Posted on 06/29/2005 10:39:18 AM PDT by jec1ny
Dictatus Papae
You keep mentioning this and I don't understand why. The "Dictatus" is a personal document of St. Gregory VII that he left in his register of epistles. There are some ridiculous statements in it, such as all Popes are saints. It has never been treated as any sort of official statement of the Catholic Church, much less a litmus test for reunion.
If you are talking about what you view as the 'presumption' of papal supremacy or infallibility, it goes back far beyond St. Gregory. Why not just attribute to the men who could be viewed as 'responsible' for it: Sts. Julius, Liberius, Siricius, Innocent, Zosimus, Boniface, Celestine and Leo the Great, along with the great Western Fathers like Sts. Optatus, Augustine, Prosper, and Ambrose? Really, is there some sort of disconnect here? We are not talking about some inventions of the High Middle Ages. Here, as I posted before, is St. Boniface's letter in 422 AD to the bishops of Macedonia:
The watchful care over the universal Church confided to Peter abides with him by reason of the Lord's statement; for he knows on the testimony of the Gospel that the Church was founded on him. His office can never be free from cares, since it is certain that all things depend on his deliberation. These considerations turn my mind to the regions of the Orient, which we behold in a way with genuine solicitude. Far be it from the priests of the Lord, that any one of them fall into the offense of making the decrees of our elders foreign to him, by attempting something in the way of a novel and unlawful usurpation, realizing that he thus makes him a rival, in whom our Christ has placed the highest power of his priesthood, and whoever rises to reproach him cannot be an inhabitant of the heavenly regions. "To you," He said, "I shall give the keys of the kingdom of heaven" into which no one shall enter without the favor of the door-keeper. He said: "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I shall build my church". Whoever, therefore, desires before God to be judged worthy of the dignity of the priesthood, since one reaches God with the support of Peter, on whom, as we have said above, it is certain that the Church was founded, should be "meek and humble of heart", lest as a contumacious disciple of him, whose pride he has imitated, he undergo the punishment of the teachers . . . Since the circumstances demand, examine if you please, the decrees of the canons; you will find, what church ranks second after the church at Rome, or what is third. In these (decrees) there appears a distinct order, so that the pontiffs of the other churches recognize that they nevertheless are under one church . . . and share the same priesthood, and to whom they, preserving charity, should be subject because of ecclesiastical discipline. Indeed this teaching of the canons has persisted from antiquity, and continues even at the present time, through the grace of Christ. No one has ever boldly raised his hands in opposition to the apostolic supremacy, from whose judgment there may be no withdrawal; no one in this has been rebellious, except him who wished judgment to be passed on himself. The above mentioned great churches preserve . . . their authority through the canons: the churches of Alexandria and Antioch, having the knowledge of ecclesiastical law. They preserve, I say, the statues of our elders . . . in all things rendering and receiving an interchange of that grace which they know that they owe us in the Lord who is our peace. But since the situation demands it, it must be shown by documents that the greatest churches of the Orient in important affairs, in which there was need of greater inquiry, have always consulted the See of Rome, and, as often as experience demanded, asked for its help. Athanasius of holy memory and Peter, priests of the church of Alexandria, sought the aid of this See. When the Church of Antioch was afflicted during a very long period, with the result that conferences because of this were often held, it is clear that the Apostolic See was consulted, first under Meletius and later under Flavianus. According to its authority, after the many things which were accomplished by our church, no one doubts that Flavianus recieved the grace of communion, which he would have lacked forever if his writing had not gone forth hence on this basis. The emperor Theodosius of most kindly memory, thinking that the ordination of Nectarius did not possess stability, since it did not take place in our way, sending from his presence members of his court together with bishops, demanded that it be performed in this case by the Roman See, and that they direct it in the regular way, so as to strengthen the priesthood. A short time ago, that is under my predecessor of happy memory, Innocent, the Pontiffs of the Oriental churches, grieving that they were separated from the communion of blessed Peter, through envoys asked for peace, as your charity remembers. And at this time the Apostolic See without difficulty granted all, obeying the Master . . . Since then, most beloved Brethren, I think that the examples which we have given suffice to prove the truth, although more are retained in your own minds, without harm to our brotherhood we wish to meet your assembly, as you see by this letter which has been directed by Us through Severus, a notary of the Apostolic See, most acceptable to Our heart, chosen from Our circle. Thus in agreement, as befits brothers, let not anyone wishing to endure in our communion bring up again for discussion the name of our brother and fellow priest, Bishop Perigenas [of Corinth], whose sacerdotal office the Apostle Peter has already confirmed at the suggestion of the Holy Spirit, leaving no question about this for the future, and let there be no objection to this, since he was appointed by Us during the space of that time in which the office was vacant . . .
