C ENTRO P RO U NIONE Semi-Annual Bulletin A publication about the activities of the Centro Pro Unione “UT OMNES UNUM SINT” Digital Edition Web https://bulletin.prounione.it E-mail bulletin@prounione.it 2532-4144 Digital Edition ISSN N. 94 - Fall 2018 E-book In this issue `Centro Conferences Paul McPartlan Chieti and the Trajectory of Catholic-Orthodox Dialogue `Centro Conferences James F. Puglisi, SA `Letter from the Director 3 2 Teemu Sippo Communion in Growth 10 Simo Peura `Centro Conferences 11 Introduction to Communion in Growth Raimo Goyarrola `Centro Conferences 13 Presentation of Communion in Growth `Centro Conferences A Ministry of the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement Centro Pro Unione Communion in Growth. Declaration on the Church, Eucharist and Ministry `Centro Conferences James F. Puglisi Tomi Karttunen 21 18 Communion in Growth. Declaration on the Church, Eucharist and Ministry Kurt Cardinal Koch `Centro Conferences 28 Thanksgiving for the Dialogue Kurt Cardinale Koch `Centro Conferenze 30 Il dialogo come linfa vitale dell’ecumenismo Don Jonathan Pogson Doria Pamphilj `Centro Conferences 36 50 th Anniversary Greeting from Jonathan Pogson Doria Pamphilj Centro Pro Unione Bulletin 2 Centro Pro Unione Bulletin A semi-annual publication about the activities of the Centro Pro Unione The Centro Pro Unione in Rome, founded and directed by the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement, - www.atonementfriars.org - is an ecumenical research and action center. Its purpose is to give space for dialogue, to be a place for study, research and formation in ecumenism: theological, pastoral, social and spiritual. The Bulletin has been pubblished since 1968 and is released in Spring and Fall. IN THIS ISSUE Letter from the Director EDITORIAL STAFF bulletin@prounione.it Contact Information Via Santa Maria dell'Anima, 30 I-00186 Rome (+39) 06 687 9552 pro@prounione.it Website, Social media www.prounione.it @EcumenUnity CENTRO PRO UNIONE A Ministry of the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement DIRECTOR'S DESK N. 94 - Fall 2018 Fr. James Puglisi, SA – Director Centro Pro Unione James F. Puglisi, SA Director Centro Pro Unione Fall 2018, n. 94 / Digital Edition (Web) ›Paul McPartlan ›Teemu Sippo ›Simo Peura ›Raimo Goyarrola ›Tomi Karttunen ›James F. Puglisi ›Kurt Cardinal Koch ›Don Jonathan Pogson Doria Pamphilj ›Week of Prayer for Christian Unity he Bulletin – Centro Pro Unione contains articles and research for the enrichment of those interested in following the developments of ecumenical and interreligious relations. This past year marked the 50 th anniversary of the foundation of the Centro Pro Unione by the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement. Several lectures celebrating this event are included in this issue of the Bulletin as well the announcement of some future events to conclude this jubilee year. At the beginning of the year, Msgr. Paul McPartlan masterfully illustrated the trajectory of Catholic and Orthodox relations after the agreement signed at Chieti. Taken together with the results of the Pan-orthodox council held in Crete, McPartlan traced some paths that Orthodox and Catholics may be able to take that will eventually lead to greater communion between the two churches. Moreover, “growth in communion” is a theme that we explored not only with the Orthodox but also with the Lutheran church. To this end the Centro sponsored a mini- symposium which presented the recently published work of the Joint Lutheran and Catholic Commission in Finland: Communion in Growth. Declaration on the Church, Eucharist and Ministry. After brief introductions presented by the Catholic Bishop of Helsinki, Teemu Sippo and by the Evangelical Lutheran Bishop of the Church of Finland, Simo Peura, Prof. Raimo Goyarrola took us on a journey exploring the development of the document. He concludes by raising some important issues which still need further attention from a Catholic perspective. From the Lutheran side, Dr. Tomi Karttunen succinctly considered two essential points of the document: first considering the Church as communion in the Triune God and secondly communion and sacramental ministry. He concludes that the convergence achieved is important and, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the work of the commission may be able to treat the remaining differences less from the point of view as church-dividing. Fr. Puglisi, in his presentation makes an attempt to situate the positive results in the context of the document From Conflict to Communion as well as the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification. At the conclusion of the mini-symposium his eminence Cardinal Koch some words of thanksgiving for the work and results of this important local Lutheran- Catholic dialogue. The 50 th anniversary celebration of the Centro Pro Unione took place in two moments: one informal and the other in a more formal academic setting. For the former, the Centro staff organized an “ecumenical tea” which evoked the beginnings of the Centro’s activities during the years of the Second Vatican Council. During the afternoon event, in addition to sharing on a less formal level there were two presentations evoking the Atonement Franciscan spirit which animates the ministry of the Centro. First Cardinal Koch spoke on the importance of dialogue as the life blood of ecumenism. His text, in Italian, “Il dialogo