Croats, Vlachs, Bulgars, and Arabs in our communion, but their national feelings do not produce such an endless catalogue of schisms, mutual excommunications and bitter feeling in ecclesiastical affairs—simply because in these affairs we all acknowledge one central authority that has the right to settle our quarrels. Catholic bishops, too, sometimes disagree, but they have a Court of Appeal to whom they can all turn and whose decision is final. The See of Constantinople is no such Court to the Orthodox. It is itself a litigant, and now always the losing one, besides the fact that, as we still have to see, the Great Church itself is torn by what are almost the worst quarrels of all (p. 342, seq.). So the conclusion that forces itself upon any one who considers the present state of the Orthodox Church is that that body wants many things to restore it to its old glory, but it wants nothing quite so much as the authority of the Pope.
Summary.
The Orthodox Communion consists at present of sixteen independent Churches, over which the Patriarch of Constantinople has a primacy of honour, but no jurisdiction except in his own Patriarchate. These Churches are, first, the four Eastern Patriarchates—Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, as well as the old independent Church of Cyprus. Since the schism eleven other Churches have been added to these, which are all formed at the expense of the Byzantine Patriarchate. It has become a recognized principle that each politically independent State should have an ecclesiastically independent Church, so there are the national Churches of Russia, Greece, Servia, Montenegro, Roumania, Bulgaria. In the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy are four Orthodox Churches—Carlovitz, Hermannstadt, Czernovitz, and Bosnia-Hercegovina. The monastery of Mount Sinai is also an independent Church. There has been great friction about the establishment of most of these bodies; in the case of the Bulgars the schism still lasts. Meanwhile, Russia has entirely destroyed the old Georgian Church. Questions of politics and rival nationalities lead to endless quarrels among the Orthodox bishops, while Russia is steadily trying to absorb the whole body into her sphere of influence.
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