R
ralphinal
Guest
No, you asked why four would leave one. If the four felt that the one would eventually overtake their areas, they might cut ties with him. It is not saying that larger=truer.
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M
Mickey
Guest
Is this true? Was there paranoia and fear about being swallowed up?
As Contarini indicated, there probably was an issue about arrogance and power appetites of the West.
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Hesychios
Guest
OK, hypothetically possible.
But the Orthodox did nothing different. Nothing.
No new dogmas, no new canons, no new rules. There was nothing to speak of in the way of change.
From what I understand, the Bull of excommunication excommunicated the Patriarch and all who follow him, the response from the patriarch was an excommunication of the two Cardinals. That’s it.
It looks like an attempt to undermine his (the patriarch’s) authority. (If so it did not work, the rank and file were not impressed.)
The Patriarch didn’t invite Humberto and Frederic over to insult them and kick them in the pants, the Cardinals came over on their own. Something must have drawn them with this previously prepared document of excommunication, so what was it?
This was not the internet age, not even the telegraph age. It took a long time for word of this transaction to make it’s way around, weeks if not months in some cases. The four patriarchates were not in some kind of conspiracy to “defect” or whatever, they were blindsided by this action of Humberto in Hagia Sophia. Humberto was pleaded with to take the Bull back!! This is rebellion?
[This is not something a person like Adrian Fortesque would like to emphasize in his style of writing. But that’s how it was.]
And yet, the Orthodox really did nothing at all otherwise. They must have been amazed. We know the full break in communion did not happen overnight all over the east, there were a lot of accomodations taking place. The complete a final break happened over a few generations in places like Antioch and Kyiv.
What Latin Catholic polemicists and apologists are suggesting is that there was some kind of conspiracy, but the Orthodox response is not consistant with that idea. Nor is there any indication that they were being disobedient to anything in any way in their own minds. There are no records of meeting planning strategy, and no attempts to explain their “actions” to the public at large, or to civil authorites, or even fellow bishops.
Can anyone here imagine the Archdiocese of Chicago conspiring with Los Angeles, Westminster and Toronto to repudiate modern Papal authority? There would be a whole lot of explaining to do at many levels. How does one get ALL of the priests and ALL of the bishops to concur with a radical change like that?
Not a peep in the historical record. No angst over any sort of BIG CHANGE in the church. They just carried on as before.
In the same time period the Latin church was undergoing some interesting organizational changes. For instance the canonization of saints was centralized at Rome and the Roman calendar became the standard. Religious orders were approved by the Pope which had the right to cross diocesan bounds, this was a new concept too, breaking down the unique authority of local bishops.All of these things are connected with the Gregorian Reforms. The Latin church was in the midst of change. Ultramontanist ideas were circulating as a counterbalance to the power of nobles and princes over the church. More and more bishops were being appointed by the Popes, who were taking advantage of political conflicts to wrest this authority from the nobles. This was not a return to an earlier ecclesiology, but in some ways it was an improvement for that age.
Regarding the east, what we do know (and this was a consistant practice) is that wherever the crusaders showed up they deposed the local Greek hierarchs and replaced them with Latins. This, more than anything else is probably what sealed the break, at least in my opinion. The Orthodox became the “bush church” in some places and there were then two parallel hierachies, one occupying the cathedrals and the other moving from place to place avoiding the soldiers.
Michael
R
ralphinal
Guest
Michael,
I have a lot of respect for you. I feel that I have learned from you and will learn from you in the future, but this responce post is not germain. I am not even sure it is French
First,
I never said anything about rebellion. I was giving a possible reason that the group of four would leave the one and not the other way around. In fact, I did not get into any kind of discussion on actual events on that example.
Second,
The question of what the Orthodox did or did not do in regards to doctrine was not raised, at least by me. I did talk about why no councils had been called, but I see that less about authority and more about need.
Third,
This is the way the discussion always ends up when anything related to the Schism is mentioned. The main reason that this thread is here is to discuss why the East has not called ecumenical councils. It has nothing to do with how we ended up in this split at all. If those above us act like this, there is no doubt as to why we are still divided.
