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Not Rome exactly but Pope Benedict as expressed when he was Cardinal Ratzinger and, in a context that is usually not conveyed:

The Ratzinger Formula

Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, San Francisco, Ignatius, 1987, p. 199.

Who would have the greater difficulty with the quid pro quo proposed?

Utroque:

Christ is in our midst!!

I think what doc has in mind is a gentle question posed to both sides of this problem in the Orthodox Church. "Can we somehow be a mediator in this? We don't want to get into the issues, but could we somehow bring you two together for the sake of the unity Christ wants for you?"

Bob

Rome has had many commissions and debates over this with the Orthodox. But no movement from Rome on the issues Orthodoxy is very serious about - at least not yet. May I suggest the following actions Rome could take that would go a long way toward real rapprochement with Orthodoxy?

1) Rome could remove the Filioque from the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds and amend previous creedal formulations during ecumenical councils that posited the Filioque. Rome could also get the World Council of Churches to agree on the original Nicene Creed as well.

2) Amend the canons/positions of the 8th Ecumenical Council to reflect the position on the Filioque as defended by St Photios the Great of Constantinople in that same vein.

3) Affirm a theology of Original Sin in keeping with the Cappadocian/Eastern perspective.

4) Affirm the later Latin dogmas concerning the Theotokos in a way that concludes there is nothing in the Eastern Church Mariology or Theotokology that requires "additions" or acceptance of the Latin dogmas.

5) Affirm prayer for the dead so as to avoid the term "purgatory" as being a necessity for the Christian East and also affirm that Eastern Eschatology bears the fullness of comprehensive Catholic truth and always has.

6) Affirm the role of the papacy within the context of a renewed Petrine Ministry where the jurisdictions of all Particular Churches is respected and that "jurisdiction" is understood as something that may only be exercised by Rome outside its own Particular Church when called upon to do so by either the hierarchy of another Particular Church or an ecclesial individual who feels he or she is being unjustly treated by his or her own Particular Church hierarchy.

7) Affirm the Orthodox calculation of Easter/Pascha which is based on the teaching of the earliest Councils.

I think that is a very good start - doesn't everyone? Alex

Oh, and I forgot something else.

Affirm the right of any Eastern Catholic Church to return to full communion with its Sister Orthodox Church and even encourage such to do so. In this way, Rome will put pay completely to the charge of seeking Uniate converts by Orthodoxy.

I think Rome should be allowed to keep the filioque provided it is understood in the same way St Maximus understood it.


I think there is reason to question this position as being definitive. In his righteous polemic against the Latin innovation, St Photios did a bit of innovating himself. I think the question of the procession of the spirit is so subtle and obscure that much of what is said on either side is at best speculative and at worst nonsense.


This is bad news. It may sound like a restriction but if a bishop is given supreme appellate authority, which is activated by any dissatisfied individual in a local church, then any faction in any of the local churches can call on his intervention to resolve a dispute. Or, to put it differently, this bishop can intervene anywhere that he has friends on the ground. This is more or less how the Ecumenical Patriarchate justifies its unilateralism in Ukraine.


The principles for calculating Easter are the same in both east and west, we easterners just persist in using an outdated calendar. I think the Church of Finland has the right idea.

Dear Swan - Christ is in our midst!

With respect to the Filioque, I would agree with you. But would Orthodoxy? Rome would, of course, say it already understands the Filioque in the way St Maximos the Confessor did . Many EC Churches do not use the Filioque and have moved in their outlet from one where they saw its formal removal as a way to be ecumenical toward the Orthodox. However, today there would be those EC's who would also urge the Latin Church to drop it because it was not in the original Nicene Creed and presents an unnecessary canonical impediment to Orthodox-Catholic relations. RC theologians in dialogue with Orthodox theologians, as I've heard them myself, will affirm that Rome should move to restore the Creed to is earlier form. However, your position is most ecumenical!

As for St Photios, he is also beginning to appear in the calendars of EC Churches, notably the Ruthenian Catholic one . . . Suffice to say that I would be very afraid to even bring up what you've said about him to any Orthodox priest and to very many EC priests of the "Orthodox in communion with Rome" theological perspective. But what you've more than earned my respect as an independent thinker sir.

And the Easter calculation is not, as I understand, entnirely dependent on which of the two calendars one uses - I am more than happy to stand corrected. The Church of Finland celebrates Pascha with the West NOT because of the fact that it calculates Easter based on the Gregorian calendar but because, as its hierarchy has affirmed, of adaptation to the much larger Western Christian body it lives with in Finland by the principle of adaptation. All other Orthodox Churches who are on the Gregorian Calendar calculate Easter independently of it and in accordance with the principles of the first two Ecumenical Councils, I believe. This is called the "Reformed Julian Calendar." Again, I am only too happy to stand corrected.

