In Ukraine, what is old is new

Sandro Magister has something new at his www.chiesa website on Ukraine.  As readers may be aware, Russia has been supporting separatists in eastern Ukraine.  It has already annexed the Crimea.

The crux of Magister's article:

The fact that Bergoglio has a soft spot for Russia had already been seen with the outbreak of war in Syria, when he called for a day of prayer and fasting to oppose the armed intervention of the United States and France against the regime of Damascus, and Vladimir Putin publicly praised him.

Then there is the influence of the ecumenical factor: of the 200 million Orthodox Christians in the world, 150 million belong to the patriarchate of Moscow and “of all Rus’,” and it is therefore with Moscow above all that the pope wants to cultivate good relations.

[...]

Today the almost five million Ukrainian Catholics know very well that they are the true obstacle to the encounter between the pope of Rome and the patriarch of Moscow. But they will not agree to be sacrificed on the altar of this ecumenical dream.

Go read the rest at the link above for more background on the Roman response to events.

New pope chosen for Egypt's Copts

BBC News

Bishop Tawadros has been chosen as the new pope of Egypt's Coptic Christians, becoming leader of the largest Christian minority in the Middle East.

His name was selected from a glass bowl by a blindfolded boy at a ceremony in Cairo's St Mark's Cathedral. Three candidates had been shortlisted.

The 60-year-old succeeds Pope Shenouda III, who died in March aged 88.

He succeeds as attacks on Copts are on the increase, and many say they fear the country's new Islamist leaders.

The other two candidates were Bishop Raphael and Father Raphael Ava Mina. They were chosen in a ballot by a council of some 2,400 Church and community officials in October.

 And

The new pope has studied in Britain, and has also run a medicine factory, the BBC's Jon Leyne in Cairo reports.

He is a man of broad experience and with managerial skills, our correspondent says, adding that he will need all those talents to lead the Copts as they face an uncertain future in a country now debating the role of Islam following last year's revolution.

This new Pope seems to be a bit of a technocrat.  Unfortunately, the BBC article doesn't really tell me anything about the man himself.  I realize it is probably not a priority for Copts, but I am most interested in seeing if this Pope will continue his predecessor's efforts towards unity among the Christian churches.  I wonder if unity would be helpful to the Copts in their struggles in Egypt.

Coptic Pope Shenouda III Dead

CNN

Cairo (CNN) -- Coptic Pope Shenouda III, the spiritual leader of Egypt's Coptic Christian community for nearly four decades, died Saturday, according to the head of the Egyptian General Coptic Association. He was 88.

And

The Coptic Orthodox Church is the largest Christian church in the Middle East, according the Coptic Orthodox Church Centre in Stevenage, England.

In addition to millions of followers in Egypt, the church has adherents in Europe, Canada, the United States, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa, the center says.

When a Coptic pope dies, all 150 bishops of the church's Holy Council appoint an acting patriarch until a vote is conducted for a successor, Doss said. Thousands of bishops, priests and monks are eligible to vote.

The most senior bishop usually takes the role of acting patriarch. In this case, that would be Bishop Michael of Asiut. If he declines, Bishop Bakhamious of Behira is next in line, Doss said.

CNN doesn't mention it, but I read elsewhere that Shenouda III was the first Coptic Pope to meet the Bishop of Rome in over a thousand years and was big on Christian unity, especially in the East.  I am interested in seeing what kind of fresh efforts his successor makes towards ecumenism on behalf of the Coptic Church.

More on the Orthodox synod

The following is a comment left at TitusOneNine in reply to a query left by me for more information, as I know that the commenter, John-Ad Orientem is well informed on Orthodox matters:

Re #5
Vatican Watcher
We are (finally) taking steps to resolve the jurisdictional chaos within the Orthodox Church here in N. America. I expect that the forthcoming Great and Holy Pan-Orthodox Synod (which some are suggesting could be received as an OEcumenical Council) will take steps to end the scandalous situation here. That said I do not see autocephaly in the cards.

