Are the Ratzinger Proposal and Zoghby Initiative Dead? Implications of Ad Tuendam Fidem for Eastern Catholic Identity Joel I. Barstad, Ph.D. Revised April 4, 2008 Introduction Is Rome satisfied with Eastern Catholic loyalty in terms of the Zoghby Initiative? In 2002 this question was submitted several times to various speakers at Orientale Lumen Conference VI, but never received an answer. One of the conference organizers, responsible for communicating audience questions to speakers, remarked that one of the speakers, a Roman Catholic Cardinal and member of the international Orthodox-Catholic dialogue, had declined the question because he did not know what the Zoghby Inititative was. And yet, for many Eastern Catholics, it has had an important part in shaping their understanding of their role as bridges between East and West. Eastern Catholic Hopes Many Eastern Catholics, in the wake of 20th-century improvements in relations between Rome and Constantinople, the ecumenical declarations of Vatican II, and Roman insistence that Eastern Catholic churches recover their authentic liturgical traditions, have found courage to abandon the theological hybridism of uniatism and claim for themselves the identity of Orthodox-in-communion-with-Rome. In this way they have begun to think of themselves, not as Eastern rites within the Roman Catholic Church, but as forerunners of the coming reunion of the Roman Church with the Orthodox sister churches. In the early 1990s, encouraged by the advances represented by the Balamand Statement, the Kievan Church Study Group1 and the Melkite Greek Catholic bishops explored the possibility of double communion whereby Eastern Catholic churches would reestablish communion with their historic Orthodox mother or sister churches without breaking communion with Rome. Much thought also went into reflecting on the possible implications of the distinction between the Bishop of Rome's role as universal primate and as patriarch of the West.2 The hope was that if the West could properly distinguish between those roles and recover an adequate understanding of the patriarchate, Eastern 1 See, for example, the collection of papers from the First Stamford Consultation of the Kievan Church Study Group, October, 1992, in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 34 (1993). 2 The recent papal renunciation of the title ªPatriarch of the Westº would seem to preclude any return to the primus inter pares of the first millennium pentarchy of patriarchs as the basis for understanding the Roman primacy. More recently, Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, hailed as a ªreal breakthroughº the fact that at the October 2007 meeting of the Joint International Commission for the Theological Dialogue between the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church in Ravenna, for the first time, "the Orthodox were ready to speak about the universal level of the church" (November 14, 2007 interview with Vatican Radio, reported by the Catholic News Service, November 14, 2007). 1 churches would have a secure foundation for an appropriate autonomy which until then seemed incompatible with the Roman self-understanding of its universal jurisdiction. Then-professor Josef Ratzinger, owing to his later role as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is credited with articulating the possibility that communion could be restored on the basis of the shared faith of the first millennium together with a mutual recognition that the subsequent developments of both churches were legitimate and orthodox. Although it is not given to us to halt the flight of history, to change the course of centuries, we may say, nevertheless, that what was possible for a thousand years is not impossible for Christians today. ¼ Rome must not require more from the East with respect to the doctrine of primacy than had been formulated and was lived in the first millennium. When the Patriarch Athenagoras, on July 25, 1967, ¼designated [the Pope] as the successor of St. Peter, as the most esteemed among us, as one who presides in charity, this great Church leader was expressing the essential content of the doctrine of primacy as it was known in the first millennium. Rome need not ask for more. Reunion could take place in this context if, on the one hand, the East would cease to oppose as heretical the developments that took place in the West in the second millennium and would accept the Catholic Church as legitimate and orthodox in the form she had acquired in the course of that development, while on the other hand, the West would recognize the Church of the East as orthodox in the form she has always had.3 Although the ªifsº here are significant, the conditions of the ªRatzinger Proposalº are certainly less strenuous than requiring the Eastern churches to accept all the developments of the Roman magisterium during the second millennium as their own. For example, some advocates of the