This guy is dripping with naked hatred for the Orthodox Church, so it’s hard to take him too seriously.
“the kind of thing that makes knowledgeable people resort to laughter, mockery, and sarcasm.”
Even wish-casting with enthusiasm for the demographic demise of Orthodox Christians:
“Moscow will return to being very peripheral indeed, and continuing to sink farther and farther down the list as its demographic death-spiral deepens.”
Then an over-the-top insult comparing a church document on primacy with the Soviet Constitution, because it doesn’t agree with his view of primacy. The Russian church suffered one of the biggest martyrdom’s in Christian history at the hands of the Soviets, really disgusting for him to throw this kind of words around.
The phrase “primacy of honor” is not some new innovation or corruption. It’s from the 3rd canon of the 3rd ecumenical council.
“‘The Bishop of Constantinople shall have the primacy of honour after the Bishop of Rome, since this city is the New Rome.’”
This is further explained by the 4th ecumenical council (451) which said,
“‘The fathers properly gave preference to the see of the Ancient Rome since this was the imperial capital. For the same reasons the 150 holy bishops also granted equal privileges to the most holy see of the New Rome, rightly judging that the city that received the honour of being the city of the emperor and the senate and having equal privileges with the Ancient Rome should also be elevated in church matters, just as the former was, and that it might be second after it.’”
Notice the reasons stated for the grant of Primacy was because of the political importance of these cities within the empire. Not because of succession from Peter or anything like that.
The pope signed off on this document, as did an overwhelming majority of Bishops from the early Christian Church at the time.
Maybe he can write a story about how the early Christian Church was “less than convincing” and full of “desperate, and desperately sad, insecurity”.
Somehow, I don't think this article by Dr. Adam A. J. DeVille will serve to improve the odds of an East-West reunion.
Dr. Adam A. J. DeVille
|
Dr. DeVille's arrogance shines forth right from the beginning of the article:
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
"Nearly three years ago now, I published a book on Orthodoxy and papal primacy and, at risk of being immodest, have since felt more and more that I had said everything that needed to be said on the topic."
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
(That is the first time I ever heard ANY writer say anything like that about ANY subject they wrote about. I don't believe even St. Augustine or St. Thomas Aquinas ever made any such puffed up claims about any of the subjects they wrote about.)
As a Catholic, I have to say that I hope Pope Francis has and will exhibit a lot more sensitivity than Dr. DeVille has here to the massive and horrendous sacrifices our brothers and sisters in the Russian Orthodox Church have had to endure for their faith, especially during recent centuries.
And the way Dr. DeVille casts sarcastic aspersions on the use of the nebulous term "primacy in honour" by the Russian Orthodox leaders, he seems to be oblivious and blissfully unaware of the way a number of murky and uncertain forms of terminology have severely limited the clarity of many recent statements made by the leader of our western Catholic Church, relating to multiple current controversial moral issues and questions, which I would argue are even more important in the scheme of things than reunification issues, and deserve even greater clarity.
And the phraseology used here "...the kind of thing that makes knowledgeable people resort to laughter, mockery, and sarcasm" sounds more like something that B-O and his ilk would say about conservatives and faithful orthodox Catholics, and one would have to be filled with a truckload of chutzpah to try to claim that that was a Christian way of expressing anything.
Somehow, I believe we are going to have to find better ways than this to reach out to each other, if our goal truly is reunification and not further alienation from each other.