Eastern Catholic Churches - Historical Background

Historical Background

Communion between Christian Churches has been broken over matters of faith, when each side accused the other of heresy or departure from the true faith (orthodoxy). Communion has been broken also because of disagreement about questions of authority or the legitimacy of the election of a particular bishop. In these latter cases, each side accuses the other of schism, but not of heresy.

Major breaches of communion:

• In 431 the Churches that accepted the teaching of the First Council of Ephesus (which condemned the views of Nestorius) classified as heretics those who rejected the Council's statements. Those who accepted it lived mostly in the Roman Empire and classified themselves as orthodox; they considered the others, who lived mainly under Persian rule, as Nestorian heretics. These had a period of great expansion in Asia. Monuments of their presence still exist in China. Now they are relatively few in numbers and are divided into three Churches, of which the Chaldaean Church, which is in communion with Rome, is the most numerous, while the others have recently split between the Assyrian Church of the East and the Ancient Church of the East.

• In 451 those who accepted the Council of Chalcedon similarly classified those who rejected it as Monophysite heretics. The Churches that refused to accept the Council considered instead that it was they who were orthodox; they reject the description Monophysite, preferring instead Miaphysite. They are often called, in English, Oriental Orthodox Churches, to distinguish them from the Eastern Orthodox Churches. This distinction—by which the words oriental and eastern, words that in themselves have exactly the same meaning, are used as labels for two different realities—is impossible in most other languages and is not universally accepted even in English. These churches are also referred to as pre-Chalcedonian or, now more rarely, as non-Chalcedonian or anti-Chalcedonian. In languages other than English, other means are used to distinguish the two families of Churches. Some reserve the term "Orthodox" for those that are here called "Eastern Orthodox" Churches, but members of what are then called "Oriental/Eastern Orthodox" Churches consider this unfair.

• The East–West Schism came about in a context of cultural differences between the Greek-speaking East and the Latin-speaking West and of rivalry between the Churches in Rome—which claimed a primacy not merely of honour but also of authority—and in Constantinople, which claimed parity with Rome. The rivalry and lack of comprehension gave rise to controversies, some of which appear already in the acts of the Quinisext Council of 692. At the Council of Florence (1431–1445), these controversies about Western theological elaborations and usages were identified as, chiefly, the insertion of "Filioque" in the Nicene Creed, the use of unleavened bread for the Eucharist, Purgatory, and the authority of the Pope. The schism is conventionally dated to 1054, when the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Papal Legate Humbert of Mourmoutiers issued mutual excommunications that have since been revoked. In spite of that event, for many years both Churches continued to maintain friendly relations and seemed to be unaware of any formal or final rupture. However, estrangement continued to grow. In 1190 Theodore Balsamon, Patriarch of Antioch, declared that "no Latin should be given Communion unless he first declares that he will abstain from the doctrines and customs that separate him from us"; and the sack of Constantinople in 1204 by the participants in the Fourth Crusade was seen as the West's ultimate outrage. By then, each side considered that the other no longer belonged to the Church that was orthodox and catholic. But with the passage of centuries, it became customary to refer to the Eastern side as the Orthodox Church and the Western as the Catholic Church, without either side thereby renouncing its claim to be the truly orthodox or the truly catholic Church. The Churches that sided with Constantinople are known collectively as the Eastern Orthodox Churches.

Within each Church, no longer in communion with the Church of Rome, there arose a group that considered it important to restore that communion. The See of Rome accepted them without requiring that they adopt the customs of the Latin Church, so that they all have their own "liturgical, theological, spiritual and disciplinary heritage, differentiated by peoples' culture and historical circumstances, that finds expression in each sui iuris Church's own way of living the faith".

At a meeting at Balamand Monastery, Lebanon in June 1993, the Joint International Commission for the Theological Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church declared that these initiatives that "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 ... took place not without the interference of extra-ecclesial interests" (section 8 of the document). Likewise, the Commission acknowledged that "unacceptable means" were used in attempts to force Eastern Catholics to return to the Orthodox Church (paragraph 11). The missionary outlook and proselytism that accompanied the Unia (paragraph 10), was recognized to be incompatible with the rediscovery of each other as "Sister Churches" (section 12). Thus, the Commission concluded that the "missionary apostolate ... which has been called 'uniatism', can no longer be accepted either as a method to be followed nor as a model of the unity our Churches are seeking."

At the same time, the Commission stated:

• Concerning the Eastern Catholic Churches, it is clear that they, as part of the Catholic Communion, have the right to exist and to act in response to the spiritual needs of their faithful.
• The Oriental Catholic Churches who have desired to re-establish full communion with the See of Rome and have remained faithful to it, have the rights and obligations connected with this communion.