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A
Pocket Church History
for Orthodox Christians
by
Fr. Aidan (Keller), All-Merciful Savior Orthodox Mission
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part
one OF THE HISTORY: CLICK HERE.
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Part
Two of the History continues after the Sack of Constantinople in 1204 A.D.
TWO
CHURCHES
From this point on, it
was clear to everyone that the Schism was not a matter of brother Bishops
who could not get along, but of two different groups of believers - the Orthodox,
who clung doggedly to the faith of their ancestors, and the Western Papal Catholics,
who after separating from the Apostolic Church developed with surprising
rapidity into a religion different both from pre-Schism Western
Christianity and Eastern Orthodoxy. The impact was devastating both for
the Western Christians, as they lost touch with the Orthodox Faith, and
for the Eastern Christians, as the numbers of communicants of the Church
plummeted and (worst of all) the Orthodox Faith came to be thought of as
an Eastern affair, rather than as a universal faith, embracing all peoples
and cultures - as the Holy Fathers had always understood it.
Since after the Schism of
Rome the Faith which we profess was preserved in Eastern lands
exclusively, our Church history will largely be an Eastern one from this
point onward. Still, we will keep abreast of events which shaped the Roman
Catholic Church so that the present-day situation, and the revival of
Orthodoxy among Western Christians in the 20th century, can be understood
and appreciated.
THE HIGH MIDDLE AGES
During the 12th century, the Greek
Church struggled to hold its own against the geographic expansion of the
Islamic religion. Already, the Byzantine Empire was much reduced in size
and influence, largely because its borders continued to be absorbed into
the Muslim sphere. But as Greek Christendom shrank, the Church gained new
wings in the conversion of the Slavic peoples. The 12th century, for
example, was a Golden Age of Christianity in Rus (now Russia and
the Ukraine). The characteristics of this Golden Age are worth noting: a
deep faith among the people, tireless efforts by the hierarchy of the
Church to eradicate old pagan ways, missionary fervour, a healthy monastic
presence with a charitable rather than legalistic bent, and the
penetration of Orthodoxy into every area of the people’s lives. A fire
at Kiev in 1124 destroyed 600 churches - which is some indication
of the attention paid to Divine worship by the inhabitants of that city.
In the same century, the Serbian Christians, another Slav people,
formed a strong Orthodox nation under the leadership of St. Sava.
WESTERN DEVELOPMENTS
Meanwhile, in
the now-heterodox West, the Papacy was amassing its power with daring and
calculation. The Popes acquired the right to appoint and depose kings and
emperors, and applied to themselves the sole authority to enroll saints in
the calendar of the new Roman Catholic Church. Rapid changes were sweeping
through the West, changes which have prompted one historian to comment
that an early Christian would have felt at home in the Western Church of
the 11th century, but out of place in that of the 12th century. A new
emphasis was being placed on emotions in the spiritual life, a
trend which only gathered steam throughout the Middle Ages and resulted in
such fantastical phenomena as stigmata (the appearance of wounds
said to be like Christ’s on the bodies of those in an ecstatic or trance
state).1 Another result was that the centrality of the Resurrection
of Christ came to be usurped by an emphasis on the Death of
Christ. In popular devotion, Christ was approached more as a suffering
fellow-man than as the God-Man. In art, the mystical iconography which had
emphasised Divine qualities and theologically instructed the people came
more and more to be replaced by passionate art,2 which
depicted in a familiar, worldly, realistic manner events of great joy or
pathos in the life of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the Saints.
1
The stigmata phenomenon dates back to the early 13th c. in the Roman
church and is found in the Muslim and Anglican faiths, but not in Holy
Orthodoxy.
2 The most
pertinent examples of this trend are the gaunt and grotesque crucifixes
of the 14th century.
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WESTERN CHURCH
REORGANISED
In the High Middle Ages, a new order was manifesting
itself in the church of Catholicism from top to bottom. Instead of a
college of ruling Bishops with honorary Metropolitans and Patriarchs among
them, as envisioned by the Seven Councils, a college of ruling bishops
subject to a powerful Pope characterised the hierarchy. The West held many
councils, considering them ecumenical, since the participation of the
Orthodox was thought unnecessary. New religious orders were invented to
allow men and women to pursue particular emphases (i.e.,
Cistercians were formed so that manual labour could be pursued, Dominicans
for the sake of preaching, Franciscans for the sake of begging,
Carthusians for the sake of solitude, etc.). The married
priesthood was vigorously suppressed at this time and faded out of
the people’s daily experience of Christianity. The worship of the Church
was now considered the exclusive province of the clergy, and the idea took
root of having a Mass which is not sung, or at which no one attends but
the priest himself. On the tactical side, the Pope began to appoint
legates and cardinals to represent him throughout Europe; often, they
carried more authority than the local bishop or archbishop. A doctrine of Purgatory
was devised and soon afterwards a doctrine of Indulgences, which
was fairly complete by the year 1300. Legalism reigned supreme as ordinary
Christians donated money to construction funds to receive 200 or 300 days
off their sentence in Purgatory (and, over time, indulgences were beset by
inflation). The official teaching on the nature of witchcraft
managed an about-face, and now the Roman Catholic leaders came to believe
that witches had genuine independent powers, could travel supernaturally,
and could assume various shapes at will. There was a persistent decline in
the Western Christians’ fasting discipline, and a more legal
approach to fasting, as local officials granted "dispensations"
from fasting or "commutations" in return for donations or
directed labour. The Eucharist came to be viewed quite differently.
Originally, the bread and wine of the Eucharist were considered
principally as the mystical Presence of Christ among Christians, a matter
of prayer and praise and song, and the taking of Communion. The Eucharist
was an Action. The medićval Western view of the Eucharistic
elements, both popular and official, was of a Thing to be objectively
adored, something to "visit," something to "keep
company," something to be displayed to the people for worship,
something to be carried around outside of the Liturgy, even to be carried
around as a character or prop in religious dramas— the Eucharist as an Object,
however greatly honoured. Gradually, the sense of Christ’s presence
among His faithful was replaced by a more restricted sense of His presence
in the eucharistic bread exclusively. The nature of the Eucharist as a
community endeavour was forgotten, and the Mass became a time for private
devotions. The last change worth mentioning is that human reason
came to occupy a more prominent place in Western theology. Rationalism, in
an attempted wedding with Christianity, spawned Scholasticism, a
system of interconnected philosophical and theological doctrines,
encompassing the spheres of astronomy and canon law as well as Christian
dogma. It must be remembered that all this was not an overnight process.
The drifting of the Roman/Western clergy and people from Orthodox
Christianity into what is now called Catholicism was dramatic, but
gradual and incremental compared with, say, the Protestant explosion.
While change characterised the West, the Eastern Orthodox faithful
remained tenaciously unchanging in their expression of Christianity. |
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CENTURY THIRTEENTH
In the 13th century, the
conditions under which Christians laboured were rather polarised. In the
East the faithful were suffering at the hands of the Muslims, of the
Mongolian Tartars (Russia), and, most tragically, of the Catholics. In
Western and Central Europe, the sovereignty of the Roman church was
undisputed, and its political clout and property holdings grew simply
immense; this is referred to as the Golden Age of the Papacy. The
Scholastic system, intertwining Christian teaching and rational
philosophy, was promoted by such men as Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus and
slowly gained ground. For the first time, the Sacraments were numbered at
seven1 and the exact way they "work" was sought. It was during
this century that the split of Rome from Orthodoxy was made final and
irrevocable. Ironically, a council was assembled at this very time to
effect the reunion of the Eastern and Western churches.
