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To: Kolokotronis

Speaking strickly in terms of practicality:

How would it work to EO satisfaction to roll back before 1054? Wouldn't they require the RC to revoke dogma?

Is there any way to meet the requirements of the Orthodox without this?


26 posted on 02/04/2007 12:39:59 AM PST by D-fendr
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To: D-fendr

"How would it work to EO satisfaction to roll back before 1054? Wouldn't they require the RC to revoke dogma?"

The only way it could work is if we all believe the exact same things in matters of dogma. On virtually all of the areas of disagreement arising before Vatican I I think a council can deal with them. The big one, filioque, has pretty much been nuanced out of existence anyway, though the IC may pose a problem for two reasons. First it arises out of an understanding of the Sin of Adam which is foreign to Orthodoxy and (I've often wondered if the Calvinist view of +Augustine didn't in some way contribute to Rome's notions by the 19th century) second it arguably raises questions on the human nature of Christ. I vaguely remember seeing a way around this once, but I've forgotten what it was.

Post Vatican I we have real problems for precisely the reason +Nektarios pointed out back in the early 20th century; with that declaration, the Church of Rome lost its spiritual freedom to function as a church. Everything about reunion hinges on this one issue, the proper exercise of the Petrine Office which of course our hierarchs and yours recognize. Without the infallibilty claim and an enforcible claim of immediate universal jurisdiction, even that could be worked out, but....

My suspicion is that if there is a way to cut this seeming Gordian Knot, it lies in the nature of Vatican I and indeed all the post schism councils of the churches. They were of necessity, despite what Rome may have once claimed, local and therefore only binding on the churches involved. Now even that doesn't fully solve the problem because even if the dogmas of Vatican I were said to apply only to Rome and its dependencies (save the Melkites who very wisely conditioned their assent)I sincerely doubt that Orthodoxy would enter into communion with a church which denied the basic equality of all bishops and the synergistic nature of The Church even if only internally (not to say that some of our hierarchs wouldn't love to see exactly that; they've tried before, recently in fact but we didn't let them get away with it). Maybe there's a way to call those declarations disciplinary in some fashion and thus subject to change? Maybe an Ecumenical Council, since there would necessarily have to be one, could overrule Vatican I? I don't know.

One thing is certain. Whatever the hierarchs come up with will have to be acceptable to the whole Church and despite our Orthodox nostalgia for a pre 1054 system, the fact is that the world has changed in the past 950 years and the necessity that The Church speak with one voice to, frankly, save civilization is magnified, at least as to the area in play. Rome needs Orthodoxy to make a common front not only against the Mohammedan threat, but also to the poisonous weed of secular humanism which has sapped the strength of Western First World culture. We can't go back to a system where Patriarchs communicated occassionally by letter or envoy and met only every 100+ years or so in an Ecumenical Council. Today the exercise of the Petrine Ministry and the primacy of the Church of Rome needs some sort of authority to actually make those offices meaningful. I don't know what that would be. I know it won't include infallibility or immediate universal jurisdiction. I would think it would have to include something which never existed before and that's some sort of Patriarchal world synod headed by the pope as the primus to deal with issues which affect the entire Church.


28 posted on 02/04/2007 4:55:38 AM PST by Kolokotronis (Christ is Risen, and you, o death, are annihilated!)
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