c. 1997 Religion News Service

GRAZ, Austria _ The first European Christian ecumenical conference in nearly a decade got off to a rocky start Monday (June 23) amid charges from the Russian Orthodox Church that aggressive proselytizing by Roman Catholics in Eastern Europe threatened to aggravate reconciliation efforts between the two churches.

Patriarch Alexii II, leader of some 300 million Russian Orthodox, said at the Second European Ecumenical Assembly that many former East bloc countries had become”witnesses to an aggravation in the ecumenical situation”due to an”inflow of missionaries from outside, carrying out massive proselytizing activity. The invasion that has lasted over the last six years has strained the situation within the church to the utmost.” Alexii’s charge, which was clearly aimed at the Roman Catholic Church, prompted a denial from Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, president of the Council of the European Bishops’ Conferences.”I can well understand the concern of Alexii,”Vlk said, but”I cannot believe that any coarse proselytizing is taking place by Catholics in Russia.” The opening shots came as some 700 delegates from the Conference of European Churches (CEC) and the European Bishops’ Conferences gathered for the first time since the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 in an attempt to tackle many of the problems associated with rising tensions among Christian churches.

Grigorios Larentzakis, a Greek Orthodox and chairman of the local organizing committee, urged participants to get beyond years if not centuries of animosity and forge a new path that celebrates Europe’s rich traditions.”No setbacks should take us away form reconciliation and establishing peace between human beings,”he said.”I cannot but hope that here in Graz we can develop a vision of a united Europe that embraces its diversity.” But that may be a tall order. While the conference is expected to produce a document that finds agreement on a number of social and political issues, it is highly unlikely that religious unity will be among them.”There will be no great statement that will be produced here and remembered by history,”the Rev. John Arnold told reporters at a news conference prior to the opening session.

Arnold, president of the CEC, said ambitions for the gathering were more modest.”Inspiration, encouragement and challenges to the represented churches,”were the aspirations of the conference, he said.

Arnold and others have said European churches are in a transitional phase that began with the end of the Cold War and the subsequent increase in nationalism and interreligious squabbling. From the former Yugoslavia to the republics of the dissolved Soviet Union, religious leaders are being drawn into political tensions or creating them for their own.

In Ukraine and Georgia, leaders of the Orthodox and Catholic churches have clashed repeatedly over the past several years. Recently, the Vatican and Orthodox leaders in Ukraine called a truce to the tug of war.

But even among the Orthodox churches themselves tensions are running high. The most glaring absentee at this first post Cold War ecumenical gathering is the spiritual leader of the Orthodox Church, Patriarch Bartholomew of Istanbul.

Bartholomew, who is the”first among equals”of Orthodox leaders, angrily canceled his participation at the conference after Alexii made an attempt to meet with Pope John Paul II. But Alexii called off the meeting that was to have taken place in Austria on the eve of the assembly. He complained Rome was trying to set unreasonable conditions to the papal-patriarch parley.

Referring to the growing division among the Orthodox churches, the Rev. Aldo Giordano, secretary of the Bishops’ conferences, said,”Eastern Europe is having to deal with modernism. It’s a delicate issue that I think needs to be looked at by the assembly.” Modernism in other forms will also be visible at the conference, where delegates will examine the changing role of women’s participation in church activities. Other meetings will focus on minority rights within the churches and the rights of gays to participate.

The final assembly document is expected to embrace a number of ideas that promote Christian unity and tolerance in modern societies. It also may offer specific remedies to ease poverty in poor countries and improve ecological conditions.

A working document, which must be voted on later in the week by the delegates, recommends, for example, that nations use 0.7 percent of their gross domestic product for development aid. It also proposes debt forgiveness to the poorest nations and urges European countries to approve initiatives that enhance free trade among Central and Eastern European nations.

MJP END HIELBRONNER