The Orthodox View

Chester Gillis, head of the theology department at Georgetown University, says Pope Benedict is following up with Pope John Paul's dream of uniting the churches. "It pained him greatly that the churches were not united. He always dreamed that the gap would be bridged and that dream is carried on by Benedict." Yet while there has been an effort to reach out, says Gillis, the differences run deep. For example, John Paul II was never able to visit Russia as he had hoped. (As a reporter based in Moscow for much of the '90s, I can remember countless times the Russian wire services reported he was coming, then he wasn't coming, then maybe he was coming again.) Gillis says that's because the Russians wanted him to come on an official state visit, whereas he wished for it to be a church-to-church visit. "He didn't want to come as a head of state. But the Orthodox Church didn't want him to come as a church-to-church exchange because it would mean that they were recognizing his leadership, it would have given him a certain religious cache they couldn't accept."

George Weigel, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington and a Vatican analyst, maintains that the Orthodox say they don't want to talk about the primacy of the pope, yet their actions tell a different story. "The Vatican has been approached by the Patriarch of Moscow and the ecumenical patriarchate of Constantinople asking if he could help them resolve their longstanding issues. If that is not an example of primacy, what is?" Although relations may not be strong with Moscow, Weigel adds that ties are close with the church in Ukraine, which—like the Catholic Church—voiced support for the democratic "Orange Revolution" of 2004-2005. Also in 2005, meeting with a committee designed to open dialogue between East and West, Benedict called the openness for discussion "a new phase of dialogue" after 15 years of renewed difficulty—this time in part because of the rise of Catholic churches in formerly Soviet territory, which—according to a Vatican statement—"re-opened wounds in Catholic-Orthodox relations that had never healed." In November 2006, Pope Benedict also visited Constantinople, walking alongside Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew in what press releases described as a day of "worship, ecumenical dialogue and fraternal embrace" with the two leaders committed toward "the restoration of Full Communion between the two Churches." The trip's "hope-filled conclusion" was heralded, but the union has yet to happen.

Because he is a theologian who has emphasized ancient Christian writings, there is some sense among Orthodox leaders that Benedict might bring new emphasis to reconciliation. But visit a Russian Orthodox Church, and that merely feels like idle speculation. After all, it's been nearly 10 centuries and the churches are still separate. As Russian Orthodox churchgoer Troyan says, "I don't know much about Benedict. To me he doesn't have the fame John Paul did, or maybe he just hasn't been 'propagandized'—to use that infamous word—as much as John Paul II had been. The most I've been hearing about the trip is how many traffic jams it will cause."

© 2008