The Diptychs and Communion

The diptychs are not a protocol table. They are the list of those the Church names at the altar, and to name or not to name is the whole of communion made audible. When two churches keep different diptychs, the divergence is not a difference of etiquette but the dispute itself, recorded in the one place where it cannot be softened. This file sets out what the diptychs are, what commemoration does, how the Greek and Russian lists differ and why, and what a rupture of communion does and does not mean.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

What the Diptychs Are

The word comes from the hinged writing tablets on which the names to be commemorated at the Liturgy were kept. In the Byzantine rite the deacon or the celebrant commemorates the living and the departed at the anaphora, and among the living are named the hierarchs with whom the celebrating church is in communion. In practice the term now denotes two related things: the ordered list of the autocephalous churches and their primates, and the act of naming them.

The order — the taxis — is a ranking of honour with a canonical history: Nicaea I, Canon 6 confirming the ancient customs of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch; Constantinople I, Canon 3 placing Constantinople after Rome; Chalcedon, Canon 28 confirming and extending that; and the later addition of the newer patriarchates and autocephalous churches in the order of their recognition. The full tables, and the differences between the Greek and Russian versions, are given in the canon-law hub (Church Governance).

The rank confers precedence, not authority. A church’s place in the diptychs settles who is named first, not who may command whom — the point made in Primacy and Synodality.

What Commemoration Does

This is the part that matters ecclesiologically, and it is simple.

To commemorate a hierarch by name at the Liturgy is to declare communion with him. The priest names his bishop; the bishop names his primate; the primate names the primates of the churches with which his church is in communion. The chain is not administrative reporting. It is the assembly’s public statement that this altar and that altar are one altar.

Three consequences follow.

Communion is not a private state. It is enacted audibly, in every parish, at every Liturgy. There is no such thing as being quietly out of communion.

Rupture is precise and datable. When a church ceases to commemorate a primate, the breach is accomplished and everyone knows on what day. This is why the history of Orthodox ruptures is a history of exact dates: the Bulgarian schism from 1872, the Moscow–Constantinople breach from 15 October 2018, the successive breaches with Alexandria, Greece, and Cyprus as each recognized the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

Restoration is equally precise. A schism ends when the names return. Constantinople lifted the Bulgarian schism in 1945; commemoration resumed; the matter was over. There is no other mechanism and none is needed.

The Two Lists

The Greek and Russian diptychs have long differed slightly in their lower rankings. Since 1970 and 2019 they differ in something more consequential: which churches appear at all.

Constantinople’s diptychs include the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, recognized by Constantinople from January 2019 and subsequently by Alexandria, Greece, and Cyprus. They do not include the Orthodox Church in America.
Moscow’s diptychs include the Orthodox Church in America, autocephalous by Moscow’s grant of 1970 and recognized by Moscow, the Czech and Slovak Church, Poland, Bulgaria, and Georgia. They do not include the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

Each senior see declines to recognize the other’s addition. The two lists are therefore not two versions of one register but two registers, and the difference between them is a precise statement of the disagreement described in How Autocephaly Arises: if autocephaly is granted by the mother church, the OCA belongs on the list and the OCU does not; if it is granted by the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the reverse.

This is why the diptychs are not a neutral registry. They are the instrument in which the autocephaly dispute registers itself, and a church cannot be agnostic about the dispute while celebrating the Liturgy — it must either say the name or not say it.

Concelebration and Its Effects

Alongside the diptychs run the practical measures that give a rupture its texture: bans on concelebration between clergy, restrictions on communing, and the withdrawal of participation from joint bodies.

Following the events of 2018 and the subsequent recognitions, the Moscow Patriarchate combined breaks in the diptychs with concelebration bans directed at the hierarchs of the recognizing churches, and, on Mount Athos, restricted its pilgrims from communing except at the Russian monastery of St Panteleimon (Ukrainian Autocephaly and the 2018 Schism).

The effects fall hardest where jurisdictions overlap. In the diaspora, clergy of different jurisdictions who had served together for decades cannot; on Athos, pilgrims of one church are restricted at the monasteries of another; laypeople in mixed families face questions no ecclesiology anticipated. That these are pastoral consequences and not merely canonical ones is worth stating in a file about lists of names.

What a Rupture of Communion Is Not

This section is stated carefully, because it is the point at which polemic most often outruns the facts, and because section 09 depends on it being stated correctly.

