On September 8, 1868, fifteen months
before the opening of the First Vatican Council, Pope Pius IX sent an Apostolic
Letter to all the patriarchs and bishops of the Orthodox Church, inviting them
to end their state of separation. If they accepted, they would have the
same rights in the Council as the other bishops, since the Catholic Church
considered them validly consecrated. If they did not accept, they would
have the opportunity to participate in special council commissions
composed of Catholic
bishops and theologians to discuss the affairs of the Council, as in
the Council of Florence in 1439. But the tone of the letter was offensive to
the patriarchs and bishops. And it bothered them even more that the
entire text was published in a Roman newspaper before they received their
personal copy.
Consequently, no Orthodox patriarch or
bishop accepted the invitation. Five days after writing the
previous letter, Pope Pius IX invited "all Protestants and other
non-Catholics" to take advantage of the occasion of the Ecumenical Council
"to return to the Catholic Church." Careful study, his letter
asserted, would prove that none of his groups, nor all of them together, “constitute
nor is in any way the only Catholic Church founded, constituted, and desired by
Jesus Christ; nor can these groups in any way be called members or part of this
Church, since they are visibly separated from Catholic unity ”. He
invited them "to try to free themselves from that state in which they
cannot be sure of their own salvation."
This letter was also considered
offensive, and it obtained very meager results.
The failure of the First Vatican
Council to achieve Christian unity hung like an ominous cloud
over the second.
But Pope John XXIII, in his optimism,
seemed to ignore it. When; I inform the world of his intention to convene an
ecumenical Council, he immediately spoke of "a renewed invitation
to the faithful of the separate Churches to follow us in a friendly manner in
this search for unity and grace, desired by so many souls in all parts of the
world. " And among the numerous commissions and secretariats that
he instituted on June 5, 1960 to immediately tackle the work of preparing the
Council, was the Secretariat for Christian Unity. Its purpose was to establish
contact with the Orthodox, Old-Catholics , Anglicans, and Protestant Churches,
and invite them to send official representatives to the Council.
The religious climate in the world of
John XXIII was very different
than it had been in the days of Pope
Pius IX. In the intervening years, the ecumenical movement, promoting
Christian unity, had made a deep impression on Christian communities around the
world.
Many factors contributed to the
development of this truly providential movement. One was biblical
research, which, to some Protestant, Anglican, Orthodox and Catholic
specialists.
It was the first area of
collaboration between Christian churches. Then came the Ecumenical
Council of Churches, founded specifically to promote Christian collaboration in
all possible fields, which in less than thirty years saw membership grow to 214
full members and eight associated churches of Protestant, Anglican, Orthodox
and Christian communions. old-catholic women.
Another influential factor was the
neo-pagan threat of Nazism in Europe during World War II, which united
Catholics and Christians of other denominations in defense of
religion. This explains why Catholic interest in the ecumenical movement
first manifested itself in Germany, France, and the Netherlands. Among the
most active members of Catholic ecumenism were Dominicans and Jesuits.
The initial successes in these three
countries received an additional boost when the Sacred Congregation of the Holy
Office promulgated its lengthy Instruction on the Ecumenical
Movement of December 20, 1949. This Instruction urged bishops around the
world “not only to diligently monitor and take care of these
initiatives, but also to promote and direct them prudently, in order to help
those who seek the truth and the true Church, and to protect the faithful from
the dangers that could so easily result from the activities of this movement ”.
Therefore, it was not surprising that
John XXIII chose Card. Bea (German, Jesuit, and Biblical
teacher); the fact that the cardinal was seventy-nine years old seemed
inconsequential.
With thousands of separate Christian
churches around the world, it was impossible for all of them to be represented
at the Council. The solution of Card. Bea consisted of contacting the major
groups and inviting them to send delegations that could represent their
affiliated churches. Thus, an invitation was sent to the World Lutheran
Federation, the World Alliance of Reformed and Presbyterian Churches, the World
Convention of the Churches of Christ (Disciples of Christ), the World Committee
of Friends (Quakers), the World Council of the Congregationcites, the World
Council of Methodists, the International Association for Liberal Christianity
and Religious Liberty, the Ecumenical Council of Churches, the Australian
Council of Churches and other groups.
