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And a notorious liberal and modernist, but we won't talk about that.

And yet that's virtually all that's been talked about here, at least within the posts that respond directly to the article (instead of responding to other posters). All we've heard so far from the Catholic faction is how heretical Fr. Richard McBrien is, in both his beliefs and in his personal life. (Almost) no one is arguing with the central thesis of the article:

...many Catholics are led to believe that the papacy must always have been as they have known it, and most popes have been just like the popes of the 20th and 21st centuries...The pontificates of a thousand years ago were very different from any that we have experienced in our lifetimes.

McBrien goes on to provide several examples from history that attempt to support & therefore "prove" the thesis, but even those aren't disputed. At best, only Claud's post #67 even attempts to engage the thesis, and then IMO only indirectly.

Should I take the silence to mean that the Catholics on FR actually agree with Fr. McBrien's thesis?

At best, only Claud's post #67 even attempts to engage the thesis, and then IMO only indirectly.

Let me be more direct then. :)

McBrien stumbled into a point backwards..but I think he really hasn't done anything more than state the obvious. A true critic of the papacy (modernist, Protestant, whatever) would make more substantive points even than he did: forget Popes who resigned....I want to get to the nub of what happened during the whole Honorius controversy.

I actually agree (and I suspect Benedict XVI would as well) with certain aspects of McBrien's thesis here...that aspects of the Papacy have changed. Anyone who says otherwise is being foolish--and I personally have no patience for that kind of blind ultramontanism.

But the real question to you, Alex, and anyone else is have these changes in any way affected the essence of the office? And there I'd argue, on the basis of Clement's letter, the Ignatian epistle to the Romans, and the very clear statements of Irenaeus, the answer is a very clear no.

what exactly DO you read in McB's thesis? I just read a reading of history:
1. he says that the Papacy in 1000 AD was different from today because there was a Pope who abdicated. That's a fact that Pope John XVIII DID abdicate (as the article says, we don't know why). Can a Pope of today abdicate? Theoretically, yes, but that doesn't happen, but it CAN. So, what's the difference?? Sheesh. Nixon resigned, Obama hasn't, so can we say that the Presidency of the 21st century is different from the Presidency of the 1970s?

2. The reforms of Pope Sylvester. We know there have been reformers WITHIN The Church for centuries -- read about St. Francis and what he did within The Church, quite unlike Luther.

3. then he lists the things that Pope John did -- ok, what's wrong with that?

Overall this article is an article recites what Fr. McB sees as history.