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Surely it is unnecessary to lay out the reasons why the contemporary Russian Church has such prominence in today's Orthodox world and it will almost certainly come into greater prominence as the years go by.

The first item on the upcoming Great Council is that of the diptychs and it is very likely that Russia will move up the ranks in the order of precedence and liturgical commemoration. The diptychs have always been based on two things - the antiquity of the Churches and their contemporary significance. This is how the newcomer Constantinople was bounced up into place number 2 and pushed Alexandria down to place number 3 and Antioch to 4.

But even if no adjustment be made to the diptychs this will not affect the significance of the Church of Russia in today's Orthodox reality.

So, basically, it's because Moscow is the eight hundred pound gorilla? But if you go by that standard, Rome is King Kong, so in a reunited Church, Rome would still have the primacy, no?

By the way, the ranking in the diptyches was not based purely on accommodation. Rome was first not because Rome was the preeminent city of the Empire; by 451, it was rapidly becoming a backwater. And Constantinople may have been the capital, but it was not ranked first. Alexandria certainly deserved to be second after Old Rome, but the Councils deliberately clipped Alexandria's wings because it was becoming too theologically dominant. Jerusalem was added to the list of patriarchal Churches mainly for symbolic value--it had, until Chalcedon, merely been a suffragan see of Caesarea. But Jerusalem also controlled the valuable pilgrimage sites in the Holy Land.

But the future significance of Moscow in the Orthodox world should not be taken as given. Russia is a country in the midst of severe moral, economic and demographic decline. If the Church of Moscow wishes to have influence outside of Russia, it must first demonstrate its moral leadership within Russia. I don't see that happening right now. Do you?

I see that Peter Gilbert who is being spoken of in another thread has something to say about our discussion on global primacy...

"There are, indeed, specific problems in the relation of Catholic and Orthodox Churches that the present Ecumenical Patriarch’s very public role has made vividly evident to many Orthodox.

"The Ecumenical Patriarch’s role as senior hierarch of the Orthodox communion is far more fragile than his public image sometimes suggests. In Rome he may look like the Eastern counterpart of the Pope, and the vigour with which he has exercised and even developed his role in the Orthodox Church may give plausibility to that image, but the fact remains that he is not the linear superior of the chief hierarchs of other autocephalous Churches, but only the first among equals among them, and that is something very different. Orthodox tradition, moreover, has never recognised any hierarchical role above that of the local bishop as of divine authority. Any higher layer of authority and responsibility derives from Synodical or sometimes even state decision.

"There is nothing inevitable or immutable in the Primacy of Constantinople. Nor can the Ecumenical Patriarch assert his authority to guarantee the Orthodox Church’s acceptance of the policy he espouses. The same arguments that establish the ecclesiastical and human origin of the patriarchates are deployed by Orthodox to reject Catholic claims of divine institution for the Roman Papacy, and of course to reject any claims to Papal supremacy. (Not, of course, to the Primacy of Rome, that is a quite different and relatively uncontroversial matter.)

http://bekkos.wordpress.com/

This does seem to be blithely, and irresponsibly, promoted by ecumenical enthusiasts such as Zizioulas, but there may be a question as to whether the pleroma of the Church would accept the return of Rome in No.1 position.

If we have an eight hundred pound gorilla which has been living in isolation for 1,000 years and may have picked up some worrying bacilli it would be wise to have a period of quarantine and attentive care and a gradual reintegration into the rest of chimp society.

Well, no, because there is good and proper historical evidence of the universal recognition of Rome's primacy. It may have begun under the principle of accommodation, but concurrently Rome was always considered the Church That Presides in Love on account of its many martyrs, its pastoral consideration for other Churches, and its dual apostolic foundation. As I said, you cannot pretend that the Roman primacy did not exist--too many documents exist on the Eastern side of the fence acknowledging it.

As I said, that primacy was defined and exercised in a different way than it is today, but it was a real primacy. To say that the Churches of the East never recognized it is, put bluntly, untrue.