Too many of the old country churches have too much at stake here (money), especially the Ecumenical Patriarchate which presides over a church of no more than a few thousand believers in Turkey thanks to the aggressive ethnic cleaning by that country over the last century. At a recent meeting to prepare the agenda of the Great Synod, guidelines were agreed to for the granting of autocephaly to new churches, which require the EP’s blessing. This was likely in part a response to the situation with the Orthodox Church in America (the former Metropolia of the Russian Orthodox Church), which was granted autocephaly by Moscow in 1970. At present the Russian Church is really the only one who has recognized that claim. Most of the other Orthodox churches view the OCA as an essentially ultra-autonomous church but maintain communion with her.

For the EP the churches in the “diaspora” (a term I really dislike) also represent a cash cow and a means to claim some relevance beyond the canonical primacy of honor which the First Throne holds in the Orthodox Church. He has been vigorously pressing claims to canonical jurisdiction over all of the churches in the “barbarian” lands (canon 28 of the Fourth OEcumenical Council).

If I had to take a guess at what the future holds, it would be a somewhat more unified American Orthodox church that would maintain its current quasi ethnic jurisdictional arrangements within the broader framework of the newly established Episcopal Assembly, chaired by a representative of the Ecumenical Patriarchate that would function as a sort of super synod.

All of this however is purely speculative and at most an educated guess.

Beyond that; the forthcoming council will be tackling a number of issues that have been a bit thorny over the last century or so. Among those would be the calendar, the fasting rules in the modern world (they haven’t changed in about 1500 years and are often fudged or simply ignored by the laity), the manner of receiving converts and relations with the non-Orthodox in general. It is possible the Synod may also issue some decrees dealing with contemporary issues of a moral nature such as birth control (there is some diversity of opinion on that subject), the sanctity of marriage and reaffirming the Church’s stand that abortion is murder. Given the EP’s personal attachment to environmental issues I would be mildly surprised if some sort of general “take care of the Earth” statement was not also issued.

The EP and some of the other churches have made strenuous efforts to keep this thing tightly scripted. However there are no guarantees as to what will happen once you get all of the world’s Orthodox bishops (or at least most of them) gathered in the same place for the first time in probably a thousand years or more. We don’t have a Pope (the EP’s occasional pretensions notwithstanding) to impose an agenda so things could get very interesting.

The one thing I do NOT expect are any major doctrinal pronouncements. There are at present no serious theological or doctrinally based issues dividing The Church. Church doctrine is largely settled and any attempt to add to or meddle with it would be foolish and almost certainly end badly.

In ICXC
John

Universal Church

Papal Primacy. Russia Heads the Resistance Against Rome

Jacob already linked to this here. I return to it because I find the idea of Catholic and Orthodox reuniting to be a fascinating subject.

Since then, the discussion on controversial points has advanced at an accelerated pace. And it has started to examine, above all, how the Churches of East and West interpreted the role of the bishop of Rome during the first millennium, when they were still united.

I wonder if the great thinkers who apart of the dialogue have already informally teased out among themselves an ideal relationship between Catholic and Orthodox. How will it work? What will the relationships be? Will the laypeople on either side know a difference when it does happen?

An Orthodox Council Soon?

In the last post, I linked to Magister's latest in which he mentioned a 'great and holy' council in the future for the Orthodox.

I found this tonight when searching for more info: Voices From Russia takes a decidedly negative view of the Patriarch of Constantinople's motives.

Yes… the neocons and globalists do their best to sow disunity and discord amongst us. Don’t forget that Bart has been their willing tool for years.

Ouch. Read it all if you're interested. The context of the post is the ecumenical patriarch's visit to Russia earlier this year.

Kicking the Can and the Great and Holy Council

Magister on the Catholic Orthodox talks in Vienna:

As a result, the Russian delegation asked and obtained that the text from Crete [historical examples of the Bishop of Rome exercising his office in the first millennium] not be included among the official documents of the commission, not bear the signature of any of its members, and be used simply as working material for a new rewriting of the working outline. A rewriting more attentive to the theological dimensions of the question.

