[OLD REGGIE]

I, as would any rational reader, understand the name Constantine in the context of these discussions to mean the actual historical person who attained the throne of the Roman Empire after a period of civil strife, legalized Christianity in the Empire, moved its capital from Rome to Constantinople, and called the First Ecumenical Council. Since you seem to regard sober and detailed correction as to historical facts regarding his life and related matters of ecclesiatical history as "pompous lectures", perhaps you are using the name in some other way. If so, quite frankly, I think you deserve all the pompous lectures you get whether from me, other Orthodox, or the Latins on the thread.

OK, Oh Pompous One.

And I believe the "Pre-Constantine" Christian Church was a vastly different Church than the "Catholic" Church which emerged from the Constantine era.

Lecture all you wish but watch that your eyes don't cross.

[The_Reader_David]

The trouble is, your belief about the pre-Constantinian state of the Church is simply wrong, and unsupported by historical facts. The Church was not, as the Latins hold, headed by the Pope of Rome. Indeed such claims may be traced at earliest to some writings of Latin Fathers in defense of the authority of bishops, which are misquoted by the Latins as supporting a unique charism inheritted by the Bishop of Rome. (St. Cyprian, for instance, wrote about the "chair of Peter" in defense of his own episcopate in Carthage against a rebel named Felicissimus. His later writing support this interpretation, rather than that given by the Latins as applying the "chair of Peter" only to the Popes of Rome.)

Actual attempt to claim authority over the whole church seem to date to the rejection of one of the canons of the Holy Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon by St. Leo the Great in the fifth century. On the other hand, St. Gregory the Dialogist (called by the Latins St. Gregory the Great) later rejected the notion of universal papal authority in letters objecting to the titling of the Patriarch of Constantinople as Ecumenical Patriarch. (In Imperial usage "ecumenical" meant throughout the Empire, not "universal" as St. Gregory interpreted it). His letter is instructive since it reminds us that three sees have Petrine foundations: Antioch, Alexandria and Rome. Pope John VIII, likewise rejected the existence of universal papal authority by accepting the canons of the council regarded by the Orthodox as the Eighth Ecumenical Council, which limited papal jurisdiction to the Patriarchate of Rome, except under narrowly drawn appeal provisions of the canons of previous Ecumenical Councils. (Incidentally, the council I am citing anathematize the council the Latins call the "Eighth Ecumencial Council"--a pitfully attended synod which deposed St. Photius the Great from the see of Constantinople.)

I have already enumerated features of the Church before the Peace of Constantine which it shares with the presently existing Orthodox Church and the Roman Church as it exists. Your belief is beside the point if you do not think the ancient Church had these features. It did, and you have produced any historical evidence to support a contrary position.