The Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church

The Orthodox churches had been preparing a general council since a conference at Rhodes in 1961, under a rule that every text must be agreed unanimously (Holy and Great Council, Towards the Council). In January 2016 their primates decided to hold it in June at the Orthodox Academy of Crete, and took off the agenda the questions on which they had not agreed, among them how autocephaly is proclaimed (Holy and Great Council, Towards the Council).

In the first half of June four churches announced that they would not take part (Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, Statement of June 2016). The Bulgarian synod asked on 1 June for a postponement, objecting among other things that topics it thought important were missing from the agenda and that texts could not be edited during the council, and resolved not to attend otherwise (Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, Decision of 1 June 2016). The synod of Antioch said that it would not take part while its communion with the Patriarchate of Jerusalem remained broken in a dispute over jurisdiction (Holy Synod of Antioch, Statement of 6 June 2016 considerations 8–9 and decisions 1–3). The Georgian synod asked for postponement until unity was reached and resolved that its delegation could not attend; its objections included the drafts on marriage and on relations with other Christians (Holy Synod of the Georgian Orthodox Church, Minutes of 10 June 2016). Patriarch Kirill of Moscow had met Pope Francis at Havana that February (Joint Declaration of Francis and Kirill (Havana, 2016) 1). His church’s synod held that the absence of even one recognised autocephalous church was an insurmountable obstacle, supported postponement, and resolved that its delegation could not take part in a council held without the consent of several churches (Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, Statement of June 2016).

The council opened on Pentecost Sunday, 19 June, with a liturgy at Heraklion (Holy and Great Council, Towards the Council News Bulletin Number 1). Bartholomew I of Constantinople signed its encyclical as chairman, followed by the primates of Alexandria, Jerusalem, Serbia, Romania, Cyprus, Greece, Poland, Albania, and the Czech Lands and Slovakia (Holy and Great Council, Encyclical signatures). It issued six documents, on fasting, relations with other Christians, autonomy, the diaspora, marriage and the church’s mission, with an encyclical and a message (Holy and Great Council, Official Documents).

The encyclical says that the Orthodox Church comprises fourteen autocephalous churches and that autocephaly must not operate at the expense of unity (Holy and Great Council, Encyclical I.5). Among later councils “of universal authority” it names that of 1484, convened, it says, to refute the unionist Council of Florence (Holy and Great Council, Encyclical I.3). The document on other Christians states that the Orthodox Church is the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church, whose unity cannot be disturbed, and that she nonetheless “accepts the historical name” of other churches and confessions not in communion with her (Holy and Great Council, Relations of the Orthodox Church with the Rest of the Christian World 1, 6). Dialogue with them, the encyclical adds, has never meant compromise in matters of faith (Holy and Great Council, Encyclical VII.20).

The council’s message calls the proclamation of Orthodox unity its first priority and records a proposal that such a council meet every seven or ten years (Holy and Great Council, Message preamble and 1). The Russian synod had judged that the ground for convening it, the consent of all the primates, was absent (Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, Statement of June 2016). The question of autocephaly had been left off the agenda (Holy and Great Council, Towards the Council); it returned within three years over Ukraine.