Uniate Churches - An Obstacle for the Unity of Churches?

Uniate Churches, Greek-Catholic Churches, Catholic Churches of Byzantine Rite or Eastern Catholic Churches are churches of the East which are under the jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome, the roman-catholic pope. They are in full communion of faith and sacraments with the Roman-Catholic Church, but retain their Eastern liturgical and canonical traditions inherited from their orthodox "mother churches". Political, sociopolitical or economic reasons often were the background to seek that unification with the see of Rome. However, the decisive point has probably been an ecelesiology which defined the unity of the church as unity under the Pope of Rome. Instead of bringing about the union between the Orthodox Church an the Roman Catholic Church, the division became deeper and new painful divisions resulted. The bilateral ecumenical dialogue between the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church nearly collapsed since the Uniate Churches have been admited again by the coverments of the former communist countries in Europe. the influence of polemic discussions has been very negative in this dialogue process, too. This research project is concentrated on the most important unions in Eastern and Middle Europe (1595/6 Brest- Litovsk, 1611 Krizevci, 1646 Uzhorod, 1700 Alba Julia) and it wants to show the main problems of the Uniate Churches from the beginning and the mastering of the present situation. Therefore research on the ecclesiological understanding of the involved churches is important. A study about present orthodox and roman catholic Ecelesiology and Soteriology likes to give an answer to the important question: Is it possibleto integrate the Uniate Churches in a Communio-Ecclesiology of sister churches? The result of this research project is understood as a contribution to the present ecumenical dialogue.

The aim of this research-project was to make a contribution to the bilateral dialogue between the roman-catholic church and the orthodox church. This dialogue was very fruitful (first as an inofficial dialogue of love and from 1980 on as official theological dialogue of the truth). Because of the problem of the so called uniatism which was nearly forgotten over many times, this dialogue run into troubles. That phenomen was the attempt of the roman- catholic church to reunite the christian church. Christians and churches of other denominations (especially orthodox) were forced to accept the pope of Rome as their jursidictional head. Result of that attempts again were broken communities and another schisma within the church. In middleeast and easteuropean area that fact took place between the 16. and the 18. century. The relation between the orthodox and the roman-catholic church got worse when the eastern catholic churches, which were forbidden during the communist regimes in Europe (e.g. in the Sowjetunion and in Romania), were reorganised after the fall of the communist system. Especially the orthodox were and are still afraid beeing pocket by the roman-catholic church. The tradition of the early church, accepting each other as sister churches is in danger, because for a long period the recognition of the pope of Rome as the universal head of the church was seen as the necessary condition for beeing a member of the right church and beeing saved (ecclesiology and soteriology). Nowadays this idea can be found in some official statements. This research-project showes the discrepancy between the positive developments and the painful retrogressions in the bilateral dialogue. On the positive side there are to be mentioned the results of the theological dialogue, both on international and on regional level. Also very positive milestones are the initiatives of pope John Paul II., his travels to mainly orthodox dominated countries and his asking for forgiveniss (Athens 2001). But other facts hinder the dialogue, for example the new formation of the new catholic diocesis in Russia and some statements about the term sister churches, done by the Vatikan. The project shows the the fundamentals of the ecclesiology of sister churches, pointing out successful results of regional theological dialogues. In this way the project is meant as a contribution to the bilateral dialogue.