Are the Ratzinger Proposal and Zoghby Initiative Dead?

Joel I. Barstad, Russian Catholic and professor of theology at St John Vianney Seminary in Denver, attempts to answer this question. From a rather interesting blog entitled The Augustana Greek Catholic: An Irregular Journal of Ecumenical Experiments.
Abstract:
Many Greek-Catholics define themselves as Orthodox-in-Communion-with-Rome and appeal to the First Christian Millennium as providing the foundation for this [...]

Read Full Post »

Bulgarian Orthodox Leader Affirms Desire for Unity

VATICAN CITY, OCT. 22, 2009 (Zenit.org).- A Bulgarian Orthodox prelate told Benedict XVI of his desire for unity, and his commitment to accelerate communion with the Catholic Church.
At the end of Wednesday’s general audience, Bishop Tichon, head of the diocese for Central and Western Europe of the Patriarchate of Bulgaria, stated to the Pope, “We [...]

Read Full Post »

Archbishop Hilarion (Alfeev) on Catholic Sacraments

From Vertograd Orthodox Journal, Newsletter No. 76, Oct. 21, 2009 (via the Irenikon listserv):
“To all intent and purposes, mutual recognition of each others Mysteries already exists between us. We do not have communion in the Mysteries, but we do recognize each others Mysteries”, declared Archbishop Hilarion (Alfeev) on the air during a broadcast of the [...]

Read Full Post »

‘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 [...]

Read Full Post »

A Tractarian perspective

On the Present Apparent Conflict Between “Orthodoxy” and “Catholicism
From Dissertations on Subjects Relating to the “Orthodox” or “Eastern-Catholic” Communion (1853), by William Palmer, M.A., Fellow of St. Mary Magdalene College, Oxford, and Deacon.
As there is one God and Father, one Lord Jesus Christ, one Holy Ghost, and one Baptism, so also there is One Body [...]

Read Full Post »

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 [...]

Read Full Post »

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, [...]

Read Full Post »

Correction from the Phanar

Fr Gregory Jensen has posted this Press Release from the Ecumenical Patriarchate:
With respect to the recently published articles reporting that allegedly His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew believes that it is possible for the Greek Catholics (Uniates) to have a “double union”, in other words, full communion with Rome as well as with Constantinople, the [...]

Read Full Post »

EP proposes dual communion?

This is the strangest news story I’ve come across in a while. I can’t help but think that there is something seriously wrong with the English translation (hint: I’m guessing “1st century” means “1st millennium”). Anyhow, here’s the story from the Religious Information Service of Ukraine (RISU):
Munich — In a recent interview with the German [...]

Read Full Post »

Fr Paul on the “Timisoara Incident”

Fr Paul, the English Catholic priest who has left many thoughtful comments both at Cathedra Unitatis and here at Eirenikon, has written a remarkable post over at De unione ecclesiarum on the ecclesiological, ecumenical and sacramental implications of the “Timisoara Incident”.
It is not my place to say whether it was in the event helpful to the [...]

Read Full Post »