Continued…
Ch. 16 Gregory the Great rejected the title “universal bishop”
. . .
“Consider, I pray you, that in this rash presumption the peace of the whole Church is disturbed, and that it is in contradiction to the grace that is poured out on all in common.” (Registrum Epistolarum, Book V, Letter XVIII)
“If then [Paul] shunned the subjecting of the members of Christ partially to certain heads, as if beside Christ, though this were to the apostles themselves, what will you say to Christ, who is the Head of the universal Church, in the scrutiny of the last judgment, having attempted to put all his members under yourself by the appellation of Universal?” (Ibid.)
“Certainly Peter, the first of the apostles, himself a member of the holy and universal Church, Paul, Andrew, John,—what were they but heads of particular communities? And yet all were members under one Head. And (to bind all together in a short girth of speech) the saints before the law, the saints under the law, the saints under grace, all these making up the Lord’s Body, were constituted as members of the Church, and not one of them has wished himself to be called universal. Now let your Holiness acknowledge to what extent you swell within yourself in desiring to be called by that name by which no one presumed to be called who was truly holy.” (Ibid.). . .
Algernon, what you have missed in this is that while Gregory recognized his own Roman primacy to have universal authority (universal authority which was legally recognized by the Empire through the Council of Chalcedon), he did not believe, as did the promoters of the Ecumenical Patriarch title, that this detracted from the local and regional authority of individual bishops or make them pawns of a higher, legal authority. This is not the true position of the Catholic Church today, or ever; for, unlike the original, medieval claim of the Ecumenical Patriarch title (a political title which was designed to centralize all Church authority in the imperial capital of Constantinople), Gregory and all other bishops of Rome did not see their universal authority in the sense of a “universal bishop,” but in the sense of a final court of appeal IF there was a crisis that could not be settled locally or regionally by the bishops involved.
For example, writing to Bishop John of Syracuse (in Sicily - a Byzantine province at the time) and discussing the crisis connected to the Bishop of Constantinople’s claim of the Ecumenical Patriarch title, Pope Gregory clearly says:
“As to what he (the Bishop of Constantinople) says, that he is subject to the Apostolic See (Rome), I know of no bishop who is not subject to it, if there be any fault found in bishops.” (Pope Gregory I Ep. Ad. Joan.)
So, despite the way modern Eastern Orthodox like to spin it, Gregory clearly
did not deny his own Roman primacy.
Also, in 590, Pope Gregory receives this oath from a bishop returning from schism:
“And, therefore, after I discovered the snare of division by which I was held, I humbly and spontaneously was led by Divine grace to return to the unity of the Apostolic See (Rome), lest I be thought to return not through a pure intention but deceitfully, I swear, upon pain of the loss of my order, and under the bond of anathema, and promise to thee, and through thee to St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and to his vicar, the most blessed Gregory or his successors, that I will never, through anyone’s persuasion or in any other way, return to schism, from which I have been delivered through the mercy of the Redeemer, but shall always remain, through all things, in the unity of the Holy Catholic Church and the communion of the Roman Pontiff.” (St. Gregory the Great, Register of Epistles, Book XII, Ep. 7)
For Gregory, unity with the church of Rome was unity with the Catholic Church.
Also, in Book V, Epistle 40 of St Gregory the Great to Eulogius, Patriarch of Alexandria (for, like all his predecessors, Gregory regarded Alexandria as the second position of primacy in the Church, OVER Constantinople), Gregory writes:
“Wherefore though there are many apostles, yet with regard to the principality itself the See of the Prince of the Apostles alone (i.e., Rome) has grown strong in authority, which in three places is the See of one.”
He repeats this idea in Book V, Epistle 39; Book X, Epistle 35; and Book XIII, Epistle 41. What St. Gregory is referring to here by “three places” is the principal of the
three original patriarchates of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, in that order of primacy, which directly governed the three regions of universal Church (the three regions of the known world: Europe, Africa, and Asia, respectively), with Rome being the final court of appeal. This whole structure of authority flowed from Peter’s authority at Rome, with Alexandria and Antioch participating in that Petrine authority via their ties of discipleship to Petrine Rome. For example, back in 382, Pope St. Damasus had declared:
“Although all the Catholic churches spread abroad throughout the world comprise but one bridal chamber of Christ, nevertheless, the holy Roman church has been placed at the forefront not by the conciliar decisions of the churches, but has received the primacy by the evangelic voice of our Lord and Savior, Who says: “You are Peter …(Matt 16:18-19).” In addition to this, there is also the companionship of the vessel of election, the most blessed Apostle Paul who, along with Peter in the city of Rome in the time of Caesar Nero, equally consecrated the above-mentioned holy Roman Church to Christ the Lord; and by their own presence and by their venerable triumph, they set it at the forefront over the others of all the cities of the world. The first see, therefore, is that of Peter the Apostle, that of the Roman church, which has neither stain nor blemish, nor anything like that. The second see is that of Alexandria, consecrated on behalf of the blessed Peter by Mark, his disciple and an Evangelist, who was sent to Egypt by the Apostle Peter, where he preached the word of truth and finished his glorious martyrdom. The third see is that of Antioch, which belonged to the most blessed Peter, where first he dwelled before he came to Rome, and where the name “Christians” was first applied, as to a new people.” (Decree of Damasus # 3, 382 A.D.)
This statement was issued to deny the canon of Constantinople I (381), which tried to make Constantinople a patriarchate
and replace the Eastern primacy of Alexandria with Constantinople. Because of this statement, this canon was withdrawn, and the Traditional Eastern primacy of Alexandria was protected, only to be threatened again by the infamous canon 28 of Chalcedon, which was again denied by Pope Leo the Great, who cited this same tradition of the three Petrine patriarchates. But, this original, Apostolic order was consistently disturbed by the theocratic government at Constantinople, which intruded into the Apostolic rights of the native bishops and which eventually succeeded in making both Jerusalem and Constantinople into government-created patriarchs, as opposed to true Apostolic ones like Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch.
What Pope Gregory is saying to Patriarch Eulogius of Alexandria above is that, because of the imperial intrusions and weakening of the authority of Alexandria and Antioch, the church of Rome has had to act directly in preserving the universal unity of the Church, as oppose to acting in cooperation with the two other sees established by St. Peter (Alexandria and Antioch), which were intended to maintain the primacy (in accord with Rome) in the regions of the East.
So, understood correctly, Eastern Orthodoxy
created the problem. It is not a solution or a correct expression of Apostolic primacy. If you object to what St. Gregory
really objected to, you should not become Eastern Orthodox, which recognizes the Bishop of Constantinople to be “Ecumenical Patriarch.” Admittedly, the modern form of the title carries no power and is merely honorary. But, this is not what it was originally designed to do, or how it originally acted when it had the real governmental authority of the Byzantine Empire to back it up.
