Uniatism and Its Origins V. Peri*

UNIATISM AND ITS ORIGINS

V. P ERI*

In June 1993, after six plenary sessions, the fourteen-year old International Commission for Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the fifteen Byzantine Orthodox Churches issued a joint document in Balamand (Lebanon), entitled: ‘Uniatism, method of union of the past, and the pres- ent search for full communion’. This document developed the statement issued by the same Commission at the previous session in Freising (June 1990), declaring that “this form of missionary apostolate ... can no longer be accepted neither as a method to be followed nor as a model of the unity our Churches are seeking” (no. 12). What is meant by “form of missionary apostolate” is the “missionary activity [which] tended to include among its priorities the effort to convert other Christians, individually or in groups, so as to bring them back to one’s Church” (no. 10). Both Churches now condemn a practice which has for long been deemed suitable, as long as it was useful for bringing back the believers that each considered to be of their own sacramental communion and canonical affili- ation. The ecclesiological teaching and canonical praxis of both Catholic and Orthodox Churches expressed this conviction, until they realised that their relation of communion was better described by the theology of Sister Churches rather than by the theology of ‘returning’ to one Mother Church, which each identified exclusively with themselves. Because of the 1000-year long separation, the two Churches behaved somewhat like the quarreling mothers in front of King Solomon: they both claimed the same son, i.e. jurisdiction over clergy and believers of oriental liturgical and canonical tradition. The Declaration of Balamand describes these efforts to convert single believers from one Church to the other as “a source of proselytism” (no. 10), an attitude which had been rejected by Pope John Paul II and the ecumenical

* Vittorio Peri, scriptor Graecus of the Vatican Library, is a lay Catholic member of the Joint International Commission for the Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Byzantine Orthodox Churches. 24 V. P ERI

Patriarch of Constantinople, Dimitrios I, in their common declaration of 7th December 1987: “We reject every form of proselytism, every attitude which would or could be perceived to be a lack of respect.” In this perspective, the Statement of Freising had already affirmed: “We reject [the] method which has been called uniatism as [a] method for the search for unity because it is opposed to the common tradition of our Churches.” This statement was further articulated in Balamand as follows:

Because of the way in which Catholics and the Orthodox once again consider each other in their relationship to the mystery of the Church and rediscover each other as Sister Churches, the form of missionary apostolate described above, which has been called uniatism, can no longer be accepted neither as a method to be followed nor as a model of the unity our Churches are seeking (no. 12).

1. Eastern Churches in communion with Rome or ‘rites’ of the Catholic Church? The way towards a common approach to the problem was understandably long and hard for the two Churches, separated for more than 1000 years. To restore a full – and visible – communion, such as the one which existed in the first millennium so long as the one and only Catholic and Apostolic Church saw itself as undivided, it was necessary to deal with the hardest point of the polemic. That is the question of the theological and canonical legitimacy of the existence of eastern ecclesial communities, bound to the bishop of Rome by a new canonical statute. The statute was clearly modified, as compared to the one which was previously used to show the visible communion between all local Churches and the Church of Rome. It is necessary to note that other important aspects of the internal life of the two Churches, both institutional and ecclesial, had meanwhile changed. In Rhodes in 1980, two full days passed before it was possible to start the work planned for the Commission. This could begin only when the deleg- ates of the Orthodox Churches, in a separate session, agreed to consider the existence of the eastern Catholic Churches and the presence of their representatives as an issue to be discussed, rather than an anomalous situation which the Catholic Church should eliminate by disciplinary action before the beginning of the theological dialogue. Obviously this request implied that eastern bishops and Catholics should not be considered Churches, not even in the sense of ecclesial communities in a condition of UNIATISM AND ITS ORIGINS 25 irregular separation – whether dogmatic or canonical – from the national Orthodox Churches, whose liturgical tradition they maintain. Important historical changes in many eastern countries gave public and legal existence to the eastern Catholic Churches which had been abolished by the communist regimes, such as those in the Ukraine and Romania. Offi- cially, the members of these Churches were deemed to have merged freely into the local Orthodox Churches. Underground survival of an episcopal hierarchy and community life for such eastern Catholic Churches never did correspond to the above mentioned facile official position of the socialist states and the Orthodox Churches. Although practically and ideologically persecuted in these regimes, the latter maintained a – heavily conditioned – right to public organisation. Whereas the Latin Catholic Churches benefitted from the same treatment, the Byzantine Catholic Churches were suppressed. According to this formal and diplomatic fiction, the most numerous eastern Catholic Churches, united to the Roman Church, ceased to exist after 1946- 48, while others, more recent, survived in small communities, as in Greece, Bulgaria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. For them, it was not unrealistic to foresee a gradual exhaustion and an easy administrative absorption into the local Latin Catholic Churches. This was the solution the Orthodox Churches envisaged for the Byzantine Catholic communities in the last Orthodox empire since the time of the Czars. This solution was easily conceivable even by the Catholics because pre- Counciliar ecclesiology did not classify such particular ecclesial communities as Churches. Instead, it considered them simply as ‘rites’, permitted and tolerated next to the Latin rite, the only universal one. In other words, their existence was traced back to a pontifical juridical act, rather than to a traditional and ecclesial historical continuity, which included the apostolic succession of bishops. The regulation of the passage from one rite to the other within the Roman Catholic Church – as well as the authorisation for a small (missionary) part of the Latin rite clergy to practice dual ritualism – reinforced such an ecclesiological view. A trace of such a view still persists in the Conciliar Decree on eastern Catholic Churches, in which, at no. 2, the expression “Ecclesiae particulares seu ritus” is used twice. Such a synonym must be considered incorrect from the theological point of view. In the decades following the Second Vatican Council, ecumenistic circles, including those of the World Council of Churches, favoured a policy of 26 V. P ERI tacitly and indirectly relegating uniatism to the historical realm, considering it to be an incongruous pastoral attitude. This was possible because the many eastern Catholic communities, capable of keeping this attitude alive, were virtually exhausted. Many had confidence in such a solution which was ‘natural’ and spontaneous, or could be simply implemented by canonic and administrative means. It is perfectly understandable that the united Catholic communities – both where they survived underground in spite of persecu- tion and in western countries, where after World War II immigration had re-formed and diffused them, were reluctant to accept it. This reluctance degenerated into an overall attitude of diffidence towards the ecumenical movement. After the ecclesiological recognition of the eastern Catholic Churches at the Second Vatican Council, the dissolution of entire ecclesial communities, legitimately gathered around bishops of their own nation to celebrate the Eucharist according to the traditional liturgy, became unthinkable for the Catholic Church. Especially after 1989, it became impossible not to consider the eastern Churches of non-Byzantine or Slavic tradition (Maronites, Syriacs, Ethiopians, Copts etc.), which were united to Rome, and the eastern Euro- pean Churches on the same scale. The canon law for eastern United Churches needed to be made uniform: the new Code of Canons for the eastern Churches tried to do that. After the sudden and unexpected collapse of the socialist regimes, the idea of awaiting the spontaneous solution of the ecclesial problem regarding uniatism proved to be unrealistic. From one moment to the next the Orthodox Churches found themselves incapable of sustaining the official thesis, according to which the main united Catholic Churches in eastern Europe no longer existed: they were forced to denounce violent occupation of churches and aggression against their clergy and believers on the part of the ‘Uniates’, led by their bishops. It became hard to accept for the Orthodox Churches the adjournment of the ecclesiological problem created by the existence of the united Catholic Churches, such as the one the Catholics had obtained in Rhodes, according to the previous pragmatic justification. Thus, “At the request of the Ortho- dox Churches, the normal progression of theological dialogue with the Catholic Church has been set aside so that immediate attention might be given to the question which is called uniatism” (Balamand no. 1). The embarrassment of having to change the agenda for the theological dialogue UNIATISM AND ITS ORIGINS 27

