Vatican Takes Step to Absorb Orthodox Church

[尼古拉前执事]

Vatican Takes Step to Absorb Orthodox Church
November 16, 2007 | From theTrumpet.com

A recent document brings Catholic and Orthodox members closer to reconciliation.

The Vatican has drafted a joint document with Orthodox Church leaders declaring that the pope has primacy over all Catholic and Orthodox bishops. The agreement was reached by a joint international commission in Revenna, Italy, on October 13 and released by the Vatican on Thursday.

The document specifically declares that the pope held the highest position in the unified church before the Great Schism in 1054, and that the bishop of Rome was the protos, or first, among the patriarchs, including those of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem.

That acknowledgment could pave the way for eventual reunification of the two churches under the pope's rule.

Cardinal Water Kasper, head of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, called discussions of the pope's power in the early Catholic Church the real breakthrough of the document.

This document is a modest first step and as such one of hope,he told Vatican Radio. “But we must not exaggerate its importance. This will not be easy. The road is very long and difficult.”

The Orthodox Church split from Catholicism in 1054, largely because of disagreements over the authority of the pope. Its 220 million members fall under the authority of autonomous national churches, rather than a universal ruler, the way 1.1 billion Roman Catholics do.

Although the two sides agreed on the primacy of the pre-1054 pope, they still disagree on what his authority entailed in terms of the power he could exercise. The early popes had much less consolidated and centralized power than their second-millennium counterparts have wielded. This will make for thornier deliberations, particularly when the dogma of papal infallibility, which the Catholic Church developed after the split and formally defined in 1870, is discussed. However, in the interest of ecumenicism, the commission has called for the role of the pope to be studied in greater depth.

Pope Benedict xvi has called regaining the Orthodox Church a priority of his administration. In May last year, a senior Russian Orthodox official delivered a message from Patriarch Alexiy ii to Benedict, and Vatican officials said they were working toward a meeting between the two. The same month, 50 Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox officials held a meeting in Vienna.

In November last year, the pope met in Istanbul with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, who rules the Turkish Orthodox Church, but is considered the spiritual head of Orthodoxy.

Benedict is literally making a career out of re-acquiring Catholicism's daughter churches. However, no matter what is on the table for discussion, one dogma will remain the same: Everybody obeys the pope.

As a result of these ecumenical maneuverings resulting in Orthodox, Anglican and Protestant daughters being welded back into the universal church, look for papal authority not to weaken but to ultimately increase even further than it has already.

This article appeared in the "London Times" on November 16, 2007 and also was sent out by "Reuters" on November 15, 2007. They listed their sources as the "Vatican Observatore".
Also, the document can be viewed at: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia

[Sean]

Let the ecumenists join Rome. It's what they've wanted to do from the outset. The recent apostacy of ROCOR was a great test case for them. It shows how quickly those whose faith was once so fervent can be herded into separation from the Truth. The same rhetoric used to unite ROCOR and the MP can be applied to the long awaited union between ecumenists and their pope. No one talks about the truth of Orthodoxy, but only sentimentally charged generalizations about an imagined "love and unity," devoid of the Grace of God.

St. John Maximovich prophesied that in the end times the Church of Christ would be very small, but "clear as a crystal."

[尼古拉前执事]

The New York Times November 15, 2007
Vatican City: Catholic-Orthodox Accord on Papal Primacy
By IAN FISHER

Efforts to reunite the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches, split for nearly 1,000 years, took a cautious step forward as a joint commission agreed that the pope has primacy over bishops of both churches. But a declaration, to be officially released today, states that the two sides had not agreed on exactly what authority the pope might exercise if the churches came together again. Pope Benedict XVI has declared full communion between the churches a central goal of his papacy, though relations with the Russian Orthodox have proved particularly difficult. The Russian church did not approve the new document.

[Pravoslavnik]

"Benedict is literally making a career out of re-acquiring Catholicism's daughter churches. However, no matter what is on the table for discussion, one dogma will remain the same: Everybody obeys the pope."

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    I have long been amazed by the the lengths to which the modern Papacy has gone to maintain the historical illusion of a pre-Schism "monarchical" Papacy that, supposedly, had political and administrative control over the ancient Orthodox Churches of the Mediterranean world.  Now the Papacy is on the verge establishing a "folie a deux" with the Ecumenical Patriarchate--inducing the modern ecumenists to endorse the illusion.

    Notice how the Catholic rhetoriticians in the above piece speak of the historical "primacy" of the Roman Papacy, without mentioning the entire phrase, "primus [i]inter pares[/i]," or "first [i]among equals[/i]."  There is nothing remotely monarchical about the historic role of the Roman Pope as "primus inter pares."  The very phrase is a definition of an oligarchy.

    Notice also how the Pope speaks of "daughter" Churches...As if the Church had originated in Rome rather than in Jerusalem, Antioch, and the Eastern Mediterranean world of the first century.  This is archetypal post-Schismatic Papal nonsense, as we all know.  And it is a final irony that this announcement would issue from Ravenna--the Byzantine Capital of Gothic Italy in the fifth century, where the early medeival Popes changed the name of one of Justinian's magnificent Orthodox Churches, originally dedicated to St. Peter, the Apostle, to a church dedicated to the Theotokos.  This sleight of hand--to emphasize the "primacy" of St. Peter for the city of Rome--occurred around the same time that the Popes forged the "Donation of Constantine..."

[Jean-Serge]

I have read the whole document and it is really different from what the media are saying. In fact, the document recognises a primacy to the Pope of Rome, primacy that existed when Rome was still orthodox. However, since Rome is no longer orthodox, this primacy cannot exist. Moreover, there is an interesting sentence saying that a church cannot change the Creed, which was done by Rome.

The whole text can be read here : http://orthodoxeurope.org/page/14/130.aspx

[Pravoslavnik]

Jean-Serge,

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  I will simply reiterate that the so-called "primacy" of the bishop of Rome in the ancient Church was a "primacy among equals."  The Latin phrase was "primus inter pares," or "first among equals."  The letters of Pope Gregory the Great expounded upon the point that none of the ancient bishops of the Church, including the Roman Pope, had a political or administrative "primacy" over other Orthodox bishops.  The monarchical Papacy and College of Cardinals that we know today was an invention of Roman bishops (Popes) after the 8th century.

[Jean-Serge]

I agree with you of course!