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Hieromonk Elias,

That is the truest account of what it means to be Orthodox I have ever seen. Submission to Christ and the order He has chosen....

Wonderful!

Admin

Christteen,

"my little 15 year old brain just doesn't grasp the concept I suppose. "

I think you are onto something there. Welcome to the Apostolic faith, anyway.

Dan Lauffer

Nik,

I noticed the thumbs down. Perhaps it's warranted perhaps it's not.

It's my understanding that no Church law says that the Pope must be of the Latin Rite Catholic Church. Am I wrong? Or can you show the law that says the Popes must be Latin Rite Catholics? Maybe I'm wrong with these various "Rites" but somewhere else here on the forum someone posted that one of the Popes was of the *Ambrosian* Rite. Most Romans are Latin not Ambrosian Rite, thus the Bishop of Rome was Ambrosian.

Of course because of Church politics the likelyhood of a Byzantine Catholic being placed as the Bishop of Rome is slime to nil. But just because the Italians held Papal office for years doesn't mean a Polish person can never find himself sitting in the Chair of Peter. Who knows the Bishop of Rome has come as far away as Africa. So maybe there is a chance for a one day Polish Pope. If there is then maybe in another thousand - a Byzantine "Vicar of Christ".


Justin

Justin,

Well technically, an Eastern Catholic could become Pope, but upon being elected Pope he would cease to be Eastern Catholic and become Latin Catholic because the Pope is not only the Pope of the Catholic Church, he is the Patriarch of the Western Church. Technically the Pope is a Latin Catholic, while at the same time exercising his papal privliges leading the whole Church.

OrthoMan,

Maybe Christ's meaning of "I am with you always" is twofold: maybe he means he is present in the Church's ecumenical councils and also present in the person of the Pope, His Vicar. Actually, I've always seen this statement as sort of saying "I am acting through the Bishop of Rome [with regards to faith and morals, etc.]".

Rome tends to refer to the Pope depending on what context it's used in, other times it can refer to the Vatican, still other times Rome & the Bishop of Rome.

Yes the Latin Catholics (Roman Catholics) are in communion with the Bishop of Rome just as the Eastern Churches that are in communion with his office. The Pope does not derive his authority from me Justin a Latin Catholic I am to submit to all the Bishops Latin and Byzantine of the Catholic Church, and all of them (myself included) are to in the end submit to the authority of the Bishop of Rome - in so much that it is proper.

Put it this way, there have been Latin Catholics and at least one Bishop who have rejected Papal authority, walked away formed their own Church that looks more Catholic then many Catholic Churches. But because of their rejection of the Bishop of Rome they no longer are in communion with Rome where as the Byzantine Catholics are. Understand better.

OOOH OOOH i know who i know who!! Are you talking about Archbishop Lefebre or whatever his name was and the SSPX? Ok, it's my bedtime...

Rum Orthodox,

I get your point, and there's not that there's not a point to it with some degree of validity. But it comes down to, like many things in life, a perception, in this case a perception of power. The Pope is listen to because one will listen to the Pope one can take this as slavery to the Pope or one can take this as some form of freedom with community with the Pope. The Abbot can tell the novice to go dig a fire pit, justly or not justly, you as the novice can view your relation to the Abbot as you will. But the novice can find virtue regardless in his submission to the Abbot's office.

You are right I know nothing of Melkite history - and certianly there is alot for me to know and relize accordinlly to that history. And no I don't know anything about Patriarch Gregory. Though I wish him well.

**********

Hieromonk Elias,

You did just fine. In what you believe.

Perhaps your great talent is in prayer

Justin

Ya that's him. See your smarter then I am.


Justin

Father, Bless!

Father Elias, an excellent excursus on why I am Orthodox in Communion with Rome. As usual, you say it better than just about anyone. Thank God and thank you. One of the best I have ever read in that short of space. I'll sign up for your outfit.

Dear Hieromonk Elias,
May God grant you many years in your Christ-like journey. I cannot possibly know one day if you will enter the fullness of the Orthodox Church. I respect your position. I cannot understand & reconcile it from an Orthodox ecclesiastical perspective My prayer is to see the reunion of Rome and those she took from us return to communion with the Orthodox Church. There is nothing more important than the Unity of Faith established in love. We may be united in many ways but we have yet to be united in one Body and sharing of the Eucharist.

Ephesians 4:3
"there is one body, and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in all."

Philippians 2:1-5
"Therefore if there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, fulfill my joy by being like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus."

I think you answered your question. If you have no objection & acknowledge the Orthodoxy of the Seven Ecumenical Councils then your Patriarchs should come forth and say so.

I think for the most part they have, at least informally.

Unity of Faith requires that we be consistent in what we teach and say and believe. To label the 4th thru 7th Ecumenical Councils as general councils is not appropriate nor welcomed. They are ecumenical councils in Spirit bound on every believing Orthodox Christian and even Rome concedes this.

