www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Father Alexander Schmemann on papacy

I posted this on another board, addressing it to a fellow Catholic who'd been engaged in a discussion on "Catholicity." Comments welcome. (No flames, please. My asbestos vest is kind of threadbare. :p )

ZT

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I was wondering what you might think of the following excerpt from Father Alexander Schmemann, taken from The Primacy of Peter:

Father Schmemann gets around all this (for himself) by maintaining that the Church is not a universal organism; rather, he claims Christians have only a Eucharistic unity, not an organic unity. However, he admits that, if we posit the idea of the Church as a universal organism, then papal primacy logically follows.

IMHO, there are serious problems with Father Schmemann's claim that Christians have only a Eucharistic unity. Obviously as Catholics, we agree that Christians do have a Eucharistic unity -- "one Bread, one Body." But we recognize that the Bible speaks of much more than this. The very term "Body" implies organism. (How many non-organic bodies have you ever encountered? :p ) What's more, St. Paul describes the Body of Christ as functioning exactly the way an organism does: the various "members" relying on each other and so forth. Moreover, Our Lord Himself described the Church as an organism: The Kingdom, He said, is like a mustard seed that gradually grows into a mature bush which shelters the birds of the air -- an eloquent, poetical, yet amazingly exact prediction of the Catholic Church growing and developing from tiny local beginnings into a universal organism.

Both Scripture and the Fathers see the Church as a universal organism. This does not exhaust the ecclesiology of the Mystical Body by any stretch, but it is nonetheless integral to it. I respectfully submit that Father Schmemann was compelled to disregard this compelling Scriptural & patristic evidence precisely because the alternative was reunion with Rome (the proverbial fate worse than death, perhaps? ).

However, I would respectfully suggest that rejection of "the universal organism" model -- with concomitant rejection of the papacy -- is not only unScriptural and unhistorical but (in practice) unworkable. It leads inevitably to jurisdictional chaos.

Leaving that aside, however, I think Father Schmemann's main point remains valid and telling: If we see the Church as a universal organism (as Jesus, Paul, and the Fathers see her:D), then we must posit papal primacy. There's no way around it. As a local congregation needs its pastor, and as a diocese needs its bishop, so the Church universal needs the pope.

So, the Church Universal has the invisible Christ as its head? Sure. But so does each parish, each diocese...yet that doesn't obviate the need for a visible head (representing the invisible Christ) on the parochial and diocesan levels. Father Schmemann makes short work of the argument that what applies for a diocese somehow doesn't apply on the universal level. He rightly identifies as "Protestant" this counterposing of the invisible Christ to the visible hierarchy....

I agree with Father Schmemann: If a local church needs a visible head in addition to the invisible one (Christ), then so must the Universal Church. And I would go further, of course: By the same token, if the local church has organic unity, not just Eucharistic unity, then so must the Universal Church. It's both/and, not either/or. Leastwise, thass the way the Bible done see it. And so do I....

Maybe we need something in the middle, between the exagerated papo-centrism of the Roman Church, and the disorganization and jursidcitionalism of the Orthodox Churches.

The ethnic Orthodox Patriarchates that were established after the schism were an innovation that the Eastern Church had to accept in order to maintain a unity. The Roman Church controlled this by supressing the "independence" of some local Churches and to create a full papal control over all the West. Both forms were needed according to the local contexts.

How can the schism be healed in the modern world were both schemes co-exist?

I don't think that the Orthodox Churches have the idea of the "invisible" Church. The head of the Church is Christ himself and he is visible through the Bishops (the Apostolic Succession) and the Mysteries.

The idea of the "invisible" Church was very much developped by the early Protestant reformers, it is an invisible society without priesthood or authority because all the faithful can have priestly powers.

Dear friend's,

this is some very interesting commentary.

I believe the best way to achieve Church unity is through our Bishop's.

Obviously the model Roman Catholics have through the Curia is a very good one. But this does not reflect every Bishops viewpoint. I believe the Curia should be expanded to include more diverse opinions.

The model Greek Catholics have now is not a good one. We are relegated to the Congregation of Eastern Churches section where I believe we have two Greek Catholic Bishop's on the board. The rest are Latin Bishops. Obviously we need a Congregation that is only filled with Greek Catholic's.

The model the Orthodox have is not a good one because the Patriarch's are on an equal footing with the Pope. Too much room for schism. Obviously all the Bishops would need a voice.

The best model seem's to be the Russian Old Believer model. Everyone has a voice.

Many Orthodox authors state that the introduction of the rank of "Cardinal" was an innovation (alien to the eraly Church of Christ)but now very few orthodox would hold that possition. The Cardinals would be like an expanded Holy Synod of the Latin Church and the Roman Curia would be like a permanent synod.

In the modern times both models, Orthodox and Latin, will have to co-exist.

IMHO, the ecclesial structures of the West and the East developed as a result of the accident of history. With the fall of the West to the barbarians, the pope of Rome, the only patriarch in the West, became the single most important authority in the West, in fact with the ascendancy of Charlemagne the pope becomes a temporal authority as well (the so-called Papal States). Seperated from the East, papal supremacy becomes a fact of life. In the East, the other four patriarchal sees and the Emperor kept an eye on eachother. As a result collegiality develops from the patriarchal and imperial situation (although a byzantinization does occur in the East to some extent). Any reconciliation between East and West must take this into consideration.

