A Russian Who Challenged Orthodoxy
Nov. 19th, 2003 11:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
arisbeInstead of focusing on differences, Alexander [sic] Soloviev emphasized the faith Roman Catholics share with his fellow Russian Orthodox Christians: "Whatever is holy and sacred for us is also holy and sacred for them."
...
"During the last two decades of his life, Soloviev became deeply interested in Christian unity. In 1886 he submitted to a Croatian Catholic archbishop his own proposal for bringing the Russian Orthodox Church back into communion with Rome. The archbishop arranged an audience with Pope Leo XIII in the spring of 1888. At that audience, the Pope gave Soloviev the papal benediction for his efforts at reconciling the Russian Church to Catholic communion.
"In 1896, Soloviev made a profession of faith before an Eastern Catholic priest, and was received into Catholic communion. He did not regard this as abandoning his ties with the Russian Church, but rather as their fulfillment.
"There is an unsubstantiated report that he received last rites from a Russian Orthodox priest, which would have been permissible had there been no Catholic priest available. But to the end of his life Soloviev recognized the Pope as 'supreme judge in matters of religion.'"
Soloviev was the first of the modern Russian Catholics, or, as we sometimes like to put it, Russian Orthodox Christians in communion with Rome. If his ideal of the Pope as an ecclesiatical Tsar is one that many of us do not consider one of his strong points, it is one most Roman Catholics aren't all that comfortable with either.
...
"During the last two decades of his life, Soloviev became deeply interested in Christian unity. In 1886 he submitted to a Croatian Catholic archbishop his own proposal for bringing the Russian Orthodox Church back into communion with Rome. The archbishop arranged an audience with Pope Leo XIII in the spring of 1888. At that audience, the Pope gave Soloviev the papal benediction for his efforts at reconciling the Russian Church to Catholic communion.
"In 1896, Soloviev made a profession of faith before an Eastern Catholic priest, and was received into Catholic communion. He did not regard this as abandoning his ties with the Russian Church, but rather as their fulfillment.
"There is an unsubstantiated report that he received last rites from a Russian Orthodox priest, which would have been permissible had there been no Catholic priest available. But to the end of his life Soloviev recognized the Pope as 'supreme judge in matters of religion.'"
Soloviev was the first of the modern Russian Catholics, or, as we sometimes like to put it, Russian Orthodox Christians in communion with Rome. If his ideal of the Pope as an ecclesiatical Tsar is one that many of us do not consider one of his strong points, it is one most Roman Catholics aren't all that comfortable with either.