EO and RCC.

The Liturgist · Jan 29, 2021

GreekOrthodox said:
We do work cooperatively at least on the local level for various charities. My church supports a homeless program that is partnered up not only with other local churches but local businesses as well. There is an annual exchange between Rome and the Ecumenical Patriarch to support better relations.

Indeed, and I see these being good programs.

thecolorsblend · Jan 31, 2021

The Liturgist · Feb 1, 2021

thecolorsblend said:
The people leading ecumenical dialogues between the two sides are convinced there are no doctrinal disagreements. Eastern Orthodox laity may say otherwise. Which is lovely, I guess, but their own bishops tell a different story. And we're always hearing about how much the Eastern Orthodox faithful obey and respect their bishops. So...

But rly, the lone major disagreement we have with each other is ecclesiological in nature. Namely, papal primacy. That's probably the only thing preventing reunification. And I don't see it changing in my lifetime.

If Rome wound up electing a Pope who was much more liberal than Pope Francis, someone not unlike the fictional Pope John Paul III played brilliantly by John Malkovich in The New Pope, I think that could cause not only a schism, but a re-evaluation of the Papal model, particularly if you had an antipope situation like with Avignon, or other complications which could cause many faithful Catholics to adopt a sedevacantist position.

Regarding the actual ecumenical talks, the feeling I get is that Pope Francis would probably like to do a deal, some of the Eastern Catholic primates such as the Melkite and Chaldean Patriarchs even more so, but the Orthodox at present are holding back, because some Orthodox churches, such as the Assyrian Church of the East, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and the Eastern Orthodox Churches of Russia, Georgia, and Serbia, and most of the faithful in others such as Romania, have strong theological concerns, while other more ecumenically inclined Orthodox churches such as the Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria, and the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople fear a schism; lastly, the Ecumenical Patriarchate has its own political agenda, which is to elevate its position among the EO churches from primus inter pares to primus sine paribus, as the Metropolitan of Bursa, who I fear will likely be the next Ecumenical Patriarch when His All Holiness Bartholomew reposes, has openly admitted. And thus the EP will not push for reunion with Rome when doing so could jeopardize its own agenda.

prodromos · Feb 1, 2021

thecolorsblend said:
The people leading ecumenical dialogues between the two sides are convinced there are no doctrinal disagreements. Eastern Orthodox laity may say otherwise. Which is lovely, I guess, but their own bishops tell a different story. And we're always hearing about how much the Eastern Orthodox faithful obey and respect their bishops. So..

This is a silly charicature, painting it as the bishops saying one thing and the laity another. There are many priests and bishops who are against the false ecumenism being pushed by the dialogues and probably many in the laity who support it, but it is certainly not as you have presented above.

The Liturgist · Feb 1, 2021

prodromos said:
This is a silly charicature, painting it as the bishops saying one thing and the laity another. There are many priests and bishops who are against the false ecumenism being pushed by the dialogues and probably many in the laity who support it, but it is certainly not as you have presented above.

What could possibly be wrong with an ecumenical reconciliation between the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics in which the Roman church recognized the validity of Eastern Orthodox doctrine, the absolute autonomous autocephaly of the Eastern Orthodox churches and their bishops since antiquity, and the grave error committed when a Roman legate uncanonically excommunicated the Ecumenical Patriarch in 1054?

