Idea to unify all Christians with pope as pastoral leader

[ralphinal]

Are you serious? If you have time, could you provide me a pointer or links to read more about this?

I’ll see what I can find. I worked for a Honda Dealership for 9 yeras, and this information was sent out a couple of times by Honda of America.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

The problem with this is that part of unity involves mutual accountability, and since Christianity is an irreducibly theological religion (i.e., our faith essentially involves commitment to paradoxical beliefs with complex intellectual ramifications), that accountability must include doctrine.

There would have to be some consensus reached that certain historically church-dividing issues did not in fact need to be church-dividing. And that’s where things get sticky, though the Joint Declaration does show that this sort of thing is possible.

This would mean denying Papal or Conciliar infallibility.​

Actually, infallibility already been comprehensively mugged: so another denial is not going to make a difference. PR is all.

I don’t expect Rome to decide that some Catholic dogmas suddenly aren’t needed any more.

If certain persons are correct, the last 14 or so Ecumenical Councils held West of the Danube are not truly ecumenical - which puts paid to their definitions. Latins must believe in a Pope who can speaks infallibly - Orientals can believe him to be wrong. This is a recipe for chaos. It makes the C of E look ultra-trad.​

But what those of us outside the Roman Communion can do is start acting *now *as if the Pope was our chief pastor. I think that would do a lot toward bringing union. The problem is that those of us who see things this way are generally regarded as eccentric and inconsistent by the folks we go to church with. Most people think, as one poster on this thread said, that if they wanted the Pope as their pastor they would just convert to Catholicism.

Edwin

Conversion is not a one-issue matter; someone who can switch from Church to Church B at the drop of a hat should not be received. Convictions can’t be changed like T-shirts, so neither can churchmanship (which is what the “why-don’t-they-leave” merchants forget).​

 

[jfhh]

Question 1: What does a “chief pastor” actually do?

He would do different things for the different ecclesial communities according to what they would expect or be willing to accept from him. So for Catholics, it would remain the same as now. For Protestants, he would do things like call for an international day of prayer and be a fellow servant of God in meeting with other pastors and listening to their concerns and what they feel God wants him to do as chief pastor. So for Catholics it would be an authoritative role; for Anglicans, a little less so, for Orthodox, likewise, and for Protestants, a collaborative role or consultative role.

 

[Peter_J]

If certain persons are correct, the last 14 or so Ecumenical Councils held West of the Danube are not truly ecumenical - which puts paid to their definitions.​

Even if those latter 14 council weren’t Ecumenical Councils, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the dogmas they defined are not truly dogmas. (I’ve heard this proposed as a compromise: that the whole question of whether they are Ecumenical Councils can be sidestepped by agreeing that they are “Dogmatic Councils”.)

Latins must believe in a Pope who can speaks infallibly - Orientals can believe him to be wrong. This is a recipe for chaos.

Not so. Latin Catholics and Eastern Catholics all believe in a Pope who can speak infallibly and who is sometimes wrong.

 

[Ahimsa]

Not so. Latin Catholics and Eastern Catholics all believe in a Pope who can speak infallibly and who is sometimes wrong.

True. The Pope is indeed infallible…except when he’s not.

 

[Peter_J]

True. The Pope is indeed infallible…except when he’s not.

Yes.

Is that so hard to believe?

 

[a_mirror_dimly]

Yes.

Is that so hard to believe?

Well without infallible rules for determining which of the Pope’s statements are in fact infallible it has always struck me as rather strange to bother defining such a doctrine at all, it essentially becomes a tautology.

 

[jfhh]

Well without infallible rules for determining which of the Pope’s statements are in fact infallible it has always struck me as rather strange to bother defining such a doctrine at all, it essentially becomes a tautology.

The infallibility doctrine proclaimed in Vatican I applies to its own proclamation. There’s no tautology. There’s a specific set of conditions and those conditions happened to have been met when those conditions were layed out in Vatican I.

 

[Peter_J]

Well without infallible rules for determining which of the Pope’s statements are in fact infallible it has always struck me as rather strange to bother defining such a doctrine at all, it essentially becomes a tautology.

The rules are infallible. If they seem strange to you, it’s probably because they are not, shall we shall, legalistic.

For example, one of the conditions is that the Pope must be acting in the role of chief shepherd and teacher of all Christians. But it’s not like there a light bulb in the Pope forehead that glows whenever he is acting in the role of chief shepherd and teacher of all Christians.

 

[a_mirror_dimly]

The rules are infallible. If they seem strange to you, it’s probably because they are not, shall we shall, legalistic.

