Church unity between East and West?

by Letters Editor · September 22, 2011

From Martin Schreiner, Pretoria

Will the differences between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches ever be resolved to enable our two sister Churches, as Bl Pope John Paul II so ardently hoped in Lumen Orientalis, to operate on two lungs again?

In reference to Our Lady, the Orthodox do not accept her Immaculate Conception, but call her the All-Holy One (panaghia, in Greek), many also maintaining that she was immaculate only from the time of the Annunciation.

On the other hand, in regard to her Assumption, which they accept, there are probably as many Orthodox churches dedicated to Mary, Assumed into Heaven, as Catholic churches.

Today the Orthodox accept only that the pope is first among equals, a title of honour, but not of jurisdiction. Yet the authority and jurisdiction given the pope by the Orthodox at the first seven ecumenical councils, held before the schism of 1054, contradicts the belief they hold today.

The Filioque clause in the Creed (that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son), recited or sung each Sunday by Catholics at Mass, is another point of contention.

The original Greek wording of the Nicene Creed proclaims that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father (alone, and not also from the Son (filioque in Latin). However from about the time of Charlemagne, Catholics have added and from the Son.

It seems possible that the largely illiterate congregations of the time confused it with the next sentence: …Who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified. The Orthodox dispute the Catholic view, citing Acts 1:4, as the promise [only] of the Father.

Catholic theologians do not consider this a problem. The Orthodox use leavened bread in the Eucharist, the Catholic Church, unleavened azymes. It would be interesting to know whether this has always been the practice down the centuries. Also, the Orthodox do not seem to have a cult of adoration of the Eucharist outside the Mass, reserving the Eucharist only for the sick.

With the development of St Thomas Aquinas’ definition of transubstantiation in the 13th century (after the great schism of 1054 with the Greek Church), adoration of the reserved species outside the context of the Mass took on greater impetus in the west. This is not the case among the Orthodox, possibly, because the leavened bread they use deteriorates so quickly. At the Council of Florence the Orthodox affirmed their belief in a state of purgation after death and that the process of purification can be hastened by the prayers and suffrages of the faithful on earth. We should pray ardently for the re-establishment of full unity between East and West.