.”67 Arguably, this kind of perspective that implies the non-reciprocal monistic hierarchy within the Trinity—in which, from the systemic dominance of “the one” and from the precedence of the whole, the strictly hierarchical structure of the church derives—is again built on very speculative grounds. As in Zizioulas’s reflection, Ratzinger’s hierarchical vision of the church rests on the bold (yet questionable) assumption that one can have access to an exceedingly specific, reliable, and detailed knowledge of the inner being and workings of God. This constitutes the knowledge from which one can then derive a normative structural paradigm determining the shape of human koinonia. Because it underestimates the epistemic, moral, and ontological limitations of human beings, Ratzinger’s communio ecclesiology might be viewed as yet another attempt to create God according to our image, instead of the other way round. While there is a lot to learn from Zizioulas and Ratzinger, Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches should not uncritically adopt the imitatio Trinitatis approach as the main methodological pathway to defining their concepts of koinonia. Due to its inherent inadequacies, this approach might hinder their efforts to build ecumenical bridges by recognizing the common trinitarian source of their diverse communities, while remaining open to embracing “all genuine expressions of the fullness of ecclesial life in Christ”68 that these communities might contribute.

 Lazić, “Koinonia,” 57.  Joseph Ratzinger, Das neue Volk Gottes: Entwürfe zur Ekklesiologie (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1969), 95; Joseph Ratzinger, Theologische Prinzipienlehre: Bausteine Zur Fundamentaltheologie (Munich: Erich Wewel, 1982), 309. 68  Frans Bouwen, “Eastern Catholic Churches,” in Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement, ed. Nicholas Lossky, José Míguez Bonino, John Pobee, Tom F.  Stransky, Geoffrey Wainwright, Pauline Webb, 2nd ed. (Geneva: WCC Publications, 2002), 345. 66 67

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3   A Way Forward As a way to enhance the ecclesiological and ecumenical potential of Zizioulas’s concept of koinonia, I recommend reframing, resituating, and appropriately amending some of the key insights of his ecclesiological synthesis to fit a new conceptual framework that emerges from a less popular, yet hopefully, more promising methodological route of communio ecclesiology. This approach—known also as the participatio Trinitatis approach— examines the relationship between Trinity and church in terms of the believer’s participation in the divine life as unveiled in history, with an emphasis on dynamic personal interaction, indwelling, and sharing, both among believers and with God. Rather than focusing on speculation about the inner mode of being of the immanent Trinity, the participatio Trinitatis ecclesiological project tends to stress the works of God ad extra. It grounds the church in those aspects of divine life that have been made accessible to human beings in the concreteness of the revelatory and reconciliatory event of Christ, in which human beings take part through the workings of the Spirit.69 According to Gregory J.  Liston, by viewing the church as an active participant in the triune life of God, this approach focuses primarily on “the Spirit-empowered works of God rather than the internal makeup of his being. It starts from below and works upwards, rather than starting from above and working downwards.”70 Karl Barth, although himself operating within a top-down approach, recognizes the legitimacy of this alternative way of doing theology: There is certainly a place for legitimate Christian thinking starting from below and moving up, from man who is taken hold of by God to God who takes hold of man … one might well understand it as a theology of the third article. … Starting from below, as it were, with Christian man, it could and should have struggled its way upward to an authentic explication of the Christian faith.71

69  For a more extensive exposition and assessment of the potentials of the participatio Trinitatis approach, see my doctoral dissertation: Lazić, Towards an Adventist Version of Communio Ecclesiology, 183–228. 70  Gregory J. Liston, The Anointed Church: Toward a Third Article Ecclesiology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), 12–13. 71  Karl Barth, The Humanity of God (Richmond, VA: John Knox, 1972), 24–25.

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Liston also succinctly explains the main trajectory characterizing such an approach: In this movement from below to above, our theological reflection matches our discipleship. As we are drawn by the Spirit from our current fallen state into participation in the Godhead, so our theological reflections start from our current experience and knowledge (limited and tainted by creaturely mortality and sinfulness) and move upwards toward reflections on the nature and existence of God.72

In the light of this, it is suggested that when articulating the vision of church as koinonia, one should start by examining the nature and direction of the transformative movement of the Spirit within us, through us, and around us. One should then consider how, by means of our participation in the work of the Spirit, we are being incorporated in the pneumatic body of Christ, and through him united with God the Father. This Spirit-­ mediated-­and-originated movement, from our imperfect and fragmented existence into the life of God, in which we are inextricably united with other fellow-believers (and the whole universe), is the basis of the church’s dynamic koinonia. This approach—as demonstrated by the increasing number of theologians writing within various Christian denominations73— “holds great promise for theological insights.”74 This is so, especially in view of its fourfold emphasis on particularity, transformation, relationships, and the movement.75 With this in view, it is proposed that the participatio Trinitatis approach serves as a much more adequate methodological route then imitatio Trinitatis for constructing a truly dynamic and inclusive vision of the church as koinonia—a vision that will embrace the best of both the Orthodox and the Eastern Catholic ecclesiological heritage. Even though this approach starts from a different vantage point, its ecclesiological perspective—if developed properly—might turn out to be just the type of conceptual framework that is needed to allow for a fuller and more  Liston, The Anointed Church, 13.  These include authors writing from the perspective of Roman Catholicism (Yves Congar, Ralph Del Colle, David Coffey), Protestant denominations (Lyle Dabney, Myk Habets, Gary Badcock, Clark Pinnock), and ecumenical traditions (Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Amos Yong, Miroslav Volf, Steven Studebaker). 74  Liston, The Anointed Church, 14. 75  Liston, The Anointed Church, 14. 72 73

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comprehensive exposition of some of the aspects of Zizioulas’s thought that remain underdeveloped thus far. Yet, like imitatio Trinitatis, this participatory framework is not immune to various reductive distortions. To avoid these distortions, certain well-­ established ecclesiological principles that are articulated by Zizioulas himself might be of great use as basic guidelines, or correctives, for constructing a dynamic ecclesiological vision of koinonia that would encourage and facilitate the church’s attempts to reach a permanently improvised, delicate balance between the person and the community in the process of becoming one with God, in Christ, through the Holy Spirit. These include at least four regulative principles: (1) indivisibility (whereby the activity of God in Christ through the Holy Spirit ad extra is always one and indivisible); (2) balance (equal attention given to the community-­forming activity of each person of the Trinity); (3) comprehensiveness (so that the entire historical work of a particular person of the Godhead should be allowed to have a bearing on an ecclesiological discourse); and (4) ontological embeddedness (meaning that all divine actions pro nobis are constitutive for the church’s esse and not merely accidental or peripheral).76 By making sure that human agency—along with its ontological, epistemic, and moral limitations—is given its proper place in the articulation of the concept of koinonia, and by integrating Zizioulas’s core insights and ecclesiological principles in a more adequate participatio Trinitatis methodological framework, one can develop a comprehensive theoretical vision of church as koinonia. This vision, if adequately articulated, might create a new opportunity for fresh ecclesiological reflection and, by doing that, facilitate a more meaningful and fruitful ecclesiological dialogue between Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches.

76  For a more detailed exposition of these principles, as well as further demonstration of how the participatio Trinitatis approach can be used by contemporary scholars to address some of the most divisive issues in the field of ecclesiology, see Lazić, Towards an Adventist Version of Communio Ecclesiology, 231–306.

Theological Reflections on the Dialogue with the Orthodox Church from an Eastern Catholic Perspective Thomas Mark Németh

1   State of the Question This chapter presents methodological and thematic considerations for a dialogue between the Orthodox Church and Eastern Catholic Churches in the hope to contribute to such an ecumenical undertaking. This topic  belongs in the wider context of Orthodox-Catholic relations.1 First of all, it seems useful to raise the question of the names of the partners of the 1  For the history and content of this dialogue see Pantelis Kalaitzidis et al., eds., Orthodox Handbook on Ecumenism. Resources for Theological Education (Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2014); Richard Potz and Eva Synek, Orthodoxes Kirchenrecht. Eine Einführung, 2nd ed. (Freistadt: Plöchl, 2014), 558–363; Johann Marte, ed., Herausforderung sichtbarer Einheit. Beiträge zu den Dokumenten des katholisch-orthodoxen Dialogs (Würzburg: Echter, 2014); Johannes Oeldemann, Orthodoxe Kirchen im ökumenischen Dialog. Positionen, Probleme, Perspektiven (Paderborn: Bonifatius, 2004).

T. M. Németh (*) University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria © The Author(s) 2021 V. Latinovic, A. K. Wooden (eds.), Stolen Churches or Bridges to Orthodoxy?, Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55442-2_18

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dialogue. The long-standing name “Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue Between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church”2 stems from the fact that the Orthodox partner insists on the attribute “Roman” for the Catholic side.3 This does not mean that the Eastern Catholic Churches are fully excluded, since some members of the dialogue group belong(ed) to them.4 Moreover, some documents— like the Balamand Statement, which will be treated later—take them into consideration. However, the Orthodox side seems to argue that Eastern Catholics are in communion with Rome and that they are therefore Roman. This will be discussed in more detail later. There are several other issues which raise questions about the future of the dialogue. The title of this volume shows that Eastern Catholic Churches are still frequently regarded by Orthodoxy as “stolen churches,” while they still regard themselves sometimes as “bridges” between the confessions. However, there seems to be growing consensus among scholars interested in the dialogue that the Eastern Catholic Churches should not be excluded from participation.5 There are several examples of a more intensive participation of Eastern Catholic Churches at lower levels of dialogue such as the Kyivan 2  For relevant documents see Harding Meyer, et  al., eds., Growth in Agreement, 4 vols. (New York: Paulist Press and Geneva: WCC Publications, 1984–2017); Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, accessed January 21, 2020, http://www.christianunity.va/ content/unitacristiani/en/dialoghi/sezione-orientale/chiese-ortodosse-di-tradizionebizantina/commissione-mista-internazionale-per-il-dialogo-teologico-tra-la.html; in German: Marte, Herausforderung, 166–255; Pro Oriente, et al., eds., Dokumente des offiziellen orthodox-katholischen Dialogs (1980–2010) (Wien, 2010), accessed January 21, 2020, http://dokumente.pro-oriente.at/dokumente/dialog_web.pdf; for other levels of dialogue: Thomas Bremer, ed., Orthodxie im Dialog. Bilaterale Dialoge der orthodoxen und der orientalisch-orthodoxen Kirchen 1945–1997. Eine Dokumentensammlung (Trier: Paulinus, 1999) 17–484; John Borelli and John H.  Ericksons, eds., The Quest for Unity: Orthodox and Catholics in Dialogue: Documents of the Joint International Commission and Official Dialogues in the United States 1965–1995 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996). 3  Although the attribute “Roman” is sometimes omitted, even on the website of the Vatican quoted in the previous footnote, it is a part of the official name of this commission. I am grateful to Prof. Theresia Hainthaler for information regarding this institution. 4  For example, Dr. Eleuterio Fortino (Italo-Alban Greek Catholic Church), Prof. Dr. Ernst Christoph Suttner (Russian Greek Catholic Church), Dr. Ivan Dacko (Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church), Bishop Prof. Dimitrios Salachas (Greek Catholic Church of Greece), Bishop Florentin Crihălmeanu (Romanian Greek Catholic Church); Metr. Paul Sayah (Maronite Church). 5  See for example, the presentation in Volume II by Petros Vassiliadis, “Orthodox-Catholic and Greek Catholic Relations After The Ukrainian Crisis”.

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Study Group6 and the Christian dialogue in the Middle East, where the initiative by the Melkite Archbishop Elias Zoghby7 has demonstrated the complex relationship at the universal and local levels of dialogue. In our times of globalization, the issue is becoming even more complex as both Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches take many kinds of action at both local and worldwide levels. Despite these challenges, there seems to be stagnation in many fields of dialogue and a certain perplexity about how to continue. This situation must be seen in the light of radical inquiries into ecumenism itself. The global anti-ecumenical movement across all local Orthodox Churches cannot be ignored. Some propose a strategic alliance which strives for cooperation on ideological issues but does not espouse church unity as a direct goal. There is also a significant amount of skepticism regarding “classic ecumenism” and the claim of a new paradigm.8 Thus, ecumenism currently resembles a large construction site. Regarding Orthodox and Eastern Catholic relations, dialogue requires mutual efforts in view of the complex current developments on both confessional sides.9

2   The Need for the Dialogue, and Obstacles on the Way of Achieving It On the Orthodox side, since the beginning of the twentieth century the Ecumenical Patriarchate and other autocephalous churches have expressed their openness to ecumenical dialogue long before Vatican II promulgated

6  See Andrij Chirovsky and Roman Hayda, “Kyivan Church Study Group, an Ecumenical Dialogue in Our Times.” The Ukrainian Weekly, September 12, 2004, accessed January 13, 2020, http://www.ukrweekly.com/old/archive/2004/370422.shtml; for other regional dialogue groups see Dietmar Schon, “Positionsdenken als Barriere ökumenischer Verständigung. Zur Methodik einer Annäherung zwischen katholischer und orthodoxer Kirchen.” In Dietmar Schon, ed., Dialog 2.0 – Braucht der orthodox-katholische Dialog neue Impulse (Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 2017), 249. 7  See Assaad Elias Kattan, “Ex Oriente spes? Zu Höhe- und Tiefpunkten ökumenischer Erfahrung im Vorderen Orient.” In Schon, ed., Dialog 2.0, 77–87. 8  On this topic, see several contributions in Religion & Gesellschaft in Ost und West 46, No. 10 (2018): 5–17. 9   For recent developments see Rade Kisić, “Der Katholisch-Orthodoxe Dialog. Bestandsaufnahme und Perspektiven.” In Schon, ed., Dialoge 2.0, 88–101, and other contributions in this volume.

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its Decree on Ecumenism (Unitatis redintegratio, UR)10 in 1964.11 Recently, the Council of Crete of 201612 also stated: “The Orthodox Church, which prays unceasingly ‘for the union of all,’ has always cultivated dialogue with those estranged from her”13 and that “the Orthodox Church believes that her relations with the Christian Churches or Confessions should be based on the most speedy and objective clarification possible of the whole ecclesiological question.”14 However, the term “Uniatism” is used in a negative context by the Council.15 Moreover, current discussions in Orthodoxy about the question of whether and in what way other Christian denominations should be regarded as churches, prevented a stronger common statement on ecumenism.16 In the current difficult ecclesiological situation of Orthodoxy, the desire to avoid raising new questions at the official level is understandable. However, at the level of theological argumentation the question remains how to give greater consideration to the fundamental principles of 10  II. Vatican Council, “Decree on Ecumenism Unitatis Redintegratio.” Acta Apostolicae Sedis 57 (1965): 90–107; English version, accessed January 13, 2020, http://www.vatican. va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decree_19641121_unitatisredintegratio_en.html 11  For Orthodox initiatives, like the letters by the Ecumenical Patriarchs from 1902–1904 and 1920 and ecumenical difficulties see Georges Lemopoulos, “Historical Road Map of Orthodox Involvement in the Ecumenical Movement.” In Kalaitzidis, et al., eds., Orthodox Handbook, 96–101; for Vatican II and subsequent Catholic documents see Thomas Németh, “Das Zweite Vaticanum und die Ostkirchen. Rückblicke und Ausblicke.” Der christliche Osten 68 (2013): 216–222. 12  This council has not been accepted by all local Orthodox churches. See Eva Synek, Das “Heilige und Große Konzil” von Kreta (Freistadt: Plöchl, 2017); Thomas Mark Németh, “Das orthodoxe Konzil von Kreta. Offene Fragen und Perspektiven.” In Jügen Bründl and Florian Klug, eds., Zentrum und Peripherie. Theologische Perspektiven auf Kirche und Gesellschaft. Festschrift für Otmar Meuffels (Bamberg: University of Bamberg Press, 2017), 325–334; Metropolit Elpidophoros Lambriniadis, “Braucht der orthodox-katholische Dialog neue Impulse? Eine orthodoxe Perspektive.” In Schon, ed., Dialog 2.0, 42–62. 13  Holy and Great Council, “Relations of the Orthodox World with the Rest of the Christian World,” accessed January 13, 2020, https://www.holycouncil.org/-/rest-ofchristian-world, Nr. 4. 14  Ibid., Nr. 6 15  Ibid., Nr. 23: “It therefore believes that this dialogue should always be accompanied by witness to the world through acts expressing mutual understanding and love, which express the ‘ineffable joy’ of the Gospel (1 Pt 1:8), eschewing every act of proselytism, uniatism, or other provocative act of inter-confessional competition.” 16  See Theresia Hainthaler, “Nach der ‘Heiligen und Großen Synode’ von Kreta 2016. Fragen und Überlegungen zu einem Neuansatz des orthodox-katholischen Dialogs.” In Schon, ed., Dialog 2.0, 118–133.

