Eastern Orthodox Ecclesiology: against false unions [my title]

The commotion about union of the churches makes evident the ignorance existing as much among the circles of the simple faithful as among the theologians as to what the Church is.

They understand the catholicity of the Church as a legal cohesion, as an interdependence regulated by some code. For them the Church is an organization with laws and regulations like the organizations of nations. Bishops, like civil servants, are distinguished as superiors and subordinates: patriarchs, archbishops, metropolitans, bishops. For them, one diocese is not something complete, but a piece of a larger whole: the autocephalous church or the patriarchate. But the autocephalous church, also, feels the need to belong to a higher head. When external factors of politics, history, or geography prevent this, a vague feeling of weak unity and even separation circulates through the autocephalous churches.

Such a concept of the Church leads directly to the Papacy. If the catholicity of the Church has this kind of meaning, then Orthodoxy is worthy of tears, because up to now she has not been able to discipline herself under a Pope.

But this is not the truth of the matter. The catholic Church which we confess in the Symbol (Creed) of our Faith is not called catholic because it includes all the Christians of the earth, but because within her everyone of the faithful finds all the grace and gift of God. The meaning of catholicity has nothing to do with a universal organization the way the Papists and those who are influenced by the Papist mentality understand it.

Of course, the Church is intended for and extended to the whole world independent of lands, nations, races, and tongues; and it is not an error for one to name her catholic because of this also. But just as humanity becomes an abstract idea, there is a danger of the same thing happening to the Church when we see her as an abstract, universal idea. In order for one to understand humanity well, it is enough for him to know only one man, since the nature of that man is common to all men of the world.

Similarly, in order to understand what the catholic Church of Christ is, it suffices to know well only one local church. And as among men, it is not submission to a hierarchy which unites them but their common nature, so the local churches are not united by the Pope and the Papal hierarchy but by their common nature.

A local Orthodox church regardless of her size or the number of the faithful is by herself alone, independently of all the others, catholic. And this is so because she lacks nothing of the grace and gift of God. All the local churches of the whole world together do not contain anything more in divine grace than that small church with few members.

She has her presbyters and bishop; she has the Holy Mysteries; she has the Body and Blood of Christ in the Holy Eucharist. Within her any worthy soul can taste of the Holy Spirit's presence. She has all the grace and truth. What is she lacking therefore in order to be catholic? She is the one flock, and the bishop is her shepherd, the image of Christ, the one Shepherd. She is the prefiguring on earth of the one flock with the one Shepherd, of the new Jerusalem. Within her, even in this life, pure hearts taste of the Kingdom of God, the betrothal of the Holy Spirit. Within her they find peace which "passeth all understanding," the peace which has no relation with the peace of men: "My peace I give unto you."

"Paul, called to be an Apostle of Jesus Christ ... to the Church of God which is at Corinth ...." Yes, it really was the Church of God, even if it was at Corinth, at one concrete and limited place.

This is the catholic Church, something concrete in space, time, and persons. This concrete entity can occur repeatedly in space and in time without ceasing to remain essentially the same.

Her relations with the other local churches are not relations of legal and jurisdictional interdependence, but relations of love and grace. One local church is united with all the other local Orthodox churches of the world by the bond of identity. Just as one is the Church of God, the other is the Church of God also, as well as all the others. They are not divided by boundaries of nations nor the political goals of the countries in which they live. They are not even divided by the fact that one might be ignorant of the other's existence. It is the same Body of Christ which is partaken of by the Greeks, the Negroes of Uganda, the Eskimos of Alaska, and the Russians of Siberia. The same Blood of Christ circulates in their veins. The Holy Spirit enlightens their minds and leads them to the knowledge of the same truth.

There exist, of course, relations of interdependence between the local churches, and there are canons which govern them. This interdependence, though, is not a relation of legal necessity, but a bond of respect and love in complete freedom, the freedom of grace. And the canons are not laws of a code, but wise guides of centuries of experience.

The Church has no need of external bonds in order to be one. It is not a pope, or a patriarch, or an archbishop which unites the Church. The local church is something complete; it is not a piece of a larger whole.

Besides, the relations of the churches are relations of churches, and not relations which belong exclusively to their bishops. A bishop cannot be conceived of without a flock or independent of his flock. The Church is the bride of Christ. The Church is the body of Christ, not the bishop alone.

