“So, how are Father and Mother doing since Vatican II, and what are the desired prospects for our shared future?”  The question, ecclesially speaking, can pointedly be posed by Eastern Catholics who have the Christian West and Christian East as their patriarchal and matriarchal Traditions, respectively. In the interest of full disclosure, I write as a (non-Roman) Eastern Catholic, which is to say that my church life is Eastern Orthodox while believing the Bishop of Rome to be the supreme pastor of the Universal Church. From the end of the 16th century the Church of Rome had promoted this way of being Catholic as a stratagem in overcoming the Christian East-West Church divide. The cost of becoming Catholic was loss of communion with Mother Churches of the East. As a method for unity (“uniatism”) the establishment of Eastern Catholicism became more of a barrier than a bridge between the Christian West and East.  With dramatic gestures such as Pope and Ecumenical Patriarch embracing on the Mt. of Olives in 1964 and the promulgation of the Decree on Ecumenism, the posture of the West towards the East experienced transformation such that a “Dialogue of Love and Truth” was realized. Within this interchange Rome came to renounce uniatism as a method for church unity.

The mission and hopes of the “Problem Child.”
A former Catholic Co-chair of the Catholic and Orthodox Bishops’ Joint Committee in the U.S. stated, “No union between the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church is thinkable without first working out how it will be possible for Byzantine Catholics and Orthodox to exist in communion.” In the eyes of still too many Orthodox, the term “Eastern Catholic” remains an oxymoron, and the majority of Catholics equate Catholicism with being Roman Rite Catholic. (“Married priests?  Confirmation and Eucharist along with Baptism in infancy? The celebration of Christmas on January 7? That can’t be Catholic!”)  This observer contends that the Church of the West can best discern remedies for its historically-conditioned ossifying predilections in and through engagement with the East. Yes, one can readily decry the juridical, authoritarian, monolithic and triumphalistic mindset within the Catholic Church, but these impairments need to be addressed in terms of Tradition-sanctioned foundational concepts, authority structures and forms of governance, lest suggested reforms be drawn from alien and transient secular sets.

According to the North American Catholic-Orthodox Consultation, reestablishing communion between West and East calls for clarification of the canonical and theological limits of papal initiatives, the extent of a pope’s primatial accountability, and also the synodal and collegial dimensions of his authority in the exercise of jurisdiction based on sacrament. New structures of authority regulating the relationships of local and regional primates need to be instituted by common consultation, perhaps by an ecumenical council.  Subsidiarity requires that in the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches bishops be elected by local synods or by other traditional methods of selection (with requisite lay involvement) that should serve, in my opinion, as models for the West. The bishop of Rome would inform the Eastern patriarchs of his election. The Eastern Catholic and Orthodox Churches would relate to the bishop of Rome in identical ways.

This observer is failing to see why Rome does not immediately require that all Catholics confess the Nicene Creed in its original form (without the Filioque clause of western addition) as a means of hastening the unifying process. In the theological, pastoral and spiritual realms, may the Church of the West continue to be enriched by exposure to Eastern perspectives on true humanization that is divinization through uncreated grace,  the application of pastoral sensitivity and flexibility (economia),  the spiritual fecundity of the Philokalia and the method of the Jesus Prayer, Eastern liturgical “sobriety” as a touchstone to check overly enthusiastic immoderation in worship planning, and a Trinitarian remedy for hyper-historicism in Christological consciousness. As an example of East/West cross-fertilization in the ethical realm that should continue, Pope Francis in Laudato Si’ referenced Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew (“The Green Patriarch”) by name as a theologically informed bellwether in the care for creation.

May all Latins realize that beneficent diversity belongs to the inner essence of Christ’s Church, and that the established reality of Eastern Catholicism conserves the catholicity - construed as an essential aptitude for the whole of humankind - of the Catholic Church.  Also, may we Eastern Catholics, in divesting ourselves of latinizations accrued in attempts to be more acceptable to Roman Catholics, become credible witnesses to those of our Mother Tradition that one’s church with its bishops can be in communion with the Church of Rome and still be Orthodox.