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ecclesiology. The Catholic Church does not understand itself as a Roman Church with some Eastern appendages but as a communio of churches which accept the primacy of the Bishop of Rome, but belong not only to the Latin but also to different Eastern traditions. On the one hand, in UR Vatican II underscored the importance of ecumenism and the dignity of the Orthodox Churches; on the other hand, in its Decree on the Catholic Churches of the Eastern Rite (Orientalium Ecclesiarum, OE)17 it has also highlighted the importance of Eastern Catholic Churches in the catholic communio and their equal dignity with the Latin Church (OE 3). Edward Farrugia noted that the latter document has set a high standard by not creating a dilemma between (Catholic) church unity and ecumenism by stating that “no ecumenism can be disloyal to a Church’s truths or members, just as there is no love for one’s particular Church if it exceeds that for the universal Church.”18 The Council also paved the way for the concept of Ecclesiae sui iuris that was explicated in the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches (CCEO)19 and gave conceptual precedence to these churches over their “rites.” According to canon 28 of the CCEO, rites are the liturgical, theological, spiritual, and disciplinary patrimony of a church sui iuris. In UR 17, which addresses the Orthodox Churches, all these four aspects of the heritage of the Eastern Churches mentioned before were explicitly recognized as belonging to the “the full Catholic and apostolic character of the Church.” Thus, the Eastern Catholic Churches cannot be reduced to administrative subunits of the Western Church. They are bearers of autonomy and a theological expression of the Catholic faith, 17  II. Vatican Council, “Decree on the Catholic Churches of the Eastern Rite Orientalium Ecclesiarum.” Acta Apostolicae Sedis 57 (1965): 76–85; English version, accessed January 13, 2020, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/ vat-ii_decree_19641121_orientalium-ecclesiarum_en.html 18  Edward Farrugia, “Re-reading Orientalium Ecclesiarum.” Gregorianum 88 (2007): 368; see also Theresia Hainthaler, “Apostolic Tradition of the Oriental Churches in the Light of Orientalium Ecclesiarum and Unitatis Redintegratio.” The Harp 24 (2009): 269–283. 19   “Codex Canonum Ecclesiarum Orientalium.” Acta Apostolicae Sedis 82 (1990): 1033–1364; Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches. Latin-English Edition. New English Translation (Washington: Canon Law Society of America, 2001); see in particular can. 27. For the notion of Churches sui iuris see George Nedungatt, “Churches sui iuris and Rites.” In Idem, ed., A Guide to the Eastern Code (Rome: Pontificio Istituto Orientale, 2002), 99–128; Luis Okulik, ed., Le Chiese sui iuris. Criteri di individuazione e delimitazione (Venice: Marcianum Press, 2005), 163–169, Congregation for the Eastern Churches, Edward Farrugia, et al., eds., The Catholic East (Roma: Valore Italiano, 2019).

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which is different from that of the Latin Church. Their own theological patrimony is an equal expression of the depositum fidei of the whole Catholic Church and must be considered when deciding what is Catholic. On the Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox sides, the problem of Uniatism is often regarded as a main obstacle for the dialogue.20 The Balamand Declaration (1993), which rejects Uniatism and proselytism, also takes the current Eastern Catholic Churches into consideration.21 Article 14 states that “the Catholic Churches [!] and the Orthodox Churches recognize each other as Sister Churches.”22 According to Article 16, the Oriental Catholic Churches […] have the rights and obligations which are connected with this communion. The principles determining their attitude towards Orthodox Churches are those that have been stated by the Second Vatican Council and have been put into practice by the Popes […]. These Churches, then, should be inserted, on both local and universal levels, into the dialogue of love, in mutual respect and reciprocal trust found once again, and enter into the theological dialogue, with all its practical implications.

This document distinguishes churches as communities of the people of God from problematic models or methods of reaching unity, advocates the inclusion of the Eastern Catholic Churches in the dialogue, and raises 20  See Kurt Kardinal Koch, “Auf dem Weg zur Wiedererstellung der einen Kirche in Ost und West.” In Schon, ed., Dialog 2.0, 23–26; Radu Preda, “Vom Uniatismus zur Einheit. Die Frage nach der Identität der mit Rom unierten Kirchen vor und nach Balamand (1993).” In Marte, ed., Herausforderung, 92–118. 21  Joint International Commission for the Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church. Seventh Plenary Session, “Uniatism: Method of Union of the Past, and the Present Search for Full Communion. Balamand, Lebanon, 23 June 1993.” Jeffrey Gros, et al., eds., Growth in Agreement II. Reports and Agreed Statements of Ecumenical Conversations on a World Level, 1982–1998 (Geneva: WCC Publications, 2000), 680–685; online version, accessed January 21, 2020, http://www. vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/ch_or thodox_docs/ rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_19930624_lebanon_en.html 22  See also on the restrictive use of this term on the catholic side since 2000: Will T. Cohen, The Concept of “Sister Churches” in Catholic-Orthodox Relations Since Vatican II (Münster: Aschendorff, 2016); Ioan Moga and Regina Augustin, eds., Wesen und Grenzen der Kirche. Beiträge des Zweiten Ekklesiologischen Kolloquiums (Innsbruck: Tyrolia, 2015); Andrea Riedl and Nino Sakvarelidze, eds., Der sichtbaren Gemeinschaft entgegen. Impulse junger orthodoxer und katholischer Theologinnen und Theologen (Freiburg i. Br.: Herder, 2015).

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the question of finding mutual principles for this dialogue. However, the Balamand Declaration offers only very vague guidelines for theological dialogue itself. One of the main obstacles for a substantial rapprochement is the mutual difficulty of implementing an alternative to exclusivist ecclesiological concepts and accepting each other as true churches. In some Eastern Catholic Churches, the acceptance of Uniatism, legitimized by unity with Rome, is still implicitly present. However, there is also perhaps a hidden side of the identity of the Eastern Catholic Churches which was pointed out by Georgij Avvakumov: Paradoxically, they feel that they have a kind of “supra-denominational mission” because of—rather than despite—the problematic history of Uniatism.23 This ambivalence could perhaps be considered useful for finding ways of living in the midst of antagonism.24 In criticizing Uniatism, we cannot ignore that this phenomenon also exists on the Orthodox side. One example is the attempted dissolution of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in 1946. Unfortunately, an open dialogue with the ROC about these events is still not possible.25 In a broader context, the wish to reduce the autonomy of the Eastern Catholic Churches inside the Catholic communio—even if due to ecumenical considerations—in reality advocates the Uniatist concept of subordinating one sister church to another. In any case, the issue of Uniatism as raised repeatedly by Orthodox Church representatives is still quite thorny. Some Eastern Catholic Churches have expressed their offer of dialogue, like the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) in its Ecumenical Concept of 2015.26 The 23  Georgij Avvakumov, “Metropolit Andrej Šeptyc’kyj und die Problematik der christlichen Einheit in Rußland. Zum geschichtlichen Hintergrund und Inhalt des Briefwechsels zwischen Andrej Šeptyc’kyj  und Antonij Chrapovickij, 1903–1908.” In Hans-Christian Maner and Norbert Spannenberger, eds., Konfessionelle Indentität und Nationsbildung. Die griechischkatholischen Kirchen in Ostmittel- und Südeuropa im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2007), 62. 24  Georgij Avvakumov, “‘Unio Ecclesiarum’ und die geistigen Grundlagen der Neuzeit. Zur ökumenischen Bedeutung der Unionstheologie.” Ostkirchliche Studien 57 (2008): 49–51. 25  See the upcoming publication Daniel Galadza and Adam DeVille, eds., The “Lviv Sobor” of 1946. Arriving at a Common Narrative (Leuven: Peeters). 26  Українська Греко-Католицька Церква, Екуменічна Концепція Української ГрекоКатолицької Церкви/The Ecumenical Position of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church (Lviv: Koleso, 2016). See Dietmar Schon, “Die Ukraine als ‘Laboratorium der Ökumene’. Perspektiven des Ökumenedokuments der Ukrainischen Griechisch-Katholischen Kirche.” Ostkirchliche Studien 67 (2018): 149–186.

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di­alogue on the Union of Brest (1595–1596) shows that it can be helpful to treat this issue not primarily as a theological problem but as a historical phenomenon. This seems to contribute to a more sober treatment of the events and facts behind this loaded concept.27

3   The Role of Theology The ecumenical dialogue of the last decades also demonstrates the need to find a common language. Sometimes Catholic and Orthodox theologians mean different things when they use the same terms. For example, Ioan Moga pointed out that the Catholic Church deals with the primacy of the Pope as an essential characteristic of the Church on a dogmatic level, while the Orthodox Church examines it on a more canonical or practical level. According to him, “it is not the forms of the exercise of Primacy, but the [sc. catholic] theology of the Primacy that is the main problem from the Orthodox point of view.”28 Contrary to the frequent emphasis on the importance of non-theological factors, the Catholic-Orthodox dialogue also requires a special focus on theological aspects. The Eastern Catholic Churches—despite Latinization—represent a form of Eastern theology, so that they are sometimes located vis-à-vis the Latin Church as Churches who share a theological tradition and culture with the Orthodox Church or Oriental Orthodox Churches. In other contexts, they stress their confessional adherence as Catholics. The distinction between these two roles is often not clearly defined and calls for a clarification of the constitutive elements of the Eastern Catholic identity. The open issues raised in this chapter could be an important task for academic theology. Despite the impression that its critical role sometimes appears to be unwelcomed by the church hierarchy, one cannot overlook positive examples for a reflected approach in controversial and delicate 27  See the last publication of the Pro Oriente project on the Union of Brest: Johann Marte, et al., eds., Die Brester Union. Forschungsresultate einer interkonfessionellen und internationalen Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Wiener Stiftung Pro Oriente. Teil I. Vorgeschichte und Ereignisse der Jahre 1595/96 (Würzburg: Echter, 2010). 28  Ioan Moga, “Papstprimat: Reden Katholiken und Orthodoxe aneinander vorbei?” Information Orthodoxie, April 3, 2018: 22 [translation mine]. Critical relating to a Trinitarian ecclesiology: Theodoros Alexopoulos, “Auf dem Weg zu einem Konsens zwischen Schwesterkirchen des Ostens und Westens? Ein Vorschlag für einen theologischen Konsenstext im Blick auf die Ökumenizität der Synode von 879/80, das Filioque und das Verhältnis zwischen Theologie und Oikonomia.” Catholica 72 (2018): 198–204.

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issues.29 In light of the global challenges facing ecumenism, the need to present arguments cannot be underestimated. The input from critical theology is an important counterweight to the danger of ideologization in many areas of the current discussion such as the questions of ethnicity, authority, state influence, gender and sexuality, and the problem of clericalism. Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Christians are often faced with similar challenges in the same geographical or cultural area, which can foster collaboration and learning from each other on the basis of a common church tradition.30 The fact that Orthodox theology is not so much determined by official church statements but rather expresses a long-­ standing tradition could also provide stimulus for Catholic theologians to develop critical reflection.31 Theology can contribute to contextualizing the doctrine of faith, which does not exist in transtemporal categories but is linked to certain concepts which can be discussed. Remaining on the level of communication and argumentation, theology can open the way for learning processes. Church history can contribute with examples where dialogue and collaboration helped find common solutions.32 At the end of the twentieth century, the dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches made it possible to bridge the gap between the two-nature and one-nature Christologies.33 Another example of a productive discussion is the acceptance by the Catholic Church of the East Syriac anaphora, which 29  See “A Letter from the Bishops of the Orthodox Church in Germany to Young People concerning Love – Sexuality – Marriage” [12.12.2017], accessed February 2, 2020, http:// www.obkd.de/Texte/Brief%20OBKD%20an%20die%20Jugend-en.pdf 30  For the field of liturgical renewal see Thomas M. Németh, “Liturgische Reformen – (k) ein Thema in den Ostkirchen?” In Martin Stuflesser and Tobias Weyler, eds., Liturgische Normen: Begründungen, Anfragen, Perspektiven (Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 2018), 221–228. 31  For current discussions see “Orthodox Scholars, Pastors Discuss Gender, Sexuality and Religion at UK Conference” [12.09.2019], accessed January 10, 2020, https://www.pappaspost.com/orthodox-christian-conference-oxford-england/; for Orthodox marriage issues in the Catholic discussion see Thomas M. Németh, “Ehe, Scheidung und Wiederheirat. Die orthodoxe Praxis im Blick der katholischen Kirche.” In Dominik Burkard, ed., Die christliche Ehe  - erstrebt, erlebt, erledigt? Fragen und Beiträge zur aktuellen Diskussion im Katholizismus (Würzburg: Echter, 2016), 217–258. 32  For the phenomenon of disaffection and attempts to solve problems see Dietmar Schon, “Positionsdenken als Barriere ökumenischer Verständigung. Zur Methodik einer Annäherung zwischen katholischer und orthodoxer Kirche.” In Idem, ed., Dialog 2.0, 211–251. 33  See Theresia Hainthaler, “Entwicklungen im Dialog der Orientalisch-Orthodoxen Kirchen.” Materialdienst des konfessionskundlichen Instituts Bensheim 57 (2006): 15–18.