In effect, at the end of the talks in Vienna, the participants agreed to set up "a sub-commission to begin consideration of the theological and ecclesiological aspects of primacy in its relation to synodality."

Next year the sub-commission will present the new text to the coordinating committee of the commission for theological dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church. So that the following year, 2012, the commission will be able to revisit and continue – on the basis of the new outline – the discussion begun in Cyprus and Vienna.
[...]

But as can be seen, the question is certainly a thorny one, with no solution in sight.

So yeah. Actually, I found the first paragraph after the lead to be the most interesting.

While the Eastern Churches are slowly approaching the convocation of the pan-Orthodox "Great and Holy Council" that should finally unite them in a single assembly after centuries of incomplete "synodality," the other journey of reconciliation, which sees the East in dialogue with the Church of Rome, is also taking small steps forward.

Like I said, interesting. First link at Google for "Great and Holy Council" is this: Reaction of the Orthodox-Roman Catholic Dialogue to the Agenda of the Great and Holy Council of the Orthodox Church - U.S. Theological Consultation, 1977. The title is confusing, but it is an agenda formulated in 1976 by the Pre-Synodal Pan-Orthodox Conference.

A second link goes to a thread discussing possible dates. The first post of the thread suggests 2013. Another suggests 2011.

Return to Ukraine

Last night on EWTN, I watched the last half of a program called Holy Roman Spies. The title sensationalized the subject-matter, as the 'spies' of the program were rather missionaries to the Soviet Union by way of Ukraine during World War II. They were all trained at the Collegium Russicum in Rome. The program also included accounts of the college's possible infiltration by the Soviet KGB, though most of the the interviewees from the college couldn't figure out why the Soviets would have been interested in such an institution. Right...

This morning, I was directed by an email to this article by Sandro Magister discussing the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and its relationship with the Orthodox of Russia. Long time readers will remember that when we last left the two sides, there was much hostility, not only between the Catholics and the Orthodox, but between various Orthodox factions fighting for legitimacy.

Magister's article today discusses the thawing of relations between Rome and the East and how this has affected things in Ukraine. The primary reason is that Benedict himself is German and not Polish, the ethnicity of John Paul II being one of the major wedge issues of the past due to the historic tension between Russia and Poland with Ukraine in the middle. One of the secondary reasons is that Benedict has dropped all efforts to establish the Ukrainian Greek Catholic patriarchate and has focused instead on cooperation with the Orthodox in evangelizing the larger segment of the Ukrainian population that is outside the Christian Church.

Though tensions in one sphere have eased, Magister points to another where the Greek Catholics have come under attack through pressure by the pro-Russian Ukrainian government through subtle oppression by the security services and lack of formal legal recognition or state monies, which instead go to the Orthodox Church.

To be continued.

Patriarch Alexy II Dead

Hat tip to NLM.

AsiaNews:

Moscow (AsiaNews) – The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Aleksij II, has died at the age of 79. The Patriarchate did not give a reason for his death but he had been sick for some time.

Aleksij became Patriarch of all Russia in 1990, the first head of the Church elected without the influence of the Russian government.

He was credited with helping restore the freedom and moral authority of the Russian Orthodox Church after decades of repression under communism, but many priests who had been arrested and sent to the gulag accused him of being a spy for the Soviet secret police (KGB).

He was seen as a supporter of Putin’s New Russia.

In relation to the Catholic Church he always refused to meet Pope John Paul II, pointing the finger at alleged “proselytising” by Russian Catholics.

Catholic-Orthodox ecumenism was substantially held back under his leadership.

Bolding mine. I'm not finding anything in English about how the new patriarch will be elected, but I'll keep looking. The question is if Alexy's successor will be a bit more accommodating or if he'll remain as firm in the Russian Orthodox Church's position as Alexy was vis a vis the Catholic Church. Time will tell, obviously.

RIP

Edit: Just a general search of 'Patriarch Alexy' here for your convenience.

