AN EXPERT on Catholic-Orthodox relations has welcomed conciliatory signs from both Churches since the election of Benedict XVI, but warned that no movement can be expected on current disputes without an agreement on papal primacy.

?New people mean new initiatives. There?s clearly been some serious rethinking, and a new sensitivity on issues which have never been settled,? said Professor Waclaw Hryniewicz, director of the Ecumenical Institute at Poland?s Catholic University of Lublin. ?But there can be no advance in dialogue without a theological and ecclesiological solution to the problem of primacy. If the Orthodox agree to discuss this before tackling other divisive questions, this would be a significant new approach.? The Catholic priest was speaking amid preparations for reconvening the International Commission for Catholic-Orthodox Theological Dialogue, which has been stalled since it last met in July 2000, after repeated postponements, in Baltimore.

In an interview with The Tablet, he said commission members were still awaiting ?detailed information? about the talks, expected in December. He added that Benedict XVI had been welcomed by Orthodox leaders as a theologian with a ?clear vision of the future?, who was committed to ecumenism and unaffected by ?historical animosities? associated in the eyes of some with his Polish predecessor. However, he cautioned that the new Pope had also been responsible, as prefect of the Vatican?s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, for the August 2000 declaration, ?Dominus Iesus?, which appeared to question the authenticity of non-Catholic denominations.

?This all points to the need to place the issues on the table again?, said Fr Hryniewicz, a long-standing commission member. ?As a theologian, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger conceded that the Orthodox cannot be expected to accept notions of primacy formulated after the Great Schism. If he is ready to support the Commission in going back to the insights of the First Millennium, when the Churches were still united East and West, we may well find a way of resolving this great issue.?

Catholic-Orthodox ties have long been tense over Orthodox complaints of Catholic ?proselytism? in Eastern Europe, as well as the post-Communist revival of Greek Catholic churches, which combine the eastern liturgy with loyalty to Rome and are known pejoratively as ?Uniates? by Orthodox leaders.
Jonathan Luxmoore, Warsaw