Joseph Pearce reviews Dmitri Solzhenitsyn’s Reuniting Rome with the Orthodox in the Imaginative Conservative.
It is almost a thousand years since the Great Schism, which divided the Orthodox Christians in the east from the Catholic Christians in the west. This division is heartbreaking for many Christians on both sides of the divide because it signifies the broken heart of the Church herself. It is, therefore, refreshing to see a new work by a young Orthodox author which seeks to suggest ways of healing the heartbreak.
Reuniting Rome with the Orthodox: How the Great Schism Unfolded and Might Yet Be Healed is written by Dmitri Solzhenitsyn, grandson of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the great Russian author and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Although conciliatory in tone, as the theme and title of the book would suggest, Mr. Solzhenitsyn sees the events leading up to the Schism and the history since the Schism from an Orthodox perspective. This is understandable and perhaps unavoidable but it will raise the eyebrows and possibly even the ire of some Catholic readers.
And yet such misgivings should not detract from the noble cause which Mr. Solzhenitsyn is advocating, nor should it deter Catholics from reading his book. Indeed the nobility of the cause for which Mr. Solzhenitsyn is fighting is made apparent in the opening paragraph of the opening chapter:
Christ sent the Holy Spirit to the apostles on Pentecost to establish “one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.” Today, the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches both profess their identity with Christ’s Church; yet, lacking communion, they are no longer “one” with each other. Somewhere along the way, our Churches have squandered the ties that once bound them together in Christ’s body.
Mr. Solzhenitsyn describes his book as “the result of a personal quest to understand the origins of the Great Schism… as well as the obstacles that continue to hinder the Churches’ reunification”. As an Orthodox Christian, he confesses “a bittersweet sense of kinship” with the Catholic Church “akin to the memory of a long-lost brother”.