For example, one of the conditions is that the Pope must be acting in the role of chief shepherd and teacher of all Christians. But it’s not like there a light bulb in the Pope forehead that glows whenever he is acting in the role of chief shepherd and teacher of all Christians.

Indeed, maybe my wording was unclear, but that’s my very point. You don’t have an infallible way of determining what’s infallible, which rather undermines the point of having such a doctrine in the first place I’d think. If the Pope is capable of making both correct and incorrect statements and we don’t have a way of distinguishing the two, the statement becomes “when the Pope is speaking the truth, what he says is true”.

At any rate, I’ll this this my last post on the matter in this thread, as I don’t want to detract from the original topic. If you’d like to discuss it more, I’d be happy to do so in another thread.

 

[SIA]

JPII asked people to think about and even give him ideas on new ways to think about and exercise the Petrine ministry.

I don’t expect my idea to come to fruition ever, but I think it’s a good idea anyway

My idea is that all Christians would accept him as chief pastor. But no belief would be required for membership besides accepting him as chief pastor and a spirit of unity.

Then the traditional Catholic part of the new church would function just as it did always. Women wouild not be ordained, people not adhereing to Real Presence would not receive Communion, etc. And the pope would be recognized as chief pastor BUT the pope would STILL issue edicts just for these Catholics – so the pope would relate to the traditional Catholic Church just as before.

And the Anglican part of the new church would function a little differently. It would do as it does now except that the pope would be accepted as the head of the church instead of the Queen. Pastoral decisions of the pope would accomodate Anglican practice and views or if pastoral decisions would involve formal cooperation in evil (ex. appointing a woman as a bishop), then the pope could just let parts of the church be semi-autonomous.

And the Orthodox Churches would be in the same relationship to the pope as before the schism as they understand it. So they would view the pope of Rome as first among equals and the pope would respect that view. The only change would be that the Orthodox would have a practical acknowledgement of the pope in that special role of honor and apostolic authority and the pope could intervene when there is a dispute as the first among equals. Basically it would be exactly what the Orthodox want in their dialogue with Rome. Only difference is that the Anglicans would be given what they want too. The church would be a diverse organic unity with some parts (ex. Catholic and Orthodox) united in ways that other parts (ex. Catholic and Anglican) are not. IOW, there would be a lowest common denominator (acceptable to Protestants too), of pope as chief pastor and a spirit of unity. But there would be sub-ecclessial communities and communities of communities that have higher common denominators within the Big Tent. So in the Big Tent, there’s MidSize Tents that are in it and within the MidSize maybe some Little Tents too.

In a nut shell, everything in terms of beliefs would stay the same but structurally there would be greater unity and spiritually there would be a greater cohesion amongst all Christians.

No thanks.

 

[jfhh]

You don’t have an infallible way of determining what’s infallible, which rather undermines the point of having such a doctrine in the first place I’d think.

No you do. The doctrine defined at Vatican I spelling out when it is infallible, is ITSELF an infallible doctrine. The doctrine APPLIES TO ITSELF.

Your position is like saying that this sentence doesn’t make sense:

For every sentence beggining with the word “for” I will give you five dollars.

You can apply that sentence to itself and ask me for the five dollars. Same deal with the Vatican I definition of the RULES for when infallibility KICKS IN. You SELF-APPLY those rules to the ACT which defined them and see if they would kick in. They happen to in fact kick in.

You can argue the definition is wrong. Arguing it is incoherent just demonstrates you haven’t thought it through enough IMO.

 

[Triciacat]

But there would be sub-ecclessial communities and communities of communities that have higher common denominators within the Big Tent. So in the Big Tent, there’s MidSize Tents that are in it and within the MidSize maybe some Little Tents too.

I think I would get lost in Tent City. Speaking of tents:

“For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For indeed in this house we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven…For indeed while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed, but to be clothed, in order that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.” (2 Corinthians 5:1,2,4)

 

[Peter_J]

Indeed, maybe my wording was unclear, but that’s my very point. You don’t have an infallible way of determining what’s infallible, which rather undermines the point of having such a doctrine in the first place I’d think. If the Pope is capable of making both correct and incorrect statements and we don’t have a way of distinguishing the two, the statement becomes “when the Pope is speaking the truth, what he says is true”.

At any rate, I’ll this this my last post on the matter in this thread, as I don’t want to detract from the original topic. If you’d like to discuss it more, I’d be happy to do so in another thread.

a_mirror_dimly,

I think you have a valid objection, although I’m not sure you’re stating it correctly. (I think that instead of saying that we “don’t have an infallible way of determining what’s infallible” you need to use a qualifier like “legalistic”.) But in any case, the very same objection that can be made about Catholicism can also be made about Eastern Orthodoxy.

