Latest / Catholic Spirit Radio / Being Catholic #382: Exploring the East-West Schism: Myths and Realities

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Being Catholic #382: Exploring the East-West Schism: Myths and Realities · Catholic Spirit Radio

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So I guess we're going into August. It's still a little bit hot.
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We had to have some nice cool weather.
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And we'll probably be having some cooler weather here soon.
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I was talking to my granddaughter not long ago.
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And she was talking to a friend who is an Orthodox Catholic.
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And they were talking about the differences
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between Catholicism and the Orthodox
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Catholic Church and talking about the so-called split in 1054 and the differences
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being between our understanding of the Holy Spirit and also the primacy of the
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Pope being the two key differences between us.
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And they asked me about it.
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And I told her that the split really didn't come as cleanly as people think in 1054.
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And it was a little bit more complex than that. And so I did a little bit of
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looking and I found an article in Touchstone magazine from the Orthodox point
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of view. And I think it's a very good article.
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And it shows that the differences between the church went on for quite some time.
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And the split wasn't quite as clean or as certain or as in any one particular
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date as most people might think. It was sort of a complex thing. It's very interesting.
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So I thought I would do a show on that. And so that's for my granddaughter, Katie.
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To answer your question a little bit more fully, I'm going to do this show and
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it'll be an article from Touchstone Magazine, which is a magazine of mere Christianity.
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And what that means, it's trying to find the commonality between the various
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Christian denominations, but especially,
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of course, between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox, because at one time
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we were together and we're still very, very close.
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So we will go into that article a little bit.
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Before we get into it, I want to ask my wife Lynn if she would like to add anything
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or have anything to say? I think it's very interesting.
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And, you know, in 1054, it was all over.
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The Crusades were going on and the big battle began because the Eastern Church
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was supposed to have everything ready for the Crusaders when they got there and they didn't.
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And, oh, they, you know, that began a lot.
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But it was not the total story. But the story will be, and we're going to dedicate
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this program to Katie and all the weekend warriors working at OSF, St.
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Joseph and Bloomington in surgery. They're there, and we're going to entertain
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you and hopefully inform you, too. Okay?
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Okay. This is from Touchstone Magazine. It's a Journal of Mere Christianity,
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and it's from the July-August 2025 issue.
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The title of the article is 1054 and all that, and it's by Gary Jenkins, and it says here, Gary W.
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Jenkins, Ph.D., is the Van Gordon Professor in History, retired,
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at Eastern University in Pennsylvania, and the current director of the St.
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Basil Center for Orthodox Thought and Culture.
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And so it's from an orthodox point of view, but I thought it was a very good
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article, and so we'll go ahead and read it.
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And its subtitle is Dating the Orthodox Catholic Schism, or Schism,
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however you want to pronounce that. I like to pronounce it schism myself.
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The year is 1273, and the Byzantine emperor, Michael VIII,
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Palaeologos, ruled, exasperated with an obstinate synod of bishops, has turned to violence.
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The bishops had withstood his ecclesiastical plans of a reunion with the Church of Rome,
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designs necessary to spare the empire the certain invasion and probable conquest
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of the city at the hands of the papal champion, Charles of Anjou,
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king of the two Sicilies.
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So there is a split between the two churches, between the Orthodox and the Latins,
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and between the East and the West.
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And Michael VIII here is trying to reunite the two in order to stave off what
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he thinks is going to be a conquest of him by the Latin in the West, Charles of Anjou.
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And so it goes on here. It says, In his frustration, Michael decided to make
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an example of Manuel Holobalus, one of the leading opponents of the Union,
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an orator and the former head of the patriarchal school.
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Michael had already mutilated and imprisoned the monk for his opinions,
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but now the emperor had him taken from prison,
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flogged, and chained to nine other poor souls, including Holobolus's niece,
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whom he then paraded through Constantinople.
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Holobolus's neck was wrapped with a sheep's intestines, and an executioner,
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quote, in quotes, that is,
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beat his head with the animal's liver as the convicts walked through the streets
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going around the quarters of the great church, Hagia Sophia.
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When Michael VIII recaptured Constantinople in 1261, he opened probably the
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most bitter episode of the several attempts at healing the schism between the
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Catholics and the Orthodox, the Latins and the Greeks.
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Michael hoped that a union of the churches would spare his weak and feeble empire,
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and under the sympathetic eye of Pope Gregory X, he agreed to such a union.
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Rome accepted that the emperor was able to control the Byzantine church,
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at least on some level, and expected Michael to enforce the union.
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But as Michael informed Pope Gregory, the union enjoyed no popularity among
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the clergy or the people of Constantinople, So the two were apart,
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and Michael was trying to get the two united for a particular specific reason,
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that is to defend himself against this attack that he saw was coming.
