Orthodox Council Moves Toward Interfaith Dialogue

Perhaps the most significant achievement of the Holy and Great Council is that the bishops managed to meet at all, after decades of preparation and the last-moment attempt of four churches to stop the event. By meeting in a global council, the Orthodox churches proved to themselves and the rest of the world that they were not merely a loose confederation of local churches, but that they were also a unified body, historically continuous with the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic” church of the creed. The Christian communion that prides itself on being “the Church of the seven Ecumenical Councils” could henceforth not only profess conciliarity as its core ecclesiological principle, but also practice global conciliarity as an important dimension of its ecclesial life.