A bishop is called a patriarch when the church of which he is the shepherd is a patriarchate, and an archbishop when the church is an archdiocese. In other words, the respect and honor belongs to the local church, and by extension it is rendered to its bishop. The Church of Athens is the largest and, today, most important local church of Greece. For this reason the greatest respect belongs to her, and she deserves more honor than any other church of Greece. Her opinion has a great bearing, and her role in the solution of common problems is the most significant. That is why she is justly called an archdiocese. Consequently, the bishop of that church, because he represents such an important church is a person equally important and justly called an archbishop. He himself is nothing more than an ordinary bishop. In the orders of priesthood—the deacon, the presbyter, and the bishop—there is no degree higher than the office of the bishop. The titles metropolitan, archbishop, patriarch, or pope do not indicate a greater degree of ecclesiastical charism, because there is no greater sacramental grace than that which is given to the bishop. They only indicate a difference in prominence of the churches of which they are shepherds.

This prominence of one church in relation to the others is not something permanent. It depends upon internal and external circumstances. In studying the history of the Church, we see the primacy of prominence and respect passing from church to church in a natural succession. In Apostolic times, the Church of Jerusalem, without any dispute, had the primacy of authority and importance. She had known Christ; she had heard His words; she saw Him being crucified and arising; and upon her did the Holy Spirit first descend. All who were in a communion of faith and life with her were certain that they walked the road of Christ. This is why Paul, when charged that the Gospel which he taught was not the Gospel of Christ, hastened to explain it before the Church of Jerusalem, so that the agreement of that church might silence his enemies (Gal. 2:1-2).

Later, that primacy was taken by Rome, little by little. It was the capital of the Roman Empire. A multitude of tried Christians comprised that church. Two leading Apostles had lived and preached within its bounds. A multitude of Martyrs had dyed its soil with their blood. That is why her word was venerable, and her authority in the solution of common problems was prodigious. But it was the authority of the church and not of her bishop. When she was asked for her view in the solution of common problems, the bishop replied not in his own name as a Pope of today would do, but in the name of his church. In his epistle to the Corinthians, St. Clement of Rome begins this way: "The Church of God which is in Rome, to the Church of God which is in Corinth." He writes in an amicable and supplicatory manner in order to convey the witness and opinion of his church concerning whatever happened in the Church of Corinth. In his letter to the Church of Rome, St. Ignatius the God-bearer does not mention her bishop anywhere, although he writes as though he were addressing himself to the church which truly has primacy in the hierarchy of the churches of his time.

When St. Constantine transferred the capital of the Roman state to Byzantium, Rome began gradually to lose her old splendor. It became a provincial city. A new local church began to impose itself upon the consciousness of the Christian world: the Church of Constantinople. Rome tried jealously to preserve the splendor of the past, but because things were not conducive to it, it developed little by little its well-known Papal ecclesiology in order to secure theoretically that which circumstances would not offer. Thus it advanced from madness to madness, to the point where it declared that the Pope is infallible whenever he speaks on doctrine, even if because of sinfulness he does not have the enlightenment of sanctity the Fathers of the Church had.

The Church of Constantinople played the most significant role throughout the long period of great heresies and of the Ecumenical Councils, and in her turn she gave her share of blood with the martyrdom of thousands of her children during the period of the Iconoclasts.

Besides these churches which at different times had the primacy of authority, there were others which held the second or third place. They were the various patriarchates, old or new, and other important churches or metropolises. There exists, therefore, a hierarchy, but a hierarchy of churches and not of bishops. St. Irenaeus does not advise Christians to address themselves to important bishops in order to find the solution to their problem, but to the churches which have the oldest roots in the Apostles (Adv. Haer. III, 4, 1).

There are not, therefore, organizational, administrative, or legal bonds among the churches, but bonds of love and grace, the same bonds of love and grace which exist among the faithful of every church, clergy or lay. The relationship between presbyter and bishop is not a relationship of employee and employer, but a charismatic and sacramental relationship. The bishop is the one who gives the presbyter the grace of the priesthood. And the presbyter gives the layman the grace of the Holy Mysteries. The only thing which separates the bishop from the presbyter is the charism of ordination. The bishop excels in nothing else, even if he be the bishop of an important church and bears the title of patriarch or pope. "There is not much separating them [the presbyters] and the bishops. For they too are elevated for the teaching and protection of the Church .... They [the bishops] surpass them only in the power of ordination, and in this alone they exceed the presbyters" (Chrysostom, Hom. XI on I Tim.).