You can judge for yourself. Here’s an explanation of their “infallible way of determining what’s infallible”:

…

 

[Peter_J]

…

But councils of bishops can err and be deceived. How then can one be certain that a particular gathering is truly an Ecumenical Council and therefore that its decrees are infallible? Many councils have considered themselves ecumenical and have claimed to speak in the name of the whole Church, and yet the Church has rejected them as heretical: Ephesus in 449, for example, or the Iconoclast Council of Hieria in 754, or Florence in 1438-9. Yet these councils seem in no way different in outward appearance from the Ecumenical Councils. What, then, is the criterion for determining whether a council is ecumenical?

This is a more difficult question to answer than might at first appear, and though it has been much discussed by Orthodox during the past hundred years, it cannot be said that the solutions suggested are entirely satisfactory. All Orthodox know which are the seven Councils that their Church accepts as ecumenical, but precisely what it is that makes a council ecumenical is not so clear. There are, so it must be admitted, certain points in the Orthodox theology of Councils which remain obscure and which call for further thinking on the part of theologians. With this caution in mind, let us briefly consider the present trend of Orthodox thought on this subject.

To the question how one can know whether a council is ecumenical, Khomiakov and his school gave an answer which at first sight appears clear and straightforward: a council cannot be considered ecumenical unless its decrees are accepted by the whole Church. Florence, Hieria, and the rest, while ecumenical in outward appearance, are not truly so, precisely because they failed to secure this acceptance by the Church at large. (One might object: What about Chalcedon? It was rejected by Syria and Egypt — can we say, then, that it was ‘accepted by the Church at large’?) The bishops, so Khomiakov argued, because they are the teachers of the faith, define and proclaim the truth in council; but these definitions must then be acclaimed by the whole people of God, including the laity, because it is the whole people of God that constitutes the guardian of Tradition. This emphasis on the need for councils to be received by the Church at large has been viewed with suspicion by some Orthodox theologians, both Greek and Russian, who fear that Khomiakov and his followers have endangered the prerogatives of the episcopate and ‘democratized’ the idea of the Church. But in a qualified and carefully guarded form, Khomiakov’s view is now fairly widely accepted in contemporary Orthodox thought.

This act of acceptance, this reception of councils by the Church as a whole, must not be understood in a juridical sense: ‘It does not mean that the decisions of the councils should be confirmed by a general plebiscite and that without such a plebiscite they have no force. There is no such plebiscite. But from historical experience it clearly appears that the voice of a given council has truly been the voice of the Church or that it has not: that is all’ (S. Bulgakov, The Orthodox Church , p. 89).

At a true Ecumenical Council the bishops recognize what the truth is and proclaim it; this proclamation is then verified by the assent of the whole Christian people, an assent which is not, a rule, expressed formally and explicitly, but lived .

It is not merely the numbers or the distribution of its members which determines the ecumenicity of a council: ‘An ‘Ecumenical’ Council is such, not because accredited representatives of all the Autocephalous Churches have taken part in it, but because it has borne witness to the faith of the Ecumenical Church’ (Metropolitan Seraphim, L’Église orthodoxe , p. 51).

The ecumenicity of a council cannot be decided by outward criteria alone: ‘Truth can have no external criterion, for it is manifest of itself and made inwardly plain’ (V. Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church , p. 188). The infallibility of the Church must not be ‘exteriorized,’ nor understood in too ‘material’ a sense: ‘It is not the ‘ecumenicity’ but the truth of the councils which makes their decisions obligatory for us. We touch here upon the fundamental mystery of the Orthodox doctrine of the Church: the Church is the miracle of the presence of God among men, beyond all formal ‘criteria,’ all formal ‘infallibility.’ It is not enough to summon an ‘Ecumenical Council’ … it is also necessary that in the midst of those so assembled there should be present He who said: " I am the Way, the Truth, the Life." Without this presence, however numerous and representative the assembly may be, it will not be in the truth. Protestants and Catholics usually fail to understand this fundamental truth of Orthodoxy: both materialize the presence of God in the Church — the one party in the letter of Scripture, the other in the person of the Pope — though they do not thereby avoid the miracle, but clothe it in a concrete form. For Orthodoxy, the sole ‘criterion of truth’ remains God Himself, living mysteriously in the Church, leading it in the way of the Truth’ (J. Meyendorff, quoted by M. J. le Guillou, Missio et Unité, Paris, 1960, vol. 2, p. 313).

• from The Orthodox Church by Bishop Kallistos Ware

 

[guanophore]

??? a Christian is one who accepts Jesus as his Lord and Savior…PERIOD. No where in Scripture does salvation depend on belonging to your church.