– established at the beginning and already partially completed – under the pressure of political rather than theological factors, was felt by both parties. Strong pressures were exerted on both sides simply to interrupt the proceedings, especially by those who still viewed the steps already taken towards the reunion of the two Churches with diffidence and hostility. It may well be said – as in fact many have – that the Joint Commission for Theological Dialogue had to face its most serious crisis between 1990 and 1993. Nonetheless, it may equally well be said that the Commission has laid the groundwork for a solution which is bound to become a keystone for the continuation of the dialogue itself. Nonetheless, such an undeniably innovative solution left many on both sides uncertain and perplexed. A new ecclesiological course was adopted for an old ecumenical problem, which was generally ignored among western and especially eastern Chris- tians, both Catholic and Orthodox, because of the ecclesiastic problems I have mentioned.

2. Historical significance of uniatism A significant symptom of the novelty of the Balamand Document is the use, already in the title, of a neologism: the word uniatism. No dictionary records the term and almost no encyclopaedia or lexicon of western languages describes it; it instead, is mentioned in analogous Greek or Romanian works. In all western languages we know words such as ‘Machiavellism’, ‘Illuminism’, ‘Romanticism’, which indicate that a historical phenomenon has become part of the critical and cultural conscience of a language, no matter what one’s own opinion is. On the other hand, no such semantic process has occurred for uniatism, not even in ecclesiastic and theological language, which should show a greater interest in the subject. The reason is to be found in the term’s deriving from the word unjat. In turn this term comes from unija, which is itself a Ruthenian (Ukrainian and Belarussian) phonetic borrowing from the Latin unio. It was used by the Orthodox, initially by the Russian and ‘Ruthenian’ opponents of the Union of Brest, to designate in a derogatory manner the members of the ecclesiastic system of Unija. The word unija was at first used in a positive sense by those, such as Poles and Ruthenians, who were favourable to an union with the Holy See. They obviously found the traditional Slavonic terms used to indicate the union of the Churches (soedinenie, svjataja zgoda) inadequate to describe 28 V. P ERI this new kind of union. Nevertheless, the polemic attitude towards the fol- lowers of the unija, or Uniates, cast a negative meaning on the term. Only later did the term ‘uniatism’ appear in the abstract and generic sense of an ecclesiastic trend and, in particular, of a historical model (unacceptable to eastern ecclesiology) of canonical union and visible communion between one local Catholic Church and the Roman Catholic Church as a whole. The term ‘Uniates’ was more and more frequently used to denote those Ruthenians who had contested the traditional bond of jurisdictional dependence on the Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople, in order to submit to the primatial authority of the Roman Pontiff while maintaining unchanged their own liturgy, tradition and sacral organisation. In the Catholic Realm of Poland, just after the end of the Council of Trento, a missionary campaign was mounted in particular by the Jesuits, in order to force the Ruthenians, both as single worshippers who were members of the nobility and as rural parish communities, to the rites and canonical jurisdiction of the Latin Church of Poland, under the immediate and full jurisdiction of the diocesan Polish bishops of the western Latin Church. The synodal decision of the Ruthenian bishops of the Metropolitanate of Kiev to renew the bond with Rome, already accepted by them according to the union of Florence, was made after the Patriarchate of Constantinople had granted the Church of Moscow the title of ‘Patriarchate of All Russias’. This title, unknown to the pentarchic tradition of the first millennium, was first bestowed in 1589 by the deposed and exiled Patriarch Jeremiah II, and then, in 1593, by synodal and canonical means. The Church of Moscow, which had promoted itself first to the rank of metropolis and then to that of archbishopric, had for a century and a half been separated from Kiev, which claimed for itself the original primatial right which, in the Byzantine ecumenic partition, was of the unitarian Archbishopric of All Russias. A ‘return’ of the Church of Kiev and of the Ruthenian Christians to the ‘Mother-Church’ of Moscow, was an absolute innovation in a long historical, canonic and ethno-political tradition. Later on, the term ‘Uniates’ was used by analogy to indicate all the eastern Christians who recognised the authority of the pope in Rome while, by his concession, maintaining the liturgy and ecclesiastic organisation which were traditional in their Churches. Ethnic and national patriotism often associ- ated the meaning of deserter and renegade of the sacral traditions of their UNIATISM AND ITS ORIGINS 29 own people to the term ‘Uniate’. The word passed into French and English with this meaning, which maintains an implicit though attenuated negative ethnic nuance, just as, in another field, the term ‘janissary’ (from Turkish yeni çeri, ‘new army’), which was originally neutral and descriptive. At times it is also used incorrectly by Catholics, even by eastern Catholics. In 1927 C. Korolevskij, in his pamphlet L’uniatisme: Causes, Effets, Étendue, Dangers, Remèdes, admitted: “Le mot uniatisme est un vocable récent, nous dirons presque un néologisme. Par contre le mot uniat, dont il dérive l’est un peu moins. On désigne couramment en français, sous le nom d’Uniates, les chré- tiens de rite oriental rattachés à la communion du Siège Romain” (p. 369). Since 1939, Cardinal Tisserand, Secretary for the Congregation of the East- ern Church, in a letter has called attention to such an incorrect and offensive use of the term ‘Uniates’ for the eastern Catholics. And, in fact, it never appears in any of the Documents of the Joint Commission for Theological Dialogue in which the only reference is to eastern Catholic Churches. In was not an easy choice to use a neologism such as ‘uniatism’, which for some could still have an ambiguous and disputable meaning, in the theological language of a common Declaration of the Roman Catholic and Byzantine Orthodox Churches. It was therefore necessary to precede this choice by an attempt to give a common description and an ecclesiological definition of the historical phenomenon denoted by the term ‘uniatism’, which as such was confronted with the ancient Tradition shared by both Churches. This was the only way of rejecting uniatism without leaving any room for ambiguity. The effort which the Joint Commission for Theological Dialogue had to sustain had no precedent – except for the polemic ones – in research or specific thought on this matter. The result of such an effort has been appreciated in several public declara- tions by the Heads of Churches and is therefore to be considered new and constructive by all believers, though it cannot immediately be thought of as exhaustive and comprehensible to everyone. To both the Catholics and the Orthodox, used to the mentality and the vocabulary which for centuries had described the relationship between the two Churches, the term ‘uniatism’ sounded unusual and it raised perplexity and diffidence because of the state- ments it suggested. Many changes in the Balamand text show the difficulty of harmonising it with the old commonplaces still existing in both Churches on the subject of uniatism. 30 V. P ERI

