Mission Statement

Connecting Dialogues

A project of the PRO ORIENTE Steering Committee for Orthodox-Catholic Dialogue (POSCOCD)

Dialogue between Catholics and Orthodox has become a reality in church life in recent decades. Encouraged by the example of prominent figures, like Patriarch Athenagoras and Pope John XXIII, many Orthodox and Catholic hierarchs and theologians have sought to open doors for mutual encounter and understanding.

Theological dialogues between Catholics and Orthodox began on different levels – official and unofficial, national as well as international. While in the first decades the participants strived towards a better understanding between Christians who have become “foreign brothers and sisters” due to the estrangement of churches in East and West over the centuries, in recent times the Orthodox-Catholic dialogue increasingly focuses on common challenges for both Catholics and Orthodox in an progressively coalescent and interconnected world. Due to migration and easier ways to travel, as neighbours and “relatives” in a pluralistic society, which has been a reality in the western world for many years and becomes apparent currently in traditional Orthodox countries as well, Catholics and Orthodox no longer live in different worlds today.

Against this background the PRO ORIENTE Steering Committee for Orthodox-Catholic Dialogue aims to stimulate dialogue between Catholics and Orthodox by providing a platform where people who are engaged or interested in Orthodox-Catholic Dialogue will find resources for interchange about important topics and common themes.

The online platform aims at:

• providing online access to all relevant resources for Orthodox-Catholic Dialogue;
• connecting different commissions and levels of dialogue to foster exchange between them;
• facilitating reception of the results of the dialogues in theological education and church life;
• encouraging young people to establish a new relationship between Orthodox and Catholics.

Following our motto “Connecting Dialogues”, the online database provides common declarations, documents and texts published on different levels since the 1960s when theological dialogues between representatives of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches began.

The database includes:

• All documents of the International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church;
• Documents and documentary material of meetings between Popes and Primates of Orthodox Churches;
• Results of theological dialogues between the Roman Catholic Church and single autocephalous Orthodox Churches;
• Common statements and texts of theological dialogues on national or regional levels;
• Common studies of unofficial groups for theological dialogue;
• Catholic and Orthodox documents which are relevant for theological dialogue between Catholics and Orthodox.

The database includes the texts, if available, in four Western languages (English, French, German, Italian) and four Eastern languages (Greek, Romanian, Russian, Serbian). The POSCOCD members attempted to gather as many documents as possible.

We invite everybody who knows about relevant texts and respective translations not yet included in the database to send corresponding information to the following e-mail-address: office@orthcath.net