John

Remie said, " The head of the Church is Christ himself and he is visible through the Bishops (the Apostolic Succession)... ".

Remie, since it has been determined in the thread "Anglicanism and Apostolic Succession" that the Orthodox Churches used to believe/still believe that the Anglican Church is in possession of valid Apostolic Succession, are they/were they part of the "visible Church of Christ"? You stated in "Anglicanism..." the following: "But those statements came from the 1930's, things have changed since the introduction of female priesthood in the Anglican Church, their orders don't seem to have credibility anymore." Were Anglicans part of the "visible Church of Christ" until they began to ordain women, or does this mean that the Orthodox Churches were mistaken from the start when they said that the Anglican Apostolic Succession was valid? What about Catholicism and its valid Apostolic Succession?

I'm genuinely curious. Please clear it up for me if you can. Thanks.

ChristTeen287

Can anyone tell me how to isolate the words of others with those little bars when I'm quoting someone else? Thanks.

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Dear Christ Teen,

look under the Instant UBB Code and you see the silver button that says quote. Press that and what should pop up is [quote} Start typing here {quote}.

{quote} put the persons commentary here{quote} .

Dear Bisantino:

I agree with your premise about the importance of broad historical trends influencing the development of ecclesiology. And with your comments about the West, to a point. But the comments about the development of a more collegial approach in the East, of course, skips a lot of interesting history.

I think that in the early days the power of the emperor served as a brake on the power of the EP. Working together, however, they exerted a centralizing influence unrivaled by anything evidenced by Rome. They did arrange, with the West, to excommunicate essentially the entire churches of Antioch and Alexandria, leaving in those territories, churches mainly composed of diaspora Greeks - churches which eventually lost local character were totally byzantined. Patriarchs of the Greek Orthodox Churches in Alexandria and Antioch were for long periods appointed by the EP, were non-native Greeks, and were even resident in Constantinople. A lot of this centralization was related to Moslem rule in these areas, and ultimately in Constantinople and south-eastern Europe.

One should also bear in mind the struggle of, for example, the Church of Serbia (Patriarchate twice dissolved by the EP), the struggles for autocephaly in, for example, Bulgaria and Romania.

Is the collegial ecclesiology of the East, then, a continuation of some early mode, untouched by the forces of history? ISTM that a case can be made that it is, on the contrary, a rather new phenomenon, related: first to the decline of power in Constantinople coupled with the emergence of a strong center in the new Rome; and second to collapse of authority of both Constantinople and Moscow with the collapse Ottoman empire, and the turmoil of the communist era.

What will happen now, in a time of relative stability? What will the structure of world Orthodoxy look like in a century? Hmmm.

Dear Steven,

You wrote,

"...Dear friend's,"
"...our Bishop's."
"...with Greek Catholic's."

I'd just like to point out to you that to make a word plural, you simply add an s (not 's), so it would be:

"Dear friends" "our bishops" "with Greek Catholics"

To make a work possesive, you add an 's:

every bishop's viewpoint.

instead of what you wrote,

"...every Bishops viewpoint."

You also don't need that apostrophe here:

"The best model seem's to be..."

I am just pointing this out for your information, not trying to be rude. I used to make these mistakes all the time, because our US public schools just really don't focus on grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc., anymore. I had to teach myself, and sometimes I still make big errors! ha ha

In Christ,

anastasios

Christeen:

I must have missed that, because it can't be possible that the Orthodox view the Anglicans as having "valid orders" when they are outside the Church!

A wonderful and concise explication of the Orthodox doctrine of Apostolic Succession is a little booklet called "Apostolic Succession" by I believe Fr. Gregory Rogers or Rutgers or something, published by Conciliar Press.

Basically, St. Augustine, in his fight with the donatists, came to the conclusion that if a validly-ordained bishop ordained with the proper form, and the intention to do what the Church wills, then an ordination occurs. This can lead to all sorts of breakaway Churches: see www.ind-movement.org [ind-movement.org] to see what I mean!!

The earlier, patristic doctrine (which the Orthodox still maintain) focuses not on the CONSECRATOR but rather the COMMUNITY. A man cannot be consecrated unless it is in connection with a eucharistic community. An ordination is FOR SERVICE in a community, not to gain "power" to celebrate sacraments. Hence the Orthodox view that if one is not visibly in the Church, his ordination is not "valid" or "invalid", it simply ISN'T because it is outside the Church. If this man comes into the Church, the Church can receive him AS a priest or bishop, however, if the ordination was done in a Church that is in schism from Orthodoxy. However, Anglicans are normatively received by ordination because their "orders" are so dubious. What the Ecumenical Patriarchate said in the 1920's was that if the ENTIRE Anglican Church converted en masse, that then MAYBE they would be received by vesting because the grace of the Holy Spirit would be applied to the everyone at once, to their orders, etc., to their communities that are in existence, etc. But individually, without that common communal joining, no, it cannot happen that way.

In Christ,

anastasios

Does anyone know where to find a direct quote of the Ecumenical Patriarch on this issue?

ChristTeen287

No, but what good would that do when he is not the head of the Orthodox Church? He is not an eastern pope!

anastasios