Meeting at Bose of the theological study group Saint Ireneus
Official press release
of the St Ireneus Group at Bose 2012
On 31 October–4 November the 9th annual meeting of the “Orthodox-Catholic mixed theological study group Saint Ireneus” was held in Bose; it centered on the topic “Primacy and synodality as reflected in the decisions of the Council of the Russian Church in 1917–1918 and in Vatican Council II.
The St Ireneus Group was founded in 2004 on the initiative of the bishop of Magdeburg and of the Institute Johann-Adam-Möhler of Paderborn, with the aim of aiding through theological studies the official dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches.
Twenty-six theologians from all parts of Europe and the United States, thirteen Catholic and thirteen Orthodox, are members of the Group, which so far has met regularly every year.
The members of the St Ireneus Group have not received any official mandate from their Churches, but in faithfulness to their own tradition they intend to study together, in a spirit of fraternal exchange and mutual listening, the theological points that still constitute an obstacle to full communion between the Orthodox Churches and the Catholic Church and to explore possible ways of approaching closer one another.
The results of the discussion of the St Ireneus Group are then offered to theological research and to the dialogue between the Churches.
In past years the St Ireneus Group met in Greece (Athens), Belgium (Chevetogne), Serbia (Belgrade), Austria (Vienna, (Ukraine (Kiev), Germany (Magdeburg), and Russia (St Petersburg). The definitions of Vatican Council I on the primacy of the bishop of Rome have been studied, as well as Orthodox reactions to this council in various regions (Russia, Middle East, Romania). The understanding of primacy in the Russian Orthodox Church has been examined, and the propositions of other study groups have been studied, with the aim of a convergent view on this problem.