FALSE COUNCIL OF LYONS -
1274 A.D.
In 1261 Michael VIII
recovered Constantinople from the Western conquerors. His empire was very
weak, however - it was subject in the West to attacks from Charles of
Anjou (ruler of Sicily) and, in the East, from the Muslims. Out of sheer
self-preservation, he engineered a council to reunite the Christians of
East and West, and it met at Lyons in France in 1274. All but one of the
Eastern delegates agreed to recognise the Pope as sole master of the
Church and to add filioque to the Creed. The marvellous thing is that this
meeting, considered an Ecumenical Council by the Catholics, proved to be
no more than a paper agreement, since as soon as the compromising Bishops
returned to the East, faithful clergy and people disowned them.
This was not the first time
in history that common Orthodox people foiled the schemes of a
politically-motivated hierarchy by sheer stubborn fidelity to our sacred
Religion. As the Emperor Michael's sister put it, "Better that my
brother's Empire should perish, than the purity of the Orthodox
Faith." As soon as Michael died, the engineered Union was joyfully
repudiated.
1
While it is true that there are seven Sacraments (Mysteries) in the
Church, some Orthodox count more, including monastic tonsure, anointing of
monarchs, etc. ‘Sacramentum’ is Latin for ‘Holy Mystery’—a
Sacrament is a Church rite in which God’s Grace works its wonders in the
soul, in a variety of ways.
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CENTURY FOURTEENTH
It is sometimes thought
that the Ecumenical Councils were the last defining moments in the
Church's theology. This is not quite true. In the 14th century, for
example, a fierce battle raged within the Orthodox Church over the
principles of hesychasm. Hesychasm is a rigorous method by which great
stillness and unceasing prayer of mind and heart unite the Christian with
God. Hesychasts, in short, are those who by unceasing prayer, most
frequently through the Jesus Prayer,1 experience God Himself and behold
His Uncreated Light, that Divine radiance wherewith Christ shone on Mt.
Tabor (Mt 17:2). In 1326, the Greek monk Barlaam, came to Constantinople.
He and a circle of sophisticates ridiculed the notion that man could
experience God directly, citing the Fathers who taught that God is
unknowable and transcendent. Barlaam charged that God can be known only
indirectly, that the physical method of the hesychasts' prayer was a
falsely materialistic conception of prayer, and that the light beheld by
those who achieved this great nearness to God was a created, not an
Uncreated, light. The great St. Gregory Palamas arose in defence of the
hesychasts and defended their physical labours (such as uniting their
breathing to their prayers) and that the light they beheld was truly
Uncreated. He did this by resurrecting the teaching of St. Basil the Great
(+379) which distinguished between the energies and the essence of God. In
His energies, which are God Himself in His revelation to man and His
action in the universe, God can be known by the pure of heart who see Him;
in His essence, He is absolutely incomprehensible and above all things.
This hesychastic teaching was championed at councils held at
Constantinople in 1341 and 1351. (Disappointed, Barlaam joined the Roman
church.) One contemporary of St. Gregory was Blessed Nicholas Cabasilas,
who wrote about the Saviour as being closer to us than our own soul, and
stressed the life given through the Sacraments in the Church. St. Gregory
seemed to emphasize ceaseless interior prayer, and Bl. Nicholas the
external, sacramental life of the Church, but in reality they were
expressing two sides of one coin: there is no true mysticism without the
hierarchy and Sacraments of the Orthodox Church, nor is an externally
correct Christianity enough, for we must all strive to enkindle our hearts
with the very Light of Christ.
After one has studied medićval
Orthodox thought in all its vitality, the common objection to Orthodoxy
summed up by the author Dom Gregory Dix seems rather indefensible:
"Into the closed world of Byzantium, no really fresh impulse ever
came after the 6th century. Sleep began in the 9th century."
Ortho-doxy did not add new beliefs to Christianity, being very content
with the apostolic faith-but she certainly was not asleep!
WESTERN COUNCILS OF
CONSTANCE & BASEL
From 1378 to 1417, there
were two, and later three, claimants to the Papacy, each supported by
certain bishops and secular rulers. This divisive scenario is called the
Western Schism (not to be confused with the "Great Schism" of
1054) and it was terminated when the influential "ecumenical"
council of Constance, a purely Western council, elected a fourth man,
Martin V, as Pope. Martin V convoked yet another council, that of Basel,
which opened in 1431, in order to combat ecclesiastical corruption and
deal with dissenting movements in Europe. This council entered into a
tug-of-war with Martin's successor, Eugene IV. The council subpoenaed the
Pope; the Pope dissolved the council. The prelates of Basel refused to
disperse and, in fact, deposed the Pope.
YET ANOTHER FALSE UNION
The Council of Basel then
announced a council to unite the Greeks with Rome, that is, to accomplish
their submission to Rome. The Byzantine Empire was now in such imminent
danger of collapse that the Emperor's Bishops were ready to consider
joining Rome to secure military aid. However, as long as Papacy and
Council were battling, the unionist Greeks were not sure which side to
enter into communion with, and the Council of Basel could not agree on
a location. Seizing the moment, Eugene IV summoned a reunion
council at Ferrara, and in 1438 it was called to order. The Greeks soon
arrived and discussions began, centered on the Trinity, the Papacy, and
Purgatory. The Greeks at first maintained the Orthodox teachings on all
these points. The disputes grew long and wearisome, and the Greek prelates
wished to return home. Eugene IV convinced them to adjourn at Florence and
discuss the filioque. At Florence, they were placed under virtual house
arrest and were told that they could not leave until they had kissed the
Pope's slippers. Food and supplies were withheld from them, and eventually
all the Greek Bishops acquiesced to Catholicism in the three disputed
teachings-all the Bishops, that is, except one. St. Mark of Ephesus, the
most learned theologian present, refused, saying, "There can be no
compromise in matters of the Orthodox Faith."
"UNION" (1439)
& THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE (1453)
In July, 1439, a union
between the Orthodox East and the Western church was declared. Throughout
the West there was rejoicing- all the bells of England were rung in
commemoration. But like the false union at Lyons, this
"ecumenical" council also proved in the end to be a political
farce. Military aid from the West, the whole reason for the Byzantine
submission, never materialised. The Byzantine Emperor did not even dare to
publicly announce the union until December of 1452, and almost immediately
afterwards, in May of 1453, Constantinople fell to the Muslim Turks and
the Christian Empire of the East ceased to exist. This was not the end of
the Patriarchate of Constantinople, however; the next Patriarch thoroughly
repudiated the false union, as did the whole Orthodox people. In the West,
Catholicism continued to prevail; in Byzantium and the Balkans, the
faithful groaned under the heavy Turkish Yoke, clinging to their ancestral
Faith and Liturgy more tightly than ever; in Russia, which had now broken
free of the Tartars, a new nation was forged, the only great power in the
Orthodox world. The Russian Christians saw themselves as the defenders and
heirs of the true Orthodox Faith, and many of them believed that Byzantium
had perished precisely because of its tryst with Rome.
PAPAL SUPREMACY
The Council of Florence
prepared the way for a new structure in the Western church. The Councils
of Constance and Basel had both decreed as a dogma of Catholicism that the
highest authority in the Roman church was an ecumenical council of
bishops. The Council of Florence reversed this trend and re-established
the Papacy as the heart of Western Catholicism. Now, the manner of church
government in the West was neither a college of ruling bishops with
honourary Patriarchs and Metropolitans (with the Pope in titular
precedence) nor yet a college of ruling bishops with an autocratic Pope
above them. Increasingly, it was that of a college of powerless bishops
appointed and directed solely by the Pope at Rome.
