Deprecated: trim(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated in
/home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-content/plugins/sexybookmarks/public.php on line
388
Deprecated: trim(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated in
/home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-content/plugins/sexybookmarks/public.php on line
394
Deprecated: trim(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated in
/home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-content/plugins/sexybookmarks/public.php on line
400
ROME, January 25, 2010 – This evening, with vespers in the basilica of Saint Paul’s Outside the Walls, Benedict XVI is closing the week of prayer for Christian unity.
There are some who say that ecumenism has entered a phase of retreat and chill. But as soon as one that looks to the East, the facts say the opposite. Relations with the Orthodox Churches have never been so promising as they have since Joseph Ratzinger has been pope.
The dates speak for themselves. A period of chill in the theological dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches of Byzantine tradition began in 1990, when the two sides clashed over so-called “uniatism,” meaning the ways in which Catholic communities of the Eastern rites duplicate in everything the parallel Orthodox communities, differing only by their obedience to the Church of Rome.
In Balamond, in Lebanon, the dialogue came to a halt. It hit an even bigger obstacle on the Russian side, where the patriarchate of Moscow could not tolerate seeing itself “invaded” by Catholic missionaries sent there by Pope John Paul II, who were all the more suspect because they were of Polish nationality, historically a rival.
The dialogue remained frozen until, in 2005, the German Joseph Ratzinger ascended to the throne of Peter, a pope highly appreciated in the East for the same reason he prompts criticisms in the West: for his attachment to the great Tradition.
Continue reading →
: str_replace(): Passing null to parameter #3 ($subject) of type array|string is deprecated in
class="post-1615 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-blog-archive tag-american-orthodox tag-autocephalous tag-byzantine tag-canon-law tag-church-and-state tag-ecumenical-patriarchate tag-fr-alexander-schmemann tag-hellenism-and-orthodoxy tag-history tag-orthodox-christian-unity tag-orthodox-church tag-orthodox-ecclesiology tag-papal-primacy tag-symphonia tag-theology entry">
Deprecated: trim(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated in
/home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-content/plugins/sexybookmarks/public.php on line
388
Deprecated: trim(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated in
/home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-content/plugins/sexybookmarks/public.php on line
394
Deprecated: trim(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated in
/home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-content/plugins/sexybookmarks/public.php on line
400
Many of the current jurisdictional controversies within the Orthodox Church involving the Ecumenical Patriarch, relations between Constantinople and Moscow, the status of the “autocephalies” — even the future of the American Orthodox Church — hinge on the question of primacy. While Orthodox Christians have rejected the Roman model of primacy as “supreme power” over the Bishop and local Church, the question of primacy within the Orthodox Church is a complete muddle. In “The Idea of Primacy in Orthodox Ecclesiology,” an essay written in 1960 and now available on the AOI main site, Fr. Alexander Schmemann examines various aspects of the primacy question, an issue he describes as “on the agenda for our time.” As he reminds us, the ecclesiological interpretation of primacy — regional, autocephalous, and “universal” — is “virtually absent” from from Orthodox theology. “We badly need a clarification of the nature and functions of all these primacies and, first of all, of the very concept of primacy,” Fr. Schmemann writes. “For both in theory and in practice there is a great deal of confusion concerning the definition of the ‘supreme power’ in the church, of its scope and the modes of its expression.”
Excerpts:
It would not be difficult to prove that the canonical and jurisdictional troubles and divisions, of which we have had too many in the last decades, have their roots in some way or other in this question of primacy, or, to be more exact, in the absence of a clearly defined doctrine of the nature and functions of primacy. And the same unsolved problem constitutes a major handicap for the unity and, therefore, the progress of Orthodoxy in countries like America where, paradoxically enough, the loyalty to a certain concept of “canonicity” leads to the most uncanonical situation that can be imagined: the coexistence on the same territory of a number of parallel jurisdictions, and dioceses…
[ … ]
In the early Church the canonical tradition was an integral part of ecclesiology — of the living experience of the Church. But little by little it became an autonomous sphere in which the visible ecclesiastical structures, the functions of power and authority, and the relations between Churches, ceased to be explained in terms of the Church-Body of Christ. Loosing its ties with ecclesiology, the canonical tradition became “canon law.” But in Canon Law there was no room for the notion of the Body of Christ because this notion has nothing to do with “law.” Continue reading →
: Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function nuthemes_content_nav() in /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-content/themes/prose/archive.php:58
Stack trace:
#0 /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-includes/template-loader.php(106): include()
#1 /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-blog-header.php(19): require_once('/home/aoiusa/pu...')
#2 /home/aoiusa/public_html/index.php(17): require('/home/aoiusa/pu...')
#3 {main}
thrown in