Well, technically, yes, since I would argue that all the Orthodox and Catholic Churches are that Church.
It just sounds to me like Alexandria is bucking to assume the position of Rome as defined by Roman Catholics,
How’s that? Alexandria is next in line, but I would expect Moscow to get it if New Rome lost it. I am 1) happy that the EP remain as he is in rank, 2) would if, God forbid, some tragedy force the reorganization of the Sees, I would be more than happy with Moscow at the helm.
My heart will still belong to Alexandria,
rather than continuing the Orthodox (Eastern and Oriental) tradition of “First among equals”. Which title has never belonged to any but the See of Peter in Rome, so you’re flying against tradition even if that’s all you’re after.
But you can’t mean that, can you?
Of course not.
Anyway, you sure do bandy around the term “Ultramontanism” a lot. You do know that it actually means, “The Head of the Church ought to be independent of worldly control and, in his own sphere, supreme.”
That’s a positive spin. We have another experience with it though. Of course for us it should be utlramarianism, since we are across the sea.
As our present purpose is to state what Ultramontanism is, it is beside our scope to expound the Catholic doctrine on the power of the Church and, in particular, of the pope, whether in spiritual or temporal matters, these subjects being treated elsewhere under their respective titles. It is sufficient here to indicate what our adversaries mean by Ultramontanism. For Catholics it would be superfluous to ask whether Ultramontanism and Catholicism are the same thing: assuredly, those who combat Ultramontanis are in fact combating Catholicism, even when they disclaim the desire to oppose it. One of the recent adversaries of Ultramontanism among Catholics was a priest, Professor Franz Xaver Kraus, who says “1. An Ultramontane is one who sets the idea of the Church above that of religion; 2. …who substitutes the pope for the Church; 3. …who believes that the kingdom of God is of this world and that, as medieval curialism asserted, the power of the keys, given to Peter,
included temporal jurisdiction also; 4. …who believes that religious conviction can be imposed or broken with material force; 5. …who is ever ready to sacrifice to an extraneous authority the plain teaching of his own conscience.” …The character of Ultramontanism is manifested chiefly in the ardour with which it combats every movement of independence in the national Churches, the condemnation which it visits upon works written to defend that independence, its denial of the rights of the State in matters of government, of ecclesiastical administration and ecclesiastical control, the tenacity with which it has prosecuted the declaration of the dogma of the pope’s infallibility and with which it incessantly advocates the restoration of his temporal power as a necessary guarantee of his spiritual sovereignty."
The war against Ultramontanism is accounted for not merely by its adversaries’ denial of the genuine Catholic doctrine of the Church’s power and that of her supreme ruler, but also, and even more, by the consequences of that doctrine. It is altogether false to attribute to the Church either political aims of temporal dominion among the nations or the pretence that the pope can at his own pleasure depose sovereigns [evidently, he has not read Unam Sanctam] that the Catholic must, even in purely civil matters, subordinate his obedience towards his own sovereign to that which he owes to the pope, that the true fatherland of the Catholic is Rome, and so forth.
These are either pure inventions or malicious travesties. It is neither scientific nor honest to attribute to “Ultramontanism” the particular teaching of some theologian or some school of times past; or to invoke certain facts in medieval history, which may be explained by the peculiar conditions, or by the rights which the popes possessed in the Middle Ages (for example, their rights in conferring the imperial crown). For the rest, it is sufficient to follow attentively, one by one, the struggle kept up in their journals and books to be convinced that this warfare by the Rationalist-Protestant-Modernist coalition against “Clericalism” or “Ultramontanism” is, fundamentally, directed against integral Catholicism–that is, against papal, anti-Liberal, and counter-Revolutionary Catholicism.
newadvent.org/cathen/15125a.htm
The opposite position is “Caesaropapism,” placing the state in control over the Church.
Yes, a term I believed dreamed up by the Renaissance, like “Byzantine,” and for similar purposes.
Most of those who accuse us of it fault us for not following it in its most extreme form, the participation of the Orthodox Catholics in the council of Florence at the will of the emperor.
So unless you’d like me to call you a Caesaropapist, kindly stop misusing the word Ultramontanist. You like being accused of the Nestorianism your forefathers flatly renounced, by people who just misunderstand the terms?
I’ve been called faaaaar worse.
Ultramontanist epitomizes what is wrong with Rome. I don’t care about Latin culture, Roman is obviously fine, Catholic too. The pare inter pares papacy is fine. But the Ultramontanist equation, pope of Rome=the Church has got to go.
I’m curious, how did Nestorianism get into this?