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The main defender of Michael's position was the former John Beckos,
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who had been imprisoned at one point for his obstreperous resistance to the idea of the Union.
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But fed a steady diet of Latin polemics, Beccos eventually came to the Latin
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position on the key question of the procession of the Holy Spirit.
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And this is one of the differences that came about between the two churches,
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the idea of the Holy Spirit and how it proceeded from the Father and the Son,
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whether it came through the Father and the Son or proceeded from the Father
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and the Son in a different way.
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I'm not sure exactly how that theologically worked, But there was a difference
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between the two on that particular issue.
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And later on, you can see that the Greek church, that is the East,
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the Constantinople Church, insisted that this could possibly be true with the
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Latin, how the Latins looked at this.
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But they didn't have the authority to declare it by themselves.
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They said they didn't think it was true. But if it was, they didn't have the
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authority to declare this by themselves. so it wasn't really a huge issue.
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One of the other issues, of course, was the primacy of the Pope,
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and later on, of course, it became not just the primacy of the Pope,
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but the infallibility of the Pope.
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However brilliant Beckles was, the Synod of Constantinople dug in its heels.
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In other words, they didn't want to reunite here at this time.
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Many, including Holoblis, had given an ear to Michael H.
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Scheme aimed at stopping Anjou by removing the casus belli of Charles's League
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of Viterbo, that is, that the Byzantines were schismatics.
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Yet the years of exile from their city remained within the memory of most Byzantines.
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Michael, however, knew that many in the Synod had entertained a union with Rome
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in the time of his predecessor,
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John IV Vetticisius, a union with conditions almost identical to those now offered by Rome.
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In other words, many people were really wanting to reunite with Rome,
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and he knew that, and he thought maybe he could get a reunion with Rome,
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and that could stop this Anjou from attacking him.
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Commemoration of the Pope during the Divine Liturgy.
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The recognition of the Pope's judicial supremacy, and the placement of his name in the diptych.
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In other words, those were some things that needed to be restored,
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and a lot of people were willing to do this,
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and this hadn't really been totally actually stopped in all areas of the East
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at this time from what I understand of the article here.
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Ultimately, the Synod weakly bowed to the pressure of Michael VIII,
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though the patriarch did not assent.
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Yet even with the submission of the synod, Michael could find no one to go to the reunion council.
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So even though he got people to agree in order to reunite, he couldn't get anybody to go.
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And it was going to be held in Lyon in 1274.
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Eventually, only diplomats and the deposed former patriarch Germanos made it to the consul.
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Upon the declaration of union, Patriarch Joseph resigned.
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So he had a declaration of reunion at this time, but then Patriarch Joseph resigned.
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So remember, this is 1273 and 1274, and they're reuniting here.
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So you can see that this has been going on. This so-called disunion has not
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been a really strong disunion, even for a long time here since 1054.
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And it really didn't, There wasn't any really...
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Clear disunion in 1054. Patriarch Joseph resigned, Beckos became the new patriarch,
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and Michael turned brutal, even executing people who has stood his policy.
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For all his troubles, in the end, Michael VIII was excommunicated by Pope Martin
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IV, the creature of Charles of Anjou in 1281.
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So here, after all these troubles and so forth, the Pope, who was being controlled
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by this Charles of Anjou was actually excommunicated Michael VIII,
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and so this whole thing came to not.
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But owing to a revolt on the island of Sicily against their French lords,
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the feared invasion by Charles of Anjou never occurred.
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A revolt that Michael VIII most certainly had a hand in planning.
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So the whole thing that he was worried about trying to stop didn't happen.
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So Michael VIII died on December the 12th, 1282.
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And it goes on here, it says, and Vronikos then removed Bekos as patriarch and
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installed Gregory of Cyprus in his place,
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who would oversee a consul that met at the Blackern Eye Palace in 1285 and formally
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repudiated the Union of Lyon.
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So in other words, if there was a union, it didn't seem that there was much
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of one, it was repudiated.
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So the above episode clearly shows a distinction to keep in mind in thinking
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about the relationship of the Latins and the Greeks.
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Michael the Ace Union was largely a formality without substance, a form without matter.
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In other words, the Union formally existed, materially it did not.
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So, there were times before the High Middle Ages, beginning about the year 1000,
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when the two were both formally and materially in schism.
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So, there were times actually earlier than 1054 when the two were in schism even before that,
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such as during the Acacian schism from the late 5th to the mid-6th centuries,
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when the Latin West saw the Orthodox East wavering and compromising on the teaching of the consuls,
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the material aspect of the problem, and thus formally broke communion.
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So even before this 1054 idea, there was things going off and on among various
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factions and factors of both of these churches where they were in schism with each other.
