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Eastern Schism Schism, EASTERN.—From the time of Diotrephes (III John, i, 9-10) there have been continual schisms, of which the greater number were in the East. Arianism produced a huge schism; the Nestorian and Monophysite schisms still last. However, the Eastern Schism always means that most deplorable quarrel of which the final result is the separation of the vast majority of Eastern Christians from union with the Catholic Church, the schism that produced the separated, so-called “Orthodox” Church. I. Remote Preparation of the Schism.—The great Eastern Schism must not be conceived as the result of only one definite quarrel. It is not true that after centuries of perfect peace, suddenly on account of one dispute, nearly half of Christendom fell away. Such an event would be unparalleled in history, at any rate, unless there were some great heresy, and in this quarrel there was no heresy at first, nor has there ever been a hopeless disagreement about the Faith. It is a case, perhaps the only prominent case, of a pure schism, of a breach of intercommunion caused by anger and bad feeling, not by a rival theology. It would be inconceivable then that hundreds of bishops should suddenly break away from union with their chief, if all had gone smoothly before. The great schism is rather the result of a very gradual process. Its remote causes must be sought centuries before there was any suspicion of their final effect. There was a series of temporary schisms that loosened the bond and prepared the way. The two great breaches, those of Photius and Michael Caerularius, which are remembered as the origin of the present state of things, were both healed up afterwards. Strictly speaking, the present schism dates from the Eastern repudiation of the Council of Florence (in 1472). So although the names of Photius and Caerularius are justly associated with this disaster, inasmuch as their quarrels are the chief elements in the story, it must not be imagined that they were the sole, the first, or the last authors of the schism. If we group the story around their names we must explain the earlier causes that prepared for them, and note that there were temporary reunions later. The first cause of all was the gradual estrangement of East and West. To a great extent this estrangement was inevitable. The East and West grouped themselves around different centers—at any rate as immediate centers—used different rites and spoke different languages. We must distinguish the position of the pope as visible head of all Christendom from his place as Patriarch of the West. The position, sometimes now advanced by anti-papal controversialists, that all bishops are equal in jurisdiction, was utterly unknown in the early Church. From the very beginning we find a graduated hierarchy of metropolitans, exarchs, and primates. We find, too, from the beginning the idea that a bishop inherits the dignity of the founder of his see, that, therefore, the successor of an Apostle has special rights and privileges. This graduated hierarchy is important as explaining the pope’s position. He was not the one immediate superior of each bishop; he was the chief of an elaborate organization, as it were the apex of a carefully graduated pyramid. The consciousness of the early Christian probably would have been that the heads of Christendom were the patriarchs; then further he knew quite well that the chief patriarch sat at Rome. However, the immediate head of each part of the Church was its patriarch. After Chalcedon (451) we must count five patriarchates: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. The difference between the East and West then was in the first place that the pope in the West was not only supreme pontiff, but also the local patriarch. He represented to Eastern Christians a remote and foreign authority, the last court of appeal, for very serious questions, after their own patriarchs had been found incapable of settling them; but to his own Latins in the West he was the immediate head, the authority immediately over their metropolitans, the first court of appeal to their bishops. So all loyalty in the West went direct to Rome. Rome was the Mother Church in many senses, it was by missioners sent out from Rome that the local Western Churches had been founded. The loyalty of the Eastern Christians on the other hand went first to his own patriarch, so there was here always a danger of divided allegiance—if the patriarch had a quarrel with the pope—such as would have been inconceivable in the West. Indeed, the falling away of so many hundreds of Eastern bishops, of so many millions of simple Christians, is explained sufficiently by the schism of the patriarchs. If the four Eastern patriarchs agreed upon any course it was practically a foregone conclusion that their metropolitans and bishops would follow them and that the priests and people would follow the bishops. So the very organization of the Church in some sort already prepared the ground for a contrast (which might become a rivalry) between the first patriarch in the West with his vast following of Latins on the one side and the Eastern patriarchs with their subjects on the other. Further points that should be noticed are the differences of rite and language. The question of rite follows that of patriarchate; it made the distinction obvious to the simplest Christian. A Syrian, Greek or Egyptian layman would, perhaps, not understand much about canon law as affecting patriarchs; he could not fail to notice that a traveling Latin bishop or priest celebrated the Holy Mysteries in a way that was very strange, and that stamped him as a (perhaps suspicious) foreigner. In the West, the Roman Rite was first affecting, then supplanting, all others, and in the East the Byzantine Rite was gradually obtaining the same position. So we have the germ of two unities, Eastern and Western. Undoubtedly both sides knew that other rites were equally legitimate ways of celebrating the same mysteries, but the difference made it difficult to say prayers together. We see that this point was an important one from the number of accusations against purely ritual matters brought by Caerularius when he looked for grounds of quarrel. Even the detail of language was an element of separation. It is true that the East was never entirely hellenized as the West was latinized. Nevertheless, Greek did become to a great extent the international language in the East. In the Eastern councils all the bishops talk Greek. So again we have the same two unities, this time in language—a practically Greek East and an entirely Latin West. It is difficult to conceive this detail as a cause of estrangement, but it is undoubtedly true that many misunderstandings arose and grew, simply because people could not understand one another. For during the time when these disputes arose, hardly anyone knew a foreign language. It was not till the Renaissance that the age of convenient grammars and dictionaries arose. St. Gregory I (d. 1604) had been apocrisary at Constantinople, but he does not seem to have learned Greek; Pope Vigilius (540-55) spent eight unhappy years there and yet never knew the language. Photius was the profoundest scholar of his age, yet he knew no Latin. When Leo IX (1048-54) wrote in Latin to Peter III of Antioch, Peter had to send the letter to Constantinople to find out what it was about. Such cases occur continually and confuse all the relations between East and West. At councils the papal legates addressed the assembled fathers in Latin and no one understood them; the council deliberated in Greek and the legates wondered what was going on. So there arose suspicion on both sides. Interpreters had to be called in; could their versions be trusted? The Latins especially were profoundly suspicious of Greek craft in this matter. Legates were asked to sign documents they did not understand on the strength of assurances that there was nothing really compromising in them. And so little made so much difference. The famous case, long afterwards, of the Decree of Florence and the forms Greek: kath on tropon, quemadmodum, shows how much confusion the use of two languages may cause. These causes then combined to produce two halves of Christendom, an Eastern and a Western half, each distinguished in various ways from the other. They are certainly not sufficient to account for a separation of those halves; only we notice that already there was a consciousness of two entities, the first marking of a line of division, through which rivalry, jealousy, hatred might easily cut a separation. II. Causes of Estrangement.—The rivalry and hatred arose from several causes. Undoubtedly the first, the root of all the quarrel, was the advance of the See of Constantinople. We have seen that four Eastern patriarchates were to some extent contrasted to the one great Western unity. Had there remained four such unities in the East, nothing further need have followed. What accentuated the contrast and made it a rivalry was the gradual assumption of authority over the other three by the patriarch at Constantinople. It was Constantinople that bound together the East into one body, uniting it against the West. It was the persistent attempt of the emperor’s patriarch to become a kind of Eastern pope, as nearly as possible equal to his Western prototype, that was the real source of all the trouble. On the one hand, union under Constantinople really made a kind of rival Church that could be opposed to Rome; on the other hand, through all the career of advancement of the Byzantine bishops they found only one real hindrance, the persistent opposition of the popes. The emperor was their friend and chief ally always. It was, indeed, the emperor’s policy of centralization that was responsible for the scheme of making the See of Constantinople a center. The other patriarchs who were displaced were not dangerous opponents. Weakened by the endless Monophysite quarrels, having lost most of their flocks, then reduced to an abject state by the Moslem conquest, the bishops of Alexandria and Antioch could not prevent the growth of Constantinople. Indeed, eventually, they accepted their degradation willingly and came to be idle ornaments of the new patriarch’s Court. Jerusalem too was hampered by schisms and Moslems and was itself a new patriarchate, having only the rights of the last see of the five. On the other hand, at every step in the advancement of Constantinople there was always the opposition of Rome. When the new see got its titular honor at the First Council of Constantinople (381, can. 3), Rome refused to accept the canon (she was not represented at the council); when Chalcedon in 451 turned this into a real patriarchate (can. 28) the legates and then the pope himself refused to acknowledge what had been done; when, intoxicated by their quick