3. The anti-traditional component of every uniatism For the dialogue to be possible, the first step the two Churches had to make was to specify the theological – ecclesiological, to be precise – terms in which a problem should be dealt with. Because of its origin and development in the different national and geographic contexts, the historical aspects of such a problem were complex and diverse. In several countries, the Catholic Church, in its single episcopal and territorial jurisdictions, had clergy and believers who maintained the tradition of the eastern Church of Byzantium in their liturgical rites and sacred customs, but declared to be in full visible communion with Rome and jurisdictionally subordinate to the pope and the Roman Church rather than to the Byzantine Church and its episcopal hierarchy. They considered themselves – and were considered – part of the western Latin Church, in its same dogmatic profession of faith and canonical organization. This historical form, showing a visible expression of Catholic unity, was realised – in different circumstances, regions, ways, pro- portions and moments – through the coexistence of ecclesial communities which differed from one another in terms of ethnic origin, language, liturgical rites and sacred customs, in dioceses which, though mixed, were unitary from a territorial and jurisdictional point of view. According to a general principle and ancient common praxis, every town and administrative territory should have only one bishop and the dioceses should not be too small, lest episcopal dignity be diminished. Such praxis had some unforeseen consequences. In some Churches the liturgical and sacred tradition of the episcopal Chair differed from that of the clergy and people of the diocese. Such a situation could also exist before the ethnic and social upheavals which occurred in all regions of the ancient Christian Ecumenical Empire, both in its eastern and western part. But in the early Middle Ages there was an increase in the number of dioceses – and, obviously, of patriarchates in which they were included – where traditions of the western Latin Church and the eastern Orthodox Church coexisted, according to a central ecclesiastic organization. In regions of the Balkans and Southern Italy (Apulia, Calabria – two borderlands) the cases in which episcopal hierarchy did not correspond to the particular tradition of a single Church were very frequent. This fact did not cause serious conflicts of competence, as long as the limits of the ‘ecumenical’ taxis were changed only by the deliberation of an Ecumenical Council and metropolitans and patriarchs did UNIATISM AND ITS ORIGINS 31 not try to interfere in the autonomy of liturgical and sacred traditions of those believers who followed the customs of a different Church. Any change of jurisdiction in the universal (ecumenical) ecclesiastic taxis, deliberated by the imperial power without previous ratification by an Ecumenical Council, was denounced by the Church, which came to lose part of its territory as “trespassing on the borders our Fathers have established”. These borders were considered holy and eternal, although in the conditions of regular union between the Churches of the Empire, hierarchical and canonical dependence did not necessarily imply uniformity of liturgical rites and sacred customs. In the larger Churches of the ancient megalopolies of the Roman Empire, such as Rome, Alexandria, Antioch and Constantinople, which for a long time had an ethnically mixed population, lay and mon- astic communities existed under the authority of local patriarchs, while maintaining the lower clergy, rites, language and liturgical calendar of their Churches of origin. The first change of rites and sacred customs imposed on Christian believers by a Church which had become the majority’s without a counciliar agreement between the two Churches, occurred in the Illyrian and Balkan regions, after migrations and settlements of new peoples; then, in Northern Africa, which had fallen under Islamic domination, and finally in Southern Italy after the long iconoclastic crisis and the Arab conquest of Sicily. The conquest of Southern Italy by Longobards, Franks and Normans introduced into many dioceses of Greek liturgy and Byzantine patriarchal dependence, metropolitans and bishops of the western Latin Church, bound in jurisdictional obedience to the pope, who had ordained or confirmed them in their office. After the Crusades, with the creation of Latin episcopal sees in the territories controlled by the Crusader Kings and in Venetian and Genoese dominions in the Greek East, this situation extended and also came to concern clergy and believers of Greek ecclesial tradition in dioceses which were included in the Latin Church. Once again the ancient rule was applied: each town and each territory should have only one bishop, even if the Christians of the region were different in ethnic origin and in liturgical and canonical tradition. But in the kingdoms of the Crusaders, the bishops, the governors and the upper class belonged to the Latin Church. As had already happened in the past for the passage from Latin to Greek rites, there was no obligation for the faithful to 32 V. P ERI conform to Latin observance and organisation of clergy. Rather, an attempt was made to regulate the coexistence of different ethnic groups living in the same area, each with its own clergy. In any case, a diocese could not be assigned to Greek metropolitans – and soon neither to bishops – who had not been nominated or confirmed in their jurisdiction by the pope of Rome. However the pope could not consecrate them because of the dif- ference of rites. Soon, all bishops were of the Latin Church. In 1215 the Lateran Council decided that in those mixed dioceses the Latin bishop would designate an episcopal vicar among the Greek clergy; he would exer- cise, in the name and for the authority of the Latin bishop, the functions of government and teaching for that part of the faithful. The Byzantine Church denounced this western change as a further innovation in the traditional ecumenical counciliar statute, in particular because of two obvious consequences: the direct intervention of the Latin Church in the verbal determination of the profession of faith and in the control in the discipline of the Sacraments. For more than twenty years, the Church of Rome had presented similar remonstrances for some changes of the same nature in the Roman ecclesial tradition, sanctioned in 692 by the Council in Trullo; the same thing happened between the eighth and ninth centuries because of other changes which took place in Italy and ancient Illyricum; and again in the eleventh century because of the anathema of some western sacramental customs and because of the prohibition of Latin worship decreed by the Patriarch, Michael Keroularios, in his jurisdiction. The Byzantine protest against the unilateral changes introduced by the Latin Church in the Byzantine ecclesiastical tradition continued up to the Council of Florence and even after it, since the mediaeval canonical statute for the Greeks was resumed or maintained in practice. In this situation, the two Churches considered themselves separated and for centuries denounced each other as schismatic, however, they always saw themselves as parts of the same apostolic and catholic Church, even if forced by circumstances into a ‘frozen’, or at least anomalous, relationship. By a process of analogy and generalization, the term ‘uniatism’ has, in the recent past, been used to describe this particular situation and the mediaeval tendency of the Latin Church towards expansion into the Christian East. Anyhow, it is important to note that, firstly, this term, as its etymology UNIATISM AND ITS ORIGINS 33 clearly shows, could exist only after the union of Ruthenians with Rome; secondly, and most importantly at the time, the forced inclusion of the faithful of one Church into the other did not occur by individual proselytism – as in the case of historical ‘uniatism’ – but only in groups and through disciplinary action.

