St Gregory Nazianzus turned down an invitation to the First Council of Constantinople (381) because, he said, “I know these things. I know that all Councils produce nothing but confusion and fighting.”
This month’s Pan-Orthodox Council, scheduled to take place in Crete from June 16 to 26, is not exactly Constantinople I, which is recognised as an ecumenical council by both Catholics and Orthodox. (The Orthodox do not recognise the 14 councils since 787.) Its more modest purpose is to gather the 14 independent churches of the Eastern Orthodox communion.
Nevertheless, St Gregory’s weary words are apt. The Georgian church has rejected a proposed document on ecumenism. The Antiochene church has sounded the alarm about the document on marriage. And now the Bulgarian church has dropped out, for mysterious reasons.
The Russian church has said that the Council cannot go ahead without a preliminary meeting to amend the documents. But Fr John Chryssavgis, spokesman for the Patriarchate of Constantinople, says the churches agreed in January that they would all attend, and any decisions would apply to all the Orthodox churches (though some might receive them differently).
For a meeting which has been in the works since 1961, it seems in a precarious state – and the possibility hangs in the air that it might not even take place. Yet there is a good case that it needs to: not just for the Orthodox, but for the sake of Christian unity.
As Metropolitan Hilarion, the “foreign minister” of the Russian church, has said, the Orthodox talk of themselves as united, so such a meeting should be a common goal. The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople has said that the “sole purpose is the affirmation of unity”.
But the Council does plan to affirm a little more. It will ratify – without amending – documents whose contents were finalised in January: on ecumenical relations, marriage, fasting, the autonomy of the churches, the Orthodox diaspora, and mission.
Issues raised by these documents are not the only obstacles before the council; some differences are political. The Russians are hostile to Ukrainian believers’ claims to ecclesiastical independence; Constantinople is more sympathetic. The Patriarchates of Jerusalem and Antioch cannot agree about which of them has jurisdiction over Qatar.
But the theological debates between and within the churches are significant. Is the Catholic Church a Church, or a communion, or a den of heresy? How should the Church approach marriages between Orthodox and non-Orthodox spouses? Should fasting regulations be relaxed?
Fr Chryssavgis has spoken about “opening up to the rest of the world as opposed to remaining marginalised in its contemporary world”. It almost sounds like Vatican II’s declared aims, though this will be a much briefer and less ambitious meeting.
Fr Mark Drew, a Catholic priest and a close observer of Orthodox affairs, notes: “Many people within the Orthodox Church are aware that there has to be some sort of adaptation to modernity. It’s just that nobody agrees about how much.”
There is also a sense that Orthodox theology has to respond to realities on the ground. The Antiochene Church, for instance, has relaxed fasting regulations. In Syria and Lebanon marriages between Orthodox and Catholic are common, as is inter-communion.
So a Pan-Orthodox Council, by bringing under one roof churches with quite different practices, provokes anxieties about the more liberal practices taking a step towards acceptance. “It’s a bit like our debates over Amoris Laetitia,” says Fr Drew. “Everybody knows that divorced people routinely go to Communion throughout most of the world, but of course once you make it official, then you’ve blown the dyke apart.”
At the time of going to press, it was not clear whether the churches would be able to find a way through without the Bulgarians.
The situation is a bit like Britain and the EU, says Fr Drew. “If it becomes a contagion, if other churches start to drop out then it looks very shaky indeed. And if the Russians drop out, it’s over.”
Though the situation has elements of farce, it could be a turning point in Orthodox history. The big unanswered question is whether that turning point will be towards schism or unity.
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