WILL THERE BE AN ALL-ORTHODOX COUNCIL?

This assembly will involve all the Orthodox churches and its resolutions will be binding on them. The need to hold such a pan-Orthodox gathering with such authority has long been evident, because the world has undergone radical changes since the last ecumenical council, with new churches appearing in the Orthodox world and acute problems accumulating. Suffice it to say that the last, Seventh, Ecumenical Council was held in Nicaea in 787, in other words 1,212 years ago, at a time when Christianity was a single whole, so that among the Seventh Council's active participants were Roman Catholic hieararchs.

Preparations for this worldwide assembly are anything but easy and hence slow. It is necessary to single out from the long list of pressing problems the most important, affecting all the interested parties; resolutions must be drafted to satisfy all the churches. Some believe this practically impossible, because the universality of Orthodoxy has long turned into an abstract notion as every Local Church has its own lifestyle, problems, and religious practice. Thus, services celebrated at the temple of Jerusalem's Orthodox Patriarchate have considerably more differences from those in Moscow than from a Catholic Mass. On the other hand, it is evident to many that the Orthodox community will preserve its identity only if it really unites.

Skeptics maintain that the Ecumenical Council will never happen. And even if it does take place no decisions will be made truly binding on one and all. Most likely they will be in the form of recommendations. They further believe that, should any resolutions be passed, no one will adhere to them. Regrettably, there are solid grounds for such expectations, one of the reasons being that today's domestic and foreign policy waged by certain Orthodox churches has too many differences. Thus, Patriarch Bartholomew I supports the Ecumenical movement - rapprochement of different Christian confessions - while many clergymen of the Greek, Georgian, Serbian, and Russian Orthodox churches vehemently oppose it. There are also other essential divergences.

One of the sharpest, most painful topics to be discussed by the Council is formulated as follows: "Autocephaly and Autonomy within the Orthodox Church and Methods of Achieving it." The fact remains that in Orthodoxy there are no universally recognized canonical rules and procedures whereby by a church subordinated to the "Mother Church" can receive independence. In the meantime, over a thousand years since the last Ecumenical Council the number of Autocephalous churches has doubled (7 in the eighth century and 14 now). Almost all the newly established independent churches, like the ones in Moscow and Greece, fought for this status over decades, even centuries, and it was quite some time before they were accepted by other churches, meaning that until then they were uncanonical or illegal.

At long last, if and when the Ecumenical Council is convened, it will adopt such clearly formulated rules and procedures, allowing subordinate churches to become independent. It does not take an ancient sage to realize that big churches are not interested in such rules and procedures, and this is especially true of the Russian Orthodox Church, because among its member churches one finds a number of candidates for absolute autocephaly, including the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Belarusian Exarchate, and the Church of Moldova. Thus, far from all churches would really want to witness another Ecumenical Council after an interval of 1,212 years.

Evidence of this is found in recent church developments. A regular Inter-Orthodox Conference was to take place in Switzerland to discuss preparations for the Ecumenical Council and deal with autocephaly and church autonomy in particular. Representatives of all Orthodox churches arrived, and then it transpired that the Moscow Patriarchate's delegation would not attend the sessions. Why? Because of the presence of the "dissenting" Estonian church (part of that church broke away from Moscow and placed itself under the Ecumenical Patriarch's omophorium. Metropolitan Chrysostom of Ephesus presiding over the session did his best to settle the conflict but failed. Finally it was decided to adjourn the discussion, although no date was set and most other delegates spoke for completing Council arrangements, the sooner the better.

It is interesting to note that the Moscow Patriarchate's external church relations department headed by Metropolitan Cyril offered no comment. In fact, what happened in Switzerland became known through the media and as reported by other Orthodox churches, particularly the Serbian newspaper Orthodoxy. In a word, it is difficult to say whether the beginning of the third millennium will be marked by the Ecumenical Orthodox Council or not.