Of course, Rome concedes this, Rome accepts those seven as ecumenical, unlike the Oriental Orthodox. We weren't there, in some cases we weren't invited, the problems didn't have to do with us anymore than Trent had anything to do with the Greeks, etc. The orthodox teaching of the councils is binding on every Orthodox Christian, but it does not follow that councils four through seven are necessarily Ecumenical Councils.

As for Rome's "8-21 Ecumenical Councils" they are not ecumenical in their own right. General councils? Maybe.

Take out Rome and insert "Constantinople" (for good measure), take out the original numbers and write "4-7", and we could say the same about you guys.

I think the Vatican views their 8-21 as Ecumenical despite what the Orthodox believe and don't believe. The Latins have always had a historical arrogant position of being superior and claiming what they thought was ecumenical.

Could the same not be said of the Eastern Orthodox?

You know, there's nothing like the good old "communion with Rome" question to git a thread goin' in the mornin', is there? It is one question GUARANTEED to never go to less than about 10 pages of posts

Rum Orthodox --

First of all, yer name is KILLIN' me? What is with the "rum" in yer name? (I love it!). Was Captain Morgan an Orthodox also. Hehehehe!!!!

You insist that I am in prelest regarding my post. What point of it? The idea from the Bible of God having a covenantal structure on earth, or the thought process by which I came to my conclusions? I must agree with Hieromonk Elias. It is orthodox to accept the structure of the Church which HE set up. Until I find some definitive declaration (meaning: Bible verse) which strips the Chair of St. Peter of the keys of Matthew 18, then I can only be obedient to what I have discovered. Your aguement is basically the same as that of the Protestants. I realize that such a statement borders on high insult -- I am not making it to be offensive, but to make a point. I have more than one time seen the IDENTICAL arguements against the papacy from Protestant AND Orthodox writers.

You know, as part of my studies, I DID read about the exploits and writings of the Early Fathers. I did find sufficient and telling evidence that the Bishop of Rome was treated with a higher level of prominance than any of the other bishops.

Also, my brother, you failed to answer my question regarding your Eastern Bishops? WHAT if you git a heretic? Then what? To WHOM does he answer? He is his own head, right?

The head of the pope is Christ. That is a given from not only the writings I have read, but from the fact that even the evil and wicked popes were unable to and didn't try to change the moral and doctrinal teachings of the Church.

My personal opinion: the Orthodox have NOT forgotten nor forgiven the Sack of Constantinople as well as other grievious hurts done to them by the West. I remember listening to an Orthodox radio program one morning and the announcer went on and on and on and on about the Sack. I wasn't even in the Church yet, but I went away feeling "Hey, isn't it about time to exercise some forgiveness?"

Anyhow, I would appreciate a little more clear explanation of what part of my previous post to you is in prelest.

Cordially in Christ,

Brother Ed

Dear Friends,

What a fascinating thread!

I don't think I'll come out just now with what I personally feel about the Papacy. I'll keep that to myself and in private for a bit longer . . .

But I wanted to comment on one point, that being the so-called incongruity of "Orthodox, Anglicans, Methodists, Lutherans - in communion with Rome."

In fact, there have been examples of all these who remained within their Churches and were in Communion with Rome.

The Anglicans have a society of Anglican Ministers in Britain to which several hundred belong and who are bound by an act of loyalty to the Papacy.

This society works from within the Anglican Communion to bring it into communion with Rome, with its patrimony etc.

The Anglicans who have joined RCism and Orthodoxy have tended to discard their former ecclesial name, to be sure.

But I've never understood why since "Anglican" was used in England before the Reformation to simply denote the English Catholic Church.

The idea that one can be "Anglican" and "in Communion with Rome" is a conclusion that has been reached long ago.

There are also Lutherans who work for reunion with Rome. I correspond regularly with one such Lutheran Pastor in Germany who is part of a movement that is both Lutheran and in favour of communion with Rome. Their identity is "Lutheran" even though they refer to their Eucharist as the "German Mass" celebrate a Daily Office and some even invoke Martin Luther in their prayers. There is no question that they consider themselves to be "Lutheran" in accordance with the early Lutherans who actually worked to get back into communion with Rome then.

Methodism is more a way of life and there have always been Low Church and High Church Methodists - John Wesley was a High Church Methodist.

There are Methodists who pray the Rosary - Neville Ward and his book comes to mind.

Methodists are like Catholics, except they pray longer, fast, and others "do more" by way of spiritual exercises. There is no reason why there couldn't be a "Particular Methodist Church in communion with Rome."

The same is true for Orthodox. The fact is that Orthodoxy was in communion with Rome for the first thousand years.

The argument over heresy is a neverending one, but there are Orthodox today who hold one may accept the Filioque, the Papacy, the Immaculate Conception, Purgatory et alia as theological opinions and yet remain fully Orthodox, as Meyendorff has illustrated with case examples in his works.

But the fact remains that we Orthodox Catholics in communion with Rome are following a much older tradition than those Orthodox outside of that communion.

Anastasios the Grammarian:

What do Orthodox "lack" by not being in communion with Rome?

For one thing, they lack the fullness of ecclesial unity such as was the state of affairs between East and West for the first 1,000 years of Christianity.

They also lack a universal vision that transcends parochialism.

