THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA The Concept of “Sister Churches” In Catholic-Orthodox Relations since Vatican II A DISSERTATION Submitted to the Faculty of the School of Theology and Religious Studies Of The Catholic University of America In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree Doctor of Philosophy © Copyright All Rights Reserved By Will T. Cohen Washington, D.C. 2010 The Concept of “Sister Churches” In Catholic-Orthodox Relations since Vatican II Will T. Cohen, Ph.D. Director: Paul McPartlan, D.Phil. Closely associated with Catholic-Orthodox rapprochement in the latter half of the 20 th century was the emergence of the expression “sister churches” used in various ways across the confessional division. Patriarch Athenagoras first employed it in this context in a letter in 1962 to Cardinal Bea of the Vatican Secretariat for the Promotion of Christian Unity, and soon it had become standard currency in the bilateral dialogue. Yet today the expression is rarely invoked by Catholic or Orthodox officials in their ecclesial communications. As the Polish Catholic theologian Waclaw Hryniewicz was led to say in 2002, “This term…has now fallen into disgrace.” This dissertation traces the rise and fall of the expression “sister churches” in modern Catholic-Orthodox relations and argues for its rehabilitation as a means by which both Catholic West and Orthodox East may avoid certain ecclesiological imbalances toward which each respectively tends in its separation from the other. Catholics who oppose saying that the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church are sisters, or that the church of Rome is one among several patriarchal sister churches, generally fear that if either of those things were true, the unicity of the Church would be compromised and the Roman primacy rendered ineffective. Orthodox who oppose recognizing Rome as a sister church generally do so on the alleged grounds that the Latin West has been in heresy since the schism and without true sacraments. Both positions have significant weaknesses, historically and theologically. At the same time, they present a positive challenge. Proponents of the language of sister churches in Catholic-Orthodox relations have not always managed to make sufficiently clear (1) that conciliarity and primacy are complementary principles, and (2) that amidst the ongoing schism, the expression “sister churches” has a paradoxical character, reflecting an anomalous circumstance that cannot remain unresolved indefinitely. Building on the groundwork laid by theologians from both traditions, this study attempts to bring out each of these points more clearly in order to show the legitimacy of the expression “sister churches” for Orthodox and Catholic ecclesiology alike, and thus to show that, finally, they are not two ecclesiologies, but one. This dissertation by Will T. Cohen fulfills the dissertation requirement for the doctoral degree in theology approved by Paul McPartlan, D.Phil., as Director, and by John Erickson (extern), M.Phil., John Galvin, Dr. Theol., and Joseph Komonchak, Ph.D., as Readers. Paul McPartlan, D.Phil., Director John Erickson, M.Phil., Reader John Galvin, Dr. Theol., Reader _____________________________ Joseph Komonchak, Ph.D., Reader ii Table of Contents Acknowledgments .................................................................................................................... vi Abbreviations……………………………………………………………………………......viii Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: The Concept of Sister Churches Prior to Vatican II ................................................ 7 I. The earliest shape of the concept ....................................................................................... 7 1. John’s Second Epistle: plurality and personality ........................................................... 7 2. Revelation 2-3: locality and temporality ....................................................................... 8 3. Second Corinthians 11:2: a local church as bride ........................................................ 12 4. First Clement and Ignatius of Antioch ......................................................................... 13 II. The further sense of the concept: similar standing ......................................................... 15 1. Churches as sisters in Basil the Great and Pope Innocent I ......................................... 15 2. Mother churches as sister churches ............................................................................. 17 III. A new tension between “mother church” and “sister churches” ................................... 28 1. Rome as mater ecclesia according to the western reformers....................................... 30 2. The 12 th century Byzantine understanding of patriarchal sister churches ................... 35 IV. The imperial factor ........................................................................................................ 45 1. Sister churches in a single Christian empire ................................................................ 46 2. Sister churches amidst imperial division ..................................................................... 49 3. Sister churches in a post-imperial context ................................................................... 55 Chapter 2: Modern Development of the Use of “Sister Churches” in Catholic-Orthodox Relations: 1958-1972 ....................................................................... 58 I. Background ..................................................................................................................... 59 II. First usages; terminological asymmetry between the two parties ................................. 64 III. Rome reciprocates in using the expression “sister churches” ...................................... 76 Chapter 3: Patterns and Ambiguities in 20 th century Usage ................................................... 86 I. The question of the precise identities of the “sisters” ...................................................... 89 1. The see of Rome and the see of Constantinople as sister churches ............................. 91 2. The (Roman) Catholic Church and the (Eastern) Orthodox Church ......................... 101 a) Letters/speeches to 1980 pairing the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church.103 b) Texts from 1980 on pairing the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church........ 113 3. The Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches ..................................................... 125 4. The Catholic Churches and the Orthodox Churches ................................................. 130 II. Summarizing Reflections ............................................................................................. 136 iii Chapter 4: Catholic Theological Reflection on the Concept of Sister Churches .................. 143 I. Six contributions in Catholic theological reflection on “sister churches”...................... 145 1. Emmanuel Lanne ....................................................................................................... 145 Lanne’s commentary on Paul VI’s Anno ineunte .................................................. 146 Lanne’s understanding of the basis of the concept of sister churches ................... 148 Canonized holiness as a qualification of sister churches ....................................... 150 Whether there can be sister churches on the regional level ................................... 151 Implications of recognizing another church as a sister church .............................. 153 Mutual recognition as sister churches and a re-reception of Vatican I .................. 157 2. Yves Congar .............................................................................................................. 158 3. Waclaw Hryniewicz ................................................................................................... 162 An ecclesiology of “sister churches” excludes “soteriological exclusivism” ........ 164 “Sister churches” on the regional level ................................................................... 169 Doctrine and ecumenism ....................................................................................... 171 “Ecumenical Aporetics” ......................................................................................... 173 4. Adriano Garuti ........................................................................................................... 176 Distinctions in usage .............................................................................................. 177 The Catholic Church is not the sister of the Orthodox Church (usage 2) .............. 180 Catholic Church = Roman Catholic Church = universal church, which cannot be a sister church (usage 3) .................................................................... 182 Orthodox and Catholic particular churches as sister churches (usage 4) .............. 183 Communion in faith and in government as prerequisites for sister churches ........ 185 Patriarchal sister churches? .................................................................................... 190 5. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ........................................................ 192 The CDF’s ote on the Expression “Sister Churches” ........................................ 193 The local church and the universal church ...........................................................