come linfa vitale dell’ecumenismo” is a courageous calling us back to the importance of dialogue in the encounter of the other. This thrust is one that Pope Francis has constantly used as a means of breaking down walls or barriers that continue keep us from encountering the other whether because of prejudices or even the more radical effort to eliminate the other. The principles of dialogue are represented in all the ministries of the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement whether they be in the area of theology and ecumenism or in their social ministries of recovery from addictions so that the person’s human dignity may be restored and be at-one with God’s purpose of creation. It was more to this latter aspect that Prince Jonathan Doria Pamphilj made reference in his remarks. Referring to his parents who made available the space at the Collegio Innocenziano he said that “Frank and Orietta (...) transmitted the fundamental values of reconciliation and dialogue to us, which is why we are unanimous in our desire to continue to support the Centro and all its magnificent work”. Looking forward as we bring to a close this jubilee year for the Centro, we have the honor of having Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, Secretary General of the World Council of Churches to address the issue of mutual accountability in the ecumenical movement. His lecture also celebrates the 70 th anniversary of the foundation of the WCC (1948-2018). The 21 st annual lecture in honor of our Founders of the Society of the Atonement will be a commemoration of the 800 th anniversary of Francis of Assisi’s encounter with the Sultan. The lecture St. Francis and the Sultan – Foundations for Christian-Muslim Dialogue in the 21st Century will be jointly presented by Fr. Michael Calabria, ofm and Dr. Muhammad Shafiq. This Bulletin is in- dexed in the ATLA Religion Database, published by the American Theological Library Associa- tion, 250 S. Wacker Drive, 16 th Floor, Chicago, IL 60606 (www.atla.com). TCentro Pro Unione Bulletin CENTRO CONFERENCES 3 N. 94 - Fall 2018 The Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church began its work in 1980 and is now considering the most contentious issue of all between Catholics and Orthodox, namely the relationship between synodality and primacy, and in particular the role of the bishop of Rome as universal primate. The most recent agreed statement of the dialogue has the title: Synodality and Primacy during the First Millennium: Towards a Common Understanding in Service to the Unity of the Church (Chieti, 2016). 1 I would like to reflect on the dialogue: what has it achieved, where is it going, and how does that most recent Chieti document fit into the story? In his apostolic letter, Praeclara Gratulationis (1894), on ‘The Reunion of Christendom’, Pope Leo XIII expressed in particular his desire for reunion between the Eastern Churches and the Catholic Church, and he spoke with great warmth about the Eastern Churches. ‘The Principal subject of contention’, he said, ‘is the Primacy of the Roman Pontiff’, and he urged the East to ‘return to that one Holy Faith which has been handed down’ to both of us ‘from time immemorial’. Before the man-made 1 All of the agreed statements of the international dialogue are available at: 2 https://goo.gl/zMWdLi (Retrieved: October 31, 2018) division between us, he said, ‘the East, like the West, agreed without hesitation in its obedience to the Pontiff of Rome, as the Legitimate Successor of St Peter, and, therefore, the Vicar of Christ here on earth’. 2 Unfortunately, that is not an accurate reading of history. More accurate is what the Chieti document says, namely that, in the first millennium, while the bishop of Rome was certainly held in honour in the East, the East did not see him as exercising a primacy among all the bishops as successor of Peter, the first of the apostles (§16), and he ‘did not exercise canonical authority over the churches of the East’ (§19). Moreover, the title ‘vicar of Christ’ for the bishop of Rome was not even adopted in the West until around 1200, by Pope Innocent III. So, despite his best intentions, those statements of Pope Leo were very skewed historically, and it is not really surprising, therefore, that his call to the East bore little fruit. The patriarch of Constantinople said in a letter of his own in 1895 that he hesitated to respond to Pope Leo’s letter because it was ‘unprofitable to speak to the ears of those who do not hear’. 3 In recent years, the international dialogue has been making great efforts to listen carefully to one another, and to portray history accurately. That is one of the reasons why it has taken nine years to reach the Chieti agreement after the groundbreaking Ravenna document, on ecclesial communion, conciliarity and authority, in 2007. First of all, we painstakingly produced a historical document on the role of the bishop of Rome in the communion of the Church in the first millennium, but it was voted down by the Orthodox in Vienna in 2010, then some thought that we should simply abandon history since we will never agree on it, and so we tried a strongly theological document on synodality and primacy, but that too failed in Amman, Jordan, in 2014. We then sought a judicious combination of history and theology, and finally succeeded in Chieti. The Chieti document very significantly said: ‘it is necessary to reflect upon history’. ‘God