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does not contain the words of institution of the Eucharist.34 Generally, such gaps between the content of faith and its human formulation should not be seen as a mistake but as a God-given, eschatological difference which can become a locus theologicus for churches that accept theological diversity as enrichment. Eastern Catholic Churches should be more actively involved in current Catholic discussions in view of their specific heritage. The fact that Pope Francis mentioned in the introduction of his Motu Proprio “Mitis et misericors Iesus”35 the Orthodox canonical instrument of oikonomia, which currently does not exist in the Catholic system of ecclesial law, could be seen as an invitation to develop ideas together with Orthodox colleagues.36

4   Thematic Areas One of the most complex issues between the Orthodox and Catholics (including Eastern Catholics) is the question of primacy of the Roman Pontiff. Pope John Paul II addressed it as an open question in his encyclical Ut unum sint (1995): I am convinced that I have a particular responsibility […] in heeding the request made of me to find a way of exercising the primacy which, while in no way renouncing what is essential to its mission, is nonetheless open to a new situation. (95)37 34  [Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity], “Guidelines for Admission to the Eucharist Between the Chaldean Church and the Assyrian Church of the East, Rome 2001 [20.07.2001].” Jeffrey Gros, et al., eds., Growth in Agreement III. International Dialogue Texts and Agreements 1998–2005 (Geneva: WCC Publications, 2007), 197–205; online version, accessed January 20, 2020  http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/ pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20011025_chiesa-caldeaassira_en.html 35  Pope Francis, “Apostolic Letter Motu Proprio ‘Mitis et misericors Iesus’ [15.08.2015].” Acta Apostolicae Sedis 107 (2015): 958–970; English version, accessed January 19, 2020, https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/motu_proprio/documents/papa-francesco-motu-proprio_20150815_mitis-et-misericors-iesus.html 36  See Péter Szabó, “The question of ‘oikonomia’ from a Catholic point of view. Reasons and dilemmas on its absence from the CCEO.” In Richard Potz and Kyrillos Katerelos, eds., Oikonomia, Dispensatio et Aequitas Canonica (Hennef: Kovar, 2016), 317–334. 37  Pope John Paul II, “Encyclical ‘Ut unum sint. On commitment on Ecumenism’ [25.05.2015].” Acta Apostolicae Sedis 87 (1995): 921–982; English version, accessed January 21, 2020, http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_25051995_ut-unum-sint.html

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Despite some attempts to open the discussion on the Catholic side, as shown by the example of the Melkite Church,38 we have a situation in which there does not seem to be much leeway for the Eastern Catholic Churches on this topic. For centuries they have been incorporated into a Catholic system of ecclesiology dominated by the Latin Church, which in many respects became even narrower over the last two centuries. However, the Eastern Catholic Churches could serve as an important touchstone for a dialogue that may hold the promise for a communio between the churches of the East and West on the basis of respect for the characteristics and autonomy of sister churches.39 The Chieti Document of the dialogue commission from 201640 clearly shows the difficulty to elaborate a common understanding of primacy. The statement that “reception by the Church as a whole has always been the ultimate criterion for the ecumenicity of a council” (Nr. 18) deserves attention from the Catholic side. It remains to be seen whether this document will become a step toward a common understanding of church authority.41 The question of the filioque will be discussed in more detail by another contribution in this volume,42 with references to the Catechism of  See note 7.  Johannes Oeldemann, “Katholisch, aber nicht römisch: die Rolle östlicher Kirchen innerhalb der katholischen Kirche und ihre Bedeutung für die Ökumene.” Ostkirchliche Studien 57 (2008): 90; see also Orazio Condorelli, “Il Codex Canonum Ecclesiarum Orientalium: un codice autenticamente orientale?” In Georges Ruyssen and Sunny Kokkaravalayil, eds., Il CCEO, Strumento per il futuro delle Chiese orientali cattoliche. Atti del Simposio di Roma, 22–24 febbraio 2017. Centenario del Pontificio Istituto Orientale (1917–2017) (Roma: Edizioni Orientalia Christiana, 2017), 294–299. 40  Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue Between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, “Synodality and Primacy during the First millennium: Towards a Common Understanding in Service to the Unity of the Church.” Chieti, September 21, 2016, accessed January 18, 2020, http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/ pontifical_councils/chrstuni/ch_orthodox_docs/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20160921_sinodality-primacy_en.html; see Synek, Das “Heilige und Große Konzil” von Kreta, 122–124; Koch, Auf dem Weg, 26–41. 41  See Adam DeVille, Orthodoxy and Roman Primacy (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011); Eva Synek, “‘Konziliarität und Autorität in der Kirche’. OrthodoxKatholischer Dialog: das so genannte Ravennadokument.” Österreichisches Archiv für Recht & Religion 55 (2008): 55–78; Péter Szabó, ed., Primacy and Synodality. Deepening Insights. Proceedings of the 23rd Congress of the Society for the Law of the Eastern Churches. Debrecen, September 3–8, 2017 (Nyíregyháza: St. Athanasius Theological Institute, 2019). 42  See Theodoros Alexopoulos, “The Filioque Issue in the Light of the Catechism of the Ukrainian Catholic Church and in Dialogue With V. Bolotov’s ‘33 Theses’” in this volume (p. 203). 38 39

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the UGCC.43 In my opinion, this document has a certain ambivalence. On the one hand, it tries to take a non-filioquistic theological approach; on the other hand, it masks the gap between the Orthodox and Catholic interpretations in a somewhat oversimplistic way. Given the legitimacy of promoting Eastern theology by the Eastern Catholic Churches, it seems important to designate the filioque not only as an interconfessional but also as an inner-Catholic issue. According to a document of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity “the Catholic Church acknowledges the conciliar, ecumenical, normative and irrevocable value […] of the Symbol professed in Greek at Constantinople in 381 by the Second Ecumenical Council” and that the filioque is “situated in a theological and liturgical context different from that of the affirmation of the sole monarchy of the Father, the one origin of the Son and of the Spirit.”44 Several Eastern Catholic Churches legitimately do not use the filioque in worship. The fact that the text of the “professio fidei” (the formula to be used when the profession of faith is canonically required) prescribed by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith includes the filioque45 shows that a monolithic conception of Latin theology still dominates in the Catholic Church. The filioque is also a challenge for Protestantism since it is also often regarded as a part of its confessional tradition.46 43  Синод Української Греко-Католицької Церкви, Катехизм Української ГрекоКатолицької Церкви «Христос – наша Пасха» (Lviv: Svichado, 2012); English translation: Synod of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Catechism of the Ukrainian Catholic Church. Christ Our Pascha (Kyiv, 2016), Nr. 3, 91, 97–98; see also Daniel Galadza, “Die griechischkatholischen Kirchen und die liturgische Erneuerung. 50 Jahre nach Sacrosanctum Concilium.” In Hans-Jürgen Feulner, et al., eds., Erbe und Erneuerung. Die Liturgiekonstitution des Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzils und ihre Folgen (Wien: Lit, 2015), 104–107. 44  [Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity], “The Greek and the Latin Traditions Regarding the Procession of the Holy Spirit.” The Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. Information Service 89 (1995/II–III): 88, 89. 45  Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Professio fidei et iusiurandum fidelitatis in suscipiendo officio nomine ecclesiae exercendo.” Acta Apostolicae Sedis 81 (1989): 104–106; Pope John Paul II, “Apostolic Letter Motu Proprio ‘ad tuendam fidem’ [18.05.1998].” Acta Apostolicae Sedis 90 (1998): 457–461; English version, accessed February 17, 2020, h t t p : / / w w w. v a t i c a n . v a / r o m a n _ c u r i a / c o n g r e g a t i o n s / c f a i t h / d o c u m e n t s / rc_con_cfaith_doc_1998_professio-fidei_en.html 46  For the filioque issue see Bernd Oberdorfer, Filioque. Geschichte und Theologie eines ökumenischen Problems (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 2001); Peter Gemeinhardt, Die Filioque-Kontroverse zwischen Ost- und Westkirche im Frühmittelalter (Walter der Gruyter: Berlin, 2002); Jennifer Wasmuth, “Das ‘Filioque’ in der ökumenischen Diskussion der Gegenwart.” Materialdienst des Konfessionskundlichen Instituts Bensheim 61 (2010):

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In the issue of Palamist theology, which was frequently a subject of polemics in former times, there seems to be openness for acceptance. In 1971, the Melkite Church made possible the commemoration of Gregory Palamas (+ 1359), moreover recently the Hungarian Greek Catholic Church officially added him to the liturgical calendar.47 Regarding the doctrinal level, Christiaan Kappes argued that despite the clash with the Thomist system, there are many aspects that are common with the Scotists’ approach, which allows for the postulation of compatibility between both approaches.48 Concerning the traditional confessional differences in the question of the Immaculate Conception, Kappes proposed to examine the notion of pre-purification in Byzantine theology as a point of contact.49 Generally, recent historical studies have displayed the tendency to move toward a broader common understanding between Catholic and Orthodox theological ways of thinking. For example, even “Pillars of Orthodoxy” like Gregory Palamas dealt intensively with Augustine. Mark of Ephesus († 1444) was influenced by scholasticism and demonstrated a very respectful dialogue with his western contemporaries in theology. This is also true of Patriarch Gennadios Scholarios († c. 1472) while Thomas Aquinas 90–94; Michael Böhnke, et al., eds., Die Filioque-Kontroverse. Historische, ökumenische und dogmatische Perspektiven 1200 Jahre nach der Aachener Synode (Freiburg: Herder, 2011); for the recent Catholic-Orthodox dialogue see Theodoros Alexopoulos, “Der Konsenstext der nordamerikanischen Orthodox-Katholischen Beratungsausschusses bezüglich Filioque: The Filioque: A Church Dividing Issue. Der Versuch einer ersten Würdigung aus orthodoxer Sicht.” Orthodoxes Forum 32 (2018): 159–175. 47  See  “Sur la ‘réintroduction’ de la fête de Grégoire Palamas dans le liturgie melkite.” Istina 21 (1976): 55–64; Kitâb al-salawât al-taqsiyyah alâ madâr al-sanah li-Kanîsat al-Rûm al-Malakiyyîn al-Kâthûlîk: al-Sawâiyyah (Horologium), wa Kitâb al-Mu`azzî (Octoechus), wa Khidmat al-Sawm (Triodium), wa Khidmat al-ashhur (Menaea), edited by Lijnat al-lîturjiyyah al-batriyarkiyyah, compiled by Loutfi Laham, vol. II, part 1 (Jûniyah, Lubnân: Matba`at al-’Âbâ’ al-Bûlûsiyyîn, 2000);  Görögkatolikus szertartási útmutató a szent szolgálatok végzéséhez a 2019/2020. Egyházi évre, 14; 98, accessed February 17, 2020, https://hd.gorogkatolikus.hu/media_doc/9ba08b7418fdfc681949a51941df1f18.pdf 48  Christiaan W. Kappes, et al., “Palamas Among the Scholastics: A Review Essay Discussing D. Bradshaw, C. Athanasopoulos, C. Schneider et al., Divine Essence and Divine Energies: Ecumenical Reflections on the Presence of God in Eastern Orthodoxy (Cambridge: James and Clarke, 2013).” Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 55 (2014): 175–220; Constantinos Athanasopoulos and Christoph Schneider, eds., Divine Essence and Divine Energies: Ecumenical Reflections on the Presence of God in Eastern Orthodoxy (Cambridge: James and Clarke, 2013). 49  Christiaan W. Kappes, The Immaculate Conception. Why Thomas Aqinas Denied, While John Duns Scotus, Gregory Palamas, & Mark Eugenicus Professed the Absolute Immaculate Existence of Mary (New Bedford, MA: Academy of the Immaculate, 2014).

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(† 1274) was influenced by Greek fathers.50 Thus, there are many arguments in favor of considering theologians who have contributed to the elaboration of a confessional profile as such, who are—according to a patristic maxime—not adverse, but diverse (non sunt adversi, sed diversi).51

5   Methodological Considerations For the Eastern Catholic Churches, OE 6 offers some important principles and perspectives. For example, they “should always preserve their legitimate liturgical rite and their established way of life, and […] these may not be altered except to obtain for themselves organic improvement. [… They] should take steps to return to their ancestral traditions” (ad avitas traditiones redire). Péter Szabó has argued that the (not “their” in the Latin original!) ancestral traditions refer to the broader traditions of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antiochia, and so on with their own specifics. The frequently heard argument that the developments of the post-union period are an organic improvement seems problematic since they instead call for a critical examination.52 Orthodox theologians could help Eastern Catholic theologians to reflect upon their own tradition more profoundly. This is also a challenge for the Orthodox side, as all churches need a concept that strikes a balance between stability and dynamics, between preserving and creating unity. Ecumenical experience shows that studying the common sources can connect people, especially if they do not take division as a starting point but link later divergences to their shared tradition and try to bring them together. Vatican II offered in UR 17 a model of “complementarity.” According to this model, the East and West

50  See Marcus Plested, Orthodox Readings of Aquinas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Christiaan W.  Kappes, “A Latin Defense of Mark of Ephesus at the Council of Ferrara-Florence (1438–1439).” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 59 (2014): 161–230; Idem, “A Provisional Definition of Byzantine Theology contra ‘Pillars of Orthodoxy’.” Nicolaus 40 (2013): 187–202; D.  Searby, Never the Twain Shall Meet? Latins and Greeks Learning from Each Other in Byzantium (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2017). For the category “West” see George E. Demacopoulos and Aristotle Papanikolaou, Orthodox Constructions of the West (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013). 51  See Plested, Orthodox Readings, 60. 52  Péter Szabó, “Return to the ‘ancestral traditions’ (OE n. 6a). Reasons and meaning.” Ostkirchliche Studien 66 (2017): 256–284.

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have developed differently their understanding and confession of God’s truth [and] from time to time one tradition has come nearer to a full appreciation of some aspects of a mystery of revelation than the other, or has expressed it to better advantage. In such cases, these various theological expressions are to be considered often as mutually complementary rather than conflicting.

Of course, the model of complementarity requires clarification and is not a general solution for resolving disagreement. However, it can contribute to finding theological consensus and is based not only on human limitations but also on ecclesiology. In a local church with its specific character, the whole church is present, but it is not the whole church. Recently, the pseudomorphosis accusation, according to which Orthodox theology has been corrupted by its “Western captivity” during the last centuries, has met with criticism as an ideologically loaded phenomenon. Church history knows many examples of mutual enrichment between different churches and theological traditions.53

6   Expectations and Perspectives For the Eastern Catholic Churches, it is important that their dialogue with Orthodoxy finds a place in the ecumenical movement. As it is clear from the arguments presented before, one has to have certain reservations when it comes to alternatives such as “bridges” and “stolen churches.” The notion of “stolen churches” refers to the problem of Uniatism but underestimates the development and current status of these churches inside the Catholic community. The comparison with “bridges” is also regarded as inappropriate by some Greek Catholic church representatives. Major Archbishop Lubomyr Husar, the former head of the UGCC, stated that bridges connect two shores but have no own existence of their own. Instead, he proposed the word “mediators” to describe entities that are present on both sides and “can point to [their] way of life.”54 This can be seen in different ways. However, the recognition of the desire to be seen 53   See Johannes Oeldemann, “Pseudomorphose oder Komplementarität? Historische Entwicklungen und heutige Bewertung gegenseitiger Einflüsse in Theologie in Ost und West.” Orthodoxes Forum 19 (2005): 51–60; Paul Ladouceur, Modern Orthodox Theology. “Behold, I Make All Things New” (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), 95–121. 54  Lubomyr Kardinal Husar, “Grußwort.” In Maner and Spannenberger, eds., Konfessionelle Identität: 9 [tranlsation mine].

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as a subject could perhaps be a starting point for finding a common narrative that takes both into account—self-understanding and the relationship with other churches. As the future is uncertain, it is worth remembering that OE 30 declared: “All these directives of law are laid down in view of the present situation until such time as the Catholic Church and the separated Eastern Churches come together into complete unity.”55 Bearing in mind the open end of this dialogue, it must be based on the awareness of the dignity of all participants. For the Eastern Catholic Churches, this dialogue could help find new ways to reinterpret their role as churches in a wider community, to re-­ examine their past critically, and to implement ecumenism. For the Catholic Church as a whole, this dialogue can contribute to better realizing its inner plurality, which is also theological, to overcoming a confessional East-West dichotomy, and to finding ecclesiologically more balanced forms of primacy and synodality. For the Orthodox Church, the encounter with Eastern Catholic Churches could help the former become a respected partner, who can offer positive approaches for the dialogue on the basis of  an extensive common heritage. This conference in Stuttgart is an example of how practical and academic ecumenism can contribute to strengthening ties between the churches and developing a “dialogue of life.”56 For both of the interested parties and for Christianity as a whole, this dialogue can contribute to re-examining controversial issues and deepening unity. It is a challenge to start dialogue with a neighbor with a difficult common history, but which community would be better able to overcome such tensions than the Church of Christ, to which all parties concerned refer? The long-standing dialogue urges us to begin such a broadening of dialogue and create a common space for it.

 See Farrugia, Re-Reading Orientalium Ecclesiarum, 353, 354, 363, 369.  Metropolit Elpidophoros, Braucht der Dialog, 51–55.

