Proofread Byz's Blog Rant

[Byzantine]

I'd be grateful if someone could give me an "all-clear" or a "no, that's heresy" on my latest blog post, which I'd like to publish tomorrow. Here it is. Thanks!

 

Let me begin by wishing a happy Pentecost to you all. I would love to write something fun and friendly, Biblical and Chestertonian for the great feast which is upon us, but it seemed more appropriate, perhaps necessary in a way, to write this post instead.

 

There's been an interview with Archmandrite Robert Taft of the Jesuits that's been making its rounds on the internet recently. I read it and frankly it seems a bit fishy. There are many points on which I disagree with Fr. Robert, but for this post we will only tackle one.

 

We begin with the last paragraph of the interview, which reads in part:

[A professor] shows that Early Christianity developed not out of some Roman cradle but as a federation of local Churches, Western and Eastern, each one under the authority of a chief hierarch ..., each with its own independent governing synod and polity, all of them initially in communion with one another until the vicissitudes of history led to lasting divisions (Source: Pravoslavie.Ru, bold mine).

Look, I'm not an expert here, but I think it's safe to say that this is strange. First off, I don't remember anyone ever claiming that Christianity started in Rome. Perhaps some strange branch of heresy did claim it, but the idea is ridiculous. Perhaps I read wrong and Fr. Robert is referring to something else, but this does have the looks of a straw man to me.

 

Furthermore, I would argue against the idea of the "federation of local Churches." Here I would very much like to just start typing out, word for word, then-Cardinal Ratzinger's Called to Communion, but then I'd get bored and this post would probably not get written, and even if it somehow did get written you probably wouldn't read it anyway and I wouldn't blame you.

 

At any rate, Communionis Notio 9 refers to Bl. John Paul the Great denying the idea of the universal Church as a federation. The same section cites the Shepherd of Hermas and St. Clement of Rome on the pre-existence of the Church. So no, no federation of Churches. The universal Church comes first. PE Benedict in Called to Communion says:

In the initial phase, [the bishops'] position as bearers of responsibility for the local Churches is clearly subordinated to the catholic (meaning universal -Byzantine Bandit) authority of the apostles. The fact that ... the place of the apostles was also finally adjudged to them implies that they now assumed a responsibility whose scope transcended the local principle. ... The Church cannot become a static juxtaposition of essentially self-sufficient local Churches. The Church must remain "apostolic", that is to say, the dynamism of unity must also mold her structure. The epithet "successor of the apostles" removes the bishop beyond the purely local (Ratzinger, Called to Communion, 85-86, bold mine).

So, from this, we can at least gain the idea that the vision of the Church as a federation is opposed by our two previous popes, one of whom about to be canonized, the other a great scholar of the Church who will probably be read long after Wake Up and Smell the Incense is rotting in some internet graveyard. We have to keep the universal Church in sight. We can't just ignore the other particular/local Churches.

 

In conclusion, Fr. Robert's position seems untenable in the light of the teachings of those who bear more authority. Have a blessed Pentecost. Maybe next year I'll get to write something about Arthur and his knights all gathering on the feast. That'd be nice and much more along the lines of stuff I'd like to write about.

 

 

[LouisvilleFan]

IMPRIMATUR: Jason Ramage, Lay Faithful of Covington Diocese. May 21st, 2013.

 

 

My apologies for the delay. This and two bucks will light a prayer candle in your local church .

[Apotheoun]

The Roman Church's ecclesiology developed in a different direction from the Patristic understanding of the Church accepted in the East, and this different path only took on distinctive shape after the Churches of the East and the West definitively parted ways in the early part of the second millennium. To put it simply the Latin Church developed a universalist approach to the Catholic Church that turned the local Churches into pieces of the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, while in the East a holistic approach - founded upon the teaching of the ancient Fathers - continued to be the basis of Byzantine ecclesiology. Ultimately a patristic ecclesiology of communion, which sees each local Church as the full realization of the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church through the celebration of the liturgy and the profession of the Orthodox faith, is incompatible with the late medieval Roman universalist ecclesiology promoted by the Scholastics, which divides the Church into pieces that are only later juridically united through a concept of hierarchical subservience to the bishop of Rome. 

 

Finally, the only thing I would change about the above quotation from Fr. Taft is the word "federation," and in its place I would use the word "communion," because that is the biblical word that signifies the unity that exists among the Churches. Moreover, this communion is realized in each local Church, which is the whole Catholic Church in a given place, because it sees itself in the other Churches spread throughout the world, and this identity of nature and existence brings about a state of communion among the many local Churches in such a way that it is proper to say that the Catholic Church is a communion of Catholic Churches. To put it another way, the one Catholic Church is the many local Catholic Churches, and the many local Catholic Churches are the one Catholic Church, and each one is this reality individually.

 

Edited May 23, 2013 by Apotheoun