4. The modern appeal of the ancient concept of a ‘return’ to the Mother Church The new way of sanctioning the dogmatic and canonical passage of the faithful from one Church to the other was known only in modern times. A new canonical statute was first imposed on Albanians, Greeks and Slavs belonging to the Greek Church in Southern Italy and Sicily; then, almost immediately, to Ruthenians and Romanians, with the application of the Per- brevis instructio super aliquibus ritibus Graecorum ad RR. PP. DD. Episcopos Latinos, in quorum civitatibus vel dioecesibus Graeci vel Albanenses Graeco ritu viventes degunt by Clement VIII, approved on 31 August 1595 and published in 1596. Besides the complete submission of those faithful to the ordinary jurisdiction of the territorial Latin bishops, the most innovative of the pontificial measures was the constitution of an ‘ordaining’ bishop of and for Greek rites, i.e. with a limited and non-territorial, but personal and ethnic jurisdiction. This jurisdiction, which at the time was also considered normal for any bishop of the Latin Catholic Church, was conferred immediately and ad personam by the Pope. The modern canonical regulation was elaborated by the Congregation for the reform of Greeks, established by Gregory XIII in 1573; this Congregation operated until the death of its president, Cardinal G.A. Santoro (9 May 1602), i.e. during the forty years which followed the end of the Council of Trento. The method of missionary propagation of the Catholic Church in the East, which can be more precisely described as uniatism, was in fact inaug- urated among the Ruthenians in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In Italy, in Venice and in Venetian Dominions, Orthodox priests and believers were too few and too poorly organised to require specific pastoral action to ‘convert’ them: it was enough to apply the Perbrevis instructio, as was done in Sicily and Calabria with the so-called Italo-Albanians. In the ‘foreign’ or ‘external’ nations, i.e. the ones which were not included in the Catholic countries of Europe, such a method was also applied after 1622 by the Con- gregation ‘de propaganda Fide’. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, 34 V. P ERI it was also resumed in other regions of eastern Europe and the Middle East, especially when Leo XIII was Pope: it was slightly modified in the form of unionism, which tended to assimilate into the Catholic Church whole ecclesial communities, rather than to ‘convert’ single believers, as was typical of uniatism. All local Orthodox Churches underwent this pastoral and missionary activity of the modern Catholic Church and constantly denounced it as a menace to their rights and to their identity. This approach to achieving visible communion appeared unthinkable to the counciliar Tradition of the first millennium. The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Anthimos VII, in his Patriarchal and Synodal Letter to Hierarchy, Clergy and Faith- ful (12th October 1895) expressed his complaint in polemical terms, the symptom of an ancient problem which through the study of its historical origin and in the light of the ecclesiology of the Sister Churches should be seen, nowadays in a completely new perspective. This ecclesiology, the truly ecumenical one (catholic, sobornaja, counciliar), can be considered ancient and modern at the same time. Many Orthodox hierarchs seem, instead, to share the mentality and the attitudes of Anthimos VII, who, 100 years ago, wrote:

Depuis un an l’Église du pape, désertant la voie de la persuasion et de la discussion, à la stupéfation et à l’inquiétude de tous, a commencé par scandaliser les sentiments des simples chrétiens orthodoxes, par l’entremise d’astutieux ouvriers qui se changent en apôtres du Christ, envoyant en Orient des clercs sous l’habit et le voile de ministres orthodoxes et machinant bien d’autres moyens de fourberie, afin de parvenir à ses fins de prosélitysme.

As said above, the Balamand text rejects this kind of method and tries to sketch the ecclesiological vision of the Sister Churches: according to this, any missionary tendency must be deemed to be opposed to the common Tradition of the Churches and cannot therefore be applied by one Church (or group of Churches) against the other. The reconsideration of traditional criteria for the reconciliation of the two Churches which has been discussed in Balamand does not only imply a radical metanoia – i.e. a serious change in the way of thinking – for the Catholics, but also for the Orthodox. Dif- ficulties at the beginning of this process are natural. UNIATISM AND ITS ORIGINS 35

