www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West The Ratzinger Proposal: (a clarification by... Ratzinger)

Where did I say that Vatican II was "an authority" for me?

I thought I was pretty clear that it is an authority for modern Roman Catholics.

As I said previously, I don't believe that Orient. Eccles. repudiated anything, it only affirmed what was already believed. This definition as you put it is inaccurate, and because it was never held, Orient. Eccles. contains no repudiation of it.

For proof that the eastern rites were considered churches prior to VII, see for example the Old Catholic encyclopedia, which quite specifically calls them churches (admittedly it muddles church and rite in places, but the heading quite clearly says churches) and more specifically it is stated in the article the following (written in 1909, and thus contradicting your various assertions about the beliefs held prior to VII):

"A short enumeration and description of the Catholic Eastern Rites will complete this picture of the Eastern Churches. It is, in the first place, a mistake (encouraged by Eastern schismatics and Anglicans) to look upon these Catholic Eastern Rites as a sort of compromise between Latin and other rites, or between Catholics and schismatics. Nor is it true that they are Catholics to whom grudging leave has been given to keep something of their national customs. Their position is quite simple and quite logical. They represent exactly the state of the Eastern Churches before the schisms. They are entirely and uncompromisingly Catholics in our strictest sense of the word, quite as much as Latins. They accept the whole Catholic Faith and the authority of the pope as visible head of the Catholic Church, as did St. Athanasius, St. Basil, St. John Chrysostom. They do not belong to the pope's patriarchate, nor do they use his rite, any more than did the great saints of Eastern Christendom. They have their own rites and their own patriarchs, as had their fathers before the schism. Nor is there any idea of compromise or concession about this. The Catholic Church has never been identified with the Western patriarchate. The pope's position as patriarch of the West is as distinct from his papal rights as is his authority as local Bishop of Rome. It is no more necessary to belong to his patriarchate in order to acknowledge his supreme jurisdiction that it is necessary to have him for diocesan bishop. The Eastern Catholic Churches in union with the West have always been as much the ideal of the Church Universal as the Latin Church. If some of those Eastern Churches fall into schism, that is a misfortune which does not affect the others who remain faithful. If all fall away, the Eastern half of the Church disappears for a time as an actual fact; it remains as a theory and an ideal to be realized again as soon as they, or some of them, come back to union with Rome.
This is what has happened. There is at any rate no certain evidence of continuity from time before the schism in any of these Eastern Catholic Churches. Through the bad time, from the various schisms to the sixteenth and seventh centuries, there are traces, isolated cases, of bishops who have at least wished for reunion with the West; but it cannot be claimed that any considerable body of Eastern Christians have kept the union throughout. The Maronites think they have, but they are mistaken; the only real case is that of the Italo-Greeks (who have never been schismatic). Really the Eastern Catholic Churches were formed by Catholic missionaries since the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. And as soon as any number of Eastern Christians were persuaded to reunite with the West, the situation that had existed before the schisms became an actual one again. They became Catholics; no one thought of asking them to become Latins. They were given bishops and patriarchs of their own as successors of the old Catholic Eastern bishops before the schism, and they became what all Eastern Christians had once been — Catholics. That the Eastern Catholics are comparatively small bodies is the unfortunate result of the fact that the majority of their countrymen prefer schism. Our missionaries would willingly make them larger ones. But, juridically, they stand exactly where all the East once stood, before the Greek schism, or during the short-lived union of Florence (1439-53). And they have as much right to exist and be respected as have Latins, or the great Catholic bishops in the East had during the first centuries. The idea of latinizing all Eastern Catholics, sometimes defended by people on our side whose zeal for uniformity is greater than their knowledge of the historical and juridical situation, is diametrically opposed to antiquity, to the Catholic system of ecclesiastical organization, and to the policy of all popes. Nor has it any hope of success. The East may become Catholic again; it will never be what it never has been — Latin."

I believe there is much in there that clashes with your picture of uniatism prior to VII, and much to support the idea that VII only clarified existing belief, and didn't repudiate any past practice which was in fact never held.

For the full article: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05230a.htm

My surprise comes more from the fact that the reconsideration makes little sense. It doesn't not follow that the if the EC's don't embrace the western middel-evil approach that came in the second mellenium that somehow that would mean the church was somehow absent during that time. His original thought made more sense both from a theological and historical perspective.


