Eastern Churches and the title of Cardinal?

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As far as I’m concerned, the title “Cardinal” should NEVER be given outside the Latin Church. Personally, I find it patronizing and frankly demeaning to give it to Patriarchs and Cahtolicoi who, by virtue of their own elected office, are superior to some Latin honorific.
 
I think they should be Cardinals during pontifical elections.
 
malphono said:
As far as I’m concerned, the title “Cardinal” should NEVER be given outside the Latin Church. Personally, I find it patronizing and frankly demeaning to give it to Patriarchs and Cahtolicoi who, by virtue of their own elected office, are superior to some Latin honorific.
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Quite a lot of Greek Catholics (especially Melkites) agree with your opinion. Is this also a common opinion among Oriental Catholics (especially Maronites)?
 
malphono said:
As far as I’m concerned, the title “Cardinal” should NEVER be given outside the Latin Church.
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Is there a more acceptable title which might be preferable? Elector, for instance?
Or is there another change or way of addressing this issue which might be more agreeable to those who find it troubling?

Thank you to you and to Peter J for your responses. 🙂
May they bring me to deeper understanding.
Amen.
 
jeannetherese said:
Is there a more acceptable title which might be preferable? Elector, for instance?
Or is there another change or way of addressing this issue which might be more agreeable to those who find it troubling?

Thank you to you and to Peter J for your responses. 🙂
May they bring me to deeper understanding.
Amen.
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If it was just a matter of changing the term used, I don’t think that would help…
 
Thank you Peter J.
Lots of prayer for peace in our house.
:crossrc::byzsoc::crossrc::byzsoc:
jt
 
jeannetherese said:
Is there a more acceptable title which might be preferable? Elector, for instance?
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No, the title “Patriarch” or “Catholicos” would be quite enough. 🙂
jeannetherese said:
Or is there another change or way of addressing this issue which might be more agreeable to those who find it troubling?
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In the mid-1970s, one of the very few positive proposal from the then Pontificate in Rome was to cease naming Patriarchs and Catholicoi to the “red hat” and instead give them an ex-officio vote in conclave. Of course that never happened, and the idea was dead and buried when the subsequent 25 year long pontificate began. And the bestowal of the “red hat” continues. 🤷
 
malphono said:
No, the title “Patriarch” or “Catholicos” would be quite enough. 🙂
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Thank you. Perhaps we shall see this in our lifetimes.
May God bless us all.
Amen.
malphono said:
In the mid-1970s, one of the very few positive proposal from the then Pontificate in Rome was to cease naming Patriarchs and Catholicoi to the “red hat” and instead give them an ex-officio vote in conclave. Of course that never happened, and the idea was dead and buried when the subsequent 25 year long pontificate began. And the bestowal of the “red hat” continues. 🤷
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Thank you malphono. Your post has been very helpful to me.
jt
 
Perhaps if we had more Eastern Catholic Cardinals, we could get a Pope from an Eastern Sui Juris Church?
 
Ignatius said:
Perhaps if we had more Eastern Catholic Cardinals, we could get a Pope from an Eastern Sui Juris Church?
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This is a good question that comes now and again. However, it usually carries with it a hidden assumption: namely, that we want to get one of our EC (I mean GC or OC) bishops into the papacy.
 
malphono said:
As far as I’m concerned, the title “Cardinal” should NEVER be given outside the Latin Church. Personally, I find it patronizing and frankly demeaning to give it to Patriarchs and Cahtolicoi who, by virtue of their own elected office, are superior to some Latin honorific.
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I agree with your statement on Eastern Catholic Patriarchs and Major Archbishops being cardinals Malphono, they should have the right to elect by their pre-described titles alone but I’m curious to why Rome has never elected Eastern Bishops of lower standing into the College.
 
Thomas48 said:
I agree with your statement on Eastern Catholic Patriarchs and Major Archbishops being cardinals Malphono, they should have the right to elect by their pre-described titles alone but I’m curious to why Rome has never elected Eastern Bishops of lower standing into the College.
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Good question, I don’t know either. But on the other hand, this occurs to me: there has, for some time now, been a trend of increasing the total number of cardinals. If that trend continues, maybe we will see two cardinals in one of the larger ECs churches. (I’m just speculating of course.)
 
