Hello Ave,
Hmmm… where to start ?
I personally think that the Eastern Catholic churches represent some form of how reunion should take place.
I at one time had thought the same.
However, this is not a form the early church had taken, it is quite a new thing. The Unia is not a replication of the early church, it is actually a new model, a modification of the highly centralized Latin church (which is also a new thing in it’s extreme centralization).
… What I mean by that is many of the things which the Latins teach… as towards the filioque, the immaculate conception, assumption – are all based off of the Latin language and the concepts of St. Augustine.
True, for starters, and St Augustine is highly respected in Orthodox circles too. But St Augustine was a good man and a seminal thinker who was open to correction. His presence as an author and bishop was not a problem in his lifetime.
It is a complex of thinking that involves a string of individuals (many probably unknown and nameless to us today), that stretches from Augustine through the Council of Orange and saint Anselm (among many others) that mark out a line of thought which departs by degree from the Orthodoxy of the early church.
I do not see how St. Augustine could be incorrect in all of his views, for as St. Justin Martyr said we all have the *spermatikos logos *inside of us. We can not be wrong about everything.
The same can be said of many others as well
Augustine believed in double-Predestination, and the Catholic church never adopted it. But John Calvin read him and taught it.
Saint Augustine was not a Pope, nor a prophet, and he was not infallible. But he was a popular Latin author and he had a lot of influence in western thought, which led to other ideas over time which tend to keep us from understanding each other today.
I feel that the differences too between original sin, and ancestral sin are simply due to cultural context and language barriers.
I feel a bit differently.
Cultural context and language barriers can interfere with us understanding one another and communicating with one another, which can make it difficult for new ideas to spread. Which is probably why Saint Augustine’s new idea of the damnation of infants did not spread easily into the east. It was still a new opinion, a new explanation for an already ancient practice of baptism by immersion.
I’ve met a Catholic before on here, who told me that the Pope will not try to run the governing structure of Orthodox churches should they reunite. He would only assist in a similar manner to other Popes in the past, by preaching ex cathedra on matters of doctrine. This is not to say that, he can’t come to a consensus with the other Patriarchs before making such a pronouncement… as it was said that before the Assumption was proclaimed, Pope Pius met with several bishops about it.
Teaching authority and administration are two separate issues.
I think that the Latin concept of administration from the top is a bit flawed, but the bishop of Rome would genuinely have administrative authority over most, if not all, of Italy. That was the extent of the Metropolitanate of Rome.
Beyond that, there are other Metropolitan Sees and synods.
The Roman Catholic church has been operating under the theory that all offices in the church are delegated from the Pope. This seems to apply even to Patriarchates, which are allowed to run themselves but do not have the inalienable right to do so.
Thus we have an office which has attempted to control the entire church from at least the time of the Gregorian Reform, claims the exclusive right to call councils and approve them, and now claims the right to unilaterally declare definitions of dogma without bothering to even put the matter before a council. This is an entirely new concept, developed over time and not really attributable to someone like St Augustine.
In the past, only heretics have ever ventured to declare dogma unilaterally.
Pax et Bona,
Okedoke…
