Roman Catholic

SCOBA has released the joint response of the North American Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation to the international dialogue’s 2007 “Ravenna Document.” This took place at the Consultation’s 77th meeting, held at Saint Paul’s College in Washington, from October 22-24, 2009. It was presided over by Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Maximos of Pittsburgh and Roman Catholic Archbishop Gregory Aymond of New Orleans. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops also released a statement on Ravenna.

Catholic Culture said that North American statement was “a candid critique of the 2007 ‘Ravenna document,’ a modest milestone in Catholic-Orthodox ecumenical relations.” Continue reading →

See you next year in Vienna:

According to a statement released by the dialogue commission Oct. 23, the commission’s Orthodox members discussed “the negative reactions to the dialogue by certain Orthodox circles and unanimously considered them as totally unfounded and unacceptable, providing false and misleading information.”

The Orthodox delegates “reaffirmed that the dialogue continues with the decision of all the Orthodox churches and is pursued with faithfulness to the truth and the tradition of the church,” said the statement released in Cyprus and at the Vatican.

At the Catholic Mass Oct. 17, Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and head of the Catholic delegation, “stressed that the spirit of humility and love should prevail in the work” of the commission.

Archbishop Chrysostomos II of Cyprus, host of the meeting, presided over the Orthodox Divine Liturgy Oct. 18. He said all the Orthodox churches are committed to a dialogue that holds firmly to the teachings of the ecumenical councils and the Fathers of the Church of the first 1,000 years of Christianity.

The joint sessions of the dialogue focused on discussing a draft report, “The Role of the Bishop of Rome in the Communion of the Church in the First Millennium.” After discussing and amending the text, the commission decided to finalize it next September during a meeting in Vienna, Austria, the statement said.

Read “As some protest, Catholic-Orthodox dialogue discusses role of papacy” on the Catholic News Service.

In an interview with the National Catholic Register’s Edward Pentin, Archbishop Hilarion of Volokolamsk talks about his first official visit to Rome in September as chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Affairs. He offers a caution about any Catholic-Orthodox union, something that media reports and at least one Catholic bishop said was imminent. In pointing out that the Roman Catholic understanding of the primacy of the bishop of Rome was a chief sticking point, Archbishop Hilarion also observed that the Orthodox have primacy issues, too. At least from the Russian perspective.

NCR: Archbishop Paolo Pezzi of Moscow was recently very optimistic about Catholic-Orthodox unity, saying it could possibly happen in a matter of months. What is your reaction to Archbishop Pezzi’s words, and what is your analysis of the current progress towards reunification?

Pope Benedict and Archbishop Hilarion

Archbishop Hilarion: I would be more cautious with regard to progress towards unity between the two Churches. Yes, I agree that the Russian Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Churches have a common understanding on issues concerning social and economic ethics, personal morality, family, bioethics and other topical issues facing the modern society.

This agreement enables our Churches already now to bear common witness to Christian ideals in the face of the secular world. A perfect unity between Churches however presupposes first of all harmony in faith, and here the situation appears to me to be more complicated.

The Joint Commission for Orthodox-Catholic Theological Dialogue now begins discussing the most important issue — though not the only one that divides the Catholics and the Orthodox — concerning the primacy of the bishop of Rome in the universal Church.

Unlike Archbishop Pezzi, I do not think we can reach a perfect agreement on this point in a matter of a few months. I have already had to point out that the problem of primacy within the universal Church has not been settled even within the world Orthodoxy. Continue reading →

From Interfax:

Archbishop Hilarion of Volokolamsk

Moscow, September 21 — Head of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations Archbishop Hilarion of Volokolamsk, who is visiting Rome, has celebrated the Divine Liturgy in Catacombs of St. Callixtus.

Speaking to believers after the service, the Archbishop urged to overcome a thousand-year-old dispute between Christians of East and West and reminded about heroism of first Christians who prayed in catacombs and preserved unity in spite of persecutions from outside.

“Denied by the world, far from human eyes, deep under ground in caves, first Roman Christians performed the feat of prayer. Their life brought fruit of holiness and martyr heroism. The Holy Church was built on their blood shed for Christ,” the DECR press service has cited Archbishop Hilarion as saying.

Then Church came out of the catacombs, but Christian unity was lost, the Archbishop further said. Today, when the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church don’t have Eucharist communication and many Protestants gave up fundamental Christian principles, “we should clearly understand, that division is sin, tearing apart body of Church and weakening the power of Christian witness in secular world,” Archbishop Hilarion stressed.

He reminded that human sin was the cause of all divisions, while Christian unity could be restored only in the way of sanctity.

“Each of us, conscientiously fulfilling a task the Church has given him or her, is called to personally contribute in treasury of Christian sanctity and work to achieve God-commanded Christian unity,” the Archbishop said in his sermon.

And he meets with Pope Benedict:

Archbishop Hilarion highlighted the importance of mutual testimony by Orthodox and Catholic believers of traditional Christian values before the secular world. He noted the identiсal views of the Orthodox and the Catholic Churches on such matters as family, maternity, demographic crisis, euthanasia and many other ethical problems.

Archbishop stated that there were certain significant differences on these matters between the Orthodox and the Catholics, on the one hand, as well as with different Protestant communities which had pursued the liberalization of the Christian teaching.

In this context, the cooperation between the Orthodox and the Catholic Churches to develop a mutual position on the above matters gains specific meaning, Archbishop Hilarion believes.

Also see “Archbishop Hilarion’s speech at Sant’Egidio” on the National Catholic Register blog. Edward Pentin has translated part of the the archbishop’s speech from the “flawless Italian.” Excerpt:

We live in a de-Christianized world, in a time that some define—mistakenly—as post-Christian. Contemporary society, with its practical materialism and moral relativism, is a challenge to us all. The future of humanity depends on our response, as Christians, to this challenge, and maybe even whether life continues on our planet. It is a common challenge and also our answer must be common. Only together can we put forward all the spiritual and moral value of the Christian faith; only together can we offer our Christian vision for the family, only together can we affirm our concept of social justice, of a more equal distribution of goods.

These moral values are traditional because they have been affirmed by Christians for 20 centuries and have formed our cultural and European civilization. They are, at the same time, very new and modern, because the Gospel of Jesus is eternally new and modern. With this common challenge, the contemporary world challenges us, and we Christians must be together. It’s time to pass from confrontation to solidarity, mutual respect, and esteem. I would say without hesitating that we must pass to mutual love, living out Jesus’s commandment to love one another. As Jesus said, all will know you are disciples of mine if you have love for the other. This is what our preaching demands and it can be effective, it can be convincing, also in our contemporary world, if we are able to live this mutual love among us as Christians.