Toward "the Tomorrow of God"

A Pope and a Patriarch embrace ecumenism and each other

It was the Feast of St. Andrew, a patron saint of Eastern Orthodoxy, and a visitor had come to a dingy cathedral in a slum quarter of Istanbul, the last refuge of Orthodoxy's symbolic center, the once mighty Patriarchate of the Byzantine Empire. There last week, sitting opposite the crowned and richly vested Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I, Pope John Paul II became the first Pontiff in nine centuries to join in an Orthodox Eucharistic service. Though the Pope did not partake of Communion, he quietly hummed along with the chants and made the sign of the cross Eastern style, right to left.

Words matched gestures. Dimitrios announced the establishment of a joint commission of theologians that will work to resolve differences. The first meeting is expected next spring. In a joint statement, the two leaders said the goal of the talks is nothing less than "re-establishment of full communion" between the world's 700 million Roman Catholics and more than a dozen self-governing branches of Eastern Orthodoxy that together include an estimated 125 million believers. A new spirit of warmth had begun when Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I met in Jerusalem at the Mount of Olives in 1964. Now under their successors, Dimitrios, 65, and John Paul, 59, a second and more difficult phase is beginning.

John Paul's quiet reception among the Islamic populace contrasted with his tumultuous tours in Mexico, Poland, Ireland and the U.S. Security was tight during his three days in Turkey. A courtesy call on Premier Sueleyman Demirel in Ankara stirred virulent press attacks on the papacy. The Pope mildly urged Turkey's oppressed Christian minority to esteem Islam for its shared moral and religious values. Dimitrios, in a pointed reference to events in Iran, deplored the "tragedy" of rising "religious fanaticism" and the "self-destruction of men and their faith, always in the name of God." In Istanbul, John Paul made brief tourist stops at Topkapi Palace and the ancient basilica of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom), which became a mosque after the Turks conquered the city in 1453, and is now a museum.

The Great Schism between these two branches of Christianity is traditionally dated from mutual excommunications hurled in 1054 by Rome and Constantinople (as Istanbul was called until 1930). In 1204 Crusaders sacked Constantinople and temporarily installed a Latin-rite Patriarch. Today there are still differences about such matters as divorce (the Orthodox permit it on grounds of adultery and allow no more than three marriages in a lifetime), and especially the Nicene Creed. The Orthodox insist on the original wording of the creed, in which the Holy Spirit "proceeds from the Father." Catholicism adds that the Spirit proceeds from "the Father and the Son."

The overwhelming difficulty about full reunion is the power and the office of the papacy itself. The Orthodox hold that religious authority derives from the church as a whole and is expressed through ecumenical councils. In Catholicism, the Pope is the ultimate arbiter. This split seemingly became unbridgeable in 1870 when the First Vatican Council declared papal infallibility in formal teachings and defined the Pope's "immediate" jurisdiction over every diocese in the world. Orthodoxy might accept the Pope as primate, but only as a first among equals with the right to initiate and coordinate action, a slow and often exasperating process now followed by the Ecumenical Patriarchate with the independent branches within the Orthodox Church. If the Pope accepted such a condition, he would be reverting to his status during the first eight centuries after Christ, something that few Catholics can imagine happening.

In some ways, though, the two churches are already united. The Second Vatican Council declared that the Orthodox "possess true sacraments, above all--by apostolic succession--the priesthood and the Eucharist." In other words it saw virtually no doctrinal barrier to joint Communion, which is not yet the case with any other Christian body. For the Orthodox, however, Communion should be shared only when full doctrinal accord is achieved.

The Ecumenical Patriarchate is anxious to pursue unity in part because of its own precarious existence and dwindling flock in Turkey, which has dropped from 80,000 in 1955 to 6,000 today. The situation was poignantly clear when only 250 people (including reporters) attended last week's historic Eucharist. But Dimitrios' effort could be frustrated by Orthodoxy's largest branch, the Church of Russia, which rivals the Ecumenical Patriarchate's authority and is inhibited in any pursuit of Christian unity by the wishes of the Soviet state. To the Kremlin, Catholicism is an alien influence that stirs up Ukrainian and Lithuanian nationalism and threatens Soviet power.

Given the tense state of the world, there is much to be gained simply by the pursuit of ecumenism, however long the road may eventually be. Before his trip to Turkey, John Paul told Catholic ecumenists from 59 nations that Christian divisions "impair the credibility of Christ himself and hinder the spread of the Gospel. He has also insisted that Christians must act together, not merely striving for doctrinal harmony but bearing joint witness in defense of human rights, the pursuit of social justice and peace, and on questions of public morality. "The moral life and the life of faith," he has said, "are deeply united." Concluded Patriarch Dimitrios, after the historic embrace: "The meeting today is destined for the tomorrow of God."

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