There is a principle I want to know the name of.
The Church has the Pope, the local Bishops, the local Priests. We see a heirarchy in how the Churh is governed. What is this principle called?
Let’s not forget the laity.
Although generally
conciliar in its governance, the Council of Chalcedon was further distinguished by the active leadership of Pope Leo I. His letter to the Patriarch of Constantinople, which was accepted by the assembled prelates as the authoritative expression of orthodoxy, establishes the importance of the bishop of Rome. By 451, the councils firmly established the institutional model of church by adapting the political model used by Rome.
Early Christianity developed a visible human organization, known as clergy, primarily to administer the sacraments. These successors to the twelve apostles came to be called bishops and, under their leadership, the Church grew organically for the first four centuries. Bishops and their helpers, presbyters and deacons, instructed and baptized the catechumens bringing them into the community. The new members in time catechized others and the movement grew at a natural geometric rate.
Emperor Theodosius name Christianity the imperial religion in 381. Theodosius’ action, however, accelerated Christianity’s growth rate (being Christian now had positive political consequences; not being Christian, negative consequences) beyond the organization’s ability to indoctrinate newcomers in the ordinary way. As a result, new members were poorly formed in the faith, and heresies resulted.
The Church, to protect its unity, responded by centralizing its authority. Ecumenical in their formation, but central in their governance, the early councils prototyped the preferred method, the conciliar method, for resolving attacks on the oneness of the Church. This new ecclesiology for projecting its authority emphasized the institutional model of Church and mimicked the political structure of the time, centralized Roman governance.
