Pope (Benedict XVI) pledges to end Orthodox Rift

CNN ^ | May 29, 2005 | AP

[kosta50]

BARI, Italy (AP) -- Pope Benedict XVI visited the eastern port of Bari on his first papal trip Sunday and pledged to make healing the 1,000-year-old rift with the Orthodox church a "fundamental" commitment of his papacy.

Benedict made the pledge in a city closely tied to the Orthodox church. Bari, on Italy's Adriatic coast, is considered a "bridge" between East and West and is home to the relics of St. Nicholas of Myra, a 4th-Century saint who is one of the most popular in both the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches.

Benedict referred to Bari as a "land of meeting and dialogue" with the Orthodox in his homily at a Mass that closed a national religious conference. It was his first pilgrimage outside Rome since being elected the 265th leader of the Roman Catholic Church on April 19.

[Kolokotronis]

Thank-you!

[Teófilo]

>I can tell them quite apart, thank you.

I seriously doubt that. The basic makeup of the Church (ecclesiology) is based on theology, but the various customs, rites, length of service, etc. is not.

My friend, believe what you will. If I can't dissuade you on this matter, I probably will not be able to dissuade you on others. Thank you for a great thread!

-Theo

[Hermann the Cherusker]

"I have no doubt the Pope himself understands how we Orthodox view councils and the effect of their pronouncements"

I assume you mean by this that a Council or Synod is not considered authoritative until it has been received by the whole Church?

One supposes. Please let us know when Chalcedon is recevied by "the whole Church", including that of Syria, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, and Armenia.

Do you suppose it is historically accurate that Sts. Nicholas, Basil, Celestine, Cyril, and Leo waited around twiddling their thumbs while it was determined whether or not the laity and lower clergy accepted what they had proposed as the Rule of Faith?

I dare say that had just a wee bit more confidence in the Truth of what they proclaimed. "So, following the saintly fathers, we all with one voice teach ... Since we have formulated these things with all possible accuracy and attention, the sacred and universal synod decreed that no one is permitted ... to think or teach otherwise." (Council of Chalcedon, Definition of Faith)

[Hermann the Cherusker]

That is because most of the Southern Italians are of Greek ancestry.

Or rather, they are Latinized Romans?

[Hermann the Cherusker]

For example, if +Augustine had been able to read Greek and had read the works of the Greek Fathers, would he have come up with the doctrine of Original Sin, something different from what the Greek Fathers had taught?

St. Augustine cited a number of Greek Fathers when discussing that very topic.

But the Catholic arguement is simplest when reduced to its basic terms. In the creed, we "confess one Baptism for the remission of sins". We Christians have always baptized infants. Ergo, we are baptizing them for the remission of sins, when they have as of yet comitted none of their own, with a rite which includes exorcisms that obviously presume the unchristened child is under the power of the devil.

But really, you seem to think as though St. Augustine were acting in a vacuum. All the while that St. Augustine was refuting the heretics, he was receiving copious support from other Churches, and especially from Rome, where Popes such as Zozimus and Boniface acted upon St. Augustine's condemnations and expelled heretics like Julian of Eclanum from the Church. If St. Augustine were saying thing that the rest of western Christendom did not believe, then he certainly had the whole lot of them quite fooled, given his near unanimous support in Africa, Italy, and elsewhere, and the quick acclimation of the genius of his works after his death.

What would a council do with the Dictatus Papae?

Why must it do anything? This is not a dogmatic document.

while we are really quite content with the status quo

How can one be content with violating the will of the Lord that "all may be one"?

I'm not content at all about the situation of division.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Is the Western Church ready for a major schism?

The schism has already occurred. It merely waits to be formalized.

[A. Pole]

The anti-Filioque argumentation only became fixed in the Orthodox consciousness, after the Schism, not before.

This issue of Filioque WAS THE CAUSE of the Schism.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

It's almost as if he's trying to give the Latin church a 'booster shot' of Orthodox ecclesiology: remember that our magesterium, while in some measure concentrated in the teaching charism of the episcopate, permeates the Church, so that the laity, monastics, and ordinary clergy are as much responsible for the propogation, defense, and yes, even definition of the Faith (the last only in the extrordinary circumstances when heresies challenge the Faith, since a council cannot be universally valid unless received by the Church as a whole).

The Bishops teach, and they teach truth objectively and without requiring the consent of others to it, but the "sensus fidelium" is always an infallible witness to truth and always confirms right teaching (the falling away of some small portion of the faithful to heresy is not an objection against this, but a proof of it - they did not hodl to truth before the proclimation of the Magisterium, and they manifested that tendency openly afterwards - the faith not having changed by the proclimation). If that is a good summary of what you are saying, then we have no disagreement.

The entire body of the faithful, anointed as they are by the Holy One,(111) cannot err in matters of belief. They manifest this special property by means of the whole peoples' supernatural discernment in matters of faith when "from the Bishops down to the last of the lay faithful" (8*) they show universal agreement in matters of faith and morals. That discernment in matters of faith is aroused and sustained by the Spirit of truth. It is exercised under the guidance of the sacred teaching authority, in faithful and respectful obedience to which the people of God accepts that which is not just the word of men but truly the word of God.(112) Through it, the people of God adheres unwaveringly to the faith given once and for all to the saints,(113) penetrates it more deeply with right thinking, and applies it more fully in its life.The entire body of the faithful, anointed as they are by the Holy One,(111) cannot err in matters of belief. They manifest this special property by means of the whole peoples' supernatural discernment in matters of faith when "from the Bishops down to the last of the lay faithful" (8*) they show universal agreement in matters of faith and morals. That discernment in matters of faith is aroused and sustained by the Spirit of truth. It is exercised under the guidance of the sacred teaching authority, in faithful and respectful obedience to which the people of God accepts that which is not just the word of men but truly the word of God.(112) Through it, the people of God adheres unwaveringly to the faith given once and for all to the saints,(113) penetrates it more deeply with right thinking, and applies it more fully in its life. (Vatican II, "Lumen Gentium", 12)

[A. Pole]

Don't we live in an age of faith ourselves. I mean, I don't give a zilch about what the world of unbelief thinks; we too live in an age of faith. The New Testament and the Patristic Age is not over.