This is the consistent view of the Popes in this period, and innumerable texts could be cited from the Fathers of the fourth-sixth centuries agreeing. The Acacian schism was ended by - guess what - an absolute submission to the Pope of Rome, demanded by the faithful and signed by the Patriarch, the Emperor, and the Eastern priests (the famous "formula of Hormisdas" quoted at Vatican I). So let's be realistic here, and admit that papal supremacy is not some invention of St. Gregory VII, but was widely held in the ancient Church, always in the West and at least sometimes in the East. Unless I am mistaken, Orthodox would today view St. Boniface's letter and numerous other papal decrees from the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries as anathema to the principle of conciliarity, right?
Ut Unam Sint describes an ecclesiology that, while soft-peddled, is basically the same old universal jurisdiction infallible Papacy stuff. Why would this be useful or helpful?
I didn't say that it was by definition the Melkites/Romans who had rewritten history regarding who had held what election first. Maybe it was the Orthodox.
But why is the question of who was elected first a relevant one? Your own information indicates that a pro-Roman faction elected someone and called him the Patriarch.
By this token, the next time the Roman see is vacant, the Orthodox should quickly hold a conclave and elect a Patriarch of Rome. If their election were held first, then this would mean that their guy would be the real Pope, right?
The real question is who was upholding the Orthodox faith and ecclesiology?
One thing that I highly doubt is that the pro-Roman faction was spontaneously embracing Roman supremacy for its own sake and on theological grounds. Rome knew how to exploit the political situation under the Ottomans, and the Ottomans knew how to exploit divisions between Christians. What is sad is that Rome so lusted after spiritual power and supremacy that it was willing to worsen situations for Christians under the Ottomans for the sake of it.
Hence? That presupposes an antecedent -- please explain to me how the development of the Borgia Papacy was the same as the situation in Constantinople.
The so-called "Caesaro-papism" of the Orthodox countries would imply that rulers of Orthodox countries dictate the content of the Orthodox faith. Examples?
Finally, we see the "Roman card" that is going to cause us to go leaping into the arms of Catholicism: Spiritually thriving Roman Catholicism is going to save spiritually moribund Orthodoxy! My, my, K... how wrong you were. Where can I sign up to get some of that good healthy Catholicism that I see flooding the streets of every community where I have lived, as opposed to the sick, nominal Orthodoxy? Goodness.
At least try to make it sound plausible, HC. You obviously didn't go to a Jesuit-run educational institution, and if you did, you probably don't want them to find out about how poorly you are able to contend here on FR.
As to the OCA, do your homework first. The reason that the numbers on the rolls dropped is because of financial assessmsent issues. Rather than counting the number of people actually attending liturgy, the numbers being reported are generally now restricted to actively pledging members.
Actual attendance numbers are continuing to grow at fairly rapid rates in most places in the OCA. New missions are continually cropping up in most dioceses.
With regard to seminarians, again, do your homework. The Greek Archdiocese is not only supplied by priests from Holy Cross, but also priests from Greece, for parishes that have large numbers of native-Greek speakers. If there were a shortage of priests, there would be stories galore of parishes and missions without priests. I'm not hearing them. Are you?
Even small missions in my dioceses in the OCA have their own priest.
Contrast that to the Catholic situation. Again, I can't believe that a Catholic is actually claiming that Rome has something to teach Orthodoxy about how to have enough seminarians and priests? Again, this is almost embarrassing.
Again, on seminarians, do your homework. Orthodox seminaries generally have a 3 year course of study. For seminarians with prior theological training (such as people who used to be Protestant ministers or Catholic priests), the course of study can be as short as 1 year of formal seminary training.
In addition, some OCA seminarians choose to attend Holy Cross, spend a year or two studying abroad, etc... There is also a 3rd OCA seminary, in Alaska, that serves the needs of that diocese.
Our little parish alone has produced three seminarians in the last 5 years. A parish as small as ours, were it Catholic, wouldn't even have a priest of our own, and yet we are producing seminarians. We are not at all unusual
Again, tell me about all of the Orthodox parishes that are doing without services. I've not seen them.
Oh, now that you put it that way... Either way you slice it, HC, the ham sandwich is a mortal sin -- i.e. you go to hell. Put that on a billboard. We Orthodox will be knocking down the doors wanting to become Catholic.
Actually, we are. The best that they are able to say at this point is that it is possible to have two mutually contradictory theologies of the Trinity and that they are starting to have more independence under a Papacy that still reserves the right to intervene proactively and unilaterally in their affairs.