There is no distinction between them. One who accepts Jesus as His Head is then united to His Body in baptism. There is only One faith, one baptism, one body, which is the Church. Those who accept Jesus as Lord and Saviour become members of His One Church.

 

[thirdn6]

JPII asked people to think about and even give him ideas on new ways to think about and exercise the Petrine ministry.

I don’t expect my idea to come to fruition ever, but I think it’s a good idea anyway

My idea is that all Christians would accept him as chief pastor. But no belief would be required for membership besides accepting him as chief pastor and a spirit of unity.

Then the traditional Catholic part of the new church would function just as it did always. Women wouild not be ordained, people not adhereing to Real Presence would not receive Communion, etc. And the pope would be recognized as chief pastor BUT the pope would STILL issue edicts just for these Catholics – so the pope would relate to the traditional Catholic Church just as before.

And the Anglican part of the new church would function a little differently. It would do as it does now except that the pope would be accepted as the head of the church instead of the Queen. Pastoral decisions of the pope would accomodate Anglican practice and views or if pastoral decisions would involve formal cooperation in evil (ex. appointing a woman as a bishop), then the pope could just let parts of the church be semi-autonomous.

And the Orthodox Churches would be in the same relationship to the pope as before the schism as they understand it. So they would view the pope of Rome as first among equals and the pope would respect that view. The only change would be that the Orthodox would have a practical acknowledgement of the pope in that special role of honor and apostolic authority and the pope could intervene when there is a dispute as the first among equals. Basically it would be exactly what the Orthodox want in their dialogue with Rome. Only difference is that the Anglicans would be given what they want too. The church would be a diverse organic unity with some parts (ex. Catholic and Orthodox) united in ways that other parts (ex. Catholic and Anglican) are not. IOW, there would be a lowest common denominator (acceptable to Protestants too), of pope as chief pastor and a spirit of unity. But there would be sub-ecclessial communities and communities of communities that have higher common denominators within the Big Tent. So in the Big Tent, there’s MidSize Tents that are in it and within the MidSize maybe some Little Tents too.

In a nut shell, everything in terms of beliefs would stay the same but structurally there would be greater unity and spiritually there would be a greater cohesion amongst all Christians.

another one of innovative ideas just to get away with disobedience and from the authority of the Church…:dts:

 

[Smber2c]

How about this though: allow multiple Church membership ? A Catholic could go to Mass, then, in the afternoon, to a Baptist or Anglican or other church. Eventually, what with everyone going to several churches, the divisions would solve themselves. Perhaps

But ‘Perhaps’ not. In college I liked a Methodist girl so I attended Methodist services for a whole year while still making it to mass. During the time I met tons of great methodists, I was in several Bible studies, and attended 3 years of weekly Wesley worship service…but dozens and dozens of times I had to just bite my tongue and say “I’m in their house - I don’t publically confront their pastor.”
In the same way there are a dozen Catholic/Orthodox/Protestant/non-denominational Protestant disagreements in this thread, this happen in all the churches too. I guess this could be a Heavenly situation for relativists that don’t think that Truth with a big “T” matters…but to anyone else worship isn’t the same when the pastor is preaching an homily and every 5th point you think, “No, that’s not true.”

I don’t see this getting anywhere - OTOH, the Church is one in Christ, & that is where it matters: man’s divisiveness does not extend to Heaven. And that makes our earthly divisions of very slight importance

I love that you mention Heaven, because that’s the crux of it all. You’re correct, “man’s divisiveness does not extend to Heaven.” However, that doesn’t mean all beliefs get in…no, no, no. Heaven is total prefection and only True Truth can enter. Anything with the tinyest speck of mistruth or falsehood is left at the door. Just look at how Jesus let those who couldn’t accept His Eucharistic teaching walk away.
In Heaven we will have perfectly formed belief. Either Mary was ever Virgin or was not. The Pope was either The Vicar of Christ or not. Contraception was either right or not. Masturbation is either right or not. And all who enter will know that perfectly.
I don’t guarantee that Catholicism is right. I think it is. I have faith it is. Several lines of logic, studying scripture, and hours of prayer compel me to this understanding…but it’s possible I’m wrong.
If I am wrong, I pray that God has the same heart as Aslan in C.S. Lewis’ “Last Battle” and He sees that I really tried and heard my prayers if they were aimed astray. (which I doubt)

However, one thing I do know. Methodism and Catholicism are not both right. Anglicans and Lutherans aren’t both right. Jews and Muslims aren’t both right. Some may say there are all wrong, but all should understand they aren’t all right…they can’t be. There is 1 truth. All these groups disagree on real teachings, not just some opinions, but explinations of their understanding of theological reality - each is mutually exclusive from the others.