reveals himself in history. It is particularly important to undertake together a theological reading of the 2 POPE LEO XIII, Apostolic Letter, Praeclara Gratulationis (1894), at: 2 https://goo.gl/7gqq2y (Retrieved: October 31, 2018) 3 See M. VGENOPOULOS, Primacy in the Church from Vatican I to Vatican II: An Orthodox Perspective(DeKalb, IL: NIU Press, 2013) 43. CHIETI AND THE TRAJECTORY OF CATHOLIC-ORTHODOX DIALOGUE Msgr Paul McPartlan - Carl J. Peter Professor of Systematic Theology and Ecumenism · School of Theology and Religious Studies, The Catholic University of America, Washington DC · Member of the international Roman Catholic-Orthodox theological dialogue since 2005 Conference given at the Centro Pro Unione, Thursday, 18 January 2018 Msgr Paul McPartlan – Professor of Systematic Theology and Ecumenism `Msgr Paul McPartlanCentro Pro Unione Bulletin CENTRO CONFERENCES 4 N. 94 - Fall 2018 history of the Church’s liturgy, spirituality, institutions and canons, which always have a theological dimension’ (§6). Pope Leo urged the Eastern churches to ‘return to that one Holy Faith which has been handed down’ to both of us. In other words, he took it that they had broken away from the Catholic Church. It is only fair to acknowledge the mirror image of that view often found among Orthodox. Two years ago, in an Orthodox church in Massachusetts, I picked up a leaflet with the title: ‘A Timeline of Church History: Tracing the birth and continuity of the Orthodox Church from Pentecost to the present’. The diagram inside showed a straight line of continuity from Pentecost to the Orthodox Church today. The Roman Catholic Church is shown branching off in 1054. At that point, it says, ‘the Roman Patriarch pulled away from the other four, pursuing his long-developed claim of universal headship of the Church’. So, it was the Catholics that broke away. As an Englishman, I was particularly intrigued by its interpretation of what happened in 1066. As every English schoolboy knows, that was the date of the Norman Conquest, when the French invaded England. The monarchy, laws, language and architecture of England were changed for ever. According to the leaflet, however, there was another change, which I must say I had never heard mentioned before: 1066, it said, ‘Norman conquest of Britain. Orthodox hierarchs ... replaced [by] those loyal to Rome’! What about St Augustine of Canterbury, sent from Rome to England by Pope Gregory already in 596, the Synod of Whitby in 664 which agreed to follow the Roman method for the dating of Easter, and so on? We are all tainted by the tendency to see history in a self- favouring way, often without really thinking, and it is a huge obstacle to ecumenical progress. Partisan history, by its very nature, will always divide us. But that is not the same as claiming that history itself will always divide us. Secular examples such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the 1990s in South Africa show the healing that can happen when both sides in a conflict face up to the realities of history together. It is not easy, but it is possible to go back and write history together. That is the way to a healing of memories, and the decision by Rome and Constantinople in 1965 to ‘remove from memory and from the midst of the Church’ 4 the mutual excommunications of 1054, which so poisoned relations between West and East, is an outstanding example of such a healing of memories. Only love and a readiness to say sorry makes that possible. I always think 4 See E. J. STORMON, ed., Towards the Healing of Schism: The Sees of Rome and Constantinople (New York/Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1987) 127. that the first principle of ecumenism is: where there’s a will, there’s a way. We have to be ready to forgive one another, to love one another, to draw a line under history and to move on, knowing that the fulness of truth lies ahead of us, not behind. At the Last Supper, Jesus said that the Holy Spirit ‘will guide you into all the truth’ (Jn 16:13). It might be said that ecumenism is wanting to make that journey into the fulness of truth together. Pope John Paul II once asked: ‘Why did the Holy Spirit permit all these divisions?’ He acknowledged that part of the cause of the divisions in Christianity was human sin, but there is more to it than that, he said. We trust that God can bring good even from evil, so ‘Could it not be that these divisions have also been a path continually leading the Church to discover the untold wealth contained in Christ’s Gospel and in the redemption accomplished in Christ?’ ‘Perhaps’, he said, ‘all this wealth would not have come to light otherwise’. 5 It is a fascinating thought that perhaps the divisions are caused not so much by a surfeit of sin but rather by the sheer abundance of truth, that finite human beings struggle to grasp and hold together. Every Christian tradition treasures at least some aspects of the one truth, and each is really holding those gifts in trust on behalf of all, because they truly belong to all. Even though we might appreciate the various separate conservation efforts, we cannot therefore justify continuing division, said Pope John Paul. ‘The time must come for the love that unites us to be manifested!’ And he thought that time was now! 6 That is surely why in his famous encyclical letter on ecumenism, Ut Unum 5 POPE JOHN PAUL II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope (London: Jonathan Cape,1994) 152-3 (emphasis in original). 