South Ossetia V

This post at Hot Air is pretty damning. Sarkozy negotiating away Georgia's sovereignty for a ceasefire... That's pretty sad.

So why are the Russians packing it in for a 'retrograde maneuver?'

Obviously, the cease-fire agreement did not chase the Russians back into South Ossetia. So what did? The unexpectedly strong American response is most likely responsible for the Russian reconsideration. George Bush went from oddly passive in the first hours of the crisis to angry within days. His order to start military airlifts to provide, ahem, “humanitarian” aid to Georgia probably took Russia by surprise. The EU move to kick Russia out of the G-8, where they don’t belong anyway, may also have gotten Putin’s attention.

South Ossetia IV

Tip of the hat to TitusOneNine for this blog post and link to the column.

George Pitcher's words in the Telegraph (scroll down a bit):

Pope Benedict XVI managed, from his holiday in the Italian Alps, to call for an "immediate" end to hostilities in South Ossetia and urged negotiations between Russia and Georgia over the contested province.

But it sounded like a rebuke to two squabbling children, not a plea for an end to a bloodbath, and carefully made no reference to the wider incursion into Georgia.
[...]

Not only will politicians, such as Gordon Brown and his foreign secretary, David Miliband, not break their holidays, but the Pope won't leave his ski chalet either.
[...]

But it's worth noting, for all the talk of unity between Christians when Anglicans bicker about their internal divisions, or Catholics talk of irreconcilable divisions over women priests, that when Christian unity really matters, an ecumenical Church is nowhere to be seen.

While I have neither the time nor the inclination to defend the slew of politicians whom Mr. Pitcher lists in his column, I do think that his words regarding the Holy Father's actions thus far are a bit unfair. Rereading Benedict's words now, they do seem rather pale compared to the condemnations from the US, but I wonder what Mr. Pitcher expects an octogenarian to do in the face of the KGB man Putin and his oil-funded army?

The pope's only weapon is his office's reputation for even-handedness. While condemning Russia directly would have been well and good, I doubt Mr. Putin would have batted an eye given the fact that he seems not at all publicly intimidated by the likes of the United States.

South Ossetia III

Russia has moved out of South Ossetia proper and is moving through Georgia now. Reports indicate that Russia has cut the country in two by taking the main highway and is moving to cut off Abkhazia so they may fully occupy it as well.

This is a good primer on what Russia's been up to for the last eighteen years.

The Holy Father commented yesterday. This is part of the CWN article:

In his reference to the conflict, Pope Benedict remarked that the violence had already caused the deaths of innocent civilians, and forced many more to flee their homes. The fighting could escalate if it continues, the Pontiff added.

Making an appeal to the "shared Christian heritage" of Georgia and Russia-- both predominantly Orthodox nations-- the Pope promised that Catholics would pray for a quick resolution of the conflict.

He also asked international leaders to "make every effort to support and promote initiatives aimed at reaching a peaceful and lasting solution."

South Ossetia II

Danger Room is a fine source for in depth info on what's going on in Georgia. The latest post is about the cyber warfare going on as Georgia's government servers are being attacked.

South Ossetia I

Georgia: Protecting its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Russia: Merely following the Kosovo precedent as established by the peace-loving West.

This is a hot war where neither side can escape fault nor be faulted for starting it.

Of course, the Russians have already bombed a Georgian city and there are unconfirmed reports the Georgians are engaging in ethnic cleansing...

I just went through all my bookmarks and Catholic news outlets are silent on a war between two Christian countries, even if they are by and large Orthodox.

The Last Vestige of Rome?

Pentecost on Mount Athos
by Sandro Magister

MOUNT ATHOS – When you see the summit of Athos emerge through the mist of the Aegean, stop the clocks. Because things are on another schedule there. The calendar is the Julian one, 13 days behind the Latin calendar that spread throughout the rest of the world. The hours are counted not from midnight, but from sunset. And it is not under the noon-day sun but in the dark of night that Athos is most alive and pulsating. In songs, lights, and mysteries.

