CNS Story: OBIT-LONG Sep-21-2005 (1,000 words) xxxn
0505366.htm
Father John Long, leading ecumenist, dies
By Catholic News Service
NEW YORK (CNS) — Jesuit Father John F. Long, a leading ecumenist and one of
the world’s foremost Catholic experts on Orthodoxy, died in New York Sept.
20 following hospitalization for emergency cardiac surgery. He was 80 years
old.
Cardinal William H. Keeler of Baltimore was to preside at his funeral Mass,
scheduled to be celebrated Sept. 24 at the Fordham University chapel in New
York.
As a member of the Vatican Secretariat (now Pontifical Council) for
Promoting Christian Unity, in the 1960s, Father Long participated in the
drafting of the Second Vatican Council’s Decree on Ecumenism, Declaration on
Religious Liberty and Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to
Non-Christian Religions.
>From 1969 to 1980 he headed the secretariat’s section for relations with the
Orthodox churches and from 1981 until his death he was a consultor to the
secretariat and the subsequent council.
He was on the Joint International Commission for the Theological Dialogue
Between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church from 1981, shortly
after it was formed, until his death.
He was a member of the U.S. (later renamed North American) Orthodox-Catholic
Theological Consultation from 1980 until his death. He was also a longtime
member of the U.S. Oriental Orthodox-Roman Catholic Consultation.
He participated in a number of other dialogues as well and represented the
Holy See in contacts with the World Council of Churches, attending various
meetings of the council and its Faith and Order commission as a Vatican
observer. He was on the commission that wrote the Vatican’s 1993 Directory
for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism.
Paulist Father Ronald G. Roberson, an associate director of the U.S.
bishops’ Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, called
Father Long “the grand old man of Catholic-Orthodox relations.”
“He was a tremendous resource and he will be sorely missed,” Father Roberson
said.
Bishop Dimitrios of Xanthos, chief ecumenical officer of the Greek Orthodox
Archdiocese of America, said Father Long “was respected by all Orthodox
theologians.”
“He was a good scholar. Many times he knew more than we did about Orthodox
history,” Bishop Dimitrios added. “He was a delight for all of us to work
with.”
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., April 5, 1925, John Francis Long entered the Jesuit
novitiate in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., in 1941 and did his philosophical and
theological studies at Woodstock College, the Jesuit seminary in Woodstock,
Md., where he earned advanced degrees in education, philosophy and theology.
He went on to special studies in Russian language and history at Georgetown
University in Washington and at Fordham.
Father Long’s ordination in 1956 made national news in the Catholic press.
He was part of a corps of Jesuits around the world preparing for possible
missionary work in Russia in the event of the downfall of communism, and he
was the first American Jesuit to be ordained in the United States as a
priest of the Slavo-Byzantine rite.
Following ordination he spent a year in spiritual and ascetical studies in
Belgium. From 1958 to 1961 he did advanced studies at the Pontifical
Oriental Institute in Rome, earning degrees in Eastern Christian studies.
After a year of research in Greece, he returned to Rome for further studies
in Byzantine church history and was appointed in 1963 to the staff of the
Christian unity secretariat as a specialist in Orthodox relations. Vatican
II was then in its second year and the secretariat was playing a crucial
role in the development of several of the council’s most important
documents.
With the church’s entry into the ecumenical movement, Father Long put his
years of carefully cultivated expertise in the churches of the East at the
service of ecumenism, especially the advance of Catholic-Orthodox relations.
>From 1967 to 1987 he was a member of Catholic delegations to theological
conversations with the Russian Orthodox Church. He participated in six
extended joint meetings held during that period and was Catholic co-chairman
of the drafting committee for the documents produced from those meetings.
He visited the Soviet Union 16 times, mainly to meet with Russian Orthodox
leaders, but also with officials of the churches of Georgia and Armenia.
He helped write Pope John Paul II’s apostolic letter marking the 1,000th
anniversary of the baptism of King Vladimir of Rus-Kiev and was part of the
Vatican delegation attending celebrations of the anniversary.
He was part of the International Commission Between the Catholic Church and
the Coptic Orthodox Church and helped draft several common statements the
commission issued. He also took part in the five Catholic-Oriental Orthodox
consultations between 1971 and 1988 sponsored by the Pro Oriente Foundation
of the Archdiocese of Vienna, Austria. He was Catholic co-chairman of three
of those meetings.
>From 1964 to 1980 Father Long was also an instructor at the Rome Center of
Loyola University of Chicago, teaching one or more courses each semester in
areas of church history, theology, ecumenism and the history of the
Byzantine Empire.
After leaving his Vatican post, from 1981 to 1985 he headed Fordham
University’s Pope John XXIII Ecumenical Center, which had a pioneering role
in educating U.S. Latin Catholics about the Eastern Catholic and Orthodox
churches. He was also editor of its periodical, Diakonia.
He returned to Rome in 1986 as vice rector and associate professor at the
Oriental Institute and a visiting professor at the Gregorian University,
posts he held until 1995. From 1990 to 1995 he was also rector of the
Pontifical Russian College, commonly known as the Russicum.
Following the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the disintegration
of the Soviet Union, he helped lay the groundwork for more Orthodox students
to do graduate studies at the Russicum and the Oriental Institute as a means
of promoting greater Catholic-Orthodox understanding.
Following his retirement in 1995, he moved to America House, a Jesuit
residence in New York. He continued his active role in national and
international dialogues and served as a visiting professor at several
institutions, including St. Mary’s Seminary and University in Baltimore and
The Catholic University of America in Washington.
END