15.

 What is the meaning of the Great Schism?

            The Great Schism of 1054, that is, the breakaway of the Roman Church from the Church Universal, is the greatest tragedy to befall Christendom. For the benefit of those Christians outside Eastern Orthodoxy, Protopriest Victor Potapov's concise explanation of that event is provided here. Fr. Victor writes that:

In the year 752, Pope Zacharias anointed Pepin the Short, the chief steward of the Frankish kings, to be king, and thereby gave, as it were, the Church's blessing to the overthrown, carried out by Pepin in the Frankish kingdom, that removed the lawful Frankish king from power. For this, Pepin, in the year 755, took away from the Germanic tribe of the Lombards the lands conquered by them in Italy and delivered into the pope's hands the Ravenna Exarchate, which had previously belonged to the Byzantine Empire, and the keys to twenty-two cities. Thus, the pope was transformed from a subject of the Eastern Roman (Constantinopolitan) emperor into an independent secular sovereign, not dependent on any other sovereign, with an independent territory and with possession of supreme state authority on this territory.

This rapidly corrupted the morals of the papacy. The inner contradiction between the ascetic ideal and secular authority appeared as a dangerous enemy of the moral purity of the popes. It entailed a radical change not only in the status, but also in the behavior, in the intentions, in the aspirations, and in the modi operand of the Roman popes. Conceit, pride, lust for power, and the aspiration to subordinate all the local Churches to their authority, which had previously appeared in the behavior of the Roman popes only as tendencies, as sporadic phenomena, now wholly takes possession of the popes.

At first, the popes set themselves the task of strengthening their authority in those Western Churches — the African, Spanish and Gallic — which did not form a part of the Roman Church. Despite a certain resistance on the part of the African Church, the popes succeeded comparatively easily in securing the subordination of these Churches to themselves: great was the authority of Rome in these former provinces.

As for the Churches newly founded in Britain, Germany, and in the other countries of Western Europe by missionaries of the Roman bishop, the popes succeeded in subordinating them to their authority all the more easily, inasmuch as the idea of the supremacy of the pope in the Church was inculcated in them simultaneously with the preaching of Christianity.

The popes, while subordinating the Western Churches to themselves, were simultaneously taking measures in order to substantiate their authority, if not dogmatically, then at least juridically. For this, a collection of ecclesiastical juridical acts was compiled in the West at the beginning of the ninth century in the name of the authoritative Spanish sacred minister, Isidore. Since both the name of the compiler and the contents of the collection, as was later established, were spurious, it received the name “Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals.” The collection consists of three parts. In the first are fifty Apostolic Canons and sixty decretals of the Roman popes. Of these sixty decretals, two are partly falsified, while fifty-eight are altogether spurious. In the second part, among other spurious material, is the spurious donation of the city of Rome by the Emperor Constantine the Great to the Roman Pope Silvester. The collection was first published only at the end of the sixteenth century, and then scholars proved without difficulty the spuriousness of the documents that were in it. At the present time, even Catholic scholars do not recognize their authenticity. But at that time, the collection served as an authoritative basis for the development of ecclesiastical relations in the West, inasmuch as it was accepted on faith and enjoyed the authority of authenticity in the course of the Middle Ages. The popes began to cite the decretals of the collection categorically in substantiation of their rights to supremacy in the whole Church.

Pope Nicholas (858-876) began to cite the “Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals” first, inasmuch as he first formulated sharply and decisively the idea of papal omnipotence in the Church. But the East, naturally, did not recognize this omnipotence. Pope Nicholas I attempted to subordinate the East to himself in one swoop. But he did not succeed in this. As a consequence of this failure, a Church schism appeared: the first time in the ninth century, and finally in the eleventh century (1054).

The external history of the falling away of the Roman Church is such [Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy].

The year 1054 is assigned to the cataclysmic schism that plunged Western Europe into the darkness of heresy, the schism which produced the Roman Catholic Church. Afterwards, the continuing putrefaction of the Roman Church produced the thousands of Protestant Churches and their offspring.

            Regarding the 1054 date, it is largely symbolic and does not pinpoint the exact date of separation of the West from the East. Moreover, it cannot be maintained that the Roman Church ceased overnight to be a repository of ecclesial grace. Instead, it became spiritually ill, the disease of heresy spread, and the West gradually came to be detached from the rest of the body. The saints and various synods since that time attest to this fact. Speaking of the decline of Christianity in the West, Hieromonk Seraphim Rose remarks:

One might cite numerous manifestations of this remarkable change in the West: the beginnings of Scholasticism or the academic-analytical approach to knowledge as opposed to the traditional... approach of Orthodoxy; the beginning of the “age of romance,” when fables and legends were introduced into Christian texts; the new naturalism in art (Giotto) which destroyed iconography; the new “personal” concept of sanctity (Francis of Assisi), unacceptable to Orthodoxy, which gave rise to later Western “mysticism” and eventually to the innumerable sects and pseudo-religious movements of modern times; and so forth. The cause of this change is something that cannot be evident to a Roman Catholic scholar: it is the loss of the grace which follows on separation from the Church of Christ and which puts one at the mercy of the “spirit of the times” and of purely human ways of life and thought.