1
"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner"
is the most widely-used form today of this ancient, Patristic prayer.
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CORRUPTION IN THE WEST
...
As power plays dominated
the Western skyline, and all best efforts at internal reform were thwarted
by the entrenched hypocrisy and corruption of Roman Catholic officials of
all ranks and all lands, a sense of hopelessness spread like a cancer
across Western Europe. In particular, the common people's respect for the
Papacy dwindled to almost nothing, as eyewitness accounts of Vatican
orgies and sadistic entertainments were borne from Rome back to all
Catholic nations. The Roman Curia1 held nothing sacred, and soon the
people of Europe felt the same way about their leadership. A grass-roots
Revolt was unavoidable.
... AND IN THE EAST
After the fall of
Constantinople in 1453, Serbia, Greece, Bosnia, and Egypt capitulated to
the Turks as well. Much of Europe and all of Asia Minor and the Levant
were ruled by Muslims, and the national Orthodox Churches were dismantled
as the Turks placed all Christians in the Ottoman Empire under a Greek
Patriarch of Constantinople who dwelt in the shadow of the Sultan. A great
deal of corruption entered the Church in Greece; for one example, the
government exacted higher and higher fees from newly-elected Patriarchs,
making the Patriarchate a rich man's enclave. In a debacle recalling the
contemporary morals of the Papacy, the Turks would depose or execute
Patriarchs in rapid succession to accrue more income from accession fees.
In spite of the danger involved, there was always someone willing to pay
enough money to be Patriarch.
1
"Curia" means "court," and is the bureaucracy of the
Roman Catholic church.
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MOSCOW-THE "THIRD
ROME"
Things took quite a
different turn in Russia, however, where a powerful Orthodox nation was
being born. There, a monastic controversy erupted in the 15th century
between the possessors, who stressed the Church's public and national
role, and believed that the Church should own great properties, maintain
splendour in worship, and distribute charity on a vast scale, and the
non-possessors, who stressed the inner and spiritual orientation of the
Church, called for a return to monastic ideals of poverty and seclusion,
and shunned collaboration with the State. St. Joseph of Volotsk led the
possessors and St. Nilus of Sora the non-possessors. Although the ideals
of the non-possessors remained an active leaven in Russian church life,
the possessors won the day, and, in fact, the next several centuries. The
monk Philotheus of Pskov propounded his Third-Rome theory at this time. He
told Tsar Basil III that the first Rome had fallen through heresy, the
second Rome (Constantinople) through sin. Moscow, he said, was the Third
Rome, or Christian centre, and there would not be a fourth. Not only the
Slavic, but also the Greek Orthodox began to look to Russia as the great
protector of Orthodoxy.
WESTERN VOLCANO ERUPTS
After Pope Eugene IV
outmanoeuvred the Conciliar movement, which would have exalted the
collective Episcopate of the West above its Pope, other challenges to
Papal control of the European scene arose quickly. The secular monarchs of
Europe, overcoming the opposition of their nobles, united their kingdoms
around themselves. As a new sense of national identity grew stronger, the
trans-national influence of the Popes naturally waned. Dissident movements
abounded. Typical of them was the uprising of Jan Hus in what is now
Czechoslovakia-Hus questioned papal authority and insisted that the
eucharistic wine should be given to the people at Mass (that was the
Orthodox and Early Western custom). But the Council of Constance had
forbidden laity to receive the chalice, and it had Hus captured and burnt
at the stake. The Inquisition, which had been established in the 13th
century and whose power to torture and kill opponents of the Catholic
denomination had been given a theological footing by Thomas Aquinas,
increased the scope of its activities and strengthened the Papacy.
Simultaneously, a cultural revolution was underway - Humanists embraced
the ćsthetic ideals of the pagan Romans and Greeks, and pagan culture was
the rage of the age. Popes and princes patronised humanist artists who
cast off the iconographic ideals of Christianity and lionised realism,
nudity, and emotionalism. The Catholic hierarchy was amazingly corrupt,
and the Papacy of the time was no exception. Pope Julius II rode into
battle in full plate armour; the behaviour of Pope Alexander VI is too
shocking to be retold in a Christian publication. The average Christian in
the West was seeing indulgences which were distributed by lottery, bishops
who oppressed commoners with heavy taxes to pay for their lavish
lifestyles, and hideous Popes who claimed, as Boniface VIII had in 1302:
"We declare, state, define, and pronounce that it is altogether
necessary to salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman
Pontiff." A general revolt was inevitable, and the first spark is
often pinpointed to October 31, 1517, when Martin Luther, a German friar,
nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg church to protest
abuses. Later he left the Catholic denomination, got married, and founded
the Lutheran religion. Luther and many other of the early Reformers were
not Protestants as we would picture today, however-Luther taught in his
catechism that Christians should make the sign of the Cross daily,
believed that in the eucharist the actual body and blood of Christ are
received, and greatly venerated the Holy Mother of God.
PROTESTANT MOVEMENTS
In England, King Henry
VIII, unable to secure from the Pope a divorce from the first of his eight
wives, had himself declared Head of the Church in England. The resulting
Anglican Church began more as a political necessity than a new religion.
Its worship and theology remained virtually unchanged for a time, evolving
into a truly Protestant form only under Edward VI. Henry VIII, like
Luther, was not what the word "Protestant" conjures up today. He
wrote pamphlets defending the seven sacraments of Catholicism and
continued to burn Lutherans at the stake as heretics until syphilis cut
him down. From Geneva in Switzerland came John Calvin, who introduced a
stark faith with a worship stripped of symbolism and artistry. Calvin
taught that the sacraments were merely symbols used by the church to
confirm the faith of its people. He vigorously defended infant baptism (a
practice over which Protestants are still divided) but did not believe as
did Luther that the eucharist gave a Christian the actual body and blood
of Christ. Calvin's ideas, which included God's absolute predestination1
of human beings to heaven or hell irrespective of their good will or good
deeds, swept like wildfire through France, Switzerland, and Scotland,
producing Reformed and Presbyterian churches. Ostensibly, the Orthodox
people were untouched by these developments, but the ripples spreading
outward from the Protestant movement would eventually stir Orthodox as
well as Roman Catholic waters.
The Protestant revolt had
one lasting effect which actually helped Western Christians become
re-acquainted with their Orthodox roots. Reformers promoted study of the
early Church Fathers, since they found discrepancies between these ancient
Christian writings and later Roman Catholic doctrines and practices. Since
the rise of the Scholastic system, study of the Fathers had sharply
declined. Now both Protestant and Catholic disputants were keenly
interested in this field, which is called Patristics. Many ancient
Christian authors were published. Too often, though, both sides missed the
point of what the Fathers were saying, since their aim was often to
"win" rather than to learn. Also, the Protestants encouraged
study of the Bible, which Catholic authorities at first resisted, but
later recommended.
1
This idea was a throwback to some of the errors of St. Augustine of
Africa.