Alexy II is for Putin

From Interfax-Religion:

Moscow, December 13, Interfax - Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia supports First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's proposal to Vladimir Putin that he become prime minister upon the expiration of his presidential term, if Medvedev is elected president.

"If there is such a combination of a new president and Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin], provided that he gives his consent, I think this would be a great blessing for Russia," Alexy said on NTV on Thursday.
[...]

"However, having known Vladimir Vladimirovich for years, I can acknowledge that ambition and pride have never prevailed in his activities," he said.

The patriarch praised "Vladimir Vladimirovich's selfless devotion to our homeland, his love for our homeland and huge efforts that he has made for the benefit of our homeland, its might, and its development for the good of our people."

It's such a simple word, so easy to say... tsar...

Although it would probably make a lot of Russians living outside the Motherland angry, especially the Romanov remnant, I would certainly before Putin being declared the tsar, if only because it would immediately clarify things. We all know he's going to manipulate things to stick around. Why not just go all the way and be done with it?

North vs. South

Interfax Religion:

Meanwhile, the Constantinople Patriarchate had interpreted canonical rulings to state that ‘it had an exclusive right to convene all-Orthodox sessions’, Fr. Vsevolod reminded. However, ‘mechanisms of inter-Orthodox consultations had not been functioning for several decades’, he underlined.

‘Those, who spoke of their exceptional right to call all-Orthodox sessions, have actually blocked this process when it came down to an attempt to clear up the rights of equally significant local Churches’, the representative of the Moscow Patriarchate said.

According to him, the developing crisis in inter-Orthodox relations which are currently in the degree of ‘a grave and chronicle decease fraught with lethal risk’ results in appearance of parallel dioceses ‘not only in diaspora, but also on the canonical territories of certain Churches’.

AsiaNews:

In this regards and referring to the decision by the Moscow Patriarchate to abandon the Ravenna working session, an Orthodox member of the joint commission on condition of anonymity spoke to AsiaNews about the problems that may be created by the Russians non participation. He explained that the Russian Church has entered a phase of post communist transition and that an internal battle for succession has begun. All external statements are subject to internal use to further different positions. In his view, there is a need for caution, and optimism, because no-one [within the Russian Orthodox Church] will dare go against the dynamics of history. Moreover the decision to withdraw from Ravenna was not shared by many Russian prelates.

The East fascinates me to no end. The Latin Church has its divisions, but in the end, there is the Pope and he is Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church. If you accept it, then that's that and if you don't, you're out. In the East though, with its co-equal (for the most part) churches, this ongoing conflict between Moscow and Constantinople being fought on many fronts is interesting to watch as it plays out. You have agents of Constantinople in Ukraine doing what they can to help along an independent Kiev patriarchate. You have the Russians walking out of Ravenna and rumors of power struggles. With that kind of dynamic, the Latin Church's ongoing struggles over liturgy and a return to orthodoxy seem eminently solvable. After all, you're either with the Pope or you're against him.

Orthodox news

From Interfax Religion:

Ukrainian Uniats urge to join NATO now - daily

Moscow, February 14, Interfax - Ukrainian political processes are being intertwined with the nation’s church life deeper and deeper.

Some Greek Catholics urge to join the NATO as soon as possible even from the preaching pulpit, the Trud daily said on Wednesday.

The February meeting of Volhynian Regional Interior Department Board held earlier this week started with a supplication service. From now on all important police events in Western Ukraine will start with a church service, the daily added.

It was also decided to make the staff of Interior Department’s regional boards and district offices regularly participate in the cervices. ‘Only those may fight the crime who have God in their hearts,’ the Volhynian Interior Department Board head Ivan Proshkovsky.

Meanwhile police officers from Khmelnitsky Region had their personal guns blessed. The like spiritual empowerment in Galichina’ police has its specific feature: the officers are led to churches marching in formations.

The above story is really bizarre in the way it goes from NATO to church-police relations with absolutely no transition. It's like two different stories put together to give the article some length. But hey, whatever floats their boat at Interfax.

