Perspectief 2016-34

2016-34 Learning ecumenically from each other 43 Com ment issues will result beneficial for all of us for two main reasons: first of all, none of us has ready-made answers to the challenges that deserve our most serious attention today. Second, for in the attempt to elaborate a common response we all can simultaneously give to and learn from one another. In so doing, there will be a growth within our own tradition as well as in the relationships between us. Conclusion By way of conclusion I will make a brief remark on to the recent Great and Holy Council of the Orthodox Church, held in Crete in June 2016. Convened after more than fifty years of preparation, the Council was supposed to show that the principle of synodality or conciliarity in the Orthodox Church is not just a theory but a fact and a distinguished feature of its entire existence. Unfortunately, the gathering in Crete has revealed the very serious conciliar crisis of the Orthodox Church: the absence of four autocephalous Churches from the Synod is a sign of the magnitude of such a crisis that reveals a fragmented, rather than a united and symphonic Orthodoxy. As a matter of fact, we Orthodox need to re-learn from ourselves and from our tradition how to embody and live more deeply synodality. And in this process of re-learning synodality, we should also let other traditions guide us and give us an impetus to strengthen even more (yet keeping with the basic principles of our ecclesiology) the visible factor of unity in the Church.