Article written by
Rev Fr Thomas Phillipose
Vicar, St George Orthodox Church, Nasik
Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church 
Pope Francis and H.H Moran Mar Baselius Paulose II in Vatican
(pic courtesy fb page of H.H)
Historic Visit:The importance of meeting with His Holiness BaseliusMarthomaPaulos II, the Catholicos of the East with His Holiness Francis, the Pope of Rome …
Moran Baselios Marthoma Paulose II, Catholicos of the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church in India, visited Pope Francis Thursday morning.
The Catholicos Moran Baselios Marthoma Paulose II, after meeting with the Holy Father visited the tomb of the Apostle Peter and was received by the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian unity.
In his address, pope Francis, referring to the faith of St. Thomas, said
“It is precisely in this faith that we meet each other; it is this faith that unites us, even if we cannot yet share the Eucharistic table; and it is this faith which urges us to continue and intensify the commitment to ecumenism, encounter and dialogue towards full communion. He said, “With you I desire that our Churches may soon find effective ways of resolving the urgent pastoral problems that face us, and that we may progress together in brotherly love and in our theological dialogue, for it is by these means that reconciliation among Christians and reconciliation in the world can come about.”
If we look to the past history, we can see similar type of visit by the Heads of these churches. On an invitation from Pope Paul VI, CatholicosAugen I visited the Pope at Bombay in 1964. The Pope was there in connection with the Eucharistic Congress. This was the first meeting between a Roman Pope and the Catholicos of the East. BaseliusMarthoma Mathews I visited the Pope in Rome. When the Pope visited Kerala in the year 1986, he visited the His Holiness Catholicos at Kottayam.Ast the result of these visits, Joint International Commission for Dialogue between the Catholic Churches and the Malankara Orthodox Church was begun on the initiative taken by H.H.Pope John Paul II and H.H. Moran Mar Baselios Mar Thoma Mathews I in 1989 to open an official window of dialogue between the two churches. An official declaration on Christology was issued in 1989 explaining that the Christological confessions of the two churches were in agreement, despite the historical and verbal differences that have occurred over the past centuries. For more than a decade this dialogue process has been successfully carried forward and established agreements on various topics, such as the early history of the St.Thomas Christians, episcopacy and the like.
But it is painful to the misinterpretation of some members about the meeting of these two heads. Some are propagating that Indian Orthodox Church and Catholic Church are going to unite. Yes, if Holy Spirit willing these Churches are going to unite in Christ, but not an amalgamation of Indian Orthodox Church by Roman Church. The unity between the Churches is the wish, will and Prayer of Jesus Christ because He is still praying “that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us……..”.But we should look back to the History and try to understand what was the nature of ancient Church. To understand the ancient Church, go back to the pages of the New Testament, specifically to the Book of Acts, and the birth of the Church at Pentecost. On that day the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles and those gathered in the upper room, and by afternoon some three thousand souls believed in Christ and were baptized. The Scriptures record that when the first Christian Community began, “they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers” (Acts 2:42).From Jerusalem, faith in Christ spread throughout Judea, to Samaria (Acts 8:5-39), to Antioch and to the Gentiles (Acts 11:19-26).Soon, there were new converts and new Churches throughout Asia Minor and Roman Empire as recorded in Acts and the Epistles.The Church, of course, was not simply another organization in Roman society. The Lord Jesus Christ had given the promise of the Holy Spirit to “guide you into all truth” (John 16:13).With the fulfillment of that promise beginning with Pentecost, the Church bore more than mere institutional status. She is not an organization with mystery, but a mystery with organization, St.Paul called the Church “a dwelling place of God in the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:22).The Church is a dynamic organism, the living body of Jesus Christ. She makes an indelible impact in the world, and those who live in her life and faith are personally transformed. But the New Testament also reveals that the Church had her share of problems. All was not perfection. Some individuals within the Church even sought to lead her off the path the apostles established, and they had to be dealt with along with the errors they invented. Even whole communities lapsed on occasion and were called to repentance. The Church in Laodicea is a vivid example (Revelation 3:14-22).Disciple was administered for the sake of purity in the Church. But there was growth and maturation, even as the Church was attacked from within and without. The same Spirit who gave her birth gave her power for purity and correction, and she stood strong and grew, eventually invading the whole of the Roman Empire.