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So it wasn't something that was happening because of one particular thing or at one particular time.
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But at other times, schism existed without anyone having declared it and with
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no seeming material reason for this to be, such as when the pope's name disappeared
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from the list of those bishops.
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Commemorated during the liturgy at Constantinople sometime around,
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and let me look here, 1009.
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So there was that particular date as well when there was a schism going on,
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and they seemed to be apart, and yet nobody actually declared a schism.
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So were they in schism or were they not in schism?
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You can see here things weren't exactly that clear.
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And the schism between the two was something that was sort of off again,
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on again, sometimes with one faction, sometimes with another,
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sometimes not fully in schism, sometimes, you know, just in schism with one
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group and not with another and so on.
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So the 81054 is not something we can really put our finger on as if it was some
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big split at one particular time.
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We're going to have to stop here and take a break. So stay with us.
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Hi, this is Bob Johnston. You're listening to Being Catholic right here on Catholic Spirit Radio.
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We're talking about the schism between the Orthodox Church,
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the Eastern Church, the Church of Constantinople, and the Latin Church,
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the Roman Catholic Church, that still exists to this day.
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The two are very, very close, and Pope Leo recently had expressed hope that
19:43
perhaps we can still get together, said that there's more hope than ever before.
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I hope that's true, and that the two wings of the church can come back together again. And...
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Want to show by reading this article that the split, which is dated back by
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most people to 1054, was not as clear and the date is not as certain and so
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forth as most people think.
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And it was a lot more iffy than that. And there were times when it was hard
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to tell whether the church was in schism or not in schism and whether what particular
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issue was in schism over.
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And so it might be that because of that, there is even a greater chance that
20:26
we can bring the two wings back together again. It goes on here.
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It says, this said, what we just talked about, the iffiness of the schism between
20:35
the church, many a writer will still throughout the year 1054 as the beginning
20:41
date of the schism, material and formally,
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which has lasted till this present day.
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But neither materially nor formally can this be considered the case.
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The year 1054 is an important date, but the events of that summer were not the
20:57
efficient causes of the schism in the church.
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First and formally, the actors involved did not speak for the entirety of their
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respective churches, and that's what I've been trying to get at.
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A lot of times when there was a split between the churches, it was a split actually
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between various groups, And even though they tried to speak for the whole church,
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they really a lot of times did not have the authority to do so.
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And so the split was actually only between particular factions and not between
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the whole two churches, as we shall see.
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And second, even if this were the case, the excommunication issued by the Latin
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cleric Humbert, Cardinal Bishop of Silva Candida, named only Michael Corollarius,
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the Patriarch of Constantinople,
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along with all who would agree with him.
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Leo, the Archbishop of Orchid, Otgrid, rather, and the Imperial Chancellor as
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under the ban, not the Synod of Constantinople, let alone the entire Orthodox world.
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So again, a lot of times, if there was an excommunication pronounced by one
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side or the other, or if there was a split, it was between particular groups
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of people rather than the whole thing.
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As regards Michael Corralarius, the patriarch of Constantinople,
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the excommunication issued by him and the Synod of Constantinople took aim only
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at the three legates, the aforementioned Humbert,
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Frederick of Lorraine, and Mark, the archbishop of Amalpi, but most definitely
22:31
not at the Pope, let alone the entire Western Church.
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So, you know, it's sort of like vice versa. both sides issued excommunications
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or issued splits, but against particular factions and not against the whole group.
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So, though materially strained, this situation hardly rose to a formal schism between the two bodies.
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That relationships following 1054 were strained, none denied.
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The West certainly put store by what had happened, even though canonically what
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Humbert had done was invalid since Pope Leo IX,
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who had granted him his legatine powers, had died before the fateful act,
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thus nullifying everything that Humber did and the other legates did in his name.
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Nonetheless, because of Humber's stature among the clergy of Rome,
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said clergy accepted that the Greeks stood in some way outside full communion with Rome.
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So here you got a lot of priests in the Catholic Church, bishops and so forth,
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understanding that somehow the Greeks were standing outside communing with Rome,
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but they didn't quite know how, and all of them didn't quite agree either.
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Not everyone did, and vice versa on the other side.
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It's a real study in human nature, isn't it? Yes, it is.
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It's very much confusion going on, and nothing at 1054 at this time for certain yet.
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So, I mean, this idea of 1054 being a clear and final decision on clear and
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final issues between the churches is simply not true. And it goes on here.
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That being said, by the end of the century, with the Orthodox world reeling
24:19
under the sudden collapse of the empire,
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a collapse brought on by the corruption and decadence that had infested both
24:27
the imperial court and Constantinople following the death of Basil in 1025.
