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[quote=StuartK]Such a synod cannot make claim to ecumenical status unless, being submitted to the entire Body of Christ, it receives the unanimous acceptance that conveys ecumenical authority. [/quote]

You have elsewhere stated that Nestorians and non-Chalcedonians are part of the Church. By your logic, there have been no ecumenical councils since 1st Constantinople. And that's assuming you don't consider Arians and Apollinarians to also have been part of the "entire Body of Christ."

Another guy with an amazingly legalistic approach to ecclesiology. I also said, since the Orientals and Assyrians are in fundamental agreement with the content of those councils, they have ecumenical authority. Everybody believes the important stuff--that Jesus Christ is true God, that Jesus Christ is truly human, and that Jesus Christ is one. And, as one Melkite archbishop put it, "Everything else is philosophy".

We are aware that the Melkite Church was at Vatican I in the person of its Patriarch Gregorios. You will remember the attempt of the Melkite Patriarch to avoid signing the document on Papal Infallibility and the brouhaha which resulted from that.

In a sense you are correct in saying that only the Church of Rome was present. In those days there was indeed only the Roman Catholic Church in existence. Such Eastern groupings as existed were not seen as Churches but as Roman Catholics using a different Rite. Officially they were called "Roman Catholics of the Melkite Rite," etc.

Hardly surprising that the Orthodox did not take up the invitation. In every sentence of this link we are railed at and termed schismatics again and again. It finishes with the Pope's stated intention of proselytizing us: "Lately, he [the Pope] has devised a plan of establishing Catholic seminaries among those Oriental Schismatics to raise a native priesthood among them, all in order to bring those millions of lost sheep back to the one fold of Jesus Christ, Holy Mother Church."

As a note in the link explains:

Also, quoting from Archbishop Messmer:

So Archbishop Messmer's words (1919) and the plan of Benedict XV (1914-1922) could hardly have influenced the Orthodox declining the invitation to Vatican I (1869-1870).

The noted stress on schismatics goes to a point made in this thread by Catholic posters: the word heretic is not used. But I can still understand the sensitivity of our separated brethern even at that, but would remind them that we Catholics are even now called and considered a whole lot worse by them.

Honesty is much better than a mistaken and polite dissemblance in Christian dialogue. If it is a matter of heresy to deny papal infallibility and papal supremacy, etc., then we Orthodox are certainly heretics, some of us material heretics and some of us formal. It is better to state that openly rather than have to deal with it half way through the dialogue.

in light of the manner in which the Council was conducted, including the treatment of the Eastern Catholic bishops in attendance, there would have been little point to having the "schismatic Orientals" present. Free discussion of the issues was not permitted, and the conditions under which interventions were allowed severely constrained. It was, in short, run pretty much by the rules of the Robber Synod. For details, see Luis M. Bermejo, SJ, Infallibility on Trial: Church, Conciliarity and Communion, Christian Classics (Wetminster, MD) 1992

Interesting observation.

Wouldn't that preclude it from being an ecumenical counsel, and therefore rome-specific?

And if it isn't such, but purported to be, wouldn't that in turn limit it's application even to the members of the Church of Rome?

hawk

Yes, actually they were. But the EO refused to participate out of pride (the EO responded that the Pope did not invite them as brothers, but as one speaking to children) - granted, I also feel the Pope made the invitation in a haughty manner. That was that. I don't see how that action by the EO would or could prevent the Holy Spirit from guiding the Vatican Council. The OO were also invited, but I am not knowledgeable as to the specific response given.

In any case, the Eastern and Oriental Catholic Churches were present, and did exercise an influence on the Council, which resulted in the important addition of a paragraph in the Vatican Decree on the Primacy, which I quoted in another thread regarding the authority of the Pope not standing in the way of the authority of the bishops in their local diocese.

Their influence was also felt in the addition of several paragraphs in the apostolic constitution to the Decree on Infallibility, that explicitly brought to light the fact that papal infallibility is limited by Sacred Tradition. In fact, the Decree on Infallibility was greatly changed from its original draft due to the efforts of the Minority Parity.

Blessings,
Marduk
"

I am not a Catholic but I would believe so. If the dogma failed to meet a condition for infallibility, namely that it was intended to bind the WHOLE Church dogmatically, then it simply is not a dogma. It is not de fide and it is not binding on either the members of the Roman Catholic Church or the Eastern Churches.

But I don't think this argument has the remotest chance of flying with regard to Vatican I since at that time there was ONLY the Roman Catholic Church and any Eastern Churches were seen as simply Rites included within the Roman Catholic Church. Notions of autonomy and sui juris were completely unknown. So it follows that the dogma *was* proclaimed as binding upon the whole Catholic Church.

It did not sound as though the "honesty" was appreciated:



Speaking of honesty rather than dissemblance: As Greek philosophy put it, gnōthi seauton; in the language of the Gospel, Luke 6:42.

Dear Father Deacon,

I think that we can all appreciate and distinguish between the polemical and adversarial atmosphere of the 1800s which we have thankfully discarded and the more irenic and objective atmosphere which has come into existence over the last 50 years of interchurch relationships.

By the time of Vatican II in the mid 1990s the atmosphere was remarkably changed and both the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad responded to the invitation of Pope John XXIII and sent observers to the Council. The Russian Church Abroad (my Church) sent a senior Archbishop and three Archpriests.

In a sense this was and is still true, but it presents an overly-simplistic view of Catholic ecclesiology. The Catholic Church has and still does stress The One Church in its ecclesiology, especially that expressed by its western lung. But the basic elements -- the necessary and sufficient elements that exist -- have always existed, though present terminology better reflects the relationships among those elements. Those elements, I have argued, are only three: (1) The One Church (communion, koinonia); (2) the churches (diocese/eparchy, ekklesia); (3) the Eucharistic gathering (Divine Liturgy / Mass etc., synaxia). That ecclesiology is realized in the Catholic Church. Element (1) is reflected among the Orthodox only at the level of Patriarchal, autocephalous, etc. "churches" -- non-essential, not divinely ordained elements/structures -- and the communion among those elements, a communion, however, where autonomy supersedes unity. Catholic ecclesiology has traditionally stressed (1), the unity of the divinely-ordained One Body of Christ, in its theology and (3) in actual practice; the fundamental role of (2) is now better appreciated and expressed.