“We will never unite into one church,” - Kipshidze on unification with Catholics and Protestants

Vakhtang Kipshidze, deputy head of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Synodal Department for Church Relations with Society and the Media, expressed his opinion on the prospects for uniting Orthodoxy with Catholicism and Protestantism. He argues that Christian denominations can work together on some common humanitarian topics, but a true unification into one Church, given the doctrinal differences, looks completely unrealistic. He spoke about this in an interview with RTVI.

“Both the Russian Church and the Vatican are confident, convinced, and agree that Christianity is an absolutely irreplaceable part of the European heritage. Attempts to somehow reduce, limit, censor Christianity and do anything with it that would limit its significance are destructive for Europe and for the whole world, which is somehow connected with Christianity. […] At the center of Christian identity is the question of the value of human life and the value of the Christian family. These two values may well be jointly defended by those Christian denominations that defend and share them,” — Kipshidze said.

At the same time, he believes that unification with Catholics and Protestants at the church level is unrealistic, since no one is seriously considering this issue given the unattainability of such a goal.

“There is a horror story that all Christian denominations seem to want to unite into one, and this causes fear and distrust among some believers. This fear, it seems to me, is sometimes quite irrational. As a person who is still involved in interreligious dialogue and church-public relations, I simply cannot imagine how all Christian denominations can unite into one. No one sets such a goal, it is unattainable. We are very different, we just have to accept it. We will never unite into one church — representatives of Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Protestantism,” — he added.