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Christodoulos of Athens and all Greece, With or without Christianity?

Em. Macron, Rediscovering the Path to Europe

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Needless to say, the European landscape was not an integral whole in which the Christian Church worked towards the goal of the entry of that whole into, and its unification within, her own ideal of a regime. Sadly, the European landscape was torn by deep seismic chasms. The Church, as a historic presence, could not always remain aloof or operate at a distance from public sentiment. She could not always keep herself out of the pressures of secular power. Particularly in Western Europe, the Church herself developed into a distinct authority, thus breeding a disastrous anti-ecclesiastical spirit. In this way, although she fought to create a society of solidarity, an ecumenical republic, where all nations would live in peace and security, the Church herself found herself scheming breaches or collaborating in their occurrence.

Every man and woman of the Church feels deep grief for everything that the Schism between Rome and the Orthodox Church has been causing for centuries now. I do not mean specifically the Schism of the year 1054. The Schism was there well before, and in a number of different ways. Its consequences, however, did not consist only in endless theological feuds or, as has been said, "disputes between priests". The Schism brought disasters upon the peoples of Europe and still continues to traumatise them in their historic course. I do not think that up to this day there has been written a sincere and penetrating history of all the evils caused by the Schism to the Church, and to the life and culture of Europeans. Nevertheless, it is certain that, once this history is written, it will help us all realise how mortal a sin the Schism has been.

I shall not refer here to the ecclesiological aspects of the Schism. Instead I shall concentrate strictly on the subject of my talk, but let me just remind you that it was the Schism, both during its period of incubation and when, later on, it came out of the snake’s egg, which led to the pernicious division of Europe into Eastern and Western world, to the underestimation of and contempt for the one of these two worlds by the other, which, in turn, ended up in wars and disasters.

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     Cf. Nat Gerrs' Why Europe, where Archbishop Christodoulos' views are discussed. Cf. David Turner, Byzantium : The 'alternative' history of Europe  *  Pope Benedict XVI, The Papal Science * Bartholomew’s lessons of faith and intelligence * Al. Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

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