What Would True Union With Rome Look Like?
A look at Fr. Thomas Hopko’s “Roman Presidency and Christian Unity in our Time,” which was further expounded upon in two podcasts titled, “What Does Rome Need to Do?” in light of recent events.
For certain Orthodox hierarchs, dialogue with Catholics is all the rage – and not just dialogue, but even participation in worship.
With the 1,700th anniversary of the First Ecumenical Council being this year, the death of one pope and the election of another, and persecution in places like the Holy Land and Syria calling for (well-warranted) Christian unity, one could almost be convinced that communion with Rome is imminent, at least from Constantinople.
For those who aren’t educated about all of the differences between the Orthodox and Catholic traditions, and even for those who are, it is now wise for us to call them to mind – not only just how numerous they are, but how drastic they are in scope.
It is my personal opinion (and it should be the opinion of all of us) that no matter what individual bishops choose to do, the Church remains guided into all truth by the Holy Spirit. This is often reflected in who the Church chooses to canonize as saints.
For instance, Papa Dimitri was just canonized, and he was saying things like this:
“I would like to know what those clergymen who collaborate with the Pope and the heretics believe… they who work every day in the sanctuary of the Lord. Do they act only in name, and not in reality? It is beyond me.”
If St. Nektarios of Aegina was known as “the saint of our century” in the 20th century, I would venture to say that St. Paisios bears that same title for us who have lived through the first 25 years of the 21st.
Despite the honor that certain sects of Greek Orthodoxy grant to Patriarch Athenagoras, he is yet to be canonized, while St. Paisios was undoubtedly considered a saint even while he was alive. In fact, the same monk who broke his monastic silence in 1969 and made the bold claim that Patriarch Athenagoras, “loved another modern woman – which is called the Papist Church – because our Orthodox Mother has not made an impression on him at all, for She is so modest,” was canonized by the same Ecumenical Patriarchate which still upholds Athenagoras’ meeting with Pope Paul VI in Jerusalem as a standard to follow and imitate.
Not only did St. Paisios write on the topic, but he, along with almost all of the Holy Mountain, ceased commemoration of Patriarch Athenagoras in response to his dangerous ecumenism.
Blessed Elder Philotheos Zervakos, a spiritual son of St. Nektarios who is not yet canonized but is considered a saint by the faithful in Greece, said in an appeal to Patriarch Athenagoras:
“Say unto the Pope and the heretics, ‘You desire union? We also desire it and long for it ardently. Behold, we receive you gladly once you cast off your evil doctrines and errors and cast away all that is against the sacred Canons and patristic Traditions of the Seven Holy Ecumenical Councils.”
We know, then, that the Holy Spirit is in control, as these saints and blessed elders are beloved by the faithful and even canonized by the Church in spite of seeming to speak in direct contradiction to bishops who embrace the spirit of the age.
As St. Paisios also wrote of Athenagoras:
“While he should have shown love first to us his children and to our Mother Church, he unfortunately sent his love very far away. The result, it’s true, delighted the secular children who love the world – who have this worldly love – but completely scandalized us, the children of Orthodoxy, young and old, who have fear of God…”
With the fear of God, then, let us examine what true union with Rome looks like. Not a photo-op, not a show of “common decency,” and not an “overcoming of differences,” but rather genuine repentance and a return to the Orthodox faith which upholds the entire universe.
Background on Fr. Thomas Hopko’s paper
Fr. Thomas Hopko of blessed memory was invited to a conference in Washington, D.C. about “re-imagining the papacy in our time” in 2005.
The conference, in the words of Fr. Thomas Hopko in his podcast episodes explaining this paper, “brought together Christians of various church denominations to say what they thought would be required of the Bishop of Rome and the Roman Catholic Church for their churches to recognize the leadership of the Pope of Rome in Christianity on a global level.”
Fr. Tom was invited to speak and give an opinion on what he thought the Orthodox Church would require. According to him, the leaders of the meeting read the various papers, but he never had a chance to actually deliver a speech on it. Each denomination’s representative had roughly 10 minutes to present their view, and nothing was gone into in any depth. Because of that, Fr. Tom decided to speak more broadly about his paper in a two-part episode of his “Speaking the Truth in Love” podcast.
