At the end of September 2024 in Paderborn, Germany took place a meeting of the St. Irenaeus Joint Orthodox-Catholic Working Group. The theme of this year’s meeting was “Schisms as an intra-church phenomenon: on the way to a typology”. It was the twentieth meeting in a row, which marked a milestone in the development of this informal but important form of Orthodox-Catholic dialogue.
The group was founded in 2004 in the context of a crisis in the activities of the “Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church”, which is the official form of dialogue at the highest level and in which Orthodox representatives are appointed by each individual local church. Unlike this Commission, members of the St. Irenaeus Group are invited to its activities on the basis of their individual theological abilities and achievements. Despite this unofficial status, the Group “still acts with the intention of promoting Orthodox-Catholic dialogue at the international level”.
One of the key initiators of creating the Group was the Johann-Adam-Möhler Institute for Ecumenism, based in Paderborn. That is why communiqués are systematically posted in several languages on the website of this institute after each of the twenty meetings. A Director of this Institute, Dr. Johannes Oeldemann, was the Catholic Co-Secretary of this Group for all twenty years. Thanks to the initiative of Archimandrite Cyril Hovorun, a member of the Group since 2008, all these communiques have been translated into Ukrainian.
During these twenty years, there have been quite noticeable changes in the membership at the personal level. In particular, Archbishop Job Getcha was a member of the Group in 2004-2017, until he was forced to withdraw from the Group due to his appointment as the Orthodox Co-Chair of the aforementioned International Commission for theological dialogue. Likewise, Metropolitan Youhanna Yazigi terminated his membership after his election as Patriarch of Antioch and All the East in 2012.
At the same time, there are a number of members of the group who have been working in it for all twenty years. In addition to the already mentioned Johannes Oeldemann, this is also the Catholic co-chairman, Bishop Gerhard Feige, who held this position all the years and delegated his power only in 2024. It is also worth mentioning Grigorios Papathomas, who began his activities in the group in 2004 as an ordinary member, and in 2023, already in the rank of Metropolitan, he became its Orthodox co- Chairman.
The main goal of the Group was formulated in its first communique in 2004: “We see it as our genuine task, by means of an international working group which transcends linguistic and cultural boundaries, to investigate the profound differences in mentality, ways of thinking and of doing theology which are related to current problems, to understand their character, and to try to see how both traditions can enrich each other without losing their own identity”.
Saint Irenaeus of Lyons was chosen as the patron saint of the Group because he is revered both in the East and in the West. In his life, he united both parts of the Christian world in a peculiar way: he came from Asia Minor (that is, from the East), and acted as a bishop in Lyons (that is, in the West). Also, thanks to his work “Against Heresies”, he is known as one of the defenders of the purity of the Christian faith.
An outstanding result of the Group’s activity was publication in 2018 of its study “Serving communion. Re-thinking the relationship between primacy and synodality”. While for centuries these two concepts characterized the peculiarities of the Western and the Eastern Christianity, respectively, here they are treated as two concepts that can exist only in a complementary way. The text of this document was published in more than ten languages, including Ukrainian and Russian.
In 2017, as part of the Group’s meeting in Rome, its members met with Pope Francis. Already then, the Pope announced with joy that proclamation of St. Irenaeus as a doctor of the Catholic Church was being prepared. This happened in January 2022 – Saint Irenaeus entered the list of the Church doctors with the title “Doctor of Unity” (Doctor Unitatis).
Returning to the topics of this year’s Group’s meeting, it is worth noting that the topic of schisms is important not only for Ukraine, but also for both branches of traditional Christianity. One of the interesting reports was the study of specific movements with schismatic potential, which did not turn into an open schism. In particular, these are the theological brotherhoods “Zoe” and “Soter” in Greece.
Also, interesting terminological remarks are noted in the communique of the last meeting: “Our ecumenical work consists in understanding how some of the contrasts between our traditions, instead of being considered as contradictions, can again become manifestations of a legitimate and complementary diversity of theological expression of the common apostolic faith of the Orthodox and Catholic Churches”.
One can find materials of the work of the St. Irenaeus Group on the website https://moehlerinstitut.de/aktivitaeten/irenaeus-arbeitskreis/
