The Christian Church is fundamentally
divided. Were it desirable to expose the internal feuds
which agitate all Christian societies, and the contradictory
doctrines of the sects which have revolted against the
Mother Church, they would form a sorrowful picture.
Yet conflicts and heresies have their
purpose. Indeed, as to doctrines which do not belong to the deposit of revelation, and which have not been
defined, controversy is permitted and the liberty of
the human mind is to be respected. As for heresy, St. Paul
tells us that it is necessary, in order that the
faith of believers may be well rounded and
enlightened.
But above all divisions, there is one more
serious, and which before all must attract attention because
of its importance and of the facts which have provoked it;
it is that which exists between the Oriental Catholic Church
and the Roman Catholic Church.
Every Christian heart must be saddened in
view of this separation, which has subsisted for so many
centuries between churches which have alike an apostolic
origin; which have, save one word, the same creed;
which have the same sacraments, the same priesthood, the
same ethics, the same worship. In spite of these elements of
union, division has been since the ninth century all
acknowledged fact between these churches. Upon whom recoils
the responsibility for this great religious and social
crime? This is one of the gravest questions upon which a
theologian can enter; he can not resolve it without bringing
to judgment one of these churches, without accusing it of
having despised the word of Jesus Christ, who made unity
a condition essential to the existence of his Church. It is
evidently only by the strangest perversion of Christian
common-sense that the division could have been provoked and
perpetuated. This is admitted in the two churches, Oriental
and Roman. For this reason they return upon each other the
accusation of schism, and are unwilling to accept before God
and before the world the responsibility which they both
regard as a stigma. One of the two must be guilty. For
notwithstanding reprehensible acts might be specified on
either side, these minor faults would not account for the
separation. Discussions upon secondary points, coldness,
occasioned by vanity or ambition, can engender only
transient controversies. To determine a fundamental and
permanent division, there must be a more radical cause and
one which touches the very essence of things.
It is not possible, then, to resolve the
question we have put without seeking this powerful and
deep-seated cause which has provoked the schism and kept it
alive to the present day. In approaching this question, we
have been struck at the outset by the difference that exists
between the reproaches which the two churches, Oriental and
Roman, urge against each other reciprocally. The latter
alleges that the Oriental Church separated herself (from
her) to satisfy a pitiful grudge, through interest, through
ambition. Such motives could, philosophically, explain only
temporary strifes. The Oriental Church, on the contrary,
assigns for the schism a motive radical and logical: she
affirms that the Roman Church has provoked it in seeking to
impose in the name of God an unlawful yoke upon the
Universal Church, that is, the Papal sovereignty, as
contrary to the divine constitution of the Church as to the
prescriptions of the œcumenical councils.
If the accusations of the Oriental Church
are well founded, it follows that it is the Roman Church
which is guilty. In order to enlighten ourselves upon this
point, we have investigated the relations of the two
churches before their separation. It is, indeed, necessary
to establish clearly the nature of these relations in order
to see from which side has come the rupture. If it be true
that the Roman Church sought in the ninth century to impose
upon the whole Church a rule unknown to the previous ages
and therefore unlawful, we must conclude that she alone
should bear the responsibility of the schism. We have
pursued the study with calmness and free from prejudice: it
has brought us to these conclusions:
(1.) The bishop of Rome
did not for eight centuries possess the authority of divine right which he has since sought to exercise.
(2.) The pretension of the bishop of Rome to
the sovereignty of divine right over the whole
Church was the real cause of the division.
We are about to produce the proofs in
support of these conclusions. But before presenting them we
think it profitable to interrogate the Holy Scriptures, and
examine whether the pretensions of the bishop of Rome to
universal sovereignty of the Church have, as is alleged, any
ground in the Word of God.