Theologian says Eastern Catholic churches key to unity with Orthodox

Published: 2003-10-31

ROME (CNS) -- Orthodox Church leaders are right to see the existence and faith of the Eastern Catholic churches as the "crucial knot" preventing progress toward Catholic-Orthodox unity, an Italian theologian said. However, for the Catholic theologian, the answer is not to do away with the Eastern Catholic churches but to hold them up as models of communities that have maintained their Eastern rites while accepting the primacy of the pope as an essential element of being church. Father Nicola Bux, vice president of the Ecumenical Institute of Bari, Italy, and a consultant to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, spoke at an Oct. 30 conference marking the release of a colleague's book. For the author of the new book, Franciscan Father Adriano Garuti, "primacy is not a problem to be overcome, but a gift to be accepted," Father Bux told the conference. Father Garuti's book, "Essays on Ecumenism," was introduced at Rome's Lateran University.

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