www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Papal Authority & the Cardinalate in regard to Eastern Hierarchs

Two exceptions, Stuart.

You say "I am". Unless I mistake your level of influence, you aren't. You may be promoting the notion, but not really planning.

And "an accident of history". I'm not sure there are any of those. At least it strikes me as a little faithless.

Excuse me for going on a tangent, but this post reminds me that I find the terminology curious: speaking of a patriarch being elevated to the cardinalate.

Here's my 2 cents: I think it's silly for you to object to Major Archbishops becoming Cardinals, given that there are also Patriarchs who are Cardinals.

No Eastern Catholic patriarch should accept the red beanie, either. The word "hierarch" is all-inclusive: bishops, archbishops, metropolitans, major archbishop (a meaningless title with no foundation in Tradition) or patriarch.

Telling, isn't it.

The problem is that since the elevation of the papacy of Rome to a universal institution in the Vatican's communion, and restricting its election to "the red beanies", refusing a "red beanie" would effectively sideline anyone not Latin.

Not necessarily. First, I would be pleased as punch if the election of the Pope were returned exclusively to the Latin Church--and more specifically, if the candidate had to be from the Metropolitan Province of Rome. The Pope is only the Pope because he's the Bishop of Rome; it's the Church, not the man, who makes the office. And first and foremost, that means the Pope must needs be the Bishop of Rome--hands on, without habitual delegation to an Apostolic Vicar.

Leaving that aside, if the Eastern Churches want a voice in the election of the Pope (and why should we? It only gives him an excuse to have a voice in the election of our hierarchs), then the rules should be amended to give a vote to the Patriarchs as Patriarchs, not as Patriarchs slumming with some Latin Jacks-in-Office.

Oh yes.

Mhohaya Lita Patriarch Sviatoslav.
He may some day be Pope.

That would be a tragedy. Let's get over this notion that any Catholic can be Pope. The Papacy is associated with the person of the Bishop of Rome, and the Bishop of Rome is Pope because he is head of the Church of Rome. If any bishop from any Church anywhere can be Pope, then let the papacy move to Kyiv, should His Beatitude Sviatoslav be elected. But if not, then let the Papacy remain within the Latin Church, and preferably within the Diocese of Rome itself.

Does this suggest, by extension, that the Pope must be an Italian? or that the Church of Rome (assuming exclusivity of the Papacy to this particular diocese) would have to place desirable candidates in the jurisdiction of the Diocese of Rome beforehand in order to ensure they are in a position to be selected, assuming the Latin Church would welcome candidates from the Church at large?

No, Stuart. The Bishop of Rome is Pope because as Bishop of Rome he is the direct successor of St Peter as head of the Apostolic College of Bishops. Even though you may disagree with this I trust that you see the difference. By its very nature there is a universal quality to the position. While historically it has acquired a Latin look, I think the prospect of a non-Latin holding the position offers some exciting possibilities for the Church, east and west, north and south.

Hasn't anyone noticed that the very title 'Major Archbishop' is a figment of the latin(izing) imagination? The Syriac and Armenian Churches have the titles Maphrian and Catholicos but the Churches of Constantinopolitan provenance know only Patriarch and Archbishop as titles of autonomous or autocephalous Churches!

As opposed to the monarchical idea that a job and a title is yours just because you're there and breathing, we have adopted an obsession with finding the "best" candidate to fill an office (maybe a product of democracy or maybe a product of celebrity culture). So we search the world to find him: the pope who will make it all okay.

I would have thought recent examples of presidents, prime ministers, and popes would have disabused us of the notion.

Indeed, my own beloved Latin Church has been over-run with priests each of whom seems certain he's the One with Something Really Relevant to say. My country, too, has been over-turned by a few men who decided to make their mark.

When you have a "great man" in an office, he tends to try to fix things. Almost invariably, this tends toward screwing things up. We all have blind spots and if one of us is going to put our stamp on something, it's going to fail where we have our failings.

Rather, let the holder of the office be a humble servant to the tradition. Let him hold the course and defer to the wisdom of generations. He, himself, is not that important. Let him keep quiet if he can. Let him leave his mark, but only if we can't quite see it.

There is a phrase in the Liturgy which strikes me; something about being "clothed with the dignity of the priesthood". This seems to point to the idea that an ordinary man in a great office does great things, not of himself, but through the careful observance of the tradition which has been handed to him.

Jesus managed to find 12 in Galilee. Could we not find just one in all Italy? Let us be done once and for all with this search for the Next Great Leader.

In general, I should prefer as pope the left-handed man living closest to St. Peter's with the birthday of December 25th over the Great Leader picked by the college of Cardinals. At least he would understand he's nobody.

Long live the Pope!

Yes, but it seems like a fiction maintained in order to avoid a decision to raise certain churches to the level of a Patriarchate in the interest of ecumenism, or so it seems. The UGCC is the perfect example.

I'm not a member of the UGCC, but I have no problem referring to the current leader as Patriarch or His Beatitude, as is permitted and proper. I don't know how one could view a multinational jurisdiction of over 4 million faithful as anything less.