Archbishop John C. Heenan of Liverpool,
member of the Secretariat of Card. Bea, said in 1962: “It is no
exaggeration to say that the personality of the Pope altered the disposition
towards the Vatican of non-Catholics in England. In today's jargon, we
could say that Pope John has given a new image to the Catholic Church in the
minds of Protestants (...). Dr. Fisher [former Archbishop of
Canterbury]
He told me that the attitude of Pope
John inspired the initiative to propose a visit to the Vatican. That would
have been unthinkable even just five years ago. "
Card. Bea invited the Archbishop
of Canterbury to send a delegation on behalf of the Anglican Church. The
invitation was accepted.
He then asked the Ecumenical Patriarch
of Constantinople, Athenagoras, to send a delegation representing the various
branches of the Orthodox Church. But when the patriarch went to the Russian
Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), it did not show any interest,
considering the Ecumenical Council as an internal matter of the Catholic
Church, which did not concern him. As, however, international interest in the
Council grew, so did that of the Russian Orthodox Church, and when Bishop
Nicodemus Rotow was asked at the New Delhi Assembly of the Ecumenical Council
of Churches in November 1961, If the Russian Orthodox Church would send
delegates to the Second Vatican Council, I replied that it was an embarrassing
question, since he had not been invited.
Technically this was true, since the
Russian Orthodox Church had not been directly invited by Card. Bea, but
through the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, which considered itself
entitled to take the initiative to propose a common delegation to other
patriarchs. And when Archbishop Jan Willebrands, secretary of the
Secretariat for Christian Unity, visited the patriarchal headquarters of the
Middle East to explain to the patriarchs and their synods the matters that
would be dealt with by the Council, it was understood that they too were
against being invited through the Ecumenical Patriarch of
Constantinople. In his view, no
patriarch was superior to the others; they were all on the same
level. Then Card. Bea invited each group from the Orthodox Church
directly.
When Bishop Nicodemus met with Bishop
Willebrands in Paris in August 1962, he told him that his Church would
react favorably to an invitation if Bishop Willebrands traveled to Moscow and
invited Patriarch Alexis personally. Bishop Willebrands did, visiting Moscow
from September 27 to October 2. I explain to the Patriarch the program of the
Council, and I offer him a verbal invitation.
However, he did not receive an
immediate response, because the written invitation had not yet arrived. The
issue of communism did not come up directly at any of the Paris or
Moscow meetings. The Russian Orthodox Church did not make any request that
the issue not be addressed at the Council, and Bishop Willebrands did not give
any assurance that it would not be. In explaining the Council's agenda,
Bishop Willebrands simply stated that the problem was on it. However, he
made it clear that, once the Council was open, the Council Fathers were free to
alter the program and introduce the topics they wanted.
The written invitation of
Card. Bea arrived after the departure of Mons. Willebrands. On
October 10, the day before the opening of the Council, Patriarch Alexis and his
synod sent a telegram accepting the invitation. On the same day, Patriarch
Athenagoras, of Constantinople, informed Card. Bea that he had been unable to
assemble a representative delegation of the Orthodox Church as a whole, and
that he was not in favor of sending a delegation exclusively representing his
Ecumenical Patriarchate. (Neither their patriarchate, nor the Greek Orthodox
Patriarchate of Alexandria, sent representatives to the Council until the third
session, and the Patriarchates of Antioch, Athens, and Jerusalem never did.)
Among the Orthodox present at the first session, in addition to the delegation
of the Russian Orthodox Church, there were representatives of the Coptic
Orthodox Church of Egypt, the Syrian Orthodox Church, the Ethiopian Orthodox
Church, the Armenian Orthodox Church, and the Russian Orthodox Church outside
Russia.
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