In that case,the Roman primacy and its meaning for the Churches would have been addressed in the sacred canons. But there is a deafening silence..... no canon roar...

I give up on you Father, because you are not amenable either to reason or to facts. Have fun playing your sanctimonious little ROCOR mind games.

Don't be rude, Stuart.

You give up because you know you can offer nothing from the canons of the first millennium which address the life and structre of the Church and which would demonstrate that Rome held a primacy of authority over all the Churches.

Well, the Council of Constantinople established the taxis of the Great Churches, and put Rome first. The Council of Chalcedon confirmed that taxis. It's interesting that Rome had problems with both canons because it put Constantinople second after Rome, but you seem to ignore them altogether.

Then there was the Council of Serdica, which gave final appellate jurisdiction over all ecclesiastical disputes to. . . the Church of Rome. And many Eastern Churchmen made use of that appellate power.

Down to the end of the ninth century, the Eastern Churches, including the Church of Constantinople, recognized the primacy of the Church of Rome. The basic conclusion of the Synod of 879-880 was Constantinople would have the primacy in its sphere, as Rome had over the Church as a whole.

Then there are all those Greek Fathers, who, when the going got tough, appealed to the See of Rome as having primacy among the other Great Churches--John Chrysostom, Maximos the Confessor, Ignatios the Lesser--the list is quite long.

This is why I will not debate the matter with you further: you are being either disingenuous or intellectually dishonest. You ignore great swatches of Church history because it does not correlate with your predetermined conclusion. You remind me of those climate scientists in the UK, complaining in their purloined e-mails that the results don't match the predictions of the models. . . therefore the data must be bad. I suggest that your model is bad, and you need a new one.

Your demand for canons of the first millennium at least is not as ridiculous as your claim that the Fathers did not say remarriage was not sacramental. As I remember reminding you, their silence was due to the fact that the Church did not even perform remarriages until the ninth century. But in this case, the canons are there, and you simply refuse to acknowledge their existence. Even though some of them come from Great Councils.

Do you see the irony here: Orthodox polemics for centuries chastized Rome for not recognizing Canon 3 of Constantinople and Canon 28 of Chalcedon as giving Constantinople priority after Rome, but now you are trying to deny the very existence of those canons because they give priority to Rome before Constantinople (and where does Moscow fall in this canon?). Do I also need to remind you that Canon 36 of the Qunisextunct Council confirmed Canon 28 of Chalcedon?

So what kind of "canons" do you want produced? Beyond that, how dare you demand canonical clarity on this issue, while simultaneously exulting in the chaos of the Orthodox nomocanonical system? Why demand from Rome something you do not demand from yourself?

Oh, wait! I remember how the game is played: heads you win, tails I lose. Between that, and constantly moving the goalposts around, you should be able to sustain the schism for another millennium without breaking a sweat. Those of us familiar with an early Star Trek episode called " A Piece of the Action" will recognize rules derived from the ingenious card game "Fizzbin".

Primacy is not a distinct sacrament (mystery); rather, primacy is inherent to episcopacy, and so all bishops possess primacy within the Church.

Now how primacy works regionally and globally as an expression of communion between the Churches - as important as it is - must never be thought of as a matter of divine right given by Christ Himself to one local Church, which is how Roman Catholics often frame the issue. Instead, primacy is a matter of authority given by the bishops in council to one among them who will act as primate within the body of bishops (i.e., the synod) - understood regionally, or even throughout the whole oecumene in an ecumenical council.

