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Encyclical “Unto the Churches of Christ Everywhere,” 1920
Patriarchate of Constantinople
Chapter 1
“See that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently” (1 Pet. i. 22).
Our Church is of opinion that a closer intercourse with each other and a mutual understanding between the several Christian Churches is not prevented by the doctrinal differences existing between them, and that such an understanding is highly desirable and necessary, and in many ways useful in the well-conceived interest of each one of the Churches taken apart and of the whole Christian body, as also for preparing and facilitating the complete and blessed union which may some day be attained with God’s help. Our Church, therefore, deems the present time most opportune for bringing forth and considering in common this important question. For although, owing to old prejudices, traditions, and even pretensions, it is probable that there may even now arise or be brought forward the same difficulties which had so often frustrated the work of union, nevertheless, seeing that it is now question for a mere contact and understanding, the difficulties, in our mind, will in any case be less serious, and if there be a good will and disposition, neither can they nor ought to constitute an invincible and insuperable obstacle.
We therefore on the establishment of the League of Nations, which has now been effected with good omen, consider the matter to be both feasible and more than ever timely, and we beg, full of hope, to herein state summarily our thoughts and opinion as to how we conceive this intercourse and understanding, and how do we consider it possible, and we earnestly seek and invite the judgment and opinion thereon both of the other brothers in the East and of the venerable Christian Churches in the West, wheresoever they be.
We accordingly think that the following two things can most greatly contribute to the attainment of such a desirable and useful intercourse, and to its accomplishment and public manifestation:
And first of all we deem as necessary and indispensable the removal of all mutual distrust and friction between the various Churches caused by the tendency, to be seen among some of them, of enticing and converting followers of other confessions. For no one ignores what is taking place, unfortunately, even now disturbing the internal peace of the Churches, and especially of those in the East, on which new afflictions and trials are thus brought through their own co-religionists; and how great, as compared with the trifling results obtained, is the hatred and antagonism produced by this tendency on the part of some to proselyte and entice the followers of other Christian confessions.
And thus sincerity and, above all, confidence being once restored as between the Churches, we consider as the most important thing that love between the Churches must be revived and strengthened, so that they may no longer look upon each other as strangers and enemies, but as relatives and friends in Christ, and as “fellow-heirs and of the same body and partakers of His promise in Christ by the Gospel” (Eph. iii. 6). And when the several Churches are inspired by love, and place it before everything else in their judgment of the others and in relation towards each other, they then will be able, instead of increasing and widening the existing dissensions, to lessen and diminish the same as far as possible; and by promoting a constant brotherly interest in the condition, the stability, and the prosperity of the other Churches, by their eagerness in watching what is happening in those Churches, and by obtaining a more accurate knowledge of them, and by their readiness to give, whenever occasion arises, a hand of help and assistance, they then will do and achieve many good things to the glory and profit both of themselves and of the whole Christian body, and to the advance of the matter of the union.
And this friendship and kindly disposition towards each other can, to our mind, be demonstrated and more especially proved in the following manner: (a) By the acceptance of a uniform calendar, for the simultaneous celebration of all the great Christian feasts by all the Churches; (b) by the exchange of brotherly letters on the great feasts of the ecclesiastical year, when it is customary so to do; and on other exceptional occasions; (c) by a more friendly intercourse between the representatives of the various Churches wherever they be; (d) by an intercourse between theological schools and the representatives of theological science, and by the exchange of the theological and ecclesiastical periodicals and works published in each Church; (e) by the exchange of students between the seminaries of the different Churches; (f) by convening pan-Christian conferences to examine questions of a common interest to all the Churches; (g) by the impartial and in a more historical way examination of the doctrinal differences both from the chair and in theological treatises; (h) by mutually respecting the customs and usages prevailing in each Church; (i) by allowing to each other the use of places of prayer and of cemeteries for the funeral and burial of persons belonging to other confessions dying in foreign lands; (j) by the settlement of the question of mixed marriages between the various confessions; (k) and, finally, by the mutual support of the Churches in the work of strengthening religious belief, of charity, and the like.
Such a frank and vivid intercourse between the Churches will be all the more beneficial to the whole body of the Church, as many dangers threaten no longer any particular Church, but all of them generally, because these dangers attack the very foundations of the Christian faith and the very composition of Christian life and society. For the terrible world war which has just come to an end, as it has brought to light many unhealthy things in the life of Christian nations, and revealed in many cases a great absence of respect for the very principles of justice and humanity, so, too, it has not only made the old wounds worse, but, so to speak, opened new ones of a more practical character, and against which great attention and care is naturally needed on the part of all the Churches. The daily gaining ground of alcoholism; the increase of superfluous luxury under the pretext of rendering life more beautiful and more enjoyable; the voluptuousness and lust hardly covered by the cloak of freedom and emancipation of the flesh; the prevailing unchecked licentious indecency in literature, painting, the theatre, and in music, bearing the respectable name of development of good taste and cultivation of fine arts; the deification of wealth, and the contempt of higher ideals: all these and the like, as they produce serious dangers to the constitution of Christian societies, are questions of the day, requiring and calling for a common study and co-operation on the part of the Christian Churches.
Finally, it is the duty of the Churches which adorn themselves with the sacred name of Christ not to forget and neglect any longer His new and great commandment of love, and still to remain behind piteously of the political authorities, which, applying truly the spirit of the Gospel and of the justice of Christ, have already instituted under happy auspices the League of Nations, for the defence of right, and the cultivation of love and harmony among nations.
For all these reasons we, hoping that the other Churches would share our thoughts and opinion as above stated on the need of promoting, at least for the beginning, such a co-operation and intercourse between the Churches, request each one of them to make known to us in reply its thoughts and opinion thereon, so that after defining by common consent and in agreement the object, we may safely proceed in common to its realization, and thus “speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ: from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love” (Eph. iv. 16).
At the Patriarchate of Constantinople in the month of January, in the year of Grace one thousand nine hundred and twenty.
The locum tenens of the Patriarchal Œcumenical Throne:
Metropolitan of Brussa: DOROTHEUS.
The Metropolitan of Cæsaria: NICOLAUS.
Cyzicus: CONSTANTINUS.
Amassia: GERMANUS.
Pissidia: GERASSIMUS.
Angyra: GERVASIUS.
Aenos: JOACHIM.
Vizya: ANTHIMUS.
Silivria: EUGENIUS.
Saranta Ecclesiæ: AGATHANGELUS.
Tyrolœ and Serentium: CHRYSOSTOM.
Dardanelles and Lampsacos: EIRINAIUS.