www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Immaculate conception - eastern view?

We'll burn at the stake together, then.

Wouldn't this approach necessarily lead to the denial of papal infallibility? One criterion for an infallible statement on faith and morals is that it must be the Pope addressing and binding the Universal Church. If some statements (such as the Immaculate Conception) are not being proclaimed as binding on the Universal Church then they are simply not infallible. Consequently they are not de fide for either Eastern Catholics or Roman Catholics.

Maybe this way of deconstructig papal infallibility will be the great contribution of the Eastern Catholics to the Catholic-Orthodox search for unity?

Is there a problem with that?

Just to add to my earlier post- Father Abbot Nicholas of Holy Resurrection Monastery in California, speaks about Eastern and Western theology and that Eastern Catholics can reject particular aspects of Western Theology that is foreign to our Eastern Theological approach but, and this is important, we can't say it is heretical. Just as the Western Catholic Church can't say that aspects of Eastern Theology is heretical but it can reject the understanding since it is not in its spiritual patrimony. I believe you can access this video interview by Abbot Nicholas through their website.
Holy Resurrection Monastery [hrmonline.org]

Maybe Father. I believe that both John Paul II and Benedict XVI have expressed openness to dialogue about the understanding of Papal infallibility and its role in a reunited Church. Praying for the reunion!

Fr. Abbot Nicholas is addressing what you mention here in Eastern Catholic Theology PART 2 [youtube.com]. It's well worth listening to PART 1 [youtube.com] as well. At about minute 5:00 Catherine Alexander specifically asks Fr. Nicholas about the Immaculate Conception.

(By clicking on "more info" you can see which questions Catherine Alexander asks the various monks, Fr. Moses, Fr. Maximos, and Fr. Abbot Nicholas, in each of the 10 minute videos.)

Eastern Catholic Theology PART 2: Questions #7.(the beginning of Part 2) May they reject doctrine and dogmas proclaimed by Rome as incorrect or heretical, like papal supremacy? #8. (approx min 5:00) What about doctrines or dogmas proclaimed after the treaties of union, like the immaculate conception? #9. May Roman Catholics reject Eastern or Oriental Catholic theology as outside their theological patrimony, incorrect or heretical? #10. What is the bottom line on what it means to the everyday Catholic that each of the rites includes its own theological patrimony?

(As a Roman rite Catholic myself all of these YourWordFromTheWise interviews are among my favorite resources as basic teachings about the Eastern churches.)

I could never leave communion with Rome, but it seems pretty clear to me that eventual reunion of the fractured Church will necessarily involve a council that refines papal infallibility--in a way consistent with both Eastern & Western understanding.

Offhand, wild guesses: pieces include Ravenna's notion of the impossibility of a post-schism ecumenical council, the need for universal episcopal consensus expressed by the Roman see, and I'm not sure what else . . .

hawk

Since I reject papal supremacy I am not -- according to Fr. Abbot Nicholas -- a Catholic. I'm sure glad that he cleared that up for me.

You like to pick fights. What Abba Nicholas said was we do not have to accept Latin dogmas, but we cannot call them heretical. You seem to consider it a bad day when you haven't hurled at least one anathema.

I believe that papal supremacy is an error. The West often confuses primacy in love, which is intended to support communion, with supremacy of power over others.

I am reminded of the words of Fr. Staniloae, who wrote: "Sobornicity is distinguished from an undifferentiated unity by being of a special kind, the unity of communion. The Roman Catholic Church has lost this sense of catholicity as communion, for the doctrine of papal primacy and the ecclesiastical magisterium make impossible the communion of all the members of the Church in all things. The Roman Catholic Church remains content with the unity which characterizes a body under command, and it has replaced the unity of communion (catholicity or sobornicity properly so-called) with the universality in the sense of geographical extension." [Dumitri Staniloae, Theology and the Church, trans. Robert Barringer (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's, 1980), 56-57]

Since I agree with Archbishop Zoghby in holding that Vatican I is merely a particular synod of the Roman Church, it follows that I do not believe that the things said at that council are either ecumenical or dogmatic. The most that can be said about the decrees issued at Vatican I is that they are theological opinions, which can be neither true nor false, but simply valid or invalid, and I hold the latter to be the case.

You my friend are doing what Abbot Nicholas is saying. We can say that within our spiritual tradition the role of the Papacy is different than understood in the Wester Church. But we can't flat out call it heresy. Its your right to disagree with a tradition or theological understanding/principle/opinion that is not within your own spiritual patrimony. And since the last few Popes are open to looking at this issue in the future as part of a reunited Orthodox Catholic Church the future is bright for an understanding of the role of the primacy of the Bishop of Rome that is acceptable to both lungs of the one Church.

If we can come to this conclusion (or be open to it), topics like the Immaculate conception of Mary can also be looked at by a reunited Church.

So yes, you are a Catholic.

Neither of which means they are heretical.


What may be invalid in regard to the Eastern Churches may be perfectly valid in regard to the Latin Church--and vice versa.