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The rhetoric coming out of Rome addressing the plight of the Byzantine East
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and its status as a Christian realm assumed a wholly different character than
24:43
one would expect were Humbert the putative measure of the Orthodox faith.
24:48
One can see this new perspective best in the rhetoric describing the plight
24:54
of the Greeks in the sermon summoning the First Crusade. And here comes the Crusades now.
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And these are what actually caused the real split between the two churches.
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And this took some time.
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Pope Urban II, overtly, and he was from 1088 to 1099, overtly spoke of the Greek
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East in fraternal terms.
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So in other words, he reigned from 1088 to 1099, and yet he was talking about
25:26
the Greek East in brotherly terms, fraternal terms in a brotherly way.
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In his sermon at Claremont in France, calling for what would be the first crusade,
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the word or any of his cognates yet to be used, in other words,
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the word crusade still hadn't been used yet.
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Urban spoke of the Christian duty his audience at Claremont had to defend the
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weak, to be their brother's keeper, to aid the Christian churches under the
25:54
yoke of the infidel, and to liberate their fellow Christians from bondage to unbelievers.
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Who were the brethren and Christians Urban asked the French chivalry to defend? It was the Greeks.
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In other words, Urban is talking about a defense here. He's not using the word crusade.
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And he is aiming this defense at defending the Greeks, at defending the.
26:19
Constantinople church, the Orthodox church, from attack by the unbelievers,
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from attack by the Muslims, actually.
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And he's talking about them as they are Christian brothers.
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So he's talking about them in fraternal terms and talking about them as if they
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are still in union with each other.
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So even at this particular time, from 1088 to 1099, it doesn't seem clear that
26:47
there's a real, actual, formal and material split between the two churches.
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We can find this same amity on the part of the Latin several decades later in
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1136, when Anselm, bishop of
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Havelberg, being in Constantinople as an emissary for the German emperor.
27:07
Debated the Orthodox Archbishop Nicodemus of Nicodemia.
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Anselm left a detailed record of his debate, which touched on the question,
27:18
then seemingly dividing the two churches,
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and similarly debated in 1054 of the Azimites, the unleavened bread used in
27:28
the Eucharist by the Latins, I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly,
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the filioque, the word the Latin West had added to the creed to proclaim that
27:36
the Holy Spirit proceeded from both the Father and the Son.
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That's the difference over the Holy Spirit that they had and the papal primacy.
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From Anselm's account, the debate proceeded along the most charitable of lines,
27:51
even if both sides pulled no theological punches.
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In other words, they were debating these issues that supposedly go back to 1054.
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They're still debating these, and they were doing it in a charitable manner,
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even though the debate hit those issues head-on, and neither side pulled any
28:11
punches, but there was still not yet a full split.
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At this debate, we see the Orthodox address directly, for the first time,
28:20
the explicit claims of primacy by the Bishop of Rome, which probably equally
28:25
with the question of the filio, drove the division between the churches.
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So these were issues, the filioque and the primacy of the Pope,
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that drove a division between the churches, but it was still not yet a full
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split between the two churches.
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And again, the Constantinople, the Greek church, the Orthodox church,
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used the phrase, if the Latins, if what they say is true.
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In other words, conceding that it could be true about the Holy Spirit,
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but simply saying they didn't have the authority to do it all by themselves.
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It goes on here, it says, But however much some denounced the Latin West,
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others of equal stature held the Latins, if not in sympathetic light,
29:12
at least in a charitable one.
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So there was lots of people on both sides that didn't think that they were in
29:19
schism with each other, that still thought that they were united.
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First and perhaps foremost among these would be Peter, Patriarch of Antioch,
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who could speak from long experience about the relationships of the Latins and the Greeks.
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Peter saw the events of 1054, little more than a brief of personal animosity,
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littered with inaccuracies and errors on points of doctrine,
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and saturated with a spirit hardly worthy of a patriarch of Christ's church.
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So he was seeing that these were incidents, and not something that should be a split between the two.
29:57
And it goes on here, it says, Because it was asserted that the pope's name had
30:04
not been observed in diptychs for centuries.
30:07
But Peter countered, however, that in the year 1009, he had been in Constantinople
30:13
and had there heard the pope's name commemorated during the liturgy.
30:18
So he is saying, no, that's not true, that the pope's name has been in various
30:22
parts of the church commemorated in the liturgy. So we're not totally in schism.
30:27
The Pope's name is not being left out. So they're still arguing.
30:32
Further argued Peter, charity should be exercised in that the Latins and the
30:37
Latin language lack the subtlety to make the theological points that the Greek language allowed.
30:43
In other words, the Latin language was not as finely tuned for theological discussion
30:49
as the Greek language was.