I find this whole situation odd, so I was reading the Wikipedia article on cardinals last night and it said that the only Eastern Catholics who are also cardinals are the Maronite and Coptic Catholic patriarchs emeriti, and the current Maronite patriarch, whereas many clergy of lesser rank in the Roman Church are cardinals.

Honestly, it kinda reminds me of comedian Chris Rock’s routine about how his neighborhood reflects racial inequality in America: He is able to live there because he is a multimillionaire and one of the most famous comedians on the planet. His neighbor is white and a dentist, but he’s not the world’s most famous dentist, or the most acclaimed dentist in the country or anything like that. He’s just a regular dentist.

Hmmm. :hmmm:
 
I was also doing a bit of brushing up regarding which Eastern prelates are cardinals, and found this statement from 2012
Now we have 5 living Eastern Catholic Hierarchs who are part of the Sacred College of the Cardinals, and they are the following: His Beatitude Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, Major Archbishop Emeritus of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church; His Beatitude Cardinal Antonios Naguib, Patriarch of the Coptic Catholic Church; His Beatitude Cardinal Ignace Moussa Daoud, Patriarch Emeritus of the Syrian Catholic Church and Prefect Emeritus of the Congregation of the Eastern Churches; His Beatitude Cardinal Nasrallah Pierre Sfeir, Patriarch Emeritus of the Maronite Catholic Church and His Beatitude Cardinal Emmanuel III Delly, Patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church.
…
Pope Benedict XVI announced on 2012.01.06 that he would elevate the following 22 prelates to the Sacred College of Cardinals in a consistory on 2012.02.18. And among this list of this Ordinaries two Heads coming from 2 different Sui Iuris Eastern Catholic Churches, namely His Beatitude George Alencherry of the Syro Malabar Catholic Church and His Beatitude Lucian Muresan of the Romanian Greek Catholic Church.
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Granted in 2.5 years (or less) things can change; but even so I’m surprised/puzzled to learn about the statement on wiki,
dzheremi said:
… I was reading the Wikipedia article on cardinals last night and it said that the only Eastern Catholics who are also cardinals are the Maronite and Coptic Catholic patriarchs emeriti, and the current Maronite patriarch,
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I am a bit confused myself. I just checked it again and it appears that the three I listed are the so-called “Cardinal Bishops”, so it would appear that the other two who make up the five total are something other than Cardinal Bishops, but Wiki appears to contradict itself in this portion, so I am not quite sure what to think. From the article, we get the following definition of what a Cardinal Bishop is: ‘Though in modern times most cardinals are also bishops, the term “cardinal bishop” only refers to the cardinals who are titular bishops of one of the “suburbicarian” sees.’ But then, later in the same section, it says:
In 1965, Pope Paul VI decreed in his motu proprio Ad Purpuratorum Patrum that patriarchs of the Eastern Catholic Churches who were named cardinals would also be part of the episcopal order, ranked after the six cardinal bishops of the suburbicarian sees (who had been relieved of direct responsibilities for those sees by Pope John XXIII three years earlier). Not holding a suburbicarian see, they cannot elect the dean or become dean. There are currently three Eastern Patriarchs who are cardinal bishops:
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Code: 
Nasrallah Sfeir, Patriarch Emeritus of Antioch of the Maronites
Antonios Naguib, Patriarch Emeritus of Alexandria of the Copts
Bechara Boutros al-Rahi, Patriarch of Antioch of the Maronites
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So on the one hand, a cardinal bishop must hold a suburbicarian see. On the other hand, the above three don’t, yet they are still counted as ‘Cardinal bishops’.

Huh? :confused:

I don’t understand what’s going on here. Not that it matters…it’s just weird is all.
 
Ah, alright. So there are just three Patriarchs who are cardinals now – I see now that two of the ones in the quote I gave have passed away since then.

So it seems we resolved one issue but opened up another one. :tsktsk: I’m familiar with the “cardinal bishop”/“cardinal priest”/“cardinal deacon” distinction, but as you say there’s a contradiction in wiki – though maybe just a matter of author-carelessness, like omitting the word “usually”. Perhaps a Latin expert will weigh in. 🙂
 
Peter_J said:
This is a good question that comes now and again. However, it usually carries with it a hidden assumption: namely, that we want to get one of our EC (I mean GC or OC) bishops into the papacy.
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It also carries an assumption that non-ECs will not accept the guidance of the Holy Spirit in accepting an EC in the papacy .😦
May our Lord help us to move beyond such assumptions.
Amen.
:signofcross:
 
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