Before the onset of the ecumenical movement and before the celebration of the Second Vatican Council, the only solution which could be imagined for an anomalous ecclesial situation was the simple restoration of the status quo ante. But such a ‘previous situation’ was differently intended, according to the ecclesiology adopted. To the Orthodox Churches it was clear that the single eastern Churches had to ‘return’ to the ancient unity, without any consideration for the changes in cultural and social conditions or, above all, in the personal conscience of the believers. The ‘Order’ for restoration was thought of as eternal, ideal, and also immutable in its territorial and ethnic components, which necessarily depend on historical changes. The Catholic Church offered a similar ecclesial and traditional motivation to justify the partial unions with the Apostolic See, which some eastern communities of Byzantine rites had accepted in order to overcome the schism. Such justification was based on the theology of the return of ‘particular’ Churches to the visible communion, both in public profession of counciliar faith and in a regular, ‘universal’ hierarchic order. According to the theological theory of the first millennium, the Church of Rome was the only keeper and depositary of this order. Both Churches considered it a ‘holy duty’ of Christian kings, defensores fidei, to sustain and defend the worship and the public activity of the Churches of their nations, in order to preserve them from schism and heresy. So, these returns of groups of eastern believers to one Church – always referred to as ‘Mother’ – was always strongly encouraged by Catholic and Orthodox governors. The favoured Church described these interventions as necessary and providential; the other denounced them as arbitrary and opposed to religious freedom. The Balamand Declaration concisely recalls this situation:

In the course of the last four centuries, in various parts of the East, initiatives were taken within certain Churches and impelled by outside elements, to restore communion between the Church of the East and the Church of the West. These initiatives led to the union of certain communities with the See of Rome and brought with them, as a consequence, the breaking of communion with their Mother Churches of the East. This took place not without the inter- ference of extra-ecclesial interests. In this way eastern Catholic Churches came into being. And so a situation was created which has become a source of 36 V. P ERI conflicts and suffering in the first instance for the Orthodox but also for Catholics (no. 8).

In the decades which followed these unions, missionary activity tended to include among its priorities the effort of converting other Christians, individually or in groups, so as to bring them back to one’s own Church ... To assure the salvation of the separated brethren it even happened that Christians were rebaptized and that certain requirements of the religious freedom of persons and of their act of faith were forgotten. This perspective was one to which that period showed little sensitivity. On the other hand certain civil authorities made attempts to bring back Oriental Catholics to the Church of their Fathers. To achieve this end they did not hesitate, when the occasion was given, to use unacceptable means (nos. 10-11).

This account, though schematic and sometimes euphemistic, rightly con- siders uniatism as a single phenomenon, even if a distinction can be made among three different canonical regimes adopted, through the centuries, by the Roman Churches in order to regulate the coexistence in the same territorial jurisdiction of Christian communities of different rites and liturgical tradition. From the fourth to the seventh century, it is possible to talk about proper coexistence, because of liturgical customs of the episcopal see or because of the presence of communities of both rites in mixed dioceses. P.V. Laurent and other authors describe such dioceses as ecclesiastic ‘joint- ownership’ of the two Churches. The unity of the profession of faith and of the sacramental and visible communion was granted by the personal authority of every bishop, who was part of a metropolitan and patriarchal hierarchy ratified by ecumenical councils. From the ninth to the fifteenth century, when territorial and hierarchic changes occurred without the ratification of a council, western dioceses belonging to the ancient taxis which had become Greek or Byzantine, as well as new Latin dioceses which had been founded in the East but still had some clergy and believers who maintained the liturgy and tradition of the Byzantine Church, were part of the western Latin Church. For this western canonical discipline, I have elsewhere suggested the designation ‘Norman- Crusader rule’. A third regime began with the pontificial constitutions of 1564 and 1566 for Greeks and Albanians of Byzantine rites who lived in Italy and was UNIATISM AND ITS ORIGINS 37 codified in the Perbrevis Instructio by Clemens VIII. At the same time the first ‘ordaining’ bishop for the believers of Greek rites was introduced in the Catholic hierarchy. This new canonical arrangement was based on the ecclesiology common after the Council of Trento. It did not contemplate the existence of Churches which were not parts or particular portions of the universal Latin Church of Rome, or, better yet, if expressly authorized by the Pope to maintain ancient local traditions and rites. Visible communion was manifested through the personal pledge of obedience that any bishop, priest or laic had to express to the Pope and to His supreme Teaching on faith and customs. From the constant attitude expressed by the Catholic Church in the wide pontifical discipline concerning ecclesial communities of Greek rites, it was clear that the Roman Church maintained its own behaviour and thought in spite of differences of place, time and circumstances. Such continuity is confirmed by the constant protest – for the entire period of separation between the two Churches – of the Orthodox Churches against eastern communities singly united to the Roman Church. Thus we can explain the general hostility of Orthodox Christianity towards a pastoral – and later also missionary – activity, perceived to be crypto-proselytism masked as a rite. The insistence on differences in origin, consistence and vitality of communities could reveal their reluctance to assume a new ecclesiological position about a matter which was considered contentious: the ‘cactus of uniatism’! This reluctance delayed a delicate and difficult discussion, in the silent hope that the historical process would spontaneously exhaust itself in particular national situations. The political regime would then impose one of the many returns and the people would gradually forget about an ecclesiological problem which was considered complicated and anachronistic. The know- ledge of historical events shows that such hope was only an illusion. On the other hand, both Churches had serious difficulties in formulating the problem in clear theological terms. The reality of sudden political changes in the East cut the Gordian knot: the two Churches were forced to confront the matter, also discussing it in the Theological Dialogue.

5. The renouncement of an instrumental use of history A second important result of the Theological Dialogue is the description of the nature of uniatism in theological and not polemical or moralistic terms: 38 V. P ERI from its etymology the derogatory word unijàt, the use of the term uniatism always implied a strongly negative judgement on those who, individually or in groups, became (or had become) part of the Church of Rome and on the intentions which inspired such a choice. Any kind of moralistic history – from the one written and censored by eighteenth-century tutors ad usum Delphini to the lacunal and reticent pages of the Soviet Encyclopaedia – purports to be able to indicate the personal moral faults which have deter- mined political events. Officially, the secular schism between the Catholic and the Orthodox Church has been imputed respectively to the proud non serviam of Byzantine emperors or to the desire of the Roman popes for spiritual and territorial power, opposed to the supreme and providential authority conferred to Byzantine emperors by God. The fall of the popes into the hands of Longobards, Franks and Normans and then the fall of the Greek Empire under the Turkish infidels have for centuries been presented by historians of both sides as evidence of the divine punishment against the moral faults of their opponents. In this particular case the existence of eastern Catholic Churches has been imputed either to the spiritual imperialism of the Catholic Church or to the ambition of the popes of Rome. Many Catholic historians have instead seen in this situation the inevitable consequence of the fierce opposition of Orthodox Churches to the universal primacy of the pope. Nowadays, history – and, more specifically, Church history – can not take similar moralistic positions nor put the intentions of the protagonists of historical events to an impossible trial. Particularly at a time of a Jubilee, when he is called to understand and repent his own faults, both individual and communal, no Christian can pronounce against his neighbour – dead or alive – a sentence which is reserved to God. In this context, the pretence, while analyzing the past, of distinguishing between theological and non-theological factors appears noble, but is illusory; and it is simplistic to see only in the latter the origin of historical choices of single men of the Church or even of one whole Church, which views each situation and spiritual act in the light of the Incarnation. In the study of history an implicit detachment from a moralistic attitude is not yet common among theologians. Evidence of this can be found in the evaluation of uniatism in its concrete and historical results. For this reason the Balamand Declaration maintains some generic formulations and can UNIATISM AND ITS ORIGINS 39 seem ambiguous in some of its passages. It is clear though that, because of its own nature and its explicit intentions, the Declaration did not intend to enter the historical field.

