An Eastern Orthodox Reflection on Papal Primacy: Olivier Clément’s Response to Ut Unum Sint and the Ecclesial Legacy of Patriarch Athenagoras I

Abstract

Russian émigré intellectuals and theologians in Paris brought a renewed faith rooted in Patristic Tradition into dialogue with Western modernity. Their creative work was developed and taken forward into the twenty-first century by Olivier Clément, one of the major figures of the ‘Paris School’ from the 1950s. The decision of the Russian émigré community to move from Russian ecclesial authority to come under Constantinople, and Clément’s own collaboration with Patriarch Athenagoras I, were early defining influences on him. The Second Vatican Council convoked by Pope John XXIII and the subsequent raising of anathemas by Paul VI and Athenagoras I led to ecclesial renewal and an ecumenical springtime in which many Orthodox and Catholic thinkers sought to bring Tradition and contemporary problems into a creative synthesis. Clément’s Orthodox interpretation of the three-fold structure of local, regional and universal primacy is his irenic response to John Paul II’s call for deeper reflection on Christian unity.