advancement, the successors of the little suffragan bishops who had once obeyed Heraclea assumed the insolent title “ecumenical patriarch”, it was again a pope of Old Rome who sternly rebuked their arrogance. We can understand that jealousy and hatred of Rome rankled in the minds of the new patriarchs, that they were willing to throw off altogether an authority which was in their way at every step. That the rest of the East joined them in their rebellion was the natural result of the authority they had succeeded in usurping over the other Eastern bishops. So we arrive at the essential consideration in this question. The Eastern Schism was not a movement arising in all the East; it was not a quarrel between two large bodies; it was essentially the rebellion of one see, Constantinople, which by the emperor’s favor had already acquired such influence that it was able unhappily to drag the other patriarchs into schism with it. We have already seen that the suffragans of the patriarchs would naturally follow their chiefs. If then Constantinople had stood alone her schism would have mattered comparatively little. What made the situation so serious was that the rest of the East eventually sided with her. That followed from her all too successful assumption of the place of chief see in the East. So the advance of Constantinople was doubly the cause of the great schism. It brought her into conflict with Rome and made the Byzantine patriarch almost inevitably the enemy of the pope; at the same time it gave him such a position that his enmity meant that of all the East. This being so, we must remember how entirely unwarrantable, novel, and uncanonical the advance of Constantinople was. The see was not Apostolic, had no glorious traditions, no reason whatever for its usurpation of the first place in the East, but an accident of secular politics. The first historical Bishop of Byzantium was Metrophanes (315-25); he was not even a metropolitan, he was the lowest in rank a diocesan bishop could be, a suffragan of Heraclea. That is all his successors ever would have been, they would have had no power to influence anyone, had not Constantine chosen their city for his capital. All through their progress they made no pretense of founding their claims on anything but the fact that they were now bishops of the political capital. It was as the emperor’s bishops, as functionaries of the imperial Court, that they rose to the second place in Christendom. The legend of St. Andrew founding their see was a late afterthought; it is now abandoned by all scholars. The claim of Constantinople was always frankly the purely Erastian one that as Caesar could establish his capital where he liked, so could he, the civil governor, give ecclesiastical rank in the hierarchy to any see he liked. The 28th canon of Chalcedon says so in so many words. Constantinople has become the New Rome, therefore its bishop is to have like honor to that of the patriarch of Old Rome and to be second after him. It only needed a shade more insolence to claim that the emperor could transfer all papal rights to the bishop of the city where he held his court. Let it be always remembered that the rise of Constantinople, its jealousy of Rome, its unhappy influence over all the East is a pure piece of Erastianism, a shameless surrender of the things of God to Caesar. And nothing can be less stable than to establish ecclesiastical rights on the basis of secular politics. The Turks in 1453 cut away the foundation of Byzantine ambition. There is now no emperor and no Court to justify the ecumenical patriarch’s position. If we were to apply logically the principle on which he rests, he would sink back to the lowest place and the patriarchs of Christendom would reign at Paris, London, New York. Meanwhile the old and really canonical principle of the superiority of Apostolic sees remains untouched by political changes. Apart from the Divine origin of the papacy, the advance of Constantinople was a gross violation of the rights of the Apostolic Sees of Alexandria and Antioch. We need not wonder that the popes, although their first place was not questioned, resented this disturbance of ancient rights by the ambition of the imperial bishops. Long before Photius there had been schisms between Constantinople and Rome, all of them healed up in time, but naturally all tending to weaken the sense of essential unity. From the beginning of the See of Constantinople to the great schism in 867 the list of these temporary breaches of communion is a formidable one. There were fifty-five years of schism (343-98) during the Arian troubles, eleven because of St. John Chrysostom’s deposition (404-15), thirty-five years of the Acacian schism (484-519), forty-one years of Monothelite schism (640-81), sixty-one years because of Iconoclasm. So of these 544 years (323-867) no less than 203 were spent by Constantinople in a state of schism. We notice too that in every one of these quarrels Constantinople was on the wrong side; by the consent of the Orthodox, too, Rome in all stood out for right. And already we see that the influence of the emperor (who naturally always supported his court patriarch) in most cases dragged a great number of other Eastern bishops into the same schism. III. Photius and Coerularius.—It was natural that the great schisms, which are immediately responsible for the present state of things, should be local quarrels of Constantinople. Neither was in any sense a general grievance of the East. There was neither time any reason why other bishops should join with Constantinople in the quarrel against Rome, except that already they had learned to look to the imperial city for orders. The quarrel of Photius was a gross defiance of lawful church order. Ignatius was the rightful bishop without any question; he had reigned peaceably for eleven years. Then he refused Communion to a man guilty of open incest (857). But that man was the regent Bardas, so the Government professed to depose Ignatius and intruded Photius into his see. Pope Nicholas I had no quarrel against the Eastern Church; he had no quarrel against the Byzantine see. He stood out for the rights of the lawful bishop. Both Ignatius and Photius had formally appealed to him. It was only when Photius found that he had lost his case that he and the Government preferred schism to submission (867). It is even doubtful how far this time there was any general Eastern schism at all. In the council that restored Ignatius (869) the other patriarchs declared that they had at once accepted the pope’s former verdict. But Photius had formed an anti-Roman party which was never afterwards dissolved. The effect of his quarrel, though it was so purely personal, though it was patched up when Ignatius died, and again when Photius fell, was to gather to a head all the old jealousy of Rome at Constantinople. We see this throughout the Photian Schism. The mere question of that usurper’s pretended rights does not account for the outburst of enmity against the pope, against everything Western and Latin that we notice in government documents, in Photius’s letters, in the Acts of his synod in 879, in all the attitude of his party. It is rather the rancour of centuries bursting out on a poor pretext; this fierce resentment against Roman interference comes from men who know of old that Rome is the one hindrance to their plans and ambitions. Moreover, Photius gave the Byzantines a new and powerful weapon. The cry of heresy was raised often enough at all times; it never failed to arouse popular indignation. But it had not yet occurred to any one to accuse all the West of being steeped in pernicious heresy. Hitherto it had been a question of resenting the use of papal authority in isolated cases. This new idea carried the war into the enemy’s camp with a vengeance. Photius’s six charges are silly enough, so silly that one wonders that so great a scholar did not think of something cleverer, at least in appearance. But they changed the situation to the Eastern advantage. When Photius calls the Latins “liars, fighters against God, forerunners of Antichrist”, it is no longer a question merely of abusing one’s ecclesiastical superiors. He now assumes a more effective part; he is the champion of orthodoxy, indignant against heretics. After Photius, John Bekkos says there was “perfect peace” between East and West. But the peace was only on the surface. Photius’s cause did not die. It remained latent in the party he left, the party that still hated the West, that was ready to break the union again at the first pretext, that remembered and was ready to revive this charge of heresy against Latins. Certainly from the time of Photius hatred and scorn of Latins was an inheritance of the mass of the Byzantine clergy. How deeply rooted and far spread it was, is shown by the absolutely gratuitous outburst 150 years later under Michael Caerularius (1043-58). For this time there was not even the shadow of a pretext. No one had disputed Caerularius’s right as patriarch; the pope had not interfered with him in any way at all. And suddenly in 1053 he sends off a declaration of war, then shuts up the Latin churches at Constantinople, hurls a string of wild accusations, and shows in every possible way that he wants a schism, apparently for the mere pleasure of not being in communion with the West. He got his wish. After a series of wanton aggressions, unparalleled in church history, after he had begun by striking the pope’s name from his diptychs, the Roman legates excommunicated him (July 16, 1054). But still there was no idea of a general excommunication of the Byzantine Church, still less of all the East. The legates carefully provided against that in their Bull. They acknowledged that the emperor (Constantine IX, who was excessively annoyed at the whole quarrel), the Senate, and the majority of the inhabitants of the city were “most pious and orthodox”. They excommunicated Caerularius, Leo of Achrida, and their adherents. This quarrel, too, need no more have produced a permanent state of schism than the excommunication of any other contumacious bishop. The real tragedy is that gradually all the other Eastern patriarchs took sides with Casrularius, obeyed him by striking the pope’s name from their diptychs, and chose of their own accord to share his schism. At first they do not seem to have wanted to do so. John III of Antioch certainly refused to go into schism at Caerularius’s bidding. But, eventually, the habit they had acquired of looking to Constantinople for orders proved too strong. The emperor (not Constantine IX, but his successor) was on the side of his patriarch and they had learned too well to consider the emperor as their over-lord in spiritual matters too. Again, it was the usurped authority of Constantinople, the Erastianism of the East that turned a personal quarrel into a great schism. We see, too, how well Photius’s idea of calling Latins heretics had been learned. Caerularius had a list, a longer and even more futile one, of such accusations. His points were different from those of Photius; he had forgotten the Filioque, and had discovered a new heresy in our use of azyme bread. But the actual accusations mattered little at any time, the idea that had been found so useful was that of declaring that we are impossible because we are heretics. It was offensive and it gave the schismatical leaders the chance of assuming a most effective pose, as defenders of the true Faith. IV. After Coerularius.