6. The traditional condition of visible communion: the counciliar ecumenical agreement of the Churches Instead its specific field was the ecclesiological one. Within it, the Declara- tion describes uniatism as the effort to reach unity and visible communion in the Church, using theological motivations and pastoral methods which are not coherent with the permanent needs of the Gospel, nowadays more evident to all Christians. The traditional watershed between Christians and non-Christians has always been marked by the common Nicean-Constanti- nopolitan profession of faith and by traditional praxis: these two things were considered indispensable for the designation of the Church of Christ as apostolic. The adoption of a missionary action – whose function was to convert and, through baptism, include in the Church pagans and people of other reli- gions – towards Christians and episcopal communities was always excluded by the Tradition, even when baptism had been administered by a schismatic or heretic Church, or in a ritually incorrect form. The sacrament should be considered valid in every case, if it is conferred in the name of the Trinity and with the intention of doing what the Church does. Pope Leo the Great and the Patriarch of Constantinople, Photius, have expressed such principles in several letters, applying them to concrete pastoral situations of their time. According to the Tradition of the First Millennium, it cannot be considered theologically or canonically acceptable to re-baptize Christians, even when they are called to return to their Mother Church from a Church which is not part of the catholic visible communion, or from a Church which is separated from it because of adhesion to a heresy condemned by an ecumenical council. This precise teaching did not prevent the Hierarchy of both Churches from making many exceptions. One of the imputations against the Patriarch, Michael Keroularios, was that he re-baptized Christians who had belonged to the Latin Church and had already been baptized in the name of the Trinity. Another was the innovation he made when he forbade worship in the Latin Churches in his patriarchate, because the Eucharist was celebrated with unleavened bread, according to the ancient Latin tradition similar to that of the Armenian Church. 40 V. P ERI

In fifteenth-century Poland, the ‘conversion’ of Eastern Church believers was variously discussed and practiced, sometimes with the administration of a second Baptism. Only after the Council of Trento did it become common to consider sacramental and ritual conversion as a simple return to the faith and to the liturgical tradition of the Mother Church after a temporary separation of the believers from its full visible communion. This development was catalyzed by the Protestant crisis, after the prob- lematic period of the Great Schism of the West, when three different Roman popes were in office at the same time – as had already happened in the eleventh century. Every single christian or bishop came to feel that his belonging to the Catholic communion of the (western) Church was based on his personal loyalty to the legitimate pope of the Roman Catholic Church. Traditional ecclesial mediation, through the communitary profession of faith and the counciliar hierarchical organization, was, of course, maintained, but de facto considered to be secondary. A person who recognized the primacy of the pope and was docile to his directives could be called a good Catholic. The Protestant Reform contested this direct relationship between individual faith in Christ and obedience to the pope and proposed the possibility of a spiritual communion whose manifestations were also visible, but indepen- dent from traditional ecclesial institutions. Within the western Catholic Church the possibility of a ‘transverse’ schism was created, a schism of conscience, and the occasion for a heresy which was professed collectively, but was an individual choice for the believer. This phenomenon can be described as a dynamic ecclesial division, opposed to the static and socially localized forms known to previous tradition. The Roman Catholic Church no longer thought that bishops, priests and the faithful should be considered members of the only one visible Church becauce of the Sacraments they received and administered, even if they were in a state of schism or heresy. Ecclesial communities – and whole Christian Nations, such as the kingdoms of Sweden and England – ceased to be considered Churches which could transmit Salvation to their believers. The ancient patristic aphorism extra Ecclesiam nulla salus started to be applied only to the Roman Catholic Church: it was clear that he who wanted to become a perfect Christian had to accept its profession of faith and its canonical and sacramental discipline. There was also a change in the conception of missionary activity: it was necessary to obtain individual conversions to the only true religion and to UNIATISM AND ITS ORIGINS 41 the only true Church. Such expeditions, which were often risky and clan- destine, were spontaneously called missiones, emissiones. The Congregation De Propaganda Fide was officially founded only in 1622, but had some institutional precedents in Rome from 1599 on. All peoples who were not included in the political extension of Catholicism, were considered potential subjects for proselytism, in which one could act by pastoral means and missionary methods in order to obtain conversions. Bishops and believers of the ancient Christian communities in the East, who lived under Ottoman Muslim domination, were not considered part of the Church. The action of many missionaries of the seventeenth century, often Jesuits, to convert – i.e. to bring back – those eastern Christians to the only true Catholic Church – to whom many of them had belonged in the first millennium – was based on its iden- tification with the historical Roman Catholic Church, ruled by the pope. Obviously, such activity was contested by episcopal Orthodox hierarchies, which felt their authority over their own Churches deliberately ignored. Because of the influence of tradition, they considered it as illicit proselytism, a uniatism which was even more cunning, because it was admitted and encouraged by non-Christian and non-Orthodox political authorities and was ready to assume the rites and sacred traditions of the Church to whom Oriental believers traditionally belonged, in order to convert them to Catholi- cism. Byzantine Churches began to believe that their Communion, from a visible and canonical point of view as well, was the only thing that made the Church one, apostolic, counciliar, ecumenical and as depositary of the Orthodox faith. Where they could – in Russia, the Soviet Union and also in Romania – they tried to ‘bring back’ the Eastern Catholic united Commu- nities to their respective ethnic and political Church, i.e. to the ecclesiastical organization of before the sixteenth century. Those opposite and exclusive ecclesiologies kept alive the motivations of polemical claims and, paradox- ically, the same pastoral and missionary method of uniatism. The ecclesiology of the Sister Churches tries to define a recovery of the traditional ecclesiology, according to which the visible communion between the Churches depended on ecumenical counciliar agreement. Such agreement was always adapted to historical and political changes in the places where the Churches were called to live. For a millennium, this ecclesiology has shown that the Churches can always come to division, schism, heresy and jurisdictional conflicts: but that they always can and must find a way 42 V. P ERI towards reconciliation and unity of faith in peace and charity. The Balamand Text indicates this ancient method that leads to the stated purpose of Theo- logical Dialogue: the restoration of full visible communion between the Churches.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

