From Berlin to Bagdad and Babylon

by J. A. Zahm

To envisage the State as separated from the Church, politics as distinct from religion, as we do in the West, is as alien to a Syrian or an Armenian patriot as it is to a Persian mollah or an Ottoman grand vizier. For this reason the Eastern Churches, like the theocratic government of Islam to which they have so long been subject, have always attributed so paramount an importance to everything that specially bears on their national life and character. And they have been confirmed in this view by their age-long treatment by the Sublime Porte which, in organizing its Christian subjects, made religion the basis of their nationality. Thus the Armenian Church was made Ermeni Millet—the Armenian Nation; the Orthodox Church, regarded as inheriting the name of the Roman Empire, became Rum Millet—the Roman nation—while Catholics of the Latin rite are known as Latin Millet—the Latin Nation. And so it was with the Churches of Egypt, Syria, Mount Lebanon, and the various other Christian Churches in the vast dominions of the Ottoman Sultan.[331]

From the foregoing it is seen that among Eastern Christians it is not their particular church that counts so much as their millet. This, although quite an artificial nation, is as dear to them as our fatherland is to us, while in comparison all matters of dogma and theology are quite secondary. For this reason it is that there are rarely any conversions from one Eastern Church to another. And for this reason, too, it is that—as has well been observed—“for a Jacobite to turn Orthodox would be like a Frenchman turning German.”

This loyalty of the schismatic Christians in the East to the traditions and national spirit of their forebears explains the exceptional conservatism of the divers Churches to which they belong—the tenacity with which through the ages they have clung to their particular rites and customs and retained unchanged their special liturgies since schism first separated them from their mother Church. And it is this intense conservatism, this undying loyalty to their millet that constitutes the greatest barrier to the reunion of the Eastern Churches with the primatial Church of Rome.

Then, too, there is ever before them the terror-inspiring specter of Fragistan—Europe—which portends disasters innumerable. It is the horrid old phantom of the land of mists and shadows which has been haunting the East since the Trojan War—which reappeared with all its horrid accompaniments of rapine and death during the invasion of Alexander the Great and still again during the repeated and long-continued campaigns of the Crusaders. These days of unalterable woe have so seared the hearts and memories of the peoples of Western Asia that, like the Trojans who feared the Greeks even when bearing gifts, they have an inborn distrust of the Feringees,[332] of their Churches, their schools, their laws, their governments.

It is because the Holy See is so thoroughly cognizant of all the fears and jealousies and animosities of the divers Eastern Churches and because she fully realizes the importance which they severally attach to their millet that she has always been so prudent and considerate in her dealings with them and so disposed to conciliate them and remove everything that might excite suspicion or distrust. Always yearning for a return of the misguided children who so long ago left her fold, she is ever ready to make any reasonable concession, so long as it does not affect the deposit of faith of which she is the divinely appointed custodian. Hence it is that, in her eagerness to further the cause of the reunion for which she has always so ardently longed, she has, in her supreme wisdom, ever been ready to allow each Church and each millet to retain its own laws and customs, rites and liturgy, language and hierarchy. And it is because of this wise and benevolent policy that recent years have witnessed the return to Rome of so many thousands of Eastern schismatics—often whole dioceses at a time—to the venerable Mother Church from which they had been lured by heresy and schism in the long ago. So far, then, as the Eastern Churches mentioned are concerned, it would appear from the foregoing pages that the day is not very distant when, in great measure, heresy shall be adjured and schism healed.

The Orthodox Churches

Just as it is not true to speak of an Eastern Church, so it is still less true to speak of an Orthodox Church. For, whereas the Eastern Churches we have considered are only seven in number, the Orthodox Churches are no fewer than sixteen. But in their origin a very marked difference is to be noted between the Orthodox and other Churches of the East.

The Nestorian and Monophysite Churches, as we have noted, originated in certain specific heresies of Nestorius and Eutyches. But the false doctrines of these heresiarchs, as has been observed, contributed less towards the separation of the Copts, Syrians, and others than did the intense nationalism of these peoples who wanted only a pretext under the guise of heresy for concealing their disloyalty to the Byzantine Empire. Few of the rank and file knew anything about the theological issues involved in the false doctrines of their leaders. The majority of them were almost as ignorant of their real bearing on Catholic dogma when the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon issued their famous decrees as they are to-day. With possibly a few exceptions not even the clergy or the bishops of the Eastern Churches are now aware of what was the cardinal issue of their schism or are able to give anything more than the vaguest and most shadowy reason for their continued separation from the Church of Rome.

The Orthodox Churches—which embrace those Christians who use the Byzantine rite but are not in communion with the Catholic Church—unlike the Eastern Churches of which we have spoken, had their origin not in heresy but in schism, pure and simple. Many and various were the causes of this schism but the chief of them were the jealousies and ambitions of the Emperors and Patriarchs of Constantinople. And these jealousies and ambitions began at an early date and gradually developed until they eventually culminated in the fatal schism precipitated by Photius and Cerularius. For

After that Constantine the Eagle turned