55 56

The Question of “Uniatism” in the Framework of the Orthodox-Catholic Dialogue and the Ecclesiological Option of Communio Dimitrios Keramidas

The question of “Uniatism”1 was pursued by the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue Between the Catholic Church and 1  Usually, the terms “Uniatism” and “Uniates” have a derogatory connotation, as they are used to underline the negative view that the Orthodox historically have had for the Catholic Churches of Byzantine rite. The term had been coined by Pope Benedict XIV in his Encyclical Ex quo (1756) to designate the Eastern rite Churches reunited with Rome. Since then, the label “Uniates” appeared in various Catholic official documents. See Edmond Farrugia, “Uniatism,” in Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Christian East, ed. Edmond Farrugia (Rome: Pontifical Oriental Institute, 2015, 2nd edition), 1881. The term “Eastern (or Oriental) Catholic Churches” was an improvement on the term “Uniate”; in fact, Vatican’s II Decree Orientalium Ecclesiarum (hereafter OE) makes no use of the word “Uniate(s).” The Freising

D. Keramidas (*) School of Humanities, Hellenic Open University, Patras, Greece Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum), Rome, Italy © The Author(s) 2021 V. Latinovic, A. K. Wooden (eds.), Stolen Churches or Bridges to Orthodoxy?, Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55442-2_19

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the Orthodox Church (hereafter JIC) nearly three decades ago, in two Plenary Sessions: in Freising (hereafter F.)2 and in Balamand (hereafter B.),3 in the aftermath of the fall of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the re-emersion of Byzantine rite Catholic Churches, who demanded the restitution of their church properties and their freedom of worship,4 but mainly on the insistence of the Orthodox Churches to treat Uniatism “as an urgent problem” and “with priority over all the other Statement speaks of “Catholic Churches of Byzantine rite” and of “Uniate Churches” (5), while the Balamand document speaks of “Oriental Catholic Churches.” The North American Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation issued in 1992 a Communique on the “Tensions in Eastern Europe Related to ‘Uniatism’” (https://bit.ly/2PfYhHI), in which it specified that “a distinction should be made between ‘Uniatism’ understood as inappropriate, indeed unacceptable, model or method for church union, and ‘Uniatism’ understood as the existence of convinced Eastern Christians who have accepted full communion with the See of Rome as part of their self-understanding as a church. ‘Uniatism’ in the former sense is no longer accepted by either of our churches” (par. 5). In the context of the O-RC dialogue, the term “Uniatism” has been used to indicate the annexation of groups of Orthodox faithful to the Catholic Church, which provoked intentionally and consciously the break of communion with their local Orthodox Church of origin. In the last decades the topic has produced a rich and interesting literature. See among other titles: Josef Macha, Ecclesiastical Unification: A Theoretical Framework Together with Case Studies from the History of LatinByzantine Relations (Rome: Pontifical Oriental Institute, 1974); Ronald Roberson, The Eastern Catholic Churches (Rome: Pontifical Oriental Institute, 2010, 7th edition); Ernst Suttner, Church Unity. Union or Uniatism? Catholic-Orthodox Ecumenical Perspectives (Rome: Centre for Indian and Inter-Religious Studies, 1991); Jean-Claude Roberti, Les Uniates (Paris: Cerf, 1992); Robert Taft “The Problem of ‘Uniatism’ and the ‘Healing of Memories’: Anamnesis, not Amnesia,” Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 41–42, (200–2001): 155–196. 2  See Sixth Plenary Meeting of the JIC “Communiqué: Uniatism,” Information Service 73, (1990/II): 52–53. A sub-commission in Vienna, in 1990, studied the “Questions concerning the Churches of Byzantine Rite United with Rome and the Problems of Uniatism and Proselytism.” See “Mixed Coordinating Committee of the JIC.  February 1–8, 1990,” Information Service 73, (1990/II): 34–35. The Coordinating Committee of the JIC prepared a working paper in 1991 in Ariccia on “Uniatism as a Method of Union of the Past and the Present Search for Full Communion,” Sobornost 13.2, (1992): 49–54. 3  See Seventh Plenary Meeting of the JIC between the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Church “Uniatism. Method of union of the past, and the present search for full communion,” Information Service 83, (1993/II): 96–99, and, with corrections, in Information Service 84, (1993/III-IV): 149. 4  The radical social changes and political turnabouts in Eastern Europe in the 1990s favoured the discussion of the “Uniate” question, which nonetheless concerned the Orthodox and the Catholics alike, as there were victims of violence and anti-Christian persecutions for both churches (F., 4).

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subjects” of the Orthodox-Catholic dialogue (hereafter O-RC dialogue).5 Hitherto, the bilateral “dialogue of truth” had successfully focused on ecclesiology and had recorded a broad convergence on issues such as apostolic succession, baptism, ordained ministries, and mystical and Eucharistic dimension of the Church.6 At any rate, the Orthodox persistence to clarify the ecclesiological status of the Eastern Catholic Churches (for many, the biggest obstacle so far to unity between Orthodox and Catholics) had accompanied the official theological dialogue, which was launched in 1980.7 Paradoxically, although the Uniate question was raised up by the Orthodox, the F. Statement was not signed by the Churches of Antioch, Jerusalem, Serbia, Bulgaria, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, while the 5  “At the request of the Orthodox Churches, the normal progression of the theological dialogue with the Catholic Church has been set aside so that immediate attention might be given to the question which is called ‘Uniatism’” (B., 1; cf. F., 6.a). The Orthodox main preoccupation was to denounce those Catholic missions that considered the countries of Eastern Europe as terrae missionis. See the “Message of the Primates of the Most Holy Orthodox Churches, Phanar, 1992,” in Orthodox Visions of Ecumenism, edited by Gennadios Limouris (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1994), 196–197: “[Proselytism is an] activity absolutely contrary to the spirit of the dialogue of love and truth […] practiced with all the methods which have been condemned and rejected for decades by all Christians.” 6  For an overall presentation of the O-RC dialogue until the early 1990s, see Dimitri Salachas, Il dialogo teologico ufficiale tra la chiesa cattolico-romana e la chiesa ortodossa. Iter e documentazione (Bari: Centro Ecumenico San Nicola, 1994). 7  The preparatory document of 1978 for the theological O-RC dialogue had specified that “the dialogue of charity must always accompany theological dialogue. […] It would therefore be useful to reconsider such unpleasant situations as, for example, those of uniatism, proselytism, etc. In general, theological dialogue can only be fruitful if it takes place in an atmosphere of love, humility and prayer.” Reported in Eleuterio Fortino “Disagreements remain on ‘uniatism,’” L’Osservatore Romano (English edition), n. 15, 11 April 2001, 10. Moreover, the desire to discuss the topic of the Eastern Catholic Churches had been expressed in the Plenary Sessions of Bari (1987) and Valamo (1988), while the Mixed Coordinating Committee of the JIC prepared a preliminary outline on the issue in Vienna, in 1990. At the same time, the Third Pan-Orthodox Preconciliar Conference (Chambésy, 1986) with regard to the O-RC dialogue had stated: “In order for this dialogue to continue without obstacles it is imperative that a discussion be held on the unfavourable consequences which certain thorny problems have for the dialogue, such as Uniatism and proselytism. The existence and perpetuation in the life of the Churches of the negative factor of Uniatism, both in its historical form and under its present manifestations, such as proselytism exercised under different aspects are inacceptable realities to Orthodoxy, and represent negative factors which hamper the developments of the dialogue.” Viorel Ioniţă, Towards the Holy and Great Synod of the Orthodox Church. The Decisions of the Pan-Orthodox Meetings Since 1923 Until 2009 (Basel: Institut für Ökumenische Studien der Universität Freiburg Schweiz, 2014): 175.

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Churches of Jerusalem, Serbia, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, and Czechoslovakia did not send any delegates in Balamand.8 One could, thus, argue that, since the two documents did not receive a unanimous Orthodox support, they have no authority on their pleroma. However, if we enlarge our field of vision, we should notice that only four of the—then—fourteen autocephalous Orthodox Churches (Jerusalem, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia) were absent in both plenaries; the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople alongside with the Patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch, Moscow, Romania, and Georgia and the Autocephalous Churches of Cyprus, Greece, Poland, and Albania signed at least one (or even both) of the documents and they received their content, at least in principle. Hence, the mentioned Statements are essential for better understanding of the ecclesial nature of the Uniate phenomenon. In this chapter we will try to highlight the way in which this thorny and long-standing issue has been addressed by the JIC, its effects on the O-RC dialogue, and, lastly but not less notably, its importance for the identity of the Byzantine rite Catholics and for the “dialogue of truth” at large.9

1   The Limits of Uniatism The JIC sought, firstly, to examine the theological principles of the Catholic Churches of Byzantine rite and, secondly, to recommend some practical guidelines for the reconciliation between them and the Orthodox Christians of Eastern Europe. The Commission stated that what is defined by the term “Uniatism” is the result of various initiatives undertaken in the past by “certain Churches and impelled outside elements” to restore 8  Reactions against the Balamand document came also from the Monastic Community of Mount Athos, from the Romanian Greek Catholic Bishops and from certain anti-ecumenical Orthodox theologians: see, by way of example, Theodore Zissis, Ουνία: η καταδίκη και η αθώωσή της στο Freising και στο Balamand [Uniatism: its condemnation and its acquittal in Freising and in Balamand] (Thessaloniki: Bryennios, 2002). Many reacted to the revival of Catholic missions in Eastern Europe and Pope John Paul’s II call for a “new evangelization” and came to propose a “Pan-Orthodox arc,” composed by politicians, intellectuals, and church leaders, against (sic!) Western Christianity. See Methodios Fougias “Orthodoxy and the West,” Εκκλησία και Θεολογία 11, (1992): 324–362, here 358: “Rome’s intentions are to bring all of Christian Europe under her complete hegemony.” 9  This chapter treats the relation between the Orthodox and the Byzantine rite Catholic Churches, as this has been addressed by the official O-RC dialogue. We are aware, of course, that the term “Eastern Catholics” has a wider connotation, as it refers to all the Eastern rite Churches in communion with Rome, of which the Byzantine rite Catholics are part.

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unity between the two Churches (B., 7). These “outside elements” or non-theological factors are not specified in the document, but apparently were related to the political conditions that led in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’ groups of Orthodox faithful of Eastern Europe to establish ecclesial communion with Rome or forced in the twentieth century Byzantine-rite Catholic communities to be incorporated into the jurisdiction of the Orthodox Churches (e.g. in communist Romania or in the former Soviet Union).10 Both documents acknowledged, however, that Uniatism, from an ecumenical point of view, instead of “bridging” Orthodox and Catholics together, created new tensions and sufferings and deepened old divisions (F., 6.c; B., 7). As to the purely ecclesial factors of Uniatism, the B. document pointed out that in certain historical contexts the Catholic Church conceived herself as the only church to whom salvation is entrusted.11 As a reaction to this, the Orthodox embraced a similar vision that only in Orthodoxy divine grace and salvation are preserved (B., 10).12 Thus, soteriological 10  Today, historical research considers questionable the conviction that the Orthodox bishops who signed the Union of Brest of 1595/1596 did so upon external imposition and without voluntary motives. As for the “return” of Eastern rite Catholics to Orthodoxy in the 1940s of the last century, Timothy (Metropolitan Kallistos) Ware notes that “the vast majority wished to continue as they were, in union with papacy.” Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church (London: Penguin, 2015, 3rd edition). 159. 11  A certain centralized Catholic ecclesiology, after the Councils of Florence (1439) and Trent (over against Reformation), projected the direct jurisdiction of the Pope over all the universal church: those not under papal jurisdiction were objects of missionary activity. Moreover, there was a general conviction that whatever existed outside the canonical boundaries of Catholicism was illegal and invalid. See Ernst Suttner and Ronald Roberson “Eastern Catholic Churches,” in Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Christian East, ed. Edmond Farrugia, (Rome: Pontifical Oriental Institute, 2015, 2nd edition), 681–683. Also, David Petras “The Ecumenical Status of the Eastern Catholic Churches,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 37.3–4, (1992): 356–357: “Before the age of ecumenism, the argument often revolved around such issues as who was right and who was wrong. The Catholic Church considered herself to be the one, holy, universal, and apostolic Church founded by Jesus Christ. There were, and perhaps still are, those in the Roman Catholic Church who taught there was no salvation outside the boundaries of the Roman Catholic Church.” 12  See, for example, Pope’s Pius IX Apostolic Letter to the “dissident” Eastern Christians In Suprema Petri Apostoli Sede (1848), or the Patriarchal Encyclical of 1895 of Ecumenical Patriarch Anthimos, in response to Pope Leo XIII Encyclical Letter on Reunion (in John Karmiris, The Dogmatic and Symbolic Monuments of the Orthodox Catholic Church, Vol. ΙΙ (Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1968). 942/1028), in which the “innovations,” the “falsification of the writings of the Church Fathers,” and the “misinterpretation of the Holy Scripture and of the decrees of the holy councils” (nr. XX) were contested,

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exclusivism was for a long time—yet not entirely—accentuated by both sides. The ecclesiology of exclusion inevitably led each church to consider the other as treacherous, whose faithful were “separated brethren” to be rebaptized, as the document reports,13 while there was little sensitivity towards the principle of religious freedom. Such apologetic approach was finally abandoned within the framework of the O-RC “dialogue of love,” started in the 1960s of the twentieth century. However, the aim of the JIC was not to make a critical analysis of the historical causes of Uniatism but to assert some wide-ranging enunciations that could express consensually the views of both parties, so as to stimulate concrete gestures towards unity.14 In light of this task the JIC declared: (a) The rejection of the attempt “to bring about the unity of the Church by separating from the Orthodox Church communities or Orthodox faithful” and bring them in ecclesial communion with the See of Rome through the “breaking of communion with their Mother Churches of the East” (B., 8). Uniatism, stated the JIC, is an erroneous method of unity (F., 6.b; B., 12). (b) The condemnation of proselytism, that is to say, that kind of “missionary apostolate” (B., 12) that considers the canonical territory of a Church as “missionary field” and aims to convert individuals or group of Christians.15 To the view of the JIC, proselytism is an alongside the sending “into the East clerics with the dress and head-covering of orthodox priests, inventing also divers and other artful means to obtain her proselytizing objects” (nr. III). 13  B. 10: “To assure the salvation of ‘the separated brethren’ it even happened that Christians were rebaptized and that certain requirements of the religious freedom of persons and of their act of faith were forgotten. This perspective was one to which that period showed little sensitivity.” 14  As for the historical development of the Uniate phenomenon, according to a widely accepted classification, we can distinguish between (a) unions of groups of Eastern Christians with Rome during the Crusades (e.g. the Maronites, the Armenians, the Latin kingdoms of the East), in which the annexed churches were partly or fully Latinized, and (b) unions derived from the Council of Florence up to the nineteenth century, which permitted a series of canonical unions with the Church of Rome. In this second form of “Uniatism” the ecclesial, liturgical, and disciplinary particularity of the annexed churches was maintained. 15  By “proselytism” is defined here as a conversion of faithful of one Christian church to another—especially between churches that share the same tradition and have a common ecclesiological understanding—through the employ of improper means and illegitimate methods, which create inter-Church competition (Catholics–Orthodox in Eastern Europe, Catholics–Pentecostal in South America, etc.). Here, there is a tension between the global

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unacceptable model of unity and missionary method (B., 10.18.22.35; cf. F., 7.c), for there is no reason to convert from one Church to another—with the exception, of course, of individual, spontaneous conversions and in respect of the principle of personal conscience (B., 15). The method of local and “partial” unionistic agreements can be no longer accepted, stated the JIC, for it contradicts the common tradition of the two churches, the ecclesiology of communion, and the relationship that exists between “sister Churches” (B., 12; 14; F., 6.b–d), in which each church recognizes the other no longer as “treacherous,” but as a church that professes the apostolic faith, celebrates the same sacraments, and preserves the one priesthood through apostolic succession.16 To recognize each other as “Sister Church” means specifically to be “responsible together [emphasis added] for maintaining the Church of God in fidelity to the divine purpose, most especially in what concerns unity,” which is “neither absorption nor fusion,” but a “meeting in truth and love” (B., 4).17 These qualities are to be considered as exclusive property neither of the Orthodox nor of the Catholics and, thereby, rebaptism must be avoided (B., 13).18

commandment of Mt. 28:19–20 and what has been historically consolidated as the “canonical field” of a specific church. Since from the second half of the twentieth century, scholars and mission operators prefer—and are encouraged—to speak of “common Christian witness” rather than of “mission” or “proselytism.” See Anton Houtepen “Uniatism and Models of Unity in the Ecumenical Movement,” Exchange 25.3, (1996): 202–203. 16  On the use of the notion “Sister Churches” in the O-RC dialogue see the First Plenary Section of the JIC (Munich 1982) document: “The Mystery of the Church and of the Eucharist in the light of the Mystery of the Holy Trinity” III, 3,b. See also Will Cohen, The Concept of “Sisters Churches” in Catholic-Orthodox Relations since Vatican II (Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2016). The North American Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation’s Communique on the “Tensions in Eastern Europe Related to ‘Uniatism’” commented that the mutual recognition of Catholics and Orthodox as “Sister Churches” means also the need to explore “new structures” for achieving the worldwide communion (par. 8). 17  See Salachas, Il dialogo teologico ufficiale, 152. 18  Ariccia document (1991), nr. 7: “After the Pan-Orthodox Conferences and the Second Vatican Council, the renewed discovery and estimation of the Church as communion by both Catholics and Orthodox has radically changed the perspectives. It is recognized on both sides that what Christ has entrusted to the Church—the confession of the apostolic faith, participation in the one priesthood accomplishing the unique sacrifice of Christ, and

