Customer Reviews

The Quest for Unity: Orthodox and Catholics in Dialogue : Documents of the Joint International Commission and Official Dialogues in the United States, 1965-1995

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This book contains the official pronouncements of the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church (hereafter the Joint International Commission). It also contains comments on those pronouncements and additional statements by the U.S. Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation (hereafter the U.S. Theological Consultation). Additionally, it contains pronouncements of the U.S. Joint Committee of Orthodox and Catholic Bishops and the Metropolitan New York/New Jersey Orthodox-Roman Catholic Dialogue.

The editors have done a magnificent job providing historical background and appropriate introductory context for the various official pronouncements. They write in a clear and succinct style accessible to the lay reader.

Unfortunately the official pronouncements themselves all too often use specialized theological vocabulary and purposely vague phrasing reminiscent of diplomatic prose. The statements of the Joint Commission are the worst. Turgid does not begin to describe the prose style of those pronouncements, and a typical lay reader will find them unreadable. The U.S. Theological Consultation said as much in their response to those documents. The pronouncements also apparently suffered poor translations from French to English. Fortunately the U.S. Theological Consultation had its own French to English translators who caught the errors.

In short, the book serves as an excellent reference for the various official pronouncements, and the introductory material is terrific, but the pronouncements themselves are difficult to read, and the ones of the Joint International Commision in particular are impossible to read.