6 POPE JOHN PAUL II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope 153 (emphasis in original). `Ms. Heather Walker from the Lay Centre at Foyer Unitas and some students Msgr Paul McPartlan – Professor of Systematic Theology and EcumenismCentro Pro Unione Bulletin CENTRO CONFERENCES 5 N. 94 - Fall 2018 Sint (1995) he said that ecumenical dialogue is always ‘an exchange of gifts’ (§28). Now, it is certainly true that Catholics and Orthodox have gifts to share, particularly with regard to synodality and primacy. In an important speech at Vatican II, Bishop Elias Zoghby of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, positioned as it were between Catholics and Orthodox, said that the great schism had ‘mutilated’ them both. ‘When it lost communion with the apostolic sees of the East’, he said, ‘the Western Church ... lost the most collegial segment of the episcopal college.’ ‘Centralisation was carried out at an extraordinary pace without anyone being able to hold it in check.’ On the other hand, he said, the Eastern Churches ‘lost ... communion with the centre of unity of the whole Church which is the Bishop of Rome’. ‘Excessive decentralisation has weakened them considerably, making difficult the regular practice of episcopal collegiality, which nevertheless remains their principal system of government.’ What he then said is so like what Pope John Paul said thirty years later that we might almost wonder whether the young Archbishop of Krakow was listening very attentively to Zoghby’s speech that day in St Peter’s. God draws good from evil, said Zoghby, and he ‘wanted this unhappy break to protect the Orthodox Churches from centralisation and Latinisation’, so that in the fulness of time our dialogue would be ‘immensely profitable’ and bring a ‘great enrichment’ to the Church ‘when it is again made one’. 7 Let us see how Catholics and Orthodox set out on that path. The historic encounter between Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem on 5-6 January 1964 inaugurated the modern push for reconciliation between Catholics and Orthodox, after nine hundred years of separation, and regular, prominent meetings of successive popes and ecumenical patriarchs have been a notable feature of Catholic-Orthodox relations ever since. The election of Pope Francis in 2013 has had a dramatic effect not only on the Catholic Church and the world at large, but also on Catholic- Orthodox dialogue. When Pope Francis appeared on the balcony of St Peter’s after his election, he instantly sent some new signals about his ministry and office. He referred to himself not as the new supreme pontiff but as the new bishop of Rome, and he used St Ignatius of 7 E. ZOGHBY, ‘Eastern and Western Tradition in the One Church’, in H. KÜNG, Y. CONGAR and D. O’HANLON, eds, Council Speeches of Vatican II (Glen Rock: Paulist Press, 1964) 49-54, at 53. Antioch’s phrase from the earliest patristic times when he referred to Rome as the church ‘which presides in charity’, 8 implicitly understanding the Church as a communion, not a pyramid. Six days later, for the first time ever, a patriarch of Constantinople attended the inauguration of a new bishop of Rome, apparently because Patriarch Bartholomew was so impressed by those first words of the new pope. The two leaders met again in May 2014 in Jerusalem, commemorating fifty years since the meeting there of Pope Paul and Patriarch Athenagoras, and then once again in November 2014, when Pope Francis visited Constantinople for the feast of St Andrew. In Constantinople, Pope Francis made a most important statement, reiterating exactly some of the key decisions of Vatican II, which have really changed the whole framework for Catholic-Orthodox relations. He said that ‘the restoration of full communion does not signify the submission of one to the other, or assimilation’, and he then said, very simply and clearly: I want to assure each one of you here that, to reach the desired goal of full unity, the Catholic Church does not intend to impose any conditions except that of the shared profession of faith. Further, I would add that we are ready to seek together, in light of Scriptural teaching and the experience of the first millennium, the ways in which we can guarantee the needed unity of the Church in the present circumstances. 8 ST IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH, Letter to the Romans, Prologue. `The hall during the conference Msgr Paul McPartlan – Professor of Systematic Theology and EcumenismCentro Pro Unione Bulletin CENTRO CONFERENCES 6 N. 94 - Fall 2018 The one thing that the Catholic Church desires, and that I seek as Bishop of Rome, ‘the Church which presides in charity’, is communion with the Orthodox Churches. 9 What the Catholic Church, and the pope himself, are seeking, therefore, is communion with the Orthodox Churches, not jurisdiction over them. That needs to be emphasised again and again. It is what pertained in the first millennium, which is our guide (see the Chieti document, §7), as we have long recognised. At that time, as the Chieti document says: ‘the bishop of Rome did not exercise canonical authority over the churches of the East’ (§19). The year 2016 saw the historic meeting between Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow in Havana, Cuba, in February, and the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, held in June on the island of Crete. The council said very firmly that ‘The Orthodox Church ... believes unflinchingly that she occupies a central place in the matter of the promotion of Christian unity in the world today’. 