Finally,
We will never reach resolution if both sides keep up the walls. Can you honestly say that 100% of the changes made by Rome, such as centralized canonization of saints, are bad? Honestly, is everything that we do in error?
I have a lot of respect for you. I feel that I have learned from you and will learn from you in the future, but this responce post is not germain. I am not even sure it is French
First,
I never said anything about rebellion. I was giving a possible reason that the group of four would leave the one and not the other way around. In fact, I did not get into any kind of discussion on actual events on that example.
Second,
The question of what the Orthodox did or did not do in regards to doctrine was not raised, at least by me. I did talk about why no councils had been called, but I see that less about authority and more about need.
Third,
This is the way the discussion always ends up when anything related to the Schism is mentioned. The main reason that this thread is here is to discuss why the East has not called ecumenical councils. It has nothing to do with how we ended up in this split at all. If those above us act like this, there is no doubt as to why we are still divided.
Finally,
We will never reach resolution if both sides keep up the walls. Can you honestly say that 100% of the changes made by Rome, such as centralized canonization of saints, are bad? Honestly, is everything that we do in error?
H
Hesychios
Guest
Bad? No, did I say bad?
I am talking about where the impulse for change was, and touched upon a possible why.
What was suggested as a possibility was that the four patriarchates “left” something or other. I am saying that if anything left anything, it was not the eastern church. The eastern church did nothing, and had no reason to do anything, it stayed the course.
Michael
R
ralphinal
Guest
OK.
So you would see it more like a caravan where some of the cars got off of the interstate to follow another road. EO stayed on the interstate, the Catholics got off?
R
ralphinal
Guest
If you are going from Chicago to LA, which is a better trip, interstate or route 66? One is more streamlined, but one enriches your life more
H
Hesychios
Guest
I don’t know how to address this.
I am not trying to be confrontational, believe me.
If we could just step outside of the ring for a moment and look at what little we know of the historical facts it should be clear that the Eastern Catholic patriarchates were not on any kind of trajectory. It’s not like there was an interstate to move along or get off of.
Some people, charitably I might add, like to thing we just grew apart. That implies that we were moving at something like the same speed according to some constant and then simply diverged…
https://ssl.rscva.com/photos/store/catalog/images/Blue_Angels_small.jpg
A nice image, but I don’t think it is accurate. I cannot think of a good analogy for what happened, at least for the moment.
I am not trying to paint the Latin church in a negative light here, all I am trying to respond to at this point is the idea that the Eastern Catholic Patriarchates “left” obedience to the Pope, that is just a myth! It just was not like that, it does not jive with the other things we know or even the many other things western Christians think about the east.
First of all, there was no Papal administration of the eastern churches, the bishops of Rome did not control anything there.
Even the fact that the west was using the filioque did not break communion between the east and the west. This is simply not the look of an organization “leaving” anything.
There is nothing like a conspiracy of any sort, or a combined action on the part of the four patriarchates (plus Cyprus, an autocephailc church) no historical evidence of any such thing. The explanation for what happened has to come from somewhere else.
Michael
R
ralphinal
Guest
Michael,
Thank you for that post. It does make sense, and it was missing some of the rhetoric that haunts both sides of this discussion. We can save the how we split for later, if you agree. BY the way, check this site
Would you agree that the councils called by Rome and not by the EO are more an indication of a perceived need that lack of authority?
Thank you for that post. It does make sense, and it was missing some of the rhetoric that haunts both sides of this discussion. We can save the how we split for later, if you agree. BY the way, check this site
Would you agree that the councils called by Rome and not by the EO are more an indication of a perceived need that lack of authority?
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Gottle_of_Geer
Guest
**Oh, definitely. Quite a few people were burnt as heretics for denying it - which is a useful if unlovely test of whether a denial of a doctrine, is a denial of a doctrine that is a dogma. **
It’s an awful mouthful - even worse than Aphthartodocetism; so it seems not unreasonable to dock it of a syllable or two
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Volodymyr
Guest
You believe Orthodox church suffers with ecclesiastical paralysis, I believe Catolic Church suffers with ecclesiastical epilepsy.
