Archbishop Elias on Double Communion (Part V)

Note: The following has been edited slightly for grammar and syntax.  The report from the Roman Congregations, to which Archbishop Elias responds here, can be found in Part III of this series.

Archbishop Elias Zoghby, We Are All Schismatics, trans. Philip Khairallah (Newton, MA: Educational Services, 1996), pp. 102-106.

Reflections on the Roman Response (Continued)

Point III

The report of the three Roman Congregations states, “One must progressively reconstitute…the groundwork of fraternal existence and collaboration before one plans more ambitious projects.” How?  First of all by envisioning “a practical program on a pastoral level…the formation of priests and laity, catechesis, the renewal of monastic life, and the renewal of liturgical life”.  If I understand this well, one must realize this program of collaboration with the Orthodox in order to reconstitute the fabric of fraternal understanding.  It is pleasing to see that the three Roman Congregations have taken into account that we Eastern Christians are separated from our oriental traditions, and that we have a need to re-adapt ourselves to a life in common with the Orthodox on the basis of Christian formation, catechesis, monastic and liturgical life.  Thus it is not a renewal of cooperation with the Orthodox but a return to our Orthodox traditions that is needed for us to realize this fraternal understanding.

Nevertheless, this return to our traditions has been made impossible by the manner in which these Roman Congregations govern us and impose upon us Latin law.  The Oriental Canon Law that is being prepared in Rome, which the Eastern Catholic hierarchs have severely criticized, will only keep us, for a long time to come, as stranger to the authentic traditions of the Christian East.

And how will these Uniate Christians realize this catechetical renewal together with the Orthodox when the origin, the nature and the extent of the privileges of the See of Rome are considered by the Roman Congregations as being an essential point which is the central point of the Roman ecclesiology?  Will this have to remain an integral part of this catechesis?

What about liturgical renewal?  Can we join together with the Orthodox in our understanding of the Liturgy when we Uniates, except for certain major feast days and in certain convents and cathedrals, have reduced the Liturgy to a “machine that produces Masses” and Eucharistic Liturgies that are almost always removed from the Divine Office, extending throughout the liturgical year?  We produce beautiful Solemn Masses from time to time, but the Liturgy has lost its soul among us, and we can only recover it within the context of a living Oriental tradition as well as the theological, patristic, ascetical and monastic traditions that gave birth so such a Liturgy.  However, with us as with the Latins, the Eucharistic ecclesiology has disappeared and has been replaced by an ecclesiology that is more sociological and juridical.  The liturgical celebration is seen, first of all, within its ceremonial, rubrical and canonical context, that is to say, its external envelope, because faith, piety and spirituality, and even sometimes theology, cannot remain in conformity with post-Tridentine teaching” [8]

And what is collaboration with Orthodox in the formation of priest and laity, as recommended by the three Roman Congregations?  From which traditions should we derive our inspiration to realize such a collaboration?  We Eastern Christians have received our formation, although based upon rational consideration, as a deformation of Eastern Christianity.  This formation we have received from Latin missionaries, using Latin textbooks.  Can this serve as a useful ground for understanding and collaboration with the Orthodox?  Is it not simpler to talk about returning to our Oriental traditions, a return that can never be fully realized while bound to the all-powerful Roman machine?  We have abandoned our oriental traditions by living outside of Orthodoxy, and only a return to Orthodoxy and the daily living within Orthodoxy will allow us to progressively recoup our oriental soul, that of our fathers in the faith.  And this return to Orthodoxy does not imply, as we have explained above, a rupture of communion with the Pope of Rome, neither will it hurt Orthodoxy, which would be enriched with what we have received from the Christian West.

In spite of all the preceding, let us suppose that our Church, or any other Eastern Catholic Church, plans to work and collaborate with the Orthodox Church in the proposed renewal scheme.  Do we believe that the latter will enter into this with enthusiasm?  And why should it?  It is well known that Rome will not allow us to re-establish communion with them before the Latin Church does.  The report of the three Roman Congregations is proof of this.  Orthodoxy also knows that the day when the Latin Church re-enters into communion with them, it will drag us automatically into this communion without asking our advice.  The Orthodox Church knows the real place we occupy within Roman Catholicism, and what part will be reserved for us in the major decisions that will be made for us.

Since the great, if not the only, obstacle to full intercommunion between Rome and Orthodoxy—and thus consequently between us and Orthodoxy—is the authority and the privileges of the Bishop of Rome, how can we oriental Uniates concern ourselves with this issue, since we do not have the proper authority to deal with it?

No.  Everything that has been proposed to us by these three Roman Congregations does not interest Orthodoxy simply because we, the Eastern Catholics, are not a free people.  It places the Western Church in a position and gives it the right to propose, to engage, and to decide upon our fate.

Point IV

The fourth and last point of the report of the three Roman Congregations is for us not to lose sight of the other Churches that are in the territory of the Patriarchate of Antioch, and are fully within the Catholic communion.  “Ecumenical activity is the work of the whole group.”  They are blind guides.  “And if a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit” (Matthew 15.14).  If we are not in the same hole, we are at least in the same basket.

When the Melkite Greek Catholic Church at Vatican II elaborated on the greatness and the advantages of the patriarchal and synodal institution as practiced in the East, a traditional system including collegial power so desired by the Latin Council Fathers, another Eastern Catholic, non-Latin Patriarch stood up the next day to denigrate such an institution.  The hierarchs of the Uniate Eastern Churches of the Patriarchate of Antioch and the other Eastern patriarchs do not always see eye to eye in the ecumenical movement.  The Latin Fathers of Vatican II had proof of this every day.  To oblige the Church of the Patriarchate of Antioch to depend upon these others for its ecumenical activities, already very limited, is to reduce it to total inertia.

In addition, ecumenical action necessitates, above all, that each Church return to its own sources.  Thus each of the Catholic Uniate Churches that considers itself as belonging to the Patriarchate of Antioch or as deriving from it, has its own roots which are not identical with those of the others.  Each has its own history and traditions that link it organically with the Orthodox Church from which it separated itself, and this is what differentiates it from other Catholic Churches that claim the same patriarchate.  An elementary rule that must preside over all ecumenical endeavors insists that each Eastern Catholic Church search for and try to draw near to the Orthodox Church from that rite from which it separated itself.  To unite, these Churches must “each one convert itself in the line of its own development, seeking its best understanding of Christ in fidelity to its own tradition and its own particular spirituality.” [9]

To want to realign these Eastern Catholic Churches under the pretext of fraternal harmony is thus to further annihilate their ecumenical role, which already is almost non-existent.  But, if I may be allowed to ask, in what measure has the Roman Church taken into consideration this fraternal harmony, not between sister Churches, but between members of the same Church, when it cut into half each of the Orthodox Churches in the Near East in order to create the Uniate Patriarchates?  This is something it would not have done today, and which Pope Paul VI condemned when he recommended the avoidance of all that may disperse the flock or introduce confusion in its ranks.

Finally, concerning the faithful of the Melkite Greek Catholic and the Greek Orthodox Churches, it is not true that they are still far from the psychological and spiritual dispositions necessary for reunification.

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8. P. Lanne, Irénikon 1979, No. 1, p. 23.

9. Regis Ladous, Veilleur avant l’aurore, p. 127.