10 That is an important refutation of the arguments of those Orthodox who object to ecumenism. Unfortunately, the document said nothing in particular about the Catholic Church, unlike the strong recognition of the special status of the Eastern Churches in Vatican II’s decree on ecumenism. 11 Nevertheless, while only ten of the fourteen autocephalous Orthodox churches actually attended the council, thirteen of them took part in the plenary session of the Catholic-Orthodox dialogue just three months later in Chieti. That large turnout for the plenary was surely significant. 1964 was indeed the breakthrough year for Catholic ecumenism. Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras met in Jerusalem in January, and on 21 November that year the Second Vatican Council promulgated three key documents: its dogmatic constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium (LG), its decree on ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio (UR), and the decree on the Catholic Eastern Churches, Orientalium Ecclesiarum — the three documents form a closely related trio. What followed, for fifteen years, was the ‘dialogue of charity’ between Catholics and Orthodox, getting to know and love one another again, after such a long estrangement, and then in 1979 Pope John Paul II 9 POPE FRANCIS, Address at the Divine Liturgy in the Patriarchal Church of St George, Istanbul, 30 November 2014, at: 2 https://goo.gl/cgrPC9 (Retrieved: October 31, 2018) 10 Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, Relations of the Orthodox Church with the Rest of the Christian World, §1, at: 2 https://goo.gl/2KNA44 (Retrieved: October 31, 2018) 11 See Unitatis Redintegratio (1964), §§14-18. and Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios announced the start of the theological dialogue, which necessarily relies on a continuing dialogue of charity. 12 The theological dialogue, the ‘dialogue of truth’, made strong progress through the 1980s. It hit severe difficulties, however, around 1990, with the fall of communism. A new freedom of religion allowed many members of the Catholic Eastern Churches, often brutally repressed under the Soviet empire, to re-assert their Catholic identity, thus raising again the thorny issue of ‘uniatism’, namely the existence of Eastern Churches in communion with Rome. Orthodox delegates insisted that that topic be moved to the top of the agenda. A statement on uniatism, firmly calling it the ‘method of union of the past’ and contrasting it with ‘the present search for full communion’, was agreed at Balamand in 1993, but that did not fully resolve the issue. An unproductive meeting was held in Baltimore in 2000 and then the dialogue came to a halt. Happily, it resumed in 2005, largely because of some significant gestures of charity by Pope John Paul II in the meantime. The newly-constituted international dialogue held its first plenary meeting in Belgrade in 2006, and it is notable that the commission was welcomed to Serbia not only by the Serbian Orthodox Church but also by the civil authorities — both the Prime Minister and the President of Serbia hosted dinners for us. The Prime Minister said: ‘The Churches of East and West are setting an extraordinary example by means of their dialogue ... [T]here is no alternative to dialogue’ if ‘confronted peoples and communities’ are to achieve ‘peace, confidence, solidarity and cooperation.’ 13 The world warms to the witness of dialogue. Even before the full communion that we hope for, our very dialogue is itself a work of God’s grace and a sign of peace. Cardinal Walter Kasper once said that in the twentieth century, which was horribly marked by war and innocent suffering, ecumenism was ‘a light shining in the darkness, and a powerful peace movement’. 14 When the formal international dialogue began in 1980, a Plan was agreed and it specified very wisely that the dialogue ‘should begin with the elements which 12 See STORMON, Towards the Healing of Schism, 367-368. 13 QuotedinthefinalCommuniqueoftheBelgrademeeting. 14 W. KASPER, “The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity: Origin and Continuing Inspiration of the Ecumenical Movement”, address at the Centro Pro Unione, Rome, 24 January 2008, in Bulletin of the Centro Pro Unione, n.73 (Spring 2008) 15-20, at 16. Msgr Paul McPartlan – Professor of Systematic Theology and EcumenismCentro Pro Unione Bulletin CENTRO CONFERENCES 7 N. 94 - Fall 2018 unite the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches’. 