Famous Russian historian Mikhail Posnov believed that one of causes of division between Eastern Church and Western Church was difference in personality of Latins and Greeks.
Your apparent preference for an authoritative administrator who can make decisions is very much a Roman, Western personality trait. To disdain the absence of such centralized authority as a sign of weakness and paralysis is revealing great preference for power, authority and bureaucracy. You can
look at your question and see that if it is not critical of Orthodoxy, it is claiming that Orthodoxy is deficient because it does not have a Vatican who even its power is illegitimate, gives a reassuring but perhaps inaccurate decision for every problem.
Orthodox do look at Ecumenical Councils as affirmations of Orthodox teaching. Orthodox teaching exists and is unchanged whether or not there is a Council to make some formal document about such truth. Orthodoxy is true and that is all we concern about.
Orthodox have a more Greek personality and more interested to contemplation, prayer, unity with God than in bureaucracy. We do not want some bishop who thinks he can add to Orthodox faith just by auto-dictate - this would be ecclesiastical epilepsy; sudden spasms in different directions.
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Gottle_of_Geer
Guest
**IOW, there is a problem: but there is disagreement over precisely what the problem is. Which is not a ton of use if it is going ever to be dealt with; & that constitutes a problem by itself. **
**Maybe, the problem is insoluble in the form in which it is put
? Why can’t we let bygones be bygones ? Not doing so seems to leave both Churches acting as irresistible forces pushing at irresistible objects. ****When Zeus was faced with the dilemma of an inescapable hound in pursuit of an uncatchable hare, he solved the problem by introducing into the dilemma an element absent from the dilemma as posed: he turned both animals to stone. End of problem. Gods, admittedly, don’t have to account for their doings to the mortals they wrong - Zeus did not have to account to the (mortal) owner of the dog; so the analogy is not entirely perfect. But it is not wholly inapplicable: going on in the same old way is going to get us nowhere
**
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Volodymyr_988
Guest
My 4 children run off all the time.Yeah, I understand. But it does not make sense that four will break away from one. It makes more sense that one breaks away from four.
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jimmy
Guest
Why should it matter if they convened an ecumenical council? They did not need one. They have come to the present fine. They did not have a reformation as the west did.
Further, the east does not approach the faith with the understanding that we know God through our intellect. According to the east, our knowledge of God is through the heart. As Evagrios said in the fourth century, “he who prays truely is a theologian and he who is a theologian prays truely.” Consequently there is no reason to just hold an ecumenical council. It does not increase our knowledge of God. The only reason to hold one is if it is tearing the Church apart.
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Volodymyr_988
Guest
That’s funny, I’ve heard from many Orthodox that there cannot be another EC because there is no Emperor.
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Volodymyr_988
Guest
Yet, during the reign of Peter “The Great” the Russian Church under Archbishop Feofan Prokopovych adopted Lutheran Synodal Rule and dropped the patriarchate system started by Nikon.
gpu-ua.info/index.php?&id=118281&rid=51
So, in a way the Reformation did come to the East. And there are many inroads being made by the Protestants in Eastern Europe and Russia. There is even a Lutheran Divine Liturgy:
angelfire.com/ca4/saintsophiaseminary/liturgy.html
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jimmy
Guest
Whether the Lutherans have a divine liturgy is irrelevant. That is the Lutheran Church, not the EO Church. Why would they call a council regarding the Lutherans who are not a part of their Church?
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jam070406
Guest
Yeah, I understand. But it does not make sense that four will break away from one. It makes more sense that one breaks away from four.
http://us.st11.yimg.com/us.st.yimg.com/I/candydepot_1997_78313276
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Volodymyr_988
Guest
You wrote that they did not have a Reformation. But, the Reformation came to Russia and Eastern Europe. So, Trent was battling a world wide problem. And former Orthodox are leaving by droves to Protestantism.
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