What Makes a Council Ecumenical?

I think this is well worth a read.

The latest from Constantinople

Hence, from Asia Minor, we proclaim in every direction that the genuine and only Mother Church is the Great Church of Constantinople. It exclusively bears the legacy of Jesus’s sacrifice on the Cross for all humanity, giving birth to numerous Churches from Bulgaria to Ukraine. This declaration isn’t a modern invention in ecclesiology but an experiential truth and legacy inherited from the Fathers of the Ecumenical and Local Synods.

From here.

We are living in challenging times. Between the quasi-papal pretensions of the EP, the clear affinity for Byzantine Rite Episcopalianism being demonstrated within the leadership of the Greek Archdiocese here in North America, and the abject surrender of the Russian Church to the Putin dictatorship; it is difficult not to conclude that God has chosen to permit His Church to be placed under some great trial.

Kyrie eleison.

Catholic ecclesiology and a heretical Pope

There is no authority to declare or consider an elected and generally accepted Pope as an invalid Pope. The constant practice of the Church makes it evident that even in the case of an invalid election this invalid election will be de facto healed through the general acceptance of the new elected by the overwhelming majority of the cardinals and bishops.

Even in the case of a heretical pope he will not lose his office automatically and there is no body within the Church to declare him deposed because of heresy. Such actions would come close to a kind of a heresy of conciliarism or episcopalism. The heresy of conciliarism or episcopalism says basically that there is a body within the Church (Ecumenical Council, Synod, College of Cardinals, College of Bishops), which can issue a legally binding judgment over the Pope.

The theory of the automatic loss of the papacy due to heresy remains only an opinion, and even St. Robert Bellarmine noticed this and did not present it as a teaching of the Magisterium itself. The perennial papal Magisterium never taught such an opinion. In 1917, when the Code of Canon Law (Codex Iuris Canonici) came into force, the Magisterium of the Church eliminated from the new legislation the remark of the Decretum Gratiani in the old Corpus Iuris Canonici, which stated that a Pope, who deviates from right doctrine, can be deposed. Never in history did the Magisterium of the Church admit any canonical procedures of deposition of a heretical pope. The Church has no power over the pope formally or judicially. The surer Catholic tradition says, that in the case of a heretical pope, the members of the Church can avoid him, resist him, refuse to obey him, all of which can be done without requiring a theory or opinion that says that a heretical pope automatically loses his office or can be deposed consequently.

Therefore, we must follow the surer way (via tutior) and abstain from defending the mere opinion of theologians (even they be Saints like St. Robert Bellarmine), which says that a heretical pope automatically loses his office or can be deposed by the Church therefore.

Read the rest here.

HT: Dr. Tighe

See also this and this.

First without equals

Bartholomew’s message: We don’t put our decisions to the judgment of the other Churches

Two worth reading

When a Catholic is invested as the Orthodox patriarch of Antioch

(cf: This)

Book Review: On the Reception of the Heterodox Into the Orthodox Church

Full disclosure: I have not yet read the book, though it is now on my 'to do' list. So, this is not a personal endorsement of the book. But the review is worth the read on its own. 

Catholics Debate: Regional Managers or Successors to the Apostles?

Last week, Bishop Joseph Strickland quoted a few lines from my latest article for Crisis Magazine called “The Great Convergence.” I wrote the piece, in part, to push back against what Bishop Athanasius Schneider calls the culture of papal-centrism we find everywhere in the modern Church. Here’s the paragraph Bishop Strickland tweeted:

"The West needs to remember that our bishops do not derive their authority from the pope. They are not the Vatican’s regional managers. They are Successors to the Apostles in their own right. They have their own teaching authority. They are the shepherds of their sheep."

For that, His Excellency was called a schismatic, a heretic, even an apostate. It goes to show how much confusion there is about the papacy even among faithful, well-informed Catholics. Apparently, quite a few of us think bishops are indeed the Vatican’s regional managers. They seem to think that the pope is the only real bishop, and that he simply rents out a little bit of his bishop-ness to the seven thousand ordinaries around the world.  

Clearly, that’s not the case. All bishops (including the pope) derive their authority from the same source: God. Our Lord consecrated the Twelve Apostles as bishops. The Apostles then passed on the authority of their office to a new generation through the laying on of hands. We call this line Apostolic Succession.  

As the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church puts it:

"For from the tradition, which is expressed especially in liturgical rites and in the practice of both the Church of the East and of the West, it is clear that, by means of the imposition of hands and the words of consecration, the grace of the Holy Spirit is so conferred, and the sacred character so impressed, that bishops in an eminent and visible way sustain the roles of Christ Himself as Teacher, Shepherd and High Priest, and that they act in His person. Therefore it pertains to the bishops to admit newly elected members into the Episcopal body by means of the sacrament of Orders."

