www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Eastern Catholics - why are you in union with Rome?

Kung's book on infallibility is one of the best I've ever read.

Joe

Joe, I agree and i was responding to Edmac's comment.

Edmac,

I believe it was a guy named Thomas Aquinas who said not to pay so much attention to who said a particular thing, but to what they had to say that was good.

In the eyes of many RCs, anything said to challenge papal authority is equivalent either to Protestantism or to a complete rejection of the Gospel. Naturally, both ECs and EOs have a different perspective on this.


Peace,
Deacon Richard

Etnick,

I've been reflecting on this situation a lot lately, and I wonder if this doesn't have a lot to do with the fact that the ECCs are still treated very much like subordinate churches, despite rhetoric to the contrary.

In a very real sense, the whole idea of the "unia" was to provide a model of what a reunited Church would be like. This was a failure precisely because it showed very clearly an arrangement that would be completely unacceptable to the EOs.

I don't know for sure, but I suspect that this is the real problem. If Rome would start giving us the same autonomy the EOs would want in a reunited Church, we would have a very different situation, and "unia" would take on a whole new meaning.


Peace,
Deacon Richard

This appears to be just the type of answer the poster was looking for

-ray

This sounds like a book I might want to read.

Can never get too much reality.

-ray

Ray, you can buy a copy on Amazon.com. BTW, my mother's side of the family comes from Meriden. John

Strange bedfellows indeed to see an Orthodox hitch their wagon to Hans K�ng. I grant, to be sure, that no one author will reflect our own thinking 100%, and even a borken clock gets it right twice a day. One wonders, however, how very comfortable Orthodox who favor K�ng's thinking on the papacy would embrace, in turn his sacramental and scriptural theologies and critiques. The adversary of my adversary...

But about two pages back I saw this one coming.

I am not interested in spinning this thread off into a days-long running war of wits on the validity or persuasiveness of various and sundry arguments for or against the the Papacy as defined by the V1 Council and understood in the Catechism. Its been done, the archived threads are open.

Christmas is coming, Ethnick if you have an interest in sending me the Hasler tome, I suppose I can be entreated to get you a copy of Jesus, Peter & the Keys [amazon.com] or Upon This Rock [amazon.com]

From there we could, I imagine, start furiously Googling articles to present critiques of the other's suggested reading... It's been done.

On the weight of our witness, I won't present mine as being too much to consider when I can point to smarter more articulate people on either side. 12 years or wrestling with these same issues lead me to well different conclusions. Odd how that worked out I guess.

If and when one party or another start shilling for a communion/denomination/church/jurisdiction over another, as wise and right sounding as it is to suggest a reading list to each other, I invariably find people who are encamped and pre-accepting a various proposition gravitate towards that which re-affirms the thinking they brought to the table. I will make no bones about it - years of thought and stress in the matter have left me encamped in a position. A few days of polemic tit-for-tat prolly won't change your thinking or mine.

But as the OP was asking for what informed our thinking, I offered a taste of what informed mine. To debate it, if anyone is interested in that, maybe a new thread should be started.

Simple Sinner, I was only recommending YOU read Hasler. I just quoted the introduction. It was some one else who made the big deal about Kung.

I have never read the man but I do know that he still, on occasion, meets with the Popes. I believe that Pope Benedict has met with him in the Vatican.

Ratzinger/Benedict-'s comments on Kung are fairly contradictory.

Someone correct me if I am wrong ... but was not Kung one of Ratzinger's teachers ... and was it not Kung who recommended Ratzinger to his post at the Vatican?

When Kung's book came out and so many articles defended Infallibility and disparaged Kung ... Ratzinger said ...


and further ...


May I repeat ... "To free itself from the constraining fetters of Roman Scholastic Theology represents a duty upon which, in my humble opinion, the possibility of the survival of Catholicism seems to depend."

But now that Razinger is Benedict .. there seems to be a change in tune. Benedict has said to the effect that it is a pity that Kung has distanced himself from the church. Exactly what that means I am not sure. A pity for Kung .. a pity for the church? One can take it both ways.

-ray

To answer the question posed by the thread title.........

I'm in union simply because I'm not persuaded that Rome is heterodox. I grew up in union with Rome. If I were to leave communion one would need to persuade me that what Rome actually teaches* on two issues is not merely undesirable, but an unambiguous deviation from Divine Revelation no matter how one cuts it or rephrases it. These issues are:

1. its role vis-a-vis other particular churches
2. the source/procession/etc. of the Third Person of the Holy Trinity

Markos

*I say "what Rome actually teaches" because there are all kinds of crazy theories out there -especially on the Internet - about Rome's position. In the end, all I can accept are those that come from the Vatican and major curial officials, as well as from those who have taken high-level studies consistent with said officials. For instance, my opinion on Papal Primacy MUST be in accordance with what Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict wrote in his book The Spirit of the Liturgy .

Ohhh soooo true.

-ray

Really?

I might just pick it up.

Thanks.

-ray

To be quite clear, my post was not directed specifically to you or your comments. It just happened to be the case that my comments posted immediately after yours.

The way this forum program works, if a poster's comments do not have a quote to which they are replying, when they post it will say the comment they are making is in response to the post immediately ahead of theirs.

What I wrote was wholly without reference to your comments which I did not see until after I posted mine.

To get back to the original question, exactly what Patristic texts do you use to justify remaining under Rome?

Alexandr