All wars end in peace. Sometimes peace comes through compromises and ceasefires (the Korean War), sometimes through the total victory of one side and the unconditional surrender of the other (the Vietnam War). The present Civil War between Constantinople and Moscow, the rivalry between the ‘Second Rome’ and the ‘Third Rome’ for control of the Church, began long ago. This rivalry is purely political, as no part of the Church controls the whole. The Church consists of diverse parts and has never been controlled by one local part.

True, the First Rome, in what is now called Italy and which inherited from the pagan Roman Empire the obsessive desire to dominate all others, tried to control all. This only ended up in the self-justifying filioque heresy, which claimed that the Pope of Rome, and not Christ, is the Head of the Church and he has total control of the Holy Spirit. This heresy came to be called Roman Catholicism. Originally it affected only a small and backward part of Christendom, mainly newly-converted, post-Roman peoples and Germanic and Celtic tribes.

The First Rome, with its militarily conquered subject peoples, from Sicily to England, finally separated itself from the Church in the eleventh century. The First Rome was already notorious for carrying out bloody wars, conquests, persecutions, indulgences, tortures and inquisitions in its attempts to impose itself. Later, however, in the sixteenth century, it itself split into many parts, with most of the Germanic peoples revolting against its Latin Yoke. The Latin Roman Catholics became far more numerous only through the crimes of the Western colonisation of Latin America, Black Africa and parts of Asia like the Philippines much later.

It was this same will to dominate that had already tormented the Second Rome and in part led to the fifth-century nationalistic splits from it of Nestorians and Miaphysites, the latter group existing to this day in Egypt, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Armenia and parts of Syria. As for the Third Rome, its will to dominate resulted in the disastrous, seventeenth-century ‘Old Ritualist’ schism, created by the enforcement of new rituals by the Russian State. As a result, the Russian word for schism (‘raskol’) came to have the purely political connotations of treason to the State.

Both those in the Second and the Third Rome who want to dominate the rest of the Church today have been much influenced by the millennial example of the First Rome, which they often visit. The temptations to obtain more power and more wealth are very great among some. This will for centralisation, whether of the First, Second or Third Romes, is purely secular. What is the Church perspective? The Church view is made clear from the New Testament. This is of independent Local Churches in different places, which share the same Faith.

Thus, at that time none of the seven Local Churches of Corinth, Ephesus, Colossae, Philippi, Galatia, Thessaloniki and Rome ever tried to dominate any other or even tried to impose something on another. This continues to be the overall situation in the (Orthodox) Church, where 16 Local Churches, now not covering cities, but countries or peoples, continue to exist. They are tied together by the same Faith; the current separation of a few of the sixteen is only because of political rivalry. This unity of Faith, in all places and at all times, is known as ‘Catholicity’.

Catholicity is quite different from ‘Catholicism’. The latter, by definition an ‘ism’ or ideology, denotes the attempt by one to dominate all others. Once Constantinople and Moscow are depoliticised and they rid themselves of their Imperialist pretensions (= the will to dominate and impose), that is, once they have been ‘dePapalised’, then Catholicity will return through the gathering of all at an inclusive, politically free Church Council, which will be free to set its own agenda. For Church Councils are where Catholicity, the Unity of the Faith in Diversity, is expressed.

In concrete terms, this means that Constantinople must give up its claims to traditional Russian Church territory (Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, the Ukraine etc) and that in turn Moscow must give up its claim to traditional Greek Church territory (Africa). In order to avoid humiliation for both, the clear way forward is to grant these territories Autocephaly, tcreating new and neutral Autocephalous Churches. Only then can serious discussions begin on joint Autocephaly being granted to areas where mixed Orthodox have lived in numbers for generations.

This means new Autocephalous Churches in Western Europe, Northern America (95% English-speaking), Latin America and the Caribbean, and Oceania. These Churches can only be formed by all the Autocephalous Churches which have populations there, not simply the Greek and Russian, whose populations in those Continents are often only a small minority. In Western Europe, the majority belongs to the Romanian Church, in Northern America and Oceania perhaps to Constantinople, in Latin America and the Caribbean probably to Antioch.