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COUNTERREVOLUTION -- THE
COUNCIL OF TRENT
The Protestant
Revolt devastated medićval Roman Catholicism. Most of the countries of
northern Europe became Protestant; geographically, the Roman church was
downsized by 50%. The papal authorities reacted in two ways: first, they
were so desperate that they tried to genuinely reform the Church; second,
they pinned their hopes on expansion into the New World, Africa, Asia, and
Eastern Europe. The effort at reform was called the Counter-Reformation,
and it was, by and large, a moral success. However, instead of a return to
the original Orthodoxy of the Western Church, the instinct in the 16th
century was to cling ever more tightly to the Papacy. It was hoped that a
less scandalous, more centralised Papacy would be a great unifying force
for Counter-Reformation Catholicism. The great triumph for this school of
thought was the Council of Trent, which the Catholics considered to
be yet another ecumenical council. This Council essentially drew the
wagons around Rome. It shot down Protestant heresies and affirmed
post-Schism Catholicism, with its papal supremacy, indulgences, purgatory,
supererogatory merits of the Saints, and all the rest which, sadly, still
forms a wall between Rome and Orthodoxy. For the first time, it made
binding the Scholastic union of dogma, philosophy, and science, with the
practical effect that medićval sciences were dogmatised.1 The
Council of Trent also tried to pinpoint with scientific exactitude the
precise source, nature, and operation of the Sacraments. A new rite of
worship called the Tridentine rite2 was appointed for
the Roman church, drawn up by Pope Pius V, a former inquisitor.3
It was based on the original traditions of the Western Church, but many of
them it sharply curtailed. In order to compete with the less-demanding
Protestant groups, worship began to be shortened and was more and more spoken
rather than sung; rows of pews, for the first time in Christian
history, replaced the open naves of churches where once the people had
stood and moved about freely; ancient chant was replaced by
secular-styled music using various musical instruments as well as the
voice. The Divine Office, the round of prayers which formerly
united Christian communities with frequency around the local church,
became a legal requirement for clergy and monastics to fulfill by private
prayers. So much were Papal prerogatives increased that Charles V of
Spain, also Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, complained that his bishops
went to the Council of Trent bishops and returned parish priests. Old
Western rites such as England’s Sarum, York, and Hereford rites fell
into oblivion before the advancing Tridentine rite. Only certain monastic
orders and specific installations in Lyons, Milan, and Toledo retained
modifications of their ancient liturgical rites.
1
Thus the Roman church’s fear of Galileo’s discoveries; by
questioning the medićval view of astronomy, Galileo seemed to cast
doubt on the dogmas of Catholicism as well.
2
Tridentine is from the Latin word for Trent, Tridentinus.
3
Pius V was a fiery figure. As Pope, in his zeal to exterminate heretics,
he reopened Inquisition cases that had been closed for 20 years. He
raised a great fleet to defeat the Turkish Armada, saving Italy from the
Saracens (Muslims). Pius V has been canonised a saint by Rome.
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A RENAISSANCE MAN OF GOD
One
fascinating man unites in his experience all the Christian currents of the
16th century. St. Maximus the Greek studied in Florence, Italy, the
cradle of the Renaissance (the rebirth of pagan culture) and eagerly
pursued Humanist ideals. (Humanism was a way of thought which strove to
place mankind, instead of God, at the forefront of society.) Then he
listened to the fiery sermons of the friar Savaronola, who was preaching
against Humanism and against Papal corruption. Maximus became a Dominican
monk for some two years. Catholicism could not satisfy him, however, and
in 1504 this brilliant scholar returned to Greece and to Orthodoxy,
becoming a monk on Mount Athos.1 In 1517 he was invited to
Russia by the Tsar to help translate Patristic literature from Greek and
to correct the errors in Russian service books. Having arrived there, he
was accused of crimes by some of the Muscovite clergy and imprisoned for
26 years as a friend of the non-possessors.
THE FAITH -- A
MASTERPIECE
To understand the
difference between Orthodoxy and the Roman Catholic and Protestant forms
of Christianity, the Faith is often compared to a masterpiece painted by a
great master (Christ). Roman Catholicism, seeking to improve the painting,
has added strokes of its own design (doctrinal innovations).
Protestantism, feeling the original beauty obscured, has attempted to
remove whole layers (accretions) from the painting, but in the process has
destroyed much of the original work.
1 Mt. Athos: a
monastic stronghold in Greece considered the heartbeat of Orthodoxy.
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ORTHODOXY AT THE
RENAISSANCE
Holy
Orthodoxy has added nothing to this masterpiece which is the religion of
Christ, nor removed anything, but has simply preserved the
"painting," seeking only to encompass it in a fitting and
complementary frame (the best and most beautiful of art, music, and
thought). The weaknesses of Orthodoxy in Reformation times were an overly
external ritual emphasis; poor education and unfamiliarity with Orthodox
source materials; too near an identification of nationality and faith;
and, in many places, a real dearth of missionary activity. In 1589, the
Metropolitan of Moscow was made a Patriarch of the Church; a fascinating
correspondence took place between the Lutherans at Tübingen and the
Patriarch of Constantinople.1 Western trends in methodology and
terminology affected the Church’s manner of teaching, often to Orthodoxy’s
detriment, and throughout this era there was no Western liturgy in
Orthodoxy, nor any beachhead of Orthodox faithful in Western lands. Until
the 20th century, Orthodoxy remained something mysterious and inaccessible
for Western people, although there were some positive contacts in the 19th
century which sparked the interest of Westerners who had wearied of the
ideological standoff between Rome and Protestantism.
TRANSFORMATION OF THE
WESTERN WORLD
In the 1500’s and 1600’s, the entire
world view of Western Christianity underwent a metamorphosis. The
religious monopoly of medićval Catholicism was broken; exploration and
scientific experiment posed serious challenges to the Scholastic system
and directed the minds of men away from spiritual priorities to the new
frontiers of secular knowledge. (On the positive side, this investigative
spirit also fueled the first historical studies of liturgy.) Capitalism,
with its worldly priorities, took shape; national identities were stronger
than ever. Protestant groups, many affected by capitalist ideals,
proliferated rapidly. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII changed the Christian
calendar, a change resisted by both Protestants and Orthodox. The Gregorian
calendar is now the civil calendar for most countries of the world,
and only traditional Orthodox Christians still use the original Christian
calendar.
1 In the end, Patriarch Jeremias
concluded that Lutheranism had passed the point of no return to the
Orthodox Faith.
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JESUITS AND UNIATES
The Roman church expanded
into the New World, Africa, and the Far East, especially through the
efforts of the Jesuit Order. Ignatius Loyola, a Spanish soldier, founded
the group in 1540; by 1600 the Order could claim 10,000 professed members.
The Jesuits were a new breed of religious order: they urged a private,
rather than communal, divine office; abandoned any cloistered ideal; and
took a special vow of fealty to the Papacy. Working across traditional
diocesan boundaries, they superseded local authorities to serve as shock
troops for Rome. Their educational techniques were widely admired, but
their reputation for assassinating their opponents earned them the
unflattering motto "When good, there are none better; when bad, none
worse." Theologically, the Jesuits promoted Sacred Heart veneration,
the Immaculate Conception of Mary, devotion to the Papacy, formal
"meditation" methodologies, lenience over high moral standards,
and the active over the contemplative life.
The Roman Catholics
expanded into America, Africa, and Asia, to places where the name of
Christ was scarcely known, but waged a simultaneous battle for the souls
of the Orthodox Christiansin Eastern Europe. Their strategy was called the
Uniate Movement: by allowing Eastern peoples to keep their forms of
worship and certain customs, such as allowing priests to marry, Uniate
leaders were able to bring their followers under the headship of the Pope.
