Replies

"D, did you try to sell me a "bill of goods"? .... Trust is a hard thing to build, D and an easy thing to loose. Here's a guarantee; if the Orthodox laity cannot trust especially informed and educated Latins, there will never be a union whether our hierarchs from the EP on down want it more than anything else."

That's a good point, Kolo, and one that we need to make repeatedly in these conversations. Charitable discussion, good will, and good intentions alone cannot form the substance of the conversations between Eastern and the Western Catholics. We must also have rigor, honesty, and thoroughness, so that in a desire to be in fellowship with each other, we do not overlook real differences. Respectfully, however, it sounds a little bit harsh to single out Dion. Dion is defending a specific opinion:

"But I do dispute your claim that the only way Catholics can interpret "deny that they are confided to Peter" is to say that it targets Eastern Orthodox. I don't really think that that's what Boniface VIII himself meant by it, but even if he did, that interpretation of it has been rejected since Boniface. "

"I am not glossing over this line. I think it's a valid question as to whether it means rejection of jurisdiction or means rejection of all honor and respect for the bishop of Rome.

"You see, dear Kolokotronis, not only Latin Catholics have had some variation in how they view these matters over the centuries,.."

Dion began by noting that it was an open question as to the interpretation. He pointed to two different interpretations, and then made the case for what he believes to be the better of the two. Dion has specifically noted that others will disagree with him, and he has repeatedly prefaced several of his statements with "I think," or "I believe."

"To me it is utterly clear that what Boniface is saying here is that anyone who says that they were not committed by Christ to the care of Peter, thereby denies being the sheep of Christ and cannot be saved."

Hermann disagrees with him, and the conversations between those two have been lively and enlightening. You can see a good example from earlier this week Here. Hopefully this conversation will remain amicable, but we may see a first class pyrotechnic display between two very knowledgeable and intelligent Catholics who don't always see eye to eye. I've seen them marshal separate documents to support their positions before, and many of us lay Catholics are left to ponder the evidence.

I'm hoping we don't see the fireworks though.....

I must confess, Kolokotronis, that I do not understand your rather inflammatory, "sell a bill of goods."

I gave what I do believe is the prima facie meaning of "si . . . fateantur." I explained why, grammatically, it could scarcely be read as asserting that all "Greeks" automatically deny any primacy to Peter (deny any "commissos Petro eiusque successoribus"), and therefore as permitting a distinction between Greeks who deny that Mt. 16 or Jn 21 involved some kind of general authority of Peter and his successors over the whole Church.

This I think is the most reasonable reading of those Latin words. It would deny salvation only to those who read Mt. 16 and Jn 21 as not involving an entrusting of the Church to Peter and his successors.

But, correct me if I am wrong, you, Kolokotronis, do not deny that Mt. 16 and Jn 21 represent Christ committing the shepherding of his sheep to Peter and his successors? Or do you? That would seem to me to be the crux of the issue. I thought you would accept some form of Petrine primacy, though you dispute the form of Petrine primacy that we Latin Catholics hold and that that is what currently divides our churches??

In any casek, I do not see Unam Sanctam's ipsissima verba as incompatible with the Vatican II declarations or with the condemnation of the Feeneyite narrow reading of Extra ecclesiam. The grammatical meaning of the Latin permits harmonization fairly readily. When one adds to that the historic context of Unam sanctam as explained in the original article, the compatibility seems more clear.

That Hermann reads Unam Sanctam in a very rigorist Roman manner, does not mean that I sold you a bill of goods unless you privilege Hermann's reading over mine a priori.

If you do not automatically privilege Hermann's reading, then you need to show why the Latin I quoted cannot sustain a distinction between Greeks and others who deny all authority and honor to Peter and Greeks and others who admit some form of primacy but dispute the exact nature of that honor and primacy with the Latins.

For those posters on this thread who insisted that Unam Sanctam has nothing to do with Protestant denials of Petrine authority, I would caution that although the Protestant Reformation was 2 centuries into the future, some of the sects of the Middle Ages also denied virtually all Petrine authority on biblical grounds, and, as pointed out in the article, incipient nationalism was building toward the eventual denial of it on nationalistic grounds as happened in England in the 1530s.

I must confess that I do not even quite understand your allegation--exactly how did you think I sold you a bill of goods?