www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Pope Resignation - A Time for re-evaluation of Bishop of Rome?

I can understand why Rome centralized and internalized its power. It was the capital of the Empire, thus granting it a primary imperial mindset, and St. Peter and St. Paul both founded missions and died in the great city. Of course, the other Patriarchates in the pentarchy fell to the Sword of Islam, coming under the domination of Mohammed's followers, which left Rome to stand alone. (With exception for the Avignon Papacy and the Great Western Schism).

There were the drastic assaults against the Church by the French Revolution and the Kulturkampf of Otto von Bismarck. And let's not forget that the Papal Infallibility of Vatican I was declared at the same historical time as the loss of the physical Papal States. So, the decree certainly strengthened the Vatican's spiritual realm to account for the loss of the land territories.

I pray it is time for Rome to realize in this new age of "evangelical Catholicism", the New Evangelization, that she needs her old sister churches of the East to save the world for Christ.

Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has stated it best recently: there is no need for the Pope to appoint the bishop of Peoria, Ill.

From another Catholic blog:



http://liturgicalnotes.blogspot.com/2009/03/bishop-of-peoria.html

Part of the selection does take place locally already, as the short list of candiates to be a bishop is prepared in each diocese and then submitted to Rome. Canons require the list to be continually updated. The late Pope Shenouda personally ordained all of the bishops apointed during his papacy for his church. I am very sure the Patriarch of Antioch has done the same.

I'm sure Bishop Jenky didn't mind.

Cribbing from Fr. Robert Taft, who said the same thing, verbatim, back in 2004. It's nice to know the Latin Church reads what the good Archimandrite writes.

It was my understanding that the last pope, Pope Benedict, had decided to leave beatifications in the hands of local metropolitans (or perhaps even local bishops). At least that was the talk at the beginning of the pontificate, but that never materialized. Suddenly there was a shift, and out came all the old trappings of the Pharaonic Papacy just short of the tiara and the portable throne.

I wonder if Pope Francis will pick up on that abandoned idea of permitting local hierarchs to tend to beatifications.

Benedict may have picked back up some of the 'trappings' of the 'Pharaonic papacy,' but I think you are right that these were mostly trappings. (By the way, I think I looked at their resurrection in pretty much the same way that you seem to have.) I believe his papacy itself was in general shaped by a commitment to strengthening collegial governance in the church and recontextualizing the exercise of primacy in the same way. It's pretty hard to know why this or that individual reform wasn't realized.
I hope that Pope Francis will be similarly committed to recovering a view of primacy more informed by the ancient church, and I am hopeful that it will result in some more concrete reforms. I found his first words very encouraging.

Please do not take this wrong, but as I see it this statement illustrates the problem...
It isn’t that when “the Pope has decided” the decision is unwelcomed. It seems like a step in the right direction and for that reason is welcomed.

But this never properly was the Pope’s decision in the first place. The ability to decide whether his office or the local Metropolitan’s office should initiate causes for beatification are not his to make, and never genuinely was.

So when he decides to allow the local synod to initiate causes it is not quite the same as admitting that this process is not supposed to be monopolized by the synod of the church at Rome, nor it's bishop alone.

Causes were initiated by local bishops before Pope Benedict.

This has been the procedure since at least 1983 with the Apostolic Constitution Divinus Perfectionis Magister [vatican.va] (but I'm pretty sure it was the procedure before that).

What Pope Benedict XVI did was move the ceremonies for the beatifications (in most cases) back to the particular churches from which the cause had emanated.