As an aside, I am of the opinion that under the canons of the ecumenical councils and those contained in the Pedalion, both the Great Schism between Rome and the Orthodox, and the internal schism which has now been, mercifully, locally resolved in Syria and Egypt, but which still persists elsewhere, particularly in the diaspora, between the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, are canonically illegal and invalid. The former is uncanonical because the Bishop of Rome lacked the authority to unilaterally impose his will on the Eastern Churches, and any excommunications or anathemas imposed on the Eastern Churches for supposed contumacy when those churches, lawfully, refused to comply with Papal edicts, are invalid, since any unsolicited instruction from the Bishop of Rome to another bishop not under his jurisdiction but within a different autocephalous church is invalid. The latter is uncanonical because, as has been clearly established, the Oriental Orthodox are not, and never were, monophysites; the Monophysite sect was a small Greek-speaking heretical sect founded by Eutyches, which developed into the Tritheist heresy led by philosophers such as John Philoponus, and which became extinct around the time of Monothelitism and the heresy of Pope Honorius I (probably as a result of Monothelitism), which like iconoclasm, was a heresy rejected by the Oriental Orthodox, hence the schism between the Syriac Orthodox and the Maronites (who did later adopt Roman Catholic doctrine and reject Monothelitism by the time of the Crusades).

prodromos · Feb 1, 2021

The Liturgist said:
What could possibly be wrong with an ecumenical reconciliation between the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics in which the Roman church recognized the validity of Eastern Orthodox doctrine, the absolute autonomous autocephaly of the Eastern Orthodox churches and their bishops since antiquity, and the grave error committed when a Roman legate uncanonically excommunicated the Ecumenical Patriarch in 1054?

How can we reconcile with Papal universal jurisdiction, supremacy, infallibility etc.?

zippy2006 · Feb 1, 2021

prodromos said:
How can we reconcile with Papal universal jurisdiction, supremacy, infallibility etc.?

I don't know how reconciliation would happen. I think some are underestimating the rift. For example, much of what The Liturgist wrote above assumes the falsity of Papal universal jurisdiction, which is something the Catholic Church holds firmly. I don't think there can be reconciliation until one of the two bodies changes their stance on this issue.

thecolorsblend · Feb 1, 2021

prodromos · Feb 1, 2021

thecolorsblend said:
You're right.

I should've written that the EO obey and respect their bishops when it's convenient for them. Thx for the correction.

Since that isn't what I said, your thanks is misplaced.

Yeshua HaDerekh · Feb 1, 2021

The Liturgist said:
the Roman church recognized the validity of Eastern Orthodox doctrine

And why do we need Rome to validate anything of ours?

bbbbbbb · Feb 4, 2021

Yeshua HaDerekh said:
And why do we need Rome to validate anything of ours?

To me it is a rather transparent effort on the part of the RCC to impose a form of authority over the EOC which it, in reality, never possessed nor can claim to possess.

The Liturgist · Feb 4, 2021

Yeshua HaDerekh said:
And why do we need Rome to validate anything of ours?

You don’t. Rather, Rome accepting as valid EO doctrines is a huge step towards fixing some of their internal problems. Hesychasm and Palamist-Patristic theology could reignite the Roman church, which having throughly exhausted scholastic theology, is now wallowing in a power struggle between conservative traditionalists, many of them Dominican or members of new traditionalist orders like the ICKSP and FSSP, and left-wing Jesuit liberation theologists.

bbbbbbb said:
To me it is a rather transparent effort on the part of the RCC to impose a form of authority over the EOC which it, in reality, never possessed nor can claim to possess.

This is nonsense, to be frank; at no time in history has the Roman church claimed less authority over, or been less involved in, Eastern Christian affairs. Compare this with the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries when you had Roman missionaries actively involved in orchestrating schisms, in some cases along tribal lines* that led to the formation of the Syro-Malabar, Chaldean, Melkite and Syriac Catholic churches, to name just a few.

*Specifically, in the case of the Church of the East, the Aramaic speaking tribes in the Nineveh Plains area remained under the Church of the East, whereas the Chaldean tribe of mostly Arabic speaking Christians in Baghdad separated from the Church of the East and became the Chaldean Catholic Church.

bbbbbbb · Feb 4, 2021

The Liturgist said:
You don’t. Rather, Rome accepting as valid EO doctrines is a huge step towards fixing some of their internal problems. Hesychasm and Palamist-Patristic theology could reignite the Roman church, which having throughly exhausted scholastic theology, is now wallowing in a power struggle between conservative traditionalists, many of them Dominican or members of new traditionalist orders like the ICKSP and FSSP, and left-wing Jesuit liberation theologists.