As for what I noted with respect to a reformed and universal Petrine Ministry, I don't believe I've said anything novel and have outlined, albeit sparsely, the general principle of that primacy as it was understood in the first millennium. I am happy to stand corrected otherwise. The Petrine Primacy does exist in Orthodoxy today and it is exercised by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. There have been rumblings from the ROC denying this, but it has yet to flesh out their view ecclesiologically.

Finally, the issues surrounding the Ukrainian situation is often treated by who I will call "disconnected outsiders" as simply a game of ecclesial chess between Moscow and Constantinople with the Ukrainian Orthodox notably absent from the board moves.

What will it take to get the Moscow Patriarchate to accept the reality of what so many Ukrainian Orthodox want by way of an autocephalous Church and indepedence from the MP? Does that come as a shock to anyone today? Are those individuals so innocent of the history of those two Churches and the ensuing politics involved? And does Orthodoxy believe that social, cultural and political considerations don't mesh with their Churches? And is the Orthodox world blind to the glaring injustices committed by the MP towards the Ukrainian Orthodox historically. Not to mention the Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church as well. Should not there, in future, be a mechanism within Orthodoxy whereby a church like the MP incur excommunication for its historic acts of collusion with its government to impose a double ecclesial and political imperialism on unwilling peoples?

Many former UOC-MP parishes which have united with the Orthodox Church of Ukraine have, truth be told, stopped commemorating in their liturgies not only the Moscow Patriarch but also Metropolitan Onuphrius. Have they not already been living in "schism?" Ukrainians are used to being called schismatics throughout their history, beginning with Roman Catholics who at one time saw Orthodox as being such and now by the MP.

The fact is that the Ukrainian Orthodox have never been happier since obtaining their Tomos of Autocephaly from His All-Holiness. I see their contentment on their faces every Sunday. I hear about it from my Orthodox relatives in Ukraine. Relations between Ukrainian Orthodox and Ukrainian Catholics have never been warmer. Moscow will just have to get over things and stop alppealing to its own interpretation of canon law. It should take the Great Fast to beg Ukrainian Orthodox and Eastern Catholics for forgiveness for what it did to these - as Father Alexander Schmemann once said at a theological conference in Edmonton "My Russian people committed a terribly grave sin against the Ukrainians." Time for some real instrospection by the MP.

For Ruthenian Catholics, what calendar, what date?

Stand corrected. For Orthodox and Catholics-Protestants there are just two operative methods/dates based on either the Gregorian or Julian calendar.

Stand corrected. Finnish Orthodox Church [en.wikipedia.org]

While most of the others allow some progress, I think this one is actually backwards.

The early councils specified a means of calculating Pascha. The tables were to *implement* it, not supersede.

However, the way out for both is to dump the calendars and actually follow the astronomical calculations . . .

(actually, that it's the Orthodox holding onto the clearly incorrect tables that don't comply with the councils is one of the things that most baffles me . . .)

hawk

Dear AJK,

Truly the difference in calendars affects the calculation (how could it not?), but I believe there is more to it than that. One of the sticking points is that the Western calculation of Pascha sometimes falls before Passover and this would be in violation of the tradition of the early Councils.

It isn't simply a matter of two calendar calculations coming up with two different dates of Pascha. The Reformed Julian calendar IS the Gregorian calendar with the date of Pascha calculated in a way that the rules governing the determination of Pascha are respected.

So you need to flesh out your argument some more.

And, Dochawk, I doubt very much that the Orthodox will agree with you . . . . Ah, what would we do if East and West finally did resolve these differences and became one?

I think that the Marian dogmas are for the whole Church, it is revealed truth of the whole Universal Church and not only something for the particular Latin Church. I do not think it's something that any Catholic can choose. It is past time for some Eastern Catholics to defend what the Church believes.

In the same way, the Filioque is dogma. Understanding will always be according to dogma, even if the term is not in the Creed. The West for a long time professed the Creed without the term, but the understanding was unanimous - but at some point to avoid errors the term was added. Absence of the term does not imply in denial.


St. Josafat Kuncewycz and other martyrs sacrificed in vain? This would only give reason for sedevacantistas or traditionalists (such as Priestly Society of Saint Josaphat, for example). The Magisterium can not contradict itself. If it was necessary to rid Christians of theological errors, it is not possible today to say that theological errors do not matter. If, for example, there are two statements that appear to be in contradiction, I think that the most authoritative document prevails.

