Schism at the Phanar: Why the Ecumenical Patriarchate Has Broken Canonical Communion

By: Bishop Stephen

 The Orthodox Church does not measure her faith by sentiment, nor by political convenience, nor by the applause of the modern world. She measures it by fidelity: fidelity to the Apostles, to the Fathers, to the Ecumenical Councils, and to the received canonical order. When that order is strained or openly transgressed, the issue is not public relations. It is communion itself.

In recent decades, the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople has engaged in joint prayer services and public liturgical gestures with the Roman Catholic Church, often represented by the Bishop of Rome. These events are frequently presented as gestures of love, reconciliation, and historical healing. No Orthodox Christian should despise peace. The Lord Himself prayed that His disciples would be one (John 17:21). Yet unity divorced from truth is not unity at all. It is a sentimental mirage.

The matter before us is not whether Roman Catholics are sincere. Nor is it whether dialogue may occur. The question is narrower and more serious: can hierarchs of the Orthodox Church engage in shared prayer with those who are outside canonical communion, without violating the very canons that safeguard that communion?

The ancient canons speak with unsettling clarity.

The Apostolic Canons, received by the Church in the East as authoritative, state: “If any bishop, presbyter, or deacon shall pray with heretics, let him be suspended” (Apostolic Canon 45). Canon 10 likewise forbids even prayer with those excommunicated. These are not obscure marginal notes. They are foundational guardrails.

The local Councils reinforce the same principle. The Council of Laodicea (4th century) declares in Canon 33: “No one shall join in prayers with heretics or schismatics.” Canon 9 further prohibits participation in their liturgical assemblies. The logic is not cruelty; it is theological coherence. Prayer in the liturgical sense is an expression of ecclesial unity. To pray together is to confess together.

The Ecumenical Councils themselves presuppose this discipline. When Arians denied the full divinity of Christ, the Church did not hold joint services in the hope that shared hymnody would dissolve dogmatic difference. She anathematized error and restored communion only upon repentance and confession of the true faith.

One may object: “But these modern services are not concelebrations of the Divine Liturgy.” That distinction, while practically important, does not resolve the canonical problem. The canons do not specify that only Eucharistic concelebration is forbidden. They forbid prayer itself. The Fathers understood that liturgical prayer is not a neutral civic ceremony. It is the voice of the Church.

Rome today confesses dogmas that Orthodoxy cannot receive: papal infallibility (Vatican I), universal papal jurisdiction, the filioque added to the Creed, the Immaculate Conception, and developed doctrines of purgatory and created grace. These are not minor liturgical customs. They touch the nature of authority, the Trinity, and soteriology itself.

When Pope Leo XIV stands beside an Orthodox Patriarch in public prayer, the optics inevitably suggest a deeper unity than actually exists. Faithful Orthodox Christians, monastics, clergy, and laity, are left to ask: if Rome’s dogmas remain unchanged, on what theological basis is common prayer justified?

It is sometimes argued that these encounters are merely “prayers for unity,” not expressions of sacramental communion. Yet prayer is never merely symbolic in the Orthodox mind. The lex orandi, the rule of prayer, is the lex credendi, the rule of belief. What we pray reveals what we believe. The Fathers did not permit shared prayer precisely because they knew that liturgical participation blurs doctrinal boundaries.

The issue, therefore, is canonical and ecclesiological. The Ecumenical Patriarchate has historically been accorded a primacy of honor within the Orthodox world. Primacy of honor, however, is not primacy of doctrinal innovation. The Patriarch of Constantinople is not a universal bishop in the Roman sense. His authority is bounded by the same canonical tradition that governs every bishop.

If a hierarch openly disregards binding canons, what becomes of his canonical standing? Canonical legitimacy in Orthodoxy is not a political title; it is communion in the truth. The Church is not preserved by rank but by faithfulness.

One must tread carefully here. To declare an entire patriarchate “no longer canonical” is a grave assertion. Historically, canonical status is determined conciliar­ly. Individual bishops may err. Even patriarchs may fall into heterodox sympathies. The Church has endured such crises before. Consider the Arian controversy, when many episcopal sees were compromised. The faithful did not create parallel churches lightly; they clung to the confession of the Fathers.

Nevertheless, there comes a threshold where persistent, public, and unrepented canonical transgression raises profound ecclesiological concerns. If prayer with those outside the Church is repeatedly normalized, despite explicit canonical prohibitions, then the faithful are compelled to ask whether the ancient boundaries are being redefined without conciliar consent.

This is not a call to schism. Schism is always a wound. It is a call to sobriety.

The Orthodox Church does not reject dialogue with Rome. Theological commissions have labored for decades. Charity demands conversation. Yet dialogue must be conducted without liturgical ambiguity. The Church can speak to the heterodox. She cannot pray as though dogmatic divisions are already healed.

Some will protest that the canons were written in a different historical context. That is partially true. The fourth century did not face the ecumenical movement of the twentieth. Yet the theological principle underlying the canons remains unchanged: prayer manifests communion. Communion presupposes unity in faith. Where unity in faith is absent, prayer must be restrained lest it falsify reality.

This is not triumphalism. It is humility before the deposit of faith.

The Orthodox understanding of the Church is not that she is one branch among many. She confesses herself to be the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. This is not arrogance; it is creed. To behave liturgically as though ecclesial boundaries are porous while dogmatic differences remain intact risks undermining that confession.

The faithful are not scandalized by kindness. They are scandalized by confusion. A shepherd must not only love; he must guard.

In times past, saints resisted imperial pressure and ecclesiastical compromise alike. St. Maximus the Confessor stood almost alone against monothelitism. St. Mark of Ephesus refused union with Rome at Florence because doctrinal agreement had not been reached. His firmness was not hatred. It was clarity.

The present moment demands that same clarity. If joint prayer with the Bishop of Rome continues without resolution of the theological divisions that separate us, then canonical coherence is strained to the breaking point. The issue is not diplomacy but ecclesiology.

What, then, is required? A return to conciliar accountability. Any departure from established canonical practice must be examined by the fullness of the Church: bishops gathered in synod, guided by the patristic tradition, and received by the faithful. Canonical order is not maintained by unilateral gestures but by shared discernment.

The Orthodox Church has survived empires, persecutions, and internal strife. She will survive this as well. Yet survival is not the goal. Fidelity is.

Unity with Rome, if it ever comes, must be unity in the whole truth: the Creed without addition, the conciliar understanding of primacy, the rejection of unilateral dogmatic definitions, and the shared Eucharist grounded in a common confession. Until then, prayerful restraint is not hostility; it is honesty.

The canons were not written to embarrass patriarchs. They were written to preserve the faith once delivered to the saints.

The Church does not belong to Constantinople, nor to Rome, nor to any earthly see. She belongs to Christ. And Christ is not served by gestures that obscure His truth.

History teaches that canonical integrity is never maintained by softening boundaries prematurely. It is preserved by steadfast confession, patient dialogue, and refusal to exchange clarity for applause.

The present controversy is a summons—not to anger—but to vigilance. The Orthodox Christian must love all, pray for all, and yet guard the altar with reverent fear. For in the end, canonical order is not bureaucracy. It is the visible expression of the Church’s invisible unity in Christ.

Where that unity in faith is absent, prayer must wait.