The first reviews of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople’s visit to the United States are trickling in, and they can be summed up in one word:
Huh?
The 57-year-old patriarch from the East– a cipher to most Americans, Orthodox and otherwise–left plenty of people scratching their heads this week, as his motorcade raced around the capital from event to event, flags flying and sirens blaring.
As part of his job description, Bartholomew has direct authority over the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. This is his first visit to the archdiocese since he became patriarch in 1991, so it is the first chance for most of his flock to hear from him directly.
But Greek Orthodox clergymen and laypeople who hoped to get some sense of his attitudes toward the controversial issues swirling within their church had to do some pretty creative exegesis of his remarks. The patriarch wasn’t talking in-house politics.
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Bartholomew is also, by ancient accord, given the place of honor among the world’s 15 autonomous Orthodox Christian patriarchs, and therefore his words carry some weight for all Orthodox.
But members of the many jurisdictions in the U.S. who want to know how Bartholomew feels about prospects for a united Orthodoxy in America must be equally unsatisfied. In one breath, the patriarch spoke of Orthodox worshiping together, “Americans as Americans”; in the next breath, he talked about maintaining distinct ethnic identities.
And anybody who hoped for further clarification wasn’t going to get it from the media, whom the patriarch suddenly froze out on his second day in town, despite the best efforts of his staff to get him to keep his appointments.
That, certainly, is his prerogative, and perhaps admirable for a man who regularly refers to himself as “Our Humble Person.” But coming without warning or explanation, the moratorium on interviews smelled as much of panic as principle.
To be fair, these are small nits; for each one, there was another moment, such as the patriarch’s address at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, where he won the warmth and admiration of a grateful crowd.
In the most anxiously awaited moment of his Washington visit, however, the patriarch was at his most perplexing.
On Tuesday night, Georgetown University, one of America’s pre-eminent Catholic universities, presented Bartholomew with an honorary doctorate. He was chosen in part, according to the citation, “in recognition of his contributions to the unity of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Sister Churches.”
The patriarch had just finished reaching out to Jews, and taking part in the first Orthodox-Muslim dialogue in the U.S. Now he was joined on the stage by a fair sampling of the country’s ranking Catholics, with great hopes that he would be responding to the pope’s 1995 call to speed up reconciliation between East and West.
It will take some time to sort out the implications of Bartholomew’s response. But it sounded, on first reading, like a splash of cold water on the whole idea.
Archbishop Agostino Cacciavillan, the pope’s representative in the United States, sat immediately next to the lectern and craned his neck back, looking bemused. Then again, he often looks bemused. Next to him, Cardinal James Hickey of Washington looked grave, but that, too, is not out of the ordinary.
The patriarch talked abstractly and at great length of the “ontological transfiguration and transformation” that would be needed before unity was possible. Then everybody applauded politely and processed out of the room.
Outside, no one seemed to know quite what to say about the speech.
Was Bartholomew’s address a spiritual wakeup call, a bold and heartfelt attempt to strip away the pleasantries on the surface of the dialogue so that it can move on to core differences of faith?
Was he trying to send a message to the Vatican that things were moving too fast for him?
Was he trying to soothe his critics in the Orthodox world, assure them that he was not about to give up any of their mutual heritage? Does he hope that by pushing away from the West a little, he can help patch up the rift that has developed between Constantinople and Moscow, where the newly revitalized Russian Orthodox Church has been flexing its muscle in the last few years?
Next week, the patriarch will arrive in Chicago for a three-day visit. No major policy addresses are planned, and some of the logistical kinks of his tour should be worked out by then.
But Chicago is a city that seems to breed its own peculiarly American brand of religion. It is a locus of progressive Greek Orthodox activism, and there may be more pressure for Bartholomew to come out from under his veil and speak plainly, even as believers celebrate his ancient mysteries.
East meets West is one thing–East meets Midwest may be a whole different world.