Past Reunion Efforts Disrupted (Due to Islamic Occupation)?

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Past Reunion Efforts Disrupted (Due to Islamic Occupation)?

Forum: Theological Expressions
Re:

Reconciliation, Towards Unity: JOINT STATEMENT BY POPE, ORTHODOX PRELATE (Matthew Tan Yew Hock)
Re:

PAPAL APOLOGY TO GREEK ORTHODOX (Matthew Tan Yew Hock)
Re:

"Enemy" Churches Praying Together: Pope and Orthodox Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens (Matthew Tan Yew Hock)
Re:

Read What Christodoulos Says to John Paul II (Christopher Yip)
Re:

Reflections on the Sack of Constantinople in 1204 and Lesser-Known Byzantine Atrocities (Matthew Tan Yew Hock)
Re:

Greek Atrocities Against the Latins (Matthew Tan Yew Hock)
Date: 2001, Jun 05
From: Matthew Tan Yew Hock MatthewTan

Eastern Orthodoxy
Eastern Orthodoxy
One of the most tragic and frustrating divisions that exists within Christianity is the one between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches. Since 1054, the year the split became official, the Catholic Church and Orthodoxy have existed in a painful state of separation, though both have valid holy orders and apostolic succession through the episcopacy, both celebrate the same sacraments, both believe almost exactly the same theology (differences will be examined later in this tract), and both proclaim the same faith in Jesus Christ.
With all of these things shared in common, why the division? What caused the division? And what, if anything, can be done to bring about a reconciliation between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches? This tract will consider these issues.
We should first realize that the root of all division between Christians is human sin. Man is the cause of these divisions, not Christ, who desires that all Christians be united in one faith, believing and proclaiming the same doctrine (John 17:21). Paul exhorted the early Christians to cultivate this unity: "I appeal to you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree and that there be no dissensions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. For it has been reported to me . . . that there is quarreling among you, my brethren. What I mean is that each one of you says, 'I belong to Paul,' or 'I belong to Apollos,' or 'I belong to Cephas,' or 'I belong to Christ.' Is Christ divided?" (1 Cor. 1:10-13; cf. Phil. 1:27, 2:2).
In the fourth century, St. John Chrysostom said that if Christians truly followed the teachings of Christ, there would soon be no pagans left. Likewise, there would be no splits in the Body of Christ. Let's take a look at the historical background to the Catholic/Orthodox split.
After the Roman Empire legalized Christianity in A.D. 312, the Catholic Church elevated five patriarchs (bishops of ancient centers of Catholicism that had been founded by one of the apostles) to govern the quickly-expanding ranks of believers. These patriarchs became the principal bishops of the Catholic Church, and they had authority over subordinate bishops who held lesser sees within their patriarchate. In order of importance, the five patriarchates are Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. One of the official titles of the Pope is "Patriarch of Rome."

Emperor vs. Patriarch
To understand the history of Eastern Orthodoxy, one must understand how its character was shaped by the ever present conflict between the Church and state in the eastern part of the Roman Empire.
After the western Roman Empire collapsed in A.D. 476, the eastern half continued under the title of the Byzantine Empire and was headquartered in Constantinople. The patriarch of that city had jurisdiction over the patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, and served under the emperor, who ruled those lands with military might. The emperor wielded tremendous influence in Church affairs. Some emperors even claimed to be equal in authority to the Twelve Apostles, and as such claimed to have the power to appoint the patriarch of Constantinople. Although the two offices were legally autonomous, in practice the patriarch served at the emperor's pleasure. Many patriarchs of Constantinople were good and holy bishops who ruled well and resisted imperial encroachments on Church matters, but it's hard to withstand the designs of power-hungry or meddlesome emperors who had armed soldiers at their disposal.
The patriarch often attempted to bolster his position in the Universal Church to give himself more leverage in dealing with the emperor, and this usually brought him into conflict with Rome.
During the years of conflict between the East and West, the Roman pontiff remained firm, defending the Catholic faith against heresies and unruly or immoral secular powers, especially the Byzantine emperor. The first conflict came when Emperor Constantius appointed an Arian heretic as patriarch. Pope Julian excommunicated the patriarch in 343, and Constantinople remained in schism until John Chrysostom assumed the patriarchate in 398.
Ironically, in the Church's eighth-century struggle against the Iconoclastic heresy (the heresy that denied that sacred icons and statues were good and useful to the liturgical life of the Church and sought to eliminate all sacred images), it was the pope and the Western bishops mainly who defended and fought for the Catholic practice of venerating icons (which even to this day is still very much part of Orthodox liturgy and spirituality), and the patriarch of Constantinople sided with the heretical, iconoclastic Emperors.