I. History of the Early Church upto AD 451
The ancient Church used the title “Orthodox” against the Gnostics, Montanists, Arians and Nestorians to qualify it as the Church having the undefiled faith and their opponents are the heretics. This Church had five main centers at Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, Jerusalem and Rome. Today the heads of these Churches are called either Patriarch (Antioch, Constantinople, and Jerusalem) or Pope (Alexandria and Rome). The Metropolitans in the early church was considered as one of many bishops who were equal to each other in rank, power and function.Between 313 and 55o A.D , the Bishop of Rome came to be acknowledged as the first among equals. But, beginning with Pope Gregory’s accession to the Episcopal throne in the Rome in the year 590 AD, the Roman bishop began to claim his supremacy over other bishops. The historical events during this era conspired to enhance the reputation of the bishop of Rome. Rome had been the traditional center of authority for the Roman world for half a millennium and was the largest city in the West. After Constantine moved the capital of the Empire to Constantinople in 330AD, the center of political gravity shifted from Rome to that city. This left the Roman bishop as the single strongest individual in Rome for great periods of time, and the people of that area came to look to him for temporal as well as spiritual leadership whenever a crisis faced them. The emperor at Constantinople seemed to be remote from Rome and its problems, but the bishop was near at hand to exercise effective authority in meeting political as well as spiritual crises. When the imperial throne in the West fall into the hands of the barbarians after 476, and other Italian cities became the seat of temporal power, the people of Italy came to look to the Roman bishop for the political as well as spiritual leadership. Slowly the Bishop of Rome starts claiming the Petrine theory based on Mathew 16:16-18. According to this theory, St Peter had been given “ecclesiastical primogeniture” over his fellow apostles, and his superior position had been passed on from him to his successors, the bishops of Rome, by apostolic succession.
Of the five great metropolitan Church leaders-in Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople and Rome-only the Patriarch of Constantinople and the bishop of Rome lived in the cities of the world consequence by 590 AD. The bishop of Jerusalem lost prestige after the Jewish rebellion against Rome during the second century. Alexandria and Antioch rapidly declined in importance and were lost Christendom when they were over run by the Mohammedian hordes in the seventh century. The bishop of Rome and of Constantinople were left as the two most prominent clerical leaders by 590 AD. The Council of Constantinople in 381 recognized the primacy of the Roman see. The Patriarch of Constantinople was given the “primacy of honor next after the Bishop of Rome” according to the third canon of the council of Constantinople. Leo I, who occupied the episcopal throne in Rome between 440 and 461, was the ablest occupant of that chair until Gregory I took that position in 590. His abilities won for him the name “great”. He was the first to be called “Papas” from which the word “Pope” is derived.
The ancient Church was divided into two kinds of Christians as a result of the Council of Chalcedon ( AD451).The councils main agenda was to discuss about the Person of Jesus Christ, i.e to say how the divinity and humanity were united in Jesus Christ. The council adopted a doctrinal thesis, which was accepted one group and rejected by the other group. Those who rejected the Council’s decision were called the Non-Caledonians and even today the Churches of Egypt, Syria, Ethiopia, Erithrea, Armenia and India are known by this name; they are also called the Oriental Orthodox Christians. On the other side the Christians of the major portion of the Roman Empire accepted the Council of Chalcedon and they were referred to as the Caledonians.
II. The Great Schism: Disagreement between East and West
During the Middle ages there were frictions within the Chalcedonian group and ultimately it led to a division of the Chalcedonians in1054; the Church of Rome (Roman Catholic Church) stood against the Eastern Christianity (Churches of the Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire).Numerous doctrinal, political, economic, and cultural factors were working to separate the Church into East-west division, two major issues ultimately emerged.1. That one man, the Pope of Rome, considered himself the universal bishop of the Church, and2. The addition of a novel clause to the Nicene Creed.
