www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Melkites at Vatican I

I agree.

No, it hasn't, or there would have been no debate at Vatican I. You have started with a conclusion and worked backwards to justify it. That won't do.


No, there wasn't. At the end of the day, all but three of the bishops at Nicaea refused to sign the Symbol of Faith: Arius, Theonas and Secundus. Even Eusebius of Caesarea signed.

Not at all, otherwise we would be left with the illogical conclusion of your premise that infallibility could be left to mean any utterance of the Pope.
Clearly, this has never been the understanding of the West or the Church. By your argument then, Unam Sanctum would be an infallible declaration, yet there aren't really any theologians who consider Unam Sanctum to be infallible (except perhaps for some of the more strident Catholic traditionalists). As I said, what you propose isn't the understanding of the Western Church.


But the point still stands. The fact that some walked out of Vatican I and became formal schismatics doesn't demonstrate a problem with Pastor Aeternus. If anything, it is quite similar to the other breaks in the Church such as Chalcedon and Ephesus. When there are those who will not affirm the voice of the Church, history shows that they leave the unity of the Church. The old Catholics became much like the Nestorians and Monophysites.

What the Old Catholics show is that Western Christians fall into modernist errors when separated from their Patriarch, but the Eastern Orthodox Churches have successfully avoided that problem without the bishop of Rome's assistance for nearly one thousand years.

That said, the way forward in ecumenical dialogue on the primacy is to focus upon canon 34 of the Apostles, which speaks of the symphony of primacy within synodality, and thankfully that appears to be the approach taken by the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue Between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church in its most recent documents.

Ecclesiological and Canonical Consequences of the Sacramental Nature of the Church [sites.google.com]

The Role of the Bishop of Rome in the Communion of the Church in the First Millennium [chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it]

You weren't reading closely. Only a handful of bishops left the Latin Church because of Pastor aeternus. But far more than half of the bishops departed before the final session, and most of those who voted non placet at that final session managed to avoid signing the confession of faith that Pius IX insisted that they sign. Quite a few managed to withhold their signatures until their dying days--still wearing the Pallium as bishops in good standing in the Latin Church. In short, the decree was rammed through a rump session of a rigged council, the outcome of which was foreordained.

The only bright spot in all this is the rejectionists made such trenchant arguments against the Ultramontane position that the final draft of Pastor aeternus was very different from the proposal presented to the council for an up-or-down vote. It was not quite as bad as the Democrats ramming health care reform through the Senate, but it was pretty bad.

You should perhaps familiarize yourself with August Bernhard Hasler's monumental How the Pope Became Infallible: Pius IX and the Politics of Persuasion (1981), which, relying on a variety of first-hand sources, some still in manuscript in the Vatican archives, which reveal the true nature of the council.

And, I think, we should continue reiterating the words of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, uttered first at Graz in 1977, then repeated in his 1985 book, Introduction to Catholic Theology:


So, I stand with Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger here, and I hope he reiterates this position to the present occupant of Peter's See.

Since modernism is a fairly recent historical issue, it is difficult to try to compare something that happened recently to 1000 years. So your point that Western Christendom is fraught with division without the Pope is a fairly flimsy argument.

Well, we could go back a bit farther, and point to that whole reformation thing. . .

Thank you, brother Aramis!

Blessings,
Marduk

Dear brother Stuart,

There you go again, thinking that papal infallibility is completely sepearate from the infallibility of the Church.

You don't seem to know much of the history of the proclamation of the Assumption dogma. The dogma was pronounced in response to the request of numerous bishops, religious orders and lay associations that spanned many years. It's just another anti-papal myth to state that the Pope proclaimed the dogma on his own initiative just to show he could.

From Wikipedia (of all places):
The previous encyclical Deiparae Virginis Mariae (May 1, 1946) to all Catholic bishops stated, that for a long time past, numerous petitions have been received from cardinals, patriarchs, archbishops, bishops, priests, religious of both sexes, associations, universities and innumerable private persons, all begging that the bodily Assumption into heaven of the Blessed Virgin should be defined and proclaimed as a dogma of faith. This was also fervently requested by almost two hundred fathers in the Vatican Council (1869-1870).

Blessings,
Marduk

Dear brother StuartK,


And you know for a fact that papal infallibility was not active in the first millenium how? With what confidence numerous Fathers of the early Middle Ages submitted doctrinal questions to the bishop of Rome! Why do you suppose that was? Even the Fathers of the Second Ecumenical Council partly based their decrees on Pope St. Damasus' Tome on the Holy Spirit!