15 Statements on Eucharist, Church and Trinity (1982); on faith, sacraments and ecclesial unity (1987); and on ordination and apostolic succession (1988) all followed swiftly as a blessed reminder of how much we share. A pattern may be discerned in that particular sequence of topics. Catholics and Orthodox want to share the Eucharist together again. The 1980 Plan stated that the purpose of the dialogue is ‘the re-establishment of full communion’ which will ‘find its expression in the common celebration of the holy eucharist’ (Plan, §I). First and foremost, then, it is important for Catholics and Orthodox to agree on what the Eucharist actually is. That was the purpose of the first statement. Then there are various conditions that are necessary for participation in the Eucharist, especially baptism and unity in faith. The second statement dealt with those topics. Then also, the celebration of the Eucharist requires bishops and priests, properly ordained in apostolic succession. The third statement considered those matters. The proper celebration of the Eucharist by the bishop and his presbyters in each local church actually requires two kinds of communion, vertical and horizontal, so to speak. Apostolic succession expresses the communion of bishops vertically, through history, and synodality or what Catholics normally call collegiality expresses their communion horizontally, across the world today. So a fourth document was planned dealing with that final point, almost like the final part of the equation. The whole 15 “Plan to Set Underway the Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church”, II, 1. The Plan may be found in J. BORELLI and J. H. ERICKSON, eds, The Quest for Unity: Orthodox and Catholics in Dialogue (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press/Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1996) 47-52. scheme was focused on preparing the ground for Catholics and Orthodox to celebrate the Eucharist together again. A draft of that fourth document was prepared in 1990, when the Iron Curtain fell and the complexities mentioned above began, and the draft had to be set aside. It was that draft, duly revised, that became the important Ravenna document, in 2007. Ever since this dialogue began, it has been concerned to clarify what the Church’s communion life should look like. The Ravenna document distinguished three levels in the life of the Church: the local level, the regional level, and the universal level. The history and tradition of the Church shows that at each level the communion life or synodality that is characteristic of the Church has had a focal point in one who is ‘first’ (protos) or ‘head’ (kephale) — hence the existence of primacy (§§20, 24, 44). The bishop is first or head among his people in the local church; the metropolitan or patriarch is first or head among the bishops at the regional level of the Church’s life; and there has also been and ought to be a first or head at the universal level among the metropolitans and patriarchs. ‘Primacy at all levels is a practice firmly grounded in the canonical tradition of the Church’, says Ravenna, but it must never be forgotten that ‘[p]rimacy and conciliarity [or synodality] are mutually interdependent’ (§43). Those two affirmations were crucial achievements of the Ravenna document, and the Chieti document reiterates them, together with the idea of there being three levels in the Church’s life: local, regional and universal. That is important for continuity, but also because the Russian delegates left the Ravenna meeting, and the Patriarchate of Moscow, therefore, never accepted the Ravenna document. Russian Orthodox delegates were present, however, in Chieti, and that means that we are all now back on the same page regarding the essentials. Chieti says: ‘Christian tradition makes it clear that, within the synodal life of the Church at various levels, a bishop has been acknowledged as the “first”’ (§4), and it refers to synodality and primacy as ‘interrelated, complementary and inseparable’. However, as it says, ‘different understandings’ of synodality and primacy ‘played a significant role in the divisions between Orthodox and Catholics’, and that is why it is essential now to try and establish ‘a common understanding’ of those realities (§5). That is exactly what the Chieti document then tries to do, with a particular focus on the universal level, where historically, of course, the main problems lie. It is important to note that Catholics and Orthodox fully agree that there is only one candidate for the office of universal primate, namely the bishop of Rome. Ravenna and Chieti both recognise that Rome has always been first in the listing or taxis of the major sees that took shape `The Most Reverend Bernard Ntahoturi, Director of the Anglican Center in Rome and Donna Orsuto, Director of The Lay Centre at Foyer Unitas Msgr Paul McPartlan – Professor of Systematic Theology and EcumenismCentro Pro Unione Bulletin CENTRO CONFERENCES 8 N. 94 - Fall 2018 between the fourth and the seventh centuries. The formal listing was: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, in that order (see Ravenna document, §35; Chieti document, §15), and Chieti reproduces all the relevant canons in a long footnote (note 11). Rome exercised ‘a primacy of honour’, says Chieti (§15), recalling a phrase used by the Council of Constantinople in 381. Interestingly, at no point does Chieti use the phrase ‘first among equals’, primus inter pares, because although that phrase is often heard today it appears to have no patristic warrant. The local church of Rome ‘presides in love’ said St Ignatius of Antioch, as we have seen. That phrase, often recalled by Pope Francis, was noted by the Ravenna document (§41), and Ravenna ended by saying that what was needed was ‘for the role of the bishop of Rome in the communion of all the Churches to be studied in greater depth’ (§44). In other words, what exactly does presiding in charity mean? Chieti tries to give at least the start of an answer. Scholars such as John Zizioulas and Brian Daley have pointed out that, properly understood, ‘primacy of honour’ does not at all imply simply an honorific primacy. 