On his return from Jerusalem , where he met with Pope Francis at the Holy Sepulchre, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, has revealed an important appointment for unity between Catholics and Orthodox: a gathering at Nicaea in 2025, where the first real ecumenical council of the undivided Church was celebrated.
Speaking exclusively with AsiaNews, Bartholomew says that together with Pope Francis “we agreed to leave as a legacy to ourselves and our successors a gathering in Nicaea in 2025, to celebrate together, after 17 centuries , the first truly ecumenical synod, where the Creed was first promulgated”.
This is a most welcome development. the early ecumenical councils hammered out a conciliar understanding of Christology. What will this one work on? Soteriology?
Some early misreadings aside, this is starting to look like a plan for a Kumbaya meeting. If that is true, it will have all of the real importance of your weekly meeting of the WCC.
I pray that we may all be represented there — it’s about time we can all get together.
Readers of this blog will certainly recognize that this initiative represents only the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Unless the other Orthodox groups are involved, most notably Moscow which is NOT going to be amused if ignored, the get-together will represent very little indeed.
While I tend to agree with #2 above, the image of Francis and Bartholomew praying together at the Holy Sepulcher gives me pause. Maybe God has something planned we can’t see.
I also agree with #4, but tend to regard a little something to be better than nothing at all.
So the bottom line is to avoid giddy, not to mention naive, optimism, but also a dour nay-sayer pessimism that locks out the possibility of a divine surprise. Prayerful realism is probably the best attitude.