Tuesday, October 05, 2010

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.

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