H.H Moran Mar Baselius Marthoma Paulose II
Pope Francis
III. The reasons of the Schism of the Church to East and West
1. Papacy: Among the twelve, St.Peter was early acknowledged as the leader. He was the spokesperson for the twelve before and after Pentecost. He was the first bishop of Antioch and later bishop of Rome. No one challenged his role.After the death of the apostles, as leadership in the Church developed, the bishop of Rome came to be recognized as first in honor, even though all bishops were equals. But after nearly three hundred years, the bishop of Rome slowly began to assume a role of superiority over the others, ultimately claiming to be the only true successor to Peter. The vast majority of the other bishops of the Church never questioned Rome’s primacy of honour, but they patently rejected the Roman bishop’s claim as the universal head of the Church on earth. This assumption of papal power became one major factor in rending the Roman Church, and all those it could gather with it, from the historic Orthodox Church.
2. The Political Factors:The church in the east was never able to be as independent as that in the west because it was under the eye of the emperor, and because it had to cope with the Greco-Roman tradition of culture which was preserved in the East during the time the West was going through the cultural chaos of the Dark ages. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the church in the west faced no great political rival on the imperial throne and grew stronger as it faced the problems associated with the cultural chaos that surrounded the fall of the empire.
When Constantine moved his capital to Constantinople in 330, he paved the way for political and finally, ecclesiastical separation of the church in to East and the west. Theodosious put the administration of the Eastern and Western areas of the Empire under separate heads in 395. With the fall of the Roman Empire in the west in the late fifth century this division was completely realized. The church in the East was under the Jurisdiction of the emperor, but the pope in Rome was too far away to be brought under his control. In the absence of effective political control in the west, the pope became temporal as well as spiritual leader in times of crisis. This gave to the two churches an entirely different out look concerning temporal power.
3. The intellectual and Doctrinal Thinking: The intellectual outlook of the West also differed from that of the East. The Latin west was more inclined to consider practical matters of the polity and had little formulating Orthodox dogma. The Greek mind of the East was more interested in solving theological problems along philosophical lines. Most of the theological controversies of between 325 and 451 arose in the East, but same problems caused little difficulty in most cases in west.
About the middle of the second century the problem of when to celebrate Easter arose to mar relations between the two sections of the Church. Differences of the opinions regarding this question always made amicable relations between the two groups.
4. Cultural factors:Another difference between the two Churches concerned celibacy. Marriage of all Parish clergy below the rank of bishop was permitted in the East, but in the west the clergy were not allowed to marry. Disputes even arose on some occasions over the wearing of beards. The priest in the west could shave his face, but the clergyman in the East had to wear a beard.
5. Addition to the Nicene Creed: A disagreement concerning the Holy Spirit also began to develop in the Church. Does the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father or does He proceed from the Father and the Son?
In 867 Phoyius, the Patriarch in the East, charged Pope Nicholas I and the Church in the West with heresy because West had the filoque clause in its form of the Nicene creed. In the west theologians held that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Son as well as well as from the Father. The east would not accept this idea. Our Lord Jesus Christ teaches, “But when the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me” (St.John 15:26).This is the basic statement in the New Testament about the Holy Spirit “proceeding”, and it is clear : He “proceeds from the Father”. Thus, when the ancient council at Constantinople (A.D 381) reaffirmed the Creed of Nicea (A.D 325), it expanded that Creed to proclaim these familiar words: “And in the one living Holy Spirit, the life giving Lord of all, who proceeds from the Father, and who with the Father and Son is worshiped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets and the apostles”.
Centuries later, in the 9th Century, in a politically motivated move, the Pope of Rome unilaterally changed the universal creed of the Church (The Nicene Creed), without an ecumenical Council, regarding Holy Spirit into “Holy spirit proceeds from the Father and Son”. Though this change was initially rejected in both East and West even by some of Rome’s closest neighboring bishops, the Pope managed to eventually get the West to capitulate. The consequence, of course, in the Western Church has been the tendency to relegate the Holy Spirit to a lesser place than God the Father and God the Son. The change may appear small, but the consequences have proven disastrously immense. This is issue, with the Pope departing from the Orthodox doctrine of the Church, became another instrumental cause separating the Roman Church from the historic Orthodox Church, the New Testament Church.