16 It refers to the serious tasks and responsibilities that have to be carried out by the one who holds the first place, the primacy. Chieti identifies various roles and responsibilities that the bishop of Rome had in the first millennium. First of all, it refers to the fact that, although the bishop of Rome did not personally attend any of the ecumenical councils held in the first millennium, ‘in each case either he was represented by his legates or he agreed with the council’s conclusions post factum’. Chieti quotes the second council of Nicaea in 787, which gave the most detailed listing of criteria for a council to be recognised as ecumenical, one of those conditions being that the council had ‘the cooperation (synergeia) of the bishop of Rome’ (§18). So there cannot be an ecumenical council without the bishop of Rome’s involvement in some capacity — that is one of the reasons why the Holy and Great Council, held of course without the participation of Pope Francis, made no claim to be ecumenical. Then, also, Chieti notes the role that the bishop of Rome played in receiving appeals from different parts of the Church, both West and East, particularly from bishops who felt that they had been deposed unjustly. It notes the provisions of the synod of Sardica, held in 343, which specified that, if he considered that the appeal was justified, the bishop of Rome could ‘order a retrial, to be 16 See I. ZIZIOULAS, “Recent Discussions on Primacy in Orthodox Theology”, in W. KASPER, ed., The Petrine Ministry: Catholics and Orthodox in Dialogue (New York/Mahwah, NJ: Newman Press, 2006) 231-246, at 234-235; B. DALEY, SJ, “Position and Patronage in the Early Church: The Original Meaning of ‘Primacy of Honour’”, Journal of Theological Studies 44(1993) 529-553. In its original meaning, says Daley, the phrase had ‘very concrete ecclesiological implications’ (553). conducted by the bishops of the province neighbouring the deposed bishop’s own’ (§19). In other words, he could act to resolve the issue, but he could not impose his own judgement, and that is why Chieti makes the significant statement already noted several times, namely that ‘the bishop of Rome did not exercise canonical authority over the churches of the East’ (§19) — the phrase is not perfect, because the canons of Sardica in a sense constitute precisely such a canonical authority, but the intention is clear. In later terminology, it means that the bishop of Rome did not exercise direct jurisdiction over the East. Those two specific responsibilities of the bishop of Rome, recognised by the Chieti document fit very closely with the teaching of Vatican II. In Lumen Gentium, the council said: ‘There never is an ecumenical council which is not confirmed or at least recognised as such by Peter’s successor’ (LG 22); and the council’s decree on ecumenism said: ‘For many centuries the Churches of the East and of the West went their own ways, though a brotherly communion of faith and sacramental life bound them together. If disagreements in faith and discipline arose among them, the Roman See acted by common consent as moderator’ (UR 14). In my book, A Service of Love (2016), 17 I outline the remarkable new thinking about the role of the pope, the bishop of Rome, that has developed within a Catholic context during the last fifty years or so, locating him not so much at the top of a pyramid but rather at the heart of an ecclesiology of communion, a eucharistic ecclesiology, and suggesting that the fundamental task of the bishop of Rome is to serve the eucharistic communion of the Church. 18 LG 22, just mentioned, describes how Peter’s successor, the Roman Pontiff, and the bishops, successors of the apostles, are united with one another in a close, collegial bond, and it recalls ‘the very ancient discipline whereby the bishops installed throughout the whole world lived in communion with one another and with the Roman Pontiff in a bond of unity, charity and peace’ (LG 22). Now, unity, charity and peace are all fruits of the Eucharist: ‘because there is one bread’, said St Paul, ‘we who are many are one body’(1 Cor. 10:17). ‘There is one body and one Spirit’, so ‘maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace’ (Eph. 4:3-4). By serving, in a multitude of ways, the Church’s unity, charity and peace, the bishop 17 P. McPARTLAN, A Service of Love: Papal Primacy, the Eucharist, and Church Unity, 2nd ed. with a new Postscript (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2016). 18 The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC; 1992) teaches: ‘Since he has the ministry of Peter in the Church, the Pope is associated with every celebration of the Eucharist, wherein he is named as sign and servant of the unity of the universal Church’ (CCC 1369); see McPARTLAN, A Service of Love 10-11. Msgr Paul McPartlan – Professor of Systematic Theology and EcumenismCentro Pro Unione Bulletin CENTRO CONFERENCES 9 N. 94 - Fall 2018 of Rome can be said to be exercising what is fundamentally a eucharistic responsibility, helping the Church to live out the eucharistic mystery at the heart of its life, in accordance with Henri de Lubac’s famous principle: ‘the Eucharist makes the Church’. 