return to the first millennium consensus as grounds for restored communion, such as Archbishop Zoghby, further relativize the second millennium developments by emphasizing the distinction between the first Seven Ecumenical Councils and later ªgeneral synods of the West,º pointing especially to Pope Paul VI's use of this terminology in relation to the failed reunion council of Lyons in 1274. This distinction is based on the criterion for ecumenicity laid down by the Seventh Council (Nicea II, AD 787) itself, requiring acceptance of a council by the churches of both East and West so that neither could claim ecumenicity for its own separate synods. Councils that lack such agreement, these advocates would argue, are not ecumenical and should not be considered infallible.4 Combining this position with the terms of Ratzinger's proposal, then, the Eastern churches could acknowledge the orthodoxy of Vatican I, for example, while not regarding it as infallible or its teaching as ecumenically binding. Such a stance might 3 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), 199. 4 Elias Zoghby, Ecumenical Reflections (Fairfax, Va.: Eastern Christian Publications, 1998), 33-35. In 2 allow the separated churches to enter into communion and then work toward full reconciliation of their second millennium differences. Some such hope is expressed by the proposal for double communion by Archbishop Elias Zoghby on the basis of the following profession of faith, which was endorsed by a large majority of the Melkite hierarchy in 1995/1996: Profession of Faith 1. I believe everything which Eastern Orthodoxy teaches. 2. I am in communion with Rome as the first among the bishops, according to the limits recognized by the Holy Fathers of the East during the first millennium, before the separation.5 Is Rome satisfied with Eastern Catholic loyalty on such terms? Roman and Orthodox Responses to the Zoghby Initiative The aim of the initiative was to find a basis for establishing communion with the Antiochian Orthodox church without damaging the existing communion with Rome. The Roman response, therefore, addressed primarily the admissibility of the Melkite Patriarchate establishing communion with Antioch prior to Rome and Antioch resolving their differences. The judgment was negative: It is not appropriate for the Melkites to declare their complete agreement with Eastern Orthodoxy precisely because Orthodox churches do not share the same faith as the Catholic Church, at least in profession and exercise. As to the Greek-Melkite Catholics declaring their complete adhesion to the teaching of Eastern Orthodoxy, it is necessary to take into account the fact that the Orthodox Churches today are not in full communion with the Church of Rome, and that this adhesion is therefore not possible as long as there is not a full correspondence in the profession and exercise of the faith by the two parties.6 Relative to the second point of the proposed profession of faith, the Roman response insists on the need to maintain the fully developed doctrine of the Roman primacy since it is an essential component of the Catholic faith. We know that the doctrine concerning the primacy of the Roman Pontiff has experienced a development over time within the framework of the explanation of the Church's faith, and it has to be retained in its entirety, which means from its origins to our day.7 5 To the Ends of the Earth: Aspects of Eastern Catholic Church History (Pittsburgh, Pa.: God With Us Publications, 1997), 88. 6 Congregation for the Eastern Churches Prot. No. 251/75 (June 11, 1997), addressed to His Beatitude Maximos V Hakim, the Greek-Melkite Catholic Patriarch, and signed by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Achille Cardinal Silvestrini, and Edward Cardinal Cassidy. 7 Ibid. The text then cites the relevant sections of the documents of Vatican I and Vatican II. 3 The letter acknowledges the offer made in John Paul II's Ut unum sint to consider other modalities in which to exercise the Petrine ministry, but it reiterates the fundamental point of Roman ecclesiology on which the Melkite proposal founders: the communion of particular churches with the Church of Rome is the principle of their communion with each other. It is appropriate to be reminded that in any case, ªThe Catholic Church, both in her praxis and in her solemn documents, holds that the communion of the particular Churches with the Church of Rome, and of their Bishops with the Bishop of Rome, isÐin God's planÐan essential requisite of full and visible communionº (Ut Unum Sint, 97).8 From the Orthodox side the Zoghby Initiative provoked similar concerns over the integrity of the faith which is to serve as the ground of union. Of particular interest, in the response of the Holy Synod of the Antiochian Orthodox Patriarchate, is its insistence on a return to the first millennium consensus as the starting point for progress toward doctrinal unity.