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The Pan‐Orthodox Meeting at Rhodes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2024

Joseph Minihan
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Eight hundred electric lights brilliantly outlined the facade and cupola of the new market that looks out on the Mediterranean quayside. On the top of the building, angled eastwards, was a large illuminated X P (Chi Rho) symbol, surmounting the words, Pan-Orthodox Meeting of Rhodes 24.9 - 1.10.1961.

Rhodes gave a warm official welcome to the congress. Ecclesiastics and civic dignitaries spoke. There were dinners, concerts, trips. Perhaps the visiting naval vessels of the United States and Britain did introduce what someone described as ‘unfortunate over-tones’ to the atmosphere in which religious matters are best discussed. But, on the whole, everything was calm, apart from puzzled speculation among journalists and observers; the extra hundred or so attracted by the congress were easily absorbed among the sun-worshipping late season holidaymakers; taxis did a roaring trade; excitement seemed to be well contained within the closed church where the delegates met generally in private.

Religious inscrutability is intensified when ecclesiastics are bearded. Of the nine or ten Catholic priests on the island that week, four wore beards, but only Father Dumont, with the added advantage of his white Dominican habit, looked in place. The impression was forced on one that here was a man fully aware of the issues involved at Rhodes, who understood what the dignified prelates and their theologians were about: so far, an Orthodox might say, as a Latin can understand us.

Type
Research Article
Information
Blackfriars , Volume 42 , Issue 498 , December 1961 , pp. 507 - 516
Copyright
Copyright © 1961 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 The main headings of this list of subjects were:—I. Faith and Dogma. II. Divine Worship. III. Administration and Ecclesiastical Order. IV. The Relations of Orthodox Churches with each other. V. The Relations of the Orthodox Churches with other Christian Churches. VI. Orthodoxy throughout the World. VII. General Theological Subjects. VIII. Social Problems.

2 Cf. Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America: Ecumenical Patriarchate: Pan‐Orthodox Meeting of Rhodes. List of Subjects for a Future Re‐Synod. p. 5.

3 The so‐called Uniats constitute a special problem in church relations. As they were mentioned at Rhodes, this matter wd be touched on.

4 It is not widely known that there is a Catholic (Latin) Archbishop of Rhodes. He resides in Rome, and is entered in the Annuario Pontificio as impedito.

5 During Turkish domination, the Patriarch of Constantinople was the chief Greek ecclesiastic. As Greek independence was achieved, the National Greek Church was proclaimed by parliament in 1833. The Patriarch accepted the fact seventeen years later. Under the Turkish Government today, the Ecumenical Patriarch has to be a Turkish citizen, but he must also be of Greek descent to qualify religiously. With grand nostalgia, Greeks still look back to the days when Constantinople was the Greek city without equal.