Posted on 10/23/2009 7:05:19 AM PDT by NYer
Pope Benedict has sure gotten the ball rolling and it seems others want to get into the ecumenical action! Thanks to A Catholic Knight on this one:
Thank you for posting the Vatican Radio source. There are two threads running on this topic, bothwith interesting comments.
This is very interesting. Of course it would never happen that every single member of the hierarchy would enter communion with Rome, but if a large majority did so, would the people really refuse to follow? Where would they be then? Would they muddle through with improvised structures rather than follow their own bishops? Could an entire hierarchy be re-constituted from Athonite diehards?
I am very ready to believe that American Catholics have congregationalist tendencies, but I'd never have believed this of the Orthodox. Or is it a matter of national sentiment? Either way, if what you say is true, I'd conclude that the lack of ecclesial sense in the West has an Eastern doppelganger.
“Of course it would never happen that every single member of the hierarchy would enter communion with Rome, but if a large majority did so, would the people really refuse to follow?”
After the Council of Florence with its ill fated reunion, virtually all the hierarchs were on board. +Mark of Ephesus alone refused to sign it. When the delegation returned to Constantinople,the people scorned their bishops and publicly taunted them as traitors to the Faith. Some were toppled from their thrones, not only in the Empire but also up in Russia. The EP Joseph had died at Florence and no bishop would accept the Patriarchial throne as it would have required him to go forward with the reunion. The people, monastics and lower clergy, almost unanimously supported Mark of Ephesus and within a few years all the Patriarchs condemned and rejected the Union. The ecclesiology of the Orthodox Church, with its well defined roles for the hierarchs, monastics, lower clergy and laity, worked just fine. Similar though not so dramatic incidents have happened time and again over the centuries, as recently as the late 1990s actually.
“Either way, if what you say is true, I’d conclude that the lack of ecclesial sense in the West has an Eastern doppelganger.”
Very, very different ecclesiology, R.
I agree, you said it! Not only is Pope Benedict picking up where Pope John Paul left off (working toward unity), he is busy 'burning the midnight oil' to be active and productive with Encyclicals and other writings and works, not to mention pilgrimages of his own. He's a real blessing to us, just what we needed, when we needed it.
+Ignatius of Antioch is among the great Fathers. He was not infallible. Carried out fully, his comment would likely mean we’d all be Arians or Iconoclasts. In any event, the people followed a real bishop, +Mark of Ephesus, as the people, ultimately, always will.
If this is the case, then who actually is in charge of the Orthodox Church? Not the bishops, for sure. You've already assured us that the laity kicked their butts once and would do it again if the situation called for it.
We had this discussion yesterday when I mentioned that the Orthodox attitude to the papacy (at least as expounded by you) bore certain marked similarities to the Protestant one. No, no, you said.
Yet here we find another example a day later. You're telling us that the Orthodox Church is some sort of "bottom up" structure which follows its bishops in general terms but that the court of last resort rests with the faithful.
That's a Protestant model of ecclesiology, chum. Aren't you the guy that's always giving us Western heretics sermons about ecclesiology?
Well, yes and no. All the orders within The Church have their proper role. No decision of the hierarchy, even in a council, even as a matter of dogma, can be considered binding unless it is accepted by the People of God. Even something as simple as an ordination to the deaconate, let alone to the priesthood or hierarchy, must, must receive the AXIOS of the people.
On the other hand, the people can do nothing without the clergy and hierarchy. But the people are the guardians of Orthodoxy.
So, chum, perhaps you should rethink running after us for a reunion. We'd so throw monkey wrenches into your already fragile ecclesiology, especially in 1st world. We'd spend our time telling your people to overthrow their bishops when they got out of line. It would be great fun!
Can we recruit Orthodox by Form 100s yet???
Well, yes.
Go through your post #28 again and bold or highlight anything on which you consider a Presbyterian, or an Episcopalian, for instance, could not sign off.
Thanks be to God for the Filioque and papal supremacy. NO MORE COUNCILS. Not now. Not ever. Religious truth is not about democracy.
While Mark of Ephesus was quite learned and knew the knew the theology that was in dispute, this could hardly be said of the mass of the laity. Surely, for the faithful in the street, this revolt against their own bishops was more the result of prejudicial hatred fueled by 500 years schism and mutual recrimination, and not from a deep understanding of the Christian faith. And unless you can say that those opposed to union today could carry on a theological debate at the level that is being discussed by the bishops and theologians, the same would have to be said today.