This has the end result of destroying the dogma of papal infallibility. I think we mentioned earlier that, as we are all aware, for a papal statement to fulfil the criteria of infallibility it must inter altia criteria be intended for reception by the entire Church. If the Eastern component of the Catholic Church has the option of buying out of Vatican I and denying the binding authority of papal infabillity the Eastern rejection destroys infallibility not just for the Church of the Catholic East but for the entire Catholic Church. Infallibility *has* to be of universal application or it is simply nothing. Is there a flaw in this reasoning?

The matter is, in my mind, already moot. No Pope will ever make an ex Cathedra declaration again, for several reasons, both pragmatic and doctrinal.

The pragmatic reason is simple enough--infallible declarations have proven to be counter-productive, harming the unity of the Church far more than doctrinal clarity has enhanced it. In the case of the two ex Cathedra decrees issued to date (the 1854 proclamation of the doctrine of the immaculate conception and the 1950 decree on the assumption of the Virgin Mary), two doctrines that had been otherwise unremarkable were suddenly elevated to prominence and called into question simply because of the way in which they had been declared. Future decrees would likely be just as divisive, and since the Petrine Ministry is devoted to the unity of the faithful, a doctrine which undermines unity is of no use to the Holy See.

On the doctrinal level, for an ex Cathedra decree to be "valid", it must be consistent with the deposit of faith (what Eastern Christians would call the Tradition), and it must reflect moral unanimity in the body of Christ. In the case of the doctrine of the assumption of the Virgin Mary, Pius XII took steps to ensure that moral unanimity by polling the episcopate. Under the ecclesiology of Trent and Vatican I, that meant polling the Catholic bishops. Given the lack of ecclesial status of the Eastern Churches at that time, and their extreme latinization, in effect this meant only the moral unanimity of the Roman Catholic Church counted.

Since Vatican II, with the establishment of independent Ecclesiae sui juris within the Catholic communion, and the recognition of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and Assyrian Churches as true Churches, obtaining moral unanimity would now require at the very least the assent of the Eastern Catholic Churches; assuming restoration of communion with the other Eastern Churches, it would require their assent as well. Given Eastern Christian ecclesiology, such assent would be most unlikely, particularly on any controversial issue.

In reality, then, the "Infallible Decree" is a dead letter. Rome probably regrets ever having brought it up, and is looking for a graceful way of shedding it without actually repudiating it. The approach enunciated by Abba Nicholas in fact points to one such way this could be done--the East simply defines the doctrine of Papal infallibility in a way consistent with its own Tradition, recognizing all the while that such an approach nullifies the doctrine as a practical proposition.

This would not be the first time that Rome has simply walked away from something it once pronounced dogmatically. For instance, from the time of Gregory VII through Pius XII, the Catholic Church taught the supremacy of the Pope over temporal rulers, including the power to make or depose princes, kings and emperors. By excommunicating rulers and placing their domains under interdict, medieval Popes were able to impose their will over secular rulers. But, over time, the power was used too frequently and with too naked a political objective, and so it lost its force. When Pope Pius V excommunicated Queen Elizabeth of England, the world yawned. No Pope ever dared to excommunicate or interdict a secular ruler again, and in 1958, Pope Pius XII quietly dropped this papal claim, stating that it was an historical artifact of a particular place and time, not part of the eternal deposit of the faith.

On a similar level, the Church once taught de fide that the rule over the Papal States was an integral aspect of the Pope's prerogatives. Pius IX in his Syllabus of Errors, condemned those who said the Papacy could exist independent of the Papal States. At the same time, he also condemned the notion that clerics could be excluded from all positions of civil authority. Fast forward a century, and find the Church condemning clerics for holding positions of civil authority. Go back to the fourteenth century, to find the Church demanding, under pain of excommunication, that secular rulers torture suspected heretics--which resulted in the introduction of judicial torture in lands (such as England) where it had not previously been known. Fast forward to the 20th century, and the Church not only does not demand the torture of heretics, it condemns torture as an affront to the dignity of the human person.

One can cavil over what degree of authority the Church employed in each of these situations (though there was a strong debate about whether the Syllabus of Errors should be retroactively considered infallible and binding; the Church dodged the bullet on that one). Some people will say these doctrines were not taught "de fide", and maybe those words were not used. But a more practical yardstick is available: to what lengths did the Church go to ensure compliance with these teachings? In my book, if you are imprisoning, killing or at the least excommunicating people for not agreeing with a doctrine, then for all practical purposes you are teaching it de fide.

And yet, these same doctrines were abandoned--in practice if not formally--when they were no longer seen as beneficial to the Church (either because the Church, in a moment of metanoia, understood its practices to be inconsistent with the Gospel of Christ, or because the situation on the ground changed, making the doctrine irrelevant or counterproductive).

Papal infallibility will probably go this way, not with a bang but with a whimper. The Orthodox ought to be willing to settle for a solution that eliminates the power without requiring a humiliating repudiation. A solution that allows the Latin Church to save face would be best not only for the Latin Church but for Orthodoxy as well. The role of the Eastern Catholics in bringing this about may very well be precisely that outlined by Abba Nicholas--disagreeing with Latin "dogmas" that contradict our Traditions, without actually denouncing them as "heretical". This is also consistent with the second half of Ratzinger's 1977 Graz address, in which he said that, in return for the Latin Church demanding no more of the East concerning papal primacy than was believed in the first millennium, the Eastern Churches would not denounce doctrines that had developed in the West during the second millennium.