De unione ecclesiarum: Notes on a text by Severian of Gabala

For this reason, I also brought up the point about the Turban and the Tiara. No, I do not possess any special information about threats to Christianity. I do know that the European Union, by its economic policies, has brought about in a few decades a demographic transformation of Western Europe that appears to be irreversible, and that Mehmed the Conqueror and Suleyman the Magnificent would have found very gratifying. How to respond to that transformation in a genuinely Christian manner is obviously a difficult and complex question; but it is one issue among many that raise for me profound concerns about the future of Christianity — indeed, I think that anyone who is informed about the present state of the world ought to be concerned about the future of humanity itself. A healing of the division between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches seems to me a most urgent need if the Church is to give a credible, united witness to its faith before a sceptical and cynical world. I agree with you that the Fourth Crusade was a gross crime (although the murder of some thousands of Venetians in Constantinople a few years earlier was not the work of angels!). I do not agree with you that the policy of unionists like Bekkos had mainly secular motivations, or that it was an abandonment of the faith of the fathers, or that it was in any way to blame for the fall of the Byzantine state. The last Byzantine emperor, who died defending the walls of Constantinople, was a unionist, and an Orthodox saint. And when you say, “there was no Greek nation at that time,” it is clear that you misunderstand what the English word “nation” means: it does not refer chiefly to a political entity, but to an historical, linguistic, and cultural one, to a people. In that sense, there certainly existed a Greek nation at that time, and it certainly became enslaved. I think that men like Joseph Bryennios and Mark of Ephesus bear some share of the responsibility for that catastrophe, by helping to make Christian reconciliation impossible by their polemics. And those who continue those polemics will bear some responsibility before the throne of Christ for the next catastrophe, whenever and wherever it comes.