Lumen Gentium goes on to explain: “This power, which they personally exercise in Christ’s name, is proper, ordinary and immediate, although its exercise is ultimately regulated by the supreme authority of the Church, and can be circumscribed by certain limits, for the advantage of the Church or of the faithful.” So, yes: bishops are bishops in their own right.  

It’s true that bishops are subject to higher authorities, including the pope. Yet it’s possible for them to exercise their episcopal office in defiance of the papacy. The Orthodox have been doing it for a thousand years. 

Read the rest here.

HT: Blog reader John L.

Quote of the day...

Important “the West needs to remember that our bishops do not derive their authority from the pope. They are not the Vatican’s regional managers. They are Successors to the Apostles in their own right. They have their own teaching authority. They are the shepherds of their sheep”

-Source

See also this.

Archbishop Makarios: The Orthodox Church cannot exist without the Ecumenical Patriarchate

“We Orthodox have a history of two thousand years. If during these two thousand years, the Orthodox Church did not have an Ecumenical Patriarchate, it should have created it. Because she would not have been able to proceed otherwise. I can not imagine the Orthodox Church without the Ecumenical Patriarchate. She cannot exist! Despite what is said and heard; despite the voices, the cold and icy voices from the north; the strange voices; the voices of secularisation, there can be no Orthodox Church without the first of Orthodoxy, who is the Ecumenical Patriarch.”

Read the rest here.

Honestly, he should just go off and join the Roman Catholics. He is clearly 3/4 of the way there already.

If Francis can abolish the ancient liturgical rites of the West; why can't (or wouldn't) he do the same to the East?

I am not going to excerpt this piece but rather encourage reading it in its entirety here. The implications of the pope's recent decree that comes dangerously close to the outright suppression of the Latin Church's 1500 year old liturgical patrimony, are breathtaking. Setting aside the obvious lack of prudence in Francis' decree, the suggestion that it is even within the legitimate powers of his office to do such a thing, should bring any talk of restoration of communion with Rome to a screeching halt. 

HT: Blog reader John L. 

P.S. This comment received via email... 

I'm surprised that Geoffrey Hull, the author of "The Banished Heart," hadn't gone full Byzantine - his entire thesis is that Rome had destroyed or mutilated every one of the liturgies of its non-Latin "sui iuris" churches long before Vatican II and the 1970 "reforms".

Raymond Rizk: Are we before the Spectacle of a Church Disintegrating?

Worth a read.

Primacy and Identity A Response to ‘First Without Equals’ and the Tragedy of Deficient Ecclesiology

 The paper that follows was originally drafted in 2015 as an internal reference document for members of various theological commissions, as a response to documents that had then been somewhat recently published and generated debate over the preceding years. The more recent events of 2018, centred in Ukraine but relating to questions of ecclesiological primacy that affect the whole Orthodox world (and which, at the present moment,1 are still very much ongoing), have given cause to disseminate the text more broadly, as a small study of some of the core ecclesiastical and theological principles involved.

We are witnessing, at the present moment, a fuller realisation of the disastrous theological and ecclesiological positions outlined in the text below, which were already nascent three years ago (and indeed further back). Improper theological visions of Church hierarchy and primacy have since led beyond the bold assertion of the unsupportable concept of a Primate who is ‘first without equals’, to the actual implementation of this flawed ecclesiology in one See’s direct violation of canonical order, based precisely on its insupportable belief that it has ultimate authority to act in its own right, in a manner binding upon all others.2 That this position, and the dire actions associated with it, is contrary to canonical order is the subject of many studies already; that it is the ‘logical’ fruit of a flawed vision of primacy and authority, rooted in misapplications of Trinitarian theology and a failure to understand episcopal-sacramental participation in the Body of Christ, is the object of what follows below.

Read the rest here.

Can Orthodoxy Live Without The Ecumenical Patriarchate?

An interesting reflection which can be read here.

I am inclined to agree with their conclusions. As Bill Tighe noted in a recent email discussion...

"Why not (if an outsider may opine)?  If it can exist without the first Rome, why can it not do likewise without the copy?"

Indeed.

