It Reached the Point Where Catholics And Orthodox Adherents Did Not Consider Each Other Christians

An important event took part in Ukrainian religious life last year, yet it was not accorded proper media attention. A book was published called Signs of the Times (Znaky Chasu). It is the first serious attempt to render a systematic scholarly account of the origin, history, and problems of the movement for internal Christian understanding.

The ecumenical movement, which could have fostered improvements in interdenominational relationships in multiconfessional Ukraine, remains terra incognita here. At best local Christians know nothing about it. At worst, the essence and significance of ecumenism are distorted due to basic ignorance or ill will.

Modern ecumenism was founded in 1910 in Edinburgh by representatives of several Protestant churches. For the first time in the history of Christianity the emphasis was not on the truth or falsehood of one faith or another or on converting everyone else. It began a quest for the common integrating factors that united the variety of churches and confessions under the name of Christianity. The first congress of the World Council of Churches was convened in Amsterdam in 1948. WCC is currently made up of over 300 Protestant and Eastern Orthodox churches. Since the 1960s, the Roman Catholic Church has maintained observers at the WCC and actively cooperated with other churches on joint projects.

Below are several excerpts from the Signs of the Times, with references to the authors and documents.

Natalia Kochan (Kyiv) notes: “The underlying principles of the ecumenical principles and practice are the equality of all churches participating in the dialogue, mutual respect, confidence, and affection.” The author believes that, ‘the largest number of opponents to the “charms of ecumenism” are found in churches and religious communities with limited church consciousness and manifestations of confessional feelings of triumph, self-glorification, egotism, xenophobia, and dependence on political forces persisting with atavistic claims to exclusiveness in testifying to the Truth.” In her opinion, “it is logical to divide Christians into two types: humanistic and authoritarian, which, to use modern sociological terms, can be defined as representing open and closed types of consciousness, respectively. The former believe, in the words of twelfth century Kyiv Metropolitan Platon that “the partitions placed in the church by people do not reach the sky.” Those opposed to ecumenism seek to reduce Christianity as a whole to one church and confession, their own. They are incapable of seeing unity in their diversity.”

Waclaw Grinewicz (Poland) refers to the times of eleventh century Metropolitan Hilarion of Kyiv and his Sermon on Law and Grace as testimony to the world view of what was still a single Church at the time. Remarkably, Hilarion, of Greek parentage and Archpriest of the Constantinople Patriarchate, mentions “the Orthodox (faithful) Roman country glorifying Peter and Paul” in the first place in his diptych prior to the Great Schism of 1054. Ms. Kochan refers to numerous historical facts to prove that the Kyiv Diocese retained friendly contacts with Rome for several centuries after the split between Constantinople and the Pope. Thus, Kyiv clergymen took part in church councils aimed at establishing a union between part of the Orthodox churches and Rome. Kyiv Metropolitan Isidor was active in the Council of Florence (1438-39).

There is a very interesting entry in Signs of the Times: a letter from Petro Mohyla to the Pope called Thoughts of a Greek Orthodox Nobleman in Poland (1644). He writes, in part, “The lasting discord has broadened the scope of disputed issues between the Greek and Latin adherents... The trouble is rooted in the dispute between the Greeks and Romans about papal primacy... Let the fact remain that the Pope has always been considered the first and foremost figure of the Church, the Vicar of Christ, and Servant of the Servants of God. However, it is not written anywhere that the Greek rite be subordinated to the Latin one... One can see clearly from the sacred dogmas and tenets of the Church of God that rite is the only thing distinguishing us from the Romans; thus, we all retain the same essence of the Faith.” Mohyla believed that the Catholics and Eastern Orthodox adherents could unite only on the principle of equality. The 1596 Church Union of Brest was something he could not accept primarily because it severed the canonical link with Patriarch of Constantinople. Union with Rome was reached at the cost of breaking another much older one with Constantinople.

The following excerpts are from a religious figure representing a different epoch, Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky. In his letter “Apropos Understanding” Sheptytsky wrote, “I wish the adherents of various confessions tried to achieve rapprochement while obviously retaining their distinctions... Gradually coming closer together may one day result in unity, but we must first rid ourselves of all reasons for discord and animosity, as they cause fellow Ukrainians to become enemies... They that desire unity must not bring to the fore mutual accusations dating from the distant past. What took place 300, 800 or 900 years ago cannot be changed! Let us forget!”

In 1965, Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras had a historical meeting with Pope Paul VI in Jerusalem to cancel the mutual excommunication decrees of 1054 resulting in the more than 1000 year-old schism between the Churches of Constantinople and Rome. Regrettably, this first hopeful breakthrough has not as yet been joined by other Orthodox churches. Patriarch Athenagoras wrote, “One must constantly move toward unity [between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches]; one must not be content with what has been achieved... After all, we are accustomed to thinking that we no longer belong to the same Church, even to the same religion. In the West, it reached the point where Catholics and Orthodox adherents did not consider each other Christians! That is why we must cleanse the memory of the Church of all bad memories of the past... All our differences in terms of rite boil down to unleavened bread, Saturday lent, and wearing beards. Yet this is not very important. Patriarch Peter of Antioch (1054) said, ‘Let us leave the beards to the barber’.”

Signs of the Time contains several works by prominent Russian Orthodox writers and theologians, among them Vladimir Solov С v, Sergei Bulgakov, and Georgy Florensky. Vladimir Solov С v wrote in 1883, “What is the fruit of our polemic against Catholicism? We have not helped the West and nor have we revived the East, while contracting someone else’s disease... Genuine adherence to the Church does not depend on greater or lesser progress in revealing or formulating dogmatic particulars; it depends on the presence of apostolic succession, on Orthodox belief in Jesus Christ as the ideal God and ideal Man; finally, it depends on the completeness of the sacraments. We and the Catholics have all this in equal measure; thus we and they constitute a single Holy Greek and Apostolic Church, regardless of our temporary historical division.”

The book ends with an epilog written by Zynovy Antoniuk, Viktor Yelensky, and Myroslav Marynovych. It reads, in part, “We still brandish our exclusiveness as though it were something really sacred, oblivious of numerous manifestations showing that our mass Orthodox consciousness perceives non-Orthodox Christians as non- Christians... With the emphasis on distinctions alleged to be signs of exclusiveness, it is hard to build truly humane, tolerant relationships in our society... There has not been a single episcopal or clerical action in Ukraine in the 1990s of serious importance to Christian unity... Attempts to use official bodies in the struggle against rivals, interconfessional enmity, undisguised antagonizing of adherents representing one confession against those of another confession is so very un-Christian that the secular nature of the state becomes its true salvation... Given Ukrainian society’s firm resolve to revive its natural place in the Central European region, open as it is for the rest of the world, all Christian communities of various confessions will be eventually compelled to tell each other, ‘We forgive and beg forgiveness!’”