—In a sense the schism was now complete. What had been from the beginning two portions of the same Church, what had become two entities ready to be divided, were now two rival Churches. Yet, just as there had been schisms before Photius, so there have been reunions after Caerularius. The Second Council of Lyons in 1274 and again the Council of Florence in 1439 both arrived at a reunion that people hoped would close the breach for ever. Unhappily, neither reunion lasted, neither had any solid basis on the Eastern side. The anti-Latin party, foreshadowed long ago, formed and organized by Photius, had under Caerularius become the whole “Orthodox” Church. This process had been a gradual one, but it was now complete. At first the Slav Churches (Russia, Servia, Bulgaria, etc.) saw no reason why they should break communion with the West because a patriarch of Constantinople was angry with a pope. But the habit of looking to the capital of the empire eventually affected them too. They used the Byzantine Rite, were Easterns; so they settled on the Eastern side. Caerularius had managed cleverly to represent his cause as that of the East; it seemed (most unjustifiably) that it was a question of Byzantines versus Latins. At Lyons, and again at Florence, the reunion (on their side) was only a political expedient of the Government. The emperor wanted Latins to fight for him against the Turks. So he was prepared to concede anything—till the danger was over. It is clear that on these occasions the religious motive moved only the Western side. We had nothing to gain; we wanted nothing from them. The Latins had everything to offer, they were prepared to give their help. All they wanted in return was that an end should be made of the lamentable and scandalous spectacle of a divided Christendom. For the religious motive the Byzantines cared nothing; or, rather, religion to them meant the continuation of the schism. They had called us heretics so often that they had begun to believe it. Reunion was an unpleasant and humiliating condition in order that a Frank army might come and protect them. The common people had been so well drilled in their hatred of Azymites and creed-tamperers, that their zeal for what they thought Orthodoxy prevailed over their fear of the Turk. “Rather the turban of the Sultan than the tiara of the Pope” expressed their mind exactly. When the bishops who had signed the decrees of reunion came back, each time they were received with a storm of indignation as betrayers of the Orthodox faith. Each time the reunion was broken almost as soon as it was made. The last act of schism was when Dionysius I of Constantinople (1467-72) summoned a synod and formally repudiated the union (1472). Since then there has been no intercommunion; a vast “Orthodox” Church exists, apparently satisfied with being in schism with the bishop whom it still recognizes as the first patriarch of Christendom. V. Reasons of the Present Schism.—In this deplorable story we notice the following points. It is easier to understand how a schism continues than how it began. Schisms are easily made; they are enormously difficult to heal. The religious instinct is always conservative; there is always a strong tendency to continue the existing state of things. At first the schismatics were reckless innovators; then with the lapse of centuries their cause seems to be the old one; it is the Faith of the Fathers. Eastern Christians especially have this conservative instinct strongly. They fear that reunion with Rome would mean a betrayal of the old Faith, of the Orthodox Church, to which they have clung so heroically during all these centuries. One may say that the schism continues mainly through force of inertia. In its origin we must distinguish between the schismatical tendency and the actual occasion of its outburst. But the reason of both has gone now. The tendency was mainly jealousy caused by the rise of the See of Constantinople. That progress is over long ago. The last three centuries Constantinople has lost nearly all the broad lands she once acquired. There is nothing the modern Orthodox Christian resents more than any assumption of authority by the ecumenical patriarch outside his diminished patriarchate. The Byzantine see has long been the play thing of the Turk, wares that he sold to the highest bidder. Certainly now this pitiful dignity is no longer a reason for the schism of nearly 100,000,000 Christians. Still less are the immediate causes of the breach active. The question of the respective rights of Ignatius and Photius leaves even the Orthodox cold after eleven centuries; and Caerularius’s ambitions and insolence may well be buried with him. Nothing then remains of the original causes. There is not really any question of doctrine involved. It is not a heresy, but a schism. The Decree of Florence made every possible concession to their feelings. There is no real reason why they should not sign that Decree now. They deny papal infallibility and the Immaculate Conception, they quarrel over purgatory, consecration by the words of institution, the procession of the Holy Ghost, in each case misrepresenting the dogma to which they object. It is not difficult to show that on all these points their own Fathers are with those of the Latin Church, which asks them only to return to the old teaching of their own Church. That is the right attitude towards the Orthodox always. They have a horror of being latinized, of betraying the old Faith. One must always insist that there is no idea of latinizing them, that the old Faith is not incompatible with, but rather demands union with the chief see which their Fathers obeyed. In canon law they have nothing to change except such abuses as the sale of bishoprics and the Erastianism that their own better theologians deplore. Celibacy, azyme bread, and so on are Latin customs that no one thinks of forcing on them. They need not add the Filioque to the Creed; they will always keep their venerable rite untouched. Not a bishop need be moved, hardly a feast (except that of St. Photius on February 6) altered. All that is asked of them is to come back to where their fathers stood, to treat Rome as Athanasius, Basil, Chrysostom treated her. It is not Latins, it is they who have left the Faith of their Fathers. There is no humiliation in retracing one’s steps when one has wandered down a mistaken road because of long-forgotten personal quarrels. They too must see how disastrous to the common cause is the scandal of the division. They too must wish to put an end to so crying an evil. And if they really wish it the way need not be difficult. For, indeed, after nine centuries of schism we may realize on both sides that it is not only the greatest it is also the most superfluous evil in Christendom. ADRIAN FORTESCUE https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/eastern-schism

Patriarch Theodoros of Alexandria believes that his sudden decision to commemorate Epiphany Dumenko, the primate of the schismatic “Orthodox Church of Ukraine,” will not lead to any divisions in the Church, but in fact to a solution to the ongoing Ukrainian crisis. He also expressed the conviction that His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow will not stop commemorating him at the Divine services, as he has stopped commemorating Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople and Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens, according to the Greek outlet Romfea. Pat. Theodoros noted that in recognizing the OCU, “we made a difficult decision, very difficult.” “Pat. Theodoros could not stand the pressure from the Phanar, the Greek authorities, and the United States,” commented Archpriest Nikolai Danilevich, Deputy Head of the Department for External Church Relations of the canonical Ukrainian Church. Surprisingly, the Alexandrian Patriarch also expressed the conviction the Pat. Kirill will not cease commemorating him, because “as the wise Archbishop of Cyprus says, that’s not a measure” that can solve the problem. Archpriest Nikolai Balashov, the Deputy Chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, announced on Friday that Pat. Kirill would cease commemorating Pat. Theodoros, though OrthoChristian has not yet been able to confirm that he did in fact stop commemorating him. Pat. Theodoros also emphasized, as he did in the press release announcing his decision to commemorate Epiphany, that the Church has a “conciliar character” and that “the decision to recognize the OCU came after long prayers and reflections, and was discussed with all the bishops of the Patriarchate of Alexandria.” The Archbishop of Cyprus himself, Archbishop Chrysostomos, had emphasized in his meeting with other primates, including Pat. Theodoros, that the Church is conciliar and thus no Local Church should make a unilateral decision. However, both Abp. Ieronymos of Athens and Pat. Theodoros later decided, and Pat. Theodoros on his own, without a decision of his Synod of Bishops, to recognize the OCU. After “the Patriarch of Alexandria recognized the OCU, that is, the tomos, which our Ecumenical Patriarch gave, the solution to this problem will begin—a problem that troubles our Church,” Pat. Theodoros commented. Responding to a journalists’ remark that his position could lead to a split, not to healing, Pat. Theodoros said: “No, there will be no schism! I believe that after my intervention, other Churches will follow our Ecumenical Patriarchate. In the end, we will be united, fearing God and solving the problem in love.” And while Pat. Theodoros earlier encouraged the faithful of the canonical Church to stand firm in their faith and position, he is now confident that “a Church that wants autocephaly should receive it, and everyone else will see that it is no different from them.” Asked what he thinks about the request not to commemorate Epiphany while serving in Limassol, Pat. Theodoros declined to answer, saying he had to discuss the issue with Abp. Chrysostomos first. Patriarch of Alexandria: Decision to commemorate OCU will lead to solution, not a schism ORTHOCHRISTIAN.COM Patriarch Theodoros of Alexandria believes that his sudden decision to commemorate Epiphany Dumenko, the primate of the schismatic “Orthodox Church of Ukraine,” will not lead to any...