Now Rome during the first millennium held that position of honor by custom, but Rome's position within the ecclesial order (taxis) is not itself a divinely revealed dogma (contrary to the claim made in Dictatus Papae: "That the Roman Church was founded by God alone"); instead, it is simply a developed custom founded upon the position of that local Church within the capital of the Roman Empire, while also being based on its dual apostolic foundation (as Stuart noted in his post). Nevertheless, the dual apostolic foundation of the Roman Church as important as it is, does not establish its position as a divine dogma; moreover, many other Churches were also founded by apostles (including the petrine sees of Antioch and Alexandria), and so one must not make more out of this Roman claim than it can support. After all, Pope St. Gregory the Great himself held that the Churches of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch together form one historic petrine see in three places (see Registrum Epistolarum, Book VII, 40), and so it would be wrong to think that the Roman Church somehow has a unique position by divine right, or to hold that it has - God forbid - supremacy over all the other Churches, which is a concept that inevitably leads to the politicization of ecclesiology as a power struggle among competing ecclesial princes.

Primacy within the worldwide communion of Churches has a purpose, but admitting this to be the case is not the same thing as accepting the second millennium claims of the Roman Church.

Might I suggest to all posters a stepping back and then approaching with even more charity?

As to the topic at hand, a good study of history shows that the whole Church (East and West) acknowledged that Rome had primacy. Orthodox theologians and historians acknowledge this. That is not questioned by anyone who knows history. The question that divides is not that there was primacy but what the primacy consisted of in the first millennium. The document discussed in Paphos in October was entitled: "The Role of the Bishop of Rome in the Communion of the Church in the First Millennium." In February, speaking towards the meeting Patriarch Bartholomew I stated: "The patriarch explained: "The theological dialogue between our Churches, interrupted for almost six years, was taken up again first in Belgrade and then in Ravenna, and will continue next October in Krakow. We will be invited to examine the question of the primacy of the Bishop of Rome within the Christian Church." [Zenit report found here.] That the Ecumenical Patriarch (sometimes trashed by other Orthodox) spoke thusly does not mean he supports the Latin's definition of primacy. I only used it because it was handy, and shows that Orthodoxy as a whole acknowledge a primacy, even though they reject Rome's definition of it.

Also, Russian Orthodox Bishop Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev stated in 2006: "Historically, until the schism of 1054, it was the Bishop of Rome who enjoyed a position of primacy among the heads of the Christian Churches. The canons of the Eastern Church -- in particular, the famous 28th canon of the Council of Chalcedon -- ascribe the second, not the first place, to the patriarch of Constantinople.

Moreover, the ground on which this second place was granted to the patriarch of Constantinople was purely political: Once Constantinople became "the second Rome," capital of the Roman -- Byzantine -- Empire, it was considered that the bishop of Constantinople should occupy the second seat after the Bishop of Rome.

After the breach of communion between Rome and Constantinople, the primacy in the Eastern Orthodox family was shifted to the "second in line," i.e., the patriarch of Constantinople. Thus it was by historical accident that he became "primus inter pares" for the Eastern part of the world Christendom."

I apologize if my recent post was held by some members of this forum to be lacking in charity. I certainly meant no disrespect to anyone, but simply wanted to state my viewpoint as clearly as possible.

I'd like to suggest a new thread that would present and discuss, in a sober, non-polemical fashion, all the historical events, teachings, etc., that bear upon the question of papal primacy. I suggest that we all suspend the desire to win polemical points and simply lay out the history as fairly and accurately as we can. I'm not a historian, so there's not much I can offer (though I do have a few books I can access). But let's simply get the historical data out there for all to see. My guess is that the evidence will force both sides to adjust their positions.

I daresay that Fr. Kimel's guess is spot on.

Firstly we ought to remember that the Church of Rome enjoyed the exact same condition of canonical "chaos" until it performed a rationalisation of canon law in 1917.

Secondly, my impressions are from the Eastern Catholics writing here that they themselves would have preferedto contine with this jumble of a system; they apparently see their own modern Code of Eastern Canons as a not very welcome Vatican imposition.

Thirdly, let us remember that the first millenium canons, although varied because they deal with different situations in diferent centuries, still give us a clear picture of the structure of the Church. If Rome had had a primacy of authority it would have been legislated in various ways at various times in the canons.