It is my opinion that if an ‘ecumenical’ synod agrees in the officially few differences that separate the papal clergy from Orthodoxy and announces a union, Orthodoxy will receive a blow, and rather decisive : ideological glueing and lack of real unity with the western christianity, along with internal schisms.
The unity that exists in our common ‘european’ chaos, almost perfect already, will be sealed by the Orthodox clergy, leading to the greatest possible corruption.
This is what happens when a Church as such collapses, and faith is decided in laboratories. In the current conditions we need to help mutual contact in many ways, except for an official ideological union. While we need real unity, a unity that comes naturally, unsolicited, wherefrom doctrinal union springs, we prepare the exact opposite. Official ‘theological’ dialogs and the official union are prospects distant enough for us to not even think about them, even for many generations ahead.
Unity in faith is impossible when presuppositions more basic than even doctrines are missing. Artificial agreement leads to the slandering of any possible belief, undermining the ground of any past and future unity between thinking and deeds, damaging the power to create a cultural prospect. Do we need doctrinal unity in order to know each other? A doctrinal unity can not come first but only follow a life already inspired by common experience and understanding. This is what happened in the christening of Hellenism, when groups and communities, even being persecuted, were developing real unity, ending to the conversion of the persecuting empire, the birth of Byzantium.
Aquinas and Symeon belong to different worlds, we can’t compare them and we can’t know who is more significant. What we call ‘Christianity’, does not really exist, not only because western peoples are deeply immersed in atheism and nihilism. In the eyes of a Turk Thomas and Symeon belong to the same world, Christianity exists and is all a ‘West’. This is what we want, a unity that remains invisible unless we have Turkish eyes?
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[…] Each Church has had a separate development, a separate history, and different challenges. Our age is indeed particular in that both faiths face the same challenges, those cited above. These are the grounds for the current projects of reunification. But are these enough? A millenium of separation cannot be resolved by simple good will, let alone an ecumenical synod. If Rome and Constantinople did not resolve their conflict when Muslim armies were threatening the later, why would secularism and scientism serve as motive for reunification?
Both have different traditions now, so let both solve these issues in their own way. This imply a close collaboration, a sort of “spiritual union” but not an ecumenical union. Catholics today–or what is left of them in the west–would see nothing coming out of this union. We can assume that Orthodox will not, either. In short, both faiths would continue to live separate from each other. But we must advocate a close collaboration, and above all forget past divergences, which are unhealthy to good relations. […]
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Reynaldo Cabrera
Dear brother how can you desire to have separated churches when your Lord prayed for the opposite ( John 17:20-23 ).
I understand your desire to maintain your identity but don’t oppose unity if that’s what our Lord prays for. I for one don’t think you will lose your identity.
GEORGIOS
I think there is much prejudice and fear hidden beneath the lines of your opinions.
For almost a millenium the Greeks we suffered the consequences of the schism between Constatinople and Rome. We have been consummed from our hate and anger for the West and we disregarded the only true fact : that Greece is part of Europe. That our only true allies are the rest of the christian nations. For so long have we turned our face away from this fact. For so long have we isolated ourselves from the rest of the Christianity. If you travel within Europe you will be astonished of how many common things and thoughts we share with people that in the past we considered strangers to us – Italians, Spanish, Portuguese etc. You will be surprised by the way that they pay tribute and reverence to the Virgin in the same way that we do.
At the same time you will come to understand that those people are our kind that we are not a peculiar national singularity as the Greeks we tended to believe thus far.
There is a brand new world out there completetely similar to us. Christian people ,mediterrenean people, people who bear the same mentality for family country and christianity.
This emerging world will be the end and result of many and different types of mergers and unions.
As such conventional wisdom suggests that there is no more room for isolation and self adoration.
The nations that will neither be absorbed nor vanish will be the ones that will find a way to create new larger symbiotic circles with the nations that they share common origins common beliefs and a common ethos.
With great prudence our bishops have realised this new state of things and wisely have they decided to procede and create for us a new symbiotic frame with the latin europe.
In this frame we will be able to maintain our rites and customs as a sui iuris church and at the same time share a common doctrinal ground with the rest of the latin world.
The path choosen from our church is not a path to papacy but a path to national survival.
A path that if it was choosed some hundred years ago we wouldn t have experienced the dwelling in a cultural and uncivilised darkness for 400 years.
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Dear George,
In my opinion, you lack knowledge of the history of Greece and Europe; apart from that, you are interested in something I’m not: national survival. It is not a matter of survival, but of living the truth, without which survival is meaningless. Of course we share with western European nations more than we share with any other non-orthodox nation on the planet, on this we can agree.
The point is that Greece is not a part of Europe: Europe is a child of Greece. Maybe not exactly the child we would expect, but it is that, as many western historians do not hesitate to observe and admit. Recall some certain and well known facts: what would Rome have been without Greece? Would the West have become Christian without Greece? Was not the European renaissance a re-founding of Europe in ancient Greece? You can search for more.
I did not speak about isolation and self-adoration, on the contrary; there is a need for close co-operation. What I am against, is doctrinal union. We don’t need doctrinal union in order to meet with each other, love each other and co-operate. Besides this, what we admire in the West, is more a product of the protestant West, than of the Catholic : We love Kierkegaard, Rilke, Beethoven, Nietzsche, – not Thomas Aquinas. If we adopted your logic, our primary target would be a union with Protestants, not a union with Catholics. Even you, I guess, can understand that such a union is impossible. Therefore, you can also understand that a union with Catholics, based on what we indeed share, is at least irrelevant.