Many steps ahead

Following the meeting of the mixed International Commission for dialogue between the Catholic and Orthodox Church, which ended in Belgrade on 25 September, we asked some exponents of the Orthodox Church present at the 14th Ecumenical Conference held at the monastery of Bose (Italy) in recent weeks, for their impressions on the resumption of interconfessional dialogue. SUFFERING FOR UNITY. “We bishops – said GHENNADIOS OF ITALY , of the Patriarchate of Constantinople – have a grave responsibility for the success of ecumenical dialogue because it is up to us to cultivate reconciliation, love and unity between the Churches and within the people of God”. “Theological dialogue – continued Ghennadios – is very important, but the dialogue of charity is also important to foster in people an awareness of the need for unity: each Christian must be conscious of his/her own responsibility towards the will of God who calls us to be ‘one thing only'”. There have been many steps ahead in this direction: “When I arrived in Italy, 45 years ago, the positions were very far apart, now there’s mutual knowledge and respect. We have discovered that we are brothers. We must pray and we must suffer from this division between us”. “It – concluded Ghennadios – has taken the place of original sin: Christ will no longer come to be crucified, but it is we who must crucify our passions, our fanaticism, our lack of love. Only thus will be born the hope and the mutual charity to realise together the will of the Father”. THE ROLE OF THE BISHOP OF ROME. “The re-opening of dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church – maintained Archimandrite ATHENAGORAS FASIOLO , parish priest of the Orthodox church in Livorno dedicated to the Dormition of the Blessed Mother of God – is, I believe, a very positive sign of the need to meet together that the leaders of our churches have acknowledged, in spite of the real difficulties that still exist between the two Churches and that have been accentuated in the last decade”. According to Fasiolo, “it’s also important that the re-opening of the theological dialogue should immediately start out not with an analysis of questions that can be easily discussed and resolved – as in the past – but with an examination of the really ‘thorny’ questions such as the role of the bishop of Rome”. “At times – explained Fasiolo – we speak of the problem of the ‘primacy of the bishop of Rome’; in actual fact no one places in doubt the primacy, that in the ancient church of the bishop of Rome, but rather the role that the bishop of Rome now plays within Christianity”. “The difficulties we could encounter [in this dialogue] – continued Fasiolo – must not stop us; we trust that, if this be the will of God, we shall progress in dialogue and find a solution that probably will not be all that different from the one that might have existed in the first millennium: a pentarchy, a ‘symphony’ in the government of the church and thus a more ‘horizontal’ than ‘vertical’ church”. “Our terms – added Fasiolo – must be reformulated, such as the concept of catholicity that is common both to East and West and must be understood as two different faces of the same coin. It’s clear that a thousand years of history cannot be rapidly overcome”. A GIFT OF THE 20TH CENTURY. “Ecumenical dialogue was a gift of the 20th century. As a Communist country, the Iron Curtain isolated us from the rest of the world, but when we entered the World Council of Churches in 1961, we had the chance of travelling outside the country and receiving delegations: that was a blessing for our Church”, said NICOLAE NECULA, dean of the “Patriarch Justinian” Faculty of Theology in Bucharest. “After the revolution in the Communist countries – added Necula -, dialogue was interrupted because some Orthodox countries such as Bulgaria, Russia and Georgia took different roads, but now it has been revived. John Paul II’s visit to Romania remains of fundamental importance: an extraordinary event in the history of our churches”. “Romanians are very conscious of the reasons for ecumenism – pointed out Necula -; we are used to living together, with Catholics, Protestants and Muslims. We know very well what dialogue means and people consider it natural to respect other faiths. Whenever a cardinal visits the patriarchate of Bucharest, people receive him as if he were one of our own bishops: they greet him, kiss his hand, they’re happy to welcome him as father in the faith”. “Apart from doctrinal discussions – concluded the dean of the Theological Faculty of Bucharest – people in Romania are already ready to make friends with those of other faiths. It’s no accident that the ecumenical assembly next year will be held in Sibiu; this is a multiconfessional city where Catholics, Protestants and Lutherans live together: a co-habitation very interesting from the religious point of view. It confers on the city a unique character”.