I think you misunderstand what I've said. I do not going along with the current ecumenical effort because Rome is saying to (though I agree it is a good thing). I go along with it because it is a vehicle to establish communion between the churches, as it endeavors to get to the truth of the matters. As I have said we are bound to follow the truth. In as much as the Pope agrees with the truth you could say that I follow him. When he disagrees with the truth I simply ignore him. So I don't think that the anology works as I don't need the Pope's permission to be concerned with the truth.

I can see this going in circles. Yes, Vatican II is an authority of some importance to Roman Catholics, and all Catholics. The conclusions you draw from it, however, have been substantially muted if not repudiated by other authorities of greater importance.

I guess if you believe that Rome is supreme in matters of doctrine that might hold, but I do not believe in Roman supremacy.

Be that as it may, the concern I brought up in my second post in this thread remains, and that is: that Roman authorities say one thing in their ecumenical discussions with the Eastern Orthodox, while saying something different when talking to Catholics who are not members of the Roman Church.

To put it another way, if the views expressed in the second quotation from Cardinal Ratzinger are so important, why is it that they do not form a guiding principle for the ecumenical representatives of the Roman Church - all of whom are appointed by the pope - in their discussions with the representatives of the Eastern Orthodox Churches. Are Roman officials lying to the Orthodox in order to keep the international dialogue going?

I don't think it's correct to say that they don't form part of the dialogue; I think they clearly do, as any report on the discussion of primacy at such meetings show.

I do not see anything from the second Ratzinger quotation in the Ravenna Document, which was accepted by the Joint International Commission, or in the Crete Document, which is just a working text.

Seriously, I do not think that the Eastern Orthodox will ever accept the primacy as it developed in the West during the second millennium, because it does not represent tradition as they have received it. Perhaps that is why the Roman representatives do not bring those things up in the official talks, because they know that to insist on that later Western understanding of primacy would end the dialogue.

Some Greeks might differ with you on that (Stylainos in Australia?).

Despite this clarification the dialogue continues as if it was never issued. At best it is an example of some in the RC attempting to mantain the appearance of continiuity for the sake of those who really think Rome never changes. At worst it is a warning to the Orthodox to tread lightly.

Look instead to the Papal Bull Magnus Dominus [icar.beniculturali.it] (1598), which is essentially a repudiation of the ecclesial status of the Uniates established in the Treaty of Brest. It denies that the Kyivan bishops can enter into communion with the Church of Rome as a distinct Church, since there is only one Church, which is the Church of Rome, outside of which are simply aggregations of heretics and schismatics. The Church cannot negotiate with such people, but can graciously condescend to forgive them and admit them into communion on the Church's terms and conditions. This was an inescapable conclusion, given the exclusionary ecclesiology of the Council of Trent.

This bull set the entire tone of the uniate experience, first by denying the ecclesial status of the Unia, who are described only as an aggregation of repentant schismatics; then by insisting that they are indeed members of the Church of Rome, but permitted to maintain their distinct liturgical rites and customs by dispensation, not by inherent right. Indeed, the Latin rite was considered normative for all Christians (the Praestantia ritus Latini, codified in Pope Benedict XIV's constitution Etsi pastoralis of 1742), but not all Christians are considered to be "mature" enough to adopt it right away:


Father Borys Gudziak has documented all of this in his book Crisis and Reform: The Kyivan Metr...le and the Genesis of the Union of Brest [amazon.com], which has been available for some years and is considered one of the definitive works on the subject.

Stuart,

Thanks for the info and link to Magnus Dominus. Are there any English translations of these documents?

I have not found a complete English translation of either Magnus Dominus or Etsi pastoralis, but secondary sources contain extensive extracts of the pertinent sections.

It is really essential to see a translation of the original. Interpretive claims such as:

etc. are just that, interpretations. As such they also are given to apply current ecclesiological terminology along with some presuppositions, anachronistically, to a 1595 document.

It's easy for us to look down our long nose of 400+ years of history and find fault with a situation that we did not experience. It is fashionable for today's bandwagon to reject and condemn the Unia outright, but I would suggest that it was a viable option for its time and should be looked upon now not as simply wrong but dated relative to the present.

Just to illustrate the importance of the original Ratzinger document in the current dialogue, this is from a recent article on the Orientale Lumen Conference:


Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/east-west-catholic-dialogue-in-d.c#ixzz1RXBRlBAE

Yeah, let's stop acting like it's just a few byzcath forum dwellers agitating and twisting the meaning around for their own agendas. It's a key ecumenical concept, no matter if Cardinal Ratzinger later desired to unring the bell.