The Following is a response to an Orthodox interlocutor. He had read my blogpost entitled “Papal Office is internal to the Episcopate , Some Notes On The Mutual Dependency of Bishops to the Pope, Citations from the Church Fathers“, and offered some objections. His real name will go unmentioned. He will be referred to as Max. His comments are in the large bold lettering, my answers are in the small text. WHERE IS EVIDENCE OF THIS AT THE FALSE REUNIFICATION COUNCILS OF LYONS (1274) AND FLORENCE (1439) WHICH WERE REJECTED BY THE EASTERN CHURCHES ONLY HAD THE SUPPORT OF THE BISHOP OF ROME WITHIN HIS OWN (WESTERN) PATRIARCHATE? The author of this statement has overridden the natural constitution of the Church’s government in preference of Patriarchal governance. It is fact that Patriarchal governance was not instituted by Jesus Christ, nor the Apostles, nor the early bishops for several centuries. What did Christ establish? He established the 12 Apostles who formed both an administrative college and missionary society. What did Christ establish through the Apostles? He established the successors to the Apostles, bishops, which is formed, like the Apostles, in a governing college and commissioned society. Within this College, there is a distinction between Head and members, Pope and bishops. Later metropolia and patriarchal organization were Church-created organizations for the better managing of the churches. The latter cannot be used to size up any into one grouping. There are churches with their bishops. The church of Rome has the successor of Peter. Thus, the church of Rome as the central head of the worldwide episcopate and the bishops/churches surrounding him in one compact visible administrative unity. Thus, when Max here makes a measurement of the universal church in Patriarchal divisions, leaving the bishops and Pope who agreed with the decrees of Lyons and Florence, he is disregarding fundamental and divine institutions and even mistakes them for the Patriarchal boundaries. One more thing – I wonder where Max gets the idea that the Patriarchate of Rome was automatically everything Western. At the council of Nicaea, canon 6 alluded to the comparable quasi-Patriarchal rights over Italia suburbicaria, which didn’t quite encompass Gaul, Spain, England, what would become Frankish lands, Africa, etc,etc. So what is it between the Council of Nicaea and the big Councils such as Ephesus 431 and Chalcedon 451 that automatically makes all these Western sees part of the Roman Patriarchate? Sure Rome was a missionary mother to these churches, but that doesn’t entail what has been assumed. The original mother was the city church of Jerusalem, and yet the world is not one big Jerusalem Patriarchate. Many more questions could be brought up ERICK YBARRA WRITES: “BUT, WE CAN ASK, CAN THE POPE GO AGAINST THE ENTIRE EPISCOPATE?” —> THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED WHEN ROME WENT INTO SCHISM AND BROKE AWAY FROM THE ANCIENT PATRIARCHATES OF JERUSALEM, ANTIOCH, ALEXANDRIA, CONSTANTINOPLE AND PRETTY MUCH EVERY ECCLESIASTICAL COMMUNITY MENTIONED IN THE NEW TESTAMENT! Again, another Patriarchal sizing of the divine ekklesia, and coming to the wrong conclusion thereby. Also, this added part “pretty much every ecclesiastical community mentioned in the New Testament!”, only has enough power to turn around and hit as a target the original shooter. During the 4th century, many Eastern churches went into an Arian disarray and corrupted the pure doctrine of Jesus Christ. Many of these churches were part of the grouping that Max provides. Does this have any significance? Enough to turn his argument into a poor inconsistency? I think so. But it only gets worse. The condemnation of St. John Chrysostom, eventually shared by the “Patriarchates” of Cple, Alex, and Antioch. Were these churches of the Ecclesiastical new testament community ? If so, what entailments follow? And, if Max’s purported import were proven true, wouldn’t it backfire? But then, it was, in fact, only the Roman See, which had alone taken initiative with Emperor Honorius/Arcadius to hold a synod to examine the case of Chrysostom, and the western sees which had retained Chrysostom’s name in the diptych of the mysteries. I wonder, just what significance Max would glean from a situation where the Eastern patriarchs broke away from one of the foremost heroes of Eastern Orthodoxy, the golden tongue himself? But then, when, once again, the three major “Patriarchal Sees” went into heretical monophysiticism, and the Roman See (together with the Western sees & some Eastern believers underground, including monks) was alone continually standing firm on Chalcedon, does he see any effectual significance of Rome standing alone again, atop of the heretical world as the “pure home of orthodox dogma” (As St. Sophronius of Jerusalem would call her) ? But God forbid the Roman See would ever break “from the ancient Patriarchates of Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople and pretty much every Ecclesiastical community mentioned in the New Testament”. ERICK YBARRA WRITES: “CHRIST ALWAYS SUSTAINS A REMNANT, IF NOT ALL, IN THE DIVINE VOCATION OF THE EPISCOPATE THAT WILL ALWAYS BE ON THE RIGHT-BELIEVING SIDE OF THINGS. THUS, BY WAY OF ACCIDENT [FROM OUR PERSPECTIVE], AND NOT BY ABSOLUTE NECESSITY, THE POPE WILL NEVER BE ALONE IN HIS OWN PAPAL MAGISTERIUM FOR THIS REASON.” —-> ERICK SEEMS TO FORGET THAT BOTH POPE HONORIUS AND POPE VIGILIUS WERE CONDEMNED BY ECUMENICAL COUNCILS FOR HERESY! It seems that when Max can find a reason to undermine Papal claims, he is willing to even do so when it means doing so in the most abnormal and extra-contextual manner possible. But then, when it suits Orthodoxy, he can expect his interlocutors to understand extenuating circumstances (see his comments above on Lyons/Florence) Pope Honorius I likely didn’t even teach monotheletism. But even if he did, where was he to confirm himself in the error? He was in the grave, and his soul hopefully in heaven or purgatory if not. Be that as it may, the Council felt free to condemn Honorius as well as many other deceased persons. Doesn’t this mean that the Council has a higher authority than the Pope? I’m sure many thought this. After all, didn’t many think Councils weren’t even more authoritative than the pontifications of their favorite theologians (see the Nestorians/Coptic churches) ?? Anyhow, Catholics have always had a response to this situation. Firstly, the promise of infallibility, which Pope St. Agatho readily asserts for the Roman See in his letter to the Eastern Council, only pertains to a specific mode of teaching. And it isn’t as mechanical as some would like to envision it. It is a mode from where the Pope speaks as the supreme pastor of the church, making a solemn judgement concerning faith &/or morals with the fullness of his God-given authority. In fact, Pope Agatho explains that Pope Honorius did not appeal to Papal authority and the tradition of Rome when he wrote his letter to Sergius of Cple. One might have thought that it would be entirely anarchronistic to think of someone noting the distinction in modes of Papal teaching. But there it is in the 7th century, by no less than a Greek Pope. Pope Leo, who ratified the decrees , agrees to the condemnation of Honorius, even if it were only that he was negligent. A good case can be made, however, that the words of the condemnation are still much stronger than that. What does this prove? That a Council, working together with a valid Pope, examines and condemns a former Pope for heresy. There is room for that on my bus. In fact, many of us are praying this occurs under the present Pontificate, if in the case of formal heresy. Of course, prayers first go to the wellbeing of all, including the Pope himself. For Vigilius – How often do you read anti-Papalists go through the whole story of Vigilius? It is rare that I hear it mentioned that the whole Three chapters controversy was an attempt on the part of the Emperor to resolve the church’s theological disputes. This, right off the bat, should signal an abnormality which the Popes themselves had previously warned against (See Gelasius’ letters to the Emperor). This tendency began with the Emperor Constantine, and could obviously serve the Church very well. But it obviously does not serve the Church very well when the secular rulers circumvent the government of the Church and imposes upon the Church its own rules and mandates. Under the power of Justinian, we see this immediately with his 3 chapters plan. He sends an edict to the eastern patriarchs, requiring them to sign. These Eastern patriarchs, knowing that such matters are to be handled only by collaboration with the prelate of the Roman See, signed conditionally. That condition was whether Pope Vigilius, the head of the universal church, would sign. Justinian knew what he was doing, and he knew he would take any measure necessary to acquire the assent of Rome. We know this because when delegates from Justinian arrived in Rome and met with an unwilling Vigilius, they already knew what plan B was. Take Vigilius into custody. *Right there*, the Byzantine Ceasar was imposing himself upon the freedom of the Church to settle her own affairs. He had already done so with the Eastern patriarchs. From here on forward, all Papal actions are rendered suspicious , since the Pope is under duress. I’d only hope that Max would afford the same understanding he expects us to have when he explains the Greeks embraced Florence. But I only hope. When in Constantinople, Vigilius gives way to Justinian and assents. Then, when he realizes his actions afford him great controversy to many churches in the West, he retracts. But Justinian holds on to that. Then the 2nd edict of the three chapters is made by the Emperor, and the eastern patriarchs are made to sign. Vigilius excommunicates all the eastern patriarchs. The very same thing that Max would say was in the power of the Council against himself [Vigilius]. And yet, no one complains. Rather, they visit the Pope and make it clear that they submit to Chalcedon “for it was ratified by the Apostolic See”, insinuating the essential role of the Pope in the determination of doctrine for the universal church. Push comes to shove w/ the Emperor, a slight reconciliation is made, and plans for a council are agreed upon. However, Justinian didn’t comply with Vigilius, the head of the Church, in allowing the West to play a major role in the dispute. Its obvious, Justinian knew it was a waste of time since the West was not going to budge on