30:51
And so there could be a mix-up and we shouldn't allow for that.
30:54
In other words, that doesn't mean that we're in a schism.
30:58
In the mind of Peter, perhaps with a more subtle take than others,
31:03
Orthodox writers would employ on the same topic, the Latins,
31:08
Latin culture, and Latin theology all suffered a rustic innocence of sophistication.
31:13
So he's saying that it's just a mix-up in words and so forth,
31:17
and we can get it straightened out.
31:20
That's what he thought, huh? Right. To Peter of Antioch, differences between
31:25
the Latin and Greek churches existed, but he did not see the Latins as schismatics,
31:30
let alone that the Greeks and Latins comprised two distinct communions.
31:35
So see, he's not looking at a schism here.
31:38
Peter's stand is backed up by the actions and statements of the future patriarch
31:44
of Jerusalem, Athemius, who had enjoyed good relations with Latin pilgrims in Jerusalem.
31:51
Athymius had been driven from his bishopric by the Seljuk conquest in 1071,
31:57
and the emperor Alexis I used him as his emissary when treating with the Normans,
32:04
knowing their regard for him.
32:06
An undulating amity between Latinx and Greeks in Antioch, Jerusalem,
32:10
and Alexandria in the following years persisted. So...
32:15
Further, the campaign against the Latins came to nothing, ending with a deposition
32:20
at the hands of the Emperor Isaac comments in 1058.
32:24
While the actions of Isaac I and those emperors who followed reveals a strained
32:29
relationship between the churches, they do not show that the Byzantine court
32:34
held itself estranged from the Roman church.
32:37
So this is 1058, and the two churches still are not holding themselves completely
32:43
estranged from each other.
32:45
The cordial relations can best be seen in that Michael VIII had reached out
32:50
to Pope Gregory VIII in 1073,
32:52
asking the Pope to thwart the planned invasion of the empire by the Norman prince
32:58
Robert Giscard, the Pope's vassal.
33:01
This was done, and Giscard sent his daughter Helena to Constantinople to be
33:06
wed to Michael's son and heir, in other words, trying to unite the two churches. But when the rebel.
33:14
Nicophorus Bautentaites, I can't pronounce these names, overthrew Michael VII
33:20
in 1078, he sent Helena Packing.
33:23
Gregory VII responded with the new emperor's excommunication,
33:28
and for the first time, the Byzantine imperial court itself felt the weight
33:33
of Rome's understanding of its authority, embodied in Gregory VII,
33:38
though certainly preached by the aforementioned Humbert,
33:42
Gregory VII's friend, that the kings of the earth stood in relation to the papacy
33:47
as the moon stood in relation to the sun.
33:49
So now Rome was sort of coming down more strongly on Constantinople.
33:55
Despite this, by the reign of Alexius Cominus, 1081 to 1118,
34:03
the Byzantine church sought to heal whatever rift divided the two great churches.
34:09
In 1089, as referenced above, a synod of the city of Constantinople admitted
34:15
that the pope's name had not been commemorated for decades, but also stated
34:20
that it knew not why this was,
34:23
and that the removal of the Pope's name from the list of bishops declared to
34:29
be in communion with the Archbishop of Constantinople was due to negligence.
34:34
In other words, they're saying that the removal of the Pope's name from the
34:39
list of bishops to be in communion with Constantinople was just a mistake.
34:43
It was just negligence. It wasn't a formal schism between the two.
34:48
So this was going on in 1089, quite a time after 1054.
34:54
Further, just two decades removed from 1089, we find St.
35:01
Theophilac of Ocrid echoing Peter of Antioch in his sympathy for the Latin church.
35:07
He expands on Peter's assessment of Latin doctrine, Latin motives,
35:12
and Latin abilities, Theophilac, the first of the Orthodox to leave a complete commentary,
35:18
on the entire New Testament, went out of his way to pour oil on the ecclesiastical
35:23
waters, saying he had little sympathy for those condemning the Latins,
35:28
since they objected to trivialities in matter of custom.
35:32
Among these, he noted the practice of kneeling before the altar,
35:35
as opposed to bowing, the use of silk investments, the wearing of gold rings,
35:41
and the practice of priestly celibacy.
35:43
All these, he wrote, came from devotion, not as a conscious affront to the tradition of the church.
35:49
So they're saying these differences are small, and there are differences in
35:54
simply trying to do the right thing, and they're not a reason for schism.
35:59
Those who faulted the Latins for the use of Azimites in the communion,
36:03
objecting that it was Apollinarian, since Leavened Bread spoke of the constant
36:07
sensibility of Christ with our human nature, were faulting the Latins for a
36:13
heresy they had never partaken of.
