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A Catholic View of Orthodoxy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Aidan Nichols O P
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In this article I attempt an overview in four parts. First, I shall discuss why Catholics should not only show some ecumenical concern for Orthodoxy but also treat the Orthodox as their privileged or primary ecumenical partner. Secondly, I shall ask why the schism between the Catholic and Orthodox churches occurred, focussing as it finally did on four historic ‘dividing issues’. Thirdly, I shall evaluate the present state of Catholic-Orthodox relations, with particular reference to the problem of the ‘Uniate’ or Eastern Catholic churches. Fourthly and finally, having been highly sympathetic and complimentary to the Orthodox throughout, I shall end by saying what, in my judgment, is wrong with the Orthodox Church and why it needs Catholicism for (humanly speaking) its own salvation.

First, then, why should Catholics take the Orthodox as not only an ecumenical partner but the ecumenical partner par excellence? There are three kinds of reasons: historical, theological and practical — of which in most discussion only the historical and theological are mentioned since the third sort — what I term the ‘practical’ takes us into areas of potential controversy among Western Catholics themselves.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 77 , Issue 905 , June 1996 , pp. 264 - 275
Copyright
Copyright © 1996 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Cf. Nichols, A. O. P., Light from the East. Authors and Themes in Orthodox Theology (London 1995)Google Scholar.

2 Edinburgh 1992.

3 Sansterre, J.‐M., ‘Eusébe de Césarée et la naissance de la théorie “césaropapiste”’, Byzantion 42 (1972), pp. 131‐195Google Scholar; 532‐594.

4 Conveniently gathered together in McPartlan, P. (ed.), One in 2000? Towards Catholic‐Orthodox Unity (Middlegreen, Slough, 1993)Google Scholar.

5 A communiqué published in its English form in One in Christ XXX 1 (1994), pp. 74‐82.

6 See Bremer, T., Ekklesiale Struktur und EkklesMogie in dtr Serbischen Orthodoxen Kirche im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Würzburg 1992)Google Scholar.

7 A justifiable cause of anger among Oriental Catholics today: see Bird, T. E., “The Vatican Decree on the Eastern Catholic Churches Thirty Years Later', Sophia 21, 4 (1994), pp. 23‐29Google Scholar.