No, you don't. You can have a metropolitan province, but all metropolitan provinces ought to be geographically defined, as, e.g., with the Ambrosian rite and the Mozerabic rite--or in the past, the Gallic rite and the Sarum rite. You can also have a distinctive rite if you are a religious order, as, e.g., with the Dominicans.

But the new Anglican ordinariates, being geographically dispersed, cannot be formed into a proper metropolitan province.

Also, my comment was in response to your observation that there are already Latin patriarchs. My point was these are not real patriarchs, as they have no authority or jurisdiction. The whole purpose of erecting new patriarchates to break up the anomalously unlimited Western Patriarchate is to create new jurisdictions with defined territorial boundaries.

Overlapping jurisdictions already exist. My plan would eliminate them by requiring all patriarchates to be multi-ritual, as in fact they were until the eighth century--and even longer, in some cases.

As for this creating the potential for new schisms, I would submit that the winnowing of the undivided Church into just two patriarchates (due to the reduction of the patriarchates of Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria after the Muslim Conquest) is the proximate cause of the Great Schism: as long as there were at least five functioning patriarchates, there were always countervailing voices to prevent the polarization of the Church into two hostile camps. Once it came down to Rome vs. Constantinople, open crisis was inevitable.

However, your comment does echo that of Gregory VII Hildebrand, who wrote that "Diversity is the mother of heresy".

These are definitely the exception to the rule in the West. And apostolic Western schisms seem to lessen or abandon succession with age. Don't some of those folks have priestesses now? Eastern schisms, though, are overwhelmingly apostolic.





That's a really great word ... "pullulation." I had to look it up; never heard of it before.





True. One way to rephrase my larger point is that the closer one is structurally to the pope, the more one tends to harden into either a wacky radical or an ultramontane. Loyalty to the institution of Rome becomes the yardstick of fealty to the church. The further one is structurally from the pope, the less he will occupy your thoughts.

I love the pope, especially this one, but going East has made me a lot more Christ-centric and less pope-centric. I'd like to see the Anglican Catholics have the same luxury.

Though I admit to seeing a quite tangential and mightily attenuated relevance to the BYZANTINE Forum here, I do wish these discussions (pontifications!) were conducted elsewhere. I feel even more strongly when the issues being ventilated are the Novus Ordo vs. Usus Antiquior, the deficiency of the translations of the Roman Rite, aberrant practices of the same and such like. Surely there are enough blogs in cybersphere to accommodate those who, in season and out of season, insist on marching to the deafening thud of their own idiosyncratic drum. Can't we have this one site to explore our own issues? A word from Rudyard Kipling is apposite here: East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet. At least, please, not on the Byzantine Forum.

This is true. I forgot about the priestesses. The dominant (but tiny anyway) branch of Old Catholics in Poland doesn't allow them.


I agree. I think this is wrong. My ideal would be a Pope that is not an absolute monarch, but a monarch in an organic society. The Pope and his personality just dominate the West. We had plenty of Taize-like ecumenists and liturgical experimentators under JPII, now we have plenty of trads (to the horror of Hans Kung). The Church should be steady. How can we dialogue with anybody when so much things change under every Pope? But the narrowing of Papal prerogatives seems contrary to the absolutist spirit of Vatican I, the universal and immediate jurisdiction etc.

Even if the Pope will decide to give more autonomy to some parts of the Church, Vatican I means that he has the right to revoke it whenever he likes. That's another potential source of conflict, I think.

Only in theory. The Pope is, according to canon law, an absolute monarch (except when he chooses not to be, in the words of Ukrainian canonist Fr. Victor Popshishil). In reality, though, he's a constitutional monarch whose power is hedged about with all sorts of informal restrictions. His real role, therefore, is one of mediating within a consensus. The Pope will not--indeed, cannot--command the Catholic Church to do something unless he is able to convince the bishops to follow him. Any attempt to do so, or to compel obedience by wholesale depositions, would create a crisis likely to destroy or at least severely weaken the Church. It's one thing to discipline an outlier, another to go after bishops who sit in the mainstream.

Assuming that one Pope grants increased autonomy to one or more parts of the Church, it would be extremely difficult, verging on impossible, for him or his successors to take it back.

Maybe we're just living in the age of conciliatory Popes. It could all be cyclical Stuart.

Bless, Father,

I could not agree with you more!

Many years,

Neil

Since the Church in England has always been part of the larger Latin Rite, I voted for no sui iuris Church. There was never one to begin with; why start now?

Alexis

And as I've said a few times here, I thought Town Hall was for all topics, Byzantine and non-? If you want to start demanding that the definition of this subforum be changed to make sure that everything is Byzantine-related, then about 98% of the threads here would no longer be admissible.

And maybe people who post Roman-related topics here value the insight of the members who post at The Byzantine Forum, and that's the reason why they post such things here, in the Town Hall, where by all appearances, they are supposed to be.

Alexis

As I have said before, the Latin Church is the 500-pound gorilla in the room when you are Byzantine Catholic. It has influence on us, whether anyone likes it or not.

Alexis,

You're correct. Town Hall is indeed the proper venue in which to discuss matters non-Eastern/Oriental, as well as those concerned with the latter which don't fit elsewhere. I withdraw my objection to the thread.



Charles,

Your point is also well-taken, my brother.

Many years,

Neil

I can only assume that this step is towards the unity of the Body of Christ; and yet I have to ask, how is the Church going to ever be united if the Catholic church is always trying to assimilate others in it?

Will the Catholic Church try to assimilate the Orthodox Church to unite Christ's body?

Is this the (only/right) way to true unity?

It is only rational that those who want to follow the path of Christ will rebel against all foul things within their churches, as our fathers were guided by the spirit so will they - but are we to take advantage and try to split the faithful within that church?

I am lost in this one - thus I did not vote.

Depends on what you mean by "assimilate". The teaching of the Catholic Church is that there's one Church (we sing that in the Creed), and the one Church is the Catholic Church.

Contrary to what people often think this is still the official position.



TAC was not in communion with the rest of Anglicans as early as in 1970s, I think. They're a small, completely separate, orphaned group.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsistit_in

The TAC is very dispersed, by the way. Papal offer is rather counter-assimilative (in my understanding of "assimilation") I think. They retain most of their heritage.

Shlomo Ot'ets Nastoiatel',

You state:



I totally agree with your statement that issues that do not really touch on the Eastern Churches should be discussed on some other fora.



I would ask how is this subject like the ones that you used as an example?



I could not agree with you more, but this subject is right up the alley for this forum.

I posted this because it impacts on the Eastern Catholic Churches in many important ways. Here are the issues that I see:

1) Does the Roman Church and the Pope really respect the ideals of Churches being sui iuris?
2) If sui iurisism is a legitimate expression within the Catholic Church, is this type of expression only limited to Eastern Christianity?
3) Is Anglicanism a rite of the Roman (Latin) Catholic Church; or has it developed enough to deserve to become a sui iuris Church within the Catholic Communion?
4) Is what the Pope and curia doing a form of Western uniaism?
5) If this exercise is successful can this not also be adopted for Lutheranism, Methodism etc. and other Protestant Christian Communities that have a layer of heirarchal structure?

I understand you wanted to make a point about how Western issues sometimes absorb this board, but I would say that this thread does not constitute a correct example.

Fush BaShlomo,
Yuhannon

If that is so - then does the Catholic Church look at the Orthodox Church the same way it looks at the Lutheran Church?

Does that Mean for instance that the baptism of the Orthodox Church is only a baptism of water while the Catholic Church alone has Baptism of Spirit!

Ahh!
Woe to us if that is what Catholics teach!