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By rejecting proselytism as a unionistic model and by discarding the ecclesiology of exclusion, the JIC was concerned to reflect on the presence of Byzantine Catholics in the current framework of the O-RC relations. The Commission declared that “there is a question of achieving together [emphasis added] the will of Christ for his own and the design of God for his Church by means of a common quest by the Churches for a full accord on the content of the faith and its implications” (B., 15). Hence, the “Uniate question” was framed in the overall context of ecumenism (in which the O-RC dialogue belongs), apart from the controversies of the past. In fact, JIC stressed that “conscious of the fact that the history of divisions has deeply wounded the memories of the Churches, Catholic and Orthodox are determined to look to the future, with mutual recognition of the necessity for transparent consultation and cooperation at all levels of Church life.”19

2   Ways of Reconciliation In light of the need to cooperate at all levels of church life and build together an itinerary towards unity, the B. document indicated some practical guidelines to be applied wherever Byzantine Catholics and Orthodox live in the same territory.20 The most important of these were: (a) The need of an ecumenical formation to mutually overcome past misunderstandings: “The authorities of the Catholic Church will assist the Eastern Catholic Churches and their communities so that they themselves may prepare full communion between Catholic and Orthodox Churches. The authorities of the Orthodox Church will act in a similar manner towards their faithful” (B., 21; cf. F., 7.b). This task presupposes the healing of old wounds, avoidance of any form of direct or indirect, physical or moral violence, and the promotion of reconciliation and fraternal collaboration between the local Eastern Catholic and Orthodox pastors (cf. F., 7.a). the apostolic succession of the pastors—cannot be considered the exclusive property of either one of our Churches.” 19  See JIC: Seventh Plenary Session, Balamand 1993 “Communiqué,” Information Service 83, (1993/II): 95. 20  B., 34: “[The JIC] recommends that these practical rules be put into practice by our Churches, including the Oriental Catholic Churches.”

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(b) The instauration of projects of pastoral cooperation: the canonical dignity of the bishops and priests of both churches must be respected, while interference in each other’s internal life should by any means be avoided (B., 29). For the Catholic Church, in particular, pastoral actions should no longer aim at proselytizing among the Orthodox, but at answering the spiritual needs of her own faithful (B., 22). Moreover, it has been indicated the need that Catholic and Orthodox bishops of the same territory to consult with each other before establishing Catholic pastoral projects which could create new structures in territories which traditionally form part of the jurisdiction of the Orthodox Church, in order to avoid “parallel pastoral activities which would risk rapidly degenerating into rivalry or even conflicts” (B., 29). The creation of joint local commissions together with the effort to make effective those already existing sought to find solutions to concrete problems and to verify that any pastoral activity could be realized in truth, love, justice, and peace (B., 26). Local pastors should “work in agreement with this other pastor and with all others. When a bilateral agreement has been reached and approved by the respective authorities, it is absolutely necessary that it be implemented” (cf. F., 7.c–d). (c) Religious liberty, which requires that the faithful must be able to express their faith and opinions and decide without external pressure if they wish to be in communion either with the Orthodox Church or with the Catholic Church (B., 24). (d) Finally, the JIC stated that “it is necessary that the Churches come together in order to express gratitude and respect towards all, known and unknown—bishops, priests or faithful, Orthodox, Catholic whether Oriental or Latin—who suffered, confessed their faith, witnessed their fidelity to the Church, and, in general, towards all Christians, without discrimination, who underwent persecutions. Their sufferings call us to unity and, on our part, to give common witness in response to the prayer of Christ ‘that all may be one, so that the world may believe’ (Jn 17:21)” (B., 33). Common witness has the meaning of convergence of all into the task of “re-evangelization of our secularized world” (B., 32), that is to say, the highest and noblest Christian duty: the proclamation of Christ’s Gospel.

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3   Freising and Balamand: What Did They Bring? Undoubtedly, the Orthodox should welcome the fact that the Catholic Church formally and categorically condemned proselytism as a method for union and rejected conversion as a purpose of missionary activity. Of great ecumenical significance also was the exhortation to avoid unilateral pastoral initiatives, so to prevent the creation of overlapped ecclesial structures, as this could escalate suspicion and divisions among the two partners. Another aspect of the issue concerned the definition of the ecclesial identity and, by extent, the canonical status of the Byzantine Catholics.21 It is important to see in what manner the O-RC dialogue reflected: (a) on the stature of the Eastern Churches with respect to their union with Rome and (b) on their canonical and ecumenical relation with the Orthodox Church. At a first level, the unionistic mission and non-expansionistic identity of the Byzantine Catholic Churches was considered as discordant to modern ecumenism.22 However, the JIC, in contrast to a previous understanding of the Uniates as inferior to the “Latin” Church, reaffirmed their ecclesial dignity, in the spirit of the Vatican II (B., 16)23 and the Code of Canons of 21  See Edmond Farrugia, “Balamand and its Aftermath: The challenges of evangelization and proselytism,” in Jesuits in Dialogue: papers of the 16th International Congress of Jesuit Ecumenists (Egypt: Secretariat for Interreligious Dialogue, Curia S.J., 2001). 14. 22  B., 22: “Pastoral activity in the Catholic Church […] has no desire for expansion at the expense of the Orthodox Church.” 23  See in this regard the Conciliar Decree on Ecumenism Unitatis Redintegratio, 17: “[The] entire [Eastern] heritage of spirituality and liturgy, of discipline and theology, in their various traditions, belongs to the full catholic and apostolic character of the Church.” See Decree on the Eastern Catholic Churches Orientalium Ecclesiarum, 3: The Eastern and the Western Churches “are of equal rank, so that none of them is superior to the others because of its rite”; see Dimitrios Salachas, Istituzioni di diritto ecclesiastico delle Chiese cattoliche orientali (Bologna: EDB, 1993); see also Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium 13c.23. CCEO (title 2, can 27) designates these Churches also as “Rites,” in which by “rite” is meant “the liturgical, theological, spiritual and disciplinary patrimony, culture and circumstances of history of a distinct people, by which its own manner of living the faith is manifested in each Church sui iuris.” In the post-Vatican II era, an important shift of vocabulary took place: the term “Eastern/Oriental Church” prevailed over the older problematic one: “Rite Church.” Ivan Žuzek, “The Ecclesiae Sui Iuris in the Revision of Canon Law,” in Vatican II: Assessment and Perspectives, edited by Rene Latourelle (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1989), 288: “The Eastern Catholic Churches were not called Churches sui juris by the Second Vatican Council but ‘Particular Churches or Rites’ (OE 2–4). This latter term ‘ritus’ was a later addition, which the experts […] at first resolutely refused.” Whereas, the concept

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the Eastern Churches (hereafter CCEO).24 This approach was quite different from the idea projected in the Ariccia working document of 1991, according to which the Byzantine Catholic Churches were considered “part” of the problem of Orthodox-Catholic division.25 Unlike this option, B. stated that these churches have all the rights and obligations which derive from their unity with the See of Rome; consequently, they are engaged, on local and universal levels, not only in the dialogue of love, but also in the theological dialogue, “with all its practical implications” (B., 16).26 One could thus presume that, at this stage, the canonical connection of the Byzantine Catholics to the Catholic Church is permanent and irreversible and that a return to the status quo ante, that is, to the canonical bond with the “Mother Churches of the East” (B., 8), is unrealistic.27 of sui iuris entails the internal autonomy of these churches and doesn’t imply any territorial connotation. 24  According to the CCEO the Eastern Catholic Churches are “individual” sui iuris Churches, where “a group of Christian faithful united by a hierarchy” (title 2, can 27), constitute the universal Church of Christ alongside the Western (= Latin) Catholic Church. As to Orientalium Ecclesiarum: “These individual Churches, whether of the East or the West, although they differ somewhat among themselves in rite, that is, in liturgy, ecclesiastical discipline, and spiritual heritage, are […] of equal dignity, so that none of them is superior to the others as regards rite and they enjoy the same rights and are under the same obligations, also in respect of preaching the Gospel to the whole world under the guidance of the Roman Pontiff” (3). 25  Ariccia, nr. 9: “Some important questions are still to be resolved. When they shall have been resolved, the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church will have full-communion, and by this very fact the difficulties caused by the Eastern Catholic Churches for the Orthodox Church will finally be eradicated will be definitively removed” (emphasis added). 26  See also “International Mixt Commission for the Theological Dialogue Between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, Coordinating Committee. Ariccia, June 15th–20th, 1998,” Information Service 47, (1998/III): 160: “It has been recognised that the Eastern Catholic Churches, being in full communion with the See of Rome, have the rights and the obligations connected with this communion, particularly concerning the ecumenical dialogue.” 27  Vatican II’s Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium (23d) declared that “by divine Providence it has come about that various churches, established in various places by the apostles and their successors […] enjoy their own discipline, their own liturgical usage, and their own theological and spiritual heritage. Some of these churches, notably the ancient patriarchal churches, as parent-stocks of the Faith, so to speak, have begotten others as daughter churches (italics ours), with which they are connected down to our own time by a close bond of charity in their sacramental life and in their mutual respect for their rights and duties.” Now, is this parental relationship between the “Mother Churches” (i.e. the ancient Patriarchates) and those “daughter Churches” that are in communion with the See of Rome

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The ecclesiological classification given to the Byzantine Catholic Churches did not satisfy all the Orthodox expectations.28 In fact, many would have preferred that the “Uniates” be Latinized or absorbed by the Roman Catholic Church.29 Instead of that, they became official interlocutors of the Orthodox and full partners of the theological dialogue (B., 16; 34), authorized to undertake local ecumenical initiatives.30 Thus, the to be considered as provisional and changeable, or as permanent and unchangeable, since a “mother” never loses her maternal quality [maybe “rights” is a better word?]? In other words, will the Byzantine Catholics return to the respective Orthodox jurisdictions, or will they maintain their canonical bond with Rome? Vatican II, in Orientalium Ecclesiarum 30, declares that all the conciliar directives of law for the Eastern Catholics “are laid down in view of the present situation until such time as the Catholic Church and the separated Eastern Churches come together into complete unity.” It has been commented that in case of union, the Eastern Catholics will have to join the Orthodox, an opinion which Card. Ignace Daoud (†2012), former Prefect of the Congregation of Eastern Churches, contested. If one agrees on the former case, would then the return of the “daughters” to their Mother Churches legitimate the “return ecclesiology”? Or would it be reasonable to accept a “bi-maternal” situation, in which Rome and the Orthodox could appear simultaneously as “Mother” Churches? As one understands, the question is still open to different interpretations among the Catholics and the Orthodox alike, even though it seems that the less sustainable option is that of a double-ecclesial identity. 28  While the F. Statement satisfied the Orthodox requests (“this common statement of F. in which Uniatism as a method is rejected, must constitute the starting point and the basis for further deliberations on the matter within the framework of the Theological Dialogue,” Inter-Orthodox Commission, Phanar, December 1990, 6, quoted in Petras “The Ecumenical Status of the Eastern Catholic Churches”: 364), the B. declaration sought to project an immediate solution, without foreseeing the future ecclesiological complexities, as Basilio Petrà states in his “Respirare con due polmoni contro ogni riduzionismo,” Vita Pastorale nr. 8–9, (2005). According to a widespread Orthodox impression, after B. “the Vatican may once again encourage Latins and Uniates to take communion at Orthodox Churches.” John Romanides “Orthodox and Vatican Agreement,” Θεολογία 64, (1993): 577. 29  Ibid.: “It is also possible that the pope at some point may desist from appointing a successor to at least one of his current Uniate Archbishops or even Patriarchs and put his local Uniate faithful under the spiritual leadership of the local Orthodox Archbishop or Patriarch as a trial test.” On his part, the Greek protopresbyter T. Zissis had suggested that “the use of Eastern liturgical rites and the wearing of Orthodox vestments not only by Uniates but also by Latin clergyman must gradually be limited and finally abolished.” Theodore Zissis “Uniatism: A Problem in the Dialogue Between the Orthodox and Roman Catholics,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 35.1, (1990): 31. A liturgical mutation of this kind, however, apart from being foreign to the principle of tolerance of liturgical diversities, would signify that the Eastern Catholics would lose their own current spiritual, disciplinary, and liturgical heritage which enriches the Catholic world. 30  See CCEO, can. 903: “The Eastern Catholic Churches have a special duty of fostering unity among all Eastern Churches, first of all through prayers, by the example of life, by the

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Orthodox persistence to discuss urgently the Uniate question, although understandable from the viewpoint of the historical circumstances of the early 1990s, ended up by prolonging an already existing thorny problem without contributing substantially to its definitive solution. In other words, it was due to the unpreparedness of both partners (and probably of those directly affected by the decisions of the JIC) to overcome the rivalries of the past that the work of the Commission was met with resistance, even though the issue had been designated as of “primary importance.”31 Hence, the pre-existing positive flow of the dialogue was at risk to be suspended, as it indeed happened from 1993 to 2000, when the JIC found itself unable to meet in a Plenary Session. It was not surprising, in fact, that the Eighth Plenary Session of Baltimore (2000)32 failed to produce a common Statement, although the Orthodox, in the preparatory meeting of the Ariccia (1998),33 were back to maintain that the existence of Byzantine Catholic Churches represents an “ecclesiologically abnormal situation.”34 In Baltimore it was acknowledged that, due to “some reserve and even outright opposition, sometimes from each side,” it was not possible to agree on the basic theological concept of Uniatism and on its canonical and ecclesiological consequences. At any rate, this failure showed that when the dialogue is not rooted in the ecumenical vocation of the church, it can compromise the whole itinerary towards unity.

religious fidelity to the ancient traditions of the Eastern Churches, by better knowledge of each other, and by collaboration and brotherly respect in practice and spirit”; and CCEO, can. 904: “The undertakings of the ecumenical movement in every Church sui iuris are to be diligently encouraged by special norms of particular law, while the Apostolic Roman See directs the movement for the universal Church.” 31  According to E. Farrugia, the failure to apply the B. recommendations was also due to the “unpreparedness of many of the younger Churches in possession of a freedom to which they were unaccustomed and so unable to intervene in inter-Church matters.” Farrugia “Balamand and its Aftermath: The challenges of evangelization and proselytism,” 6. 32  See “JIC.  Emmitsburg-Baltimore USA, July 9–19, 2000,” Information Service 104, (200/III): 147–148. 33  See Information Service 98, (1998/III): 160. 34  As reported in Σάββας Αβραμίδης, Θεολογικοί Διάλογοι [Theological Dialogues] (Athens: Synodal Committee for Inter-Orthodox and Inter-Christian Relations, 2014). 90. Zissis had suggested that “[t]he preservation of Uniatism, however, automatically signifies also the preservation of the primacy of the pope […] the Eastern Catholics have the ‘free right […] to join themselves fully either to Roman Catholicism or to Orthodoxy.’” Zissis, “Uniatism,” 28.31.