A rupture of communion between churches is not a declaration that one of them has ceased to be the Church. These are distinct acts with distinct forms. A rupture is effected by ceasing to commemorate; a judgment that a body has fallen from the faith is effected by a conciliar act condemning a doctrine and naming those who hold it. The Church has done the second — at Ephesus, at Chalcedon, at Nicaea II — and when she has, she has said so in a horos and an anathema, not in a change of commemoration.

Nothing of that kind has occurred between the Orthodox churches in the present disputes. Constantinople, Alexandria, Greece, Cyprus, Moscow, and every other autocephalous church are Orthodox Churches; none has been conciliarly condemned; no doctrine is at issue between them; and the sacraments celebrated in each are not treated by the others as void. What has occurred is a rupture of communion over a jurisdictional and canonical question. That is grave — it is the gravest condition the Church can be in short of heresy — and it is not the same thing.

METHODOLOGY §4.2 states the rule this collection follows: a rupture of communion between churches is never reported as though it placed a party outside the Church, unless the Church has said so conciliarly. She has not.

Nor is a rupture permanent by nature. The Bulgarian schism lasted seventy-three years and ended. The Acacian schism between Rome and Constantinople lasted thirty-five and ended. Ruptures within the Orthodox communion have historically been healed by synodal acts, and the possibility of that outcome is a fact about the present situation and not a pious hope.

The Ecclesiological Question Underneath

If the local churches are one by communion, and communion is registered in the diptychs, then a divergence in the diptychs is a divergence in the Church’s own account of who she is. That is uncomfortable and it should be.

Three positions are held, and it is worth naming them.

The rupture is an illness in one body. On this reading the Orthodox Church remains one Church, presently in a state of impaired communion between certain of her members; the unity subsists in the shared faith, the shared mysteries, and the mutual recognition of orders, all of which persist. This is how most Orthodox churches describe the present state in their official language.

The rupture is a fracture with no principled terminus. On this reading, absent an agreed procedure and an agreed forum, there is nothing to prevent further ruptures on further questions, and the Church is discovering that her conciliar machinery has failed. Writers in several jurisdictions have argued this with some urgency since 2019.

The rupture is a canonical fact awaiting a synodal remedy. On this reading it is neither an illness to be described nor a catastrophe but a dispute of exactly the kind synods exist to settle, which has not been settled because none has been convened with the authority to settle it.

[Disputed: how the present divergence of the diptychs is to be described ecclesiologically. The description as impaired communion within one Church is the language of most official statements on all sides; the description as a structural failure of Orthodox conciliar machinery has been argued in the theological literature since 2019; the description as a canonical dispute awaiting a synodal remedy is the position of those churches that have called for a pan-Orthodox resolution rather than taking sides. No pan-Orthodox act has adjudicated, and the three descriptions carry different practical implications for what would count as a solution.]

The Practical Summary

For a reader who wants the operative facts:

The diptychs record communion, not rank alone. A name present is a church in communion; a name absent is a church not in communion.
Two lists now exist and they differ over two churches — the Orthodox Church in America and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.
Ruptures are datable, public, and reversible.
No Orthodox church has been placed outside the Church by any of this, and to write as though one had would be false.
The remedy, if there is one, is synodal, and no pan-Orthodox synod has met on the question.

References

First Ecumenical Council (Nicaea I, 325), Canon 6; Second Ecumenical Council (Constantinople I, 381), Canon 3; Fourth Ecumenical Council (Chalcedon, 451), Canon 28 — trans. NPNF II/14.
Moscow Patriarchate, Holy Synod statement severing communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate, 15 October 2018; subsequent synodal acts concerning Alexandria (December 2019), Greece (November 2019), and Cyprus (20 November 2020) (mospat.ru).
Ecumenical Patriarchate, synodal communiqué of 11 October 2018; Patriarchal and Synodal Tomos of 5–6 January 2019 (ec-patr.org).
Ecumenical Patriarchate, act lifting the Bulgarian schism, February 1945.
Moscow Patriarchate, tomos of autocephaly for the Orthodox Church in America, 10 April 1970 (oca.org).
METHODOLOGY.md, §4.2 (the rule on reporting ruptures of communion).
Erickson, John H. The Challenge of Our Past: Studies in Orthodox Canon Law and Church History. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1991.
Nikodim (Milaš), Bishop. Pravila pravoslavne crkve s tumačenjima, 2 vols. Novi Sad, 1895–96.