One doesn't need a dogmatic declaration on papal infallibility in order to deduce that the early Fathers perceived in Rome a standard of orthodoxy that was unsurpassed by any other See.

What does their rejection of it have to do with anything? Infallibility is only active in very specific circumstances. God gives that grace to the Church when it is particularly needed. Perhaps you're confusing infallibility with indefectibility.

Blessings,
Marduk

It really puzzles me that some feel that to be more eastern and orthodox they need to embrace the Orthodox point of view concerning the role of the bishop of Rome in the first millennium when, IMHO, it is the Roman point of view that has more patristic and documented historic support as you clearly sited. Certainly the Primacy was not exercised in the lop-sided way that it has been since the schism, and it is the task of both sides to rediscover just how it was made manifest back then. I do not think it helpful in this dialogue for Greek Catholics to cheer-lead the Orthodox on this issue. I also feel that it might be clearer to understand infallibility from a negative point of view. The bishop of Rome will never lead the Church into error because he possesses in his person that same infallibility that the Church has when united with him. Perhaps the conciliar definition was over-kill as were the dogmatic decrees of Pio Nono and Pius XII. That certain doctrinal points of view have taken on a peculiarly Latin character goes without saying, but I think it disingenuous to say that they are theological opinions or even erroneous. In essence, is not the the "et macula originalis non est in te" and "Assumpta Est" the Latin way of understanding the "Panagia" and the Dormition? If "Lex orandi" is to have any credence, these beliefs cannot be reduced to opinion.

I would disagree that this has anything to do with adopting the Orthodox view on things but rather has more to do with Eastern Catholics figuring out how to live out the teachings of the Second Vatican Council. The Council Fathers spoke about how the Eastern Churches need to return their roots and rid themselves of any Latinizations, etc, and debates like this are just part of that process.

I don't see this debate framed in the context of "how can we undermine the Church and cast doubt on the Faith" but rather "how are we to understand Vatican I and its teachings in light of our Eastern Tradition". There is a big difference.

It seems to me that there is a lot of confusion among Eastern Catholics with regard to how to understand the post-schism dogmas. You hear everything from "as long as we say these dogmas aren't heretical, we don't have to accept them" to "we must understand everything exactly as the Latin Church expounds them or we are not truly Catholic". I think there is a middle ground, and Eastern Catholics are struggling to find where that is. I like debates like this because, while they do raise dust, so to speak, they also help to clarify our role in the Church as well as how these things are to be understood and accepted. In many ways, this is very important work in view of the future reunion that [b]will[/b] happen.

That brings me back to my previous question, which no one has answered yet. (If you scroll up, you should be able to find it.) As a Melkite, how does this all play out for me on a practical level? If my Patriarch and the Synod of Bishops with him accepted Vatican I with a "disclaimer", is that what I am to believe? (I think I stated it better earlier, but I would really like thoughts on this question.) It seems to me that in this debate, this is one question that never gets addressed.

Thanks in advance for all your thoughts.

Even in the Philokalia there's a story about monks who appealed to the bishop of Alexandria, then, I think, Antioch, but were dismissed, so they decided to appeal to the Pope in Rome "as a last resort" (this is explicitly written) and referred to him as "head of everything on Earth" or something like that.

The Council of Serdica (342) identifies the Bishop of Rome as court of final appeal in ecclesiastical disputes. And as long as the Bishop of Rome confined himself to acting in such a manner, all was right with the world. The unilateral insertion of the Church of Rome into the internal affairs of other Churches, beginning in the 9th century, marked the point at which the East and West became increasingly estranged.

As to acclamations (Peter has spoken through the mouth of Leo, etc.), as well as other florid honorifics and titles, it is important to remember that this was the rhetorical style of late antiquity, greatly influenced by the emergence of imperial panegyrics. In short, reading such things literally is anachronistic and misleading.

Hold on, though.

Pope Clement I of Rome wrote his Epistle to the Corinthians in about 96 AD. There was no initial appeal from the Corinthian Church to Clement. That's about as early as one can get in the Apostolic Tradition where the Bishop of Rome excercises his universal primacy. If this isn't an example of the Pope of Rome inserting himself the internal affairs of other Churches, I don't know what is.

So as you said, all was right in the world at this time, so what's the problem. His universal primacy seems to be demonstrated in the earliest days of the Church.