The Pope Wants to “Walk Together” with the Orthodox

“By journeying together, [...] we prepare ourselves to receive from God the gift of unity,” he declared to the delegation of the Theological College of Athens led by Metropolitan Agathanghelos. This audience takes place as the Catholic Church prepares for the celebration of the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, which took place between May 20 and July 25, 325. It was during this Council that the Creed, the confession of the Christian faith known as the Symbol of Nicaea [or the Nicene Creed], was set.

In the Bull of Indiction for the Holy Year 2025, Spes non confundit [“Hope does not disappoint”], the Pope considers this anniversary as an invitation to progress “to visible unity,” by agreeing on the date of Easter, which Catholics and Orthodox will celebrate on April 20 in 2025.

He also wants to organize an ecumenical celebration in 2025 to evoke the “richness of the testimony” of the martyrs of various Christian religions, whom he describes as “seeds of unity, expressions of the ecumenism of blood.”

During the audience, the Pope did not fail to emphasize the following: “By journeying together, working together and praying together, we prepare ourselves to receive from God the gift of unity that, as a fruit of the Holy Spirit, will be a communion and harmony in legitimate diversity.”

And he insists: “We must journey together and pray together,” after recalling how he had been “happy to learn that once again this summer you will welcome to the Theological College of Athens a group of Catholic students, who will be introduced to knowledge of the modern Greek language and the Orthodox Church.”

In his speech, the Pope declared that, “It is the young [...] who can break the bonds of antagonism, misunderstanding and prejudice that for centuries held Catholics and Orthodox back from acknowledging one another as brothers and sisters, united in diversity.” He stressed the importance of “bearing witness to the love of Christ, especially in a world so divided and riven by conflict.”

An Ecumenical Meeting in Bari

From June 3 to 7, 2024, the Coordinating Committee of the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue Between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church met in the city of Bari, in the south of Italy, under the leadership of Cardinal Kurt Koch, Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, and Metropolitan Job of Pisidia of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.

A communiqué from the meeting described what was accomplished: “The Coordinating Committee considered a draft text entitled ‘Towards Unity in Faith: Theological and Canonical Issues,’ which summarized the achievements of the Dialogue thus far and identified several issues remaining to be resolved between Roman Catholics and Orthodox. The Committee began to discuss in particular the historical and theological issues related to the Filioque and Infallibility, respectively. To this end, two subcommittees were formed.”

At the end of the communiqué, the Committee stated: “The members look forward to the forthcoming commemoration in 2025 of the 1,700th anniversary of the First Ecumenical Council held at Nicaea in 325, and pray that this event will be an inspiration on the path towards the re-establishment of full communion.”

Commentary

Francis’s ecumenism is a praxis, it is a matter of “journeying together”—in a “synodal” process—and of “praying together” to smooth out, he thinks, all doctrinal “misunderstandings” and all theological “prejudice.” But this contempt for dogma could well be caught by moral requirements that the Orthodox are hardly inclined to put aside.

We remember, in fact, the opposition that several Orthodox confessions showed when Fiducia supplicans, authorizing the blessing of same-sex couples, was published. They did not hesitate to consider that this Roman document called into question ecumenical dialogue.

In short, for the schismatic Orthodox, homosexuality is not soluble in synodality. Only Francis seems to believe that all doctrinal and moral difficulties can be dissolved in an ecumenical synodal praxis.