“It’s kind of like an ecclesiological fantasy of what could be imagined for the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church to be in communion with each other, in sacramental communion and in fact be in the same Church,” Hopko said. “It’s a little bit of a fantasy because so many things seem to be so out of the question that they’re just unreal. I’m pretty sure that is the truth, actually.”
Acknowledgement of Rome’s important role in the early Church
At the beginning of any debate or discussion, it is important to define terms. And there is no denying that the church of Rome held a special place of honor in the early Church – anyone who does such a thing is being dishonest. Due to this honor, the Roman Church exercised a “presidency in love” for two main reasons stated by Fr. Tom:
“It was founded on the teaching and blood of the foremost Christian apostles Peter and Paul. And it was the church of the capital city of the Roman empire that then constituted the ‘civilized world (oikoumene).’”
St. Ignatius of Antioch, who would be martyred in Rome in the early second century just as Ss. Peter and Paul were, said that the Roman Church was “a church worthy of God, worthy of honor, worthy of felicitation, worthy of praise, worthy of success, worthy of sanctification, and presiding in love, maintaining the law of Christ, bearer of the Father’s name.”
Apostolic ministry and the early episcopate
We know that the first bishop of Rome was St. Linus, as St. Irenaeus of Lyons makes mention of it in “Against Heresies.” As Fr. Tom points out, the apostles were not overseers of local churches due to their unique apostolic ministry – this ministry was “to be foundation stones of God’s household as eyewitnesses and servants of the risen Lord, the Church’s cornerstone (Eph 2:20).”
Linus, and all other bishops in the Church, were successors of the apostles. They were also all successors of Peter, as they confessed his faith that Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Mt 16:16).
All bishops received the Holy Spirit through the apostolic laying on of hands to bind and loose human sins, and they all held the office with the expectation of “teaching sound doctrine, conducting right worship, shepherding the faithful, caring for the poor and needy regardless of their belief or behavior, and generally safeguarding what had been entrusted to them: ‘the good deposit (bonum depositum, kale paratheke)’ that dwelt in them ‘through the Holy Spirit’ (1 Tim 6:30, 2 Tim 1:14).’”
Bishops were also expected to defend the faith against heresy, reconcile sinners to Christ, preach the Gospel to non-Christians, and generally represent the Church in the area in which they lived.
We see then that clergy were not simply part of the Church because of material apostolic succession, although that is essential, but also through apostolic teaching. In the unique presidency of Rome, Fr. Tom explains further:
“But the Roman bishops were to do so, as we have already noted, in a unique and special way, both for those within the faith and those outside it, because they were the overseers of the church founded by Christ's preeminent apostles Peter and Paul that was located in the capital of the empire that was identified with the whole ‘civilized world,’ in the city that symbolized the ‘end of the earth’ (Acts 1:8).”
With this in mind, let us look at why it is so devastating that this special see broke away from the One True Faith through heretical reasoning and a lust for worldly glorification.
Temptation due to unique leadership
“Because of its unique place among the Christian churches, the church of Rome in the person of its bishop was soon tempted to assume powers, prerogatives and privileges among the churches beyond those belonging to its ministry to preside among them in love,” Fr. Tom states.
This, however, did not go unchallenged. Great bishops like St. Cyprian of Carthage in the third century and St. Photios the Great in the ninth century come to mind, and ironically (due to the extreme Western devotion to him), St. Augustine in the fifth century. Even Pope St. Gregory the Great said that the bishop must be the “servant of the servants of God” while disputing Constantinople’s adoption of the title “ecumenical.” In fact, Pope St. Gregory’s language got much stronger than that:
“I say it without the least hesitation, whoever calls himself the universal bishop, or desires this title, is, by his pride, the precursor of Antichrist, because he thus attempts to raise himself above the others.”
Fr. Tom notes that this temptation was too powerful to be resisted, especially because Rome was the only “apostolic see” in the Western half of the oikoumene, whereas in the East, practically every little church “could justly claim to be an ‘apostolic see.’”
As this temptation grew, so did attempts to expand the unique authority of the bishop of Rome. Using Scripture regarding Peter’s first place among the apostles and “historical documents” about the authority of the bishop of Rome that were later proven to be fabricated, along with political events, namely the Coronation of Charlemagne by Pope Leo III on Christmas Day in 800, the papacy reached a point of being more imperial than spiritual in nature.
