From the 1848 Encyclical to the Lifting of the Anathemas (1965)

Twice in the nineteenth century the popes invited the Orthodox to “return,” and twice the Eastern patriarchs answered conciliarly — the Encyclical of 1848 against Pius IX and the Encyclical of 1895 against Leo XIII — fixing the classic modern statement of the Orthodox position. In 1965 Rome and Constantinople mutually lifted the anathemas of 1054; this file sets out, from the Joint Declaration’s own text, what that act did and did not do — the Church did not thereby restore communion — and records the intra-Orthodox dispute it opened.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

1848: The Patriarchs Answer Pius IX

In January 1848 the newly elected Pius IX issued In Suprema Petri Apostoli Sede, an encyclical to the Eastern Christians inviting them to return to communion with the Roman see on Rome’s terms (Pius IX, In Suprema Petri Apostoli Sede, 6 January 1848). The answer came in May: the Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs — signed by Anthimos VI of Constantinople, Hierotheos II of Alexandria, Methodios of Antioch, and Cyril II of Jerusalem with their synods, twenty-nine bishops in all — a document that has acquired near-symbolic authority in modern Orthodoxy (Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs, 1848; English trans. in Leith, ed., Creeds of the Churches, 3rd ed., Louisville: John Knox Press, 1982; discussed in Ware, The Orthodox Church, new ed., Penguin, 1993, ch. 1).

Its argument, in the Church’s own voice (§4.1): the Filioque is named a heresy and the papacy’s claims an innovation — “of these heresies diffused… over a great part of the world, was formerly Arianism, and at present is the Papacy” is its severest sentence — the West, not the East, is the innovator, having altered the common Creed the East has kept unchanged; Rome’s primacy was a seniority within the undivided Church, forfeited by innovation, not a headship over her (Encyclical of 1848, §§4–13). And then the sentence for which the document is chiefly remembered, answering the papal theory of authority at its root: “among us, neither Patriarchs nor Councils could ever introduce new teaching, for the protector of religion is the very body of the Church, even the people themselves, who desire their religious worship to be ever unchanged and of the same kind as that of their fathers” (Encyclical of 1848, §17, trans. Leith). Khomiakov and the later theology of sobornost built on precisely this paragraph (Ware, The Orthodox Church, 1993, ch. 1; cf. Holy Tradition).

The exchange repeated at century’s end. Leo XIII’s Praeclara Gratulationis (1894) renewed the invitation in gentler tones; the reply of Patriarch Anthimos VII and the Synod of Constantinople (1895) itemized the points a real union would require examining — the Filioque, papal primacy of jurisdiction and infallibility (now defined dogmas since 1870), the Immaculate Conception (1854), purgatory, azymes — and stated the enduring Orthodox criterion: union is possible only on “the one common faith of the undivided Church of the first nine centuries”; each new Roman dogma since the separation widens, not narrows, the breach (Patriarchal Encyclical of 1895, replying to Praeclara Gratulationis; the criterion discussed in Siecienski, The Papacy and the Orthodox: Sources and History of a Debate, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017, on the nineteenth-century exchanges). Between the two encyclicals stood Vatican I itself (1870), which dogmatized exactly what the East had refused for a millennium — see Filioque and Papal Primacy.

1964–1965: Jerusalem and the Lifting of the Anathemas

The twentieth century changed the register. The Ecumenical Patriarchate’s encyclical “Unto the Churches of Christ Everywhere” (1920) proposed a league of churches and practical cooperation; Vatican II (1962–65) produced, in Unitatis Redintegratio (1964), a Roman ecumenism that called the Orthodox “sister Churches” in later usage and acknowledged the East’s legitimate patrimony (Vatican II, Unitatis Redintegratio, 1964, esp. §§14–18 on the East). In January 1964 Patriarch Athenagoras I and Pope Paul VI met in Jerusalem — the first meeting of a pope and an ecumenical patriarch since Florence (the documents of the whole rapprochement are collected in Tomos Agapis: Vatican–Phanar (1958–1970), Rome–Istanbul, 1971).

On 7 December 1965, simultaneously at St. Peter’s and at the Phanar, the Joint Catholic–Orthodox Declaration of Paul VI and Athenagoras I (with his synod) was read. Its operative text must be quoted, because both its content and its limits are routinely misstated. The two churches declared that they:

“(a) regret the offensive words, the reproaches without foundation, and the reprehensible gestures which, on both sides, have marked or accompanied the sad events of this period; (b) likewise regret and remove both from memory and from the midst of the Church the sentences of excommunication which followed these events, the remembrance of which has influenced actions up to our day and has hindered closer relations in charity; and (c) deplore the preceding and later vexatious events which, under the influence of various factors — among which, lack of understanding and mutual trust — eventually led to the effective rupture of ecclesiastical communion” (Joint Declaration of 7 December 1965, §4, in Tomos Agapis, 1971).

