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 [...]

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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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Zizioulas on Orthodox-Catholic Dialogue

From the blog Communio, via Sean, the recent letter of Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) of Pergamon to the Archbishop of Athens and the Metropolitans of Greece on their Church’s ongoing dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church. Emphasis added.
Your Eminence,
Given that much turmoil has been unduly created by certain circles, on the subject of the official theological [...]

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Archbishop Zoghby on the Indissolubility of Marriage

I’ve been thinking a bit about this topic lately, and since it came up recently in the comments to this post, I thought I’d focus the discussion on this article of the late Melkite Catholic Archbishop Elias Zoghby. It’s come up before here at Eirenikon. The text of the article comes from the blog Torn [...]

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Will the “Third Rome” Reunite with the “First Rome”?

Recent Meeting Could Mark Turning Point
By Robert Moynihan
WASHINGTON, D.C., SEPT. 21, 2009 (Zenit.org)- Sometimes there are no fireworks. Turning points can pass in silence, almost unobserved.
It may be that way with the “Great Schism,” the most serious division in the history of the Church. The end of the schism may come more quickly and more [...]

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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 Gregory Jensen, “The Lessons of Uniatism”

While it is not a popular position for an Orthodox Christian, much less a priest, when I reflect on the history of uniatism—of those communities who left the Orthodox Church and joined themselves to Catholic Church—I am struck less by the machinations of Rome and more the failing of Orthodox Christians. Much of what we [...]

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Sacraments, East and West

I recently discovered the “Light of the East” online radio show / podcast, produced by Annunciation Byzantine Catholic Church in Homer Glen, Illinois. I highly recommend it.
In particular, I have been enjoying the four part series “Recovering a Sacramental World View” by Hieromonk Maximos of Holy Resurrection Monastery, Newberry Springs, CA (soon to be relocated to Belvidere, New [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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