Effects of the imperial papacy and the view of the Pope today
These developments “later brought about the Protestant Reformation in the West, and so also the Roman reaction in the Counter-Reformation that made the papacy what it is today,” Fr. Tom states.
Eventually, radical dogmatic decrees about the Pope’s position and power were put in place at the first and second Vatican Councils. As Fr. Tom writes:
“The Roman Church's current official teachings about papal privilege and power that are unacceptable to the Eastern Orthodox churches are the dogma of the pope's infallibility when speaking officially ‘from the chair of Peter (ex cathedra Petri)’ on matters of faith and morals ‘from himself and not from the consensus of the church (ex sese et non ex consensu ecclesiae)’; the binding character of the pope's infallible decrees on all (Catholic) Christians in the world; the pope's direct episcopal jurisdiction over all (Catholic) Christians in the world; the pope's authority to appoint, and so also to depose, the bishops of all (Catholic) Christian churches; and the affirmation that the legitimacy and authority of all (Catholic) Christian bishops in the world derive from their union with the Roman see and its bishop, the Supreme Pontiff, the unique Successor of Peter and Vicar of Christ on earth.”
In the last century there have been revolutionary advances in technology, multiple world wars, Soviet persecution of Christians along with the rise and fall of communism, the Jewish holocaust, and increasing civilizational secularization which led to the Pope of Rome generally being seen as the visible leader of the Christian world.
These advances in technology and media “served to bring the Roman popes of the last half century, especially the remarkably gifted and charismatic Pope John Paul II, out of their Vatican enclosures and directly and immediately into the daily lives of people all around the world.”
The question, then, is what to do about this role of “de facto leadership” in our present day and age. Several popes have actually asked this question, and recently, Pope Leo XIV has even said that he is “open to all suggestions” when it comes to union between Rome and the Eastern Orthodox Church. So, here they are.
Non-negotiables in regards to doctrine and worship
While I would love to chime in with my own thoughts, I will defer entirely to Fr. Tom’s writing here. Below is his list of worship-related and doctrinal barriers to communion that the Pope would have to accept and change in order for there to be communion between East and West:
First of all, the Orthodox would insist that the bishop of Rome hold the orthodox faith of the catholic church, and teach and defend true Christian doctrine. This means that the pope would have to do several specific things, chief among which, I would think, are the following:
He would have to confirm the original text of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Symbol of Faith and defend its use in all the churches, beginning with his own. At the very least (should some churches for pastoral reasons be permitted to keep the filioque in their creed), he would insist on an explanation that would clearly teach that the Holy Spirit "proceeds from the Son" only in relation to God's saving dispensation in the world. He would make certain that no Christian be tempted to believe that the Holy Spirit essentially proceeds from the Father and the Son together, and certainly not "from both as from one (ab utroque sicut ab uno.)”
The pope would also teach that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are three distinct persons or hypostases, and not simply "subsistent relations" within the one God who is identified with the divine nature. And he would insist that the one true God of Christian faith is not the Holy Trinity understood as a quasi-uni-personal subject Who reveals Himself as Father, Son and Spirit, which is unacceptable "modalism." He would rather hold that the one God is Jesus' Father from Whom the Holy Spirit proceeds Who dwells in the Son, and in those who by faith and grace become sons of God through Him.
The pope would also insist that human beings can have real communion with God through God's uncreated divine energies and actions toward creatures, from the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit.
He would also officially say that the immaculate conception of Christ's mother Mary from her parents, and Mary's total glorification in the risen Christ "at the right hand of the Father," are not properly explained in the papal bulls that originally accompanied the Roman church's "ex cathedra" dogmas on these two articles of faith. The pope would explain that Mary's conception by her parents was pure and holy without a need for God extraordinarily to apply "the merits of Christ" to Joachim and Anna's sexual act of conceiving her in order to free her from "the stain of original sin." And the pope would also have to make it clear that Mary really died, and was not assumed bodily into heaven before vanquishing death by faith in her Son Jesus.