Many of the common people did not understand what was happening; some
believed that the Pope had joined the Orthodox Church. In 1596, when the
Polish kingdom (situated directly on the East-West fault line) was at the
zenith of its power, the Union of Brest forced tens of thousands of the
Orthodox faithful in Poland to join the papal fold, using the bloodiest of
methods. One Uniate champion, bishop Josaphat Kuntsevich, who was known to
the faithful as the Butcher, was canonised as a saint by Rome for his
efforts. The hands of Orthodox and Catholics alike were stained with the
blood of their fellow men. The scars of Uniatism run deep even today, and
indeed it seems the recent liberation of Eastern Europe has only opened
the door to a renewal of the conflict.
COUNCIL OF
BETHLEHEM
(A.D. 1672)
Orthodox thought was
undermined at this time by an intellectual fascination with the Western
scene, and in response the Eastern Patriarchs met at a number of
Pan-Orthodox Councils. These Councils were not touted as Ecumenical, but
are of great importance. Three of them condemned the calendar changes made
by Pope Gregory XIII and upheld the Julian, or Orthodox, calendar. One of
them, the Council of Bethlehem (called also the Council of Jerusalem), is
of chief importance; it produced a Confession of Faith, under the name of
Patriarch Dositheus of Jerusalem, which was a strong defense against
Protestant ideas. All these Councils rejected both Catholicism and
Protestantism, and decisively upheld the Apostolic Faith.
THE HOLY MOUNTAIN
Perhaps the greatest
bulwark of our Faith at this time was Mount Athos, the Holy Mountain, a
peninsula in Greece teeming with monasteries populated by monks of all
Orthodox national backgrounds.1 While Orthodox people were busy bartering
their rich cultural heritage for Western fads, Mt. Athos preserved the
culture and faith of Eastern Christianity, together with the highest
ideals of Christian ascetic and contemplative life as expounded by the
Early Fathers.
SCHISM IN RUSSIA
In imperial Russia, a
terrible schism exposed the worst susceptibilities of Orthodoxy in the
Third Rome. In the 1650s, Patriarch Nikon, an overbearing man with a love
for things Greek, changed Russian services and customs to accord with his
perception of what was standard in the other Patriarchates, and alienated
many of his flock. The Patriarchs deposed Nikon but ratified his reforms;
the Old Believers (Old Ritualists is more accurate) refused his decrees
and formed a schism. For making the sign of the Cross a little
differently, for making processions around the church in one direction
rather than another, Old Believers were oppressed and killed. The Church
hierarchy showed that it allowed no room for a loyal opposition, and the
opposition believed that the only true Orthodox were in Russia and were,
in fact, themselves. A year after Nikon died, Tsar Peter I gained the
throne and abolished the Moscow Patriarchate.
UNIATE MOVEMENT RESISTED
In the 17th century, the
Unia, the union of many Slavic believers with the Roman church, remained
in force. As early as 1588, Patriarch Jeremias of Constantinople had
blessed lay brotherhoods to defend the Faith against Catholicism. Helped
by the printing press of Ivan Fedorov (who had been expelled from Muscovy
with his "diabolic invention"), ordinary believers and simple
monks in the Ukraine and Galicia were very successful in rallying against
the Unia and preserving Orthodox teachings.
PROTESTANT PATRIARCH ?!
Western trends most often
affected not the dogmas of the Eastern Church but the style in which they
were presented. However, Orthodox Christendom recoiled in horror when the
Patriarch of Constantinople, Cyril Lukaris, came out with his Confession
of Faith. This work was thoroughly Calvinist, and was swiftly condemned by
Orthodox councils held in Kiev, Jassy, and Jerusalem. In 1638, Cyril was
drowned by the Turks.
1
In earlier times, the monastic communities on the Holy Mountain reflected
a broader range of national origins than at present: Bulgarians,
Georgians, Moldavians, Wallachians, Spaniards, and Italians all had their
own monasteries, making Athos a truly pan-Orthodox commonwealth. For more
information on Athos’ Italian monastery, see the leaflet "Amalfion:
The Western-Rite Monastery of Mt. Athos," to be republished by St.
John Cassian Press.
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JANSENISM
Within Roman Catholicism,
the lax moral theology of the Jesuits was attacked by thinkers such as
Bishop Cornelius Jansen of Ypres, who cited, as had Calvin, St.
Augustine's views on Grace and human free-will. Jansen claimed Jesuitism
was incompatible with St. Augustine (which it was), and a power struggle
ensued as each party sought to have the other proscribed by the Roman
authorities (which they each were). Jean du Vergier de Hauranne, abbot of
St. Cyran in France, brought Augustinian ideals to the famous convent of
Port Royal outside Paris and encouraged a stream of Augustinian
publications. A number of influential people attached themselves to Port
Royal for guidance; Blaise Pascal, father of the modern computer, wrote
his Provincial Letters, which blasted Jesuitism with eloquence and charm.
Pope Innocent X issued a bull condemning five propositions from Augustinus;
Jansenists agreed with him but observed that the propositions were not to
be found in the book. Port Royal was shut down.
The Jesuits fostered a new
and unheard-of devotion to Jesus' physical heart (the Sacred Heart), an
imaginative and emotional piety stressing Christ's human nature over His
Divine nature. This devotion was in fact a revival of the early heresy of
Nestorianism, which had singled out Christ's humanity for a separate
veneration. Using the pulpit and the confessional, the Jesuits spread this
spirituality, and their other concepts, throughout Roman Catholicism.
CHURCH OF UTRECHT
In the Netherlands, torn by
Protestant-Catholic strife, the local Roman clergy tended strongly to
Jansenist ideals. They were effective at reclaiming ground lost to
Calvinism, but their very success alarmed the Jesuits, who denounced many
of the most illustrious of the Dutch churchmen as heretical. Pieter Codde,
vicar apostolic of Utrecht, was deposed by Rome in 1704 because he would
not sign an anti-Jansenist document. The cathedral clergy chose Cornelius
Steenoven to be their bishop, and in 1724 he was consecrated by a
disguised Roman bishop passing through town. This was the beginning of the
Roman Catholic Church of the Old Episcopal Clergy, or "Little Church
of Utrecht." In 1763, at the Council of Utrecht, this body, seed of
the future Old Catholic movements, affirmed every Roman Catholic dogma and
pronounced the Orthodox Faith to be schismatic and false. Its
establishment signalled not a rapprochement with Orthodoxy, then, so much
as a refusal to drift yet further from her, as much of the Roman fold was
doing.
SYNODAL RUSSIA
In the most powerful sphere
of the Orthodox Faith- Russia-traditional Church life was disrupted by
Tsar Peter I's Spiritual Regulation. Drafted by a layman, the Regulation
abolished the patriarchate and set up a Synod of Bishops presided over by
a State-appointed, layman "ober-procurator." The government of
the Russian Church at this time was organisationally modelled on
Protestant bodies of the West. The reign of the Empress Catherine, a
German by birth and training, was even more disastrous for Russian
Orthodoxy. She closed half the monasteries of the Empire, and when in 1773
the Jesuit Order was abolished by the Papacy itself (to the relief of
Europe's crowned and mitred heads), Catherine harboured Jesuits in Russia
and preserved their Order. These were dark days for Orthodoxy, and yet the
same Lord Who promised to be with us "to the consummation of the
world" preserved His Holy Church through thick and thin.
GRASS-ROOTS ORTHODOX
REVIVAL
In the face of oppression
and obstruction, as well as foreign influence, God granted Orthodoxy
outstanding Saints to reinvigorate His Church. St. Nicodemus of Mt. Athos
(+1809) compiled the Philokalia, the teachings of the Holy Fathers on
interior prayer of the heart. St. Paisius, who lived on Athos and then in
Moldavia, founded monasteries where contemplative prayer flourished. His
hesychastic revival blossomed in Russia and nourished such great Saints as
Seraphim of Sarov and the Optina Elders-a succession of spiritual giants
who spanned the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries in a golden chain of
holiness reminiscent of Christianity's earliest days.
