By RAYMOND DE SOUZA, KM
Part 33
From the two previous articles on the self-proclaimed Orthodox Churches, we may conclude without fear of contradiction that they do not compose the true Church founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ. They possess elements of His Church, yes, and very important ones indeed, but as they are today they do not make up the One Church Jesus founded to distribute the fruits of His Redeeming Sacrifice on Calvary.
A first feature that proves our conclusion is that they are not one. The various Orthodox Churches have never claimed they are united in government, although unity is a distinctive mark of the Church of Christ. We have seen it ad nauseam that He founded one Church, not many. The Orthodox Churches claim their individual independence from one another, which shows by their own deeds that they are not a “Church,” but an assembly of churches. They claim to have patriarchs, but there is no agreement among them regarding seniority and primacy. Of course, they are not as messed up as the 40,000-plus Protestant churches and sects, but, all the same, there is no unity.
Moreover, their disagreements are not only regarding government: They are about doctrine as well. For instance, the Churches of Constantinople and Russia do not believe that a Catholic or a Protestant is able to administer valid Baptism. Only they can do it. Other churches disagree, and accept valid Baptism from other non-Orthodox churches. There are other points of disagreement, but they require no particular attention.
From the lack of unity in government and doctrine a natural consequence emerges: There is no guarantee of infallibility among those churches. None of them claim to be infallible! Nobody is completely sure about which doctrine or practice is guaranteed to reflect the Mind of Christ. Before they broke away from Rome, they fully accepted the Pope’s authority to teach on matters of faith and morals with competence and guarantee of freedom from error. They were truly united for over 1,000 years. But after their separation (schism), they recognized no authority to decide matters of faith and morals with infallible certitude.
They admit they are acephalous — without a single head. Issues of morality are particularly crucial these days, and the Orthodox have no central authority to decide on them. They disagree on contraception, divorce, in vitro fertilization, the artificial prolongation of life, and a myriad of other moral issues brought about by the development of technology in modern times.
By way of example, in 1997 the patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew, was asked about their teaching on contraception, which the Catholic Church condemns as illicit. His rather candid reply reveals the total lack of authoritative teaching in their churches:
“According to a long-held tradition, the Orthodox Church avoids dictating or making categorical decisions of a social or ethical nature” (Time magazine, May 5, 1997, p. 50). It is a tradition all right, but a very weak and superficial one, as if moral issues depended on the individual preference, without any common teaching for all Christians.
Only an infallible Magisterium is able to teach with authority moral issues that guide the Christian people to virtue and away from sin. The Orthodox churches do not possess such a Magisterium. Their neutrality and confessed inability to teach on moral matters was completely unknown before 1054 when they cut themselves off from Rome. Such an inability to teach on moral issues was particularly unknown to the early Church fathers, who accepted the Pope’s authority.
Conclusion: Their neutrality represents a clear renunciation of teaching authority, which goes directly against Christ’s great commission given to the apostles: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:19-20).
Another feature is that the ensemble of Orthodox churches is not Catholic in the proper sense of the word. They confine themselves to certain races and do not spread the faith to all nations, as Jesus commanded. The Russian church is mainly composed of Russians, the Greek church of Greeks, the Ukrainian churches of Ukrainians, the Bulgarian church of Bulgarians, etc., etc. plus of course their descendants in the lands where they have migrated. Their churches resemble national churches rather than churches with a universal calling to convert the world. They have very little membership of peoples of other races and cultures. Besides, they are naturally small in numbers, as they are confined to their own nation or culture. Consequently, the missionary efforts of the Orthodox are totally negligible, as opposed to Christ’s command to make disciples of all nations, and not merely of their own.
The Orthodox churches are not fully apostolic. They claim to descend from the apostles, but do not possess apostolicity in its full sense. And why is that so? In which ways is their apostolicity true and in which ways is it not? They are apostolic because of two main reasons: One, their Holy Orders do come from the apostles, and they were united with Rome for one thousand years, and have maintained the Holy Orders after the schism; and two, their doctrines are largely apostolic, but not all, as we have seen before.
But they are not apostolic because of their disunity with the Successor Peter, the Prince and Head of the apostles, established by Christ while He was here with us on earth.
The Orthodox churches kept that sacred unity for a thousand years, but finally in 1054 they broke it and divided themselves into a variety of national churches, subject to the local political powers. The Orthodox, broken up as they are into independent churches, admit that, unlike us Catholics, they have no central See communicating apostolic authority to the rest.
Yes, they still maintain that their doctrine is apostolic; and yet no individual Church has any certainty that its doctrine is truly apostolic. Unfortunately, they will remain so to the end of time, unless one of them can show that its authority to teach is derived from the apostles and is guarded by the gift of infallibility.
The average level of virtue among the practicing laity of the Orthodox Churches is unquestionably high. This is explained by the fact that they have preserved almost all the doctrines and devotions of the Catholic Church; that they have valid episcopal and priestly orders, and so still use many of the means of grace. After all, they do have all seven sacraments. Yet it must seem singular even to the Orthodox themselves that, since they snapped the link with Rome, their church appears to have remained in spiritual stagnation.
One does not hear of miracles and their saints have not been authenticated by a rigorous process as in the Catholic Church. There are no new and beautiful devotions, or new religious orders for the needs of the times, such as we expect to find in a truly living Church that enjoys God’s blessing.
Ripped To Fragments
Finally, what is the root defect of the Orthodox Church? It is its rejection of a supreme spiritual authority, the papacy — the great unifying bond of the Church of Christ. At the time of their separation, the Orthodox formed one body, united around the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
Their unity, however, was not a unity of obedience, but of reverence, and has been ripped to fragments by secular princes who required that each kingdom should have its own separate and subservient church.
Next article: Finding the true Church of Jesus Christ.
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(Raymond de Souza is an EWTN program host; regional coordinator for Portuguese-speaking countries for Human Life International [HLI]; president of the Sacred Heart Institute, and a member of the Sovereign, Military, and Hospitaller Order of the Knights of Malta. His website is: www. RaymonddeSouza.com.)
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