Ut unum sint!

I've been perusing some fascinating reports from a recent conference at Fordham University, entitled "Orthodox Constructions of the West". I got the leads from Dr. Liccione, who, unfortunately, could not attend. Eirenikon is posting reports by Michaël de Verteuil and so far I've perused part 1 and part 2.

Verteuil's Report 1 deals with "Fr. Taft’s opening address," which, Verteuil notes, "proved hard to bear for some of the Orthodox attendees but, as one of them put at lunch to the agreement of his fellow Orthodox at the table, Fr. Taft has pretty well earned to right to say whatever he wants." In the following excerpt, I have bolded what I find most intriguing:

...Fr. Taft, introduced as the world’s foremost expert on the history of the Byzantine liturgy with over 800 publications to his credit, noted that the Catholic-Orthodox dialogue remained on track..., but offered two grounds for disillusion: the field remained the preserve of theologians and hierarchs and needed to be pursued more at the grassroots level, and the process continued to be plagued by failure to accept and confront respective responsibility for “a dolorous past.” ...

Orthodoxy needed to undertake its own examination of conscience and adopt a less polemic view of history. Fr. Taft noted, for example, that the Catholic apology for past sins against the unity of the Church was met largely with indifference, with Russian and Greek bishops even averring that Orthodoxy, for its part, had nothing to apologize for never having resorted to uniatism or used the secular arm to impose its will or oppress the conscience of others.... Orthodox forms of “uniatism” had been manifest with respect to an Assyrian “Orthodox” Church under Russian auspices in the interwar period and could be found even today in the existence of “Western rite Orthodoxy”. ...

Fairness required recognition that differences that were already in play in the first millennium should be accepted as valid, as the magisterium would otherwise be contradicting itself in having once accepted what to some was now unacceptable. Both the Western and Eastern fathers had to be incorporated in any review of our respective theologies. Misrepresentation had to be avoided, and he offered two examples. Orthodox critics still tended to treat scholastic theology as “the” rather than “a” Western theological framework. Similarly, Neo-Palamite efforts to treat existing differences as having been dogmatized should be resisted. ...

During the subsequent question period, Fr. Taft acknowledged that the autocratic model of Roman primacy had never been accepted in the East. He also noted, however, that there was no evidence the West had ever for its part recognized the Pentarchy and thus autocephally as the Church’s organizing principle. The way forward thus probably lay in a synthesis rather than in the imposition of one or the other model. Fr. Taft also stressed the primacy of saving souls over the strict application of abstract ecclesiological principles that were, in any case, not universally respected by either side.

In the last paragraph cited, Fr. Taft's claim that the pre-Schism West had not clearly, much less dogmatically, accepted the Pentarchy as the normative ecclesiology, is of the utmost importance in this dialogue. To oversimplify things to an obscene but hopefully forgivable level, on Orthodox premises, only that which is accepted at a valid ecumenical council by the whole Church in union, is in fact binding for the whole Church in union. The Pentarchy was the union of the five patriarchs in Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, and in contemporary Eastern Orthodoxy, the "remaining" four patriarchates are seen as the guiding 'magisterium' for the Church. Fr. Taft's point, however, is that, since the "Pentarchy ecclesiology" was not formally ratified by the Pentarchy itself (i.e. by Rome, at least), it has, in Orthodox terms, no binding power as an absolute refutation of Roman supremacy. Had the Pentarchy been dogmatically promulgated before the Schism, Rome would indeed be guilty of blatant heresy and schism for defying that ecclesiology and breaking union with the Church Pentarchical. As it stands, however, Orthodox appeals to the authority of pre-Schism pentarchical ecclesiology lack the probative force required to denounce Roman supremacy as heresy simpliciter.

Verteuil's Report 2 covers Dr. Kolbaba's lecture on the historical context and origins of "the Schism." Verteuil reports that Kolbaba

...set out to explain not so much why the schism occurred, but why it occurred when it did in the latter half of the 11th century. Specifically, she sought to answer this question in such a way as to avoid a deterministic view of history which treats critical events in retrospect as if they were somehow inevitable. What made the timing of the schism so difficult to explain, in her view, was that it followed on a long period of generally good relations between East and West. The 9th century dust-up between Rome on one hand, and Constantinople in the person of Photius on the other was widely seen in retrospect in the 10th century as an aberration. ...

All the factors that were later offered up to justify the schism (the papal claims, the filioque, as well as liturgical and disciplinary differences) were of long standing and were known in the 10th century, though they were not yet seen at the time as obstacles to communion. ...

Rome was still viewed positively in the 10th century for its earlier role in resisting iconoclasm, and the West was correspondingly not then perceived as a source of heresy. Despite the 9th century controversy over the filioque, Dr. Kolbaba noted that a comprehensive review of extant documents has yielded not a single Greek treatise against the interpolation that can be traced unambiguously to the 10th century, a lacuna all the more remarkable as one would in later times be expected (she observed half jokingly) to write at least two before being taken seriously as an Orthodox theologian [For a theological nerd, this is quite a knee-slapper!]. Furthermore, works condemning typically Western liturgical practices which would characterize Orthodox polemics in later centuries had yet to be written. So what changed in the 11th century? ...

The Gregorian reforms in the 11th century were to usher in a harder Western line on clerical celibacy and independence from secular authorities, as well as on the Papal claims; but Dr. Kolbaba argued that it was the East rather than the West that was ultimately to pick fault with the other, and that it was in the East that we should look for the key developments that would leading to a change in attitude that in turn would make the schism possible. Specifically and perhaps surprisingly she pointed to the substantial improvement in the Byzantine military situation along the empire’s eastern and southeastern frontier in the late 10th and early 11th centuries as the key underlying game changer.

Territorial contraction in earlier centuries and the struggle against iconoclasm had resulted in a more homogenous Greek-speaking and liturgically Byzantine empire. These features were to become, for courtly and religious elites based in Constantinople, the empire’s defining attributes any weakening of which could be seen as posing an existential threat to its survival.

In a nutshell, I take Dr. Kolbaba's "takeaway point" to be that schism is what you make it. The "reasons" for schism, like the reasons for divorce, are more often than not ex post facto rationalizations for what is already a refusal to let chairty overrule judgment and autonomy. That's good news, since if schism is what we make it, then reunion is also what we make it.

I will probably have more to report on this conference, as the reports emerge at Eirenikon, and once I peruse Dr. Peter Gilbert's reports on the conference as well. I have written before about Fr. Taft and Orthodox-Catholic relations, so feel free to search FCA's archives for more data.