36:15
The heretic Apollinaris denied that Christ, incarnate, fully assumed our human nature.
36:22
It is right, argued Theophilac, that the Greeks should use the leaven bread,
36:29
artos, since it was among the Greeks that Apollinarianism had arisen.
36:34
In other words, the Latin bread doesn't show Apollinarianism in the Latins because that
36:41
heresy had never risen among them. It had risen among the Greeks,
36:45
and the Greeks were avoiding the unleavened bread to make sure that they weren't
36:51
falling into that heresy, and that's something that the Greeks had to do,
36:55
and the Latins did not have to because they never did partake of that particular heresy.
37:00
So, this is what's going on. We're going to have to stop here and take a break,
37:03
stay with us, we'll be right back.
37:04
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Honey, what are we going to do for Mass this weekend? We'll be out of town and
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won't be here at our regular Mass time.
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Let's go online to check catholicspiritradio.com and find another Mass time.
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The website lists the regular Mass schedule plus most Holy Days of all the Catholic
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That's a lot in Central and Northern Illinois. Good, we'll easily be able to
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You won't believe the number of churches that offer it.
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That's wonderful. The Eucharist brings me such peace.
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Yes, and they even have a community calendar that lists local Catholic events.
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39:37
Hi, this is Bob Johnson. You're listening to Being Catholic right here on Catholic Spirit Radio.
39:42
We're talking about the Orthodox Church and the Latin Catholic Church,
39:47
the Orthodox, the Greek side of the Catholic Church and the Constantinople side of the church.
39:53
And I'm talking in the beginning here about the fact that Leo,
39:58
our new pope, seems to think that the two are closer than ever before at being
40:06
able to come together again.
40:07
Again, I hope that's true, and the two could come together,
40:11
but it's going on here in this article on the 1054 idea of the schism between
40:19
the church on how ippy that schism was and how actually it took place over a long period of time.
40:27
And it went back and forth, and there were different things on both sides that
40:34
caused it. But what really, I'm going to have to, you know, get to the crux
40:39
of the matter here because this is a long article.
40:42
But what really happened, actually, this went on like this for a while.
40:48
Various groups saying they were in schism, various groups saying they were not in schism.
40:52
Some people saying they were joined, some people saying not,
40:55
until the Crusades happened.
40:58
And what happened then with the Fourth Crusade, the Crusaders went back.
41:03
To Constantinople, and from there they were going to go into the Holy Land,
41:09
and something went wrong.
41:11
They were unable to do so, and because of the misuse of fungs,
41:16
right, animosities between the two and so forth, the Crusaders actually sacked Constantinople.
41:24
And this was something that actually drove the churches further apart than ever
41:29
before, and it was sort of a downhill slide from there.
41:33
And that's one of the things that actually caused the split between the church
41:37
more than anything else, because it could have been repaired.
41:42
In fact, actually, in 1338, much later than that, it was repaired very shortly
41:49
for a period of time there.
41:51
There was a reunion of the two churches, but things went wrong with it.
41:56
It was a very weak reunion, and it didn't last.
41:59
And by the end of 1338, the reunion failed, and then the church was in contradiction
42:07
or in schism with each other after that again.
42:10
And it has been in schism all the way until this date.
42:14
But it's clear that 1054 was not really the exact particular date that there
42:21
was a schism between the two, and that schism is not anywhere near as clear as people make it out.
42:28
It has come down to the fact that the differences between the two churches are
42:33
mainly, and there are some others.
42:36
But mainly the difference between the definition of the Holy Spirit and proceeding
42:42
through the Father and the Son rather than in a different way,
42:46
which I'm not fully able to understand here at this time that needs to be explained a little bit more.
42:51
We're not going to have time to do it in this last segment.
42:55
But that is something that can be repaired.
43:00
And the final difference would be the primacy of the Pope.
43:06
And even that is not a huge problem.
43:09
Probably the biggest problem would have been when the doctrine of infallibility was declared.
43:17
And that wasn't until 1850-something? Yeah, that was in the 1850s or so.
43:23
But that is something also, I think, that can possibly be repaired.
43:28
And also, in my opinion, and probably the Orthodox Church can understand that,
43:36
There needs to be a head of a church or any other organization in order for
43:44
there to be a strong unity.
43:46
If there isn't, it's difficult to hold an organization together,
43:50
and I think the Orthodox can understand that, and there's a lot of leaning toward
43:55
that idea, and those things perhaps can be worked out.
43:59
But at any rate, that's what happened with the Crusades, and it was the Crusades
44:05
that actually sort of finalized the split between the two churches more than anything else it did.
44:11
Over the next 150 years, communications were not non-existent but certainly meager.
