And A False Interpretation Of
The Eastern Catholic Tradition

An article by an Australian Ukrainian Catholic priest of the Eparchy of SS. Peter and Paul for the Ukrainian Catholics of Australia, New Zealand, and Oceania, Fr. Paul Babie, was published in the Australian theological periodical Compass (autumn 2005, vol. 39, no. 1).

It surprisingly takes to task the doctrinal formulation of the "Filioque," declaring it to be "an illegitimate alteration of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed by interpolation and, as such, it is an alteration that lacks authoritative dogmatic status."

Taking upon himself the onus of speaking for all "Eastern Christianity," the author declares the "Filioque" to be "an illegitimate addition [to the Creed]," "theologically inaccurate," and "a grave theological error." This unexpected attack on an article of Faith of the Catholic Church — namely, that the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son (filioque), or as the authentic Eastern Tradition held in an equivalent formulation, the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally "from the Father through the Son" — represents a shocking deviation from the fidelity of Ukrainian Catholics to the dogmatic teaching of the See of Peter manifested in the blood of so many martyrs for the Catholic Faith from the time of the Union of Brest-Litovsk (1596) through the horrific persecutions of the Czarist and Soviet periods.

As our author rightly noted, it is within the rights of the Ukrainian Catholic hierarchy to preserve their ancient tradition of not adding the "Filioque" to the recitation of the Creed during the Divine Liturgy or on other liturgical occasions, nor does the Catholic Church demand they do. History shows that there is no Dogma of the Faith which cannot be subjected to misunderstanding, and the doctrine of the "Filioque" is no exception.

As has been sadly noted for centuries, our separated Eastern Orthodox brethren have seriously misunderstood the "Filioque" as implying "two origins" in the Trinity or a "double procession" involving two independent "causes" for the procession of the Holy Spirit, thereby constituting a denial of the Father as the one source of the Holy Trinity.

What is disturbing about the author's article is that he reflects more the jaundiced views of Eastern Orthodox polemicists than the clear teaching of the Catholic Church as repeated in the "Catechism of the Catholic Church" (CCC, nn. 245-248; 264; 2789).

The Catechism quotes appropriately from the great Reunion Council of Florence (1439) where exhaustive debates took place regarding the "Filioque."

There all the Byzantine Greek bishops (with one exception, the obstinate Mark of Ephesus) finally admitted both the truth of the doctrine that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father and (or through) the Son as from one principle and the "Filioque's" introduction into the Latin text of the Creed as "legitimate and with good reason."

In our time, the Catholic Eastern Churches have exercised their option of reciting the Creed as it was originally written, not of denying the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son (filioque), as from one spiration. Whereas our author mistakenly asserts that "filioquist thought is entirely out of place" in the thought of the Eastern Fathers of the Church, the truth as has been shown in the writings of Catholic theologians is that the Christian East was "filioquist" even before St. Augustine (who the author admits "favored an approach that sits comfortably with the filioque").

Before the Council of Ephesus (431 AD), there was perfect accord between the Latin and Eastern Fathers concerning the procession of the Holy Spirit. St. Athanasius, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Epiphanius, and other Fathers attributed a real causality to the Son in the Procession of the Holy Spirit. The same is true of their Latin brethren, Saints Ambrose, Hilary, Augustine, and Pope Leo I (the latter is specifically quoted in the CCC, n. 247 as "dogmatically confessing the procession from both the Father and the Son").

Eastern and Western Fathers agreed that the Son occupied a median position in the Trinity and received from the Father that the Holy Spirit proceeded from Him also. It is because the Son participates in the procession (spiration) of the Holy Spirit from the Father that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Father and the Son.

In two remarkable addresses on the Holy Spirit (November 7 and 14, 1990), Pope John Paul II may be said to have refuted directly the falsehood often asserted by Eastern Orthodox and uncritically repeated by our Ukrainian author that "the filioque was irreconcilable with Eastern Trinitarian faith." The Pope noted further that the "Filioque" had spread throughout the entire West by the ninth century and was "a clarification that changed nothing in terms of the substance of the ancient Faith." Moreover, it expressed a truth "adopted by the Greeks and Latins at the ecumenical Councils of Lyons (II, 1274) and Florence (1439)."

The Pope quoted appropriately the decree of the latter council dealing with the Holy Spirit as:

"still a useful basis for dialogue and agreement between Eastern and Western brethren, even more so since the agreed-upon definition ended with the following declaration:

"We establish… that the explanation given of the expression Filioque has been added to the Creed licitly and with reason, in order to render that truth clearer and because of the incumbent needs of those times'… The formula Filioque does not constitute an essential obstacle to [ecumenical] dialogue itself and to its development, which all hope for and pray to the Holy Spirit".
(address, November 7, 1990)

It is to be hoped that the Committee on Doctrine for the Australian Bishops' Conference may pay attention to the spread of heterodox views being spread among Catholics with respect to an article of Faith concerning the Holy Trinity so formally defined by the Church's Magisterium.

 

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