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You might want to sit down before you read this:

I prefer to be sitting before I read almost anything. I don't know why this piece should be different. I see nothing shocking here. Should I?

I have many friends who are either Anglo-Catholics, Continuing Anglicans or Anglican traditionalists. I repeatedly ask them why they do not simply become Roman Catholics, especially as they can do so while retaining their traditional liturgical practices. I never get a coherent answer, which leads me to believe it is a combination of cultural attachment and reflexive anti-popery.

Many also have a certain fondness for pious mythology about the Church in Great Britain, one they share with many of the Western rite Orthodox; i.e., that somehow Britain preserved a more authentic, purer form of Western Christianity than that practiced on the Continent, which is preserved in the rites of the Anglican Church.

Wow. Caramba.
His words must have felt like a poke in the eye with a sharp stick; or else like a brilliant but scary lightning-bolt which mercilessly illuminates everything for a brief moment.

Flannery O'Connor once said "for the hard of hearing, you must shout and for the nearly blind you have to draw large and startling pictures".

I wish all these folks well on their faith-journey, as we call it today.

I think Bishop Peter is stating the Truth. The Pope's offer is very generous and is in the true spirit of Ut Unum Sint.

I also have friends whom are in the Anglican church and they consider the Pope's offer absorption and where hoping for an intercommunion between Rome and an Anglican Catholic Church (like between Rome and my own Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church). Many hold onto the idea of the Oxford movement and the branch theory- i.e. the Catholic church is divided into three branches- Rome, Orthodoxy, and Anglicanism.

Sadly, they fail to see that the branch theory they hold so dear is not universally held by the other two branches (Orthodoxy and Rome).

I pray that like Blessed Newman they realize that the Catholic Church is only found in the Orthodox and Roman Communions.

If Newman had lived in the 1960s and 70s, instead of the 1860s and 70s, he probably would have followed the path of Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware). But in his day, there was no large Orthodox community in Britain, and what there was concerned itself exclusively with the spiritual needs of the bustling Greek expatriate community. Rome was his only alternative to Canterbury, but even then, he had reservations.

Could you please elaborate. I am interested in Blessed Newman's reservations since he is often quoted as a great apologist for the idea of "development of Doctrine" used to defend Roman doctrines and dogmas.

I think it is worth mentioning that Blessed John Henry Newman's was both an unusually attractive and an extraordinarily complicated personality. It is difficult to say anything real about him in just a few words. It is much more rewarding to read Ian Ker's excellent but rather challenging biography. [amazon.com]

Nelson,

Newman was a great patristics scholar and historian of the Church. This is what drove him out of Anglicanism in the first place. His theory of the development of doctrine was nothing more than an empirical acknowledgement that what the Church teaches and does today has evolved from what it taught and did in past centuries (true for both the Eastern and Western Churches, no matter what the former like to say). But he undoubtedly had problems with some of the developments in the Latin Church of his day, which he knew were at odds with the words and beliefs of the Fathers, and in no area more so than in the Papal perquisites. Newman was very uneasy with Pastor aeternus, even though he accepted its legitimacy. If there had been another option that circumvented these problems, while still allowing him to reconnect with the Church of the Fathers, I believe he would have taken it.

Nelson Chase-

I often have a problem with trying to believe two contradictory things at once; that the Church is One, and that both Catholicism and Orthodoxy are The Church.

I don't think this is possible. Perhaps The Church is *in* Orthodoxy, but *subsistit in* those churches in communion with the See of Peter. I think subsistit in means something like "is present whole and entire" or even "is substantially present in" . The Catholic Church *is*The Church, although The Church may extend beyond its borders. And you will find that the Orthodox say that Orthodoxy *is* The Church...but they don't know where the Church isn't.

Branch theory is not an acceptable ecclesiology. Not even if the tree only has two branches.
Susan Peterson

Well you know that there are two way to understood the ecclesiology.

The one is to see the Church as an image of the Heavently Church (or New Jerusalem): in this case the earthly church shall reflect the hierarchic structure of the heaven Church, where for sure there are not nor two nor five branches.
This is the more classical ecclesiology that we can find in the Fathers, and was the underlined theology of the same existence of the Byzantine Empire. Nowadays the Orthodox theologians confirms the validity of this view but they dont dare to confirm its obvious consequence: as the heavenly Church has a single apex, also its image in earth shall have a single head.

The second possible ecclesiology is to define the Church as the gathering around each single Eucharistic liturg. This "low profile" view, quite modern and often corrected in order it can take care of the historical figure of bishops and dioceses, is upheld by famous present Orthodox theologians as John Zizioulas.

Other ecclesiologies, as the two-three branches, or the 5-patriachates or any other proposal are inconsistencies.

It will not possible any union or communion with the West Church till the Orthodox world don't take a stand on which theology it upheld: if the ancient vision of one single earth church as image of the heavely church will win, the possible result may be a "union" with the West, otherwise if the "Eucharist based ecclesiology" will will, the result may be a "(inter)communion" with the West.