44:17
Throughout this period, the empire withered owing to civil wars and the advance
44:21
of the Ottoman Turks, who took advantage of these wars to expand into Europe.
44:26
The emperors of this period seemed to agree with the mind of Manuel II,
44:30
The second, who ruled from 1391 to 1425.
44:34
Who had warned his son and heir John VIII never to seek union with the Latins,
44:39
for it would only embitter his Greek subjects against him, and further would
44:44
arouse the suspicions of the Turks and doubtlessly incite them to hostilities.
44:49
By this time the empire was little more than a client of the Ottomans.
44:53
By 1425, the empire had contracted to Constantinople, Thessalonica,
45:00
and the region south of Corinth called Amoria.
45:03
Even these last two were constantly contested with the Ottoman Turks, who were now closing in.
45:10
Manuel II had spent years in the West seeking military aid apart from any union,
45:16
but obtained nothing for his efforts.
45:18
Finally, John VIII, despite his father's warnings in the early 1430s.
45:24
Appealed both to Rome and to the consul, then sitting at Basel,
45:28
hoping for a reunion consul, which would bring with it a crusade against the Ottomans.
45:33
As it happened, the consul of Basil and Pope Eugenius IV were at an impasse,
45:39
and the consul fathers actually had the pope on his heels.
45:43
The arrival of the Greek envoys allowed Eugenius to summon a consul,
45:48
and for the sake of the Greeks, to hold it in Italy.
45:51
The consul at Basil ended up splitting, with a minority decamping south,
45:56
declaring that the unity of the Church was more important than the reforms the
46:00
consulate Basel was seeking.
46:02
The consul met first in Ferrara in 1438. That's the date that I was saying.
46:08
I meant not 1338. They tried to reunite again.
46:13
But then, because of the plague and because of the unificence of Cosmo the Medici,
46:18
who wanted to meet certain members
46:20
of the Greek delegation, the consul transferred itself to Florence.
46:25
This was the occasion for the well-known painting in the Medici chapel,
46:28
The Procession of the Magi, in which Emperor John VIII figures prominently.
46:33
At Florence, the open debate, which had not happened at Lyons,
46:38
and which the Greeks certainly sought, finally materialized.
46:41
By the consul's end, all of the Greek bishops signed the document of union,
46:46
with the exception of their most prominent member, Mark of Ephesus.
46:51
His failure to sign, he elicited the comment from Eugenius IV that without Mark we are nothing.
46:58
So again, in 1438, there was a weak reunion of the two churches.
47:05
Many of the Greeks agreed to the union based upon the final wishes of the patriarch Joseph II.
47:13
He had left a written confession of adherence to all that the Church of Rome taught.
47:18
Ironically, in the formula of union, Pope Eugenius IV had added a thanksgiving
47:24
to God that the schism of 430 years had ended.
47:29
Despite the hopes of Eugenius IV and John VIII,
47:33
Florence fell short of uniting the Orthodox with the Catholics as the patriarchs
47:38
of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria
47:41
unanimously rejected the consul at a meeting in Jerusalem in 1443.
47:47
Further, with the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the union materially,
47:53
such as it was, fell apart.
47:55
To return to the distinction between material and formal, we can see that the
48:00
churches were in both material and formal schism between 1285 and 1439.
48:07
Whereas after 1439 there may have been a formal union between Rome and Constantinople,
48:14
one that lasted at least till the fall of the city, but even following the Consul
48:18
of Florence and the signing of the formula of union at the consul,
48:23
it would stretch the facts to say that materially the churches could be considered one.
48:29
Just before the fall of the city, the Union was proclaimed at Constantinople,
48:34
but even then, prominent Orthodox,
48:37
including several signatories from Florence, who had been declared heretics
48:42
and excommunicated from the communion of Rome by the consul, disagreed.
48:46
Among those seeking this latter agreement was George Scolaris,
48:51
a one-time supporter of the Union of Florence, who had been convinced to renounce
48:56
his stance by Mark of Ephesians.
48:59
At the fall of the city, Scalaris was known, even among the Turks,
49:03
as an opponent of the Union, and owing to this, was brought out of slavery by
49:09
the Sultan Mohammed II and elevated to the patriarchal throne.
49:13
Not until 484 did a consul of Orthodox hierarchy, including representatives
49:19
of the four Eastern patriarchs, formally renounced the Union.
49:23
Materially, it would be hard to say it had ever existed since 1204.
49:28
Indeed, even before 1204 materially, the matter is tenuous.
49:33
But it would be stretching this observation in the face of so many witnesses
49:37
to say that 1054 had created for the Orthodox and Catholics both a formal and material schism.
49:45
For my own humble part, and this is the author here talking,
49:50
I agree with my former professor as the material date 1285 is the formal one.
