Promoted by the “Pro Oriente” Foundation, an informal group of Catholic-Orthodox dialogue founded by the distinguished Catholic expert in patristics, the Parisian Isabel de Andia, in 2001, an ecumenical theological colloquium was held in Vienna in recent weeks on “The Holy Spirit in the life of the Church. Charisms and institution”. Chaired by the archbishop of the Austrian capital, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, the meeting brought together some thirty Catholic and Orthodox theologians, both from eastern and western Europe. The aim of the meeting, the Foundation’s second (the first was held in 2001), was to “show that the Fathers of the Church, who lived before the schism of 1054, had a single undivided view of Christianity”, explained Isabel de Andia. She also stressed “the fruitful and promising climate of dialogue between Catholics and Orthodox in France, thanks to the contribution of the Institut Saint-Serge (Orthodox theological institute) in Paris, and especially thanks to the renewal of patristic studies on the Catholic side”. “The ecclesiological distinction between institution and charisms she explained did not correspond in the Fathers to a clear delimitation between work of Christ and work of the Spirit”. According to Cardinal Schoenborn, “ecumenical dialogue does not seem to have broken down today, but it is in trouble”: it needs, he said, “a new ‘breath’ which can only come to it by a common return to the theological and spiritual source of the Fathers”. Hence the need for “a real work of ‘re-invigoration’ in the Holy Spirit”.
