Of course, in fairness, it should be remembered that the four Eastern Patriarchates had, by this time, cut off the popes of Rome as heretics and all the historical reasons for this aside, the theological basis for that anathema was the innovation of the filioque. As a practical matter, our patriarchs were basically saying that the Latins were "extra ecclesiam" and although the East has always resisted officially declaring that membership in The Church is the sine qua non of salvation, there certainly were those then and now who hold exactly that position. Though he declared this 150 odd years later, +Mark of Ephesus stated the Eastern position vis a vis Rome and those in communion with it,
"We have excised and cut them off from the common body of the Church, we have, therefore, rejected them as heretics, and for this reason we are separated from them"; they are, therefore, heretics, and we have cut them off as heretics."
Nearly 50 years ago as a first grader in Catholic school, I was on the receiving end of this when the nun who was my teacher quoted the last line of this Bull to me in front of the whole class. I've never forgotten that, but I have also never forgotten my father's rage at the comment and the kind and healing words of the old monsignor/pastor of the parish which ran the school to the effect that the nun was "a silly woman" and that the Bull didn't mean "Holy Orthodoxy". Of course, that's exactly what the Bull meant, in part, but it was a nice thing for an old Irish priest to say. I still smile when I think of that kindly, very good man.
It seems apparent that the theology of the Latin Church has developed away from this sort of medieval position. Personally I think the mental gymnastics necessary to on the one hand get beyond this attitude while at the same time maintaining the fiction that the Latin Church simply now better understands what Boniface was saying is unfortunate. The ecclesiology of the Latin Church makes this necessary. As we all know, its hard to walk across a wet floor once one has painted oneself into a corner. The bottom line is, if we Orthodox can come to a point where we can trust the Latin Church (not just the Pope; you all know I think +BXVI is spectacular)it would be best if we allow them whatever fig leaves they feel they need to deal with some of the unfortunate remarks of their popes and hierarchs.
Yes indeed.
It seems that it depends on what "confided to Peter" means. I could interpret it to include those who accept a primacy of honor but reject a primacy of jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome. I would also not be surprised if some Catholics interpreted it to be aimed at the Eastern Orthodox. Your school teacher certainly interpreted it that way, as did the Feeneyites. But the Feeneyites were condemned for interpreting it that way.
I would think that your schoolteacher should be condemned for interpreting it the way he did--depending on how old you are, this would have been at the time that Fr. Feeney had been condemned for the hardline interpretation of extra ecclesiam nulla salus. I'm sorry that your teacher interpreted it wrongly and that it has been a burr under your saddle all these years.
But I do dispute your claim that the only way Catholics can interpret "deny that they are confided to Peter" is to say that it targets Eastern Orthodox. I don't really think that that's what Boniface VIII himself meant by it, but even if he did, that interpretation of it has been rejected since Boniface.
I am not glossing over this line. I think it's a valid question as to whether it means rejection of jurisdiction or means rejection of all honor and respect for the bishop of Rome. Surely there were Orthodox at that time and since that time who did the latter and could be the target of the phrase whereas others did not and were not the targets.
You see, dear Kolokotronis, not only Latin Catholics have had some variation in how they view these matters over the centuries, but so too have the Orthodox. In the heat of polemics, some Orthodox have said some pretty absolutist things about the Bishop of Rome, such that they would be denying any sense of their being "confided to Peter." But at other times, and in the present general viewpoing of most Orthodox, a distinction between primacy of honor and of jurisdiction is widespread. So if Orthodox are permitted to disown the strictest, most anti-Latin claims of the past and give more benign interpretations to them, then surely we Latin Catholics should not be accused of disingenuity if we interpret Unam Sanctam in such a way as to exclude Orthodox who accept Petrine primacy of honor but not primacy of jurisdiction and to suggest that perhaps even Boniface meant that.
I don't have time right now, but I will take a look at the Latin some time and see what's being translated as "confided to" here.
Could you not agree?
"Nearly 50 years ago as a first grader in Catholic school,"
Heh. We must be just about the same age, Jack.
You piqued my curiosity, so I looked it up in Denzinger 468. It reads "Si ergo Graeci sive alii se dicant Petro eiusque successoribus non esse commissos: fateantur necesse se de ovibus Christi non esse, . . ."
To me it is utterly clear that what Boniface is saying here is that anyone who says that they were not committed by Christ to the care of Peter, thereby denies being the sheep of Christ and cannot be saved.
But that is exactly what the Orthodox who make a primacy of honor/jurisdiction do not deny. They do not deny being committed in any sense whatsoever to the pastoral care of Peter. They deny being committed to that pastoral care in the way that others believe they should acknowledge being committed.
The dispute between Orthodox and Latin Catholics is not over whether all Christians are committed to the care of Peter. You do not deny (unlike some extreme Protestants) that in Mt. 16 and in John 21 Christ committed his Church/sheep to the care of Peter, do you? At one time it was common among most Protestants to deny this absolutely but a wholesale denial of it has never been characteristic of the Orthodox-Catholic schism. We are in schism, not in communion fellowship not because you deny any and all Petrine authority but because we disagree over the exact nature of that authority.
Boniface did not intend this as a blanket rejection of all Greeks. He wrote "si (if)" the Greeks or others deny all committedness to Peter they thereby deny being sheep of Christ. If he meant that the fundamental position of the Orthodox involves a denial of being committed to Peter, he should have written, "Since" ("Quia" or "Quoniam" or something like that) the Greeks and (not or) others deny that they are committed to Peter.
Even strictly grammatically the passage implies a distinction between those Greeks who make a blanket deny of any special authority for Peter given him by Christ (as some Protestants still do to this day) and those Greeks who acknowledge some sense of being confided to the pastoral ministry of Peter. I would assume you are included in the latter.
So the more "benign" interpretation of Unam Sanctam upon which Fr. Feeney was condemned in the late 1940s, a few years before the time you were in grade school (do I have it approximately right), is not a later whitewashing of an objectionable passage in Unam Sanctam but a fairly decent prima facie interpretation of the plain words. Your first grade nun (sorry for missing the fact that it was a nun, rather than "he" as I wrote in my earlier post) was teaching a crypto-Feeneyism. The Irish pastor was not just smoothing over your father's ire while secretly approving of the nun's Feeneyism. If the priest was familiar with the recent condemnations of the Feeneyites, then he was in fact giving your father the straight dope on the matter and was in fact condemning the nun's false, Feeneyite interpretation, though in a nice way!
I hope that this might make some sense to you now, after all these years of anger at what truly was an insult to you by the nun who was not accurately representing her own church's teaching but, like the priest said, may not have realized she was teaching condemned Feeneyism. (Or maybe she did realize it?)
Some Protestants acknowledge that Mt. 16 and Jn 21 teach a Petrine primacy; many even recognize that Mt. 16's reference to Isaiah means that Peter's successors are included. Others give a blanket denial. So some Protestants come within the excluded category in this line from Unam Sanctam but other Protestants do not fall into that excluded category. The same would apply to Orthodox, depending on whether they reject absolutely any Petrine primacy or any primacy of honor to his sucessors.
Of course, last I checked, the resistance of the Greeks was not over St. Peter and his sucessors being entrusted with the whole Church, but rather what that entrustment gave them liberty to do. Otherwise, Holy Father's such as St. John Chrysostom would have to be cast into the outer darkness with the wicked Latins.
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)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. (St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew, 64.3)
During the time of controversy during which Unam Sanctum was written, the objection of the Easterners was that they would be more than happy to obey if only Rome would prove its faithfulness to Christ by casting out the filioque and other controverted items.
Amen, Brother...I agree....:)