Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism

It is easy to catalog the disagreements and forget how much East and West still hold in common — more, in fact, than divides them. Both confess the Holy Trinity and the full divinity and humanity of Christ as the first seven ecumenical councils defined them. Both keep an ordained ministry of bishop, priest, and deacon in apostolic succession. Both believe the Eucharist to be truly the Body and Blood of Christ, offered in a real sacrifice. Both honor the Virgin as Mother of God, ask the prayers of the saints, venerate relics and images, and treasure monasticism and the same early Fathers.

This is why the two are often called "sister churches" of the first millennium, and why Orthodoxy does not regard Roman Catholicism as it regards the fruit of the Reformation. The disagreement is a family estrangement between two communions that once were one — which is precisely what makes it so painful. St. Paul's cry rebukes any complacency about it: "Is Christ divided?" (1 Corinthians 1:13).

The deepest difference is over the office of the pope. The early Church accorded the bishop of Rome a primacy of honor as first among the patriarchs. The Catholic Church came to understand that primacy as something more: a universal jurisdiction over the whole Church and, as the First Vatican Council defined in 1870, an infallibility when the pope solemnly defines doctrine on faith and morals. Catholics hold this not as an innovation but as the legitimate unfolding of Christ's commission to Peter — the visible center of unity the Church needs. The Orthodox answer that the Church's unity is guarded not by one universal head but by the shared faith of all the bishops in council, and that no see, however honored, may govern or define for the rest.

Bound up with this is the Filioque — the Western addition to the Creed confessing that the Holy Spirit proceeds "from the Father and the Son." The Orthodox object both to the teaching and to the fact that it was added to the common Creed of the councils without a common council. Beyond these lie doctrines Rome defined after the schism, without the East: purgatory as a purification after death, and the Marian dogmas of the Immaculate Conception (defined 1854) and the bodily Assumption (defined 1950). The issue is partly the doctrines themselves and partly a deeper question — whether one part of the Church may define new dogmas alone at all.

Relations today are warmer than at any time since the schism. In 1965 the mutual excommunications of 1054 were lifted by Patriarch Athenagoras and Pope Paul VI, and an official theological dialogue between the two churches has met for decades, examining precisely the questions of primacy and conciliarity that divide them. Both sides now speak to each other as Christians who confess one Lord, and cooperate on much that they hold in common.

Yet communion is not restored, and honesty forbids pretending the differences are trivial. The Orthodox have no single juridical verdict on Catholic sacraments — some are received into Orthodoxy by chrismation, some by confession, and the practice has varied — and the two churches do not share the Chalice. What the Church asks of the Orthodox faithful is neither to minimize the real divisions nor to gloat over them, but to hold the truth as they have received it while praying, in Christ's own words, "that they all may be one" (John 17:21).