I believe it is possible to say that to the West, innovation is the negation of the Filioque. According to Sergei Bulgakov:

"In conclusion, we can say chat, co the extent they considered the problem of the procession of the Holy Spirit, the Cappadocians expressed only one idea: the monarchy of the Father and, consequently, the procession of the Holy Spirit precisely from the Father. They never imparted co chis idea, however, the exclusiveness that it acquired in the epoch of the Filioque disputes after Photius, in the sense of ek monou tou Patros (from the Father alone)." (The Comforter, p. 80)

"the Augustinian theory of the Filioque was received in a natural and elemental manner in the West, without the participation of doctrinal theology, without new efforts to understand and prove this theory theologically. It was simply professed to be a self-evident theory and the only one that was possible. A whole series of Western writers, including popes who are venerated as saints by the Eastern church, confess the procession of the Holy Spirit also from the Son; and it is even more striking that there is virtually no disagreement with this theory." (The Comforter, p. 90).

PS: Sorry, some letters were not recognized when I pasted the quote:

"In conclusion, we can say that, to the extent.... never imparted to this idea, however, the exclusiveness that it adquired in the epoch of the"

Not true as has been pointed out on this forum many, many times by me and others referencing verifiable sources that include Orthodox commentators.

It is that, two calendars each with respective computus, following the SAME prescription considered to be based on the authority of Nicaea I. They differ in that only one, the Gregorian, is sufficiently in harmony with nature, that is, the sun and moon.

Not so.

I already have, many times in great detail in this forum but, first, you have to read them, and then make some authentic effort to understand. The bottom line: The Julian calendar and its Paschalion, because it fails to adequately describe nature, actually violates the prescription of Nicaea and the sacred Scripture on which it is based, while it stridently claims to uphold the same and thus, in my judgment, brings upon itself the description Orientale Tenebris. And the great disappointment is that those sitting in the darkness are content to do so, zealous and triumphant.

This is so. Astronomical calculations are neat and tidy and quite accurate but an overkill that I believe is an out, a face-saving measure for Old Calendarists that in the end is to no avail anyway. The astronomical method also departs from the framework of Nicaea and the prescription of Scriptural Passover on which it is based. It is an alternative that I once supported but now think is an elaboration that in the way it interprets the rule can alter the intent of the rule. The Julian computus was in accord with the rule and is numerically elegant but, unfortunately, nature does not function as modeled by the Julian computus. The Gregorian calendar and computus is a, probably the, true revision of the Julian in that it maintains a connection to the Julian methodology: While attaining the desired correspondence with nature, that is the sun and moon, it cleverly maps its corrections back onto key, familiar features of the Julian computus.

Going back a month and a half, I'd like to answer my own rhetorical question which I do not think anyone has adequately addressed:

Rome has put herself to the "Test" many,many times expressing in many documents, going back to Popes Benedict XV to Benedict VI , her love and affection for the Churches of the East separated from her communion, asking very little except that they reciprocate. .

Vatican Council II gave expression to that same love and affection, again appealing for reciprocity. I may be wrong, but I think it is the practice to officially invite the separated churches of the east to participate in those major Councils that have been held in the west since the separation.

St. Pope Paul VI and His Holiness, Patriarch Athenagoras mutually lifted the Anathemas imposed in 1054. This in itself establishes a kind of Communion.

It may be apocryphal (but I don't think so): it is said that the same Pope knelt and kissed the feet of a legate of His Holiness in the Sistine Chapel.

Rome readily accepts that Catholics of any rite may approach the chalice for communion in any Orthodox Church, but we know this is not accepted or reciprocated by the Orthodox.

An official international dialogue has been established, and ongoing for many years. Need more be said?

The fact is, there just is not enough documentary evidence from the first millennium to establish who is right on the issue of Primacy in the Church. There is weight on both sides and both are Orthodox, although there are no first millennial denials of Roman Primacy that I know of. We all need to be "tested" given the critical times in which we breathe.

Last evening I went to a beautiful Akathist at the Greek Orthodox church just down the street. I cried at the beauty; but, more,I cried at the separation of our churches. Why cannot we be in communion? Is it because that ancient old Roman liturgy is just too plain and simple, and the Orthodox are afraid that they would be overrun by sheer numbers? No, they would not. It is Rome that would be the richer, and she wants to be.Why? Because she has passed the test, but she need not give herself away. I would like to see Eastern Churches that are in communion with Rome be put to the "test" by casting aside their "latinisms" which the Orthodox perhaps see as more an obstacle than the "Filioque" and such! This is the "Why" of an old man still waiting.