Cardinal Koch visits Ukraine to deepen Catholic-Orthodox dialogue

[Nestor_kea]

Remember that the 4 ancient Patriarchates were established to rule their own corner of the Roman Empire. Jerusalem was given this status merely as an honorific being the Holy City. New Patriarchates are needed to rule the other lands beyond the First Millennium Roman/Byzantine Empire. But Rome has chosen to extend her borders rather than establish new Patriarchs in places like the Americas and the Far East.

The Orthodox choice was to establish national patriarchates and having many independent churches what I find worse. 1 pope (well, two – there is also Alexandrian), 5 patriarch, 40 catholicoi… is in my opinion better than 1 pope and 45 patriarchs. Catholic patriarchs are in a way quite self-governing (and decentralization of Western part was necessary because it had been, was, and is huge) and if they were larger in area, they would be more.

What about structure like this?

• Rome exclusively in Western Europe, Scandinavia, part of Americas, maybe Philippines, or temporary in very problematic regions;
• Constantinople exclusively in Western Turkey, former USSR, and Greece;
• Alexandria exclusively in nearly the whole Africa;
• Antioch exclusively in East ~ Asia minus C.+J. territories;
• Jerusalem exclusively in Palestine, Sinai, Jordan, Arabic Peninsula, Cyprus, maybe Australia and Oceania;
• overlappings R.-C. in Central Europe, Balcany minus Greece;
• overlaping R.-Ax. in “Carthago”;
• overlapings C.-Ant. in the whole Turkey;
• Americas somehow solved, or somehow combined (or maybe unsolved).

Pros of R.-C. overlapings in Central Europe: for example exGreek-Catholics would feel more “safe” under Roman patriarch and exOrthodoxes would feel better under Constantinople.

In this way each patriarch would be like “smaller pope” now with huge enough agenda and delf-ruling but not too huge for one super-hierarch.

Within patriarchates there could be catholicoi for special or larger areas according to need but some directly patriarchal areas left. Maybe restoration of primates would help (but not as borders of old monarchies were). Then there are metropolitans and so on.

(When I imagine Moscow patriarch in lower rank they would be probably furious and he would have to be remained… so Constantinople would have neraly nothing and hence as Ecumenical one with free hands for “territories amongs barbarians” = America)

I just thing we don’t need so many hierarchs in as high officies as possible. If someone is “super-hierarch”, so with 20-30 % of world under him and not just one nation or state. I think that national churches are bad idea. Organization according to nations / peoples / gentiles is quite good but they should be metropolitans or primates (max. catholicoi), not patriarchs because patriarchs (with pope) are absolutily above everything.

 

[ConstantineTG]

The Orthodox choice was to establish national patriarchates and having many independent churches what I find worse. 1 pope (well, two – there is also Alexandrian), 5 patriarch, 40 catholicoi… is in my opinion better than 1 pope and 45 patriarchs. Catholic patriarchs are in a way quite self-governing (and decentralization of Western part was necessary because it had been, was, and is huge) and if they were larger in area, they would be more.

I think you misunderstand Orthodox ecclesiology. The choice to divide by political jurisdictions started with the early Church, and this included the Roman Church. The Metropolias and eventually the Patriarchates were based on the Roman political map of cities and provinces. As time went by these political jurisdictions extended to foreign kingdoms (like Rus) until the national Churches we have today. And to say the Roman Church never did it is a denial of the history of the Roman Church. Not too long ago there were national synods in the Roman Church, where the Primate occupied the see of the capital city of a nation (or what at the time was the captial). The Archbishop of Washington DC today is still known as the Primate of the United States. Only in the post-Vatican II ecclesiology did Rome do away with this model and introduced a flatter ecclesiology where bishops form national Episcopal Conferences which are in no way synodal (bishops are not bound to any decision made by a Conference, they can always opt out).

The Orthodox just followed what was already there from the early Church, following political divisions as a way to outline the jurisdictions of bishops. Back then it made a lot of sense because cities weren’t close to one another anyway so you can’t really have one bishop head more than one city if the next city is half-a-day’s journey away. Also, it just so happens that through time these jurisdictions became different nations. For example, Alexandria, Antioch and Constantinople were all part of the Byzantine Empire, they weren’t national Churches. But circumstances over the 2000-year (or 1700 year for Constantinople) history has changed the demographics and the political boundaries for those jurisdictions.