This is nonsense, to be frank; at no time in history has the Roman church claimed less authority over, or been less involved in, Eastern Christian affairs. Compare this with the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries when you had Roman missionaries actively involved in orchestrating schisms, in some cases along tribal lines* that led to the formation of the Syro-Malabar, Chaldean, Melkite and Syriac Catholic churches, to name just a few.

*Specifically, in the case of the Church of the East, the Aramaic speaking tribes in the Nineveh Plains area remained under the Church of the East, whereas the Chaldean tribe of mostly Arabic speaking Christians in Baghdad separated from the Church of the East and became the Chaldean Catholic Church.

Of course, the RCC has claimed, at least since the Great Schism, to have all authority over the entire earth and specifically over all Christians.

Yeshua HaDerekh · Feb 4, 2021

The Liturgist said:
You don’t. Rather, Rome accepting as valid EO doctrines is a huge step towards fixing some of their internal problems.

Then they should just accept Orthodoxy and join back with The Church!

bbbbbbb · Feb 4, 2021

Yeshua HaDerekh said:
Then they should just accept Orthodoxy and join back with The Church!

Much easier said than done, of course.

The Liturgist · Feb 5, 2021

Yeshua HaDerekh said:
Then they should just accept Orthodoxy and join back with The Church!

And accepting Orthodox doctrines as valid is a huge part of that process.

The Liturgist · Feb 5, 2021

bbbbbbb said:
Much easier said than done, of course.

Indeed, but a fair chunk of the Roman Catholic Church including all of the Eastern Catholic churches (which although tiny compared to the Roman Rite have outsized influences, because their primates tend to be members of the college of Cardinals, so statistically, far more Eastern Catholics become cardinals than Western Catholics, and as many as a score and three cardinals is a sizable voting block) are moving in the right direction for that to happen, to the extent Metropolitan Kallistos Ware was able to quote Winston Churchill and declare that we are at the end of the beginning of the process of reunification.

Lawrence87 · Feb 5, 2021

The major difference that caused the great schism was that the Western Church added the 'filioque' to the creed. The Eastern Church proposed that this subtle alteration, in declaring that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son alters Trinitarian theology in subtle but important ways (not to mention that they weren't consulted about it).

In the centuries since then the Roman Catholic Church developed the doctrine of purgatory, the immaculate conception, Papal infallability and so forth. As a general rule the Eastern Orthodox Church has not undergone so many overt changes to it's doctrine since the schism. There obviously has been changes, but they aren't as marked as those undergone by the Catholic Church. Basically Orthodoxy looks to how things have always been done in the ancient Church as its source of authority, whereas the Roman Catholic Church places more emphasis on the authority of the Pope.

Yeshua HaDerekh · Feb 5, 2021

The Liturgist said:
And accepting Orthodox doctrines as valid is a huge part of that process.

Well yes, that was the point...they would have to...if they would join The Church...

bbbbbbb · Feb 5, 2021

Lawrence87 said:
The major difference that caused the great schism was that the Western Church added the 'filioque' to the creed. The Eastern Church proposed that this subtle alteration, in declaring that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son alters Trinitarian theology in subtle but important ways (not to mention that they weren't consulted about it).

In the centuries since then the Roman Catholic Church developed the doctrine of purgatory, the immaculate conception, Papal infallability and so forth. As a general rule the Eastern Orthodox Church has not undergone so many overt changes to it's doctrine since the schism. There obviously has been changes, but they aren't as marked as those undergone by the Catholic Church. Basically Orthodoxy looks to how things have always been done in the ancient Church as its source of authority, whereas the Roman Catholic Church places more emphasis on the authority of the Pope.

All true. One of the interesting (to myself, at least) aspects of the Protestant Reformation was the desire to purge the Roman Church of various practices and doctrines which had evolved over time and which had served to isolate the Roman Church from the rest of Christendom.

EO and RCC.

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