Part 3
Flashback to my high school and college years and my struggle with Papal Powers
One of the most difficult steps which a convert from Catholicism to Orthodoxy must take is putting aside the 1870 Vatican I dogmas of Papal Infallibility and Papal Supremacy. These were stumbling blocks for me too.
Because of the saintly image projected by Pius XII during the late 1950s when I was a child, and his popular biography which portrayed him as a saint, during my senior in high school, I applied and was accepted into the Dominican Order after a couple of interviews. Thus, on a bright sunny in early August, I cut short my summer vacation, and entered the postulancy, a six month period were I was studying and looking into the monastic life. When I became a novice and started to really live the monastic life, we had to read almost all of the recent papal encyclicals and selections from the book, The Church Teaches, which contained pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic conciliar documents, including the Seven Ecumenical Councils, Council of Trent, and Vatican I.
In our survey class, we were only required to read the document on Papal Infallibility, not the one on Papal Supremacy. Later on as a novice, I left the convent due to Buddhist teachings given in a taped retreat given by Thomas Merton. However, in the mid 1990s after I had married and was looking into Orthodoxy, I read all the council documents in translation from the Seven Ecumenical Councils, the Council of Trent, and Vatican I, and my eyes were opened. By 1995, I could no longer accept Papal Supremacy--the idea that the pope was supreme over each and every bishop. That was not the way Christ established His Holy Church, because Peter did not super manage the rest of the 11 Apostles. He could never have done any travels if he had. Neither could the Apostles or St. Paul have done their missionary journeys if they had to make visits to St. Peter every 24, 36, or 48 months. After Papal Supremacy fell, then Papal Infallibility was the next to topple, and I realized that I could no longer call myself a Roman Catholic. On April 6, 1996, our family was chrismated into the Greek Orthodox Church.
Soon after Hitler's Pope was published in 1999 by the British journalist and author John Cornwell, my husband and I purchased a couple of copies and started reading them. This carefully researched book using sources from the secret Vatican Archives exposed the connection between the Vatican underground and Hitler. It also exposed the connection between the Vatican, the Franciscans, the Ustaše, and the slaughter of the Orthodox Serbian Christians from the cliffs of Medjugorge during World War II. The late British author, Michael Davies, also exposed the connection between Medjugorge and the Ustaše and proposed that the so-called "virgin" was actually a ghost as villagers had reported strange tapping on the windows and knocks at the door with no one being there. Hitler allowed the Vatican underground to operate freely under the conditions that top ranking members of Hitler's staff could use this underground to escape to Argentina when necessary.
However, the most important knowledge gained was that Pius XII, being a canonical lawyer before his election to the Pontificate, was the person responsible for the Code of Canon Law of 1917. This information concerning Pius XII's important role in writing the Code of Canon Law of 1917 is also found at Wikipedia and a few Catholic websites. It was he and his staff of canon lawyers who rewrote all the Holy Canon--Canons which had excommunications attached to them if altered. These Canon Laws were rewritten to make the Ancient Canon Laws comply with the recent 1870 decrees of Papal Supremacy requiring that all bishops must now be approved by the Holy See before their election and consecration.
The Ancient Canons only stipulated that each bishop in the Holy Catholic Church (both East and West before the Schism) needed to be elected by the diocesan priests and laity, and then have the election confirmed by three neighboring bishops who would do the consecration of the newly elected bishop. Only after the newly elected bishop was consecrated was his name sent to the Pope or Patriarch and then added to the diptychs for commemoration. The Code of Canon Law of 1917 changed this procedure to remove any local control so that the Pope had to approve all new bishops throughout the world. This made things very difficult especially during the communist persecution which followed the release of the Code of Canon Law in 1917.
Whereas the ancient pre-Vatican I procedure had required the signature of three neighboring bishops to elect a bishop, the new post-Vatican I procedure required the vacant diocese to secure the names of three men (laity, priest, or bishops of another diocese) who would then be submitted to Rome. The Pope of Rome then had the authority to elect one candidate or elect all three candidates for different dioceses. He could also reject all of the candidates and demand that the vacant diocese submit a new list of three worthy candidates.
This happened to the Melkites, who at the death of Bishop Ignatius in October of 1992, repeatedly had to send in new lists to the Pope of Rome until the name of Bishop John was finally chosen as Eparchy in November of 1993. A mysterious bishop from the Vatican came to visit our parish and interviewed me and several other parishioners at random to verify that Bishop John was a good man, only then was he approved by the "Supreme Pontiff," the Pope.
The very fact that the Ancient Holy Canons were adulterated in 1917 to comply with Vatican I dogmas of Papal Supremacy and Infallibility, and then again were modified in 1983 to comply with the changes mandated by Vatican II is very disturbing. These Ancient Holy Canons have anathemas attached, so they should have never been changed.
Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melkite_G ... _of_Newton
TO BE CONTINUED ...