The current schism between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches is a schism within the Church, not a schism from the Church. Neither Rome nor Constantinople represented the totality of the Church, nor was either Church subordinated to the other. Today, both the Catholic communion and the Orthodox communion are authentic elements of the one true Church. This is not branch theory, this is not a "low" ecclesiology, it is recognition of a simple historical truth.

That neither communion is willing to admit this officially is simply a matter of letting the weight of a millennium of politics and polemics obscure what objective scholarship has revealed. Both sides are too wedded to the status quo and the perquisites that go with it, to make a serious move towards reconciliation.

As for antv, his understanding of Eucharistic theology is itself a bit defective, since Eucharistic theology does not posit the fullness of the Church in every Eucharistic celebration, but in every local Church, which is to say, the diocese headed by a bishop ordained in the apostolic succession. His failure to recognize the bishop as the ordinary minister of the Eucharist, with the priest serving only as his designated deputy, is not uncommon, but the existence of the antimension ought to serve as a symbolic reminder (together with the empty thronos) that the bishop is the nominal presider at every Divine Liturgy.

Moreover, the universal dimension of the Church is manifested in the communion of all bishops--not the communion of all bishops with one particular bishop. If the Orthodox Church is defective because its bishops are not in communion with the Bishop of Rome, the Catholic Church is likewise defective because the Bishop of Rome is not in communion with the Orthodox Church. Each communion has suffered because of its estrangement from the other, therefore neither communion can claim to be the sole representative of the true Church. Either both are, or neither is.

That being the case, I do not see how antv can make the case for a single, pyramidal structure for the universal Church, since such a model did not exist in the first millennium, except in the minds of certain Popes and Western theologians, who were wise enough not to press the point.

Ultimately, we have today a failure to understand the culture and mindset within which the first millennium Church operated, a culture of honor and status, in which jurisdiction and power frequently took a back seat to moral authority. The modern world is based on contract, contract demands clearly demarcated power relationships, and such relationships are just not compatible with the Church as a typos of the Holy Trinity. The Church has hierarchy, it is true. But ideally, this is hierarchy without subordination, as is true in the Trinity: all should defer to all according to his charism and status, and not because of legally defined "jurisdiction".

Thank you StuartK for your interesting post. Here some remarks


In the first millennium (well, at least from Constantine) this "ordered unity" actually existed, and the first ones to break it were ... the Westerns

In the Byzantine mind of the first millennium there was a single structured heavenly Church, and on earth a single structured "Christian Empire" with its single Church !!! No doubt about this.

It was not the Patriarch of Constantinople nor the Pope the apex of the earthly structure, but it was the Emperor !!!
It was the Emperor who summoned Councils, who issued their decrees, who appointed the members of the Holy Synod, who approved the Patriarch and in case deposed him, who organized the structure of the Church in his provinces (diocesis), who ultimately decided and enforced the more important decisions about the faith. He had clerical rights (as to take Communion at the altar) and people prostrated in from of him. He was not infallible, but anyway he represented the apex of the earthly structure, the apex of the image of the heavenly Church. For us 21th century people it is very difficult to understand, but the division between State and Church is only 2 centuries old.

The title itself "Vicar of Christ" in the first millennium existed but it was a title of the Byzantine Emperor !!!
When Charlemagne in 800 proclaimed his own empire, this was considered a foolish act by the Byzantines, because the Empire as the Church should be "One". And when the Pope about the 11th century assumed for himself the title of "Vicar of Christ", that at the Byzantine's eyes was simply insanity and craziness, because it formally broke the unity in earth of what was united in the heavens.

But the "Christian Empire" collapsed (1453). The Western have developed a theology were the unifying factor moved from the empire to the Papacy and perhaps went too much through this way. The Eastern theology many times looks like to be still orphan of the "Christian Empire" not being able to find a new theological unifying factor (with the risk of following each and all national boundaries)

The rapprochement between East and West will not possible till the East will not consolidate a clear ecclesiology which came through the 1453 events. Zizioulas's attempt, which as StuartK reminded is not limited to the single Eucharistic Liturgies, is a very good attempt and it is acceptable by Catholics and it could be proposed as a possible common basis. But it has two weaknesses: it is not agreed by all the Orthodox, and it cant solve the issue of the "ordered unity" which was so important in the first millennium and it is still a structural requirement for each possible ecclesiology.

Well the "ordered unity" and the "single jurisdictions" are different issues, and the one does not require the other. Also a simple fully recognized "primate of honor" can fulfill the requirements of a "ordered unity".

By the way also the Trinity according to the Eastern view is strictly ordered (not as ontology but as manifestations): both the Son and the Holy Spirit proceed by the Father only, who is the apex.
It is quite ridiculous for a Western to see Eastern theologians who fight against the flat Western vision of the Trinity but use it when they try to justify a possible existence of a "not ordered Church".

I, too, have read Meyendorff's Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions. And I think you are making a mistake in assuming that the de jure organization of the Church reflected its de facto operation, in the same way that someone would err in assuming that the de jure organization of the Empire reflected its actual operation.