Bishops have no right to behave like rulers, not only towards the other churches but also towards the presbyters or laymen of the church of which they are bishop. They have a responsibility to Oversee in a paternal way, to counsel, to guide, to battle against falsehood, to adjure transgressors with love and strictness, to preside in love. But these responsibilities they share with the presbyters. And the presbyters in turn look upon the bishops as their fathers in the priesthood and render them the same love.

All things in the Church are governed by love. Any distinctions are charismatic distinctions. They are not distinctions of a legal nature but of a spiritual authority. And among the laymen there are charisms and charisms.

The unity of the Church, therefore, is not a matter of obedience to a higher authority. It is not a matter of submission of subordinates to superiors. External relations do not make unity, neither do the common decisions of councils, even of Ecumenical Councils. The unity of the Church is given by the communion in the Body and Blood of Christ, the communion with the Holy Trinity. It is a liturgical unity, a mystical unity.

The common decisions of an Ecumenical Council are not the foundation but the result of unity. Besides, the decisions of either an ecumenical or local council are valid only when they are accepted by the consciousness of the Church and are in accord with the Tradition.

The Papacy is the distortion par excellence of Church unity. It made that bond of love and freedom a bond of constraint and tyranny. The Papacy is unbelief in the power of God and confidence in the power of human systems.

But let no one think that the Papacy is something which exists only in the West. In recent times it has started to appear among the Orthodox too. A few novel titles are characteristic of this spirit, for example, "Archbishop of all Greece," "Archbishop of North and South America." Many times we hear people say of the Patriarch of Constantinople, the "leader of Orthodoxy," or we hear the Russians speaking of Moscow as the third Rome and its patriarch as holding the reins of the whole of Orthodoxy. In fact, many sharp rivalries have begun. All these are manifestations of the same worldly spirit, the same thirst for worldly power, and belong to the same tendencies which characterize the world today.

People cannot feel unity in multiplicity. Yet this is a deep mystery. Our weakness or inability to feel it originates from the condition of severance into which the, human race has fallen. People have changed from persons into separated and hostile individuals, and it is impossible for them now to understand the deep unity of their nature. Man, however, is one and many; one in his nature, many in persons. This is the mystery of the Holy Trinity, and the mystery of the Church.

It is imperative that Christians realize that the Church has sacramental and not administrative foundations; then they will not suffer that which has happened to the Westerners who followed the Pope in his errors because they thought that if they did not follow him, they would automatically be outside the Church.

Today the various patriarchates and archdioceses undergo great pressures from political powers which seek to direct the Orthodox according to their own interests. It is known that the Patriarchate of Moscow accepts the influence of Soviet politics. But the Patriarchate of Constantinople also accepts the influence of American politics. It was under this influence that the contact of the Ecumenical Patriarchate with the similarly American-influenced, Protestant, World Council of Churches was brought about, and its servile disposition toward the Pope started to take on dangerous dimensions and even to exert over-bearing pressure upon the other Orthodox churches.

America thinks that it will strengthen the Western faction against communism if, with these artificial conciliations, it unifies its spiritual forces. But in this way the Church becomes a toy of the political powers of the world, with unforeseeable consequences for Orthodoxy.

Are the Orthodox people obliged to follow such a servile patriarchate forever? The fact that this patriarchate for centuries held the primacy of importance and honor in the Christian world cannot justify those who will follow it to a unifying capitulation with heresy. Rome also once had the primacy of importance and honor in the Christian world, but that did not oblige Christians to follow it on the road of heresy. The communion with and respect for one church on the part of the other churches remains and continues only as long as that church remains in the Church, that is, as long as it lives and proceeds in spirit and truth. When a patriarchate ceases to be a church, admitting communion with heretics, then its recognition on the part of the other churches ceases also.

The Orthodox people must become conscious of the fact that they owe no obedience to a bishop, no matter how high a title he holds, when that bishop ceases being Orthodox and openly follows heretics with pretenses of union "on equal terms." On the contrary, they are obliged to depart from him and confess their Faith, because a bishop, even if he be patriarch or pope, ceases from being a bishop the moment he ceases being Orthodox. The bishop is a consecrated person, and even if he is openly sinful, respect and honor is due him until synodically censured. But if he becomes openly heretical or is in communion with heretics, then the Christians should not await any synodical decision, but should draw away from him immediately.