Vatican’s representative in Russia urges Catholics to respect Orthodox traditions

Moscow, February 14, Interfax - Representative of the Holy See in Russia, Archbishop Antonio Mennini, has pointed out that it is important for the Catholics to respect the Orthodox church tradition for a success of the ecumenical dialogue.

‘We will seek to show more gestures of sympathy and respect for the Russian Orthodox Church, putting distrust and prejudice away, as we work only for the sake of Jesus. We must try to understand with love, and understanding takes learning’, Archbishop Mennini writes in an address to the readers of Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism which have been republished in Russian.

[A whole lot of talk on the book]

The Catholic clergy are strongly recommended ‘to pay attention to the norms existing in Eastern Churches for their faithful and to avoid any, even seeming proselytism’ and ‘to show sincere respect for the liturgical tradition of other Churches and church communities, which are asked, in their turn, to show reciprocal respect for the Catholic tradition’.
[...]

Good ideas all around.

Finally, back to Ukraine: Ukrainian Orthodox demand air time for the canonical Church radio and TV

Moscow, February 13, Interfax - Ukrainian Orthodox believers fear Roman Catholic proselytism and urge authorities to give them some air time for broadcasting.

‘We demand that the canonical Orthodox Church, which has formed spirituality, morals, and civilization image of our nation for centuries, be suitably represented at Ukrainian state TV and radio in accordance with its authority and number of believers,’ the Fraternity of St. Alexander Nevsky’s appeal to the Ukrainian government, the text of which Interfax received on Tuesday, said.

The appeal of the representatives of Ukraine’s Orthodox community was an answer to the association agreement between the president of Ukraine’s national broadcasting Viktor Nabrusko and the director of programming at Vatican Radio Federico Lombardi.

The Catholics would have seven casts a week at the state radio, ‘while the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in fact has no air time at the national radio,’ the Fraternity’s representatives noted.

That is really weird. They have /no/ air time at all? Huh.

Anyway, the news round-up out of Ukraine and Russia is complete for another day.

Ask and ye shall receive

Yesterday I said I should do some research into the background behind Rome-Athens relations since I had forgotten or was not recalling anything I'd read in the past. Zenit provides with an interview with a Monsignor Salachas of the Greek Catholic Exarchy in Athens who explains.

Q: Some years ago, and not that many, a visit by the Orthodox archbishop of Athens to the Pope was quite improbable. What is changing?

Monsignor Salachas: Insofar as I know, Archbishop Christodoulos' intention to visit the Pope already ripened during the last years of John Paul II's pontificate, whose funeral he attended personally.

The starting point of a new era in relations between the Church of Rome and the Orthodox Church of Greece was precisely John Paul II's Jubilee pilgrimage to Greece in May 2001 "in the footsteps of St. Paul," and the signing of a Joint Declaration in Athens' Areopagus by Pope John Paul II and Archbishop Christodoulos, committing themselves to fraternal collaboration and a common testimony to safeguard the Christian identity of the European continent.

It was followed in March 2002 by the visit to the Holy See of a delegation of the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece, and in February 2003 by the visit of a delegation of the Holy See, headed by Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, to the Church of Greece, and the participation of representatives of the Holy See in several initiatives convoked by the Church of Greece at the international and ecumenical level.

Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Constantinople consolidated the decision already made months earlier by the archbishop to visit the Church of Rome and meet with her Bishop to reaffirm the commitment assumed with the declaration in Athens' Areopagus in 2001.

The monsignor's comments on the Eastern Catholic Churches are worth reading:

It is known that the Orthodox Churches' reservation is based on the fact that they don't see a theological foundation that justifies the existence of the Eastern Catholic Churches, while for the Catholic Church the fact of their full communion with the Apostolic See of Rome with the bonds of the profession of the faith, of the sacraments and of the ecclesiastical government, justifies their ecclesiasticism and canonicity.