The pope would also clearly state that though there may be a purification and cleansing from sin in the process of human dying, there is no state or condition of purgatory where sinners pay off the temporal punishment that they allegedly owe to God for their sins. The pope would also stop the practice of indulgences whereby, through certain pious activities, Christians can allegedly reduce the "days" of purgatorial suffering for themselves and others.
The pope would also make it clear that Christ's crucifixion was not a payment of the debt of punishment that humans allegedly owe to God for their sins. He would rather teach that Christ's self-offering to his Father was the saving, atoning and redeeming payment of the perfect love, trust, obedience, gratitude and glory that humans owe to God, which is all that God desires of them for their salvation.
The pope would also assure all Christians that the bishop of Rome will never do or teach anything on his own authority, "from himself and not from the consensus of the church (ex sese et non ex consensu ecclesiae)." He would promise to serve in his presidency solely as the spokesperson for all the bishops in apostolic succession who govern communities of believers who have chosen them to serve, and whose validity and legitimacy as bishops depend solely on their fidelity to the Gospel in communion with their predecessors in the episcopal office, and with each other.
On undecided doctrinal and moral issues the Pope of Rome would use his presidential authority to insure that everyone - clergyman or layperson - would be encouraged to freely present his or her arguments concerning Christian teaching and practice as witnessed in the Church's formal testimonies to Christian faith and life, i.e. the canonized scriptures, the traditional liturgies, the councils and canons, and the witness and writings of the canonized saints for the reasons that they are glorified.
The pope would also use his presidential authority to guarantee a spirit of freedom, openness, respect and love in and among all churches and Christians, and indeed all human beings, so that the Holy Spirit, Christ's sole "vicar on earth", may bring to remembrance what Christ has said, and guide people into all the truth. (Jn 14:25, 16:13) The pope would, in this way, truly be the Great Bridgebuilder (Pontifex Maximus). In order for the Pope of Rome to exercise presidency among the churches and Christian leadership in the world, his church would also have to exemplify proper Christian worship. This, too, for Orthodox Christians, would mean some specific things.
The pope would have to insist that, except for extraordinary pastoral reasons, baptisms would be done by immersion in water in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. He would also insist that the newly-baptized be immediately chrismated with "the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit" and brought into communion with Christ by participation in the Holy Eucharist. This includes infants who enter the Church's sacramental life by virtue of the faith of the adults who care for them. The practice of a later episcopal laying-on-of-hands confirming the faith of the baptized may be permitted in churches desiring to continue this practice.
Concerning participation in the Holy Eucharist, the pope would also insist that the faithful receive Holy Communion from the gifts, i.e. the bread and wine, actually offered at the eucharistic liturgy which they are celebrating. The faithful would not be given communion from "reserved gifts" which are kept exclusively for those unable to attend liturgy for good reasons, usually sickness or infirmity.
The pope would also ensure that the faithful always participate in the consecrated wine, the blood of Christ, at Holy Communion. How this is practically done may differ in different churches, but it must be done, without exception. As for the bread, unleavened wafers may be used for pastoral reasons in the churches with this practice, but the pope would affirm leavened bread as normative for the Christian Eucharist.
The pope would insist on the celebration of the Holy Eucharist, with psalmody, scripture readings and exegetical sermons according to local ecclesial practices, as normative corporate worship for Christians on the Lord's Day and on the Church's liturgical feasts. He would forbid private eucharistic celebrations for particular intentions, and for particular pietistic, political or ideological purposes. He would support the celebration of Vespers, Compline, Matins and the Hours in the churches. He would restore the practice of having the priestly celebrant in the Latin liturgy face the altar with the faithful during the prayers and eucharistic offerings. He would also consider enforcing the ancient ascetical and penitential practice of forbidding the celebration of the Holy Eucharist in Christian churches on weekdays of Great Lent.
Changes in ecclesiology
For the Pope of Rome to once again be recognized as president among the churches and the world leader of Christianity, a complete overhaul of the Catholic ecclesiological structure would be required.
We see just how clueless many Catholics are in regards to Orthodox ecclesiology, as many in the West simply see Patriarch Bartholomew as the Pope of the East. While His All-Holiness certainly has done some – shall we say – marketing of his own to promote that particular image, there still seems to be some understanding from Catholics that if Constantinople enters into communion with Rome then that means the Orthodox Church is in communion with Rome.