49:58
Though never overtly explicit on this in his writings, he was certainly so in his conversation.
50:04
In other words, 1054 is not the real date of the disunion, and the disunion
50:10
is very, very difficult to put your finger on even to this day.
50:15
Any comments you want to make, Lynn? Yeah, I think we need to go over a little
50:19
bit. What are the differences in belief?
50:22
If we've got time, the Catholic Church,
50:25
the Roman Catholic Western Church, believes the Holy Spirit proceeds from God
50:30
the Father to Jesus Christ the Son,
50:34
and the Orthodox Church believes the Holy Spirit proceeds only from God the
50:41
Father, and it doesn't go through the Son.
50:44
The other thing is they do believe in confession. They have confession like we do.
50:50
They do not believe in purgatory. They believe in heaven and hell, nothing in between.
50:58
They believe in Mary, the mother of Jesus, as a theotokos, the mother of God.
51:05
But they don't honor her in the same way that the Western church does.
51:12
They believe in the Dormation, Mary fell asleep, and, well, I don't know.
51:20
That's confusing. And that is a belief in a Catholic that can hold as well,
51:25
too. Yeah, right. It's not a big thing.
51:28
The patriarch Constantinople didn't trust the Roman Pope and accused some of
51:35
the Western tradition of being unchristian.
51:38
They aren't really big things, though. They also believe in each bishop within
51:45
the, from what I can tell,
51:47
each bishop holds his own authority and can make wider decisions and so forth
51:54
without consulting the people above them, the cardinals, I guess.
52:00
But like Bob says, it's kind of hard to do. You got to have somebody that makes
52:04
a final decision. Right.
52:06
They've been doing it for all these centuries, so who knows?
52:10
That's not something that would preclude any union either.
52:15
It's really hard to put your finger on it. The two biggest things,
52:20
I think, are the... The primacy of the Pope.
52:22
The primacy of the Pope and then the Holy Spirit issue, the filioque,
52:28
are the two biggest issues.
52:29
But I think those can be resolved, actually. And some of the church in earlier
52:34
times actually did sign over and agree, you know, along with Rome on some of those other issues.
52:41
So it's difficult, you know, to know.
52:44
But at any rate, it says here that there is more hope than ever before that
52:49
the two could be resolved. I hope that that is the case. I do know this.
52:53
I think a Catholic can go to an Orthodox Mass if he is unable to get to his
53:02
regular Catholic, the Roman Catholic Mass, and it counts as going to Mass.
53:07
And he doesn't have to ask permission of his Roman Catholic priest or bishop to do so.
53:13
I do think, though, if a Catholic goes to Mass and intends to receive communion and so forth,
53:19
he is supposed to inform the bishop of the church, you know,
53:23
of the diocese, the Orthodox area that he's in, or at least the priest, anyway.
53:29
Don't take my word for it on these issues.
53:32
I mean, this is something that may have changed.
53:35
I do think that it's the other way around for the Orthodox.
53:40
I think before they can go to a Roman Catholic church and have it count as mass
53:47
and so forth, they're supposed to get permission from their priest or their
53:51
bishop. I think that's how it goes.
53:53
Yeah, I believe that's true. But they both have, both the priests in the Orthodox
54:00
Church are considered valid priests.
54:02
They consider that they can consecrate the host and so forth,
54:06
as far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the Roman Catholic Church is concerned.
54:10
So there's much, you know, union already.
54:15
And it would be great if the two churches could come together.
54:18
Yes, it would be. And, you know, with the synodal thing I've been so opposed
54:23
to all along, maybe this is what they're angling at.
54:28
Maybe so. I don't really understand. I don't understand that either.
54:31
Synodal movement that much, you know, myself.
54:34
Apparently would give each bishop a little more discretion. At any rate,
54:39
we're going to have to stop here.
54:41
I hope that answered some questions. Yeah, it's a confusing issue to a certain
54:47
extent, But it's not as clear as people think that it was, you know, that one 1054 issue.
54:52
Yeah, I tend to think that it's a lot of human nature in there that I'm not giving up my side of it.
55:01
On both sides. It was a long article, and I really, you know,
55:04
maybe we should have taken a little bit.
55:06
Maybe we'll take a little more time on another show to talk about it a little
55:09
bit more. Yeah, we need to get, yeah.
55:10
Anyway, St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.
55:14
Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.
55:17
May God rebuke him and humbly pray.
55:20
And to thou, Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God,
55:24
thrusting to hell, Satan, and all evil spirits, who wander through the world for the rule of souls.
55:30
Amen. You've been listening to Being Catholic with Bob Johnston.
55:34
On Catholic Spirit Radio, if you'd like to contact Bob, email bob at catholicspiritradio.com.
55:40
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