http://news.qq.com/a/20071117/000772.htm
CNS, November 17 — The Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, which have been split for more than 950 years, have taken a very important step toward reunification. The two sides have recently drafted a joint document and, for the first time, agreed to call the pope the “first bishop,” with a status above that of the Orthodox patriarchs. Yet after the two churches eventually reunify, the pope’s supreme power will inevitably be weakened; on the contrary, the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Orthodox Church may use this to strengthen his influence over Muslim countries, becoming, in effect, the “pope” of the entire Orthodox world.
According to Hong Kong Wen Wei Po, the leaders of the two churches held a special meeting earlier to discuss the pope’s status, the first since their split in 1054. A special committee made up of clergy from both churches drafted a Ravenna Document, which preliminarily agreed that the Bishop of Rome (that is, the Catholic pope) is the highest-ranking bishop, with a status above all Catholic bishops and Orthodox patriarchs.
Pope Benedict XVI has long hoped to bring about reunification between the two churches, and he has decided to convene a special meeting next Friday (the 23rd), which cardinals from around the world will attend.
If the two churches successfully reunify, the pope will become the highest bishop, but his power will inevitably be constrained; the absolute authority he currently enjoys in Catholicism will no longer be seen. In addition, the Orthodox Church will also require Catholicism to abandon the doctrine of papal infallibility and to allow Catholic priests to marry.
And if the two churches really can achieve reconciliation, the one to benefit most will be Bartholomew I, the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Orthodox Church (that is, the Patriarch of Constantinople or the Patriarch of Istanbul). In future dialogues with Muslim countries such as Turkey, he will have greater influence and decision-making power, becoming, in effect, the “pope” of the Orthodox Church.
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Who told me what on earth is going on here? Isn’t this joke going a bit too far?? Today doesn’t seem to be April Fool’s Day……This world changes fast……Of course, this word “reunification” must certainly have been sensationalized by the media, but for the first time in nearly a thousand years, that’s still pretty impressive……
Latest Comments
butian
2007-11-17 18:24:45 Anonymous 124.17.17.238 [Reply]
Why would the pope’s power be weakened?
Gu
2007-11-17 19:21:54 Anonymous 123.112.69.87 [Reply]
To say “reunification” is certainly an overstatement, because within Orthodoxy alone there is hardly any unity. There is no relationship of subordination among the major patriarchates.
If we follow the above line of argument, the Catholic pope becomes the “first bishop,” but in the end he is still just a “bishop”: ranked first among bishops, yes, but without any essentially, in principle, fundamentally higher status. Then this “first” is really only a secular honor, given out of worldly, historical respect, and no longer endowed with the sacred power of God’s governance over the whole secular world. Or to put it another way, the pope’s “power” would become relative, conferred through some kind of negotiation and respect, rather than directly granted by God.
If it really came to that, the weakening of the pope’s (secular) power would be a minor matter; the key issue is doctrine and authority. The reforms in doctrine at Vatican II were already quite drastic, but they had still not touched such a core issue, because the question of the “pope’s” authority and status is precisely the focal point of the divisions between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, and between Catholicism and Protestantism. For Catholicism to retreat on this crucial point is truly astonishing……
Gu
2007-11-17 20:10:01 Anonymous 123.112.69.87 [Reply]
I once wrote that if Catholicism is associated with absolutism and Protestantism with liberalism, then Orthodoxy corresponds exactly to socialism (of course, that is all something I picked up from books). What Catholicism and Orthodoxy have in common is that both attach importance to the meaning of the “church”; both believe that God will always be guiding the church. But how exactly does God guide the church? Catholicism makes this concrete in the person of the pope alone, saying that the pope is guided by God and therefore represents God’s will; that is where the doctrine of papal infallibility comes from. Orthodoxy, however, holds that God guides the direction of each believer’s heart, that every believer is equal, and that the meaning of the church is to bind the faithful into a whole, representing the common will of the body of believers. It is precisely this collective will, rather than that of any single individual, that represents the will of God. Therefore the Orthodox “top leader” would absolutely never be called an “emperor,” just as the top leader of a socialist country is called a “chairman.” In simple terms, the fundamental difference between the Catholic “pope” and the Orthodox “patriarch” is that the pope is God’s representative, whereas the patriarch is only the representative of the body of believers.
So if Catholicism is to compromise with Orthodoxy, it must acknowledge that the pope is not God’s representative — because Orthodoxy would absolutely never accept that point. At most, Orthodoxy can raise the Catholic pope’s status to the highest level, just as other patriarchs represent a city or a province, while you represent the capital or something of that sort. Even if one says that the pope is above all patriarchs by one rank, at most he would then be a representative among representatives, a general representative. But in any case, Orthodox “representation” works from the bottom up, and would never acknowledge that the pope is directly the representative of God.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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