Thoughts from an Eastern Orthodox Priest (This Rock: January 1996)
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Thoughts from an Eastern Orthodox Priest
By Rev. Chrysostom Frank
THE recent break of communion between the Moscow Patriarchate and
the Ecumenical Patriarchate over the "Estonian issue" may seem to many,
both inside and outside the Orthodox Church, like a momentary tiff
between two brothers over a seemingly insignificant issue. There is more
to this unseemly altercation than meets the eye. . . .
This spat between Moscow and Constantinople illustrates a basic
ecclesiological problem which has not been adequately dealt with in the
Orthodox world for over nine hundred years-the question of communion
and an effective universal primacy. The Byzantine imperial government,
the Turkish empire, and Communist political power successively and
largely successfully kept the lid on the problem. They ensured, ironically,
that on the surface peace within the Orthodox world was somehow
maintained, while local Churches simultaneously became more and more This Rock
national and/or ethnic in character. The emergence of political nationalism Volume 7, Number 1
and the various wars of independence in the nineteenth century only   January 1996  
exacerbated the underlying problem.
Up Front
The situation created by the schism with the See of Rome in the eleventh   By Karl Keating
century left the Orthodox East without an adequate ecclesiological and
Letters
theological basis for dealing with the immense problem of how to ensure  
the unity and communion of the local Churches without the Petrine Dragnet
ministry of the Bishop of Rome.  
KNOWING THE GNOSTICS
Now the Byzantine emperors, Turkish sultans, and Communist politburos   By ROBERT SPENCER
are gone. Our Orthodox Churches are free. We are faced squarely with a AN EASTERN VOICE CRYING
problem hidden for centuries-how can we, the various local Churches, live,   IN THE WILDERNESS
act, and think like the Church, which we claim that we are, rather than like, By RAY RYLAND
as Vladimir Soloviev said, a mere conglomerate of national Churches, The Russian Legend of St.
formally constituting a single communion, but characterized by discord,   Nicolas and St. Cassian
hostility, jealousy, and hatred? By Vladimir Soloviev
Thoughts From an Eastern
On the day when the Russian and Greek Churches formally break commu-   Orthodox Priest
By Rev. Chrysostom Frank
nion with each other, Soloviev argued, it will be seen that the
"Oecumenical Eastern Church is a mere fiction and that there exists in the WHY NO WOMEN'S
East nothing but isolated national Churches"!   ORDINATION
By MICHAEL J. TORTOLANI
The present tiff between Constantinople and Moscow might well compel Classic Apologetics
one to take more seriously the logic of Soloviev's argument. Perhaps even   The Soapbox Bishop
more compelling, however, is the realization of both the need, and the By Most Rev. Steven A. Leven
freedom we now have, to face directly the problem created by the Schism Fathers Know Best
of 1054. . . .   Contraception
Old Testament Guide
Perhaps now is the time, the kairos, to do something which is   Song of Songs
simultaneously terribly radical and terribly conservative -to call on the By Antonio Fuentes
Bishop of Rome to act as arbiter in this squabble between Moscow and
Thoughts from an Eastern Orthodox Priest (This Rock: January 1996)

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Constantinople. Perhaps now is the time to recognize the folly and  
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foolishness of our ecclesiastical structure which has produced national
Churches which seem interminably locked into their own self-interest and   Subscribe
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the time to look deeply at our need for the Petrine ministry, which was so
profoundly recognized by Eastern saints such as Theodore the Studite and Maximus the Confessor and which
we still sing about in our liturgical celebrations (e.g., texts for the commemoration of St. Gregory the Great).

Perhaps this tiff between Moscow and Constantinople is the God-given occasion to reconsider all the polemical
argumentation that we have used to justify and to maintain the Schism of 1054. Perhaps now is the time to
realize that where all of us-on all sides of the disputes-have stood and continue to stand is not entirely on the
fullness of catholic truth.

Perhaps now is the time to fall down on our knees and mutually ask forgiveness of each other-Romans, Greeks,
Slavs, Arabs, Muscovites, Constantinopolitans, "converts," all of us! And maybe when we rise up again we will
find ourselves at a most peculiar place-at the same Eucharistic Chalice.

Rev. Chrysostom Frank, Department of Church History, University of South Africa.

(This message, which has been edited for space, appeared in the Catholic Information Network's Eastern
Catholic Internet mailing list (CINEAST). CIN can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.cin.org/cin.)

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