Perhaps you missed the point he was trying to make.
Establishing these letters, written in Greek, as authentic and genuinely from the first decade of the second century was one of the triumphs of nineteenth-century British scholarship.
He does not question St. Ignatius' prominent position in the Church, be it West or East. He is simply stating a fact. No need to be so sensitive, K.
“Without them, this bishop of Antioch might have remained no more than a name, as obscure as many another early Christian bishop.””
That’s both ethnocentric and idiotic. As for the other sentence, the East never doubted the authenticity of the originals we had in our possession. It didn’t take a bunch of 19th English protestants to establish the truth of +Ignatius’ position in the Church (BTW, he was the 3rd bishop of Antioch, not the 2nd).
“He is simply stating a fact.”
But NYer, he isn’t stating a fact about The Church. He is stating a fact, if at all and surely unintentionally, about the ethnocentrism of the Western Church.
“No need to be so sensitive, K.”
Yes there is, NYer. Our hierarchs are in discussions about reunion and both the EP and the late +JPII told us we should be getting to know one another better. The West needs to understand these things and cease pontificating about The Church and what is and was as if the East never existed or exists.