You you think so, then you should see the matters of the Faith and especially of dogmas and dogmatic differences as the key issues. They should be debated on their own merits and not being reduced to political or other interests.

So in the dialog with Protestants, Catholics should discuss the role of the Bible, the reality of the Church, priesthood etc ... Orthodox and Catholics should focus on Filioque, Immaculate Conception, Original Sin (and other issues like the Divine Grace being created on uncreated).

Dismissing the faith differences in the name of peace and "love" will create the false unity - the same unity which will be used by Antichrist to unite ALL religions and the whole mankind. Better is to stay honestly divided and try to be friendly.

[Destro]

Latinized Roman is a redundancy. And the Greeks were in Southern Italy before the rise of Rome or the Latins.

[Destro]

As far as I understand it the original sin is the fall of Adam - we who come from Adam live under the consequences of their original sin (not ours). Think of it as a landlord kicking out unruly tenants but will invite them back in if they agree to behave by the rules. Baptism is an initiation ritual - only after baptism can sins be forgiven. We are not painted guilty by original sin only live in the world created as a result of that original sin. Christ was the way to correct Adam and Eve's error. The way of reconciliation between God and the offspring of Adam and Eve.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Baptism is an initiation ritual - only after baptism can sins be forgiven.

This was the position of Pelagius and Julian. They were both excommunicated for this heresy.

Original Sin is the absence of sanctifying grace in the soul at conception and birth. Baptism remits this fault, which is not personal, but is communicated from Adam by natural generation, by infusing the newborn with the life of God. It is not an empty ritual.

If sin is ontologically to be void of the life of God, then a newborn has sin, because we are not born into the world connected to the Lord. If remission of sin is a process whereby the life of God is infused into the soul, either for the first time in Baptism, or again in Confession, then a newborn has this original sin remitted by the Sacrament of Baptism.

[Destro]

I don't think you are correct. Alsp according to your position I don't need to go to confession anymore? Or instead of confession I should get weekly baptisims?

[Destro]

So if Jesus was without sin why did he undergo baptisim?

[conservonator]

According to my nephew and Orthodox convert, he thinks it would be "fun" to see the RCs accept the stricter Orthodox way of fasting, married priests with children and watching the Pope become JUST the Bishop of Rome, Italy, instead of the ENTIRE world. Oh, and changing the way they view just about everything about "original sin".

Just a guess, but was you nephew a Protestant before he converted?

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Latinized Roman is a redundancy.

If Romans were Greek (the inhabitants of Latium were not Romans until after the citizneship law of AD 212), and Greeks of Hellas became Romans through conquest, then the Greeks of Magna Grecia were Romans, and that they now speak a Latin tongue means they were Latinized.

But the most learned of Roman historians, among who is Porcius Cato, who compiled with the greatest care the genealogies of the Italian cities, Gaius Semporonis and many others, say they are Greeks, part of those who once dwelt in Achaia, and migrated many generations before the Trojan war." (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, I, XI)

Certainly your kith and kin in Greece and Turkey and Syria call themselves Romans, or Romaoi, as did and do their Muslim opressors, who fancied themselves as Sultans of Rum, or Rome if you will.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

So if Jesus was without sin why did he undergo baptisim?

He did not need to, as St. John recognized. "But John stayed him, saying: I ought to be baptized by thee, and comest thou to me?" (St. Matthew 3.14)

And Jesus was not baptised with the Sacrament of Baptism, since such did not yet exist until he sanctified Baptism by His Baptism, at which point He Himself started a ministry of Baptizing (cf. St. John 3.22, 26 and 4.1-2). But he suffered to be baptised by St. John to manifest his humility:

"And Jesus answering, said to him: Suffer it to be so now. For so it becometh us to fulfil all justice." (St. Matthew 3.15)

And his glory:

"And Jesus being baptized, forthwith came out of the water: and lo, the heavens were opened to him: and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove, and coming upon him. And behold a voice from heaven saying: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." (St. Matthew 3.16-17)

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Alsp according to your position I don't need to go to confession anymore? Or instead of confession I should get weekly baptisims?

I'm not sure where you get that from. Baptism forgives original sin, all actual sins comitted in life up to that point, and initiates one into the Church, and may be only had once. Confession allows for the forgiveness of sins after Baptism, and may be had as many times as one falls after Baptism.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

One thing that everyone must bear in mind is that after 450 AD the Church essentially existed as two separate communities because of the language divide.

While officially, Rome was still one state, there was very little communication between the Greek and Latin wings, as the majority of people, even bishops didn't understand each other.

It also didn't help that the Latin west was mostly under the thumb of pagan or Arian German tribes after that point.

[Destro]

Like I wrote: Baptisim initiates one into the Church - that initiation overcomes the effects of Adam and Eve's original sin.