Chalcedon, even if stupidly not realizing the Nestorianism in Theodore/Theodoret/Ibas. *Right there again* – The Emperor taking the driver position in the church bus. A big no no. But Vigilius has little to choose from, right? I mean, he is being held prisoner, let’s not forget. The Council convenes and Vigilius isn’t very cooperative, but then says he’ll give a statement on his view within a certain time. The Council doesn’t like the result, and they strike his name from the diptychs, and move on with the condemnation of the three chapters. Council is closed. Vigilius is left an outsider. Now, from here, Max believes his Eastern Orthodox position has gained him another leg in the debate with Catholicism. The problem here is that he has sacrificed the Church’s stance on what an Ecumenical Council *is* in order to obtain this idea that Constantinople 553 held jurisdiction over the Pope and the universal church. First of all, the West was absent. So, at the point in time that the Council closed, we aren’t talking about a Universal Council, though Max would attribute it as such. Now, this is even more curious given that Max, unless I’m mistaken, holds to a similar view of Khamiokov on the gradual acceptance of a council as ecumenical, where the full achievement of ecumenical, supreme, and infallible authority is contingent upon the *whole church receiving it*. If that is the case, then I can’t imagine how Max would say that Justinian and the Eastern bishops comprised an ecumenical action against Vigilius which had the authority to do so. Just a few years after this event, Pope St. Gregory I would say ‘without the authority and the consent of the Apstolic See, none of the matters transacted have any binding force’. Now unfortunately, the removal of the Pope’s name from the diptych of the Eastern liturgies had already become a common thing in the East by then, so I’m sure it wasn’t too strange an idea, but what I’m having a difficult time getting is its validity. When Acacius of Cple removed Pope Felix from the diptychs, it is not as if committed Catholics have to then overturn their belief in the supremacy of the Pope. So this is my response. I will add that Cple 553 began abnormally and would thus end abnormally. Vigilius wrote in with repentance to the patriarch of cple saying he was wrong and that the council was right. I don’t know if he ratified the council then or not. His successor Pelagius I would take the task for sure, and he had quite a battle on his hands since the Western churches were not invited to the convocation, and plus, they saw it as a threat to conscience, i.e. their revoking of Chalcedon. A mess created a bigger mess. But what I hope to communicate here, in concluding, is that it is extremely revealing that Orthodox such as Max would depend so heavily on the actions of Justinian and the eastern bishops against Vigilius, given the rare and abnormal circumstances. THE FOLLOWING CITATIONS ARE FROM A WORK BY THE FRENCH HISTORIAN CLAIRE SOTINEL. IN IT, THE AUTHOR DISCUSSES THE PERIMETERS OF CHURCH AUTHORITY DURING THE TIME OF JUSTINIAN AND SEEKS TO DEFINE THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CHURCH AND IMPERIAL AUTHORITY IN THE PERIOD LEADING UP TO AND FOLLOWING THE FIFTH ECUMENICAL COUNCIL. WHEN DISCUSSING THE RELEVANCE OF VIGILIUS’ EXCOMMUNICATION TO HER TOPIC, SHE QUOTES JUSTINIAN’S LETTER IN WHICH VIGILIUS IS CLEARLY SINGLED OUT. REMEMBER THAT AT THIS STAGE, VIGILIUS HAD RETRACTED HIS CONDEMNATION OF THE THREE CHAPTERS: “THE MOST RELIGIOUS POPE OF OLD ROME [HAS MADE HIMSELF] A STRANGER TO THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN DEFENDING THE IMPIETY OF THE CHAPTERS AND, MOREOVER, IN SEPARATING HIMSELF FROM YOUR COMMUNION BY HIS OWN INITIATIVE […]. THUS, SINCE HE HAS MADE HIMSELF A STRANGER TO CHRISTIANS, WE HAVE JUDGED THAT HIS NAME WILL NOT BE RECITED IN THE HOLY DIPTYCHS LEST, BY THIS MEANS, WE FIND OURSELVES IN COMMUNION WITH THE IMPIETIES OF NESTORIUS AND THEODORE […]. ONE THING IS CERTAIN: WE SERVE UNITY WITH THE APOSTOLIC SEE, AND YOU MAINTAIN IT. VIGILIUS’ TRANSFORMATION, OR ANYONE ELSE’S, CANNOT, IN FACT, HARM THE PEACE OF THE CHURCHES”. TO WHICH THE COUNCIL RESPONDS: “THE PLANS OF THE MOST PIOUS EMPEROR ARE IN CONFORMITY WITH HIS ACTIONS UNDERTAKEN FOR THE UNITY OF THE HOLY CHURCHES. LET US THEREFORE SERVE UNITY WITH THE APOSTOLIC SEE OF THE ALL-HOLY CHURCH OF OLD ROME BY FULFILLING EVERYTHING ACCORDING TO THE TERMS OF THE IMPERIAL DECREE WHICH HAS JUST BEEN READ” The relation of ecclesial authority to Imperial authority, I believe, had been answered correctly by Pope Gelasius. Also see above comments. ERICK YBARRA WRITES:”DURING THE PONTIFICATE OF POPE SYMMACHUS, GREEKS APPEALED TO HIM ON BEHALF OF THE EASTERN CHRISTIANS WHO WERE SUFFERING FROM THE MONO-PHYSITE FALL OUT: “YOU WHO ARE TAUGHT DAILY BY YOUR SACRED TEACHER, PETER, TO FEED THE SHEEP OF CHRIST ENTRUSTED TO YOU THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE HABITABLE WORLD” (MANSI, 8.221)” —-> ERICK FORGETS TO MENTION THE SYMMACHEAN FORGERIES. SEE BELOW: THE SYMMACHEAN FORGERIES ARE A SHEAF OF FORGED DOCUMENTS PRODUCED IN THE PAPAL CURIA OF POPE SYMMACHUS (498—514) IN THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTH CENTURY, IN THE SAME CYCLE THAT PRODUCED THE LIBER PONTIFICALIS. IN THE CONTEXT OF THE CONFLICT BETWEEN PARTISANS OF SYMMACHUS AND ANTIPOPE LAURENTIUS THE PURPOSE OF THESE LIBELLI WAS TO FURTHER PAPAL PRETENSIONS OF THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE BISHOPS OF ROME FROM CRITICISMS AND JUDGMENT OF ANY ECCLESIASTICAL TRIBUNAL, PUTTING THEM ABOVE LAW CLERICAL AND SECULAR BY SUPPLYING SPURIOUS DOCUMENTS SUPPOSEDLY OF AN EARLIER AGE. “DURING THE DISPUTE BETWEEN POPE ST. SYMMACHUS AND THE ANTI-POPE LAURENTIUS,” THE CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA REPORTS, “THE ADHERENTS OF SYMMACHUS DREW UP FOUR APOCRYPHAL WRITINGS CALLED THE ‘SYMMACHIAN FORGERIES’. … THE OBJECT OF THESE FORGERIES WAS TO PRODUCE ALLEGED INSTANCES FROM EARLIER TIMES TO SUPPORT THE WHOLE PROCEDURE OF THE ADHERENTS OF SYMMACHUS, AND, IN PARTICULAR, THE POSITION THAT THE ROMAN BISHOP COULD NOT BE JUDGED BY ANY COURT COMPOSED OF OTHER BISHOPS.” – CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA XIV, 378. This is an extremely uninformed response. First, what does the letter from the Greeks appealing to the Pope have to do with the Symmachean forgeries? Absolutely nothing. I am shocked that this was his response. Allow me to give you the context here. Macedonius (495) was elected in the place of Euphemius of Constantinople, and he was confronted with a demand from the Emperor Anastasius I to issue an official repudiation of the Council of Chalcedon. He responded that without the consent of the Roman see, no repudiation was possible from him. (Caspar, op. cit., vol ii, p. 121). He was immediately deposed. One year later (512) Constantinople, Alexandria, and Antioch were in the hands of Monophysitism. From these states of affairs, we have a letter from some Greeks in the East who were victims of Caesaropapistic tyranny during this Acacian schism. Dr. Trevor Jalland describes this letter: “Reminding the Pope that he enjoys the power to loose as well as to bind his [Greek] petitioners please: ‘Of a truth you are possessed of the Spirit of Christ, who are daily instructed by your holy teacher Peter how to tend the flock of Christ, which has been entrusted to you over all the earth and obys you not by constraint but willingly…All of us, both those in communion with them (sc. Monophysites) and those who decline it, await next to God the light of your visitation and admission to favour. Wherefore hasten to help the East, whence the redeemer Himself sent forth two great luminaries Peter and Paul to give light to the whole world’. What answer, if any, Symmachus returned to this pathetic appeal is unknown. All that remains of his eastern correspondence is a letter to the Illyrian episcopate urging them to take warning from the fate of the eastern churches: ‘For those, who believed they could disregard the admonition of the Apostolic See, have deservedly suffered what is bound to befall those who forsake their duty’” (Church and Papacy, page 335-6). Max cannot find you a scholar who is contesting these records. Thus, his response to this in terms of the Symmachean forgeries should inform anyone of his readers that he is not closely looking after the things that he writes. That can change, and hopefully it will. But this may be an opportunity to bring up something of interest here since the topic of forgeries came up. The following sources *are not from the forgery collection*. Symmachus had a rival to the episcopate of Rome, a man named Laurence. When Symmachus won the election, the party of Laurence sought at first change to accuse Symmachus of wrongdoing. Sure enough, when Symmachus had established the date of Easter to March 25th, the pre-Victorian Paschal cycle, in defiance of the Alexandrine date of April 22, the part of Laurence sought to procure his summons to a court in Ravenna to be indicted. They added other charges as well. During this plan, a synod was held in Italy at the church of St. Maria in Trastevere, at which Symmachus appeared in person, though Laurnence was presiding. After two sessions accomplishing nothing, the synod sought Theodoric the Arian King in order to condemn Symmachus by civil power. But this plan didn’t fall through since Symmachus didn’t show up for trial, and neither did Theodoric seek to intervene. The Italian synod ended with an acquittal on Symmachus. Seems like an unimportant event, but it comes with some interesting details. It just so happens that two Western bishops, Ennodius of Milan & Avitus of Vienne, both venerated Saints in the Orthodox churches, both of whom were strong supporters of the authority of the Roman see. These both wrote in response to Symmachus’ enemies during the above context. In the first place, we have a statement coming from some bishops of Italy who wrote to King Theodoric concerning the attempt of the supporters of Laurence to condemn Symmachus : “…the person [Symmachus] who was attacked ought himself to have called the Council, knowing that to his See in the first place the rank or chiefship of the Apostle Peter, and then the authority of venerable councils following out the Lord’s command, had committed a power without its like in the churches; nor would a precedent be easily found to show, that in a similar matter the prelate of the aforementioned See had been subject to the judgment of his inferiors” (Mansi, viii, 248). St. Avitus of Vienne wrote a letter to the Roman senators, which reads: “We were in a state of anxiety and alarm about the cause of the Roman church, inasmuch as we felt that our order [the episcopate of Gaul] was endangered by an attack upon its head…What license for accusation against the headship of the universal church ought to be allowed?