We feel for their situation, and long for their return to Orthodoxy.
Not true. Read all of the escape clauses in "Orientalium Ecclesiarum." Any Roman canon lawyer worth his salt could drive a Mack truck through those with his eyes closed. And keep in mind that that particular post Vat II encyclical was a dramatic shift toward independence and away from Latinization.
Reading the accounts of the second Vatican Council, it doesn't seem that very much was intended to be kept from the jurisdiction and power of the Pope.
Then why would you want anything to do with Orthodoxy if this is the kind of dismissive contempt that you have for Orthodox Christians?
"The Dictatus Papae was not a "proclamation" but a Canon Law extract of supposed canonical teaching and privileges"
What parts, pray tell, are no longer the position of Rome save perhaps that all popes are saints?
"Actually, at the time, the Orthodox had "submitted" just 14 years prior at Florence, and westerners from Genoa and Venice bravely fought side-by-side with the East Romans to defend the City right to the final day."
HC, two of my ancestors fought on the walls of the City in the Party of the Emperor and fell with him. I know all about the Fall of the City. There were indeed a few Italians who fought on the side of Christianity. There were more who fought for the Turks, including their siege cannon expert. The Latin West sat by. That's the history, Hermann, or does Rome have a revisionist view of that too?
"Yes. Rome even sent Priests and Monks among you to preserve you in learning while under the Turkish yoke do the closure of your schools. Today this period and assistance is castigated by you as one of western oppression."
Oh, I'll bet that Rome did. Teach by day, burn our Liturgical and theological books by night. Learning, at least in Greece, was preserved in the "Secret Schools", hidden in caves and cracks in the mountain rocks and run by Orthodox priests and monks. An ancestor of mine, Fr. Efstathios, ran one. The children went to the schools in the night for fear of the Turks.
"Our Lady did not ask for prayers for the conversion of the Orthodox to Catholic Orthodoxy, and only the idiots among our communion would ever put out such a story."
Well then, the Catholic school I attended in the 1950s was staffed by idiot nuns and today a new crop of idiots have become very computer savvy, some even here on FR. Has the Roman Church anathemized these people? No.
"How can someone who purposefully propogates schism in the Church, or glories in living in seperation, come to glorification and salvation? Their life is not one of love, but of hate for their fellow man, and worse, their fellow believers. Do you believe that haters and schismatics receive salvation?"
These are matters which we leave to God alone. I will say that there certainly is a 1000+ sentiment among some Orthodox that the heresies of the Roman Church and its breaking away from The Church is indeed a serious spiritual matter. As St. Mark of Ephesus wrote:
"We have excised and cut them [the Papists] off from the common body of the Church, we have, therefore, rejected them as heretics, and for this reason we are separated from them; they are, therefore, heretics, and we have cut them off as heretics."
"I can guarantee to you that there is not a single Orthodox person who believes that our hierarchs should be elevated, moved or removed at the whim of the Pope of Rome...not one.
Good. Rome doesn't have such powers outside her Patriarchate. We agree."
And the extent of that Patriarchate is exactly what. Its the whole world, isn't it, Hermann?
"Universal jurisdiction means that the Pope can hear cases and settle disputes and provide order in the Churches throughout the world, not that he is every Bishop's Metropolitan and every Priest's Bishop and every faithful's Pastor."
Really? When did he stop appointing all the bishops and metropolitans and cardinals in the Roman Church?
"We'll see. But if she is stuck, its not such a bad place to be in."
Inded we shall. I am glad to see that at least you think Rome's in a good spot.
That's interesting. Maybe you wish to read the words of bishop Lucentius, the Apostilc legate at the Council of Chalcedon addressing the Emperor:
"But if not, let our opposition be placed in the minutes, and pray let us know clearly [Lat. that we may know] what we are to report to that most apostolic bishop who is the ruler of the whole church..."
...how then are you able to say this with a straight face to members of the Melkite Greek or Ukranian Catholic Churches?
They are a painful reminder why any re-union in Roman eyes means nothing more than the same old worn-out Unia. And they are a living proof that the Vatican can tolerate anything, as long as the other Church submits to the Pope, even if their theologies are not the same.
The Pope also has one vote, you say -- and a prerogative to dispense with the cardinals and just proclaim dogma on his own! Hardly any Orthodox Patriarch, "petit" or "grand," to use your perverse terminology, ever had or has.