EVANGELISATION
The late 18th and the 19th
centuries were times of great missionary fervor in the Church. In 1794-the
very year that St. Paisius reposed-the first Russian missionaries arrived
in Alaska. Won over by great teachers such as St. Herman and St. Innocent
of Alaska, a large proportion of the Eskimo and Aleut Indians became
staunch Orthodox Christians. In Japan, which had no native Orthodox, St.
Nicholas of Tokyo (+1912) converted thousands of Japanese and set up a
self-sufficient native Orthodox Church. In Russia, the seminary of Kazan
was the missionary heart of the nation, and in this region the Liturgy was
celebrated in over 20 different languages. Orthodox missionaries were
often successful precisely because they did not employ the coercive
tactics other Christians of that era too often favoured. On the North
American mainland, the first church to represent our Faith was built at
Fort Ross, California, in 1812. St. Juvenal of Alaska was the first
American martyr for Orthodoxy. In 1879, an archbishopric was established
at San Francisco and, in 1898, St. Tikhon was made Archbishop for North
America (later he suffered for the Faith as Patriarch of Moscow). It was
in San Francisco too that another martyr for Christ, an Indian, sanctified
the New World with his blood. St. Peter the Aleut had sailed down from
Alaska to California. When he
refused to change to Roman Catholicism, the local Franciscan friars
dispatched him to eternal life by cutting off his fingers one by one until
he bled to death.
MUSLIM STRANGLEHOLD IS
BROKEN
Ever since the fall of the
Levant and Byzantium to Arab and Turkish forces, Eastern Christians (the
Russians excepted) had generally lived in subjugation to Saracens or
Catholics. In 1821, however, the Greek Christians toppled their Muslim
overlords in a bloody massacre. They wished to establish an Orthodox
kingdom, but the European powers had other plans for the young nation. The
Kingdom of Greece was forced to accept a Catholic monarch, and the course
forced upon the Church of Greece was a difficult one. In Serbia, Bulgaria,
and Romania, the faithful likewise threw off the Turkish Yoke, and these
lands revived their ancient national Churches, each with its own
Patriarch. This was a mixed blessing, for as long as the Turks held sway,
native Christians were cut off from the rest of the world, and oppression
encouraged them to guard their traditions. Now, winds of humanism and
modernism began to blow within the Church's precincts, imperceptibly at
first, later with hurricane force.
TWO NEW DOGMAS FROM ROME
In 1854, Pope Pius IX
declared as a dogma that the Virgin Mary was conceived immaculately,
without original sin (in spite of the fact that Catholic teachers such as
Bernard of Clairvaux, Thomas Aquinas, and other Roman Catholic
authorities, taught the contrary). This same daring Pope, who called
himself "the way, the truth, and the life," called the Catholic
bishops of the world to the First Vatican Council, where in 1870 they
unanimously agreed that the Pope of Rome is infallible whenever defining
faith or morals for the Church. The Christian world reeled in shock.
Protestants were vindicated; this was the culmination of their direst
warnings. The Orthodox were aghast. Expecting some Catholics to seek
refuge in Orthodoxy, the Russian Church approved a Western Rite Mass for
them (their offer had few takers). In the USA, the Catholic Archdiocese of
St. Louis had just published a catechism stating that Papal infallibility
was a notion dreamed up by Protestants to make Catholicism appear absurd.
A second, revised printing was hastily prepared.
OLD
CATHOLICISM
In only one part of the
world was a serious, lasting protest raised against the Papacy by Roman
Catholics themselves. In Germany, a circle of scholar-priests, risking
their careers, stood up to Papal infallibility and were ejected from the
Roman Church. In 1873, these priests banded together and, with many
sympathetic lay people, founded the Old Catholic church,1 which soon
merged with the Old Roman church of Utrecht. The Old Catholics expressed
their wish to return to the ancient Christian faith and practice, but
because they had no unbroken, living tradition to link them with their
Orthodox ancestors (as did the Eastern Orthodox), they could not agree on
what the ancient Christian faith and practice were. Their only link with
Western Christianity had been through Roman Catholicism, and now that they
were independent of Rome, everything was "up for grabs."
Unwilling to take its lead from Rome, and skeptical about Orthodox
tradition, the Old Catholic church strove to gain a sense of direction
through a series of lay Congresses, huge affairs which created quite a
stir on the European scene and were attended by Protestant, Catholic, and
Orthodox observers. Ultimately, the Old Catholics felt most comfortable
with the Anglican church. Within ten years the denomination had
assimilated many features of Protestantism, though retaining elements of
Catholicism and reciting the Creed, like the Orthodox, without the filioque.
1
Fr. Friedrich von Schulte was the founder of this denomination.
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SPLITTING
HAIRS AND SPLITTING UP
The
twentieth century has heralded one unique and very unfortunate phenomenon.
As in no other epoch of Christian history, we have seen the proliferation
of a countless multitude of denominations. Prior to 1900, the most
well-known denominations, Moravians, Lutherans, Calvinists, Anabaptists,
Anglicans,1 Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists, which
sprang up in that order, were new groups who most influenced the lives of
Europeans and Americans. In America, the new religions of Mormonism
(founded 1830), Seventh-Day Adventism (1844), Christian Science (1879),
and the Jehovah’s Witnesses or Russellites (1884) were formed and began
disseminating doctrines widely differing from historic Christian
teachings. In the more traditional Protestant bodies, a great deal of
division occurred over differences in Scripture interpretation, differing
ideas of church government, and purely political concerns.
"SACRAMENTAL"
CHURCHES PROLIFERATE
The explosion in
split-off denominations was not confined to Protestants; many Catholic or
Orthodox clergymen seceded from their respective churches to form new
groups. We can begin to understand the actions of these men and their
splintering movements if we understand how they viewed Holy Orders,
the process of ordaining clergy.
The Fathers of the Church
teach us that the Grace of the Sacraments, given by God, resides in His
Holy Church. This Grace is poured out upon the faithful through the clergy
ordained for the Church to this purpose. This mysterious power resides,
then, not in the individual men who celebrate the Sacraments, but in the
single Body of the Church, from whom the Bishops and clergy receive any
authority they may possess. If any clergyman separates from the Church,
whether by teaching falsely (heresy) or simply seceding from the unity of
the Church (schism), any "sacraments" he performs are utterly invalid
and void, since "he has become a layman" (St. Basil). He is like
a lamp unplugged from its source, or a branch cut off from a tree; the one
cannot give light, and the other cannot sustain life.
However, the Roman Catholic teaching,
made official at the Council of Trent, says that sacramental authority
rests in the person of the clergyman as an effect of his
ordination; therefore, if he secedes from the Church, he can continue to
liturgise or ordain, although he will sin in so doing, and his sacraments
will be valid but irregular. This teaching became the
rationale for thousands of independent bodies called Catholic or Orthodox
or both, which profess to have an apostolic succession and sacraments,
but have lost that which is essential to them both, the characteristic of
Church unity as understood by Christianity’s early Fathers.
Often, these bodies have clergy or bishops but no people to attend
services.
1 In the USA, those of the Anglican
Communion are called Episcopalians.
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AN OCEAN OF BLOOD
In the year 1917, a
horrific calamity befell the Christian world. A revolution overthrew the
Orthodox Tsar of Russia, and the "Third Rome" fell to atheistic
Communists. In many ways, this event signalled the end of the Church's
prosperous "Constantinian Era" and the return of a martyric age.
