Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 15.djvu/178

 UNION

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UNION

woiili! 1)0 usoloss; for one lliirip is quite certain, the Hf)ly See can never accept conditions which would involve the renunciation of an ollice it knows to be of Divine appointment and vital for the maintenance of the Church's imity. Nor is this all, for these Ortho- dox prelates, if they will reflect, must needs see that their conditions are such as cannot possibly form a durable basis for reunion. They claim that their position anrl theirs only is sanctioned by what they call "the Seven General Councils" — that is, the Councils of NicM'ii i:!'_'."ii, Const ant inoj)le I (381), Ephesus (431), Cli,ilc.-.l..n i l.'il ). Constantinople II (553), Third Consl:iiilinoplc (C.SO), Second Nica>a (787). But this is just what C'atliolic historians deny; and, as it would appear, with a licavy balance of evi- dence on their side. Who, then, is to decide between the two contentions? In other words, is tliis Oriental claim more than a disguised appeal to the Protestant principle of private iudgnient, the very priiicii)le which, as the ex[)erience of four centuries of Protes- tantism has demonstrated, is essentially tlic principle of division, and not of unity? It will be reli<'d that the authority to decide is with the next general council. Hut if it were at all conceivable that general councils could take the place of a living centre of unity in the government of the C^hurch, at least they would require to be held at short intervals, and then the question arises: Why, if our Eastern brethren appreciate the importance of unity, have they not during all these centuries taken the initiative in working for the holding of such a general council and invited the Catholic representatives to take a friendly part in it? Why, when the popes have taken that initiative and have invited the Jvisterns in the nio.st cordial terms to join in such a council, or at least to join with them in some friendly conference to discu.ss the possibilities of a reconciliation, have they always so sternly refused? There arc those who think that, as in the times of Phot ius and Ca-rularius, the chief deterring causes that stand in the way of the reunion of the Orthodox with the Catholics are political, and to some extent that may be the case. But the tsars, who, if they were to put themselves at the head of a vast reunion movement, could probably carry the rest of the Easterns (Monophysites and Nestorians included) with them, cannot be unconscious of the splendid role which would become theirs as the leading Christian sovereigns and i)rotect(irs of a united Chris- tendom of such vastly increased dimensions.

Evidently, then, the jjrimary cause why the East will not approach the West for the healing of the schism is .still to be sought in that indefinable spirit of antipathy which the Easterns have inherited from past ages, when to .some extent it was reciprocated in the West, and which makes them suspect every over- ture that comes from the West of being dictated by some malign ulterior purpose — such as to suppress their anc'ient rites, or transform their religious habits, or crush out their reasonable liberties by extravagant exercises of ecclesiastical power. To us in the West it seems unintelligible that such ground- less suspicions .should be entertained. It may be that in some districts, where the East .and West toucheach other closely, and the blending of religious with political animosities causes tension, material for that sort of suspicion exists, but certainly there is no corresponding aversion to Easterns or their religious habits in the general area of Western Catholicism, and above all, as has already been observed, there is absolutely no ground for suspecting the integrity of the motives that have consistently animated the long line of ])opes. The Creeks who took refuge in Southern Italy under pressure of the Turkish invasion have never to this day found difTiculty, but on the contrary much encourageminl, from the pojies, in their adherence to their Eastern customs, the marriage of their clergy included; and since the timi' of the

Council of Florence it h.as been a fixed principle of p.ai)al government that Orientals passing into coin- nuinion with t he Holy See should be required to remain in their own rites and customs where no doc- trinal error w.as involved, Leo XIII enforcing adher- ence to this principle by new .sanctions in his "Orien- talium ecclesiarum dignitas" (1893). Moreover, w^hy should the popes or their adherents in the West cherish dislike for rites and customs so intimately associated with the memories of those venerable Fathers and doctors whom East and West agree in venerating and claiming as their own'.' Could the Easterns, then, only be induced to lay aside these sus- picions, if but provisionally, and meet the pope or hia representatives in friendly conference, the problem of reunion would already be half solved. For then explanations could be exchanged, and false impres- sions removed, particularly the false impression that it is lust of domination, and not hdelify to a Divine trust, that constrains the popes to insist on the recog- nition of their primacy. After that it might be neces- sary to discuss doctrinal points on which the two sides are at variance; but the discu-ssion would turn on the application of ancient principles recognized on both sides. Seeing how shaflf)wy are some of the points of disagreemcnl, some of them would surely be cleared up comiiletely l)y such discussions, and if others stood out, and thereby ma<le any inunediate act of reunion impo.s.sible, at least the better understanding arrived at might be hoped to impart to any further studies and discussions a convergent tendency and so lead on to intercommunion at no remote date.

Is such a consummation impossible? For the present it would seem to be so, if we are to judge by the atlit\idc of the rulers, civil and ecclesiastical, of the Orthodox Cluirches. But it is at least symptomatic that .Joachim III, the present Patriarch of Con- stantinople, the same who in 1902 proposed confer- ences on reunion to the other autocephalous churches, has recently (Bes.sarione, January-March, 1911) ex- pressed his desire for reunion and for preparatory efforts to come to an understanding with the Westerns. The career, too, of such a man as the late Vladimir Soloviev — who, starting from the ordinary Orthodox conceptions, set himself to study the whole question of reunion in the light of the patristic writings, and was led to enroll himself among the Uniats — may fairly be t.aken, .seeing what influence he exercised, and his memory still exercises, over many of his fellow-countrymen, as a sign that there are others of like mind in that sealed empire, as indeed is known to be the case. Moreover, the imperial edicts of tolera- tion published in Russia in 1905, though they were quickly to all intents and purposes revoked, sufficed to lift the veil and make manifest the true sentiments of the many Huthenian I'niats who had been given out as willing deserters to the camp of schism. So, too, did the memorandum of the thirty-two Orthodox priests on the necessity of changing the organization of the Russian Church (published at St. Petersburg in 1905), together with the subsequent discussions and proceedings for the determination of this (lueslion in a national council (Palmieri, "Chiesa russa", i), mani- fest the grave dissatisfaction of many of the Orthodox clergy with the suppression by the civil power of the spontaneous life and thought of their national Church.

Nor do we lack the direct testimony of witnesses familiar with Eastern lands to the existence there of many ardent aspirants after reunion. Thus Nicole Franco, a Uniat priest of the Greek Kite, in his instruc- tive study of the question under all its aspects, testi- fies that "the reunion movement has manifest (xl itself in the provinces of European Turkey among Greeks, .Mbanians, and Bulgarians, and in Asia among the Creeks and Melchiles, not to .speak of the Armenians, Syrians, and Chaldeans, .and. which is more significant si ill, among the Russians, in whose midst Catholic