I can say that because my ethnic-eastern Church experience is very much enclosed within its own parochialism, a parochialism that communion with Rome forces it to lift itself out of once in a while.

What Orthodox not in communion with Rome "lack" is that kind of universal vision, unity amidst diversity.

There are over 20 Churches in communion with Rome that reflect the theological/ritual diversity of the early Church.

Can the Orthodox Church which is really enclosed within its Byzantine parameters boast of something similar?

I'm proud of my heritage, but I'm equally proud of joining with Christians of diverse liturgical/cultural traditions around the globe.

Alex

This is already probably an overly active thread, but at the risk of adding to the cacaphony of posts here, I'll add my own $0.02.

First off, let me say that I respect everyone's sincere opinion on these difficult issues -- I may disagree, but I do respect sincerely-held views.

I think that Fr. Elias has stated the Eastern Catholic position as it must be. In other words, in my own view, the position he articulated is the one that ought to be held by Eastern Catholics if they are truly Eastern Catholics -- namely that although the communion with Rome is imperfect (and perhaps very imperfect), the fact of that imperfect communion is preferable to the lack thereof, and, in fact, this fact of communion goes to heart of what a full "Church" is, such that one cannot be fully "Church" without the fact of that communion. That makes perfect sense to me as the Eastern Catholic perspective.

When I was an Eastern Catholic, I did not share that perspective. To the contrary, I came to believe that the Orthodox are fully the Church, their lack of visible communion with Rome notwithstanding. I therefore was somewhat at odds with the classical view stated above by Fr Elias. Of course, I was not alone among Eastern Catholics in my views, but nevertheless the views I had were rather "unorthodox" from the Catholic perspective.

As an Orthodox, I readily admit that primacy and conciliarity must both be present for the Church to be fully the Church. I will even admit (to the consternation of at least some Orthodox) that the primatial see really ought to be Rome, and that when Rome became separated from the Orthodox Church, the Orthodox Church suffered dramatically from that. Constantinople has been asked to play a role for the last 1000 years that it was never set up to play, and the results of that effort are fairly clear, I think. What I don't believe is that it is impossible for Rome to become separated from the Church, or that one must remain in communion with Rome at all times in order to be "Church". There was a Church before there was a Church of Rome, after all. In seeking a balanced vision of the Church, Orthodoxy needs a Roman primacy as it enjoyed in the first millenium ... but not at any price, and not on the terms that have been articulated by Rome for the past 1000 years. Rome, for its part, needs the check on its own power that true conciliarity offers in order to restore balance in its own ecclesiastical organism as well as to provide the groundswell for a true renewal of life in the Latin Church itself.

We each, therefore, have something needed by the other from the ecclesiastical perspective. Sure, we Orthodox have a primatial bishop, but we can't pretend that he acts in a way that the Pope did before the separation, because he simply doesn't -- he was never set up to do that; in order to have a true primacy to balance our conciliarity and complete it, we will need the Pope (but not necessarily on Rome's terms!). At the same time, Rome can claim it is getting more conciliar (in fact, things seem to be going the other way, but perhaps that's a subject for a different thread...) but the quality of that conciliarity will never be what it should be without the independent voice of the other local churches that are a manifestation of the universal church throughout the world -- and, in this, I have in mind the perspective of the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches -- sorry, but the Eastern Catholic Churches have well proven that they can't play that role (notwithstanding the sporadically energetic attempts by the Melkite Church to do so) effectively within the Roman communion.

So, I am Orthodox precisely because I do not believe what Fr. Elias does about the nature of the Church. As an Orthodox, I am allowed to believe that the primacy of Rome is needed and should be restored (ie, in the context of Orthodoxy, not at any price) and still be an Orthodox. I do not have to believe that communion with Rome at any price is necessary in order to be fully "Church", which is what is expressed in Fr. Elias well-written piece, and which is affirmed by "Dominus Iesus".

Brendan

Dear Brendan,

Well, will wonders ever cease?!

I agree with you as you've articulated the position you held as BOTH an Eastern Catholic and now as an Orthodox Christian.

I too don't believe that the Orthodox are any less "Church" because of the fact they are not in jurisdictional unity with the Catholic Church.

What I've said the Orthodox "lack" by not having a Primate like the Pope has nothing to do with their Apostolic Faith and Order, and everything else that goes to make the "Church."

What you've said about the Primacy is what I agree with totally and enough said about that.

I've had many debates with my former teachers and professors, a number of whom are (or were as some have reposed) theologians.

For them, the Orthodox Church is "THE Church" as well, while the Papacy is something they saw as not having any effect on them being "Church."

And what you and Meyendorff and other Orthodox theologians (do you see how highly you are regarded, Big Guy? ) have said about the Primacy and what it COULD and perhaps SHOULD become is what most Eastern Catholics would also agree with as well.

All in all, since you agree that Rome should be the universal primatial see, I recommend you to the Vatican as the Chief Advisor on Orthodox Affairs.

Too many Latins in that department has a similar effect as having too many celibates working as marriage counselors . . .

Glad to see you are rested up . . .

Alex