That is simply not true – if, God forbid, Constantinople were to enter into false communion with Rome, the likely result would be excommunication of the patriarch by the rest of the autocephalous Orthodox Churches, who would then carry on without Constantinople.
In the case of Rome, there are some bullet points that summarize what Fr. Tom suggested:
- The bishop of Rome would be chosen by the church of Rome – a “college of cardinals” appointed by the pope would no longer exist.
- The pope would not select and appoint bishops in any churches. He could question the choice of a candidate or even review candidates and offer his opinion, but this would be the same power as the primate of any other regional church. He would have no power to interfere outside of his own diocese.
- The pope would create commissions and departments composed of individuals from all the world’s churches to assist in his service as Christianity’s world leader and chief spokesperson. The church’s magisterium would consist of bishops, not a team of theologians appointed by the pope in Rome who act on his authority.
- Bishops would oversee the members of their own flock. If a bishop were deposed by his local synod, he could appeal to the bishop exercising presidency over his regional church. As a last resort, he may appeal to the bishop of Rome as the Church’s highest president.
- The bishop of Rome would cease being an official head of state – heads of state from around the world would relate to him solely as a Christian bishop and spiritual leader.
The role of the Pope in the Church united
If the Pope of Rome were to be accepted as the leader of the world’s Christians, then his ministry would continue to have a broad – and perhaps even broader – scope that should be supported by the Church.
“As leader of the world's Christians, the Pope of Rome would travel extensively,” Fr. Tom writes. “He would take full advantage of contemporary means of transportation and communication. He would master electronic media to serve his ministry in proclaiming Christ's Gospel, propagating Christian faith, promoting ethical behavior, protecting human rights, and securing justice and peace for all people. He would be the servant of unity among all human beings, first of all his fellow Christians, not as an episcopus episcoporum, but as a true servus servorum Dei.”
It would take much to refashion the papacy into something that “presides in love” among all the churches that hold true to Orthodox doctrine and tradition. Repentance would also be required, beginning with Rome herself, who had cast aside its mission to show the way to all others.
My addition
Something that Fr. Tom did not touch on in his paper, probably due to the immense scope of it, is the acceptance or rejection of the many post-schism saints canonized by the Catholic church.
It would be safe to say that, if all of the previous conditions were to be accepted, there would have to be some kind of recognition that all of these saints did not hold to the One True Faith. However, trusting our bishops, the lives and alleged miracles of all of them should be examined carefully in a process that would likely take many years to complete.
I do not know exactly how something like this would shake out or whether or not it is even possible. I can think of multiple Catholic saints off the top of my head that had experiences that are completely foreign to Orthodox practice and by no means should be accepted, but for the sake of being charitable I will not discuss them here.
While it is easy for me to say that we cannot accept any of these post-schism saints (which may even be the correct thing to do), the most likely occurrence if communion were actually a possibility would be to carefully examine each and every one of them and go from there.
Sacrificing our own will
While I might outwardly say that I would love communion with Rome so long as it is done in the correct way, including the things that were laid out above, I am curious if I actually believe that.
I like to participate in the ribbing of Catholics, and I sometimes can make my Orthodox faith an object of superiority (not that it isn’t superior) rather than a guide to the truth for those who are outside. I do not even live my own faith, and yet I use it to make fun of others.
So, at least in my own case, union with Rome would require an extreme sacrificing of my own will.
As Fr. Tom writes, we would have to admit our own sinful contributions to Christian division and also forgo our desire for other churches to repent publicly, rather allowing God “to consign everything of the past to oblivion for the sake of bringing about the reconciliation and reunion of Christians at the present time.”
“In a word, the Orthodox would have to sacrifice everything, excepting only the faith itself, for the sake of building a common future together with Christians who are willing and able to do so with them. Like Roman Catholics and Protestants, they would have to be willing to die with Christ to themselves and their personal, cultural and ecclesiastical interests for the sake of being in full unity with all who desire to be saved by the crucified Lord in the One Holy Church ‘which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all’ (Eph 1:23), that is ‘the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth’ (1 Tim 3:15).”
Due to all of the conditions that have been laid out in this piece, it seems impossible to consider union with Rome as any kind of realistic occurrence.
However, we know that “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Mt 19:26).