Bishop Athanasius Yevtich: discusses Fr. George Florovsky's "The Limits of the Church"

It will be difficult for me to duly expound on the magnitude and importance of Fr. George Florovsky, the “ecumenical first-priest”, as he was referred to by his student, bishop Daniel (Krstich).[1] Nonetheless, with great love and gratitude to God and to Fr. George, I will always remember when as a Priestmonk I served Divine Liturgy with this great father, celebrant and theologian, in a 9th C Byzantine church, in the monastery of Saint Nicodemus in Athens, which later became known in the 19th C as the “Russian Church”. Afterwards, with the providence and grace of God, I had the honor to succeed him for three years (1970-1972) at the Orthodox Theological Institute of Saints Sergius in Paris, as chair of Patristics, along with Fr. Andrew Fyrilla. Before I met him, however, and got acquainted with him on a personal level, Fr. Justin Popovich spoke frequently about Fr. George Florovsky, with whom he spent years together during the German invasion in Serbia, when they would meet and discuss. Fr. Justin Popovich would call Fr. George Florovsky an “icon on the iconostasis of orthodox theology of the modern age”.

The organizers of this present colloquium asked me to speak on the subject, “Fr. George Florovsky on the Boundaries of the Church”. It concerns a very difficult subject and I will try to speak as objectively as I can, with complete respect towards Fr. George Florovsky, but with a critical approach towards the position that he formulated in his article. In previous sessions, there were already some presentations about Fr. Florovsky’s ecclesiology, which happens to be rich and multi-dimensional. His article on the “Boundaries of the Church”2, in my opinion constitutes an early phase in Fr. George Florovsky’s evolution. It was written in Paris on the feast day of Saint Sergius in 1933. It was published in English, then in Russian, and even then, in French and Serbian. There exists a translation in Greek3. Without a doubt, the article of Fr. Florovsky is written within the framework of the ecumenical movement, which also is a leading subject for his time as well as in our own. This fact is highlighted by the author himself, as he refers to an article of his, “On the Reunification of Christians”, which was published in a volume collection in 1933 in Paris, just as another older article of his, “The Problems of Christian Unification”4.

We will not [sic] continue the exhaustive analysis of this article by Fr. George Florovsky. The author briefly mentions in the text the apostolic and patristic events concerning the unity of the Church, by giving special emphasis on Saint Cyprian of Carthage. He presents and exercises criticism on the positions of Cyprian, and then goes to Saint Augustine and the practice of the Church in relation to the acceptance of heretics. Subsequently, the author refers to modern Russian theologians. Thus, on the one hand there is a mention of Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) and of Archbishop Hilarion (Troitsky) who considered that the charismatic boundaries of the Church coincide with the canonical. On the other hand, he refers to (Aleksey) Khomyakov and Philaret (Drozdov), the Metropolitan of Moscow, who considered that the charismatic and canonical borders of the Church did not coincide. I also remember Fr. Justin Popovich, who would say that the more correct and theologically orthodox position was held by Metropolitan Anthony and Archbishop Hilarion, that in other words, the charismatic and canonical boundaries of the Church coincide. It is interesting that in the same year, of 1933, an article was published, written by bishop Sergius (Stragorodski), the later Patriarch of Russia, which Fr. George Florovsky most likely did not have a chance to consider. These two theologians [Metropolitan Anthony and Archbishop Hilarion], although they wrote independently from each other, almost echo the same views word for word, resulting in concurring opinions on the limits of the Church. Fr. George Florovsky elicits the Greek theologians, [Christos] Androutsos and [Konstantinos] Diovouniotis, – rather old and conservative theologians, and mostly refers to them in relation to a commentary of his concerning economy of the Church. We must note that this commentary in particular was also weak. Fr. Florovsky does not proceed to analyze the great Fathers of the Church, although in approximately the same period he writes some of his greatest and famous works on Patristics, such as, “The Eastern Fathers of the 4th C”5, and “The Byzantine Fathers of the 6th- 8th Cs”.6

Read the rest here.
See also Fr. George Florovsky's actual essay here.

Many thanks to Fr. Peter Heers for posting this excellent translation.

Ecclesiology and non-Orthodox Baptisms

I draw the reader's attention to this post over at Byzantine Texas where there is a lively and (unusual for Orthodox blogs) sober discussion of non-Orthodox baptisms and their ecclesiological implications. Please leave any comments there.

ROCOR Holy Synod on the Proposed Texts for the Great and Holy Pan-Orthodox Synod

 To the Very Reverend and Reverend Clergy, Venerable Monastics and Pious Faithful of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia:

In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit!

In light of the welcome publication of the documents to be considered by the forthcoming Pan-Orthodox Council, scheduled to take place on Crete from 16-27 June 2016, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia has undertaken to examine these texts, together with a multitude of other Hierarchs, clergy and laity who are doing the same as preparations for the Council continue, and to communicate with our God-preserved flock and others the manner of suggestions we are proposing, since the documents of the Council are the cause of interest and questioning to very many. We are reminded, in this as in all things, of the words of the Lord to the Holy Apostle St. Peter, when He pronounced that the future shepherd’s work would be to feed My sheep (John 21:17); and likewise that the food for those who love Him is to diligently preserve what Christ has taught them: If ye love me, keep my commandments (John 14:15), and If a man love me, he will keep my words (John 14:23).

