Other Columns by Paul M. Weyrich
Paul M. Weyrich Bio

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So much has been said about the accomplishments of Pope John Paul II that I felt it useful to comment on one initiative about which he felt very strongly but which did not bear fruit, his effort to achieve unity with the Eastern Orthodox Church. The official biographer of the Pope, George Weigel (who was an NBC commentator for the Papal Funeral), told me years ago when he regularly traveled between Washington and Rome that John Paul II was "virtually obsessed with trying to achieve unity with the Orthodox."

Coming from an Eastern European country, the Pope was well acquainted with the Orthodox. He had a deep and abiding respect for their liturgical practices as well as their general adherence to basic doctrines, which the Church has held since apostolic times. He once asked the Melkite Patriarch, Maximos V Hakim, how the Western Church could recover the sense of the sacred, which had been lost in the West but had been retained in the East. The Patriarch told him it was a mistake to have the altar facing the people. The Pope's closest advisor, Cardinal Ratzinger, recently wrote a book saying the same thing.

After the Holy Spirit appeared to the Apostles in the form of tongues of fire on the Feast of Pentecost each Apostle set out in a different direction of the known world. St. Paul, who was not an original Apostle, had persecuted Christians zealously. When he was the pagan Saul, God knocked him off of his horse and warned him that if he wanted to serve Him he must serve the Christian Faith. Saul then was converted and became the Apostle who wrote the letters included in the New Testament Canon. St. Paul's trips are well recorded. Traditions state that some Apostles traveled to China and India. Because there is no written record of travels taken by most Apostles, we will never know if these traditions are true or were composed by pious Christians eager to confer legitimacy on their communities.

The Church was persecuted in its early years. The most pervasive persecutions were under the Emperor Diocletian, whose goal was to wipe Christianity from the face of the earth. The Emperor's plan did not succeed completely because Christians were driven underground, where they lived and worshipped in caves, now called the Catacombs. The Emperor Constantine later declared Christianity legal and the state religion, after having a vision of a blazing cross imprinted with the words, "By this sign thou shalt conquer." Constantine was going to fight the most critical battle of his career for the empire. He adopted the cross as a symbol for his troops and he won. The Church grew around this Christian empire in the East and West. Based on liturgical teaching, Western Christians regularly knelt and genuflected because that was the highest honor to convey to royalty, and because Christ was King. Eastern Rite Christians regularly stood because standing was the proper way to show respect to royalty. More and more the Eastern and Western Churches developed separately but always in communion with one another.

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