Over 20 million people lost their lives in the conflict, many of them
Martyrs for the name of Christ.1 Indeed, their number surpasses even the
number of early Martyrs who suffered in the catacombs and amphitheatres of
the Roman world. Although the Communists strove for 70 years to stifle the
Faith with torture and death, it remained utterly unconquerable.
ORTHODOX DIASPORA
The calamity caused a river
of Orthodox émigrés to flow out of Russia to every corner of the earth.
This is of great importance, for we know that the end of the world will
not come until the Gospel has been preached everywhere. According to St.
John Maximovitch, this preaching is not a preaching by just anyone, in
just any manner, but a preaching in the fullness and authority of Holy
Orthodoxy. The Orthodox Christian diaspora has made this virtual
impossibility a reality. We have seen, in this century, a resurrection of
the Orthodox Faith in Western lands after a 900-year exile, and the spread
of the Faith all over the globe, far beyond its historical confines.
1
Some New Martyrs had lived and worked in California, New York, and
Chicago.
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VARIETY OF
"JURISDICTIONS" ENTERS AMERICA
Orthodox missionary
activity in America was initiated along the northeastern seaboard by
"cloaked" (monastic) Bishops from Norway in 956 A.D. However,
the lasting missionary work here was begun by the Russian Orthodox Church
in 1794, in Alaska. Therefore, all Orthodox Christians in America, of
whatever ethnicity, were under the Russian Bishops. But after 1917,
different ethnic churches, in violation of canon law,1 sent their own
Bishops to America to tend to Orthodox of their own ethnicities. This led
to chaos, but it must be borne in mind that the needs of Orthodox
immigrants were unusual and truly pressing. These overlapping extensions
of various national Orthodox Churches from the Old World were called
jurisdictions, and many tedious rivalries have arisen between them, to the
discredit, in this land, of our sacred Faith.
MID-TWENTIETH CENTURY
After the end of World War
II, the number of Eastern Orthodox emigrating to the United States
increased. Labouring among them were St. Nicholas (Velimirovitch), a
Serbian Bishop who had the character of an Apostle (+1956), and Bishop
Theodore (Irtel), a monk from the sacred monasteries of Pskov Caves and
Valaam in Russia, who worked with St. Nicholas for a time in Canada.
During this period several substantial Orthodox seminaries were founded in
the U.S.
ROME TURNS AWAY FROM ITS
HERITAGE
In 1962, the Second Vatican
Council of the Roman Catholic church was called by Pope John XXIII.
Vatican II, considered an ecumenical council by the Catholics, was unique
among all the "ecumenical" councils of history because it issued
no dogmatic decrees, concerning itself only with social, structural, and
liturgical issues. The results were a mixed bag-in some cases, early
Christian ideas were introduced into the Roman Catholic system; in other
cases, its last Orthodox vestiges were swept away. The most notable change
was to Roman Catholic worship, where the Tridentine rite (the bare-bones
remnant of Western Orthodox liturgy) was replaced by forms of worship so
unaspiring, irreverent, and banal that Roman Catholics by the millions
stopped attending Sunday services in disgust and disillusionment. Many
Catholics turned to Episcopal churches for reverence and ceremony, or
even, in some cases, to Judaism. In view of their desperation, it was felt
that many such Christians could be welcomed back into the Orthodox Church,
and that this reunion could be helped if they were offered familiar,
Western forms of worship. This programme in the Orthodox Church, called
Western Rite Orthodoxy, was not extensively realised, however, for several
reasons:
DIFFICULTIES OF WESTERN
ORTHODOXY
1) The number of Western Rite outlets was very small;
2) Other Eastern Orthodox were and are often suspicious, or even
hostile, towards any Western Christian expression;
3) There were few spiritual leaders of a high calibre to guide the
Western Rite missions, and virtually no monks (in Orthodoxy, only a monk
can be chosen Bishop).
4) Orthodoxy demanded that potential converts rethink their faith more
than the casual Sunday crowd, even the devout, were willing to do;
5) Once Catholics or Episcopalians had converted, and saw that the
Byzantine Rite was more beautiful, ancient, and majestic than the
Tridentine rite or the Book of Common Prayer, they gladly switched to the
Byzantine rite; and
6) Catholics raised in that generation could not surmount the belief
that if they left the Pope their eternal salvation was in jeopardy. Better
a non-practising Roman Catholic, many thought, than an active Orthodox
Catholic.
ST. JOHN of SAN
FRANCISCO (+1966)
One of America's greatest
Saints was Archbishop John Maximovitch. Born in Russia, ordained Priest as
a young man in Serbia, he was consecrated Bishop to lead the Russian
Orthodox community in China, where, in Shanghai, he built a large
cathedral and orphanage. After some years as a Bishop in Western Europe,
where he encouraged Western Rite Orthodoxy as a means of bringing the
Orthodox Faith back to Europe, St. John was appointed Archbishop of San
Francisco, where he healed a bitter dispute and built the great Cathedral
of Our Lady, Joy of All Who Sorrow. He was a great Orthodox educator and
theologian, a loving pastor, an amazing ascetic, and a wonderworking
saint. In 1994 he was glorified as a Saint of the Church, and his sacred
and incorrupt relics rest today in a shrine in his Cathedral in San
Francisco. Countless spiritual and physical healings have occurred through
his relics and his unsleeping prayers.
1
The canons state that an area which has been evangelised by a particular
Church shall remain in the sphere of responsibility of that Church.
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ORTHODOXY'S TRAIL OF
TEARS
Perhaps the most sorrowful,
but necessary, words must now be spoken regarding the state of the
Orthodox Church in the 20th century. As the author of this historical
sketch, I pray almighty God for the objectivity and charity to negotiate
these stormy straits-for it would be dishonest to sail around them.
At the beginning of our
century, a common obedience to the ancient Christian faith and traditions
united all Eastern Orthodox faithful. In the 1920s, a heresy called
Ecumenism began to tilt this unanimity. Ecumenists believe most or all
churches named "Christian" are parts of one inclusive, invisible
Church. The unity of which Christ spoke, they believe, was lost in
history. The ecumenists say that a reunification of the various
denominations will restore this unity. Traditional Orthodox also hope for
the various Christian bodies to be united, but we believe that authentic
reunification can occur only when Christians who have split away from
Orthodoxy for one reason or another are reunited with Her, and profess
again the original faith of their fathers. An ecumenist, to take an
example, would claim that for unification purposes each denomination ought
to forfeit the teachings which make it unique among denominations, or
minimise them, or simply ignore their incompatibility with variant
doctrines. Ecumenism is couched in terms of love, but it sacrifices the
truth which is the very foundation of Christ-like love. Genuine unity does
not have to be concocted; it has always existed in the Orthodox Church as
the result of sharing one unaltered and authentic Christian Faith.
Ecumenism gained rapid
ground in 1923, when Meletius IV, a Freemason who had been made Patriarch
of Constantinople by the British and French, called an
"Inter-Orthodox Congress," which recommended the Papal calendar,
married Bishops, and abolition of fasts. Only six Bishops and a few
Priests attended, and the Congress mostly failed. It did succeed, however,
in planting the new or Papal calendar in Romania and Greece. Pious
believers who maintained the Orthodox calendar (celebrating their feasts
13 days later than at Rome) were excommunicated and persecuted. Meletius'
successor, Gregory VII, supported the "Living Church" movement
in Russia, a sort of Orthodoxy Lite engineered by the Communist regime.