6. The Iconoclastic controversy:Thus a series of controversies, beginning with the Easter controversy of the second century, embittered relations between the East and West. With each dispute the hostility increased. The iconoclastic controversy in the Easter Church in the eighth and ninth centuries caused many hard feelings. In 726, Leo III, as Emperor of the East, forbad any kneeling before pictures or images, and in 730 he ordered all except the cross removed from the churches and destroyed so that the Mohammedans might have no chance to accuse the Christians of idolatry. This attempt at lay revival in the Eastern church ran into the vested opposition of the parish and monastic clergy. In the west the Pope and even the Emperor Charlemegane took a stand in favor of the use of visible symbols of divine reality. This interference by the west in the affairs of the Church in the East increased the antagonism between the two areas. The church in the west continued to use pictures and statues in worship; the Church in the East, however, eliminated statues but kept icons, usually pictures of Christ which were to be accorded reverence but not the worship that belongs to God alone.
7. Unnecessary intervenes of Roman Pope to the internal affairs of the East: The people of the East particularly resented the attempt by Pope Nicholas I in the middle of the ninth century to interfere with the appointment of the Patriarch of the Church in the East, even though it may have been justified on moral grounds. Though Nicholas was not successful, his interference, in what many in the East felt was a matter for the East alone, intensified the bad feeling between two Churches.
Conflict between the Roman Pope and the East mounted-especially in the Pope’s dealings with the Patriarch of Constantinople. The Pope even went so far as to claim the authority to decide who should be the bishop of Constantinople in marked violation of historical precedent, No longer operating within the government of the New Testament Church, the Pope appeared to be seeking by political means to bring the whole Church under his dominion. In 1053 all of these differences and bitter feelings focused around what was apparently a minor matter. MicheaelCerularius, Patriarch of Constantinople from 1043 to 1048, condemned the Church in west for the use of the unleavened bread in the Holy Eucharist. Such use had been a growing practice in the West since the ninth century. Pope Leo IX sent Cardinal Humbert and two other legates to the East to end the dispute. The differences of opinion widened as the discussions went on . On July 16, 1054, the Roman legates finally put a decree of excommunication of the Patriarch and his followers on the high altar of the Cathedral church of Saint Sophia. The Patriarch was not to be outdone and there upon he excommunicated the Pope of Rome and his followers. Thus the second great schism in the Christianity after Chalcedon Synod 451, broke the unity of the Church once again.
The Pope, of course, had no legitimate right to do this, but the repercussions were staggering. Some dismal chapters of Church history were written during the next decades. The ultimate consequence of the Pope’s action was that the whole Roman Catholic Church ended up divided from the New Testament faith of Orthodox Christianity. The schism has never been healed. As the centuries passed, conflict continued. Attempts at reunion failed, and the Roman Church farther from its historical roots.
IV. Latter History: Further Divisions the West
During the centuries after A.D 1054, the growing distinction between East and West was becoming indelibly marked in the history. The Eastern Church (Both Oriental and Byzantine Orthodox Churches) maintained the full stream of New Testament faith, worship, and practice-all the while enduring great persecution from both Islamic
forces and also from her western counterpart.( See the crusades, I will narrate about crusades latter).The Roman Catholic Church(Western Church) bogged down in many problems. Then, less than five centuries after Rome committed itself to its unilateral alteration of doctrine and practice, another upheaval occurred-this time inside the western gates.
Although many in the west had spoken out against Roman domination and practice in earlier years, now a little-known German monk Martin Luther inadvertently launched an attack against Roman Catholic practices which ended up affecting world history. His list of Ninety Five Thesis was nailed to the Church door at Wittenberg in 1517, signaling the start of what came to be called the protestant Reformation. Luther had intended no break in Rome, but he could not be reconciled to its papal system of government as well as other doctrinal issues. He was excommunicated in 1521, and the door to future unity in the West slammed shut with a resounding crash.
The reforms Luther sought in Germany were soon accompanied by demand of Ulrich Zwingli in Zurich, John Calvin in Geneva, and hundreds of others all over Western Europe. Fueled by complex political, social, and economic factors in addition to the religious problems, the Reformation spread like a ranging fire into virtually every nook and cranny of Roman Catholic Church. The ecclesiastical monopoly to which it had grown accustomed was greatly diminished, and massive division replaced unity. The ripple effect of that division impacts even today as the Protestant movement continues to split.
