‘The Filioque: A very basic introduction’

Dr Peter Gilbert, of De unione ecclesiarum (one of a few blogs by an Orthodox Christian I can bear to read) has just posted the text of a lecture he recently gave to the Youngstown, Ohio chapter of the Society of St John Chrysostom. Please leave any comments you have at Dr Gilbert’s blog.
I will [...]

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On Michael Cerularius

I am proud to feature this interesting article by Catholic friend of the blog and frequent commenter, Michaël de Verteuil –
Of the two Patriarchs of Constantinople most closely associated with the East-West schism, Michael Cerularius (Keroularios) is clearly the lesser figure in Orthodoxy. Unlike Photius, Michael was not a great scholar and was not declared [...]

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‘Not an Anthologist: John Bekkos as a Reader of the Fathers’

From my favorite Orthodox blog, Prof. Peter Gilbert’s De Unione Ecclesiarum –
I finally have some good news to report. Today I received an e-mail from the Managing Editor of the journal Communio, informing me that the Summer 2009 issue is now, at last, in print, and that they have decided to feature my article on [...]

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‘Schism and Communion’

By David J. Melling (1943-2004)
(Many thanks to De Unione Ecclesiarum for the text of this article.)
Early in his ministry as a Non-Juror Anglican priest, the saintly William Law published a sequence of “Letters to a Lady inclined to enter the Church of Rome.” (1732-3) His advice to the Lady was that she, like other laymembers [...]

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Benedictine Hagiorites

The Benedictine Monastery of St Mary on Mount Athos
Dom Leo Bonsall
Eastern Churches Review 2:3 (1969), pp. 262-7 (footnotes omitted)
BENEDICTINE contacts with the Church of the East have been many and varied, but the foundation of the abbey of St Mary on Mount Athos and its continuing existence during a period when official relations between Rome [...]

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Benedictine Ecumenical Calibration

From the blog Gregorian Rite Catholic:
Benedict XVI is “on board” with ecumenism, but he calibrates it carefully. It is a refreshing change from the near-indifferentism that characterized the previous pontificate.
The first substantial ecumenical address he gave was in Cologne. And everyone was all aflutter when he said this: “On the other hand, this unity does [...]

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The Petrine Ministry and Christian Ecumenism

From the blog The American Catholic (July 9th, 2009) –
Orientalium Ecclesiarum (Decree on the Eastern Catholic Churches) truly deserves more attention, as it remains vital to the self-understanding of the Catholic Church and for the prospect of Christian ecumenism in general.
Eastern Catholics are non-Latin Rite Christians who, at some point in the last thousand years, [...]

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Fr Reardon on “Anselmian soteriology”

From Fr Pat’s Pastoral Ponderings, June 28, 2009:

Saint Anselm, as we have seen, begins his reflections on soteriology—the theology of salvation—by addressing the question: What is sin? This he identifies as the affront to the honor of God. He then goes on to inquire: What is required to satisfy the offended honor of God. This [...]

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“The Immaculate Conception and the Orthodox Church” (4)

By Father Lev Gillet
From Chrysostom, Vol. VI, No. 5 (Spring 1983), pp. 151-159.
(Continued from Part I, Part II & Part III)
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V. There are three principal causes which provide an explanation for the opposition with which the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception has been met in the Orthodox Church.
First and foremost, there is the mistrust felt a priori by many Orthodox about any doctrine [...]

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“The Immaculate Conception and the Orthodox Church” (3)

By Father Lev Gillet
From Chrysostom, Vol. VI, No. 5 (Spring 1983), pp. 151-159.
(Continued from Part I and Part II)
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IV. Let us now consider more closely the attitude of the Russian Church towards the question of the Immaculate Conception.
Every Russian theological student knows that St Dmitri, metropolitan of Rostov (17th century), supported the Latin ”theory of the epiklesis” (10); but young Russians [...]

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