In order to avoid too many specialistic references within the text I include a list of other works in which I dealt with the complex historical problem which is the subject of this essay. Communion between Churches – big or small, ancient or modern, main or secondary – becomes real and visible in the frequent exchange of gifts and charisms which each of them receives from the Holy Spirit through the sacraments of salvation. The visible communion between Sister Churches therefore requires a constant and common confrontation between evangelical needs and historical faults or wrongs. Nowadays, it is possible to see that some of those wrongs have been caused by the action of communities which thought they were realising the same evangelical needs, whose concrete and historical realisation is, in fact, always inadequate and perfectible. The actual Theological Dialogue suggests the question: why do Catholic and Orthodox Churches continue to be divided and insist on remaining divided when all their faithful belong to a gen- eration that is looking for God and for a more convincing experience of solidar- ity and fraternity? A visible practice of charity is the first form of evangelisation. To find a clear answer to this question it is first of all necessary to know if the pressing evangelical needs of our days still leave the two Churches the right to be separated. This theme is developed in the introductory chapters of the following works: – Lo scambio fraterno tra le Chiese: Componenti storiche della comunione (= Lo scambio fraterno), Storia e Attualità, 13 (Vatican City, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1993), pp. 7-27; – Orientalis varietas - Roma e le Chiese d’Oriente: Storia e diritto canonico (= Orientalis varietas), Kanonika, 4 (Rome, Pontificio Istituto Orientale, 1994), pp. 11-50. Several contributions are dedicated to uniatism: – The first one was completed on the Sunday of the Trinity of 1987 in Cassano Murge (Bari), during the meeting of the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue: ‘La comunione visibile tra le Chiese: Sugli aspetti storici ed ecclesiologici di ogni regime d’unione’, Oriente Cristiano, 30 (1990), pp. 3-18 (now also in Lo scambio fraterno, pp. 349-363); – ‘Considerazioni sull’uniatismo’, Oriente Cristiano, 31 (1991), pp. 13-42 (now also in Lo scambio fraterno), pp. 367- 394; UNIATISM AND ITS ORIGINS 43

– ‘I diritti canonici di ogni Chiesa “in un luogo e in un tempo”: Questioni attuali ed ecclesiologia antica’, in Lo scambio fraterno, pp. 405-470.

More specifically on the Synod of Brest (1596) are the following works: – ‘I precedenti storici ed ecclesiologici dell’unione di Brest’, in Il battesimo delle terre russe: Bilancio di un millennio, ed. S. Graciotti, Atti del Convegno internaz. di studio promosso dalla Fondazione G. Cini, dall’Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei con la collaborazione dell’Accademia delle Scienze dell’URS: Civiltà Veneziana, Studi, 43, (Florence, Leo Olschki Editore, 1991), pp. 323-333 (now also in Lo scambio fraterno, pp. 395-404); – ‘Beresteis’ka unija u rims’komu baèenni’, in 400-littja Beresteis’koi unii: Istoriènii kontekst, ukladennja Beresteis’koi unii i perse pouniine pokolinnja (L’viv, 1995), pp. 7-38; – ‘Sul carattere sinodale dell’Unione di Brest’, Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum, 28 (forthcoming).

The ancient historical and canonical situation in which uniatism developed at the end of the eleventh century, concerns the regimes of sacramental and canonical coexistence between the two Churches, in particular those of the Greek Church in Southern Italy after Norman occupation and of the Latin Church in the East after the Crusades. On pentarchy: – ‘La pentarchia: Istituzione ecclesiale (IV-VII secolo) e teoria canonico-teologica, in Bisanzio, Roma e l’Italia nell’alto medioevo (3-9 aprile 1986), I, Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 24 (Spoleto, 1988), pp. 209-311; – ‘La dénomination de patriarche dans la titolature ecclésiastique du IVe au XVIe siècle’, Irénikon, 64 (1991), pp. 359-364; – ‘La Chiesa di Roma e le missioni “ad gentes” (sec. VIII-IX)’, in Il primato del Vescovo di Roma nel primo millennio - Ricerche e testimonianze: Atti del Symposium storico-teologico, Roma 9-13 ottobre 1989, Pontificio Comitato di Scienze Storiche: Atti e documenti, 4 (Vatican City, 1991), pp. 567-642 (now also in Lo scambio fraterno, pp. 181-245); – ‘Local Churches and Catholicity in the first Millennium of the Roman tradition’, in The local Church and Catholicity: Acts of the International Colloquium, Salamanca, Spain, April 2-7, 1991, published in The Jurist, 52, 1 (Washington, 1992), pp. 79- 108 (in Italian in Lo scambio fraterno, pp. 321-348); – ‘La lettura del concilio di Firenze nella prospettiva unionistica romana’, in Christian Unity: The Council of Ferrara-Florence 1438/9-1989, ed. G. Alberigo, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, 97 (Leuven, 1991), pp. 593-611; – ‘Preti cattolici e vescovi ortodossi in una proposta di A. Eudemonojannis s.j. (1566-1625)’, in Tomos timètikos K.N. Triantaphyllou, I (Patrai, 1990), pp. 267- 280; 44 V. P ERI

– ‘Le vocabulaire des relations entre les Églises d’Occident et d’Orient jusqu’au XVIe siècle’, Irénikon, 65 (1992), pp. 194-199; – ‘Due pareri inediti del cretese Andreas Eudemonojannis’, in Rodonia: Timè ston M. I. Manoussakas, II (Rethimnon, Crete, 1994), pp. 459-472.