…As a Roman senator and a Christian bishop, I conjure you that the state of the Church be not less precious to you than that of the commonwealth. If you judge the matter with your profound consideration, not merely is that cause which was examined at Rome to be contemplated, but as, if in the case of other Bishops any danger be incurred, it can be repaired, so if the Pope of the city be put into question, not a single bishop, but the episcopate itself, will appear to be in danger. He who rules the Lord’s fold will render an account how he administers the care of the lambs he entrusted to him; but it belongs not to the flock to alarm its own shepherd , but to the judge [God]. Wherefore restore to us, if it be not yet restored, concord in our chief” (Mansi, viii. 293). St. Ennodius wrote , “God perchance has willed to terminate the causes of other men by means of men; but the prelate of that See He has reserved, without question, to His own judgment. It is His will that the successors of the blessed Apostle Peter should owe their innocence to Heaven alone, and should manifest a pure conscience to the inquisition of the most severe Judge [God]. Do you answer; such will be the condition of all souls in that scrutiny? I retort, that to one was said, ‘Thou art Peter, and upon this Rock I will build my Church’, and again, that by the voice of holy pontiffs, the dignity of his See has been made venerable in the whole world, since all the faithful everywhere are submitted to it, and it is marked out as the head of the whole body” (Mansi, viii. 284). Some pretty interesting words from these two saints venerated to this day in the Orient. Dr. Trevor Jalland corroborates on this in addition to the Symmachean forgeries : “Yet in spite of the Pope’s pathetic situation, enthusiastic champions of the Roman see made a timely appearance in the persons of Ennodius of Milan and Avitus of Vienne. The latter may well have expressed the view of the Italian episcopate as well as that of Gaul when he wrote: ‘If the position of the chief (princeps) is shaken by accusation, we feel the position of everyone of us to be weakened’. The work of Ennodius on the other hand, as a reply to the Pope’s enemies, though characterized by clever evasions, violent abuse and a marked dependence on irrelevant quotations of Holy Scripture, bas a special interest as the product of a church which at one time seemed to overshadow even Rome itself as the primatial see of Italy. In him we find the earliest explicit assertion that a distinction is to be drawn between the Pope as an individual and the Pope as the holder of the Papacy. As an individual he will receive just judgment on the Last Day; as Pope he cannot be guilty of anything demanding judicial punishment. It is not difficult to imagine that such a view would have been highly acceptable to one such as Gregory VII, under whose inspiration the Ennodian principle was embodied in the Dictatus Papae. Not less remarkable was the abundance of pseudonymous and apochryphal literature which may rightly be regarded as a by-product of this anomalous situation. The chief object of these writings was to make good some of the very obvious defects in the papal structure which recent events had laid bare. They included, besides other suppositious conciliar Acts such as the Gesta Liberii, the Gesta Xysti and Gesta Polychronii, the proceedings of an apocryphal ‘synod of Sineuessa’ at which the unhappy Marcellinus was supposed to have been arraigned. Encouraged to judge himself, the Pope was represented as having declared himself guilty, whereupon Militades, apparently elected and consecrated on the spot, is said to have remarked, ‘Rightly has he been condemned out of his own mouth, for no one has ever judged the Pope, since the first see can be judged by no man’. A similar principle emerges in the contemporary supplement to the Silvestrian saga depicting another imaginary Roman synod, which besides condemning the author of the Paschal cycle, rejected by Symmachus, some hundred years or so before his birth, passed a series of canons of which the last significantly read: ‘No man shall judge the first see’. It is evident from these strange essays in imaginative history that the ideas of Gelasius were already showing themselves prolific, but it would be unjust to Symmachus to attribute to him direct responsibility for the offspring” (Church and Papacy, page 333-4). According to Dr. Klaus Schatz, the forgeries were only to get the principle “the First see is judged by none” into canon law. The drafters of the forgery already knew the valid existence of the principle under the pontificate of Pope Gelasius. Schatz writes: “The principle that prima sedes a nemine iudicatur, ‘the principal see is judged by no one’ (which effectively means ‘can be judged by no one’) became in the course of the centuries a succinct way of saying that there can be no court above the pope that can condemn him, depose him, or set aside his decisions. In this sense the principle has developed an enormous influence, especially since the eleventh century. But it was known and effective long before that…..In this succinct phrasing [first see is judge by none] the principle can be traced back to the Symmachian forgeries, written in about 500. Their setting was the period of Ostrogoth domination. Pope Symmachus, politically a supporter of the Arian Ostrogoth king Theodoric, faced strong ecclesiastical opposition within the Roman clergy, whose orientation was to Byzantium, and he was about to be deposed by a synod. The forgers hoped that this principle could be used to prevent his deposition; they referred to supposed cases around the year 300 when the deposition of a pope was averted because of this principle. Of course it was only this bold formulation that was new, not the content. It appears very clearly in two letters of Pope Gelasius I from 493 and 495 in the context of the Acacian schism. According to the canons, every can appeal to the pope, but there is no appeal beyond him, ‘and thus he judges the whole church and himself stands before no tribunal, and no judgment can be passed on his judgment, nor can his decision be abrogated’. But it was through the Symmachian forgeries that the principle entered the legal canon; it was this formulation, and not that of Gleasius, that made history, but only slowly and by roundabout ways. It was apparently not until the ninth century that the principle became a fixed element in the legal traditions of Rome, possibly under Frankish influence.” (Papal Primacy: From its Origins to Present, page 73) ERICK YBARRA WRITES: “SO WE HAVE, THEN, A RECOGNITION BY THE CHURCH FATHERS THIS IDEA THAT THE PETRINE PRIMACY OF THE ROMAN SEE IS NOT AN EXTERNAL REALITY, AS THOUGH IT WAS ADDED UNTO THE EPISCOPAL CONSTITUTION. RATHER, IT IS ONE WITH THE EPISCOPAL CONSTITUTION. SECONDLY, THAT THIS ESSENTIAL ELEMENT OF THE EPISCOPAL CONSTITUTION IS NOT SOMETHING WHICH CAN PERTAIN TO ANY AND ALL SEES, BUT ONLY THAT OF THE ROMAN SEE (WE CAN EXPLAIN CONCERNING MORE ABOUT GREGORY’S LETTER WHEREIN HE SPEAKS OF 3 LOCATIONS OF PETER’S SEE IF IT IS BROUGHT UP IN REBUTTAL) SINCE IT ALONE RECEIVES THE SUCCESSION TO PETER’S PRIMACY.” —> ERICK DOES NOT BOTHER OFFERING A REBUTTAL OF POPE GREGORY’S VIEW ON 3 LOCATIONS OF PETER’S SEE. BUT LET US SEE WHAT ST JOHN CHRYSOSTOM AND ST. THEODORET HAVE TO SAY: ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM: “IN SPEAKING OF ST. PETER, THE RECOLLECTION OF ANOTHER PETER [FLAVIAN, BISHOP OF ANTIOCH, AT THE TIME THE DISCOURSE WAS WRITTEN,] HAS COME TO ME, THE COMMON FATHER AND TEACHER, WHO HAS INHERITED HIS PROWESS, AND ALSO OBTAINED HIS CHAIR. FOR THIS IS THE ONE GREAT PRIVILEGE OF OUR CITY, ANTIOCH, THAT IT RECEIVED THE LEADER OF THE APOSTLES AS ITS TEACHER IN THE BEGINNING. FOR IT WAS RIGHT THAT SHE WHO WAS FIRST ADORNED WITH THE NAME OF CHRISTIANS, BEFORE THE WHOLE WORLD, SHOULD RECEIVE THE FIRST OF THE APOSTLES AS HER PASTOR. BUT THOUGH WE RECEIVED HIM AS TEACHER, WE DID NOT RETAIN HIM TO THE END, BUT GAVE HIM UP TO ROYAL ROME. OR RATHER WE DID RETAIN HIM TO THE END, FOR THOUGH WE DO NOT RETAIN THE BODY OF PETER, WE DO RETAIN THE FAITH OF PETER, AND RETAINING THE FAITH OF PETER WE HAVE PETER” (ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM, “ON THE INSCRIPTION OF THE ACTS”, II; CITED BY E. GILES, DOCUMENTS ILLUSTRATING PAPAL AUTHORITY (LONDON: SPCK, 1952), P. 168. CF. CHAPMAN, STUDIES ON THE EARLY PAPACY, P. 96). [NOTE: NOTE THAT ST. FLAVIAN, ARCHBISHOP OF ANTIOCH IS A PETER AND HAS OBTAINED THE CHAIR OF PETER, AND THAT AS LONG AS HE KEEPS THE FAITH OF PETER’S CONFESSION, ANTIOCH HAS A ST. PETER.] ST. THEODORET MAKES A SIMILAR STATEMENT ABOUT THE SEE OF ANTIOCH WHEN HE STATES THAT ANTIOCH POSSESSES THE THRONE OF PETER: “DIOSCURUS, HOWEVER, REFUSES TO ABIDE BY THESE DECISIONS; HE IS TURNING THE SEE OF THE BLESSED MARK UPSIDE DOWN; AND THESE THINGS HE DOES THOUGH HE PERFECTLY WELL KNOWS THAT THE ANTIOCHEAN METROPOLIS POSSESSES THE THRONE OF THE GREAT PETER, WHO WAS THE TEACHER OF THE BLESSED MARK, AND FIRST AND CORYPHAEUS OF THE APOSTLES.” (PHILIP SCHAFF, NICENE AND POST-NICENE FATHERS (GRAND RAPIDS: EERDMANS, 1956), VOLUME III, THEODORET, EPISTLE 86, TO FLAVIANUS, BISHOP OF CONSTANTINOPLE, P. 281). That the Orthodox continue to bring out Gregory’s letter to the Patriarch of Alexandria is quite shocking. This attempt to equate the Roman see with that of the Alexandrian or Antiochene See is clearly refuted by the following statements of Pope Gregory: “As regards the Church of Constantinople, who can doubt that it is subject to the Apostolic See? Why, both our most religious Lord the Emperor and our brother the Bishop of Constantinople continually acknowledge it” (Epistles 9:26). “the Apostolic See, which is the head of all other churches” (13:1) In a letter to Bishop John of Syracuse, Gregory says : “as to his saying that he is subject to the Apostolic See, if any fault is found in bishops, I know not what bishop is not subject to it. But when no fault requires it to be otherwise, all according to the principle of humility are equal”. Anglican Patristic scholar, J.N.D. Kelly wrote that Gregory I “was indefatigable…in upholding the Roman primacy, and successfully maintained Rome’s appellate jurisdiction in the