1054 And All That
The Norman conquest of southern Italy touched off the Great Schism, the final tear in the fabric of Christendom. When the Catholic Normans took over the Byzantine-Rite Greek colonies in southern Italy, they compelled the Greek communities there to adopt the Latin Rite custom of using unleavened bread for the Eucharist. This caused great aggravation among the Greek Catholics because it went against their ancient custom of using leavened bread.
In response, Patriarch Cerularius ordered all of the Latin-Rite communities in Constantinople to conform to the Eastern practice of using leavened bread. You can imagine the uproar that ensued. The Latins refused, so the patriarch closed their churches and sent a hostile letter to Pope Leo IX.
What followed next was almost a comedy of errors. In an attempt to quell the disturbance, the Pope sent a three-man delegation, led by Cardinal Humbert, to visit Patriarch Cerularius. But things grew worse instead of better. The legates presented the patriarch with the pope's reply to his charges. Both sides managed to infuriate each another over diplomatic courtesies, and when the smoke cleared a serious rift had developed between the pope and the patriarch of Constantinople. This was not, however, the actual break between the two communions. It's a popular myth that the schism dates to the year 1054 and that the pope and the patriarch excommunicated each other at that time, but they did not.
Orthodox bishop Kallistos Ware (aka Timothy Ware) writes: "The choice of Cardinal Humbert was unfortunate, for both he and Cerularius were men of stiff and intransigent temper . . . After [an initial, unfriendly encounter] the patriarch refused to have further dealings with the legates. Eventually Humbert lost patience, and laid a Bull of Excommunication against Cerularius on the altar of the Church of the Holy Wisdom . . . Cerularius and his synod retaliated by anathematizing Humbert (but not the Roman Church as such)" (The Orthodox Church, 67).
The New Catholic Encyclopedia says that, "The consummation of the schism is generally dated from the year 1054, when this unfortunate sequence of events took place. This conclusion, however, is not correct, because in the bull composed by Humbert, only Patriarch Cerularius was excommunicated. The validity of the bull is questioned because Pope Leo IX was already dead at that time. On the other side, the Byzantine synod excommunicated only the legates and abstained from any attack on the Pope or the Latin Church."
(These mutual excommunications of the individuals involved were revoked in 1965 by the pope and the Byzantine patriarch.)
In reality, there was no single event which marked the schism, but rather a sliding into and out of schism during a period of several centuries, punctuated with temporary reconciliations. The East's final break with Rome did not come until the 1450s, a few decades before the Protestant Reformation.

Attempts at Reconciliation
"Even after 1054 friendly relations between East and West continued. The two parts of Christendom were not yet conscious of a great gulf of separation between them . . . The dispute remained something of which ordinary Christians in east and west were largely unaware" (Kallistos Ware, 67).
The two communions attempted to reconcile on a number of occasions. In 1274 the Second Council of Lyons was held, which brought about a union of the Eastern churches with Rome that lasted until 1282, before they again went into schism.
Another reunion council, the Council of Florence, was held between 1438 and 1445. This council was faced much adversity, including repeated transfers of its location, but it eventually succeeded in bringing the two communions back together, and the Eastern Orthodox Churches were reconciled once again to Rome.
But all of this changed when the Byzantine Empire collapsed suddenly in 1453. A soldier forgot to lock one of the gates of the fortified city of Constantinople, and the Turks exploited the mistake and sacked the city. With the Turks in control of the capital city, the rest of the empire crumbled quickly. Under pressure from the Muslims, most of the Eastern churches repudiated their union with Rome, and this is the split that persists to this day. The current Eastern Orthodox communion dates only from the 1450s, a mere sixty years before the Protestant Reformation.

