Another Church cannot step in out of their own initiative. If one Church feels the need of someone else coming in and giving them a hand, they would reach out to a sister Church and ask them to intervene. You will see this in Acts at the First Council of Jerusalem. You will see the result of meddling by those who claim to be from the Jerusalem Church who turned out not to be officially from them. And you will see that the Jerusalem Church didn’t step in until Antioch sent Paul and Barnabas to Jerusalem, and this is only after they tried to resolve the issue by themselves and couldn’t come to a conclusion.
Hey, ConstantineTG. Just curious: what happens if one of the autocephalous church’s (hypothetically speaking of course) begins to embrace something that is not doctrinally sound? Is there some sort of overriding authority to step in and correct the matter? Just trying to learn a little more about the EOC.
Rawb seemed to put in a nice answer to it (if I may quote him!):
The Ecumenical Patriarch in Orthodoxy doesn’t have the same kind of ecclesiastical power as the Pope of Rome does in Catholicism. So from what I understand from Rawb, because there is an equality in terms of bishops, no other patriarch can override the Romanian Orthodox Church if the latter (as simply an example) decided to embrace a heresy such as monophysitism. They could only “quarantine” them until they decided to return to….orthodoxy.
Thanks FabiusMaximus
Ok. Thanks Rawb.
Everyone breaks communion with them. They can continue on their own but then given they are not in communion with anybody else then they have no credibility, and everyone else declares them a heretic. There can be a council to declare the bishops as heretics, and if the people will not schism with the bishops, the highest rank in honor among the Patriarch may assign Orthodox bishops to the people.
If the bishops schism, the Orthodox bishops may appoint new bishops in the territories of those who schism if there are any faithful who wish to remain in the Orthodox communion of Churches. This is what happened with the schism between the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, although how it played out was a bit of back-and-forth for a number of years. And with Rome, because all faithful in Rome backed the Pope, the Orthodox didn’t appoint a new “Orthodox Patriarch of Rome”. Also the fact that the schism with Rome was gradual and wasn’t a full and total schism until basically when both sides realized that the schism was deep and total, it was too late. Remember that even by the Council of Florence they were still trying to resolve their issues.
This is true. We do sometimes (often?) replace the bishops to ensure the people are provided for. Alexandria is a perfect example.
Makes sense.
Curious though, since the Italo-Albanians are Byantine Rite Catholics, weren’t there other Orthodox Christians in and around Rome/Italy at that time? Or did all bishops in the area just had strongly supported their Patriarch?
Yes, it would be great. But not as the Antiochians did, we would need to take the Western Rite to a whole new level
Eastern Catholics (rightfully) complain about Latinizations in the Catholic Communion… but it appears that, historically, Hellenization was the policy in the Eastern Orthodox Communion. Shouldn’t the Eastern Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria, and his church, celebrate the Coptic Rite? And shouldn’t the Eastern Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch celebrate the Syriac Rite? But they don’t… it’s Byzantine across the board. Even the small pockets of Western Rite Orthodox parishes are, by all accounts, heavily Hellenized - it is not a reflection of any pure Latin liturgy/spirituality.
In the case of the Church at Antioch… the city itself and it’s near surroundings always used greek in liturgy since the beginning. The syriac liturgy developed later, east of Antioch in the poor and rural zones.
I always understood that the Syriac Rite was older than the Byzantine Rite (at least as we know it today). Yes, there was widespread Greek cultural influences throughout that entire region, but surely Christians in Egypt were celebrating the Coptic Rite long before they started worshipping according to the Byzantine Rite. Even if Antioch was using the Greek language, it wouldn’t have been the modern Byzantine Rite. Otherwise, the Coptic and Syriac Orthodox Churches wouldn’t have their distinct Rites - which date back to before the Chalcedonian schism. The Eastern Orthodox Churches of Antioch and Alexandria were erected to replace these churches which had fallen into schism.
The Greek Rite is older as it is the language in which the Apostles mainly evangelized (remember it was the lingua franca of the ancient world & the NT and the LXX were greek at first). In the case of Antioch (again), I think it was the Byzantine Greek Rite… Why I think so? Because St. J. Chrysostom, an Antiochian, composed the liturgy that bears his name before the schism with the Syriacs. In the case of Alexandria I think you´re right, it was imposed.
It is far complicated than that. Remember at the time of the schisms with the Nestorians and the Oriental Orthodox, most of the Liturgy and the Rites were still in development. I’m not sure at which point were they celebrating what Liturgy. St. John Chrysostom introduced his version of the Divine Liturgy around 400AD, and the Oriental Orthodox broke away in about 50 years. And at this point remember that St. John Chrysostom’s Liturgy isn’t exactly what we see today. I’m not sure at what point did St. John Chrysostom’s Liturgy got adopted there. Also note that those that remained in communion with Constantinople were Greeks anyway. It’s really a complicated history to just say they were hellenized. The Slavs developed their own religious culture even though they adopted the same Liturgy as the Greeks.