It is with zeal for such divine commandments that the whole plenitude of the Hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church seeks to apply the counsel of the Righteous Solomon: incline thine ear unto wisdom, and apply thine heart to understanding (Proverbs 2:2), scrutinizing the documents that have been made available to us with humility, diligence and obedience. This task is undertaken in a spirit free from fear or worldly worry, since we fervently trust that God Himself is ever the helmsman of the Church, and as He has guided her through the many centuries to our day, so He will continue to guide and preserve us now and until He comes again. Rather, we offer reflections on a few of the texts as a means of conjoining our thoughts to those of many others who are working for the good of all our inter-Orthodox endeavours, including His Holiness the Patriarch and those members of our Russian Orthodox Church who labour with him in these preparations.

While certain of the documents—which have been prepared by the Pre-Conciliar Conferences for the Council’s consideration, but which are of course not final texts and are necessarily preliminary—do not give rise for concern in our reading, and indeed contain elements of useful clarification (for example, the document “Autonomy and the Means of Proclaiming It”), the employment in others of ambiguous terminology, a lack of theological precision, and ecclesiological language foreign to the sacred tradition of the Church, demand commentary that may lead to their correction. This is most notably the case in two documents: “Relations of the Orthodox Church with the Rest of the Christian World”, and “The Mission of the Orthodox Church in Today’s World”; and a few issues arise also with the procedural text entitled “Organisation and Working Procedure of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church.”

Read the rest here.

Fr. Thomas Hopko: The One True Church

 Orthodox Christians claim that the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Chalcedonian Orthodox Church, is the one true Church of Christ. That’s the confession of faith that we make. Of course, we have to say right away that there are members of the Orthodox Church who are relativistic, especially in America, there would be those who could say, “Well, all churches are the same,” and, “no one can claim the truth,” and, “different churches have different things,” so we really shouldn’t be so proud and so arrogant as to say that our church is the only church or the only true church, that we really should not do that. However, that is the teaching.

I mean, it really is the teaching of the Holy Scripture and certainly of the Councils and certainly of the Holy Fathers and the saints. There would be no doubt at all, absolutely no doubt, that it is really a dogma. I would say that, a kind of a formal, official conviction and teaching in the Eastern Orthodox Church, that the Eastern Orthodox Church and only the Eastern Orthodox Church is really, truly, fully the one Church of Christ.

It is the Church of the Messiah. It is the qahal Israel. It is the assembly of Israel in the Messiah, in Jesus, to which Gentiles like myself may now be included by faith and grace. And that indeed this church is the Church. Certainly it would be a dogma, an absolutely official teaching of the Eastern Orthodox Church, that at baptisms and at the Holy Eucharist, at the Divine Liturgy—and we also do this at the compline service at the daily services in church—we say the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. And we say it in the singular: not “we” as the Council said it, but “I,” meaning “I accept it, I believe this.”

Read the rest here.

OCA Holy Synod issues Preliminary Response to canonical restructuring proposals

A Preliminary Response of the Holy Synod of Bishops of the Orthodox Church in America to proposals with regard to canonical restructuring, a topic of discussion at the fifth meeting of the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of the United States of America in Dallas, TX September 15-19, 2014, was issued and distributed to all bishops on September 17.

The text of the Preliminary Response reads as follows.

Read the rest here.

Dr. Adam DeVille Responds to the Russian Church's Statement on Primacy

Dr. DeVille has written a critical response to the MP's long awaited document on primacy. As I have said repeatedly, the document was only incidentally addressed to Rome. The real target was Constantinople, and it definitely got their attention. In all honesty I was not exactly bowled over by the Moscow document. It seems like a fairly cavalier and breathtakingly short document for such a weighty subject. And I don't think Adam is too far off the mark in his suggestion that Moscow is trying to reduce the Ecumenical Patriarch to an ecclesiastical equivalent to The Queen of England, i.e. a figurehead.

All of which lends further weight to my long held view that we have no business holding discussions aimed at ending a thousand year schism with Rome, until we have our own ducks in a row. Conversations with Rome should be limited to areas of mutual interest, such as charity and the collapse of western civilization before the twin threats of militant secularism and militant Islam while we sort out our internal issues.

I will be most interested to see what becomes of this much discussed but never quite materializing Pan-Orthodox Synod.

Constantinople Responds to Moscow on Primacy

The Ecumenical Patriarchate has posted a response to the position paper from the Holy Synod of the Russian Church on primacy. As I noted in an earlier post, the Russian paper seemed to be directed more towards Constantinople than Rome, to whom it was ostensibly addressed.

Russia Declares China And Japan To Be Their Canonical Territory

Read the report here.