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I could care less about jurisdictions.

Marduk,

First, I have to say, you should drop your resume with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Church, as you apparently go well beyond the former Prefect and current Pontif in your defense of Papal perquisites.

Second, on this:


What you are saying is that there was jurisdiction, as long as we understand that jurisdiction doesn't really mean "jurisdiction".

Dear brother Stuart,

The reason I oppose the word “jurisdiction” is because of the imperialist baggage associated with it. Because of this imperialist baggage, many interpret “jurisdiction” in terms of control. But I don’t oppose the actual meaning behind it (which is “solicitude,” and not “control”). Let’s analyze it this way:

Take Canon 6 of Nicea, which states that the Bishop of Alexandria has jurisdiction over all of Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis. If we are to take “jurisdiction” according to the sensationalist interpretations of Low Petrine advocates, then this must mean that the Bishop of Alexandria has control of all these regions in such a way that he can disregard the authority of any local bishop in those regions and simply replace them with his own authority at his whim. Good luck with finding anyone adhere to such an interpretation.

Obviously, “jurisdiction” has a less legalistic sense than Low Petrine fearmongers pretend.

Let’s compare this to the Catholic teaching on the papacy. The Catholic Church teaches that the Bishop of Rome has universal jurisdiction. From this, many non-Catholics (especially those who hold a Low Petrine view) claim that the Catholic Church is teaching that the bishop of Rome has control over every diocese in the world, and has the authority to replace the authority of any bishop in a local diocese at his whim.

But let’s exercise some fairness here. Why should an informed Catholic believe that “jurisdiction” is used any differently by Vatican 1 than the way it is used by the First Ecumenical Council? There seems to be a decidedly unjustified bias going on here.

On that point, notice some of the earlier canons I quoted. One states that any Synod is invalid without the participation of a Metropolitan. And we all know that it is the prerogative of a Patriarch or Metropolitan to convene their Synods. Yet, when the Catholic Church teaches that the Pope is necessary for the validity of an Ecumenical Council, or that the Pope has the prerogative to convene Ecumenical Councils, why do Absolutist Petrine and Low Petrine advocates use these to claim that the Pope has absolute control over an Ecumenical Council? I doubt they will say the same of the Patriarch or Metropolitan with respect to their Synods. There’s absolutely no logic to this bias against the papacy.

HH JP2 of thrice-blessed memory described “jurisdiction” in this way, and I would much rather listen to him, than the exaggerated interpretations of Absolutist Petrine advocates, or the sensationalist fearmongering of Low Petrine advocates:
“ Inasmuch as the Church is a group of human beings called to carry out in history God's plan for the salvation of the world, power in her appears as an indispensable requirement of mission. Nevertheless, the analogical value of the language used allows power to be conceived in the sense provided by Jesus' maxim on "power in order to serve" and by the Gospel idea of the pastoral leader. The power required by the mission of Peter and his successors is identified with this authoritative leadership guaranteed of divine assistance, which Jesus himself called the ministry (service) of a shepherd…

Vatican I's definition, however, does not assign to the Pope a power or responsibility to intervene daily in the local churches. It means only to exclude the possibility of imposing norms on him to limit the exercise of the primacy. The Council expressly states: "This power of the Supreme Pontiff does not at all impede the exercise of that power of ordinary and immediate episcopal jurisdiction with which the bishops, appointed by the Holy Spirit (cf. Acts 20:28) as successors of the apostles, shepherd and govern the flock entrusted to them as true pastors..." (DS 3061).

Indeed, we should keep in mind a statement of the German episcopate (1875) approved by Pius IX that said: "The episcopate also exists by virtue of the same divine institution on which the office of the Supreme Pontiff is based. It enjoys rights and duties in virtue of a disposition that comes from God himself, and the Supreme Pontiff has neither the right nor the power to change them." The decrees of Vatican I are thus understood in a completely erroneous way when one presumes that because of them "episcopal jurisdiction has been replaced by papal jurisdiction"; that the Pope "is taking for himself the place of every bishop"; and that the bishops are merely "instruments of the Pope: they are his officials without responsibility of their own" (DS 3115). ”

Blessings,
Marduk

Etymology wins out. Juris + diction = law + speak. A person or office with jurisdiction wields the power of law over a defined group or territory.

Ahhhh! But according to Christ (repeated by HH JP2 of thrice-blessed memory which I quoted above), power in the Church can only be realized as a ministry of service. In JP2's words, it is "the power to serve." That is far different from the normal imperialist connotations attached to the word "jurisdiction."

This shouldn't surprise you. The Church borrows a lot of words from the secular world, but they don't mean the same thing in the Church (I explained to you above just two examples with the terms "ordinary" and "immediate"), and to unthinkingly utilize secular definitions for these words can only lead to troubling conclusions.

Blessings,
Marduk

"I'm from the government. I'm here to help you."

Nonetheless, your posts give me hope that some day papal supremacy will be "clarified" in a manner acceptable to all. Your method is particularly creative: simply redefine words to mean the opposite of their commonly understood meaning. Orwellian, but useful.

It isn't helping these people.

http://toledoblade.com/article/20110116/NEWS16/101150403

I'm curious as to how the Diocese of Toledo managed to circumvent the historic preservation act and demolish an historic, 121-year old church building. I'm sure the fix was in, somewhere.

In any case, "I'm from the government, I'm here to help you" is always said in an ironic or cynical mode.

If only this were true lol.

You mean there are people who really mean it?

At my former parish, the annual visit of the bishop usually elicited a combination of cynicism, sarcasm and dread.

"May God bless and keep the Tsar (far away from us)!"

Maybe the folks in Seneca County, Ohio have kept the Tsar far away from the rights of property owners.

Even with a historic designation, you can get an exemption and demolish a building. There's a church here in Philadelphia that this is probably going to happen to in the near future.

The Toledo issue does touch on a facet of jurisdiction that people do care about at the grassroots level; and that's who controls the property and the purse strings.

I miss the closed thread on Benedict's nuanced take on the Eastern Orthodox Churches.