Here is what the canons of the Church say on this: "... So that if any presbyter or bishop or metropolitan dares to secede from communion with his own patriarch and does not mention his name as is ordered and appointed in the divine mystagogy, but before a synodical arraignment and his [the patriarch's] full condemnation, he creates a schism, the Holy Synod has decreed that this person be alienated from every priestly function, if only he be proven to have transgressed in this. These rules, therefore, have been sealed and ordered concerning those who on the pretext of some accusations against their own presidents stand apart, creating a schism and severing the unity of the Church. But as for those who on account of some heresy condemned by Holy Synods or Fathers sever themselves from communion with their president, that is, because he publicly preaches heresy and with bared head teaches it in the Church, such persons as these not only are not subject to canonical penalty for walling themselves off from communion with the so-called bishop before synodical clarification, but they shall be deemed worthy of due honor among the Orthodox. For not bishops, but false bishops and false teachers have they condemned, and they have not fragmented the Church's unity with schism, but from schisms and divisions have they earnestly sought to deliver the Church" (Canon XV of the so-called First and Second Council).

The bishops of the West supported Cardinal Humbert when they learned of the excommunication of the Ecumenical Patriarch and they thus joined him in his horrific crime against the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.

Again, if the excommunication of the Ecumenical Patriarch was a "horrific crime against the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, why was the excommunication of the Pope not also so?

The Church is one. She does not have two "halves"

My point all along. I just wish that the Greeks would remember this and not act as if only their views carried any weight.

Well, to start with, the Roman excommuication came first and, as we know, the others that followed were in response.

Wrong! The only reason that Cardinal Humbert was in Constantinople in the first place was that Patriarch Michael ordered the name of the pope removed from the diptychs.

Constantinople's excommunication of Rome was in defense of the Tradition and thus amply justified.

This is the very matter in dispute and you cannot resolve it by just say that the Orthodox say it is so; such an approach is tautological. It is no different than saying: "I am right because I say that I am right."

St. Cyril also said

"After the incarnation of God the Word I worship one nature-the nature of God Who took on flesh and became man"; "I confess that our Lord consists of two natures before [their] union, and after [their] union I confess one nature".

Taken out of context, it would appear that this giant was embracing Monophysitism, and -- in fact -- this was used by Monotphysite heretics, notably Eutyches, as "authoritative" teaching of one nature of Christ.

None of the Councils even approved the idea that the Spirit proceeds "and from the Son," nor did the whole Unidivded Church teach it.

The excommunication of a pope is not in and of itself a crime. It might or might not be a crime, but as a rule of thumb, ecclesial excommunications are not criminal. They usually are needed for the bene esse of the Church. The excommunication of Rome by the Ecumenical Patriarch may or may not have been needed for the bene esse of the Church but, in hindsight, it looks to me as if it was more than justified, given the subsequent behavior of the Roman Catholic Church A.D. 1054 - present. Just my personal opinion of course.
It is not that only the views of the Orthodox Greeks have weight but that the views of heretics (e.g. Origen!), have no weight. The Church is one. Those within her are listened to. Those without are not.

"If Caeseropapism is not to be the word employed to describe popes playing at being secular rulers of vast empires, what term shall we employ for this phenomenon"?

I am not sure! I think you would have to go back to before Charlemagne to even consider the possibility when the Pope ruled "vast" empires... if you can even call what happened during the Dark Ages "ruling". Hopefully, since Italy took over the remaining large pieces of land from the Vatican to form the nation Italy about 80 years ago, we won't see Vatican rule any secular land outside of Vatican City itself. And I believe if you read the history of the Roman Church during the Medieval era, you will find that the Pope turned out to be a good balance to the aspirations of the secular Holy Roman Emperor and other such kings. The Pope certainly had very little military power yet was able to keep much of the secular ruler's powers in check.

I think we can safely say that we won't be returning to the days of secular ruling popes...

Regards

I mention this so that you would realize that no man's personality must dominate or define the Church, except that of Christ. Yet, unlike the Orthodox Church, the the Church of the West had been defined and redefined by some many different men on the throne of Saint Peter. The Church can remain timless only if it is defined by God and not by men. The purpose of this article, and I hope this becomes clear, is that the Church does should not depend on the personality of the Pope or anyone else, nor should the Pope be the central personality in the Church.

The "Rock Star" Papacy owes itself to the discovery of the uses that could made of means of modern communication methods by Hitler, and then appropriated by Pius XII, John XXIII, and John Paul II (just as also appropriated by various world leaders).

Paul VI and Benedict XVI were not cut from that cloth, nor is such a cult of personality bearing useful to the Church, IMHO

Far cry from Papacy! Apples and oranges. St. Jerome;'s idea of the "prince" of Apostles is not Pope Leo I's idea, not of his legate at the Council of Chalcedon who says that the Pope is the "ruler of the church," or that he has the right to imperial insignia.