Eastern Fragmentation
Two subsequent events, one external, the other internal, served to reduce the status of the patriarch of Constantinople to nearly to that of a figurehead. The sword of Islam gave military protection to the center of the Eastern Orthodox world, but at a high price. The Muslim sultan sold the office of patriarch to the highest bidder, and changed the occupants often to keep the money rolling in. From 1453 to 1923, the Turkish sultans deposed 105 out of the 159 Patriarchs. Six were murdered, and only 21 died of natural causes while in office.
Another mighty blow that weakened the authority and effectiveness of the patriarch came from Russia. Ivan the Great assumed the title of "Czar" (Russian for "Caesar"). Moscow was then called the "third Rome," and the Czar tried to assume the role of protector for Eastern Christianity.
With the collapse of the patriarchal system, the Eastern Church lost its center and fragmented along national lines. Russia claimed independence from the patriarch of Constantinople in 1589, the first nation to do this. Other ethnic and regional splintering quickly followed, and today there are a total of eleven independent Orthodox Churches, along with the Orthodox archbishops claiming the title patriarch in the original six patriarchal sees. The Russian Orthodox Church dominates contemporary Eastern Orthodoxy, representing a full seven-eighths of the total number of Orthodox Christians.

The Filioque problem
One theological disagreement that has received a great deal of attention over the centuries has to do with of the Latin compound word filioque ("and the Son") which was added to the Nicene Creed by Spanish Catholic bishops around the end of the sixth century. With this addition, the creed says that the Spirit "proceeds from the Father and the Son." Without the addition it simply says that the Spirit proceeds from the Father.
Eastern Orthodox have traditionally challenged this, either saying that the doctrine is inaccurate or, for those who believe that it is accurate, that the pope had not authority to insert this word into the creed.
Many today, both Eastern Orthodox and Catholics, are of the opinion that this controversy was a tempest in a teapot. The doctrine that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son as well as the Father is intimated in Scripture and present in the earliest Church Fathers. At the reunion council of Florence, when the citations from the early Fathers were shown to the Orthodox delegates, they accepted the doctrine. Controversy over it only arose again after the Eastern churches repudiated their union with Rome under pressure from the Muslims.

The Councils
A more substantive disagreement between Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox concerns the role of the pope and the ecumenical councils in the Church. Both sides are agreed that ecumenical councils have the ability to infallibly define doctrines, but a question arises concerning which councils are ecumenical.
The Eastern Orthodox communion bases its teachings on Scripture and "the seven ecumenical councils"--I Nicaea (325), I Constantinople (381), Ephesus (431), Chalcedon (451), II Constantinople (553), III Constantinople (680), and II Nicaea (787). Catholics recognize these as the first seven ecumenical councils, but not the only seven.
Catholics recognize there as having been an ensuing series of ecumenical councils, leading up to Vatican II, which closed in 1965, however, the Eastern Orthodox close off the ecumenical councils in 787, and no teaching after II Nicaea is accepted as of universal authority since that time.
One of the reasons the Eastern Orthodox have not claimed to have had any ecumenical councils since II Nicaea is that they have been unable to agree on which councils are ecumenical. In Orthodox circles, the test for whether a council is ecumenical is whether it is "accepted by the Church" as such. But that test is unworkable: Any disputants who are not happy with the result of a council can simply point to their own disagreement with it as evidence that the Church as a whole has not accepted it as ecumenical, and it therefore has no authority.

The authority of the Pope
Since the Eastern Schism began, the Orthodox have generally claimed that the pope has only a primacy of honor among the bishops of the world, not a primacy of authority. But the concept of a primacy of honor without a corresponding authority cannot be derived from the Bible. At every juncture where Jesus speaks of Peter's relation to the other apostles, he emphasizes his special mission to them and not simply honor among them.
In Matthew 16:19, Jesus gives Peter "the keys to the kingdom" and the power to bind and loose. While the latter is later given to the other apostles (Matt. 18:18), the former is not. In Luke 22:28-32, Jesus assures the apostles that they all have authority, but then he singles out Peter, conferring upon him a special pastoral authority over the other disciples which he is to exercise by strengthening their faith (22:31-32).
In John 21:15-17, with only the other disciples present (cf. John 21:2), Jesus asks Peter, "Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?"--in other words, is he more devoted to him than the other disciples? When Peter responds that he is, Jesus instructs him: "Feed my lambs" (22:15). Thus we see Jesus describing the other disciples, the only other people who are present, the ones whom Jesus refers to as "these," as part of the lambs that he instructs Peter to feed, giving him the role of pastor (shepherd) over them. Again, a reference to Peter having more than merely a primacy of honor with respect to the other apostles, but a primacy of pastoral discipline as well.

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