On several occasions, Orthodox exponents, theologians and ecclesiastics have expressed their point of view for the solution of this problem, considering that Eastern Catholics should opt to return to the Orthodox Church, from which they stem, or incorporate themselves to the Latin Church, inasmuch as they are united to Rome.

Obviously, such a solution cannot find agreement on the part of the Catholic Church, for essentially doctrinal, ecclesiological and pastoral reasons.

I think that "Uniatism" implies fundamentally the more delicate and theologically more difficult question, that is, the primacy of the Roman Pontiff.

In a comment I read someplace yesterday, an Eastern Catholic was lamenting the current status of the Eastern Churches as sort of bastard children that were over time being viewed as unwanted and as obstacles to be overcome in the road to ecumenism. The jurisdictional issues that lie ahead should all the other prerequisites of full communion be fulfilled are quite huge in and of themselves.

N. 214 - THURSDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2006

I should use that as the official title every time I post info from VIS.

• This morning, the Holy Father received His Beatitude Christodoulos, archbishop of Athens and of all Greece, who is making an official visit to the Vatican. Prior to his audience with the Pope, the archbishop visited St. Peter's Basilica where he prayed at the tomb of John Paul II.
  [...]
  
  "At the same time," he added, "we must increase collaboration among Christians in all European countries in order to face the new risks that challenge the Christian faith: growing secularization, relativism and nihilism, which open the way to forms of behavior and laws that damage the inalienable dignity of man and threaten such fundamental institutions as marriage. It is vital to undertake joint pastoral activity, as a joint testimony to our contemporaries and an expression of our hope."
  
  
• This morning in the Vatican, following their private meeting and after each had pronounced a public address, the Pope and His Beatitude Christodoulos, archbishop of Athens and of all Greece, signed a Joint Declaration in the presence of members of the archbishop's Greek delegation and of Catholic representatives.
  
  "We, Benedict XVI, Pope and Bishop of Rome, and Christodoulos, Archbishop of Athens and of all Greece, in this sacred place of Rome, ... wish to live ever more intensely our mission to bear apostolic witness, to transmit the faith, ... and to announce the Good News of the birth of the Lord. ... It is also our joint responsibility to overcome, in love and truth, the multiple difficulties and painful experiences of the past."
  
  "Our meeting in charity makes us more aware of our joint task: together to follow the arduous path of dialogue in truth in order to re-establish full communion of faith. ... Thus we obey a divine mandate ... and continue our commitment, ... following the example of the Apostles and demonstrating mutual love and a spirit of reconciliation."
  [...]

I need to find some more material in the Greek Church and its own relationship with Rome. Benedict and Christodoulos got on quite well it looks like. But Greece has its own archconservatives who view Rome with distrust, though they report to Constantinople, not Athens.

• The Office of Liturgical Celebration of the Supreme Pontiff published today the calendar of celebrations at which the Holy Father will preside during the Christmas season:
  
  DECEMBER
  
  - Sunday, 24: Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord. The Pope will celebrate Midnight Mass in the Vatican Basilica.
  
  - Monday, 25: Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord. At noon from the central balcony of the Vatican Basilica, the Pope will deliver his Christmas message to the world and will impart the "Urbi et Orbi" blessing.
  
  - Sunday, 31: At 6 p.m. in the Vatican Basilica, the Holy Father will preside at first Vespers on the Solemnity of Mary Mother of God, during which the traditional "Te Deum" hymn of thanksgiving will be sung for the conclusion of the civil year.
  
  JANUARY 2007
  
  - Monday, 1: Solemnity of Mary Mother of God and 40th World Day of Peace which has as its theme: "The Human Person, the Heart of Peace." In the Vatican Basilica at 10 a.m., the Holy Father will preside at the celebration of Mass.
  
  - Saturday, 6: Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord. Holy Father to preside at Mass in the Vatican Basilica at 10 a.m.
  
  - Sunday, 7: Baptism of Our Lord. Benedict XVI will preside at Mass in the Sistine Chapel at 10 a.m., during which he will impart the Sacrament of Baptism to a number of children.