OK; now, why would you want the likes of us groveling at some hierarch’s feet next to you?
You are confusing theology with ecclesiology. The Presbyterians and Episcopalians could never sing off on theology. That's what matters.
The EOC is run the way it was run from the beginning. It was the Latin Church which "evolved" into this pay-pray-and-obey organization. I believe it was +Cyprian who argued for the Eastern ecclesial model and lost. The West simply became too Frankish.
But that's not the Orthodox concern as long as any reunion does not imply Latin ecclesiology. The reunion hinges on the profession of the same faith and the undertsanidng that both Latin and Orthodox traditions express identical cocnepts in different words. So far, no one has been able to show that different woprds mean the same concepts, which is why there is no reunion.
“While Mark of Ephesus was quite learned and knew the knew the theology that was in dispute, this could hardly be said of the mass of the laity.”
Well, evidence from history indicates otherwise. One of the Fathers, I forget which one, complained how he couldn’t get through a day of his errands without being engaged by the butcher or shoemaker or tailor in a theological discussion on some arcane topic. In fact, I’ll bet that the laity 1000 years ago was better catchized than today as a general proposition.
“And unless you can say that those opposed to union today could carry on a theological debate at the level that is being discussed by the bishops and theologians, the same would have to be said today.”
P, you’ve read much of what has been discussed in the dialogs here or on the Vatican or Patriarchate websites. Do you think it is particularly arcane? The main topic has been the proper exercise of the Petrine office in terms of the 1st millenium of The Church and how it would work in the future. Do you think the level of that discussion is particularly arcane? P, Met. John’s comments on primacy and the synodal system, for example, are the subject of discussion, pro and con, in both the Russian and Greek popular press, maybe elsewhere. This isn’t difficult stuff to understand. What’s difficult is finding a common and acceptable praxis on a go forward basis.
Well, we could say the same of the Latin clergy. It's not as if they were "above it all" and void of prejudices.
However, the way the Orthodox laity keep the hierarchy in check is by long memory. Since very little changes in the liturgy (and, remember, Orthodoxy is governed not by a magisterium but by lex orandi lex credendi), there are at least three, often four generations of believers in the church at any time raised on the same liturgy.
In other words, young adults, their parents, and their parents' parents, who attended the same liturgy and the same feasts year after year after year.
In fact this is how the Jews kept the oral tradition. The operant word is immutability. Ignoring small changes in decor, vestments and order or psalms, in other words theologically insignificant changes, there are three, and even four generations of believes who remember what the liturgy is supposed to be like.
The moment something changes, because a new "progressive" bishop is onboard, they will confront him and challenge him to show them why is such a change justified and where did it come from. Tradition. That's what kept Judaism and treat's what is keeping Eastern Orthodoxy relatively unchanged and immune from innovations.
Once you have a liturgy that is 1700 years old, it's difficult to introduce something new and justify it as something old, patristic, apostolic, trendy, etc.
In the Catholic Church and Protestant communities, there is no such breaking mechanism. Catholic magisterium speaks of a developing doctrine, based on the "deposit" of faith, which basically amounts to "discovery," which is alien tot he East.
The East believes the Church received the faith in full, once and forever and there is nothing else to discover and adjust, and perfect, and fix. The Church is not of this world, and does not change or conform according to it. But in the West, just the opposite is true.
Catholic rituals have changed along the way, but none so drastically as from the late 1960's onward. How can you possibly have three even four generations of believers knowing the same liturgy? How could they possibly 'notice" that something is wrong? Besides, Catholic magisterium is followed blindly. Catholic masses pay, pray and obey without questioning. When one pope removes high candles from the Sunday Mass, no one says anything.
When the crucifix disappears from the altar no one corrects the bishop. Likewise, when one decides to reintroduce them, the Catholic faithful simply accept it. Nicely "domesticated" laity, I must admit.
Catholic Church is founded on constant, never-ending change. Now there is a new translation of the Missal coming out. The old one is not longer "in vogue" but the Church will never admit it is wrong! Things just get replaced without any admission of error, and silently everyone moves on with the new "standards," at least for a while.
This is so essentially opposite to anything in the East, it is unrecognizable and quite scary to be honest with you.
It was Gregory of Nyssa, and he was complaining about the ludicrousness of free-lance theologizing amongst the half-educated and confused laity of Constantinople.
Ekklesia means gathering of the faithful, not the magisterium. Catholic and apostolic Church simply means followers of correct Chirstian teaching, as passed on by the apostles, everywhere.
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