www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Caeseropapism

Actually, even Roman Catholicism was amenable to Caesaropapism. Remember that for centuries, the Papacy was a puppet of competing secular powers--whether the Hohenstauffens or the Hapsburgs or the Valois, and did their bidding much more readily than the Patriarchs of Constantinople did the bidding of various Emperors.

Not today. Read your own history.

When you use terms, you should know what they mean. Unless, of course, you are willing to admit that the Roman Catholic Church in Poland was as caesaropapist under the Communists as any of the Orthodox Churches.

It is true that our mindset is mostly opposed to it. We tend to be ethnic first and if some RC wanders in we receive them. You are exactly right. While Balarmand forces this issue it is our bishops who actually believe it. So how does a local parish buck the tide?

Interesting. Could you elaborate?

I think this is a case in which it would be helpful to see the precise wording of said directive.

Just have to add that for many Orthodox there is a reluctance to 'evangelize' in the Western sense, so perhaps this is not a unique Eastern Catholic phenomena.

I encourage you to google it. Our bishop agrees with it. It may or may not be official. I doubt that it matters. We tend to live by it. I'm really no longer interested in checking this or that official or unofficial document. I don't even wish to argue about the definition of Caeseropapism might be or how it has been applied to this or that region. What interests me is not only the survival of the BCC but also our growth. We are shrinking. We've been over that many times. Can we reverse the shrinkage? Should we bother?

True enough of some jurisdictions, but not of others. About half of the OCA these days consist of converts either from some other form of Christianity or from outside the Church altogether. And the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese is presently much more than 50% convert, with about 2/3 of the clergy coming from the ranks of former Protestants and Catholics. Of course, this has led to considerable tension within both jurisdictions, as the ethnically oriented "cradle Orthodox" find their comfortable hegemony challenged by outsiders who frequently have a much more rigorous approach to Orthodoxy than they do.

Other jurisdictions have not reached out beyond their ethnic communities, and invariably they suffer whenever immigration dries up, because ethnicity cannot hold people to such a counter-cultural way of life as Orthodoxy--there are too many convenient alternatives. As Metropolitan Kallistos says, soon nobody will be Orthodox who doesn't make a conscious decision to be Orthodox.

Oh brother.

Christ is Risen!

The points which Hahn makes trouble me since I perceive them as inaccurate. As one quick example - we have no Ruthenian Church so his knowledge seems insecure. There is no time to write a response;it is a busy day. But I googled one of Hahn's phrases and came up with an Orthodox response to him. (There are probably others -this is from Carlton.)

See
http://orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/tca_carltonrome.aspx

Yes, I've seen that response from Carlton before.

Interestingly enough, the Catholic writer William J. Tighe was critical of Carlton's book overall, but called that particular part of it "essentially just":


http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/print.php?id=13-07-033-b

I'm honestly never sure whether I should try to help grow the BCC or the Orthodox Church. Living in an area without a BCC, yet having friends who become interested in the Eastern Churches, I am left by default to send them to an Orthodox Church. I've known several people who are interested in the Eastern Churches, and would like to be in communion with Rome, yet they don't want to become Latin Catholics, so they often end up becoming neither Catholic or Orthodox, because there really seems to be no way for them to become Byzantine Catholics. How could they even form some kind of community? If they formed a community and got together for reader's services, studied byzantine theology, ect, they still have no way to enter the Church without defaulting to the canonical status of a Latin or joining an Orthodox Church, both of which are not what they're looking for. I will admit however that as the study, they often come to the decision that they should become Orthodox, but for those who don't they're really stuck in a bad place.

Do they tell you why they don't want to become Orthodox?

Some do some don't, but those who don't tend to lean towards becoming Orthodox once they spend some time with it.