If trouble on the European continent were not trouble enough, the Church of England was in a process of going its own way as well. Henry VIII, amidst his marital problems, replaced the Pope of Rome with himself as head of the Church of England. As a decade followed decade in the West, the branches of Protestantism continued to divide. There were even branches that insisted they were neither Protestant nor Roman Catholic. All seemed to share a mutual dislike for the Bishop of Rome and the practices of his Church, and most wanted far less centralized forms of leadership. While some, such as the Lutherans and Anglicans, held on to certain forms of liturgy and sacrament, others, such as the Reformed Churches and the even more radical Anabaptists and their descendants, questioned and rejected many ideas of hierarchy, sacrament, historic tradition, thinking they were freeing themselves of only Roman Catholicism. To this day, many sincere, modern, professing Christians will reject even the biblical data that speaks of historic practices are “Roman Catholic”. To use the old adage, they threw the baby out with the bathwater without even being aware of it.
V. New Doctrine the Roman Pope: Immaculate Conception of Theo Tokos
Again in the year 1854 December, Pope Pius IX, the Pope of Rome, pronounced a new decree. “we, by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul and by that invested in us do, to the honour of the Holy and undivided Trinity, for the glory and adornment of the Virgin Mother of God for the exaltation of the Catholic faith, and the advancement of the Christian Religion Declare and Pronounced and define that the doctrine with holds that the Blessed virgin Mary, in the first of her conception, has been, a special grace and privilege of Almighty God and in views of the merits of Jesus Christ, The savior of the human race, preserved and exempted from every stain of original sin, is revealed God, and consequently is to be believed firmly and inviolably by all the faithful”. Orthodox Church views this as violation of the ancient faith of the Church by the Roman Catholic Church because we cannot have any biblical evidences or historical proofs in the Church for proving the immaculate conception of St Mary.
VI. So we can some up the major differences between the Roman Catholic Church and Historic Orthodox Church as follows:
The Orthodox Churches do not accept the supremacy of the Pope. They believe that reach regional Church should be administratively autocephalous (having its own head) and the highest authority in each Church is its own Synod of Metropolitans rather than anyone outside. They regard the Roman papacy as a denial of the Apostolic constitution of the Church.
The Orthodox Church believes that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, while Roman Catholic Church state that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.
The Orthodox Church does not accept the Infallibility of the Roman Pope.
Orthodox Church rejects the immaculate conception of St Mary, a new dogma introduced by Roman Pope in the year 1854
While the Roman Catholic Church accepts more than 25 Councils, the Oriental Orthodox Churches accept only three Councils as Ecumenical, namely Nicea (325), Constantinople (381) and Ephesus (431).
Thus, while retaining in varying degrees portions of foundational Christianity, neither Protestantism nor Catholicism can lay historic claim to being the true New Testament Church. In dividing from the Orthodox Christianity (Eastern Christianity), Rome forfeited its place in the Church of the New Testament. In the divisions of the Reformation, the Protestants-as well-meaning as they might have been –failed to return to the New Testament Church.
7. Rays of Hope
The Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, also known as the Indian Orthodox Church, is an autocephalousOriental Orthodox Church. This Church was founded by St. Thomas, the apostle of Jesus Christ. The primate of this Church is ‘His Holiness the Catholicos of the East and Malankara Metropolitan’ who is also the spiritual, temporal and ecclesiastical head of the Church. The Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church has parishes within India and across the world, tracing its origin to the first century evangelical activity of St. Thomas, the apostle.
It is always a matter of Joy, when the kinders lived in unity, and the meeting shepherds of the Indian of Orthodox Church and Roman Catholic Church increases our joy. Please understand it is not a matter of re unity, because it is Roman Catholic Church went out from the Historic Church and deviated from the early faith of the New Testament Church. Orthodox Church always maintained the uncorrupted faith of early Christianity. If this fact they understand, the Roman Catholic Church can correct their doctrinal errors and come back to the fellowship of Orthodox faith and fellowship. Because we are one in Christ. God bless.
References:
Christianity Through the Centuries, A History of the Christian Church by Earle E Cairns PH.D, Chairman of the Department of History Wheaton College, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapis, Michigan,1954
Introducing the Orthodox Church, an article from Orthodox Study Bible
A Study on St Mary, written by Dr. Paulose Mar Gregorios and Dr. Geevarghese Mar Osthathios, Publised by Kottakkal Publications 1959
A Guide to The Orthodox Liturgy and Faith, by Dr.Punnose U Panoor, Published in the year 1994.