As I have noted many times, there was a clear distinction between potestas or imperium on the one hand, and auctoritas and dignitas on the other, and the interplay between the two defined the shape not only of Imperial but also Church history. A man could have theoretically immense potestas through the office he held, but would be unable to impose his will upon others due to his limited auctoritas. Conversely, a privatus with no formal potestas at all could direct the course of events through the exercise of his auctoritas.

So, while the Church in the immediate post-Constantinian period adopted the principle of accommodation, whereby the administrative structure of the Church mirrored that of the Empire, the two united through the person of the Emperor (God's vice-gerent on earth), in reality things were not so clear. Every diocese was supposed to belong to a metropolitan province, each metropolitan province, but not all metropolitan provinces were created equal, so that some could, through the exercise of auctoritas, bring others within their orbit, despite the nominal independence of each metropolitan province.

The system worked well as long as the most influential provinces did not attempt to impose their will on others through the application of potestas, and various provinces strove energetically to resist the attempt of the "Great Churches" to infringe upon their independence, and particularly their traditional prerogatives.

You are right that Rome was by far the worst offender in this regard, offending at various times the Churches in Gaul, Spain and Africa, but Alexandria and Constantinople were not immune from the disease.

So what you see in the 4th century reality is an organization that is both hierarchical but rather flat, and also disparate in the manner in which authority was exercised in different regions. Already by this time it was established that the Archbishop of Alexandria could directly appoint and depose all the bishops within not only his province, but all those provinces that looked to Alexandria for direction--and by the late fourth and early fifth centuries, Alexandria also believed it had the auctoritas to dictate to Churches completely outside its sphere. Rome in theory had jurisdiction only over its province and the suburbicanian dioceses, but had pretensions to direct authority over all the Churches in the West, while those Churches in turn only sporadically acknowledged Rome's leadership--and often opposed its impositions. Constantinople gained in authority at the expense of Rome mainly because, as the Church of the true capital of the Empire, it had access to immense resources and imperial favors.

But it would be wrong to think that the Emperor was in fact the true head of the Church. The Church itself never admitted such, acknowledging Christ alone as the true high priest. The Church believed that the Emperor was placed over the world to maintain order and to protect the Church, and to work with the Church in the process of converting the world, but the Church steadfastly resisted any attempts by the Emperors to define or impose doctrine, and successfully opposed a succession of Emperors who, in the eyes of the Church, proposed erroneous doctrine--even when the Emperor used his perquisites to appoint bishops amenable to his own perspective. To say the Emperor controlled the Church is to fall into the error of believing in Caesaropapism, rather than symphonia.

Finally, in regard to the Trinity, which is three unique hypostases in one divine essence, it is indeed hierarchical, as I said. The Father is an Archos Anarche. But there is no subordination: the Father is not superior to the Son or the Spirit; the Spirit is not inferior to Son or the Father; but all are likewise of one essence, thus all equally God. Instead of subordination, the Trinity exhibits perfect communion. Each hypostasis knows the others are He knows Himself. The Father is Archos Anarche, the Son is the Only-Begotten before all ages, the Spirit is the Giver of Life, eternally proceeding from the Father. Each defers to the other according to their unique identities. The notion that the Father "orders" the Son to do something, or that the Son "commands" the Holy Spirit is absurd. The Son knows the will of the Father, and acts in accordance with it; the Father knows the Son, and his will directs Him accordingly. The Spirit goes forth to do the will of the Father at the behest of the Son, not because He is so commanded, but because it is his nature to do so. The Trinity is perfect communion through perfect love.

No, I never read "Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions" by Meyendorff (an author I consider biased). I refer to the excellent book of Y. Spiteris "Ecclesiologia Ortodossa" (not available in English) and to other my historical readings about the Byzantine Empire.

The point is that the Bizantines went on having the ancient mind of full coincidence between State and State-Religion. And any attempt to prove the existence of a de jure organization different from the de facto operation is simply anti-historical: not even the political organizations in the ancient times used to have this distinctions: you think at the American Constitution as the de jure organization and you compare it with the de facto operation: but this mindset is only modern, and to extrapolate it for the first millennium Church organization is misleading.

No byzantine brought in question the right of the Emperor to summon councils or to depose patriarchs.

The idea of "Head of the Church" is a modern idea. In the first millennium mindset it was not possible to separate State and Church. The first in the East to have an idea of a timid independence of the Church was actually Michael Cerularius but many his contemporaries considered his position as untenable novelty (read Michael Psellos on this regard)

Emperors were anyway not absolute monarch: it was possible to rebel against them, and that occurred lots of time, both by the army and in a few cases by portion of the Church (thankfully).

****
However the point is that in the first millennium the structure of the Church, as well as the Heavenly Church and the Holy Trinity, was ordered and had an apex.
Of course the structure under the apex was more or less flat and the order was more or less consistent: nothing on this earth is perfect.

So I consider necessary for whichever possible ecclesiology to have an apex. It does not mean to have a single jurisdiction, but to have someone that, on the earth, have a primate of honor, could summon councils and issue their decrees, could chair in love the meetings of bishops, etc. Who? this is an other question.