www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West New UGCC Catechism Reaffirms Papal Infallibility?

One of the marks of catholicity of the Church is that what is given in a part is for the whole. Apoutheoun might feel that he can simply wave away what he doesn't like, but the fact of the matter is that the canons of his own Church recognizes the supreme, full, immediate, and universal ordinary power of the Bishop of the Church of Rome (CCEO Canon 43).
It has nothing to do with "Western Catholics having a problem with it". it has to do with submitting one's self to the canons of the Church one belongs to.

But the CCEO is the most Latinized document every imposed upon the Eastern Churches and are almost a carbon copy of the Latin Code and is not an authentic representation of the Eastern Canonical tradition(s).

One set of canons for 22 distinct Eastern/Oriental sui juris Churches is just silly. The canonical traditions of the Byzantine Churches are different than the Coptic, Syrian, Armenian and all the others Churches that make up the Catholic Communion of Churches.

Glory to Jesus Christ!

The CCEO codifies canons within and among sui iuris Churches. Particular customs and norms within a Church are formulated and approved within a Church under its "Particular Law." In a case with which I'm familiar,the Ruthenian Church in America, Metropolitan Judson Procyk promulgated it. It surely is different from the Particular Law of the Archparchy of Presov or the Eparchy of Mukachevo.

On the broader subject......
Let me pose a question to our posters. Let's pretend that there was never a union in history of an Eastern Orthodox Church with Western Catholics, that there was never a mingling since the tragic schism. Now, let's imagine that the West and East come into communion.

Do you think that either the West or the East would remain unchanged? Do you think that there would be no accomodations? Do you think there would be no revision in technical language which would reconcile the objectionable differences? If not, how could anyone credibly say there is communion, when in fact nothing really changed? Preposterous!

So how can an "Greek Catholic" Church as exists today be "totally" Orthodox? How can it totally reject Western dogma? Yes, the differences, even in dogma can be nuanced so that it's not so foreign. And hasn't the Roman Catholic nuanced its positions to reconcile most of the past "heresies" of the East?

We should not be critical of the UGCC catechism; they acknowledge that it is not an ecumenical statement; why should it be? Face it, the Orthodox Patriarchs won't negotiate with the Greek Catholics; they will only speak to Rome.

Groundbreaking formal and unilateral statements being included in the catechism would only hinder the chances of communion among the Christ's churches.

As I see it,
Fr Deacon Paul

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Any human custom that ignores the fact that the one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church exists, and is made manifest, whole and entire in each local Church must be dispensed with as contrary to Apostolic Tradition. This is not about being Byzantine, Roman, or Oriental; instead, this is about accepting the reality that the one Church exists only in and through the many local Churches.

Finally, it does not follow from the fact that a particular bishop holds primacy that he is then also to be styled the head of all the Churches. According to ancient Tradition there is only one bishop (i.e., one πρῶτος or κεφάλη) in each local Church. One must not confuse the fact that the primate is the first (πρῶτος) or head (κεφάλη) within the synod with the false notion that he is then also to be accepted as the head of each and every local Church.

Me want to watch First Contact.

That's great. What would you say makes your position a Catholic one?

Pope Paul VI said that the latter councils of the West are General ones and not Ecumenical. From the article Ecumenism in the Thirteenth Century


If Pope Paul VI can hold that the latter councils of the West are general and still be a Catholic, why can't an average Melkite Catholic or for that matter the whole Melkite Greek Catholic Church? Certainly one can't get more Catholic than the Pope of Rome can they?

I've never been one for reading doctrine into speeches. Speeches are political, and people can get away with spin in them they can't elsewhere. For example, here we have the term "general" - to keep Orthodox happy? My reading of this is that it was diplomacy; I'm not really sure that there is such a thing as a "general" synod in Orthodoxy. There are local synods, for local churches, some of the canons of which later became binding Ecumenically. (see Rodopoulos, An Overview of Orthodox Canon Law, pp. 48 ff.). Speeches are not the place to look for doctrinal change - the documents of the Church are. Does Pope Paul suggest these councils don't bind Melkites? I'm not sure the term General implies this (Local would).

All of this raises interesting questions of course about what exactly constitutes Ecumenical in the Catholic CHurch then. For example, we read in Rodopoulos regarding the Second Council, that it was originally not considered Ecumenical because the West was absent, but was later ratified as Ecumenical.

So it seems to me that if your argument for why things aren't ecumenical is because easterners aren't there, it could fall into problems. Additionally, your argument has problems in relation to VII and VI, because of course Easterners were there. The Melkites etc were there as the heads of the Catholic Eastern Churches, and signed off on it. If you don't like what they signed off on, that's fine, but the corpus of documents from these councils is the position of the Melkite Church just as much as the Roman Church. If you don't like it, hey, there's Constantinople.

I continue to shake my head at these sort of threads. If being in communion with Rome is so terrible, and these people in Rome don't understand you and hoist these outrageous documents on you, why continue to do it? If it's because you like having things to complain about, I assure you, there are plenty of things to complain about in Orthodoxy, so you won't be bereft of internet forums to do so, and there are even more options available for bashing Rome if that is what rocks your boat. More importantly, on Orthodox forums, most people will agree with you bashing Rome, whereas most Catholics must look at these threads and go "why are these posters Catholic if they dislike Catholic documents so much and do so much to try and disprove that they apply to them?"

Just as saying "western" doesn't equate with Roman Catholicism.

It is Catholic because Orthodoxy is Catholic. I do not equate being Catholic with being Latin or with accepting Latin theological theories.

Well I think you're wrong to characterise the things in your list as "latin theological theories". I think they are the hallmarks of being a Catholic, of whatever sui juris Church. I think the Melkite hierarchy agrees, the Ukrainian hierarchy obviously agrees, the Ruthenian hierarchy agrees. The items you list are the markers that distinguish a member of the Catholic communion of churches from a member of the Orthodox communion of churches, and as such provide a fixed point for dialogue. A moving target is of no use use for dialogue whatsoever. It is utterly bizarre to Orthodox how one can be in a communion of churches and apparently disregard all the official documents of that communion of churches.

I guess that you and I will have to agree to disagree.

I think that Eastern Catholics who accept Medieval Western innovations (e.g., "created" grace) are Latinized.

It would seem that Patriarch Sviatoslav has a somewhat different perspective:

You have the view that you can't be Latinized and Orthodox. The Russian Orthodox Church has always been pretty Latinized.