For a Western Christian, the explanation of the Great Schism in the textbook could lead to the mistaken notion that Rome's separation from the Church was nothing more than a fortuitous outcome of non-theological factors (historical and political) in the East and West that only secondarily spilled over into the theological realm. Such was not the case. Even though theological and non-theological matters alike were mixed together in the schism that cut the West off from Christ's Church, it was ultimately the theological issues that were the root of the schism — a point under-emphasized in the textbook, but made in the prefatory notes to the theology course. The same notes go on to explain that however deeply Christians in any age may be affected by historical events, the Church is not. The Church remains ever the same — immovable, unshakable and eternal — just as its Head, Jesus Christ, is.

            The prefatory notes also refer to the fact that all bishops are equal and that none is infallible. Bishops and their dioceses are protected from error and heresy by their obedience to the Church's Councils. Since these Councils are assemblies of all bishops and are under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, they are expressive of the conscience of the Church, which alone is infallible. When a bishop places himself above the Councils, he severs himself from the only real protection from error and heresy he has — these same ancient Councils, and he has no source of guidance of the Holy Spirit. Heresy and error are inevitable for such a bishop.

            Further explaining the Great Schism, the prefatory notes mention that all Orthodox Fathers presented their writings asking: Is this what the Scripture teaches? Is this how Sacred Tradition understands it? Is this how the previous Councils have defined it? They would then submit their writings to the conscience of the Church for its approval. Anyone disobedient to this way will separate himself from the Church, the notes state. And should this separation involve a bishop who takes a diocese or Patriarchate with him, this separation constitutes a schism. And the notes conclude, to be in schism is to be cut off — by one's choice and deed — from the Holy Church, and thus cut off from Christ.

            Metropolitan Anthony, former First Hierarch of the Russian Church in Exile, explains that it is not possible for there to be a split within or among the Churches. He states that from time to time, people have fallen away from the one indivisible Church, and in doing so, they ceased to be members of it. Thus, there was no “division” of Churches in 1054, but rather a “falling off.” If a “division” had occurred, it would have meant that after one unified Church had existed for one thousand years, there came into being not one but two Churches, something contrary to Christ's promise that the Church is one (Mt 16:18). According to this promise, the Church can never lose its unity, but will always remain one.

            The Church has experienced a succession of heresies and schisms from the very earliest times. A particularly long-lived separation began in the fifth and sixth centuries over Christological issues, when entire nations — Egypt, Ethiopia, Armenia, and large parts of the Syrian population abandoned the communion of the Orthodox Church. Rome's schism is therefore nothing new to the history of the Church. It is not the earliest schism, nor is it the longest one in duration; it differs only in its being the largest one in terms of the number of people who were severed from the Church.

            After the Great Schism of 1054, there were two different groups of believers — the Orthodox, who maintained the Apostolic Christian faith of their ancestors, and the Western papal Catholics, who after separating from the Apostolic Church developed with surprising rapidity into a religion different both from the pre-schism Western Christianity and Eastern Orthodoxy. As one historian noted, an early Christian would have felt at home in the Western Church of the eleventh century, but out of place in that of the twelfth century.

            The Latin Church has not come to terms with the terrible event of 1054 and falsely maintains that the Orthodox Church went into schism at that time. Rome adds that while Orthodoxy is schismatic, it is not heretical. That is, Rome teaches that Eastern Orthodoxy does not have false doctrines.

            Moreover, in an attempt to keep its flock from ever investigating Christ's true Church and becoming Orthodox, Rome claims that nothing essential separates Orthodoxy from the Latin Church, other than Orthodoxy's refusal to accept the “universal authority” of the pope. Beyond this matter, Rome teaches, any doctrinal differences are only “misunderstandings” because of incomplete formulations.

            In spite of Rome's claim that Orthodoxy went into schism, history is clear in showing that once Rome no longer looked to Sacred Tradition, to the ancient Councils, or to the Church Fathers — much to the opposition of the entire East, it set itself above these and attempted to define theological issues on its own. Thus Rome cut itself off from its only protection against error and heresy, and it ineluctably fell into heresy itself. Rome was no longer a part of the continuing unity of Christ's Church after the Great Schism of 1054. To this day, even though the Roman Catholic Church claims to be the true Church, it stands outside the boundaries of the one true Church that Christ established on earth. After 1054, the Orthodox Church is the only true continuation of the early undivided Church.