east….Gregory argued that St. Peter’s commission [e.g. in Matthew 16:18f] made all churches, Constantinople included, subject to Rome” (The Oxford Dictionary of Popes, page 67). Jaroslav Pelikan writes concerning the tri-partite See of Peter Max mentioned: “To be sure, Peter had also been in Alexandria and in Antioch, and Gregory sometimes put forth the idea that these two patriarchs shared with him the primacy given to Peter: Rome was the see where Peter had died, Alexandria the see to which he had sent Mark, and Antioch the see which he himself had occupied for seven years. There was one see of Peter in three places. But this touch of whimsy about the apostle did not have any far-reaching implications for Gregory’s concrete doctrine of primacy in the church. Everybody knew that the see of Peter was Rome. When the legates at Chalcedon in 451 responded to the reading of Leo’s Tome with the exclamation, ‘Peter has spoken through the mouth of Leo!’ they were simply giving voice to this general assumption. For the early church, primacy had belonged in a special way to Jerusalem, the mother city of all believers. But it had moved from the capital city of the old Israel to the capital city of the world, which became the capital city of the new Israel….The churches of the Greek East, too, owed a special allegiance to Rome. As far as the Church of Constantinople was concerned, ‘who would doubt that it has been made subject to the apostolic see’, that is, of course, to Rome? By hailing the authority of Leo, the fathers at Chalcedon gave witness to the orthodoxy of Rome. One see after another had capitulated in this or that controversy with heresy. Constantinople had given rise to several heretics during the fourth and fifth centuries, notably Nestorius and Macedonius, and the other sees had also been known to stray from the true faith occasionally. But Rome had a special position. The bishop of Rome had the right by his own authority to annul the acts of a synod. In fact, when there was talk of a council to settle controversies, Gregory asserted the principle that ‘without the authority and the consent of the Apstolic See, none of the matters transacted have any binding force’. (The Christian Tradition, Vol 1, pages 353-4) ERICK YBARRA WRITES: “PAPAL FAILURES DO NOT DIMINISH THE ONTOLOGICAL ROLE OF THE PAPACY, NOR DOES IT PROVE IT IS OF MAN-MADE ORIGIN OR THAT IT IS AN EXTERNAL MACHINERY CREATED FOR THE SAKE OF GOOD ORDER, BUT IT CONTINUES TO BE OF THE ESSENTIAL CONSTITUTION.” —> AGAIN, ERICK SEEMS TO FORGET THAT BOTH POPE HONORIUS AND POPE VIGILIUS WERE CONDEMNED BY ECUMENICAL COUNCILS FOR HERESY! IF AN ECUMENICAL COUNCIL CAN JUDGE A POPE AS HERETICAL (AS THE SIXTH ECUMENICAL COUNCIL DID WITH REGARDS TO POPE HONORIUS), IT SEEMS CLEAR TO ME THAT THE ECUMENICAL COUNCIL IS THE HIGHEST AUTHORITY IN THE CHURCH. ANCIENT POPES WERE REQUIRED TO YIELD TO THE HIGHER AUTHORITY OF AN ECUMENICAL COUNCIL AND ALL DECISIONS EFFECTING THE ENTIRE CHURCH IN MATTERS OF DOCTRINE AND ADMINISTRATION WERE MADE THROUGH CONSENSUS AT ECUMENICAL COUNCILS, THEY WERE NEVER MADE BY PAPAL DECREE ALONE. See comments I made about Vigilius and Honorius. As for Max’s insistence that an Ecumenical Council has more binding authority than the Pope. For starters, an authentic Ecumenical Council requires the Pope’s participation, and thus for Catholics, one cannot divorce Pope and Council in the way Max does. It is as St. Gregeory the Great said, without the authority of the Holy See, no Council can have this sort of authority. Secondly, there are plenty of historical evidences which demonstrate that the court of the Roman See exceeded the authority of a Council supposedly claiming to hold jurisdiction over the universal church. I can give you the following examples. When they were condemned by the Council of Ephesus 449, Eusebius of Dorylaeum, St. Flavianos of Constantionple, and Theodoret of Cyrus all appealed to Pope Leo for the overturning of the decrees at Ephesus, which was finalized under the “authority” of Pope of Alexandria, Dioscorus, and Emperor Theodosius II. From all appearances, this was a Council. And for students such as Max, who love to shout the universal power of Justinian at the 5th Council, there isn’t any reason why he should think Ephesus 449 is not ecumenical, at least in preparation and matter. Moreover, Pope Leo unilaterally annulled the 28th canon of the Council of Chalcedon. Even after the bishops at the Council ratified it together with the Patriarch of Constantinople and Emperor Marcian, the Patriarch of Constantinople finally, after two years, admitted to Pope Leo that all the canons were suspended for his approval or disapproval, and he dropped the whole case – at least, he said he would. Following this, you have the fall out in the East to monophysiticism. It was the Roman See which had continued to herald the decrees of Chalcedon. And the only way the East was brought back into the unity of the Church was through a formula drawn up by Pope Hormisdas and officially signed by a great many in the East under the prodding of Justinian I. There is a rumor going around, made popular by a 19thcentury Anglican anti-Catholic writer, Fr. Puller, that the East had made all sorts of modifications and demands of their own before coming into union with the Holy See. Such is nonsense. If space allowed, we could go on to the historical context of the Pelagian controversy in North Africa, the Iconoclastic controversy, and the dispute caused by Photius. https://erickybarra.org/2017/01/28/catholic-primacy-answering-some-objections-from-an-eastern-orthodox-researcher/

Ukrainian media has been reporting on trouble boiling under the surface of the schismatic “Orthodox Church of Ukraine” (OCU) for several weeks now. Factions have formed between those who support the official primate “Metropolitan” Epiphany Dumenko and those who remain loyal to and supportive of “Patriarch” Philaret Denisenko and are indignant at his minimal role in the new structure. Denisenko has been the unrivaled leader of the schismatic autocephaly movement in Ukraine for 30 years but was relegated to the role of “Honorary Patriarch” in the OCU, forbidden to put his name in for primate by the Patriarchate of Constantinople which created the new church in cooperation with President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine. The first Synod meeting for the new “church” gave him control of Kiev churches—a far cry from the primatial leadership he had imagined for himself. Now the trouble has boiled over and Philaret has openly declared that he intends to restore the schismatic “Kiev Patriarchate” (KP) and take those hierarchs loyal to him with him. That is, the schismatic OCU, made up of two schismatic bodies, now faces the serious threaten of breaking down into two schismatic groups again. Despite promising Constantinople that the KP was liquidated just before the “unification council” on December 15 that united the KP with the “Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church” (UAOC) to create the OCU, Philaret has since then continually declared that the KP still exists. He has given awards on behalf of the KP and parishes of the canonical Church that decided to go into schism were re-registered to the KP, not to the OCU. He has also declared that the “unification council” was in no way a Ukrainian council, but was a function of the Constantinople Church. It has become clear that Philaret kept the KP alive as Plan B in case he wasn’t satisfied with the new OCU, and he’s openly not. “The Kiev Patriarchate exists, it does not need to be returned,” he said in a recent interview 1+1. “There is a patriarch, and if there is a patriarch, then there is a patriarchate, the Kiev Patriarchate. And there it does and should exist. And the time will come when it will be recognized. I am 100% certain,” he added. He went on to acknowledge that there is a division in the “Ukrainian Church,” but said, “We are creating a single church—the Kiev Patriarchate. Necessarily.” The Ministry of Culture of Ukraine, on the other hand, has officially stated on May 10 that the KP no longer legally exists in Ukraine as of January 30. However, the evidence shows otherwise, as the KP (and the UAOC) remains active in the state register of legal entities, individual entrepreneurs and public formations. As mentioned above, the KP has continued to receive new parishes since January 30. Philaret has also declared that only he who created the KP can liquidate it. Epiphany Dumenko was the protégé of Philaret Denisenko in the KP. Denisenko forced another KP “hierarch,” Mikhail Zinkevich, to remove his name from consideration for the primatial slot so his loyal project Dumenko could be elected. Denisenko assumed continued loyalty from Dumenko and even declared that he would continue to rule the church in tandem with the much younger Dumenko. However, the frosting of their relationship became apparent when Denisenko recently invited a number of “hierarchs” of the OCU to join him at Kiev’s Vladimir Cathedral on May 14 to celebrate the memory of St. Makary of Kiev, whose relics are kept at the cathedral. The invitations were sent on behalf of the KP, and Dumenko was not among the invitees. It is widely expected that the revival of the KP will be discussed. The Ternopil Diocese of the OCU, formerly the Ternopil Diocese of the UAOC, offered the clever response of expressing its support for Epiphany Dumenko in a letter published on UAOC letterhead. Denisenko did eventually invite Dumenko, commenting to him that he had not initially invited him because “not once after your election as the primate of the UOC—for five months—did you celebrate the Divine Liturgy with me. I had the thought, perhaps it’s wrong, that you consider it humiliating to serve with Patriarch Philaret?” The fact that Dumenko has not served with his mentor and “Honorary Patriarch” for five months indicates the growing sentiment among mainly the younger members of the KP that the future is not with Denisekno—it’s time to move on. And Dumenko’s supporters are striking back. An appeal to the supporters of Philaret, “10 Theses for the Orthodox Church of Ukraine,” has appealed online, imploring them not to provoke a new schism. Additionally, the administration of the schismatic Kiev Theological Academy has forbade its students from attending Philaret’s May 14 service for St. Makary. The online appeal states: “Immediately after the unification council, strange processes incomprehensible to us began, which we connect with the unacceptable lust for power and ambition of some of