"Mark of Ephesus, the Council of Florence, and the Roman Papacy" (original) (raw)
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KANONIKA 31, 2024
In his early literary works as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI made a significant assertion: “Rome must not require more from the East with respect to the doctrine of primacy than had been formulated and was lived in the first millennium.”1 This statement forms a foundational pillar for our discussion. Our inquiry focuses on crucial aspects related to primacy during the first millennium. This prompts an exploration of historical modalities of exercising primacy across different epochs and an investigation into the diverse perspectives held by Eastern Churches, both those situated within and outside the confines of the Roman Empire. Precision in addressing these questions is essential. As suggested by the title, this work embarks on a dual examination: 1) a thorough analysis of the primacy of the Bishop of Rome in the first millennium, and 2) a comprehensive exploration of the ongoing ecumenical dialogues with the Orthodox Churches. This study is organized into two sections dedicated to these interconnected yet distinctive topics to ensure coherence and clarity.
Often and for a good reason, commentators have noted that whereas Western Christianity was quick to realise and consider the challenges posed by the modern, brave new world, Eastern Christianity proved to be far slower in its reactions. There is no point in arguing otherwise. A series of factors conditioned, and still do, Orthodox Christianity’s slowness to respond to contemporary challenges. For one, its eschatological and transcendent figure proved to be a double-edged sword. This figure kept it out of the maelstrom of any rushed desire to fit in the nontraditional narrative of our time, but at a cost: it lost track of time, so that the last major overhaul it has undertaken was with reference to the nineteenth century nationalist ideologies, which have become its narrative ever since. Another factor is, of course, its geographical position, traditionally the Orthodox Church being confined to lands where the brave new world itself has penetrated slower than in the west, making impossible an earlier encounter. No wonder therefore that, against this backdrop, only more recently did Orthodox Christianity arrived at grasping some of the challenges of our time, through the reflection of the Orthodox living in the west. In turn, the Roman Catholic Church was there from the outset, witnessing the emergence of modernity. Getting quicker its historical bearings than Eastern Orthodoxy, it engaged a critical conversation with the brave new world from very early on. For instance, it held two major councils in modern era, where it assessed the impact of modernity on Christian faith and life. John Paul II’s Veritatis Splendor continues this conversation on ethical grounds, preceding by more than two decades the concerns recently expressed in the Encyclical of the first major gathering of the Orthodox Church in modern times, the 2016 Holy and Great Council of Crete. In my talk, I look at the ethical dimension of the two documents, pointing out how, despite the historical and cultural gulfs between the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Churches, both encyclicals illustrate similar concerns about the moral dilemmas of our age. The Splendour of Truth: A Symposium on St John Paul II's Encyclical Veritatis Splendor: 25 years on, held at School of Philosophy and Theology, The University of Notre Dame Australia, Sydney (Broadway campus). 18-19 October 2018 Audio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clXCRrbjKkI&t=209s
2022
The main goal of this article is to investigate whether the conciliar documents and their preparatory stages describe the collaboration between laity and their pastors in a way which describes an accountable Church. We did not encounter a technical definition of accountability in the documents of Vatican II. However, if creating a greater culture of accountability refers to the willingness of all members of the people of God to have the quality of their Christian life evaluated by other members, then we encountered such pleas in the attention to the mutual relationship of ordained and lay faithful during the preparation of the conciliar documents.