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4   The Ecclesiology of Communion and the Future of the Byzantine Catholics Nevertheless, given that the Byzantine Catholic Churches have found their ecclesial identity reaffirmed in the framework of the Catholic communion, it is idealistic to insist on the resaturation of their pre-Unianistic status.35 It is essential, instead, that the Byzantine Catholics, as members of the Catholic Church, also adopt the constitutive principles of the theological dialogue, as set up in Patmos/Rhodes in 1980. These principles include (a) finding what unites Orthodox and Catholics, (b) dealing with the problems of division, and (c) examining the difficulties “in a positive spirit” and “in a new way,” that is to say, considering the theological and ecclesiological developments created after the schism [emphasis added], in the light of the historical developments and later theological and ecclesial practices in the East and in the West, so to “overcome progressively and successively the concrete obstacles which stand in the way of the renewal of common life between our churches.”36 These guidelines clearly suggest the need to approach the ecclesiology of the Byzantine Catholics not through the mindsets of the past and the “ecclesiology of return” (through the exaltation of conversions, proselytism, and obedience to a universal authority), but in view of the ecumenical challenges of our century. In particular, of great help would be the so-called communion ecclesiology, cited in the F. and B. documents, which for many is the most promising and convincing mode to comprehend the complexity of the O-RC relations. In fact, according to the North American Orthodox/Catholic Theological Consultation, this approach could “change the context of past disputes and create new

35  In this regard, it can be said that the proposal to abolish Uniatism advanced by the PanOrthodox Conferences of the 1960s is not mandatory for the present, since the theological O-RC dialogue has explicated the nature and limits of the Byzantine rite Catholics and in some way has satisfied the desiderata of the Conferences. On his part, Petras comments that “it is counter-productive for some Orthodox spokesmen to simply write off the Eastern Catholic Churches and to request that they become Latin. […] Though the Eastern Churches never became, and never will become a ‘bridge to unity,’ they have, at least, kept the Roman Church ‘honest’ in its position within the universal Church. They have been a witness, within the Roman Communion, of the need for recognition of the value of the Eastern tradition.” See Petras “The Ecumenical Status of the Eastern Catholic Churches,” 365. 36  See Information Service 47, (1981/III–IV): 117.

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possibilities for fresh examination of the issues which historically have divided us.”37 Nonetheless, the nature of this “communion ecclesiology” needs to be sufficiently clarified in order to respect the self-awareness of each church: the territorial/geographical (or Eucharistically centred) Orthodox one and the more universalistic Catholic one.38 One should also take into account the recent attempts of decentralization undertaken by Pope Francis39 and the need to affirm primacy within the Orthodox world.40 In this regard, the documents produced by the Tenth (Ravenna, 2007)41 and Fourteenth (Chieti, 2016)42 Plenary Sessions of the JIC on the interdependence between synodality and authority/primacy are an indication that the O-RC dialogue has reached a stage where organic 37  “A Response of the Orthodox/Roman Catholic Consultation in the United States to the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church Regarding the Balamand Document (1994),” par. 11, https://bit.ly/2LPkqut 38  A territorial-centred ecclesiology could permit Orthodox and Catholics to consider the communio ecclesiology in the light of the Eucharistic ecclesiology, where the “one” Eucharist is celebrated by the “one” church under the guidance of the “one” bishop who presides over it [what do you mean by “local synod” here?] and is the visible expression of unity with the other churches. Certainly, a response to that could remind that today “with the demographic changes of our times, the various Churches exist side-by-side in most parts of the world, and practically every ‘Local’ Church must make pastoral provisions for her faithful everywhere. No territory can be considered anyone’s exclusive preserve.” Serge Keleher “Response on ‘Uniatism as a method of union,’” Sobornost 13.2 (1992): 61. 39  See Pope Francis, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (2013), nr. 246: “In the dialogue with our Orthodox brothers and sisters, we Catholics have the opportunity to learn more about the meaning of episcopal collegiality and their experience of synodality. Through an exchange of gifts, the Spirit can lead us ever more fully into truth and goodness.” 40  Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, “Opening Address by His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew at the Inaugural Session of the Holy and Great Council,” https:// urly.it/33v87: “The synodal institution became not only the supreme arbiter for the life and faith of the Church’s members, but also the visible bond of communion between the local Churches on both the regional and global levels. […] Th[e] golden rule of synodality has ever since also defined the understanding of primacy in our Orthodox Church, which it promotes as a model for all Christian churches and confessions.” 41  JIC “Ecclesiology and Canonical Consequences of the Sacramental Nature of the Church. Ecclesial Communion, Conciliarity and Authority,” Information Service 126, (2007/IV): 178–184. 42  JIC “Synodality and Primacy During the First Millennium: Towards a Common Understanding in Service to the Unity of the Church,” Information Service 148, (2016/ II): 70–73.

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communio between the “one” and the “many,” or between different ecclesial centres, has been reciprocally recognized as fundamental for church’s unity. In particular, the Chieti Statement declared: (a) the “interrelatedness between the proestos or bishop and the community is a constitutive element of the life of the local church” (nr. 8–9) and the obligation of each local church to “celebrate in communion with all other local churches which confess the true faith and celebrate the same Eucharist” (nr. 8); (b) the specific rights of regional churches (Metropolitanates or Patriarchates) to envoy councils and validate the election of a new Archbishop, Metropolitan or Patriarch (nr. 14); and (c) the primatial role of the prima sedes, that is, of the Church of Rome, to receive appeals (nr. 19) and to moderate disputes, in the context of General or Ecumenical Councils: “Major questions regarding faith and canonical order in the Church were discussed and resolved by the ecumenical councils [… in] accord with that of previous councils” (nr. 18). What emerges from the above is that: (a) Eucharist can be understood as a gathering event, which reconciles the people of God of a concrete, local community with Christ (vertically) and among themselves (horizontally) and anticipates the Kingdom of God. This principle can be applied both internally, in relation to the members of a given community, and, most important, between churches—to the extent that synodal communion is the manifestation of the quality of the fullness of truth and catholicity of faith of a local church.43 (b) Communio extends universally the relation and interdependence that exists between the “one” (bishop/protos) who represents a local church, and the “many” (community of faithful/churches depending upon a protos) who are her members; (c) Primacy is neither provisional nor transitory, but an essential and permanent component of ecclesial communion in and among the churches; 43  In this respect, J.  M. Tillard’s ecclesiology of communion and Metropolitan John Zizioulas’s Eucharistic ecclesiology could be of great help. They both affirmed that the Church extends the communion with God, which she experiences sacramentally, to the communion with the others, even with those “outside” her canonical boundaries. In this way, the Church becomes in all effects the “Ekklesia” and avoids any kind of self-isolation.

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Therefore, one could argue that if ecclesial communio is meant to satisfy only the criterion of relation with the See of Rome as a prerequisite of unity (the old understanding of “Uniate” unity) and does not explore the all-embracing and reconciliatory synodal dimension of the Church, then its vigour remains incomplete, as this type of one-sided ecclesial unity has not been and will not be accepted by the Orthodox—and perhaps neither by the Byzantine Catholics themselves.44 If, however, communio is related to a deeper understanding of Eucharistic and synodal communio, in which the primatial role of the Bishop of Rome has a fundamental role, then a concrete sign will be given on that unity is achieved not through Rome, but with the whole Christian community, and not merely as a coexistence of different liturgical rites (Latin, Byzantine, etc.) under the guidance of a universal magisterial authority,45 but as the coexistence of local Churches with a proper autonomy, which will recognize synodality as an institution that (a) guarantees regional communio among pastors who preside over the Eucharist and the faithful; (b) has an incontestable administrative authority over the church-­ members of a council; and (c) is open to express universally a sense of unity, in love, faith, and sacraments, in the form of a synodal fellowship of Churches, in which the presidency or primacy of Rome and the cooperation—or 44  Houtepen “Uniatism and Models of Unity in the Ecumenical Movement,” 213: “[The] conciliar model could well be expanded to the churches in communion with Rome, both Eastern Rite and Latin Rite Catholic churches.” 45  On the definition of the Eastern Catholics as “Churches” and not as “Rites” by the postVatican II Catholicism, see footnotes 1 and 24. The definition given by Suttner and Roberson that “the term Eastern Catholic Churches designates local or regional Churches which follow an Eastern Church tradition […] to almost all Eastern regional Churches of the Byzantine, East Syrian, West Syrian, Coptic, Armenian and Ethiopian tradition, there correspond currently smaller or greater Eastern Catholic Church.” See his “Eastern Catholic Churches,” in Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Christian East, ed. Edmond Farrugia (Rome: Pontifical Oriental Institute, 2015, 2nd edition), 678, confines an Eastern Catholic Church to a specific liturgical tradition. On the basis of this non-territorial nature of the Eastern Catholic Churches, one could presume that the territorial competition between Eastern Catholics and Orthodox will be avoided when unity will be restored. The jurisdiction of some Eastern Catholic Churches (e.g. in the case of the Eastern Catholic Patriarchates) is extended beyond their local/regional area of influence. Similarly, the Western-rite Orthodox, a contemporary and rather limited phenomenon, cannot by any means be considered as Orthodox Uniatism.

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“synergy”—of the patriarchal [Orthodox] Churches of the East (Chieti, nr. 15) are central.46 Such regional, initially distinct, Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic synodal bodies could gradually (eventually, after the successful conclusion of the O-RC dialogue) converge into the common witness of the one Gospel of Christ and into the sharing of pastoral activities for the people of both churches and not for each one’s “own” flock. This side-by-side existence between Eastern Catholics and the Orthodox Churches could be realized in the same (provisional) way that is in force for the Orthodox jurisdictions in the diaspora. This, to our opinion, will not contradict, but on the contrary will strengthen the value of the gathering-event of the Eucharistic understanding of the Church, as a sign of unity in love, faith, and sacraments, whose natural extension is nothing but the synodal life. We could schematically represent this model of dialogue as follows: (a) Byzantine Catholics as “bridge Church” within the Catholic Communion: Orthodox Church

↔

Catholic Church (Latin + Eastern)

(b) Byzantine Catholics as “bridge Churches” with the Orthodox: Orthodox Churches → Eastern Catholics Churches → Latin Catholic Churches In the table “a” the criterion of dialogue on “equal footing” among the Orthodox and the Catholic Church as a whole [as requested by the Second (Rhodes, 1963) and Third (Rhodes, 1964) Pan-Orthodox Conferences]47 is better reflected than in the table “b,” where the Byzantine Catholic Churches, for their oriental sui iuris liturgical identity, are those who primarily support the dialogue with the Orthodox, whereas the “Latin” Catholic Church maintains alone a “universal” stature. But an ontological distinction between the “particular” churches (in the plural) and the 46  Mons. Fortino had rightly noted that “the issue of the origin of the Eastern Catholic Churches is therefore connected with that of the primacy and the need for full communion […] a solution to this matter will be found in the agreement to be sought with the Orthodox concerning the role of the Bishop of Rome in Christ’s Church.” Fortino, “Disagreements remain on ‘uniatism,’” 10. 47  See Ioniţă, Towards the Holy and Great Synod of the Orthodox Church, 131–135.

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“universal church” (in the singular) is foreign to Orthodox ecclesiology, since a local church is the expression of the catholicity of church’s faith and the fullness of life in Christ.48 In other words, local dialogues— between Orthodox and Eastern Catholics or between Orthodox and Latin Catholics as well—can be potentially an anticipation of unity or a sign pointing to the possibility of experiencing unity locally. Yet, such a unity, to be definite and permanent for the whole Church, must inevitably be expanded and celebrated on a universal level not with one specific church (even if she is the primatial See), but with all the Christian churches throughout the world.

5   Concluding Remarks In light of all the above, we can ask: is it accurate to consider the Eastern Catholic Churches as “bridge Churches” with the Orthodox, a label that has been often employed to redefine their identity positively? Or, should we, rather, accept that the Orthodox must dialogue directly only with the “Roman” Catholics, without the mediation of the “Eastern” ones?49 The 48  See Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on some aspects of the Church understood as communion,” Acta Apostolicae Sedis 85 (1993). 838–850. II.9: “[…] ontologically, the Church-mystery, the Church that is one and unique, precedes creation, and gives birth to the particular Churches as her daughters. She expresses herself in them; she is the mother and not the product of the particular Churches.” One must recognize, however, that Vatican II and the post-conciliar magisterium define the Church in less juridical and more biblical and sacramental terms. See, for instance, Vatican II’s Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium, 41 “[…] the pre-eminent manifestation of the Church consists in the full active participation of all God’s holy people in these liturgical celebrations, especially in the same eucharist”; also the above-mentioned Letter of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, III.3: “The eucharistic Sacrifice, while always performed in a particular community, is never a celebration of that community alone. In fact, the community, in receiving the eucharistic presence of the Lord, receives the entire gift of salvation and shows, even in its lasting visible particular form, that it is the image and true presence of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.” Nevertheless, the Congregation notes that “the rediscovery of a eucharistic ecclesiology, though being of undoubted value, has however sometimes placed unilateral emphasis on the principle of the local Church”; it seems, so, that there’s still a tension over the precedence of the universal or the sacramental-local dimension of the Church. 49  E. Lanne described Oriental Catholic Churches as being contested: from the Orthodox, who see in them a stumbling-block to Christian unity; from those “Roman” Catholic who favour Latinization and centralization; and from certain Catholic ecumenists, who believe that Eastern Catholics will be dissolved, once union with Orthodox will be re-established. See Emmanuel Lanne, “Un christianisme contesté: l’Orient catholique entre mythe et

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answer to this query should take into account that Vatican II and the post-­ conciliar magisterium, as we saw, acknowledged the particular sui iuris status of the Byzantine Catholics, that is, their liturgical tradition, their spiritual and disciplinary heritage (married clergy, second matrimony for the laity, etc.), their internal administrative autonomy, in other words the notion of juridically autonomous, local Churches, to which pre-Vatican II Catholic ecclesiology had paid little attention.50 A future-oriented and ecumenically minded option should, thus, distance itself from any suggestion of ritual assimilation of the “Uniates” by Catholicism or of their canonical absorption by Orthodoxy and affirm, instead, that the Eastern Catholic Churches should maintain their stature not as a “bridge” between the Orthodox and the Catholics but as an ecclesial reality within the Catholic Church, in a way that could recall trustfully the tradition of the church of the origins, in which diversity (and not the elimination of differences in the name of “Latinization,” “Hellenization,” “Russification,” etc.), autonomy (i.e. the internal disciplinary liberty of a given community alongside its right to elect its leader), and communion (as an opposite to isolation) are not a hindrance but essential conditions for the worldwide Christian unity.

réalité,” in The Christian East: Its Institutions and Its Thought. A Critical Reflection, edited by Robert Taft (Roma: Pontifical Oriental Institute, 1996), 85–88 [reported in Farrugia “Balamand and its Aftermath”: 13]. 50  Farrugia “Re-reading Orientalium Ecclesiarum,” 353: “The body of OE address itself primarily to an inner-Church situation, the relationship between the Latin Church and the Catholic Eastern Churches.” One could thus argue that the presence of Eastern Catholics within the Catholic Communion enriches the spirituality of the latter and dismisses any form of ritual or ecclesial hegemony—due to the equal rank of dignity between Western and Eastern Catholics. It is for this reason that we cannot share the idea that the “concept of Ecclesia sui iuris and that at the same time the ecclesiological vision of the Eastern Catholic Churches [must] be reviewed. This is because a confused and incomplete canonical concept can not only create problems within the Catholic Church, but also in the ecumenical sphere cannot help to bring about the unity of the one Church of Christ.” Georgică Grigoriţă, Il concetto di Ecclesia sui juris (Rome: -n.p., 2007). 199.

