Is The Vatican Getting Serious About the Orthodox?

Yesterday, the Vatican announced the appointment by Pope John Paul II of an Eastern Catholic prelate as prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for the Eastern Churches.

Syrian Catholic Patriarch Ignace Moussa Daoud I of Antioch will head the Congregation.  He will be the second of only two Eastern Catholic churchmen so far to head the Vatican bureaucracy that is expressly in charge of "Eastern Church affairs."  

(The first was Msgr. Gabriel-Acace Coussa of the Melkite Rite, appointed to the post by Pope John XXIII in 1961 - although he died soon afterwards).

Patriarch Ignace M. Daoud will therefore be the one who will organize the Pope's trip to Ukraine in June of next year.

The Vatican is patting itself on the back for this appointment as a way to tell the Orthodox Church and the world that it is really serious about relations with the Christian East and that it "understands" it.

The Vatican has, by way of ecumenical commissions, already voiced its view that Uniatism was, in retrospect, a bad and ill-informed model of church unity.  It has promised that it will never again pursue it in future.

The Vatican has also proclaimed the Orthodox Churches as "Sister Churches who together with the Roman Church form 'two lungs' of the Church' and with which it "shares the Apostolic faith" and sacraments etc.

Yet, in practice, the Vatican has not been above sending Latin missionaries into Ukraine and Russia, ostensibly to promote both Catholicism and Uniatism, there. 

It is fine for the Vatican, in its recent document, "Dominus Jesus" to proclaim Roman Catholicism the "only true church" with a side reference to those "beloved" Sister Churches.

But when an Orthodox document emerged stating the traditional position of the Orthodox on this subject, then the Vatican got its nose all out of joint. 

A Vatican media release even misrepresented the position saying that "it would seem that salvation is only to be found in the Russian Orthodox Church."  There was no ethnic or national reference in the Orthodox statement at all, however.

And if Uniatism is no longer the model of church unity, according to the Vatican itself, then how does this impact the status of the Uniate churches?  If the Orthodox Church is a Sister Church, what would be wrong if the Uniates had an open option to return to their Mother?   

If the Orthodox Church shares the same Apostolic faith as the Roman Catholic, why is there no real movement on issues such as the Filioque?  Is all this taking the Orthodox East seriously?

But an even more serious chasm between ecumenical rhetoric and actual practice is in the very continued existence of the "Congregation for Eastern Churches."

Originally, this bureaucracy was set up not only to deal with Uniates of different Eastern Church backgrounds, but also with the evangelization of pagans and others. 

Perhaps the Vatican, at one point, saw Uniates and pagans as "Sister congregations" as well!

Commentators, both Catholic and Orthodox, have affirmed as much . . . Uniates, as in Ukraine, were viewed as "semi-Catholics," or as second-class Catholics.  For example, during public church processions in Poland, the Greek Catholic Metropolitan could follow only after the last Roman Catholic bishop.  Full and complete latinization, the practical end result, in any event, of the Union of Brest, was the ideal.

It was no wonder then that Rome tagged the Uniates onto the Congregation or bureaucracy that was responsible for missions among the pagans etc.

In modern times, this Congregation has left the pagans to others and has dedicated itself exclusively to the Ostpolitik of Orthodox-Catholic and East-West relations.

From an internal church point of view, the Congregation is the buffer between the Pope and the Uniate communities.

Rhetoric regarding church autonomy to the contrary, everything must go through this Congregation.  An Eastern Catholic Patriarch or Metropolitan must get the "go-ahead" from a simple bishop-secretary in this Congregation to do just about anything.  This I was told directly by Eastern Catholic hierarchs . . .

The Congregation stands as an anachronistic bureaucracy that represents, in actuality, the Vatican's distrust of the Uniate Churches.  Why?

It would seem that the Eastern Catholics are more sincere in their loyalty to Rome and Catholicism than the Vatican would, in political terms, want them to be.

The Vatican Council documents on the Eastern Catholics chide them for their Latinized ways of thinking and worshipping (and who has the ultimate responsibility for that, one may ask?).

Some Eastern Catholic bishops are even more "papal than the Pope."  Every time Rome tries to lob a soft political ball into the Orthodox court, the Uniates, even their very existence, appear to upset the serve.  What is a Vatican ecumenical politician to do?

Not only is the fact that the Eastern Catholic churches need to have a special Vatican overseer in the person of the Congregation an offense, the fact that the overriding majority of the Prefects have not even been of the Eastern Rite is also telling.  It tells a story about how seriously the Vatican takes Eastern spirituality and church autonomy!

The complete abrogation of the Congregation for the Eastern Churches is really the only way the Vatican may even begin to achieve a semblance of credibility here, not with the appointment of an Eastern Catholic prelate to it.

The Eastern Churches have no real autonomy to speak of.  Surely they have proven their loyalty to Rome, time and again.  They should be allowed to live their own lives.

If the Vatican is actually serious about the "Two Lung" theory of the Church, then why not put in place a means, in conjunction with the Orthodox Churches, for a return of the Uniates to them?   

And if the Vatican is worried about the attitudes of the Uniates, then perhaps it might begin addressing their underlying roots, chief of which is their alienation, practical as well as spiritual, from their Mother Orthodox Church.  This has been brought on by the Vatican's historic (and, for all intents and purposes, unchanged) policy on Uniatism.

The ecumenical-political rhetoric of the Vatican media office isn't fooling anyone, least of all the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches.  There seems to be separate positions for everyone all around.

But the main concerns in its relations with the Orthodox Church are precisely the ones that seem to be largely ignored.  These are the theological roots of the break of AD 1054, the Filioque, the papacy and so on.  They won't go away by themselves, if the Vatican imagines they will. 

The Vatican should also start by listening more to the Roman Catholic theologians and students of the Eastern Church, rather than to its diplomat-politicians in this respect.

The Vatican media release ends with an enthusiastic exclamation about the real possibility of the Patriarch-appointee becoming a Cardinal.

As if to add insult to injury, the release writers obviously have no appreciation for the status of "Patriarch" in the Church.  As a Patriarch, the appointee is already on the same level as the Pope himself, who is also a Patriarch. 

To become a Cardinal on "top" of that is really irrelevant to the Eastern spiritual perspective.  Cardinals are an entirely Latin Church position and role.  

If the Vatican were at all serious about its relations with Eastern Christianity, it should  hope that the Roman Church will always have fewer, than more, Eastern Catholic Cardinals, or, ideally, none at all.  We shall all stay tuned!

Dr. Alexander Roman  alex@unicorne.org