On jurisdictional and canonical coexistence between the Latin and the Greek Churches in Southern Italy: – Chiesa romana e ‘rito’ greco: G. A. Santoro e la Congregazione dei Greci (1566- 1596), Testi e ricerche di scienze religiose, 9 (Brescia, Paideia Editrice, 1975); – ‘I metropoliti orientali di Agrigento: La loro giurisdizione in Italia nel XVI secolo’, in Bisanzio e l’Italia: Raccolta di studi in onore di A. Pertusi, Vita e Pensiero (Milano, 1982), pp. 274-321; – ‘L’unione della Chiesa Orientale con Roma: Il moderno regime canonico occi- dentale nel suo sviluppo storico’, Aevum, 58 (1984), pp. 439-498 (now also in Orientalis varietas, pp. 51-141); – ‘Una Chiesa orientale innestata nell’Occidente cattolico’, Oriente Cristiano,33 (1993), pp. 14-25; – ‘Modelli storici della convivenza nell’Italia meridionale, Kanon: Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für das Recht der Ostkirchen, 12 (1994), Multikonfessionelles Europa (München-Eichenau, 1994), pp. 8-17; – ‘Chiesa latina e Chiesa greca: Protagonisti e regimi della coesistenza canonica’, in Calabria Bizantina: Il territorio grecanico da Leucopetra a Capo Bruzzano (Reggio, Calabria, 1995), pp. 45-74; – ‘Si dissiru li missi a Patarriti: Sulla persistenza della tradizione ecclesiale bizantina in Calabria’, Rivista Storica Calabrese, 16 (1995); (= Studi in onore di M. Mariotti) (forthcoming).

For a more general treatment of the problem from the perspective of modern ecu- menism: – ‘Il contenzioso ecclesiale tra Oriente ed Occidente’, in Cattolicità ridotta - ‘Servi- tium: Quaderni di spiritualità’, 24 (1990), pp. 3-18; – ‘Un muro da abbattere: La separazione fra i cristiani’, Studium, 86 (1990), pp. 501- 511; – ‘Due tradizioni cristiane da integrare’, Testimoni nel mondo, 17 (1991), pp. 16-23; – ‘Costruire, evidentemente insieme, la comunione visibile: La peculiare missione del Vescovo di Roma nel ministero petrino dell’unità ecclesiale’, Presenza Pastorale, 65 (1995), monographic issue on the encyclical Ut unum sint, pp. 467-499; – ‘L’Oriente cristiano a Roma nell’ultimo secolo’, in The Christian East, ed. R.F. Taft, Orientalia Christiana Analecta, 251 (Rome, 1996), pp. 21-54; – ‘All’alba del terzo millennio abbiamo il diritto di rimanere divisi? Cronaca eccle- siologica di un quindicennio ecumenico tra Cattolici ed Ortodossi’, Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia, Universidad de Navarra, 5 (1996), pp. 467-499. UNIATISM AND ITS ORIGINS 45

By consulting the works mentioned above, the reader may easily reconstruct the lit- erature (by now quite ample) on the historical and theological aspects of uniatism as a recurrent attitude in Church History, on Roman uniatism in the nineteenth century, on the Union of Brest and on the Declaration of Balamand. Suffice it to mention here the most recent and significant contributions: – G.-M. Croce, La Badia greca di Grottaferrata e la rivista ‘Roma e l’Oriente’: Catto- licesimo e Ortodossia fra unionismo ed ecumenismo (1799-1923), Storia e attualità, XII, 1-2, 2 vols. (Vatican City, 1990) – E. Ch. Suttner, Church unity: Union or uniatism? Catholic-Orthodox ecumenical perspectives, Placides Lectures, 1991 (Rome-Bangalore, 1991).

In 1996, on the occasion of the fourth centenary of the Union of Brest, the Insti- tute for Church History, recently established at the Theological Academy in Lvov, organized five International Historical Meetings in Lvov, Kiev and other Ukrainian cities. The proceedings of the first three meetings have already been published, edited by B. Gudjak (director of the Institute and author of a research on Crisis and Reform: The Kievan Metropolitanate, the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Gen- esis of the Union of Brest, forthcoming as a publication of the Ukrainian Scientific Institute, Harvard University). The three volumes that have already appeared are: – 400-Litta Berestejs’koï Uniï, Istoricinii kontekst, ukladennja Beresteis’koï Uniï i perse pouniine pokolinnja (L’viv, 1995); – Derzava, syspil’stvo i Cerkva u Ukraïni y XVII stolitti (L’viv, 1996); – Beresteiis’ka Unija i Ukraïns’ka kultura XVII stolittja (L’viv, 1996).

A seminal evaluation of the Declaration of Balamand has been advanced by – P. Duprey, ‘Une étape importante du dialogue catholique-orthodoxe: Balamand, 17-24 juin 1993’, in Communion et réunion: Mélanges Jean-Marie Roger Tillard, ed. G.R. Evans et M. Gourgues, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, 121 (Leuven, 1995), pp. 115-123.

SUMMARY

Uniatism and its origins The author of this article deals with the problem of ‘uniatism’ in a very broad sense: the origins and the use of this term are discussed, as well as uniatism as a historical phenomenon. In the past ‘uniatism’ was used by the Roman Catholic Church as a method for reuniting the Eastern Churches. The Orthodox Churches saw it, therefore, as a threat and a handicap in the ecumenical relationship. However, some Orthodox Churches have also tried to ‘bring back’ the Eastern Catholic Communities to their ‘Mother Chruch’. All this is the result of “opposite and exclusive ecclesiologies” which contradict the counciliar ecclesiology of the 46 V. P ERI

Ancient Chruch. In our century the attitudes have evolved: the Eastern Communi- ties within the Roman Church are no longer considered as mere ‘rites’, but they received a new canonical statue. On the other hand, the Orthodox Churches had to recognize the existence of the Eastern Churches united to Rome. In 1987, Pope John Paul II and the ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Dimitrios I, condemned ‘proselytism’ in a common declaration. In 1993, the International Commission for Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches issued a joint document in Balamand (Lebanon), in which it repeated this condemnation. Although its use of the term ‘uniatism’ may be confusing, the agreement in itself is an important step forward to solving the problem of the division of the Churches. In order to reach full communion, they have to rediscover the traditional ecclesiology and to regard each other as ‘Sister Churches’.