www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology Immaculate Conception on Eastern Calendars

The Roman Church does not have primacy over the others. This is exactly the confusion that I think should be avoided.. the Pope has primacy, but the Roman Church is equal to any of the other autonomous/sui iurus Churches in honour and dignity - a sister Church is the proper sense. Just because the Pope has primacy, people somehow confuse this to mean that the Latin Church somehow has primacy - it does not! The false assumption has lead to Easterners mimicking Latin practices and abandoning their own Traditions, and forced imposition onto Easterners of Latin norms by some members of the Latin Church... I thought that era was long gone, but apparently not.

Cardinal Ratzinger could not have been clearer: The Universal Catholic Church is the "mother Church", the particular sui iurus/autonomous Churches are sisters, equal in dignity and honour - whether they be Latin, Melkite, Chaldean, Syriac, Malankara, Malabar, Maronite, Ukrainian, Russian, Romanian, etc.

I think we're debating a misunderstanding. We seem to have a different understanding of primacy here. Primacy does NOT mean "I am better than you".

Again Eastern & Western Catholics have simply had a terminology difference.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13121a.htm
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03744a.htm
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03449a.htm

More from the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913:




Remember, this was in 1913.

if any church is mother, it is jerusalem.

"Rejoice, Holy Sion,
Mother of the Churches, abode of God . . ."

from the Oktoechos.

Fr. Serge

You're right Edward, TONE 1 Resurrection stikhera for Saturday evening clearly states this.

Dear Byzantophile,

While national Latin Churches have no ecclesial status, surely they are an historical, sociocultural fact of life, no?

You mean that the Catholic Church in Poland isn't Polish through and through in every sense of the word, just as the ROC is Russian, the GOC is Greek etc.?

Alex

Dear Byzantophile,

However, simply because the UGCC parish you were at affirmed both the Latin and the Byzantine titles of the Feast of December 9th does not mean we may generalize for the whole UGCC.

There are UGCC parishes that have the Forty Hours Devotion and the public rosary and also statues. There are those parishes that would regard anyone who does not have a statue of the Sacred Heart as not being "Catholic" and the like.

To declare the feast of December 9th, as Pat. Joseph the Hieroconfessor did for the whole of the UGCC, as "the Conception of St Anne" is to underline the way the East has always celebrated this Marian feast.

For the East, the notion of the "stain of Original Sin" where not only the impact of the sin of Adam is passed on to us through generation, but also the guilt of that sin in any sense is outside the parameters of how the East has always understood "Original Sin."

For the East, there is no question but that the Most Holy Mother of God the Word Incarnate was never under any bondage of evil or the devil through sin. She was conceived in holiness at the moment of her miraculous Conception. Her experience of Divine Grace was and is a dynamic, ongoing one, beginning with her Conception - and not even ending in Heaven.

For Eastern theology, the dogma of the IC was simply the West's way of getting out of the straight-jacked of an extreme Augustinian view of Original Sin that, beginning with Augustine himself, would never be imputed to the Mother of God.

The dogma of the IC taught the East absolutely nothing new, nothing that it didn't already celebrate and was, at worst, rooted in a view of Original Sin that was completely foreign to it.

Again, the UGCC is very much like the Anglican church in the sense of "High, middle and low" categories when it comes to Easternization.

It is this that many RC's find very difficult to understand about the title, "Conception of St Anne" and sometimes think that the East thinks that Mary was conceived with the "stain of Original Sin" after all.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Alex

An interesting discussion. It will also be interesting to see how the catechism of the Ukrainian Catholic Church will handle these 'newer' feast days that originated in the West. 'The Conception of Anna, When She Conceived the Mother of God' was the feast we celebrated on Dec 9 in the UCC. This feast was also listed in the liturigical calendar included in the newly published 'Antholology' which is a formal publication of the Ukrainian Catholic Church.

I was interested in the above discussion to hear that some see this feast as a day of obligation. It is not a day of obligation for Ukrainian Catholics, nor is it a day of obligation for Roman Catholics (at least in Canada ... besides Sundays, RCs in Canada only have two days of obligation, Dec 25 and Jan. 1).

We have a different understanding of this in the West these days. Since very few western countries still have an established church (Spain, Peru, Argentina, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco) and a Catholic monarchy (Spain, Lichtenstein, Luxenbourg, Monaco), many former privileges/concessions have reverted back to the Holy See. Modern communication methods may also have had something to do with this.

I agree with you completely, but why do many ECs on here seem to deny this and sa that it doesn't apply to them?


I did not think that. I did, however, take issue with some ECs denying that the Proclamation of the IC was purely done for the Latin Church.

As for Jerusalem being the mother church, I totally agree. But I would argue so is Rome as well, honorarily. As I stated before by analogy, the first church in a diocese/eparchy and its cathedral church are BOTH considered "mother churches". The first one is a fact, the second a title of honor due to it being the diocesan bishop's church.

Dear Byzantophile,

Fair ball - understood and I agree.

Alex

Well Said, Michael!

Dear Byzantophile,

Your point is an important one and is worth contemplating and discussing.

The definition of the IC by the Pope is most assuredly for the whole world - that the Mother of God was conceived in holiness and never did any shadow of darkness or sin come over her.

However, this definition could only really apply in a situation where Christians could legitimately believe otherwise, namely, that the Mother of God was conceived "with the stain of Original Sin on her soul."

And until that definition was proclaimed, Latin Catholics, such as Aquinas and others, did indeed accept that Mary was conceived with the "stain of Original Sin."

At no point was that ever the case in the East. So the IC simply reiterated, but in pith and substance, what the East always believed, that Mary was holy in soul from her conception.

Original Sin to the East is concupiscence and death. Mary experienced no concupiscence owing to her being the pre-eminent Temple of the Holy Spirit, she felt no pain in giving birth to Christ and her death was so sweet as to be called a "dormition."

But the fact that she did die indicates, to the East, that she was under the effects of Original Sin, even though her eminent and ongoing Theosis mitigated those effects to the nth degree.

So the IC doesn't tell Eastern Christians something new at all and insofar as it relates to Blessed Augustine's and others' views on Original Sin, it really says nothing to the East, Orthodox or Catholic.

Alex