Communion, Conciliarity and Authority
The Joint International Commission for the Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church recently held their tenth plenary session in Ravenna, Italy from 8-14 October 2007. The fruit of that dialogue is a new document, entitled Ecclesiological and Canonical Consequences of the Sacramental Nature of the Church: Ecclesial Communion, Conciliarity and Authority. The text of the document can be found here.
Cardinal Walter Kasper and Metropolitan John Zizioulas led the respective delegations and were deeply involved in the work. That is about as good a theological “dream team” as I can imagine. Kasper’s comments on the document can be found here, and he is appropriately sober about what it represents. That sobriety has, alas, been absent from some of the press coverage, which seemed to suggest that the Catholics and the Orthodox were on the verge of putting the Great Schism behind them. I’m afraid we’re still very far from that point.
One interesting point for me is the (albeit limited) discussion of national episcopal conferences in the Catholic Church:
29. In subsequent centuries, both in the East and in the West, certain new configurations of communion between local Churches have developed. New patriarchates and autocephalous Churches have been founded in the Christian East, and in the Latin Church there has recently emerged a particular pattern of grouping of bishops, the Episcopal Conferences. These are not, from an ecclesiological standpoint, merely administrative subdivisions: they express the spirit of communion in the Church, while at the same time respecting the diversity of human cultures.
30. In fact, regional synodality, whatever its contours and canonical regulation, demonstrates that the Church of God is not a communion of persons or local Churches cut off from their human roots. Because it is the community of salvation and because this salvation is “the restoration of creation” (cfr. St Irenaeus, Adv. Haer., 1, 36, 1), it embraces the human person in everything which binds him or her to human reality as created by God. The Church is not just a collection of individuals; it is made up of communities with different cultures, histories and social structures.
The language used is very careful and it probably cannot be used to score points in the ongoing debate within the Catholic Church about “theological status” of national episcopal conferences. Still, the statement that such conferences, as regional groupings of local churches, are not “merely merely administrative subdivisions” but “express the spirit of communion in the Church” is an important one to reflect on. It also suggests that the role of conferences within the Catholics Church has implications for our dialogue with the Orthodox.
The statement, of course, has no official status within either the Catholic Church or the Orthodox Church at this point. It will have to be “received” and pondered prayerfully by both. I think we can all pray that this reception would be fruitful.
Wow! Talk about delicate and painstaking work. While reading the document from start to finish, one can almost experience first-hand the patience, restraint, and statecraft that went into the document, as the drafters searched for points of common ground and went to great lengths not to offend. Cardinal Kasper must be a person of great poise and ability. Is he eligible to be the U.S. Sec’y of State?
It’s too bad the Russian Orthodox representative walked out of the plenary session and that the ROC didn’t sign the document, but it still seems a significant document to me. It’s always better that disagreeing parties are talking to rather than at one another, though I couldn’t help but be amused at the caveat in footnote 1:
“Orthodox participants felt it important to emphasize that the use of the terms ‘the Church’, ‘the universal Church’, ‘the indivisible Church’ and ‘the Body of Christ’ in this document and in similar documents produced by the Joint Commission in no way undermines the self-understanding of the Orthodox Church as the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church, of which the Nicene Creed speaks. From the Catholic point of view, the same self-awareness applies: the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church ‘subsists in the Catholic Church’ (Lumen Gentium, 8); this does not exclude acknowledgement that elements of the true Church are present outside the Catholic communion.”
We call that a CYA provision in my line of work. (Google is a great help for those who may not be familiar with that acronym.)
I think this is a very important step, even if not a final healing of the Great Schism. The ecumenical frontier faces East, for Rome, never morese than under Benedict, who shares an Orthodox religious sensibility. Primacy, which is effectively a political issue (yes, I know, with lots of theological and ecclesiogical baggae–but still) is the chief sticking point.
Interesting how this dialogue, at least on bishops conferences, is also tugging Rome in a direction of compromise. It will be fascinating how see how such a rapprochement affects the churches internally, as well as externally.