www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Orthodox-Catholic commission agrees on primacy of Pope but...

Alex,

Fr. Schmemann addresses that problem in an article in the book, "The Primacy of Peter in the Orthodox Church."

God bless,
Todd

You don't understand.

I do not believe that I had said anything to the effect that � �everything I believed is wrong.�

If I did, I think I would have only meant it to apply to believing in Papal Primacy and Papal Infallibility (as currently defined by the RCC).

Let us be honest ... how much does Primacy and Infallibility ... effect the average Roman Catholic on a day to day level? Not much. The average Catholic misunderstands both and never really encounters something 'Infallible'. So these two items are not really operative in the average Catholic on a day to day level.

I do say that I have brought my 35 plus years of research and study within philosophy, languages, cultures involved in the OT and NT, psychology, church history, theology, etc.. etc.. etc.. to bare on the subject (primacy and infallibility) and it is very clear to me that both ... are a mistake. I had just never really looked at them before. As I say ... they are not operative for the average Catholic on a day to day level.

I am still a Roman Catholic ... even if I recognize that my church has made these two mistakes.

I have done a bit of posting on Matthew 16 .. here and there ... but only to get a bit of feedback as I waded through it. I fully understand that verse now. The RCC interpretation is wrong. My own interpretation is more like St. Augustine's ... but I have no crying need to convince anyone about anything there. I do not like to disturb people's beliefs too much as more harm can sometimes come from that ... than a misinterpretation which really has no day to day consequence upon their lives. God knows all about us and he has got all this covered.

If you like ... I will post a bit on what can and can not be infallible and exactly what 'infallible' is and means and what it 'does'. It is very consistent from Plato on up to Thomas Aquinas. After that (in the West) infallibility gets mis-categorized when it comes to the Pope ... but it still remains consistent in RC mystical theology. But again .. I have no feelings of need to convince anyone of anything. (as if I could change the world!).

Everything is going alone as God wants it to for our best good.

An alliance (call it unity) between Orthodox and Roman Catholic is not that far off. There will be a type of Papal Primacy ... but not in the way it is imagined that it once was in the early church .. nor in the way it is current in the Roman Catholic church. The RCC has been re-adjusting itself to water down both ... in a way acceptable to the Orthodox. A compromise will emerge. A corporate merge will take place. Globalisation is forcing that if the two churches want to stem shrinkage and be more successful against the competition. Stagnation means lost ground. They know that. The competition against each other has reached a stalemate (neither will go away) that has limited any further growth (and they are losing ground in the world). A corporate merger is inevitable.

One must separate the message (the gospel) from the messengers (church government). The words �the gates of hell shall not prevail� means that in a war of annihilation ... the church will remain and the gospel will get preached forever. You would have to know what Old Testament wars were like and why Jesus said �gates� I guess. You see ... when an invading army came ... it would surround the major city ... if it took the city it would kill everyone and burn it and dismantle the main city gate (doors) in order to carry that back to their king and parade the gate around to prove that that city � was no more. These doors were very ornate and embossed with the symbol of that city's god. You can say it was a war of one city's gates � against another city's gates. One gate against another gate. One god against another god.

And so ... �the gates of hell shall not prevail...� means that the church will not disappear and cease to exist. This has nothing to do with the personal holiness of the church members and the human governance of the churches. God does not require that the messenger be holy and saintly ... only that he deliver the message.

Once we (as individuals) have the message ... we should not be like the scribes and lawyers who knew scriptures and church laws as experts - but did not use the 'keys' (enlightenment of conscience) to enter into the true spirit of the law. That spirit is to pay great attention to Providence and to conscience. It is one thing to know about the gospel and another to do the gospel. One might think that the more we know of the gospel and the law ... the more we can do it. But no. It is rather the more we do it ... the more we can know it. And so charity (loving each other) and conscience ... these two are above it all and fulfill it all.

May the peace of good conscience be yours.
-ray

-ray

Some thoughts about the events at the recent commission and about primacy:

Russia and the Pope [holydormition.blogspot.com]

John...

Moscow

Tell me, if you know, can the other Orthodox churches (are they really independent?) ... can they make their own peace with Rome?


( a small rant not directed at you )

I swear .. I get so frustrated. It really seems to me that ALL churches break canon when it suits them to do so.

Enee menee minee moe ... who is the ultimate universal leader of the church .. today? It seems we have three claims to that. I have a half a mind to reject them all.

anyways ...

Peace to you John and to your church.
-ray

With the contemporary Catholic and Orthodox rejection of uniatism, it seems unlikely to me that certain Orthodox Churches will reunite with the Catholic Churches while others do not.

If uniatism is an entirely, objectively bad thing, then we Byzantine Catholics shouldn't exist. Personally, I think we're the best thing either the Catholic or the Orthodox have got going.

And check mine out also-

http://byzantinechristian.blogspot.com/2007/11/proud-uniate.html

Unia is not the answer to the schism; instead, as the Melkite Patriarch has said, koinonia is the goal (cf. From Unia to Koinonia [mliles.com]).

Sacramentally, equal, yes. Rome has always affirmed that.
But that is not the issue here and the issue of primacy doesn't revolve around the sacramental equality of all of the Bishops.

Ray,

A couple of books that I found to be particularly good during my transition from Protestantism to the Eastern Catholic Church are; Jesus, Peter and the Keys; http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Peter-K...mp;s=books&qid=1195582350&sr=1-1
and, "The Russian Church and the Papacy" by Vladimir Soloviev; http://www.amazon.com/Russian-Churc...mp;s=books&qid=1195583018&sr=1-1
The one by Soloviev had a profound impact on me.
Keep reading ray.
In Christ,
Aaron

Dear JR,

Well, I don't know if we are. Certainly, Rome would love it if the UGCC didn't exist. And not only because we are so uncooperative either.

The problem is that we as EC Churches are based on an ecclesiology that Rome no longer subscribes to and finds to be an embarrassment all around.

Frankly, the best thing would probably be if all the EC Churches simply return to their Mother Orthodox Churches and once the breast-beating stops then perhaps Rome and the East can sit down calmly and work things out.

For one thing, the UGCC wouldn't have the ongoing stress of its struggle with Rome for acknowledgement of a patriarchate et al.

Alex

Dear danman,

Then what does it really revolve around?

Alex

The Ukrainian Catholics I know, do not want to join the Orthodox Church. If that were the case they'd just go to the one down the street.

Dear Alex,

If this is your opinion, why haven't you left the UGCC?

I'm not saying "go home," but sincerely want to know why someone who believes the UGCC should not exist would belong to the UGCC.

-John

Amen!

Alex,

To whom would we "return," the MP? In all fairness, I think there are other issues here.

For one thing, both Sheptytsky and Slipyj--men who understood the issues at stake much better than I--were in favor of a Catholic-Orthodox reunion, but needless to say they did not think reabsorption into the MP was a good idea.

Another thing is that I think the ECCs could still serve their original purpose as a model for a reunited Church. It would be a very different model from the one that was envisioned in the 16th Century, and as we have seen, it still needs to be different from what it is today.

This would probably mean eliminating the Sacred Congregation for the Eastern Churches, or perhaps turning it into more of a liaison office and less of a governing body.

Anyway, it seems to me that the real problem with the unia (at least in its present form) is that it clearly shows the ECCs as subordinate bodies, not as full sister-churches. When that changes, we might just see things start to happen.


Peace,
Deacon Richard