Index1

A Accusations, 16, 24, 77, 78, 153, 156, 183, 197, 353 Adventist, xiii Afanasiev, Nicholas, xii, 240, 241, 250, 252–259, 256n72, 277 Alexander Men, 191 Ambrose of Milan, 78 Anniversary of Baptism of Rus’ (988), 67 Anti-union, 46 Aquinas, Thomas, 20, 23, 24, 29, 212, 219, 351 Archbishopric of Esztergom, 104–107 Archdiocese in Blaj, 118 Arianism, 284 Augustine, 213–215, 351

B Balamand Statement, 340 Balkans, 91, 148, 283 Baptism, 77, 80–83, 141, 143n5, 270, 273, 326, 357 Barlaam of Calabria, 20 Bea, Cardinal, 155 Bekkos, John, 20, 27, 29, 212 Belarusian, 26, 36, 38, 41n1, 43, 55, 57–61, 65, 66, 69–73, 196 Benedict XIV (1740-1758), Pope, 83, 104, 287, 355n1 Benedictines, 94, 243, 265, 265n10 Bessarion, Cardinal, 21 Bilateral dialogue, 16, 311 Bilateral ecumenical dialogues, vii, 1 Bilateral relationships, 199 Bishopric in Mukachevo, 118

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2021 V. Latinovic, A. K. Wooden (eds.), Stolen Churches or Bridges to Orthodoxy?, Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55442-2

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INDEX

Blaj, 104, 106, 108, 110, 112, 114, 118, 119, 122, 132, 134–136, 139, 140, 291, 292, 294 Blaj Diocese, 104 Body of Christ, 80, 81, 85, 182, 228, 229, 251, 252, 255–257, 277, 298, 326, 336 Bolotov, Vasily, xii, 203–218, 274, 274n29 Boris I, 141 Branch Theory, 268 Brezhnev, Leonid, xi, 190, 196 Bridges, vii, viii, xii, 3, 8, 9, 19, 38, 200, 222, 238, 298, 334, 340, 347, 353, 368n35, 372–374 Budapest, 101, 107n24, 128, 131–140 Bulgakov, Sergius, xii, 36n52, 240, 242 Bulgaria, xi, 141–152, 154–156, 158, 217, 310, 357, 358 Bulgarian, 96, 141–159 Bulgarian Orthodox Church, xi, 141–159, 261n1 Byzantine, 20–26, 29–32, 32n43, 35, 35n51, 36, 39, 43, 44, 62, 90, 95, 102, 103, 111–114, 117–140, 156, 212, 213, 233–235, 262n3, 263n6, 265n10, 288, 295, 313, 351, 355–356n1, 356, 358, 358n9, 368n35 Byzantine Catholics, xi, xiv, 117–140, 154, 362, 364, 365, 366n27, 368–374 Byzantine Church, 234 Byzantine Greeks, 28 Byzantinism, 30, 234, 234n43

C Cabasilas, Nicholas, 245, 245n16 Canonical territory, 5, 360 Canonization, 64–75, 80, 83 Cappadocian fathers, 210, 321, 330, 331 Catechism, xii, 95, 203–218, 290, 292, 349 Catholic, xiii, 29–32, 35, 37–39, 53, 85, 95, 97, 108, 152, 153, 157 Catholic Church, x, 1–16, 29, 48, 63, 93, 107n24, 110, 121, 142–150, 165, 185, 204, 220, 245, 276, 285, 303, 333, 343 Catholic Churches of Oriental Rites, 297 Catholic Churches of the Eastern Rite, 343 Catholic Eastern Churches, vii, 179, 374n50 The centennial of the Moscow Council (1918), 67 Central Committee of the Communist Party, 189, 193, 196 Chaldeans, 26, 296, 299 Chieti document, 301, 306–312, 349 Chieti Document (“Synodality and Primacy during the First Millennium,” 2016), xiii, 306 Christian ecumenism, 307 Christian social development, 235 Christian unity, vii, 236, 241, 259, 263, 266, 269, 272, 373n49, 374 Christus Dominus, 173 Chrysostom, John, 78, 308, 308n24 Church authority, 349 Clement VII, Pope, 45 Clement VIII, Pope, 44 Clericalism, 278, 278n43, 280, 347 Code of Canons, 115, 282, 296, 297

 INDEX 

Codex Canonum Ecclesiarum Orientalium (CCEO), 282, 296, 297, 343, 343n19 Cold War, 186, 187, 192, 193 Commission for the Oriental Churches, 167–169, 180, 182 Committee for State Security (KGB), 190 Communio ecclesiology, xiii, 317–337, 369n38 Communion, xii–xiv, 47, 77, 79, 81–83, 174, 177, 215n37, 216, 220, 224–226, 229, 236, 237, 240, 243–250, 256, 257, 259, 266, 271, 273, 277, 285, 286, 288, 289, 297, 298, 302, 303, 307, 308, 309n27, 310, 318, 318n6, 320–325, 324n27, 325n30, 327, 330–332, 340, 344, 356n1, 358n9, 359–363, 361n16, 361n18, 365n26, 365n27, 366n28, 368–374 Communion of saints, 285 Communist Party, 189, 189n7, 196 Complementarity, xiii, 238, 284, 291, 295, 296, 352, 353 Confessionalization, 37–39, 88, 89, 99, 285 Confessions, 29, 33–35, 37, 38, 76, 82, 88, 94, 97, 216, 224, 225, 245, 248, 251, 340, 342, 353, 361n18, 369n40 Constantine Melitiniotis, 212 Constantinople, 20, 23–26, 54, 54n28, 80n46, 111, 141–144, 146, 146n14, 148, 154, 154n36, 178, 285, 350, 352 Converted, 5n13, 30, 44n9, 53, 57, 59, 61, 64, 146, 147 Converts, 30, 39, 145, 153, 221, 223–227, 237, 360, 361

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Copts, 83, 299 Cossack uprising of 1648–1657, 80n47, 89 Council of Ferrara-Florence, 21 Council of Florence, 51, 138, 175, 175n66, 206, 212n30, 285, 287, 302n2, 360n14 Council of Trent (1545–1563), 48 Council of Trent (1547), 83 Councils in Basel, 21 Councils of Basel in 1431–1437, 21, 25 Counter-Reformation, 49, 289 Creed, 25, 28, 133, 135, 215–218, 216n43, 228, 298 Croatia, 27, 107, 109 Crusaders, 24 Cultural boundaries, ix, 39 Cultural history, x, 87–99 Cultural identity, 87, 291 Culture, 19, 20, 32, 44n8, 47, 50–53, 60, 61, 68–70, 87, 88, 88n1, 90, 92–94, 96–98, 176, 220, 263, 264, 284, 296, 305, 346, 364n23 Curia, 24, 104 Cyprian of Carthage, 254 Cyril of Alexandria, 206, 210, 211n26 D Decet Romanum Pontificem, 45, 45n10 (Decree) Laetentur coeli, 26, 285 Denominational, 32–39, 319 Denominationalism, 33, 35, 40 Denominations, 9, 15, 31, 33–35, 33n47, 37, 83, 150, 153, 156, 157, 280, 314, 336, 336n73, 342

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INDEX

Dialogue, vii–x, xiii, xiv, 1–16, 30, 36, 74, 85, 87–99, 156–159, 174–179, 182–184, 186, 187, 200, 207, 222, 240, 263, 264, 268–272, 276, 279, 280, 283, 291, 298, 301, 305, 307, 310–314, 318–320, 337, 355–374 Diet, 46, 48, 49, 53, 53n26, 60, 109 Diet of 1573, 48 Disunity, 258, 267–269, 277, 305 Dogmatic divergence, 283, 285, 286, 296 Dominicans, 23, 97 E East, 6n18, 20, 23, 29, 32, 33, 35, 37, 38, 43, 52, 92, 142, 175, 175n66, 183, 215, 222, 228, 230, 237, 239–244, 246, 246n20, 247, 249, 285, 303, 307–309, 311, 312, 349, 352, 360, 360n12, 360n14, 365, 365n24, 368, 372 Eastern Catholic, viii, xii, xiii, 3, 4, 5n13, 7–16, 9n27, 11n31, 75, 85, 111, 149, 176, 221, 222, 224, 237–259, 313, 314, 336, 339–354, 358n9, 362, 366n27, 366n29, 367n34, 371n45, 372, 373n49, 374n50 Eastern Catholic Churches (ECC), vii–xi, xiii, 1–16, 44n6, 63, 75, 85, 111, 170, 174, 177–182, 184, 221, 237, 238, 298, 313, 314, 320, 329, 332, 334, 337, 340, 341, 343–346, 348–350, 352–354, 357, 357n7, 359n11, 362, 364n23, 365n24, 365n25, 365n26, 366n28, 366n30, 368n35, 371n45, 372n46, 373, 374, 374n50

Eastern Catholicism, xii, 219–242, 244, 257 Eastern Churches, 7, 13, 26–28, 103, 105, 115, 146, 166, 169, 171, 174–181, 175n66, 183, 228, 244, 258, 282, 286–290, 296, 297, 308n25, 343, 354, 364, 366n27, 366–367n30, 368n35, 371n45 Eastern Orthodox, xii, 19, 28–31, 33, 37, 39, 239, 240, 244, 247, 251, 254, 259, 319, 319n8, 331, 332, 334 Ecclesial identity, 298, 364, 368 Ecclesiality, 289, 328 Ecclesiastical, ix, 20, 23, 25, 26, 29, 32–34, 39, 61, 61n40, 88, 93, 99, 102, 105, 110, 112, 113, 142, 154, 217n46, 223, 229, 234, 237, 262, 282, 283, 290, 306, 312, 365n24 Ecclesiological Investigations Research Network, vii Ecumenical Council, 6n18, 170, 171, 178, 216–218, 293, 302, 303, 306, 370 Ecumenical spirit, 172, 311 Ecumenical theology, xiii, 220, 220n4, 221, 223, 240, 241, 245–251, 256, 257, 262, 266, 269, 270, 279, 283 Encyclical Ut unum sint (1995), 348 Enlightenment, 38, 97, 286 Episcopate, 82, 165, 166, 174, 254 Eschatological, 268, 269, 298, 325n30, 326n37, 327, 331, 348 Eschatology, 269, 289, 331n61 Esztergom, 104–111, 115, 290 Ethnophyletism, 240, 258, 302n2, 312

 INDEX 

Eucharist, 122n16, 225–227, 241, 246, 251, 253, 255–259, 277, 284, 287, 308–309n27, 325, 326, 326n42, 327n44, 327n45, 327n47, 327n48, 330, 331, 334, 348, 361n16, 370, 371, 373n48 Eucharistic bread, 23, 287 Eucharistic communion, 240, 243, 245–247, 249, 250, 256, 257, 259, 277, 306 Eucharistic ecclesiology, xii, 239–259, 277, 369n38, 370n43, 373n48 Evdokimov, Paul (1901-1970), xii, 261–280 Excommunication, 45n10, 153, 246, 246n20, 256 F Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius (FSASS), 242, 243, 245, 247, 248, 250 Filioque, xii, 23, 25, 26n32, 28, 122n16, 143, 203–218, 228, 271–275, 279n46, 284, 284n7, 287, 346n28, 349, 350, 350n46 Filioquism, 274 First Vatican Council (1869-1870), 106, 278 First World War, 140, 148, 263 Florence, 20, 21, 24–26, 51 Florence Council, 122 Florentine, 26n32, 27, 286, 288, 289, 291 Florentine Council, 284, 286, 287, 289, 290, 296 Florovsky, George, 30, 31, 36, 36n52, 220, 220n3, 242, 318n1 Francis of Assisi, 74 Francis, Pope, 6n15, 83, 158, 159, 184, 282, 348, 369

379

Franciscans, 94, 97 Franz Josef I, Emperor (1848-1916), 126 French Revolution, 231 G Gorchakov, Prince, 144 Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL), 43, 43n4, 44, 44n8, 46, 48–50, 52–55, 52n24, 52n25, 53n26, 57n31, 58–60, 70, 78 Great Schism, 26, 215, 246n20 Greco-Catholic Church, xi, 162n1, 184, 298 Greek Catholics, xi, xiii, 47, 64, 67, 69, 93, 94, 102–122, 124, 131–140, 162, 163, 185–200, 204, 206, 281–299, 345, 353 Greeks, 20–22, 24, 25, 28, 32, 35, 38, 39, 46, 47, 50, 54, 54n30, 76, 92, 142, 205, 206, 225, 233, 234, 272, 366n29 Gregory of Nyssa, 206, 210 Gregory X, Pope, 283 Gregory Palamas (1296-1359), 23, 30, 213, 245n16, 273 Gudziak, Borys A., 31, 32 H Henotic, 19, 20, 22–26, 32, 39–40 Heretic, 23, 24, 78, 82–84, 139, 254 Hermaniuk, Maxim Metropolitan, 161, 163–168, 163n6, 165n18, 166n24, 166n25, 170–174, 177–181, 183 Heroes, 72, 75 Historiography, 19, 29, 33, 34, 87, 89, 93, 94, 187 Holy and Great Council, 309, 310, 312, 313, 313n41, 369n40

380 

INDEX

Holy and Great Council of Crete, 305, 309–311 Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, xiii, 74, 261, 279, 301, 302n2 Holy See, 103–106, 110, 111, 114, 115, 120, 131, 133–135, 137, 139, 186, 190, 223, 288 Holy Spirit, xii, xiv, 23, 25, 51, 64, 85, 204–208, 210, 212, 213, 269–276, 280, 284, 284n7, 287, 302, 308, 314, 320, 324, 326, 337, 350n44 Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, 56 Hus, Jan, 48 I Identity, x, 35n51, 47, 51, 60, 69, 71, 73, 74, 85, 98, 99, 101–116, 142, 145, 147, 151, 152, 152n29, 154, 154n36, 157, 175, 183, 208, 213, 227, 235, 263, 286, 290, 291, 294–298, 322, 325–326, 334, 345, 346, 358, 364, 366n27, 368, 372, 373 Innokenty of Vilnius, 65 Institut Oecuménique de Bossey, 266 Institut Saint Serge, 264 Inter-Christian dialogue, 310 International Commission for Theological Dialogue Between the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Church, 203 J Jesuit missionaries, 49 Jesuits, 47, 49–51, 52n24, 92, 94, 97, 105, 198, 222, 288 Joachim III, Ecumenical Patriarch, 261

John Damascenus, 207 John Paul II, 83, 150, 220, 348, 350n45 John XXIII (1958-1963), Pope, 149, 158, 252 Joint International Commission for Theological dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church (hereafter JIC), 356, 357n7, 358, 360–364, 361n16, 367, 369 Josyf-Veliamyn Rutsky, 46 K Keroularios, Michael, 215, 216, 284 Khomiakov, Alexei, 228, 229 Kirill, Patriarch of Moscow, 184 Koinonia, xiii, 81, 317–337 Konstantinos Meliteniotes, 20 Krivosheine, Vasily (1900-1985), 243 Kuncevich, Josaphat, x, 41, 46, 63, 74–85 Kydones, Demetrios, 20, 22, 23 Kyiv, 21, 38, 43–46, 49, 89, 90, 93 Kyivan Christianity, x, 87–99 Kyivan Metropolitanate, 46, 53–55, 57, 57n31, 72, 78, 89, 90, 95–97 Kyivan Rus, 43, 58, 58n32, 59, 90, 93 Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (KMA), 89–92 L Latins, 2, 20–25, 30, 43, 43n4, 50, 51, 64, 76, 88, 90, 92, 94–98, 104, 112, 113, 121, 122, 284, 284n7, 287, 288, 291–293, 295, 308, 318, 343, 350, 352, 360n14, 363, 365n24, 366n28, 366n29, 368n35, 371 Latin tradition, 93, 94, 283

 INDEX 

Lay, 54, 55, 130, 136, 138, 149, 229, 236, 262–264, 266, 279, 282, 303, 304 Laypeople, 121, 123–126, 130, 132, 133, 138, 139, 150, 311 Lithuania, 42, 43n4, 71, 75, 80n47, 190n10, 192, 194 Lithuanian, 65, 89, 193, 194 Lubomyr Husar, Archbishop, 353 Lumen Gentium, 170, 174, 364n23, 365n27 Luther, Martin, 48 Lutheran, 35, 117, 140, 271 M Magnus Dominus, 45 Makartsev, 192, 193 Martyr, 75, 80–82, 81n53, 84, 85, 182 Martyrdom, 80–85, 145, 282, 295, 298 Maximus the Confessor, 82 Metochites, Georgios, 20 Metropolitanate of Kyiv, 43, 44, 46 Metropolitan Isidore of Kyiv, 21 Metropolitan See of Blaj, 106 Meyendorff, John, 30, 36 Middle ages, 35, 87, 93, 142n1 Mladenov, Lazar, 145n12, 148 Mohyla, Petro, 27, 38 Moldovan, 122, 136 Moltmann, Jürgen, 208, 208n17 Monasticism, 94–96, 267n12 Mount Athos, 94, 358n8 Mukačevo, 290 Muscovy, 43n4, 49, 50n22, 54, 54n28, 54n29, 55, 58, 59, 80n47, 91 Muslims, 22, 145, 153 Myrrha Lot-Borodine (1882-1957), 243

