Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Catholic, Orthodox Churches to try to overcome millennium-long disagreement

Moscow, September 22, Interfax - A joint international commission on dialogue between the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church, which began in Vienna on Tuesday, will discuss the Pope's primacy in the first millennium.

"This is the most complicated subject in the dialogue between the Orthodox and the Catholics, because the attitude toward the bishop of Rome's ministering is key for the modern Catholic Church," Hegumen Philipp (Ryabykh) representing the Russian Orthodox Church at the session told Interfax.

The presumption that the Pope has ecumenical jurisdiction goes against Orthodox ecclesiology, which teaches that, while the Orthodox Church preserves unity of faith and church governance, it still consists of several local churches, Father Philipp said, who is a deputy head of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations.

Read further...Intterfax...

No comments: