The Eastern Catholic Churches and the Furtherance of Catholic-Orthodox Unity: Three Possible Paths

Abstract

AbstractAlthough the Eastern Catholic Churches are seen by many today as obstacles to full communion between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, history offers at least three possible ways for them to serve the cause of unity and become true bridgebuilders between East and West. First, the Eastern Catholic Churches could remain part of the Catholic Communion, but at the same time increasingly become “the Orthodox voice” within it. This, for example, was the role of both Melkite Patriarch Gregory II Youssef at Vatican I and Patriarch Maximus IV at Vatican II. Second, the Eastern Churches could continue to explore the possibility of a dual communion with both Rome and Constantinople, a state of affairs that appears to have existed in the Kyivan Church for several years prior to Brest. Third, the Eastern Catholic Churches could return to those Orthodox churches from which they originally sprang, serving within Orthodoxy as an antidote to the anti-Catholicism that currently poisons relations between East and West.