NICHOLAS: The citation by Saint Ignatios commonly used by Papist apologists is a fraud.
INCOGNITO: Yeah, everything is a fraud that doesn't agree with your presuppositions.
NICHOLAS: You're a very trying person, but for Christ's sake I am endeavoring to enlighten you. You are obviously baiting me, claiming to be an old calendarist Traditionalist Orthodox, and yet trying to defend the indefensible Papacy, with citations from Latin or Latin-edited sources, because you have no knowledge of the amount of forgery Rome engaged in. Even though you are baiting me and therefore probably do not care about the Truth at all, there may still be a spark in you that wants the truth, so I have decided to try to help you out of your dark labyrinth.
The matter of the Papacy---early or late--- has nothing to do with my presuppositions: Truth remains true, even if no one agrees with it. This is not an argument you can win, Whoever You Are, since it is the argument of the devil, not the Truth of Christ God.
INCOGNITO: Can you refer me to a source, ancient or modern, that says the quote from Saint Ignatius is fradulent? You can assert anything you want. Can you supply evidence?
NICHOLAS: I have ten pages of evidence about Roman forgeries in my essay AGAINST PAPISM. Plus I explained to you what "presides" means in an Orthodox sense.
The Church granted Rome certain rights, which She never viewed as Divinely established, for then She would never have birthed Saints who said that Rome has fallen away from the Church.
INCOGNITO: So you disagree with Saint Theodore the Studite who refered to the "divine primacy"?
NICHOLAS: What is word the Saint is using for Divine? The Church granted Rome a primacy of honor, an administrative primacy for reasons of Church discipline: since this was a decision of the entire Church, in some lofty sense it may be construed as Divine, since the Church is Christ's Life on Earth: but Christ cannot be tied to lies: NOTHING is above the Chruch. So when Rome fell, Rome fell, the honorary primacy ended, no matter what you're claiming Papal Primacy to mean. If the citation from St Theodore is authentic, it in no way means that he would have accepted as Orthodox all the innovations that have scarred the life of the Papacy, driven it to bloodshed, and caused her to fall way from the Church. We know the value of a tree by its fruits: this is the fruit of the Papacy: division, strife, murder, and now syncretist ecumenism. Such is the rotten patrimony of bishops who wish to place themselves ABOVE THE CHURCH. The Pope of Saint Theodore the Ikonodule's time was probably defending ikons (though today's Papist churches have no ikons [humanistic portraiture suffices for them] and lots of garish statues), and Saint Theodore probably heaped praises on him and his see for this reason, the East being much involved with ikonoklasm. This does NOT mean that God was protecting Rome in a special way, unavailable to the other churches, because Rome indeed eventually fell away. Long before Saint Theodore, the Church Herself at the Sixth Ecumenical Council anathematized Pope Honorios! THERE IS NOTHING AUTOMATIC ABOUT GRACE: one must BE Orthodox to remain in the Orthodox Church. We cannot hold Christ captive to our delusions: we cannot say He set up a system in which no matter what the bishops of Rome does or says, we owe him oebedience because Christ HImself etsablished him to rule over the Church. What madness! What Christomachy! This makes Christ a party to all manner of sins, all manner of doctrinal innovations, all manner of antichrist juggernauts.Therefore any quotation you provide that does not express the Orthodox phronema on the Papacy is not authentic, even if not forged. NO ONE is above the Church, not even the Saints. No Saint is infallible: though in this matter I can find NO Orthodox Saints who extol the Papacy IN THE PAPIST SENSE. THE CHURCH is the pillar and ground of the Truth. The Church would never have have called Rome heretical if Rome's primacy were established by Christ for all time. Do you believe that in the first century A.D. in Caesarea Philippi in the Middle East, Christ was telling His disciples that Rome was the head of the Church for all time? (MATTHEW 16:24)? Do you really believe that is what He meant? What an anachronstic instance of flapdoodle!
I doubt you read Latin, and I doubt you're an expert on the transmission of texts. The Migne who edited the Fathers, both Greek and Latin, was, as I've told you, a Papist priest. If you believe Papist priests are incapable of forgery, then you do not know how they behaved. Second, the Orthodox and the Orthodox alone get to interpert what pre-schism Church writers mean when they heap praises on the see of Rome. For instance, when the Orthodox read such passages (IF they are authentic: any many AREN'T, so beware of citing them as if there were no question that they ARE), they understand that Saint Cyprian of Carthage (+256) taught that EVERY BISHOP IS PETER IN PETER'S SEE, so they don't make a principle of Divine unchangeable rule out of a Church-granted primacy of honor for Rome. Neither should you, since you claim to be an old calendar traditionalist. An old calendarist who accepts some form of the Papacy: what a Kabbalistic melding!
Rome was where Saints Peter and Paul were martyred, and she was the capital of the Empire: THAT and that alone was the source of her authority in "the early Church."
INCOGNITO:Oh boy. You are SO wrong. The early Fathers believed Romes primacy to be based on the Gospels, especially Matt. 16, John 21.
NICHOLAS: No "early" Church Father, NOT ONE, interprets what Rome calls "the Petrine texts" as meaning what Papists say they mean: NOT ONE---and Papist scholars admit this fact.
I've asked you to send me your name and address so I can send you my essay AGAINST PAPISM to listen to on cassette, so you may unlearn all you think you've learned. I don't have time to go back and forth with this if you will not do what you said you would do: send me your name and address. I've offered to help you: now you must take the time to WANT TO be helped.
Nicholas Candela