Originally posted by Zenovia:
What is unfortunate is that the Eastern churches cannot comprehend this, and only see it as the Pope assuming power that he does not have. The East therefore believes, the church in the West, if continuing to assume this authority on it's own, will fall into heresy.
It's a pity each Church can only perceive things through their own lenses. Christ I believe would want us at least to try to perceive things from the lenses of others.
Zenovia
I offer these excerpts for reflection:
So that is the teaching of the Gospel about Church authority. How are we
to apply it?
I'd like to think briefly tonight about three factors. During this
conference, we've said quite a lot about the primacy of the Pope of
Rome. I'd like, rather, to begin with another factor, without which we
cannot properly understand the authority of the Church. I would like to
start with the authority of the sensus fidelium – the general conscience of
the Church. We haven't said very much about that so far in our conference.
Any truly Catholic and Orthodox view of authority has to take into account
that the Holy Spirit is given, not just to patriarchs, popes, or bishops,
but to the whole people of God. Here we have an important scriptural
indication in John 15:15. There, Christ says that He does not call us
slaves or servants, but He calls us friends. Then He goes on to indicate
the difference between a slave and a friend. “A slave,” says our Lord,
“does not know what his Master is doing.” He obeys blindly, from fear of
punishment. “But,” says Christ to His Disciples, “I have made known to you
the Father's will and purpose.” So you are not slaves, you are friends.
That means we don't obey blindly, but willingly. We don't obey out of
fear, but out of love. When Christ says that we are His friends, surely
that means every baptized member of the Church – all of us are His
friends. He doesn't restrict His friendship only to the hierarchy. So,
the Church is truly a society of friends. There's no polarization, then,
in the Church between the absolute ruler and passive subject. What we have
in the Church is sisterhood, brotherhood, co-responsibility, communion,
koinonia.
Some years ago, the Orthodox Patriarch Ignatius of Antioch made a statement
of great importance – simple but profound. He said: “Communion is the
highest authority in the Church.”
I think that is exactly what Christ means when He calls us friends. We
enjoy communion through Him with the Father, and through and in Him we
enjoy communion with one another. It is this communion which is the
highest authority in the Church – the authority of mutual love.
Now, let's turn to the account of the descent of the Holy Spirit on the day
of Pentecost, in Acts 2. We are told they were all filled with the Holy
Spirit. As Saint Peter goes on to point out, “this is a fulfillment of the
prophecy of Joel: "I will pour out my spirit on all flesh'” (Acts 2:16-17).
So, through the descent of the Holy Spirit, in the upper room at Pentecost,
all members of the Church, all without exception, are made spirit-bearers,
charismatics, in the true sense of that word, imbued with the charismata of
the Paraclete. As Saint Peter points out: “we are all anointed as
priests.” As we are told in the book of Revelation: “we are a kingdom of
priests and kings” (Revelation 1:6).
Now, what happened to the Holy Mother of God, to the Apostles and to the
first Christians gathered at Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, happens to
each one of us. After we've been baptized, immersed in the water of the
font, then in the Orthodox practice we are anointed with the Holy Chrism,
the myron. This chrismation, immediately after Baptism, is for each one of
us a personal Pentecost. The tongues of fire which descended visibly on
the Apostles on the 50th day, descend also upon each one of us at our
Chrismation, invisibly but with no less reality and power. As Saint John
says (1 John 2:20): “you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all
know (or you have all knowledge).”
The power to discern between truth and falsehood is not the monopoly of any
particular hierarch or order within the Church. It is the power given to
all the baptized, to the royal priesthood in its totality. So here, in the
sacrament of Chrismation, our personal Pentecost, we have the basis of what
is known as the sensus fidelium – the general conscience of the Church. It
is not just a diffused feeling. It is a sacramental power.
Any doctrine of infallibility – which is not a scriptural word – has to
take this into account. Because the Holy Spirit is given to the whole
people of God, statements made by Popes, Patriarchs, and Synods require to
be received by the people of God as a whole, by the anointed ones who
constitute the charismatic community of the Church.
The Holy Spirit does not only speak through the hierarchy. The Holy Spirit
speaks through all the people of God. It may sometimes be lay people who
save the Church from heresy when the bishops fall away. This is well-put
by a Latin Father of the fourth century, Saint Paulinus of Nola. “Let us
hang upon the lips of all the faithful, for the Spirit of God breathes upon
every one of them.” We listen to all the faithful. It may often be not a
Patriarch or a Pope who speaks the truth, but a lay person.
In the seventh century, in Byzantium and the West, very many people fell
away into the heresy of Monotheletism. This caused great confusion in the
Church. Saint Maximus, who was only a layman, stood firm and did not give
way. When he was in exile, emissaries of the emperor came and said: “You
are alone. The emperor has agreed to this. The Patriarch has agreed to
this. The Pope of Rome has agreed to it. You are outside the
Church.” “No,” said Saint Maximus, “in that case I "am' the Church.” So
he, as a layman, bore witness, a faithful witness.
So it was also that Saint Hippolytus of Rome said, in the early third century,
“On such as believe rightly, the Holy Spirit bestows the fullness of grace,
that they may know how those who are at the head of the Church should teach
the tradition and maintain it in all things.”
So often the laity correct the hierarchs.
Our Lord Jesus said: “when the Spirit of Truth comes, He will guide you
into all the truth.” The “you” there doesn't just mean the Pope of Rome,
the Patriarch of Constantinople, the bishops, the professional
theologians. “You” means every baptized and chrismated member of the Church.
