There has been some consternation among Catholics about Pope Leo XIV not saying the Filioque (“and the Son”) when he recited the Nicene Creed with the Eastern Orthodox in his recent trip to Turkey and Lebanon.
This is not as big of a deal as some are making it out to be. Here’s why. The Byzantine Catholics, who are in full communion with Rome, do not recite the Filioque in the Creed or anything like it. They just leave it out, like the Orthodox do, and it’s not a problem. They remain in union with Rome. The pope is supreme over all rites and churches within the Catholic Church, so he can say the Creed with or without the Filioque. When he’s with the Latin Church, he says the Filioque. When he’s with the Greek Byzantine Catholic Church (which is in full-communion with Rome) he does not. And it’s been this way for a very long time. If any one of us in the Latin Church were to officially change rituals, and go over to the Greek Byzantine Catholic Church, for example, we too would cease to say the Filioque, yet we would still be Catholic, and in full communion with the pope. If you don’t understand what Eastern Rite Catholics are, visit this page for an explanation. In summary, the Catholic Church is a communion not a monolith. It is a communion of 24 juridical churches. The largest is the Latin Church, which is what we are most familiar with here in the Western world. However, there are still 23 other juridical churches in the East. We’re just not used to them because we don’t see them very much here in the West. You might see a parish or two in a large city, but even then, these parishes are usually very small. If you don’t happen to live near one, you still probably won’t encounter Eastern Catholics, even if you live in the same city!
Eastern Catholics, of the 23 eastern juridical churches, do things a bit differently from Catholics here in the West. Most notably, they often have married priests, with children, in this is fairly common. They cross themselves in a way that many Latin Church Catholics would consider “backwards.” They use a different type of prayer beads and devotions. And their liturgies are indistinguishable from the Eastern Orthodox. That would include, in many cases, not saying the Filioque in the Nicene Creed or anything similar.
Why is this allowed? Shouldn’t we all be reciting the same Nicene Creed in the exact same way?
Not exactly. There was a period of time when Catholics had differing versions of the Nicene Creed for centuries, before the split between East and West. The first known insertion of the Filioque into the Creed occurred at the Third Council of Toledo (in Spain) in A.D. 589. This was a local council of the Visigothic kingdom, which had just converted from Arianism to Catholicism. Toledo III inserted “et Filioque” into the Creed to emphasize the full divinity of the Son against remaining Arian tendencies. Gradually, this spread into other Western territories. It was not adopted by Rome until A.D. 1014. The split between East and West (Roman Catholic v. Eastern Orthodox) did not come about until A.D. 1054. So Catholics used different versions of the Nicene Creed, some with the Filioque, and some without, for 465 years prior to the split between East and West. During this time, the Eastern Catholics did not excommunicate Western Catholics, nor did Western Catholics excommunicate Eastern Catholics. They lived in relative peace with each other.
The split did not come when the Western Church added the Filioque to the Creed. No. It happened when a papal emissary tried to impose it on the Eastern churches in 1054. That’s when things fell apart. It was more about authority and jurisdiction than it was about theology or liturgy. The Eastern Catholics seemed content to let Western Catholics do whatever they wanted with the Filioque, until the West tried to impose it on the East. That’s when everything went bad. We could add that political tensions had been simmering for about 200 years prior, with the creation of the Holy Roman Empire, which the East saw as a rival to the Byzantine Empire, but that’s politics not theology. It played a role, but it wasn’t the deciding factor.
There were multiple attempts to end the schism in the following centuries, but none of them stuck. And the schism itself was not absolute. The Maronite Catholic Church, in Antioch, never split with Rome, and remained in full-communion with the pope through all of history to this very day. The Maronites even use the Filioque, which they added to the Creed in A.D. 1180, some 126 years after the Great Schism in 1054. So for another 126 years, Catholics in the East (Maronites in full-communion with Rome) still did not use the Filioque, and there was no problem.
It helps to understand why the Filioque was added in the first place. It was to combat various heresies, including the Arian heresy. It’s more of a discipline than a doctrine. No Ecumenical Council of the whole Catholic Church has ever mandated the Filioque for the Eastern churches. The Council of Florence (A.D. 1439) was the most serious attempt at ending the schism between East and West. In the decree Laetentur Caeli the Eastern delegates agreed that the Filioque was theologically legitimate and that the Latin Church could lawfully use it, but the council did not decree that the Eastern Catholic churches had to insert the word into their own recitation of the Creed. In practice, only the Latin Church was required to keep it. In spite of this, however, the Eastern delegates went home and the union was rejected by their churches.
Rome and Constantinople have already resolved this issue theologically with the help of a handful of Byzantine Catholics who later came back into full-communion with Rome. The problem centers around a misunderstanding between Latin and Greek. In the Latin, the word Filioque can mean more than one thing, but the Greek equivalent is more specific and comes across as a heresy. In practical usage, the Latin term Filioque (“and the Son”) relating to the procession of the Holy Spirit can mean either the Holy Spirit proceeds directly from the Son and the Father (two sources), or it can mean the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone (one source) but with the active participation of the Son, because the Father shares everything with the Son. This latter sense is what is intended by the Filioque, not the former. The former is agreed to be heresy by both Rome and Constantinople. The Holy Spirit does not have a duel origin. He comes from the Father alone, but the Son assists because the Father and Son share everything in common. So in proper and specific Latin, in a way that harmonizes with Greek, it would be said “per Filium” instead of Filioque. This would translate to English as “through the Son” instead of “and the Son.” Thus, a proper Latin way of rendering that line of the Creed, one which would work in Greek as well, would be “qui a Patre per Filium procedit” which translates into English as “who proceeds from the Father through the Son.”
The official Roman Catholic policy, since the 1995 Vatican document on the Filioque from the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, as well as statements by St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI, is that the original Greek form of the Creed without the Filioque is the normative common text, and Rome has repeatedly said the addition was never meant to be a dogma about the words themselves, only about the underlying theology. So when the Pope celebrates with Eastern Catholic bishops or in ecumenical settings, the Nicene Creed is almost always said without the Filioque. It’s standard operating procedure now. Thus, when Pope Leo XIV did the same thing with the Eastern Orthodox in his recent trip, he wasn’t doing anything that was out of the ordinary. He was just doing it with the Eastern Orthodox, who are not in full-communion with Rome, as opposed to Eastern Catholics who are.
It’s reasonable to assume that if the schism between East and West is ever to be fully mended, it would likely include an agreement, perhaps through ecumenical council, to correct the Latin Nicene Creed to mirror what is stated above. Until then, however, the popes will simply keep the practice of using the Filioque in the West, particularly in the Latin Church, while omitting it in the Eastern Churches, and in ecumenical settings with the Eastern Orthodox.
Shane Schaetzel is an author of Catholic books and he is an Evangelical convert to the Catholic Church. His articles have been featured on LifeSiteNews, The Remnant Newspaper, Forward in Christ, and Catholic Online. You can read Shane’s books at ShaneSchaetzel.Com
