Papal Primacy: Russia leads the resistance

...The outline of the discussion was, until this point, a working document drafted by a joint sub-commission at the beginning of autumn 2008, at a meeting in Crete.

In October of 2009, in Cyprus, the joint international commission for theological dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, with the Russians present, examined and discussed the first part of this outline, on some historical cases of the universal exercise of the "primacy" of the bishop of Rome, in the first centuries of the Christian era.

The discussion was supposed to continue in Vienna. But there were surprises right from the beginning. The Russian delegation raised objections against the working text provided in Crete, and ultimately succeeded in having it rewritten.

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The main objection of the Russian Church is the one summarized by Metropolitan Hilarion shortly after the meeting, in a note published on the website of the patriarchate of Moscow:

"The 'Crete Document' is purely historical and, speaking of the role of the bishop of Rome, it makes almost no mention of bishops of other Local Churches in the first millennium, thus creating a wrong impression of how powers were distributed in the Early Church. Besides, the document is lacking any clear statement that the jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome did not extend to the East in the first millennium. It is hoped that these gaps and omissions will be made up in revising the text."

As a result, the Russian delegation asked and obtained that the text from Crete not be included among the official documents of the commission, not bear the signature of any of its members, and be used simply as working material for a new rewriting of the working outline. A rewriting more attentive to the theological dimensions of the question.

In effect, at the end of the talks in Vienna, the participants agreed to set up "a sub-commission to begin consideration of the theological and ecclesiological aspects of primacy in its relation to synodality."

Next year the sub-commission will present the new text to the coordinating committee of the commission for theological dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church. So that the following year, 2012, the commission will be able to revisit and continue – on the basis of the new outline – the discussion begun in Cyprus and Vienna.

Read the rest here.

This is well worth reading as it presents a Catholic perspective from someone with many eyes and ears in the Vatican. That said it has its shortcomings not the least of which being that it repeats the worn canard that the only thing dividing Rome from Orthodoxy is the Papacy. I also think Magister hugely overstates the level of acquiescence on the part of the other non-Russian churches to Rome's papal claims. If this is what people are thinking in the Vatican then Rome has some really serious issues that go beyond doctrine.