…I was asking who if anyone becomes the Orthodox Pope…
There never was a Pope in the modern sense in the Holy Orthodox Catholic church. So there is no equivalent, no ‘enforcer’.
That doesn’t mean there is no authority. No one who is uncomfortable with religious authority would be happy in the Orthodox church. One doesn’t get to choose what to believe, one doesn’t come in teaching, one comes into the faith as a student to learn. No one who cannot humble himself and have a desire to be taught will make it.
It’s a tough affair to be Orthodox, the disciplines are rigorous. The worship is long by modern standards, the fasts (all fasts) are real fasts of deprivation, numerous and longer than one might expect.
Confession is never anonymous and normally neither is reception of communion.
Does not the Christ instituted structure of bishops and priests imply the need for a visible head?
The word ‘bishop’ means overseer, or supervisor. He watches over the flock, and has teaching authority. The bishop is the visible church head of his flock.
His is not a creating authority or inventing authority, it is teaching magisterial authority. In order to teach, one studies (and prays).
So what of another head, like a higher authority? The gathered church fathers addressed this issue in the first church-wide gathering after the persecutions ended. At Nicea they said …
" Let the
ancient customs in Egypt, Libya and Pentapolis prevail, that the Bishop of Alexandria have jurisdiction in all these, since the like is customary for the Bishop of Rome also. Likewise
in Antioch and the other provinces, let the Churches retain their privileges. And this is to be universally understood, that if any one be made bishop without the consent of the Metropolitan, the great Synod has declared that such a man ought not to be a bishop. If, however, two or three bishops shall from natural love of contradiction, oppose the common suffrage [ie: election or choice] of the rest, it being reasonable and in accordance with the ecclesiastical law, then let the choice of the majority prevail. "
So the early church fathers saw the church as bishops (in Saint Ignatio’s sense) gathered into groups by province or kingdom led by the bishop of the local major cities. It was the bishops of the Province which elected new bishops, and the Metropolitan bishop was to certify the election. In fact the bishops of the Province elected their own Metropolitan too. Tradition was that three at least were required to ordain and consecrate a man as bishop, and the other bishops who may not have been able to make the journey were to send letters.
History shows that these separate Metropolitan organizations did not control one another, but strove to always teach the received Truth in common.
It is clear from Canon 8 of Ephesus that the independence of the ancient Apostolic churches was to be preserved. When the Metropolitan of Antioch began to extend his authority over the church on Cyprus the local Cyprus church appealed to the assembled fathers of that Council (Ephesus) and the assembled fathers responded with this: "… The Rulers of the holy churches in Cyprus shall enjoy, without dispute or injury, according to the Canons of the blessed Fathers
and ancient custom, the right of performing for themselves the ordination of their excellent Bishops.
The same rule shall be observed in the other dioceses and provinces everywhere, so that none of the God beloved Bishops shall assume control of any province which has not heretofore, from the very beginning, been under his own hand or that of his predecessors. But if any one has violently taken and subjected [a Province], he shall give it up; lest the Canons of the Fathers be transgressed; or the vanities of worldly honour be brought in under pretext of sacred office; or we lose, without knowing it, little by little, the liberty which Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Deliverer of all men, hath given us by his own Blood.
Wherefore, this holy and ecumenical Synod has decreed that in every province the rights which heretofore, from the beginning, have belonged to it, shall be preserved to it, according to the old prevailing custom, unchanged and uninjured: every Metropolitan having permission to take, for his own security, a copy of these acts. And if any one shall bring forward a rule contrary to what is here determined, this holy and ecumenical Synod unanimously decrees that it shall be of no effect."
The title of Patriarch is something of an honorific, because there is prestige associated with some of these ancient Metropolitan Sees as mother churches from Apostolic days but one Metropolitan’s authority properly stops where another begins.
The goal is to maintain communion with the other dioceses and churches
by being faithful to the received teaching and respectful of the neighboring bishop’s authority (the neighboring bishop having the same goal). It’s not that hard to understand.
It must seem remarkable to many people that Orthodoxy can hang together with a common faith under Christ out of sheer desire to do so. One probably couldn’t start a church today and get that to happen over several generations, but Holy Orthodoxy has Apostolic origins and it’s traditional faith stubbornly held, and confidence in the Holy Spirit.
