Dear brother Don,
I can see why the term would be confusing since it doesn’t specify territory, but the rejection of his role as patriarch disturbs me as an Orthodox.
Mardukm, I’d love to hear your thoughts on Pope as patriarch and how it relates to this question!
According to official Vatican sources, the dropping of the title is intended to “
advance the ecumenical dialogue.”
So I have to interpret it in a way consistent with that official understanding.
I am aware of the criticism by some Orthodox that the dropping of the title can be construed to mean that the he is giving up the title of “Patriarch of the West” to reinfoce the idea of a UNIVERSAL jurisdiction. In good conscience, I have to consider the question “
Does this advance the ecumenical dialogue?” If it doesn’t, then I am not in the least convinced that was the actual intention of the action.
Some commentators I’ve read have noted that HH JP2 of thrice-blessed memory was himself thinking of dropping the title, in order to promote the idea that the Pope does not care just for the Western Church, but for the whole Church.
But HH Pope Benedict is not HH JP2. In an essay which HH Pope Benedict wrote back in 1969 (obviously was not yet Pope
), entitled “Primacy and Episcopacy” he expressed the following sentiments:
“
The image of a centralized state which the Catholic church presented right up to the council does not flow only from the Petrine office, but from its strict amalgamation with the patriarchal function which grew ever stronger in the course of history and which fell to the bishop of Rome for the whole of Latin Christendom. The uniform canon law, the uniform liturgy, the uniform appointment of bishops by the Roman center: all these are things which are not necessarily part of the primacy but result from the close union of the two offices. For that reason, the task to consider for the future will be to distinguish again and more clearly between the proper function of the successor of Peter and the patriarchal office and, where necessary, to create new patriarchates and to detach them from the Latin church. To embrace unity with the pope would then no longer mean being incorporated into a uniform administration, but only being inserted into a unity of faith and communion, in which the pope is acknowledged to have the power to give binding interpretations of the revelation given in Christ, whose authority is accepted whenever it is given in definitive form…In the not too distant future one could consider whether the churches of Asia and Africa, like those of the East, should not present their own forms as autonomous ‘patriarchates’ or ‘great churches’ or whatever such ecclesiae in the Ecclesia might be called in the future.”
That is how I have understood HH Pope Benedict’s intention of dropping the title “Patriarch of the West” to be - to pave the way for greater jurisdictional autonomy of Eastern and Oriental Catholic communities who are in territories that are traditionally regarded as being under Western Patriarchal jurisdiction. At the very least, I consider that to be its most PRACTICAL result.
The problem I percieve as I hear the Orthodox concerns about the dropping of the title is that for all the Orthodox pleas (from lay and clerical sources) that jurisdiction should be understood in terms of service and love, their/your own Orthodox hierarchy still very much understands local jurisdiction in terms of control. It is the Popes of the Catholic Church who have consistently called for an understanding of jurisdiction - of power - in terms of service and love, as imminently exemplified by Pope St. Gregory the Great. This was noted, IIRC, by Metropolitan Kallistos at the recent
Orientale Lumen conference.
It should be noted that Catholic commentators on the action are almost unanimous that the Pope has not relinquished his role as Patriarch of the Latin Church.
Blessings,
Marduk
