www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Catholic/Orthodox Reunion: status report?

What I said is that in various commentaries of church literature one will never find a claim that episcopacy has been founden as one chair or office in Mathew, John or any other apostle, except for Peter. It has been widely accepted that it is with the words Jesus addressed to Peter (mathew 16:18) that episcopacy was founded. The one episcopal chair of Peter theory on which all bishops sit, speaks for it itself.

Another point for us to understand, instead of reproducing the rich argumentative literature on the topic, is, as I wrote earlier, to see that the church as a subject on his own, dependent on political, social and other needs, can transform the way sees itself organized. Gradual monarchiality and centralization of episcopacy that took place from the 1st century, part of which the development of Papacy is too, pointes us to that subjectivity of the church.

This again is very important to understand before we start putting clear cut off boundaries of this development.

And eucharistic episcopacy theory, according to which each local church manifesting the full catholicity, consequently claimin the same dignity among bishops, is practically an ideal dream the church of first ideal millenium never lived on.

That it does, but what does it say, as a) all the Apostles sat on it, and placed their successors on it and b) St. Peter himself sat on that chair at Antioch as he did at Rome, a fact commemorated on the Roman calendar itself. Then we have the words of St. Gregory the Great, that the Pope of Alexandria and the Patriarch of Antioch sit on the one throne of St. Peter with him.

Btw, the episcopacy was founded in Pentecost. Hence the reason why St. Matthias was elected to take Judas' bishoprick in preparation. Which also brings up an issue of the relatio of Pastor Aeternus:if only St. Peter had a successor, how did Judas have a bishoprick for St. Matthias to take?

And we agree on that. What I think we disagree on is that those same political, social and other needs also lays at the basis of the primacy of Rome, not a unique office from St. Peter. Do you agree that this is where we disagree?

The chorbishop got the same opportunity to speak and the same vote that any Patriarch got at an Ecumenical Council, and the canons protected the bishop of the smallest diocese as they did the Patriarchs. The least of the bishops could ordain a priest or deacon, and even in the highly centralized West, continued to consecrate his own chrism. And the priests of a diocese always acted in place of the local bishop, and not the local patriarch (except in his own diocese), let alone a supreme pontiff.

As to dignity, no one would claim that Pope Stephen VII (or VI, the kinks in the chain of St. Peter from succession disputes, anti-popes, etc. confuses the numbering) is the equal of St. Gregory the Great or St. Leo the Great, would they?

Since you agree saying 'that it does' and 'we agree on that', that is enough as far as I am concerned regarding what I expressed in this topic, namely that papal monarchy is not that foreign to eastern mentality, since, to repeat it, that monarchality of church was a common feature of both east and west throughout the first millenium. The roman christian empire only deepened it, giving cause to the creation of two, rather three centres of power, Rome in west versus emperor plus his patriarch in east.

The factors, whether sociopolitical or a special unique calling from on high, do not bother us, since we are dealing with reality. In fact the factors were mixed, difficult too see which caused the other.

Pope Leo I, known as the Great, a saint for the orthodox up today, would be called in the contemporary language of east a papist par excellence!

There are answers as regarding the petrine chairs of Antioch and Alexandria. Despite that we are not going to bother to try and give a full exhasting sulution to what is what and who is who.

It is important, I think, that the orthodox, especially those who idealize orthodoxy as something pure opposed to anything of latin impurity, to understand that in fact the two are only two brothers of the same mother, roman empire, or, and, two sides of the same coin.

You mean by "papal monarchy" "universal jurisdiction"? How foreign that is to the "eastern mentality" may be seen by the reaction, i.e. rejection, of attempts of the Phanar (in circumstances similar to Old Rome after the rise of New Rome) to assert a universal jurisdiction into Orthodoxy today.


Yes, a bishop in his diocese, and a patriarch in his patriarchate. In canon 8 of Ephesus, the Archbishop of Cyprus, backed by the Church in Ecumenical Council, taught the Patrirach of Antioch the limits of "monarchality." The bishop of Rome St. Victor was taught the same lesson by the whole Church (including his suffragan, St. Irenaeus of Lyons) over two centuries before. The fate of the council of 869 in Constantinople confirmed the same.


And fortunately God sent the Bulgarians in between and raised up their patriarchate, then that of the Serbs, to counterbalance such a creation and adding buancy to the other Patriarchates and Churches outside the Empire to prevent the rise of a "papal monarchy" in the East after one had taken over in the West.

And the Patriarch of the West had his emperor too, a Frankish Germanic one, who ordered the filioque into the Creed at Rome, which caused the Pope of Rome to be struck from the Orthodox diptychs of the Catholic Church, a rupture only confirmed when Pope Leo IX sent Card. Humberto to demand reinstatement.


True enough, but such things left us with a communion of many patriarchates in the East, and not in the sense of the three papacies which at one time compeated for the patriarchate of the West
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_tkkjn54Lcxw/TNSvpiaOA1I/AAAAAAAAAH8/6ctCEoKK2oU/s1600/KISH219.jpg
a prelude to the total collapse of the patriarchate in the Reformation and Counter-reformation.

It does not bother us, but it bothered Vatican I, as Pastor Aeternus explicitely demands acceptance of its claims as "a special unique calling from on high" and anathematizes atttributing them to "sociopolitical" factors. The Orthodox can live with the fact that the primacy (not supremacy) "was through the Church that it was transmitted to [the pope of Rome] in his capacity as her minister." Pastor Aeternus, Lumen Gentium, the Code of Canon Law and the Codex Canones Ecclesiarum Orientalium cannot.



No, because he never anathematized anyone who rejected his more extravegant claims, and in the end had to bow to the collective judgement of the Church.

Well, us Orthodox who have spent more outside the Roman Empire than in it, do not idealize the Empire of the Romans, in particular as we know what Romulus did to his brother Remus for supremacy. Third Rome might, but then her heartland was never part of it, and she had her own origins. And those of us only briefly part of Rome, and those never really in it, have the least problem with "Latin impurity"-Moscow and Antioch have sustained support for the Western Rite Orthodox. That does not lessen our insistence on Orthodox purity, which is why we oppose the imposition of a revived Roman empire model onto the Church.