And its self-limitation, in §5: the two churches “realize that this gesture of justice and mutual pardon cannot suffice to put an end to the differences, ancient or more recent, which remain between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church” — differences to be overcome, the text continues, through purification of hearts, regret for historical wrongs, and “a dialogue which will lead… to living together again… in the full communion of faith, fraternal accord and sacramental life which existed among them during the first thousand years” (Joint Declaration, 1965, §5, in Tomos Agapis, 1971).

What the act did. It consigned to oblivion the specific excommunications of 1054 — acts which, as Section 04 established, “were directed at particular persons and not at the Churches” (Joint Declaration, §3) — and it formally substituted the “dialogue of charity” for nine centuries of mutual recrimination as the official posture of the two churches (Tomos Agapis, 1971; Ware, The Orthodox Church, 1993, ch. 16).

What the act did not do. It did not restore communion, and said so in its own text (§5, above); it did not touch the doctrinal causes — Filioque, primacy, infallibility, and the rest remain exactly where 1895 left them; it did not annul the Orthodox conciliar acts (1285, 1484) or the Roman ones (Lyons, Florence, Vatican I); and it bound, on the Orthodox side, only the Church of Constantinople, whose synod enacted it — the other autocephalous churches were not parties (the act’s scope discussed in Ware, The Orthodox Church, 1993, ch. 16; Siecienski, The Papacy and the Orthodox, 2017, on 1965 and after). The Church did not thereby become in communion with Rome, and no Orthodox authority has ever claimed she did; Athenagoras’ own church continued — and continues — to receive converts from Rome and to bar intercommunion.

[Disputed — intra-Orthodox, per §4.2: the wisdom and implications of the 1965 act and the "dialogue of charity." (a) The critical position: the ROCOR First Hierarch Metropolitan Philaret (Voznesensky) protested the lifting of the anathemas in a 1965 epistle to Athenagoras and developed the case against ecumenist gestures in his "Sorrowful Epistles" (1969–1975), arguing such acts imply a communion in faith that does not exist and mislead the faithful; the monasteries of Mount Athos voiced parallel protests, and St. Justin Popovic wrote against the whole ecumenical engagement (Justin Popovic, The Orthodox Church and Ecumenism, Thessaloniki, 1974). (b) The supporting position: Constantinople and most autocephalous churches held the act to be exactly what its text says — a removal of scandal-causing personal anathemas and an opening of dialogue without doctrinal concession — a position argued by, among others, Metropolitan Kallistos Ware (The Orthodox Church, 1993, ch. 16) and presupposed by the churches' subsequent participation in the official dialogue. The dispute continues within canonical Orthodoxy and is treated at [The Ecumenism Debate](../../orthodoxy/09-orthodox-distinctives/ecumenism-debate.md); this collection records both positions and does not adjudicate.]

The Threshold of the Present

Between 1848 and 1965 the tone of the schism changed — from anathema to embrace — while its substance, on the Orthodox Church’s own repeated statement, did not change at all: the faith of the first millennium remains the sole basis she has ever offered for union (1848, §§4–13; 1895; Joint Declaration, 1965, §5 — which itself points back to “the first thousand years”). Whether the official dialogue that began in 1980 has moved that substance, and what the Church would actually require for reunion, are the questions of Section 09.

See Also

References

  • Pius IX. In Suprema Petri Apostoli Sede (6 January 1848). (The invitation to “return.”)
  • Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs (May 1848). English trans. in John H. Leith, ed., Creeds of the Churches, 3rd ed. Louisville: John Knox Press, 1982. (The conciliar Orthodox reply; §17 on the body of the Church.)
  • Leo XIII. Praeclara Gratulationis (1894); Patriarchal Encyclical of Anthimos VII and the Synod of Constantinople (1895). (The second exchange; the first-nine-centuries criterion.)
  • Encyclical of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, “Unto the Churches of Christ Everywhere” (1920). (The twentieth-century opening.)
  • Vatican II. Unitatis Redintegratio (1964). (Rome’s ecumenical charter, on the East at §§14–18.)
  • Tomos Agapis: Vatican–Phanar (1958–1970). Rome–Istanbul, 1971. (The documentary record: Jerusalem 1964; the Joint Declaration of 7 December 1965, §§3–5.)
  • Ware, Kallistos (Timothy). The Orthodox Church. New ed. London: Penguin, 1993. Chs. 1, 16. (The encyclicals; 1965 and its limits; the Orthodox debate.)
  • Siecienski, A. Edward. The Papacy and the Orthodox: Sources and History of a Debate. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. (The nineteenth-century exchanges; 1965 in the history of the debate.)
  • Philaret (Voznesensky), Metropolitan. Protest to Patriarch Athenagoras (1965); Sorrowful Epistles (1969–1975). (The ROCOR critique.)
  • Justin Popovic, St. The Orthodox Church and Ecumenism. Thessaloniki, 1974. (The theological case against ecumenism.)