Реферат: Catholic

cuts the text would have betrayed the very message of the publication, beginning

with the title “Balamand Unia?” All the more so that the excluded passages carry a

reference to the previous work done by the Orthodox-Catholic Theological

Commission in Freising and Ariccia, which does not agree with the allegation of the

authors of the article that the Balamand Document was a fruit of some recent “plot”.

The newspaper also says that the document was signed by Hegumen Nestor

Zhilyaev, although, as we have mentioned earlier, this document was not intended

for signing or ratification by representatives of the Churches.

The term “Sister Churches” was introduced in the atheistic manner of the soviet

period and without due preliminary study. In this connection, the ecclesiological

basis of the Balamand document calls for some clarification, which we offer below.

Vatican II called the Orthodox Church a Sister Church, thus recognizing the blessed

nature of the Orthodox Church and the salvific nature of her sacraments. The

Orthodox Church, in her turn, always recognized the validity of the sacraments of

the Catholic Church. The evidence to that is the fact that the Catholic Christians are

accepted into the Orthodox Church by the so-called Third Order for joining the

Orthodox membership – not through Baptism, as non-Christians or sectarians, nor

through Chrismation, like the Protestants, but through repentance, like

schismatics. Roman Catholic clergymen are accepted in their existing orders to

which they had been ordained by the Roman Catholic Church.

It is no coincidence that Old Believers, who are also in schism from the Orthodox

Church are accepted back in the same manner as the Roman Catholic Christians.

This fact shows that despite serious fundamental differences on a number of

doctrinal and spiritual issues between the two Churches, Roman Catholicism in the

Orthodox mind and Tradition is viewed as a Christian community in schism with the

Orthodox Church which nevertheless has preserved apostolic succession.

It is precisely to clarify the nature of doctrinal differences and then overcome

them that the two Churches entered into theological dialogue with each other.

The Balamand Document adds nothing fundamentally new, but follows in the