?????

Kosta, please read St. Jerome before you make such statements. St. Jerome was an agent of Pope St. Damasus, and worked much of his life in the employ of the Papacy. St. Jerome was what would today be termed an "extreme Papalist" or "ultramontantist".

My words are spoken to the sucessor of the fisherman, to the disciple of the cross. I follow no leader but Christ and join in communion with none but Your Blessedness, that is, with the chair of Peter. I know that this is the rock on which the Church has been built. Whoever eats the Lamb outside this house is profane. Anyone who is not in the ark of Noah will perish when the flood prevails ... I do not know Vitalis, Meletius I reject, and I ignore Paulinius...
-St. Jerome, Letter to Pope St. Damasus 15.2 (374 AD)
The Church here is split into three parts, each eager to seize me for its own ... Meanwhile I keep crying: "He that is joined to the chair of Peter is accepted by me!" Meletius, Vitalis, and Paulinus each claims to be loyal to you, which I could believe did only one make the claim. As it is, either two of them are lying, or else all three. Therefore I implore Your Blessedness by the cross of the Lord, by the necessary glory of our faith, the Passion of Christ - that as you follow the Apostles in dignity may you follow them also in worth, ... tell me by letter with whom it is that I should communicate in Syria. Despise not a soul for whom Christ died!
-St. Jerome, Letter to Pope St. Damasus 16.2 (374 AD)
You Orthodox here speak so often of a Patristic mindset, and knowing the Fathers, and yet you really seem to know them so little, that you make statements like the above about St. Jerome and his view of the Papacy that seem to ridiculous to people like gbcdoj and myself.

Chrysostom appears to differ on whether such titles imply authority, as I have shown

No, he is quite clear:

He says unto him, "feed my sheep." (John 21.17)
And why, having passed by the others, does He speak with Peter on these matters? He was the chosen one of the Apostles, the mouthpiece of the disciples, the leader of the band; on this account Paul went up upon a time to enquire of him rather than the others. And at the same time to show that he must be of good cheer, since the denial was done away, Jesus put into his hands the chief authority among the brethren; and He does not bring forward the denial, nor reproach him with what had taken place, but says, "If you love Me,
preside over your brethren, and the warm love which you manifested, and in which you rejoiced, show you now; and the life which you said you would lay down for Me, now give for My sheep" ...
And when He had spoken this, He said "Follow Me." (John 21.19)
Here again He alludes to his being very closely attached to Himself. And if any should say, "How then did James receive the chair in Jerusalem?" I would make this reply, that He appointed Peter teacher, not of that See, but of the whole world.
-St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on John 83.1
What does Christ say? "You are Simon, the son of Jonas; you shall be called Cephas." (John 1.42) ... therefore He added this, "And I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock will I build my Church" (Matthew 16.17); that is, on the faith of his confession. Hereby He signifies that many were now on the point of believing, and raises his spirit, and makes him shepherd ...
... For those things which are peculiar to God alone, (both to absolve sins, and to make the church incapable of overthrow in assailing waves, and to exhibit a fisherman that is more solid than any rock, while all the world is at war with him), these He promises Himself to give; as the Father, speaking to Jeremiah, said, He would make him as "a brazen pillar and a wall" (Jeremiah 1.18); but him only to one nation, this man in every part of the world.
... and to a mortal man He entrusted authority over all things in Heaven, giving him the keys ...
-St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew, 64.3
"And in those days," it says, "Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples, and said." Both as being ardent, and as having been put in trust by Christ with the flock and as having precedence in honor, he always begins the discourse.
-St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles, 3.1.15

Just as nowadays, for the sake of Christian charity, Orthodox teachings are not called "heretical" by the Roman Catholics, and vice versa, the truth is that our rejection of Roman Catholic dogma places us outside of the teachings of the RCC and, by definition makes us -- and you -- for the same reasons of opposite direction, reciprocally, mutual "heretics." Thus, we agreed to use other terms that fall short of calling the other side "heretical" but the meaning is clear when and how such terms are used.

The Catholic Church considers the Orthodox Church (by which I mean the legitimate ecclesiastical heirarchy and the faithful attached to it), to be disobedient children of the Catholic Church, some of whom individually are involved in a variety of errors or schisms due either to ignorance or malice, but who as a corporate body, form a part of the one true Church which has the Pope as the vicar of its Head, with their Bishops able to exercise a de facto jurisdiction despite lacking formal communion with Rome.