19 Very interestingly, the two papal tasks identified by Chieti and already mentioned by Vatican II can actually be fitted into that picture. Let us recall the normal flow of the Liturgy. Before the time of holy communion, there is a profession of faith — the creed — and a sign of peace. Those are significant preparatory moments, showing that those who receive the Eucharist must be right in their faith and at peace with one another. Councils determine what is rightness of faith, and dealing with appeals is an instrument for settling disputes and restoring peace. So, anchoring the Church’s ecumenical councils on one hand and moderating disputes on the other can be seen as two very particular ways in which the bishop of Rome serves the eucharistic unity of the Church in faith and communion. By their very nature, those two tasks are only occasional, but symbolising, serving and strengthening the Church’s eucharistic unity in faith and communion can be said to be the bishop of Rome’s abiding, daily responsibility, exercised in countless ways. 20 Does this viewpoint accord with the teaching of Vatican I, which everyone naturally recalls with regard to Catholic understanding of the papacy, often with some concern about its ecumenical implications? There are good reasons to believe that it does. Let us recall, for instance, the teaching of Vatican I that papal primacy exists ‘in order that the episcopate itself might be one and undivided and that the whole multitude of believers might be preserved in unity of faith and communion by means of a closely united priesthood’. 21 ‘Communion’, ‘priesthood’, the eucharistic resonances are clear. I would suggest that a eucharistic understanding of the papacy is compatible not just with Vatican II, but also with Vatican I, and that in fact it resonates deeply with the teaching of the scriptures and the fathers of the Church. Coming back to our context here, one of the great benefits of a eucharistic approach to the role of the bishop of Rome, in line with the early Church, is that it opens new doors to dialogue between Catholics and Orthodox on this highly contentious issue. Let us recall that the split between Christian West and East occurred at the very time of the development in the West of a different, primarily 19 H. de LUBAC, Corpus Mysticum: The Eucharist and the Church in the Middle Ages, trans. Gemma Simmonds (London: SCM, 2006) 88; see also P. McPARTLAN, The Eucharist Makes the Church: Henri de Lubac and John Zizioulas in Dialogue, 2nd ed. (Fairfax, VA: Eastern Christian Publications, 2006). 20 See McPARTLAN, A Service of Love, 83. 21 First Vatican Council, First Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Christ, Pastor Aeternus (1870), Prologue (DH 3051). juridical, understanding of the papacy, positioned at the top of an institutional pyramid rather than at the heart of a eucharistic communion. That was no coincidence. Ever since it began, as we saw earlier, Catholic- Orthodox dialogue has aimed at the restoration of full communion so that Catholics and Orthodox can share the Eucharist together. Its trajectory has been eucharistic. The 1980 Plan crucially said that, when discussing differences between us, ‘a distinction must be made’ between those which are ‘compatible with eucharistic communion and those which are incompatible’ (§II, 3). A valuable way forward with regard to the primacy of the bishop of Rome would surely be to see it precisely as a ministry at the service of the eucharistic communion of the Church, West and East. Let us ask, finally, whether the Chieti document has any openings towards a eucharistic understanding of the bishop of Rome. Well, we have seen how it links the bishop of Rome to the holding of ecumenical councils and to receiving appeals, both of which can be fitted into a eucharistic picture, but does it say anything more directly eucharistic about the role of the bishop of Rome? Indeed it does. It says that the taxis or ordering of the major sees ‘had its highest expression in the celebration of the holy Eucharist’. It is important to know who will preside at a Liturgy involving several primates, and how everyone should stand. They stand ‘according to the taxis’, says Chieti, and this practice, ‘manifested the eucharistic character of their communion’ (§17). When we recall that the bishop of Rome occupies the first place in the taxis, I think we can certainly say that Chieti is open to a eucharistic understanding of his role and his ministry among his fellow primates, all within the communion of the people of God as a whole. As we have seen, such an understanding serves to unify the various tasks proper to the bishop of Rome that Chieti identifies, and it fits very neatly within the eucharistic understanding of the Church that has guided the international Catholic-Orthodox dialogue since it began in 1980. Clearly there is more work to be done, but this would seem potentially to be a very promising and consistent way for the dialogue to address the most difficult issue of all between us. It seems fitting to close with some words of the Catholic theologian Jean Tillard, one of the initial architects of the dialogue together with John Zizioulas. It might be said that in his book, The Bishop of Rome (1983), Tillard rather anticipated the way in which the Catholic-Orthodox dialogue would need to deal with that office. The Church is not made by the papacy, he said, it is made by baptism and the Eucharist. ‘The purpose of the papacy is to give the Eucharist its full dimensions.’ 22 22 J. M. R. TILLARD, The Bishop of Rome, trans. John de Satgé (London: SPCK, 1982) 189. Msgr Paul McPartlan – Professor of Systematic Theology and Ecumenism Next >