Реферат: Catholic

The document encourages churches “to create joint local commissions or make

effective those which already exist, for finding solutions to concrete problems and

seeing that these solutions are applied in truth and love, in justice and peace. If

agreement cannot be reached on the local level, the question should be brought to

mixed commissions established by higher authorities” (par.26) The document

continues: “It is necessary that Catholic and Orthodox bishops of the same

territory consult with each other before establishing Catholic pastoral projects

which traditionally form part of the jurisdiction of the Orthodox Church, in view to

avoid parallel pastoral activities which would risk rapidly degenerating into

rivalry or even conflict” (par. 29)

The above-mentioned examples make it absolutely clear that the Balamand

Document is no mysterious “Unia”; on the contrary, it is intended to lessen the

tension caused by the activities of the Greek Catholics.

This text is a provisional working document of the Joint Commission for the

Theological Dialogue, and because of that it was not signed by representatives of

the Churches. Hegumen Nestor Zhilyaev attended the Balamand meeting in 1993 as a

representative of the Russian Orthodox Church; that is why his name is mentioned

among the members of the Commission.

The document was published in Russian in 1995 in the ‘Unity” collection (vol.II), a

periodical issued by the monastery of the Nativity of the Theotokos in the Moscow

diocese, along with other documents related to Orthodox-Catholic theological

dialogue.

The reaction to the document among the Roman Catholic was rather complex;

some Uniate Churches – in Rumania, for example – greeted it with open hostility.

Bishop George Gutu, the Apostolic Administrator for the Greek Catholics in Rumania,

in 1994 sent a letter to Pope John Paul II criticizing precisely those parts in the

document where Uniatism was rejected as a method contradicting the tradition of

the two Churches, and accusing the Rumanian Orthodox Church of that “it does not

admit coopting the Rumanian Uniate Church by the Rumanian Orthodox Church by