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Handout #101 |
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Joint declaration made by Pope Paul VI and the Patriarch Athenagoras (7 December 1965) |
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Among the obstacles in the way of the
development of these brotherly relationships of trust and esteem (between
the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church) is the memory of painful
decisions, acts and incidents which in 1054 A.D. came to the climax with the
sentence of excommunication pronounced against the patriarch Michael
Cerularius and two other figures by the legates of the Roman See, led by
Cardinal Humbert, legates who were themselves then the object of a similar
sentence passed by the Patriarch and Synod of Constantinople.
Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras I, in his synod, confident of expressing the common desire for justice and the unanimous feeling of love among their faithful, and recalling the precept of the Lord, 'When you present your offering at the altar... 'Mt. 5:23-24, declare with one accord that they: (a) Regret the offensive words, the unfounded accusations and the despicable acts which, from one side or the other, marked or accompanied the sad events of this period; (b) Equally regret and blot out from memory and from the realm of the church the sentences of excommunication which ensued, the memory of which even in our day acts as an obstacle to reconciliation in love, and consign them to oblivion; (c) Finally, deplore the disturbing precedents and subsequent events which under the influence of various factors, including a failure to understand and mutual distrust, finally led to the effective schism in communion. Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras I, with his synod, are aware that this reciprocal gesture of justice and pardon is not enough to put an end to the differences, older or more recent, which exist between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church and which by the action of the Holy Spirit, will be surmounted through the purification of hearts, through regret for the wrongs of history, and a positive concern to arrive at a common understanding and expression of the apostolic faith and its demands ... |