381

N National, 33, 34, 50, 52, 57, 58, 64, 69, 72, 73, 107, 108, 112, 137, 139, 142, 145, 147, 152, 154, 154n36, 175, 176, 233–236, 263, 264, 272 Nationalism, 39 Nations, 33, 34, 43n4, 46, 52, 59, 66, 68–71, 73, 137, 153, 175, 176, 233, 234, 240, 290 Nation-states, 33, 34 Neo-Patristic, 30, 31, 33–36 Neo-Patristic movement, 30 Neo-Platonic, 331 Neo-Scholastic era, 30 Newman, John Henry, 248, 249 Nicene Creed, 205, 228 Nicholas II, Tsar, 226 Nilus Cabasilas (1298-1363), 213, 214, 214n35 O O’Malley, John, 32 Ontological, 80, 81, 249, 250, 253, 256, 268, 321, 324, 324n28, 326, 329, 331, 334, 337, 372 Ontology, 321–325, 330 Orientalium Ecclesiarum (OE), 162, 174–183, 343, 354, 355n1, 364n23, 365n24, 366n27, 374n50 Oriental theology, 284 Orthodox, vii, 1–16, 30, 43, 63, 88, 107, 117, 141–159, 174, 191, 204, 220, 239–259, 261, 282, 301, 319, 340, 356 Orthodox-Catholic dialogue, xiii, 12n35, 279, 357 Ostpolitik, xi, 185–200 Otherness, 322, 325, 325n30, 326 Ottomans, 21, 22, 146 Oxford Movement, 245

382 

INDEX

P Pan-Orthodox council, 261, 262, 279 Papacy, 143, 152, 223, 234, 236, 279, 359n10 Papal, 3n4, 27, 29, 45, 50, 50n22, 83, 104, 107, 144, 148, 151, 158, 207, 276, 294, 359n11 Papal primacy, xii, 13, 24, 32, 122n16, 138, 222, 233, 236, 276, 277, 286, 287, 291, 296 Pastor Aeternus, 294 Patriarchate of Constantinople, 43, 50, 54, 143, 146 Patristics, 4, 36, 96, 181, 204, 208, 210, 271, 278, 284, 296, 321, 322, 324n29, 352 Paul V, Pope, 79 Paul VI, Pope, 168, 174, 199, 302 Persecutor, 75–80 Personal freedom, 322 Petrine ministry, 278–280, 278n43 Photios, 207, 216, 303n4 Pjotr Semenko, 134 Platonic, 331 Plotinus, 209, 209n19 Pneumatology, 269, 270, 276 Polish, 43, 47, 51–53, 58, 60, 61n40, 69, 71, 76, 89, 98, 134, 189 Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (PLC), 27, 28, 31, 43, 44n7, 46, 50, 67, 77, 80n47, 90, 95, 97 Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (PCPCU), 10, 10n29, 340n2, 348n34, 350, 350n44 Pope, ix, 6n15, 19, 22, 24, 25, 31, 34, 44, 49, 51, 52n24, 56, 84, 133, 135, 137, 142, 143, 158, 159, 172–174, 178, 198, 199, 215, 220, 225, 236, 279, 284, 286–288, 293, 294, 314, 333, 344, 346, 366n29, 367n34

Post-Tridentine, 29, 97, 104, 105, 115, 285, 286, 288, 293 Pre-Chalcedonian, 26 Primacy, 25, 27, 28, 51, 151, 249, 250, 256, 259, 278, 279, 294, 304, 305, 308–309n27, 312, 328, 333n64, 343, 346, 348, 349, 349n40, 367n34, 369–371, 369n40, 369n42, 372n46 Primacy and synodality, 303n5, 307, 308, 308n25, 312, 354 Primacy of honor, 27, 278 Problematic, 4, 74, 206, 210–215, 241, 329–331, 344, 345, 352, 364n23 Procession of the Holy Spirit, xii, 23, 51, 204–206, 208, 211n26, 214n35, 272–274, 350n44 Pro-Russian, 42, 71, 166 Proselytism, xiv, 74, 153, 155, 157, 182, 342n15, 344, 357n5, 357n7, 360, 360–361n15, 362, 364, 364n21, 367n31, 368 Protestant, 6, 31, 33–35, 37, 44, 48, 49, 84, 88, 88n1, 97, 130, 138, 139, 178, 179, 230, 261, 264, 265, 270, 271, 277–280, 285, 302n2, 314, 319, 336n73 Protestant Reformation, 48 Proto-Belarusian territories, x, 42, 44, 63 Pro-Western, 42 Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagites, 208 Purgatory, 23, 51, 122n16, 285, 287, 289 R Rahner’s grundaxiom, 208 Ratzinger, Joseph, 259, 330n60, 333 Reformation, 32, 47–49, 54, 54n30, 84, 285, 359n11

 INDEX 

Reformed, 35, 271 Rerum Novarum, 236 Ressourcement, 36, 36n52 Reunion, xii, 162n1, 204, 218–238, 249, 276, 279n46 Roman Catholic, xi, 3n4, 28, 29, 31, 33–37, 35n51, 44, 47, 51, 53, 56, 59, 61n40, 64, 78, 93, 101, 104, 106, 109, 117–119, 123, 125, 127, 129, 136, 139, 152, 183, 184, 203, 240, 254, 259, 276, 283, 286, 287, 293, 294, 302, 312, 333, 356n3, 369n37, 373, 373n49 Roman Catholic Diocese of Alba Iulia, 128 Roman Church, ix, 19–25, 27, 28, 32n43, 35, 172, 175, 176, 179, 181, 217, 237, 284, 343, 368n35 Romanian, x, xi, xiii, 27, 101–140, 281–299 Romanian Greek-Catholic, 289, 292, 293 Romanian Greek-Catholic Church, 112, 281 Romanian National Church Congress (RNCC), 128, 129 Romanian Uniate Church of Transylvania, 102 Roman Pontiff, 170, 172, 177, 293, 294, 348, 365n24 Roman popes, 24, 27 Rome, 13, 20, 23, 26, 27, 38, 42n2, 43–45, 47–51, 61n40, 71, 77, 80n47, 103–107, 110, 111, 115, 121, 122, 131–141, 143–146, 143n5, 150–153, 152n29, 155–158, 162n2, 163, 163n7, 166, 176, 186, 186n1, 197–200, 204, 217, 217n46, 221, 222, 225, 226, 228, 233, 234, 236, 237, 244, 258, 278, 279, 281,

383

285–290, 292–294, 297, 298, 340, 343, 343n19, 345, 355–356n1, 356n2, 358n8, 358n9, 359, 359n11, 360, 360n14, 364, 365, 365n26, 365–366n27, 370, 371, 371n44, 371n45, 372n46 Roncalli, Angelo, 148, 149, 155, 158 Rostotsky, Theodor, 55 Russian, viii, xii, 33, 34, 43, 52, 57–61, 68–72, 76n40, 76n41, 80n47, 96, 142–144, 143n4, 146, 166, 198, 219, 220, 223, 225, 233, 234, 236, 239–259, 261–280, 290 Russian Diaspora theologians, xii Russian émigrés, 36, 242, 264 Russian Empire, 39, 55–61, 57n31, 69, 80n47 Russian Orthodox Church, xi, xii, 12, 14, 49, 56, 57, 60, 65, 69, 70, 72, 73, 75, 162n1, 183, 187, 188, 197, 199, 200, 225, 261n1, 264 Ruthenia, 38 Ruthenians, 26–28, 38, 43, 43n4, 44, 44n8, 46, 47, 50–55, 52n24, 54n30, 60, 64, 71, 72, 75, 78, 103, 117–119, 132, 163, 165 S Sacraments, 77, 80, 224, 225, 246, 248, 277, 286, 295, 325–328, 325n32, 361, 371, 372 St. Gregory II, Pope (d. 731), 83 St. Innocent I, Pope (d. 417), 83 Schism, 13, 24, 26, 48, 83, 152, 220, 225, 227, 228, 230, 234, 246, 246n20, 256, 258, 283, 296 Schismatics, 25, 83, 134, 146n14, 147, 254, 269, 291

384 

INDEX

Schism of 1054, 146, 283 Scholarios, Gennadios, 24, 351 Scholastic theology, 23, 34, 285 Second Council of Lyon, 25 Second Council of Lyon in 1274, 20, 25, 283 Second Vatican Council, xi, 5, 29, 35, 36, 36n52, 150, 161–184, 252, 253, 256, 266, 272, 344, 361n18, 364n23 Serbia, 8, 14, 107, 154, 357, 358 Serbian, 117, 128, 129, 155 Serbian Orthodox Church, 128, 129 Serbs, 27, 117 Sheptytsky, Metropolitan Andrey (1865-1944), 15n39, 221, 244, 299n38 Siamashka, Joseph, x, 41, 56 Siamaška, Joseph, 61n39, 63–74 Sigismund III, King, 44, 44n7, 45, 49 Skarga, Peter (1536-1612), 50 Slavic, 39, 68, 158, 223, 223n10 Slavonic, 32, 43, 292 Slavophile, 39, 143n4, 228 Slipyi, Josyf, 187, 188 Slipyj, Josyf, 162, 163, 163n6, 168, 173, 180–181 Sobornost, 228–230, 242, 247, 250n35, 251, 253, 258, 266n12, 369n38 Socialist Block, 188, 189 Social mission, 230, 235, 237 Social reform, 233, 235 Soloviev, Vladimir Sergeyevich (1853-1900), xii, 219–238 Solovyov, Sergei, 33 Sophiology, 237 Soteriology, 88 Soviet, xi, 162n1, 163, 186–197, 199, 200, 282

Special, viii, ix, 8, 27, 29, 34, 68, 73, 76, 105, 107, 179, 182, 244, 246, 262, 277, 346, 366–367n30 Spiritual Intercommunion, 248 Sremski Karlovci, 118 Stephen I, Pope, 82 Stolen Churches, viii, 3, 7–9, 282, 340, 353 Synodal, x, xiv, 66, 67, 102, 106, 108, 111–116, 122, 123, 138, 178, 301–304, 306, 310, 311, 313, 370–372 Synodality and Primacy during the First Millennium, xiii, 307, 307n20, 349n40 Synodal principle, 303, 314 Synodical, xiii, 301–315 Synods of Ferrara-Florence (1438-45), 206 T Taft, Robert, 62, 222, 356n1, 374n49 Tertullian, 80 Theandrism, 268 Theologumenon, 205 Theosis, 220, 221, 231, 232, 324 Timothy II, Patriarch of Constantinople, 79 Tolstoy, Nicholas Fr., 224–226, 224n13, 238 Traditions, vii–ix, xi, xiii, 6n18, 15, 19, 20, 25–29, 32, 35, 39–40, 47–49, 56, 64, 76n40, 77, 80, 81, 90, 91, 93–99, 102, 103, 105, 108, 111–123, 140, 146, 152, 153, 157, 158, 176, 177, 179, 181, 182, 204, 218, 220–222, 236–239, 252, 259, 265, 270, 270n19, 271, 273, 278, 279, 283, 288, 292, 293, 295–298, 303, 305, 306, 309,

 INDEX 

311, 312, 319, 319n7, 321–323, 323n24, 330–333, 336n73, 343, 346, 347, 350, 352, 353, 360n15, 361, 367n30, 371n45, 374 Transylvanian, xi, 102, 105–107, 114, 119–123, 125, 127, 130, 131, 133, 140, 294n32 Tridentine Council, 225, 285, 289–291 Trinitarian, 207–210, 213, 214, 218, 268, 270, 273, 274, 274n29, 278, 302, 307, 320–325, 328, 330–333 Trinity, 6n18, 83, 206–211, 211n26, 213, 269, 271, 274, 278, 309n27, 320, 322, 323, 323n24, 329, 330, 333–335, 337 Turks, 22 U Urban VIII, Pope, 80, 135 Urban IX, Pope, 283 U.S.S.R., 185–200, 282 Ukraine, vii, x, 14, 16, 34, 42, 52, 57, 71, 75, 76n40, 80n47, 87–99, 102, 162, 162n1, 183, 187, 188, 190n10, 196, 197, 199, 200, 239, 244, 247, 257 Ukrainian, viii, xi, 26, 34, 36, 38, 43, 47, 58, 60, 71, 87, 89, 91–94, 96–99, 117, 161–184, 190, 196–199, 196n24, 203–218, 221 Ukrainian Catholic Church, xii, 165, 169, 180, 180n82, 203–218, 244, 298 Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU), 89, 90, 220 Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), xi, 162, 162n1, 188n4, 340n4, 345, 345n26, 350, 353

385

Una Sancta, xii, 250–253, 256, 261–280 Underground, 116, 162n1, 188, 197 Uniate Church, x, 14, 43–47, 55–57, 60, 61, 64, 69–71, 79, 101–116, 146–149, 153, 156–159, 176, 182, 356n1 Uniates, x, xi, 19, 27, 28, 39, 43n6, 46, 47, 55–60, 64, 65, 67, 70–72, 76n41, 77, 79, 93–99, 101–116, 141–159, 176, 196, 197, 199, 200, 355n1, 356n4, 357, 358, 360n14, 364, 366, 366n29, 367, 371, 374 Uniatism, xiii, 71, 80, 156, 233, 236, 289, 290, 342, 344, 345, 353, 355–374 Union, 13, 19, 41, 63, 102, 119, 141, 175, 198, 228, 262, 285, 342, 364 Unionists, ix, 19, 21, 24–33, 36, 37, 39, 212, 302n2 Union of Brest, x, 41–85, 206, 206n7 Union of Brest (1595–1596), x, 346, 359n10 Union of Brest of 1596, 38, 43, 64 Union of Lublin of 1569, 53 Union of Lyon (1274), 146 Unitatis Redintegratio (UR), 6n16, 6n18, 162, 174–183, 342, 343n18 United, 19, 21, 27, 38, 69, 84, 121, 143, 152, 166, 226, 229, 251, 254, 255, 257, 271, 278, 280, 298, 365n24 Universal, xii, 25, 74, 126, 171, 172, 218, 226, 228–230, 232–238, 254–256, 279, 293, 302n2, 303n4, 304, 307, 312, 320, 327, 333, 333n64, 341, 343, 344, 359n11, 365, 367n30, 368, 368n35, 371–373, 373n48

386 

INDEX

V Vatican Council, 111 Vatican II, xi, 6n18, 83, 164, 272n22, 279, 296, 317, 341, 342n11, 343, 352, 364, 365–366n27, 373n48, 374 Vienna, 80n47, 106, 107, 110, 119, 120, 122, 204, 207, 288, 314, 356n2, 357n7 Villains, x, 63–85 Vilnia, 58, 60, 64, 75, 76 Vilnius, 64, 65, 75, 190n12

West-East controversy, 73 Western, xii, 9n27, 22, 30, 37, 38, 43n4, 58n32, 61, 70, 73, 87, 93, 95, 118, 145, 147, 149, 151, 152, 156, 158, 264, 265, 273, 284, 291, 295, 296, 324n25 Western-Ruthenianism, 71 Williams, Rowan, 83 World Council of Churches (WCC), 1, 33, 156n42, 266, 272n22, 310n36, 318, 318n2, 318n4, 318n5, 357n5

W West, 20, 21, 24, 26, 31, 33, 35, 37, 38, 43, 52, 71, 72, 92, 122, 146, 154, 175, 175n66, 188, 208, 215, 228, 230, 233, 236, 237, 239–244, 246, 246n20, 249, 262–264, 266, 279, 283, 285, 298, 302, 303, 307–309, 311, 312, 349, 352, 365n24, 368

Y Yugoslavian, 189 Z Zernov, Nicolas (1898-1980), 243, 243n7 Zizioulas, John, xiii, 304, 308–309n27, 317–337, 370n43