the church hierarchs… First of all, we are talking about several interviews of the former Patriarch of the UOC-KP Philaret.” The Orthodox world has long known that Philaret Denisenko went into schism in the first place 30 years ago after he was passed over for the Russian Patriarchal throne. As the Metropolitan of Kiev and Locum Tenens following the repose of Patriarch Pimen, Denisenko fully expected to ascend the throne, but in the aftermath of Alexei II’s election and enthronement, he betrayed Christ in His Church and became an ideologue of schismatic nationalism. He was defrocked, excommunicated, and eventually anathematized for persisting in schism. On October 11, the Holy Synod of Constantinople declared the anathema against him null and void. Its spokesmen have justified the overturning of the anathema by claiming it was never justified in the first place. Moscow had simply taken revenge on Philaret for seeking Ukrainian autocephaly they claim—it had nothing to do with Philaret’s lust for power. However, now that the Ukrainian schismatic church has autocephaly from Constantinople (though it is recognized only by Constantinople), there seems to be no justification for Philaret’s ongoing provocations, other than his egocentrism and lust for power that His Beatitude Archbishop Anastasios of Albania spoke of in a 2015 interview. For his part, Epiphany Dumenko, who will not attend Philaret’s gathering, has responded that a return to the KP would mean the loss of the tomos of autocephaly from Constantinople and the isolation of the OCU. The OCU is, in fact, currently isolated from the rest of the Orthodox world, though Dumenko recently expressed the hope and belief that this will change. The current state of the OCU is only a continuation of what has always been. Before the “unification council” in December, the “hierarchs” of the KP and UAOC could not work together and the Holy Synod of Constantinople was forced to write the statutes for the schismatic church and to convene the “council,” forcing a unification of incompatible groups. http://orthochristian.com/121136.html?fbclid=IwAR1M8S0t4Ttj44C33Or8c5_ZuTrBkDHvIK9qslV_vqxNJGiEuxeCGHCst-s

https://www.fort-russ.com/2018/10/many-thousands-will-die-the-coming-schism-in-orthodoxy-repent-and-stop-this-insanity/ Published on: Oct 14, 2018 @ 00:40 – By Metropolitan Jonah – Once again, the United States and its policies are creating chaos, setting up the murder of innocent people, and disrupting an ancient institution. Only this time, it is direct interference in the affairs not just of a nation state, Ukraine, but of a religious institution, the Orthodox Church. And the effect of this is not just on a local, but worldwide level. The granting of autocephaly to the schismatic Ukrainian body, the so-called Kiev Patriarchate, is not primarily an ecclesiastical issue, but a political one. Ecclesiastically, the US policy is interfering on a number of different levels. It is not, of course, interfering for the sake of human rights, freedom of religion, of religious institutions governing their own lives without government interference, or the fundamental American principle of the separation of church and state. It is rather operating contrary to these fundamental American principles, and trying to force the faithful people of Ukraine into a unified state church, supporting an unpopular government installed, supported and maintained by the United States, and essentially appointing the clergy and hierarchy, particularly the patriarch, for that body. Undoubtedly it will support the Ukrainian government in its efforts to nationalize the 12,000 churches belonging to the legitimate canonical Ukrainian Churchand its faithful people, confiscating the buildings and property, including the ancient sacred monasteries and national landmarks. The Ukrainian people, faithful Orthodox Christians, will fight against the confiscation of their churches, just as they fought the Soviet confiscation of their churches by the Communists in the 1920s. And now as then, they will give their lives for the protection of their holy places from defilement by false brethren. Just as they heroically fought the Nazis in the Second World War, and then the Communists again after the Nazis were expelled, they will reject the false patriarch Denisenko and fight against a government that they know cares nothing for them and their interests, their liberty and religious freedom, just as they rejected the Living Church Renovationists in the 1920’s. Thousands will die, protesting against American policy translated into violent action by the Ukrainian government. This is a grave sin, for the Ukrainian leadership and their American masters. Moreover, not content to manipulate the ecclesiastical and political mafiosi of Ukraine, a failing state grasping for power and lacking legitimacy from its people, the State Department and other agencies have injected themselves into the Patriarchate of Constantinople. They have manipulated the elderly Ecumenical Patriarch, either directly or through their proxies, through his greatest weakness: the precarious position of the Patriarchate within Turkey, politically and financially. They would expand his jurisdiction, and have ensured his financial stability with bribes of millions of dollars. They are using and abusing an old man who is trying with all his might to preserve an ancient institution. They have compromised him, and the institution of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and are thereby disrupting not only the Ukraine and its precarious peace, but fostering a schism that will rend the Orthodox world, a community larger than the United States. This is a bitter and cynical move, and profoundly evil. Their justification is that they want to curtail the influence of Russia. The neoconservatives and others who control so much US policy are possessed by a paranoid Russophobia, left over from the first Cold War, and a new hatred of the Christian values espoused by the resurgent Russia. Despite Russia’s overtures for greater cooperation and détente, and President Trump’s apparent willingness to make friends with Russia, we remain hostage to the fears of State Department and Pentagon bureaucrats. Should we not to mention that Russia has a GDP less than that of Texas, and a military budget less than one tenth that of the US. So the United States tries to hit the Russians in the place they care about the most: their Faith, their Church, their Christianity. The canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, under Metropolitan Onuphry, is a maximally autonomous church attached to the Russian Orthodox Church. It is the Mother diocese of the Russian Church, and there is a thousand year connection between the Kievan Metropolitanate and the rest of the Russian Church. For years, the Kievan Metropolitanate has been autonomous, which means that their main connection with Moscow is that they commemorate (pray for) the Patriarch of Moscow at services. Otherwise, they govern their own life. The Russian Patriarch has far less authority over the Church in Ukraine than the Pope does over the Roman Catholics in America. (There is a close parallel to old deep seated American anti-Catholic attitudes, and fears of the Moscow Patriarchate.) Yet there are close personal ties, and huge numbers of Ukrainians serve in parishes and dioceses throughout Russia. The ties are organic, and the canonical Ukrainian Church has no desire, and has not asked, for autocephaly. And so the United States State Department and agencies support a disgraced and legitimately defrocked charlatan who is all dressed up, and who is himself manipulating the pathetic Poroshenko, for his own ambition. They have blackmailed the elderly Ecumenical Patriarch, in regards to the disappearance of funds from the American Archdiocese, and then bribed him. To justify himself he asserted an interpretation of his own jurisdiction that is rejected by the rest of the Orthodox Churches. The other thirteen Orthodox Churches, with one or two exceptions that have remained silent, condemn this move by the Ecumenical Patriarchate. They do not accept the assertion of virtually universal jurisdiction by the Patriarch of Constantinople, nor the authority to act unilaterally, especially on matters that require the consensus of all the Churches, such as the granting of autocephaly. While the Patriarchs cannot control what happens politically in Ukraine, what is more likely is that they will meet and try to remove Patriarch Bartholomew for having acted contrary to the universal canons. The greatest hope is that the Ecumenical Patriarchate will repent and stop this madness. It may be too late. In the meantime, if they go through with the autocephaly, babushki—grandmothers—will be dying in Ukraine trying to defend their beloved churches from the new Ukraino-Nazis. The Patriarchate of Constantinople will have relegated itself to schism from the rest of the Orthodox world; it might as well then join the Vatican. In any event it will lose any claim to the primacy, save historical memory, and thus any influence. Sooner than later in Ukraine, Poroshenko will be voted out, and Denisenko, 90+ years old, will die. Then the schism will fall apart, regardless of its status. Ukraine will continue to collapse, autocephalous church or no, into political, social, economic and ecclesiastical chaos. No one, not the US and not Russia, is willing or able to step in and save it. It will finally have to emerge from the ashes. So it will join Iraq, Libya, Syria and other places destroyed by US intervention. Orthodoxy, however will survive – preferably with the Ecumenical Patriarchate intact, but even without it. The other churches have already rallied around the Patriarch of Moscow as standing for and maintaining canonical order; and around Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev as a victim of profound injustice, revealing Christ suffering in the midst of persecution. So thanks to US policy, Moscow emerges strongly as the moral leader of the Orthodox world. Poetic justice. But you, State Department, will have the blood of the little Ukrainian grandmothers and old men on your hands and your heads. And you will have to answer for your decisions and actions before God. Or do you even care? Metropolitan Jonah October 12, 2018 Metropolitan Jonah is a bishop within the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, the former Primate of the Orthodox Church in America, and a native born American. HOUSANDS WILL DIE – The Coming Schism in Orthodoxy: “Repent, and Stop This Insan