CNEWA

ONE @ 50: Toward Understanding Diversity in Unity

In honor of ONE magazine’s 50th-anniversary year, the CNEWA blog series, ONE @ 50: From the Vault, aims to revive and explore the wealth of articles published in ONE magazine throughout its history. Read about the relationship between the churches of the East and West in this article, originally published in Winter 1986.

Read an excerpt from “Toward Understanding Diversity in Unity” below, then read the full story.

Attitudes among Catholic and Orthodox peoples on the Church and their place in it not only stem from their strong national feelings, but are also deeply rooted in their ecclesiastical history and religious thought. For while the one, holy, catholic, apostolic Church founded by Jesus Christ is unified, the Church certainly is not uniform in all aspects.

Until the schism of the East, which occurred after more than a thousand years of Christianity, the Church was organized on a kind of federal basis. Each flexible grouping included a particular geographical area and Christians of similar background and heritage. Within each of the five distinct areas was a chief bishop called a patriarch.

The five patriarchates were named for their see cities: Rome, Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Constantinople. Each patriarchal see was a major center of early Christianity. Rome was often referred to as the Patriarchate of the Western Church. The other patriarchates were in the East. Antioch, the first headquarters of the Church until St. Peter moved to Rome, was an important center of Christianity for several centuries. Constantinople developed into the most important and powerful patriarchal see, for it was the capital of the Byzantine and Roman world.

The Great Schism dividing East and West split the Church and was reflected in the political spheres. It was a gradual, almost imperceptible severance extending over centuries. The difficulties concerning Photius in Constantinople in the ninth century opened the first wound of separation since the withdrawal of the Assyrians (Nestorians in Mesopotamia and Persia) and of the non-Chalcedonians (Monophysites in North Africa and Asia Minor) in the fifth century. Then the complex problem between East and West in the eleventh century involving Michael Cerularius, Patriarch of Constantinople, ended in a gigantic division. The previous minor schism culminated in the major separation of Constantinople and Rome.

The breach in 1054 was mended temporarily by the union following the Second Council of Lyons in 1274, but it ruptured once again in 1282. A more promising settlement after the Council of Florence in 1439 lasted until 1472.

Read more.

Brother John Samaha, S.M., is a Melkite Catholic on the staff of the Marianist Formation Center in Cupertino, California.

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