The newest American Conservative (July 17 issue) is full of excellent articles (sorry, no links as of yet).  To name just a couple, W. James Antle III writes an interesting report on the electoral struggle of Rep. John Hostettler (R-IN), one of six Republicans to vote against the Iraq war; Chilton Williamson levels a devastating and powerful critique of the aimless life of acquisition and consumption Americans embrace.  Crunchy cons, Pantagruelists and traditionalists, take note.  These two alone are worth getting a copy of this issue, and there is more to be had besides these. 

I wanted to start out with this preface highlighting all the good articles in the 7/17 issue, because I also feel compelled to comment on a number of rather egregious errors in Marcia Christoff Kurapovna’s “Reconciling Christendom.”  In what seems to have been intended as a crash-course in church history and ecumenical relations between Catholics and Orthodox, Ms. Kurapovna made several mistakes and omissions, some theological and others historical, that are irritating to me for their inaccuracy but still worse they are misleading for those readers who are less familiar with the particulars of the divide between Catholics and Orthodox.  These errors and omissions do not facilitate the cause of rapprochement between the two churches in the Truth, which is a goal that all faithful Christians of both confessions ultimately hope for, but rather confirms in the minds of skeptics and anti-ecumenists that those interested in ecumenism are strong on a spirit of reconciliation and weak on matters of substance.  For those unfamiliar with teachings of the Faith, these errors can confuse, mislead or even scandalise those through misrepresentations of Christianity.  For those unfamiliar with Orthodoxy, which includes a great many Christians, these errors and omissions can also present a less than clear and accurate portrait of the Orthodox Church, and this also requires some correction.

First, I should declare my interests: I am Orthodox and among the Orthodox I am also generally an anti-ecumenist, insofar as ecumenism today has typically involved laxity and indifference to significant questions of doctrinal disagreement.  I attend services in the parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, one of the most traditionalist jurisdictions in the Orthodox Church, so you may take my critiques with these things in mind.  However, I come to the question of ecumenism with tremendous respect for many of the great figures of Catholic history and good personal relations with many Catholics. 

It is lamentable that well-intentioned efforts to foster understanding between Catholics and Orthodox are marred by easily checked and unnecessary mistakes, and even though I am far from convinced that modern ecumenist efforts are rightly guided I am inclined to lend some aid to fostering mutual understanding, especially when ecumenists fail in this basic task of reconciliation.

Beginning with the most simple, the Greek Paschal response to the acclamation, Christos Anesti! (Christ is Risen!), is not Isos Anesti, as Ms. Kurapovna claims, but Alithos Anesti! (also transliterated, less accurately, as Alethos Anesti or Alethos Aneste).  This is arguably minor, but I believe it is incorrect. 

On a small but important point of history, the Fourth Crusade was not exactly “Rome versus Constantinople,” as Ms. Kurapovna wrote, but rather Franks/Venetians vs. Byzantines.  Rome did not order or authorise the sack of Constantinople; Pope Innocent III deplored the attack.  He did, admittedly, accept that the deed was done and endorsed the Latin empire founded on the wreckage of Byzantium, but the conquest of Byzantium was not really the result of the historic rivalry between the two sees.

On an arguably more technical point, 1054 has become a shorthand date for the Schism between Catholics and Orthodox when it really represented only the “mutual excommunication” of Patriarch Kerularios and Cardinal Humbert.  These excommunications were personal and marked a break insofar as the two sees ceased commemorating each other’s bishop in their respective diptychs–they did not represent anathemas of entire bodies of believers on the grounds of persistent commitment to false beliefs or schismatic rebellion, such as had happened in the past and would happen again later on.  In this light, we can see that the “lifting” of the excommunications of 1054, while undoubtedly well-intentioned, was highly symbolic and ecclesiologically meaningless.

1054 was partly the culmination of the controversy over the western addition to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed of the phrase “and the Son” (Filioque), originally a Visigothic addition intended as an anti-Arian affirmation of Christ’s divinity and adopted in Rome itself only in 1014, but it would be misleading to say that the controversy over Filioque was a “separate detail within the growing issue of Rome’s assertion of the supremacy and infallibility of the pope as successor to Peter the Apostle.”  It was one of the central points of contention, and it was the fundamental doctrinal disagreement.  Admittedly, the western Eucharistic practice of using unleavened bread (the so-called azymes issue) had become one of the burning issues that Kerularios raised and one of the perceived errors that he cited in his criticisms of western practices  The question of papal “infallibility” was not at stake, because the idea had not been raised in these terms.

At the risk of being pedantic, the Byzantinist in me wonders who the “11 emperors” associated with the ecumenical councils were.  Technically, Constantine VI presided over the 7th Ecumenical Council along with his mother, the Empress Irene, though there was never any question of who was in charge, and Constantine IV’s two younger brothers, Tiberius and Heraclius, were also present with him during many of the sessions of the 6th Ecumenical Council, but the latter two were not emperors or even co-emperors (supporters of the brothers staged a rebellion after the council calling for them to be raised to the status of co-emperors, but this did not happen and the brothers were executed). 

This leaves us with Constantine I (Nicaea), Theodosios I (Constantinople I), Theodosios II (Ephesos), Marcian (Chalcedon) together with his wife, the Augusta Pulcheria, Justinian (Constantinople II), Constantine IV (Constantinople III), Irene and Constantine VI (Nicaea II) and Basil I (the anti-Photian Council of 869-870, not typically considered an ecumenical council by the Orthodox Church).  Counting Pulcheria, this gives us 10 emperors and empresses, and not counting her we have nine.  No matter how you slice it, eleven emperors is not the correct number.  A niggling detail?  Perhaps, but still incorrect.

Most damaging and inexplicable of all Ms. Kurapovna’s mistakes is the phrase “the concept of the Trinitarian nature of Christ,” which puzzles me endlessly and fnally exhausts every attempt to understand what Ms. Kurapovna really wanted to say.  Of course, I assume she probably meant to say “the Trinitarian nature of God” and, innocently enough, puts the name of Christ in place of God (since Christ is God) and thought nothing of it, but the phrase as it stands sounds like nonsense.  There might be a very roundabout way of understanding this phrase in an Orthodox fashion, but it would take some heroic mental gymnastics to reach it.  If Christ is the Word Incarnate, One Person in two natures, perfect God and perfect man, Christ does not have a “Trinitarian nature,” though He is One of the Holy Trinity and is consubstantial with the Father and the Holy Spirit.  This unfortunate phrase seems to be an extremely awkward attempt to compress the teaching that the Son is consubstantial with the Father and the distinct but related teaching that Christ is fully God and fully man.  As it stands, however, I believe it does not really convey either of these truths in a way that the average reader would be able to readily comprehend.       

On an equally serious note, it is tragic to portray the history of the first seven (or eight) ecumenical councils (just about the only thing Catholics and Orthodox can agree on anymore) as the source of later conflict and schism, when these are the decisive moments when the Church overcame internal conflict and division, affirmed Her unity and proclaimed the Faith with one voice.  Seeing these councils as the root of later division between east and west is a false, albeit all too popular, narrative of church history that lends the legitimacy of cultural and political determinism to the eventual break-up of Christendom.  With respect to, say, the 6th Ecumenical Council, for which I have particular regard and interest, this view could not be more false; it is only partly correct with respect to the 7th Council, and even then it is a question of Frankish iconoclasm in opposition to papal acceptance of the council’s decisions. 

In addition to incorrectly describing the dispute over the third canon of the First Council of Constantinople as one of a Constantinopolitan claim of supremacy, when it only claimed the equality of the patriarch of “New Rome” with the pope of “Old Rome” on the basis that the two possessed primacy because of the political primacy of the two cities in which the bishops dwelled, Ms. Kurapovna also failed to note that the “Photian Schism,” while significant and damaging, was ultimately and finally healed in the council of 879.  The causes of the divisions of the eleventh century must be sought much closer to the time when they occurred in both the strengthening of the patriarch at Constantinople and the reforms of the so-called Papal Revolution under Leo IX and later Gregory VII–we cannot blame the woes of the eleventh century on the almost entirely controversy-free tenth century, which saw general peace and amity between Rome and Constantinople.