Meletius became Patriarch of Alexandria in 1925, and carried out his
revisionist programmes there. Since Meletius' time, many more local
Orthodox churches have adopted the Roman Catholic calendar. Fortunately,
despite the calendar split, all Eastern Orthodox celebrate Pascha (Easter)
on the Julian calendar (Orthodox in Finland are a rare exception).
In 1966, Patriarch
Athenagoras of Constantinople and his Synod declared they had lifted the
1054 excommunication against the Roman Pope. Despite the fact that the
Papacy is much less near to Orthodoxy now than it was in 1054, Athenagoras
also entered the Pope's name in the diptychs (prayer list of Orthodox
Patriarchs). Athenagoras praised the movement toward one chalice by those
"who don't know the difference in their doctrines and are not
concerned about them." His successor, Demetrius, concelebrated part
of a Mass with Pope John Paul II in 1987, underscoring his ecumenist
thinking. In 1990, representatives of all Patriarchates except Jerusalem
signed the Chambesy Agreement, urging Orthodox churches to merge with
Monophysite churches by setting aside the Fourth Ecumenical Council.1
1
That is, not requiring Monophysites joining with them to assent to
this Council, which even the Anglicans endorse.
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All the developments named
above do more than run against the grain of Orthodox tradition. In a way
that cannot be ignored, they point to the formation of an "Eastern
Orthodoxy" having her ethnic and ritual trappings but based on
neither the Seven Ecumenical Councils, nor the teachings of the early
Christian Fathers, nor on Orthodox Tradition. The leaders of this trend
seek refuge in the respect accorded them by contemporary society as
official leaders of their people, and in many cases have shown scant
tolerance towards those who insist upon their ancestral Orthodox faith and
customs. Such traditionalists are often branded "schismatics,"
"fanatics," or "heretics," and repression and violence
have been loosed against them.1 At the vanguard in this battle against
revisionism in Orthodoxy are the Old-Calendar Synods of Russian, Romanian,
Bulgarian, and Greek Orthodox Bishops, some of whom are united in full
communion. Within the established Georgian, Russian, and Serbian Churches,
there is a movement underway to pull away from the excesses of false
ecumenism, by making clear statements of sound Orthodox faith and by
withdrawal from the ecumenistic World Council of Churches.
WHITE-WATER NAVIGATION
The unstable picture
painted above is disheartening, and it may represent the last and greatest
temptations faced by the Church of Christ. Nonetheless, our Saviour Jesus
has said that "the gates of hell shall not prevail against" His
Church. Perhaps the most encouraging thing to do is look at how the Church
has handled these sorts of situations before. Let us look back to the
roiling 4th century, to the lifetime of St. Basil the Great: the lives of
Christians were rocked by a fantastic battle between the Arians and the
Orthodox. Heresy had penetrated into the Church structure in various
shades and shapes, and a common result was that a number of Bishops who
were faithful feared to be in communion with other Bishops who, in
reality, were as faithful as themselves. A good part of St. Basil's life
was spent trying to re-establish communion between orthodox Bishops, using
the Nicene Creed as a common ground. It seemed then, as now, that the ship
of Apostolic Christianity had been dashed to pieces, but her Bishops, by
obedience to the Faith, were eventually able to express their spiritual
unity in intercommunion and organic unity.
WHAT'S AN ORTHODOX TO
DO?
Many concerned Orthodox,
shocked by turncoat Bishops and Patriarchs, are misled into thinking they
have to "rescue" or "defend" the Church. Such an
attitude can quickly degenerate into fanaticism or prideful
"correctness." St. Isaac of Syria (7th century) comments thus:
"Someone who is considered among men to be zealous for truth has not
yet learnt what truth is really like: once he has truly learnt it, he will
cease from zealousness on its behalf." It is the personal duty of
every one of the faithful to remain unwavering in the Orthodox Faith.
Those who wish to depart from it, let them depart; if they hold the title
of Bishop, our responsibility is to seek out Bishops who teach truly and
rightly, and place ourselves under their care. It is not necessary for us
to know what the Church will "look like" in the event of
significant upper-echelon defections, nor need it be our particular
concern.
1
In 1992, traditionalist monks were forced from St. Elias Skete on Mt.
Athos by representatives of the Patriarch of Constantinople and armed
federal agents. The persecution of Old-Calendar Orthodox across Greece and
Romania by the establishment is another unworthy chapter in modern
Orthodox history.
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THE ORTHODOX CHURCH
TODAY
Orthodox Christendom, our
holy Mother, whose great and sacred legacy is as dear as our own hearts,
stands today at a great and decisive crossroads. On the positive side,
vast missionary opportunities await us on every continent and across our
own nation. With the advantage of highly-developed media, great numbers of
people may now come to know what Orthodoxy is and what she teaches.
Byzantine iconography is becoming well-known and well-respected the world
over, so that there is great opportunity for our holy icons to accomplish
their silent preaching. Since the Iron Curtain has been "torn in
twain," the faithful in formerly Communist lands (85% of all
Orthodox) have new freedoms to preach and practice the Faith, and
spiritual revivals in Russia, Romania, and elsewhere appear promising. In
places as unlikely as Australia, Uganda, Sicily, and the U.S., there are
flourishing Orthodox communities and an outpouring, often deeply personal
rather than theatrical, of the grace and mercy of God. Moreover, in
varying degrees and at varying paces, separated Christian bodies who are
searching for historical Christianity are moving closer and closer to
Orthodoxy.
On the sobering side,
however, it cannot be denied that the spirit of our age is one of
materialism, hedonism, selfishness, and aimless religious
wandering-antitheses of spiritual rebirth. Ethnic exclusivity and
jurisdictional infighting threaten the integrity of Orthodox witness. In
America there is a terrible shortgage of monks and nuns, and as long as
spiritual goals are outranked by monetary and secular concerns, in various
of the churches, Orthodoxy's strength will be checked and her testimony to
the world crippled. Our souls and the souls of our children are in real
danger from the materialistic, morally bankrupt, religiously empty culture
which surrounds us and which is now being rapidly exported to Orthodox
countries.
Since the battle lines have
already been drawn up, our own response to Christ will have much to do
with the future of the Church and of our planet. This is not a time to
shirk or be gloomy. When a theologian complained to St. Nicholas
Velimirovitch (†1956) about the lack of faith today, he received this
reply:
"There is bitter truth
in your letter. However, let all despair be far from us. Despair is the
dowry of death which unbelievers accept alongside their marriage with
death. There have been even more difficult times for the Church of Christ,
but the soldiers did not collapse, nor was the battle lost. You've only to
read the picture St. Basil paints of the state of affairs in the Church
and in the world (4th century), a picture black as the black night on a
rough sea. It looked as though the world's end were nearing and God's
judgment were in sight. Since then, some 16 centuries have rushed by. Not
only did the Christian Faith not extinguish itself, but its light
enveloped the entire globe and enlightened every corner of the world...
Will disbelief destroy God's
Faith? This is the question that Christ's heroic Apostle asked in the
first days of a history which has now reached 19 centuries. These numerous
centuries have justified his bright look into the future. Take as your own
this radiant apostolic glance into the future of Christianity. Try to
write an article on the Church entitled Christ's Triumphal Chariot."
And now, dear reader, may
the peace of God remain with you, and may you be borne aloft to the Heaven
of joy in this triumphal Chariot, whose destination is the Throne of the
Living God.
The End, and glory to
God.
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The text above, by Fr. Aidan
(Keller) of Austin, has been available in book format since 1994 under the
title of A Pocket Church History for Orthodox
Christians. For
ordering information, click here.
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