Thus the Uniate agreements are not formal unions of two Churches (as if there exists such a thing), but an agreement by one part of the Church, formerly considered to be in some sense disobedient or in discord, to now re-enter into communion with the Roman Church and be obedient and in fraternal concord. Thus at the Council of Florence: "For, the wall that divided the western and the eastern church has been removed, peace and harmony have returned, since the corner-stone, Christ, who made both one, has joined both sides with a very strong bond of love and peace, uniting and holding them together in a covenant of everlasting unity. After a long haze of grief and a dark and unlovely gloom of long-enduring strife, the radiance of hoped-for union has illuminated all. Let mother church also rejoice. For she now beholds her sons hitherto in disagreement returned to unity and peace, and she who hitherto wept at their separation now gives thanks to God with inexpressible joy at their truly marvellous harmony."

The Roman Catholic Church has striven mightily at times to avoid dogmatic formulas that condemn error and would likewise condemn the East. Thus at Trent, when we condemned divorce and remarriage, we usd the formula "If anyone says the Church errs, inasmuch as she has taught and still teaches [the indissolubility of marriage], let him be anathema" to avoid condemning the contrary practice of the Greeks. And similarly in dogmatizing the concept of Purgatory, we have minimized the doctrine to be simply about the forgiveness of minor sins and completion of repentance after death to avoid all the grounds of controversy we discovered with the East on this point.

I find it interesting that in 1200 years of polemics, the Eastern Church has yet to enter a single anathema into the Synodicon of Orthodoxy that condemns a western "error" or "heresy" - even the filioque!

The Catholic Church could only consider our Orthodox brothers to be heretical if the whole eastern Church adopted some novelty and preached it as a matter of faith in contradiction to the position of the western Church. This has never, in our view, happened.

I am not asking you to accept the filioque or any other of the matter in dispute but rather to withhold judgment until it can be definitively settled by an ecumenical council under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

The Filioque was definitively settled at Lyons and Florence.

It perhaps remains to be explaind in a way that the Greeks can accept as in line with their understanding of Constantinople I. They themselves, have, however, made a significant attempt in this regard at the Council of Blachernae in 1283 and in the writings of some of the their doctors, such as St. Gregory Palamas. The problem is more one of philosophical terminology than of faith, as some modern Greeks, otherwise very polemical, such as Fr. Romanides, have stated flatly that the filioqe can be understood in an Orthodox manner.

"I find it interesting that in 1200 years of polemics, the Eastern Church has yet to enter a single anathema into the Synodicon of Orthodoxy that condemns a western "error" or "heresy" - even the filioque" Hermann

Not necessary. The Second Ecumenical Council spoke with finality on the subject of the Holy Spirit's procession. But, just to keep you happy, we do require all Roman Catholic converts to Orthodoxy to publicly renounce and spit upon their former heresies, e.g. the filioque doctrine. I cannot rememember, but I think we may also require them to spit upon their heretical notions as to the Pope of Rome. If not, it probably would be a pretty good idea.
For more information on this, you might want to contact http://www.homb.org/

I was responding to just one point that you made, the one as to unilateral anathemas. My point was that the anathema of A.D. 1054 was not unilateral. It was quadrapartite (Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem). And the confirmations that followed were for the benefit of the Orthodox.

An interesting but false reading of history.

The split of 1054 was between Cerularius and Humbert. The rest of the Christian world was blisfully ignorant of this, and continued merrily along in communion with each other. The Patriarchs of Antioch and Jerusalem only came to an agreement with this split between Rome and Constantinople around 1100, when they refused the Crusader states. The Church in Albania, Serbia and Bulgaria was even later, adhering to Roman Communion into the 1200's.

Mentioning the Patriarchs of these other cities in the 1500's is a little comical. By that point they were little more than ornamental court puppets of the Patriarch of Constantinople (the Pope of Rome also had similar ornamental Patriarchal puppets), who did not even live in those cities, two of which (Alexandria and Antioch) did not even exist any longer. Of course they danced the jig of their master.

The filioque question was decided once and for all time at the First Council of Constantinople in A.D. 380. The fathers there decided that the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son, period.

Really? When did they say that?

How can that be reconciled with the 9th Anathema of St. Cyril at Ephesus, which says: "If anyone ... does not say rather that the Spirit through which [the One Lord Jesus Christ] worked the miracles was His Own, let him be anathema."

How is the Holy Spirit, prceeding from the Father alone as seem wont to say, Christ's own Spirit?

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