As for the "big" and "small" Patriarchs, the Orthodox Church is based on the concept that the fullness of faith and God's Mysteries are achieved in every Church of Christ, rgeradless of the location or the size of its congregation, so the size doesn't matter after all. :-)
The prominence and the more visible political influence of various churches is not tied to their spiritual greatness, but to their secular character and location, which to the Roman Catholics is one and the same, or at least it appears to be so.
Good point.
Hermann, it was amazing. There were probably 30-40 people at liturgy, including a schoolbus a few times, during the mornings we were at Sameba. That was Monday, Tuesday, Wed, Thursday, and Friday.
On the weekend I attended at monasteries, two different ones, so I could not speak to the attendance at churches outside the monasteries then.
Tbilisi is an amazing place and I cannot wait to return. I intend to die there if I can.
The new churches are going up because they could not fit everyone who wanted to go in the 25-30 that were in Tbilisi. Pilgrimage to Orthodox Georgia, older article
There is an Orthodox church every mile or so as you walk through Tbilisi. All open every day, serving liturgies every morning, and with people (mostly women) attending. I went to the bank one morning and the man asked me, "Didn't I see you at liturgy yesterday morning?" Policemen stop as they walk past a church and elaborately cross themselves and bow. You get a taxi and the driver stops and crosses himself just before he starts the car.
Tbilisi is the closest thing to heaven here on earth that I have found. God willing, let me retire there. Christ is everywhere. I miss it so much that I wouldn't make it if there were not 3 or 4 people from there emailing me regularly from there now.
We have two young men preparing for it in our parish.
I have a good e-friend from Georgia who tells me the same thing. Pretty much every church in the country is overflowing, high attendance at the weekday cycle of services, packed out attendance at Vigil and Liturgy, churches going up everywhere, floods of pilgrims to the monasteries, non-stop pilgrimages on the "Way of St. Nina," etc...
When the Patriarch/Catholicos returned after having made his stance regarding ecumenism and especially the World Council of Churches, he was received by the parish clergy and faithful with an outpouring of thanks and warmth that was apparently amazing.
There are wonderful things happening in Georgia. And although there is a love-hate relationship between Russia and Georgia, my friend has told me that much of the reason for this is the support of the Russian Church.
This, K., is indeed the central point, and the point that needs to be understood. Schism really amounts to a separation that does not involve a difference in faith. It is thus not completely accurate to say that Rome is simply in schism from the Orthodox. Your quotation from St. Mark of Ephesus indicates this.
The fact that Roman Catholics and the Orthodox are not part of one Church is because the Roman Catholic faith became different from the apostolic faith that has continued in the Orthodox Church. At the heart of it is a doctrine of the Trinity that reflects and creates a completely different way of understanding and living all parts of the Christian tradition.
Until the Roman Catholic church has rethought, from the ground up, the errors of infallibility and universal jurisdiction, specifically renouncing them and allowing this changed ecclesiology to percolate through the whole body of their church, this can't begin to happen.
For until this is rethought, it will be impossible for the Roman Catholic church to return to an Orthodox Trinitarian doctrine -- and it would take much time for the implications of to percolate through their theology.
It can happen. It would take centuries, though...
In a country the same size as our state of Missouri.
Dear MarMema,
"...the number of clerics - to over 600."
I'm glad that the number of priests is increasing in Georgia. However, in terms of the population served, 600 isn't a large number.
Nationmaster http://www.nationmaster.com/country/gg reports that Georgia has about 4.7 million people. Of that, Nationmaster reports that 65% are "Georgian Orthodox," (I'm not sure that's a valid distinction from Russian Orthodox), 10% are Russian Orthodox, and 8% are Armenian "Apostolic." The rest are Muslim or other.
http://www.nationmaster.com/country/gg/Religion
That's about 83% who are, broadly speaking, Orthodox. Or about 4 million folks, give or take.
600 priests for 4 million folks works out to about 1 priest for every 6500 believers. That's a bit rough.
We American Catholics are distressed that we have but 45,000 priests for 65 million Catholics, or about 1 priest for every 1400 Catholics. Worldwide, we're distressed that we have only a bit more than 500,000 priests for about 1.2 billion Catholics, or about one priest for every 2400 Catholics, give or take.
Now, it may help in that, according to Nationmaster, only about 10% of folks actually go to church in Georgia. That knocks it down to about one priest for every 650 believers.
In the US, perhaps as many as 35% of Catholics (and perhaps fewer) go to Mass regularly, meaning that there is one priest for every 500 active Catholics.
Yet, we Catholics bemoan our lack of vocations. Perhaps we complain too much about our Church. Perhaps things aren't quite as bad as we're often encouraged to think.
sitetest
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