Simon Cox Blog: Orthodox Will Hold Humbled Yet Historic Council in Crete

Friday 17 June 2016

Orthodox Will Hold Humbled Yet Historic Council in Crete

Patriarchs disagree over solving centuries of disputes in 10 days.

The last time the 14 separate branches of the Orthodox church met, in 787, they hadn’t yet split with the Roman Catholic church.

So pulling together a Holy and Great Council meeting of the global representatives of 300 million Orthodox Christians for next week hasn’t been easy—even with the event being discussed since 1961.

A number of issues have cropped up in the last 1,000-plus years. The short list includes: the Archbishop of Constantinople’s historical position as “first among equals” despite the Moscow Patriarchate’s superior numbers and wealth; Moscow Patriarch Kirill’s meeting with Pope Francis that angered Orthodox who consider Catholics heretics; and the struggle between the Jerusalem and Antioch Patriarchates over who has jurisdiction over Qatar.

The initial list of issues to discuss topped 100 items; Orthodox leaders managed to whittle it down to 6. The goal of council organizer Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I: not to settle centuries of disagreement, but to find consensus by starting small.

“Bartholomew is not making this event an end in itself, but the start of a long process for Orthodox renewal,” AsiaNews translated from La Croix, a French newspaper. “This is why he has deliberately limited the discussion to the texts on the agenda, even if this means initially accepting a minimalist consensus.”

The six issues are not about doctrine or canonical structure, as Kirill has stressed. Here’s the list:

The mission of the Orthodox church in today’s world
The Orthodox Diaspora (and which Orthodox patriarchates can claim jurisdiction over the various scattered members)
Autonomy and the means by which it is proclaimed
The sacrament of marriage and its impediments