Pope Leo’s apostolic letter, In Unitate Fidei (“in the Unity of Faith”), raises serious concerns over its treatment of core Catholic teachings. The letter, dated November 23, concerns the 1700th anniversary of the First Council of Nicea in 325, and was written in preparation for the recently concluded papal visit to Turkey, where the Holy Father celebrated that anniversary as the guest of Bartholomew I of Constantinople. While there is much that is true and genuinely edifying in the letter, the Holy Father disturbingly suggests that the Church move beyond “theological controversies that have lost their raison d’être” to develop “common prayer to the Holy Spirit” with non-Catholic Christians, and twice even references a “universal Christian community” that appears to encompass both Catholic and non-Catholic churches professing the Nicene Creed: a sort of “concentric circles” ecclesiology that makes the true Christian Church something larger than the actually universal (catholic) Church — which is also One, Holy, and Roman.
The Holy Father wrote,
We must therefore leave behind theological controversies that have lost their raison d’être in order to develop a common understanding and even more, a common prayer to the Holy Spirit, so that he may gather us all together in one faith and one love.
Many commentators suspect — and I am among them — that the “theological controversies” the pope has in mind include the millennial divide between the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox communions over the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son, the Filioque (cf., e.g., “Is the Filioque Being Set Aside?” by Murray Rundus). Two things in particular lend credence to this interpretation of the text: First, the Holy Father has more than once now omitted the Filioque in public recitations of the Creed. Second, in the document itself, the Creed is quoted without the Filioque (“Consequently, the Creed took the name ‘Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed,’ and now states [emphasis mine]: ‘I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets.’”) Now, it is an undeniable matter of history that neither the First Council of Nicea in 325 nor the First Council of Constantinople in 381 inserted the Filioque in the creed. (In response to the Macedonian heresy, Constantinople I added to the Nicene Creed concerning the divinity of the Holy Ghost; the resultant creed is called, properly, the “Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed”. This is the creed we recite every Sunday.) What keeps this from being an “argument from silence” is that at this point in the text, we are referred to footnote ten, where Pope Leo tells us,
The statement “and proceeds from the Father and the Son (Filioque)” is not found in the text of Constantinople; it was inserted into the Latin Creed by Pope Benedict VIII in 1014 and is a subject of Orthodox-Catholic dialogue.
This is true as far as it goes, but it omits one crucial and enormous fact: The millennium old Latin formula, Filioque, is Catholic dogma. In 1274, the Second Council of Lyons defined, “We confess that the Holy Ghost proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son, not as from two principles, but as from one principle, not by two spirations, but by one single spiration” (Denz. 460). Later, in 1439, the Council of Florence defined the Filioque with a much longer, more explanatory formula, and then went on to state, “We define in addition that the explanation of the words ‘Filioque’ for the sake of declaring the truth and also because of imminent necessity has been lawfully and reasonably added to the Creed” (Denz. 691). The Eastern churches were abundantly represented at Florence, as the ratification of this ecumenical council of the Church,
was accepted by the [Eastern] emperor, the pope, the patriarch of Constantinople, the patriarch of Alexandria, the legates of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, fifteen metropolitans, and, in total, over seven hundred Latin bishops and two hundred Greek bishops. And out of all the bishops present, only two of them, Mark of Ephesus and Isaias of Stauropolis, refused to sign the union. (“The Ecumenical Authority of the Council of Florence,” by Benjamin John. Mr. John relies heavily in that article on Father Thomas Crean’s masterful volume, Vindicating the Filioque: The Church Fathers at the Council of Florence, which abundantly and rigorously proves the ecumenical character of the Florentine Council — by both Eastern and Western standards — and shows its fidelity to the doctrine of the Eastern Fathers concerning the Holy Ghost.)
For more on the Filioque, please see:
This lamentable downplaying of dogma is, of course, nothing new in the revolutionary times in which we live. That is true generally; specifically, the current setting aside of the Filioque (if that is indeed what the Holy Father is doing) is redolent of the 1990s ecumenical initiatives that downplayed the same dogma during the pontificate of Pope John Paul II. But we must emphasize: Controversial or not, the word Filioque represents a fundamental doctrinal divide, not merely a semantic disagreement between East and West. Yes, it is tragic; yes, it is horrible; but framing such disputes as outdated “controversies” both fails to look reality in the face and reflects a dangerous indifferentism with an accompanying confusing ecclesiology — of the “concentric circles” variety mentioned above. While the language of In Unitate Fidei does not exceed previous papal statements in similar contexts, it continues a concerning trend toward doctrinal ambiguity in what can only be a fruitless pursuit of Christian unity. Such unity, it must be said, depends on truth.
I have made the point before that ecumenism is a dangerous game, one with built in traps. In the interests of unity with one group, we may well offend the sensibilities of another. (Examples abound: When indifferentist statements regarding the necessity of belief in Jesus Christ are made to appease “the other great monotheistic religions,” some Evangelicals become justifiably offended; the inverse may well happen: in asserting our shared belief in Christ as a non-negotiable, along with the truth that the New Testament fulfills the Old, suddenly the other side is offended; and keeping both Jewish and Muslim “dialogue partners” happy at the same time can require all the skill of a showman who can juggle an egg, a bowling ball, and a running chainsaw while riding a unicycle.) The example I have most often used to show the prickly nature of ecumenical diplomacy involves offending the Orthodox by downplaying the necessity of the sacramental and liturgical economy instituted by Christ in our ecumenical outreach to Protestants. (On such points, we are in general agreement with the Orthodox.) But, by an almost comical turn of events, in the case of the Filioque, the matter is reversed, for all the mainline Protestant denominations actually have the Filioque in the Nicene Creed — you know, the thing THE POPE put there!
As I finish these lines, I would like to reiterate and amplify a point made earlier: The apostolic letter’s two references to a broader “universal Christian community” beyond the Catholic Church are particularly alarming as such formulations undermine genuine Catholic unity and unicity, and this erroneous ecclesiology lays the foundation for dismissing the Filioque as mere semantics akin to an eggheaded debate about angels dancing on pinheads. If what we want is Christian unity (and we do!), then we need to go about it the right way. It can only be achieved in that single unity that Jesus Christ has already established in His one Church, as Pope Pius XI pointed out in Mortalium Animos. To the Catholic Church and to her alone did Jesus Christ entrust the sacred deposit of faith; in her alone, therefore, do Christ’s faithful abide in unitate fidei.