If we are to have a right understanding of the collegiality of bishops, the
meaning of “synod,” and of the place of primacy in the Church, we must
never forget that the Holy Spirit is poured out on the total people of
God. We must never forget the sensus fidelium, the general conscience of
the Church.
Now, what about the second factor – the episcopate?
The Holy Spirit is given to all the baptized. But, the episcopate has a
special charism veritatis, charisma of the truth, to use Saint Irenous'
phrase, a special charisma to proclaim and teach the truth. This is
bestowed on bishops through sacramental consecration. Yes, the people of
God as a whole, the entire company of the baptized, are guardians of the
truth. But the bishops have a special vocation to proclaim and teach the
truth. In the words of 2 Timothy 2:15 used at the Liturgy, the bishops are
appointed rightly to define the word of truth.
Yet the bishops, when they so proclaim the truth, speak not to the
uninitiated but to those who know, who have all knowledge, in Saint John's
word. So there is a reciprocal relationship between bishop and flock.
When the first Orthodox bishop to serve in North America was consecrated in
Russia in 1840, Saint Innocent of Alaska, he said in his consecration
sermon: “the bishop is at the same time the teacher and the disciple of his
flock.” Russian slavophile theologian Alexis Khomiakov singled out that
phrase as possessing particular significance – teacher and disciple.
So there isn't within the Church just a one-way power structure. There is
a mutuality, co-responsibility, communion. The truth enlarges through the
communion between the bishop and the people. Communion is the highest
authority in the Church
Here, we recall Christ's words that exousia – power – means diakonia –
service. “I am among you as one who serves,” says Christ. So the bishop
is the servant of his flock. That must surely mean, among other things,
that he needs to listen to them. As Saint Gregory the Theologian says,
“even bishops have to learn.”
Now, to discuss primacy. What is true of bishops is true equally of
primates, patriarchs, and popes. “I am among you as the one who
serves.” Surely, the best of all papal titles used at Rome is servus
servorum Dei, the servant of the servants of God. Primacy, in its
fundamental meaning, is not the possession of greater power. It's not a
superior ability to coerce and subjugate. Primacy means the opportunity
and responsibility for a wider sphere of service. We may all of us be
grateful for the way in which this truth has so movingly been emphasized by
the present pope, John Paul II, in his encyclical Ut Unum Sint and elsewhere.
In commenting on primacy, I would like just to mention two further
points. Primacy exists at many different levels. I remember back in the
1980's when ARCIC, the Roman Catholic-Anglican doctrinal discussion in
Britain were in progress in their first round, they put out a document on
authority. It spoke about the position of the local diocesan bishop. It
also spoke about the universal primacy of the pope, Pope of Rome.
Now, if you only speak about those two things, surely you are distorting
the proper meaning of the Roman Primacy. Because in between the local
diocesan bishop and the Pope there is a whole series of different levels of
primatial authority. There is first the regional primacy of the
Metropolitan. That is something that has largely fallen into disuse in the
Orthodox Church today. Then there is the primacy of patriarchs and heads
of the autocephalous and autonomous Churches.
Then thirdly, in the understanding of the modern Orthodox Church, the
Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople possesses a certain universal
primacy as “first among equals.” There are different understandings in
different Orthodox Churches about exactly what that involves. But then you
would come to the universal primacy of the Pope of Rome.
If we isolate the primacy of the Pope, ignore the intermediate levels of
primatial authority, then our understanding of the papal ministry will be,
in part, distorted.
A second point – all those different levels of primacy should not make us
lose sight of the fact that sacramentally all bishops are equal. The
Patriarch of Constantinople or the Pope of Rome have not received an
additional consecration not granted to other bishops. If we think of the
Church, as I would certainly wish to do, in terms of the eucharist, then
the bishop is above all the one who presides at the eucharist. At every
eucharist the whole Christ is present, not just a part of Him. Christ is
not more present in the eucharist at Rome or Constantinople or Kiev than He
is at the eucharist in Oxford or Johnstown or Bound Brook. Levels of
primacy, that is to say, when the Church is seen in eucharistic terms, are
secondary to the fundamental equality of every local Church and so of every
diocesan bishop.
I would venture to say, as an Orthodox, that all bishops, including the
Pope, are fundamentally and sacramentally equal. So if any is to be styled
a primate his status is to be understood as primus inter pares, the first
among equals.
“All authority has been given to Me,” the risen Christ says to us. “Lo, I
am with you always.” The only final authority in the Church is Christ
Himself, ever-present within her through the Holy Spirit and in the
Eucharist. Christ alone, as head of the Church, is the source of all
exousia, all power, and any proper exercise of it can only be in Him and
through Him. The highest call of appeal in the Church, the ultimate
criterion of the truth remains always the Son of God Himself, living
mysteriously in the Church and leading her in the way of truth.
God's continuing presence in the Church is not to be externalized or
materialized. It cannot be identified, that is to say, with the letter of
Scripture, or with a single person such as the Pope, or with the collective
person of the episcopate gathered in council. All of these together with
the sensus fidelium, the general conscience of the Church, have their part
to play in the exercise of authority, yet none of them is to be taken in
isolation form the rest of from the total life of Christ's body.
“The eucharist is a continual miracle,” a great eucharistic priest, Saint
John of Kronstadt, used to say. The same is true of the Church as a
eucharistic organism – a continual miracle. In our ecclesial vision we
need constantly to return to what remains beyond all external criteria and
all formal infallibility – what remains the central mystery of the Church's
nature. The Church is the miracle of God's presence among humankind.
from the talk of Bishop Kallistos at Orientale Lumen V Conference
