Orientale Lumen: The Churches of the East

"Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity."

 - Psalm 133:1

Patriarch Kirill I of Moscow and All Rus' celebrating the Triumph of Orthodoxy. Photo courtesy of the Moscow Patriarchate.

What most people in the West don't realize is that there is more to Christianity than just Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. Sadly, most people have only vague intimations of what lies beyond the religious peripheries of Western Europe, recognizing perhaps only the multi-colored domes of the Kremlin or the strange religion of a Greek aquaintance, neither Protestant nor Papist but still Christian. In fact, these architectural and sociological anomalies are the fruit of rich, venerable rescensions of Christianity whose history and unique theologies, while seemingly obscure to most Westerners, are inextricably bound up with that of our own tradition. They are the Orthodox Churches, both Chalcedonian and non, and they sprawl from the frozen steppes of Sibera to the shores of the Nile, equally at home in a Muscovite pent-house as they are in an Ethiopian cave. Totalling at just under half a billion adherents, they comprise one quarter of the Christian religion and their roots run deep into antiquity.

Gotta love the Greeks.

To the untrained (or truly knowledgable) eye, the Orthodox really aren't all that different from Catholics. They're heavy on ritual, the veneration of saints, monks, candles, etc, etc. You see, dear reader, there's a reason for that. For the first millennium of Christianity, Catholics and Orthodox were members of the same Church. Eastern and Western Christians worked together to hash out what exactly what it meant to be a Christian, meeting in councils and dying in the colosseums, side by side. Unfortunately, from the very start there were strains between the East and West, mainly over the jurisdiction of the Pope and certain theological nuances. Like any family dispute, there were a lot of misunderstandings, yelling and the occasional rape and pillage of a city. Eventually the "two lungs" of the Church, as they were termed by Bl. John Paul II, severed ties with one another, and the second millennium has been one defined by mutual distrust, paranoia and bigotry.

Father Lazarus, an Australian Marxist who converted to Coptic Orthodoxy and became a cave-dwelling hermit.

So, why is it important that we bridge this divide? Simply enough, because God wills it. The night before He died, the Messiah prayed to the Father, "...that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me (Jn. 17:21)." As has been repeated ad nauseam by the ecumenical movement, the fact that Christians are separated from one another is a scandal, one that leads ignorant souls to make excuses for not becoming Christian. If you try hard enough, you can their pitiful griping, "That's exactly whats wrong with religion. Not even the Christians can agree on what they believe." So, ever the good evangelists, we as Christians must rob these poor souls of excuses for not converting. One way of doing that is by fostering unity with the Churches of the East.


So, the first step to breaching this divide is by developing familiarity with our separated brethren. How do we do this?


1. Visit an Orthodox Church: Its not hard, especially in my neck of the woods (Eastern Pennsylvania) and its permitted by Church authorities. Be prepared, however, for a world of difference between Orthodox Liturgy and what you're used to in your run-of-the-mill Catholic parish. Be prepared also, if inquired as to your present religious affiliation, for a recitation of a millennia's worth of grievances against "Old Rome", as some of them refer to the Catholic Church.