# Can Rome and the East heal the Great Schism?

**By:** David P Deavel  
**Published:** 2026-08-01T18:00:00.000Z  
**Source:** [The Catholic Herald](https://thecatholicherald.com/article/can-rome-and-the-east-heal-the-great-schism)

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Reuniting Rome with the Orthodox: How the Great Schism Unfolded – and Might Yet Be Healed by Dmitri Solzhenitsyn (272 pages, Creed & Culture, $29)
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Twentieth-century Orthodox theologian Fr Alexander Schmemann used to say that a requirement for reconciliation with Catholics was a pan-Orthodox synod. That, he added wryly, was “an eschatological concept”. After Schmemann’s death, however, the Orthodox attempted a pan-Orthodox synod in 2016. Admittedly, that event did not succeed in bringing all the particular Orthodox Churches together. The most notable abstainers were the Antiochians and Russians. The event was, nonetheless, a start.
So, perhaps the end of the world is nearer? Alternatively, might there be hope for Christian reunion between Catholics and Orthodox this side of the last trump?
In his new book, Reuniting Rome with the Orthodox, Dmitri Solzhenitsyn, grandson of the Nobel Prize winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, demonstrates a passionate desire for Christian reunion, writing that, as an Orthodox Christian, he “regards the Catholic Church with a bittersweet sense of kinship, akin to the memory of a long-lost brother”. He also shows a deep awareness of the mountain of difficulties that stand in the way of reunion. Nevertheless, he hopes that, with faithfulness “to Christ’s call that we be one, drawing inspiration from our shared first-millennium history and the common heritage of our apostles, fathers and saints while persisting in prayer, perhaps the Holy Spirit will cause this potential to become a reality on this side of the Second Coming of Christ”.
Though not a formally trained theological scholar, Solzhenitsyn has done a tremendous amount of research as part of “a personal quest to understand the origins of the Great Schism… as well as the obstacles that continue to hinder the Churches’ reunification”. Six of his seven chapters are historical accounts, starting with the period of a united Church and ending with the most recent developments in the quest for unity. As the Dominican theologian Fr Aidan Nichols observes in his afterword to the volume – Orthodox theologian Fr Laurent Cleenewerck provides an introduction – while one could quibble with the meaning of some historical details, “the historically informed Catholic… will not find much to quarrel with in Solzhenitsyn’s telling of the tale”.
From the beginning of the account until its end, Solzhenitsyn strives to present fairly and honestly the ways by which the seeds of division were planted and how they came to bloom nearly a millennium ago. Even in the undivided Church, misunderstanding and mistrust were being sown by language differences between the Greek East and the increasingly Latin West, political differences and the difficulties of sorting out the Arian crisis. Add to this the different visions of how the Church, above ground and capable of acting publicly since Constantine, should be related to the civil order. Solzhenitsyn rightly notes that the West always had a clearer distinction between the two. Byzantine thinkers mostly tended towards an integralist vision, while Rome treasured ecclesial independence.
As late antiquity melted into the Middle Ages, all these difficulties were exacerbated. The Greek and Latin theological worlds grew further separated. Different liturgical and canonical practices became points of division. And the questions about the structure of authority among different particular Churches became a real point of contention. The Church of Rome seems always to have been accorded some sort of primacy, but what kind of primacy? Is it purely a convenient or traditional arrangement, or something divinely appointed? What are its limits? Ironically, those who objected to Rome’s perceived high-handed interventions in other Churches often accepted imperial actions that were far more high-handed than those of the popes.
Solzhenitsyn tells, with care and accessible language, the events leading to and away from the Great Schism. With admirable honesty, he notes bad behaviour on both sides, as well as the purely this-worldly political motives that often seemed to dictate ecclesial actions. His great theme is that, among the countless reasons for division, the two biggest were the disputes about papal authority and a growing and scandalous lack of charity among Christians.
This assessment might surprise some observers, then and now, who attribute the division purely to the theological disputes over the Holy Spirit’s procession – the Filioque – priestly celibacy or even the use of unleavened bread for the Eucharist. Solzhenitsyn does not deny that there were differences on these topics or even that some might have separated because of them. But he does think that they were not the most intractable problems.
While the first half of Reuniting Rome with the Orthodox impresses one with the coldness of division, the later chapters, covering the last few centuries of thawing relationships, are heartening. Solzhenitsyn clearly explains how Catholics and Orthodox can agree on the Filioque and perhaps even papal authority, as well as many other concrete tools of reunion.
This volume may be overly optimistic, given Orthodox apathy about reunion and recent Catholic liturgical and doctrinal disarray. But, as Fr Nichols observes, this book, “by God’s grace”, may well “hasten” the desired reunion.
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