Well, it takes a big man to admit that; God forgives, so do I. And I’d be lying if I said I’d never done the same thing, which in part explains my reluctance - borne of experience - to debate these issues of millennial magnitude. A few dudes on POAL almost certainly aren’t going to clear this up, where the greatest Saints and minds of the last thousand years have failed.
I believe the Lord Jesus Christ, in His Infinite Wisdom, knows exactly what’s going on, and why. After having been through enough of these fruitless battles, by now I’m pretty sure we’re supposed to:
1) faithfully preserve the specific Tradition we’ve received, without compromise, and 2) don’t get in fights about any of it with other Christians. 3) be open to the possibility that one’s own mind may change in light of new evidence, which had not been considered; but never expect this of others.
Nobody here got in any of what I’d call “fights”, so I think we’re good. One thing I’d learned which I hadn’t understood was the Latin understanding of the Magisterium. As an Orthodox Christian, it had not occurred to me there was a name for the “good thing” that the Papacy conferred upon her subjects. It hadn’t occurred to me; but I can certainly see the value, and I can admit it was something that pre-Schism Orthodox Christians both East and West basically took for granted. I gained that insight from these debates, and probably wouldn’t have otherwise.
So does that mean I’m ready to start praying the Rosary at a FSSP Mass ? Not so fast. Acknowledging the Traditional understanding of the Magisterium doesn’t suddenly negate the Thousand Years of Divergent Tradition we’re up against.
The pre-Schism Roman Saints are our Saints, too, and they were working and writing within the paradigm that real for them - that is, a living, breathing, Christian Empire at the top of the world. They had an Ecumene. We do not. That changes everything. Would they recognize the post-Schism, late medieval updates to the Roman System as Orthodox? That’s extremely debatable, and almost all Orthodox think they would not.
And this isn’t because we’re schismatic assholes; it’s because we simply cannot believe that our Apostolic Community was completely wrong this whole time - centuries, even - and that God really intends for us to just surrender to this power-hungry globalist corporate super-state.
Consider our perspective, which is more likely;
A) all the other Ancient Patriarchates, and the hundreds of Bishoprics established by them for hundreds of years, were totally full of shit, and they conspired to break free from Latin control in a massive schism, or B) Rome decided that, to expand its power and influence, it pieced together from whatever it could within the Tradition, a sort of unprecedented “super-Bishopric” to rule them all, and proceeded to do so by whatever means possible.
The choice, to us, is incredibly obvious. Rome clearly made it up, to gain power.
I’m not saying this to be a jerk, or to make you doubt your beliefs or whatever. I’ve been happy enough to leave well-enough alone. But please understand, you don’t have a chance at this. By all means, explain your position. But please don’t get bent out of shape that we’re not buying it.
I’m not saying this to be a jerk, or to make you doubt your beliefs or whatever. I’ve been happy enough to leave well-enough alone. But please understand, you don’t have a chance at this. By all means, explain your position. But please don’t get bent out of shape that we’re not buying it.
Haha. I'm cracking up.
King, did you read the part about 'charity'? :)
The idea is that to be charitable in a debate, you must allow an opponent's argument to get off the ground by relinquishing your actual beliefs and adopting theirs as true, for the time being only and for the sake of walking out all of the logical entailments of their beliefs. You're basically saying, "Yeah, alright. Let's take that as true and think about what it would mean."
King walks in like: "Nah, not fuckin buyin it." Hahaha.
Wait, what did I do ? I didn’t know about this sense of the word “charity”. I was thinking it meant basically agape.
No, I was just giving you a hard time haha. I think the way that PS used it was as a kind of method for us to approach these arguments without feeling like we're defending something as personally as we have. Charity is something you do in argument so that you kind of lose the need to protect your own ideas like a mother bear protecting her cubs. It's just treating everything more objectively, which is hard to do when your religious beliefs are so personal.
So does that mean I’m ready to start praying the Rosary at a FSSP Mass ? Not so fast. Acknowledging the Traditional understanding of the Magisterium doesn’t suddenly negate the Thousand Years of Divergent Tradition we’re up against.
This is something I've been thinking about. If it is God's will that the two halves of His Church (and in a way this is the case that we constitute halves of a kind, unlike the case with heretics) be united at the end of time, how could this be done? To outright tell one side they've been wrong for a thousand years or more would be such a challenge to man's pride that I wonder if many would even convert. Even if our Blessed Mother appeared to us all to assure us of this, providing another Miracle of the Sun or somesuch to convince us, if the "erring side" remains prideful, what good would it do?
I think an appeal would almost have to acknowledge man's pride to be successful - even if it is a Divine warning or appeal, given that man's pride is great enough. By this I mean, a "diffusive tactic" might have to be used, where the wrongs of both sides are pointed out in order to bring about unity.
Obviously different examples will appeal to us differently. I might imagine such an appeal condemning the East for rejecting the principle of the supreme teaching authority of Peter's successor, while condemning the West for exploiting this teaching authority through non-magisterial acts, including the move toward statehood possession, inordinate conflict with states, etc.
I'm not trying to say that both sides are equally in schism. Whatever the nature of the division, and whatever the true beliefs of each side may be, it is almost certainly, if not necessarily, the case that one side's separation is based on a rejection of some part of the Church's essence (from my perspective I would suggest this is the nature of the hierarchy itself), whereas the other pertains to things accidental to Her nature (like the proper relation with non-Church entities).
Whatever the exact details, I am trying to suggest that it is not a case of one side being completely right and the other completely wrong, but that there is a difference of kind, not mere degree, with respect to what each side gets wrong.
And we might disagree until the cows come home on which side is guilty of the greater (essential) error, but at least by acknowledging the presence of correctness and error on both sides, pride might be sidestepped and reunion might be possible, if ever a time comes when things are made clear to all.
Just so we’re clear, I’m not saying the Orthodox as-a-whole have actually lost a Traditional understanding of the Magisterium. All I can say is I didn’t receive it - it’s not a thing we ever really talked about. It may in fact be current among other sets of people in the Orthodox Church, and if it is it’s probably in the context of Bishops.
I’m unconvinced the way it’s being understood by the Latin Communion is necessarily correct. I know the Orthodox are well-aware of the Teaching Authority of the Church, because it’s obvious not everything that calls itself “Orthodox” is authoritative. So how is an Orthodox supposed to gauge whether a teaching is authoritative? In whom does the Magisterium lie within Orthodoxy?
Now I knew the answer to this before I knew the word “Magisterium*, but I wouldn’t have known this-is-that. The question-and-answer; in whom resides the Magisterium of the Orthodox Church? In God’s Holy Saints. That is, people with “Saint” before their name, whose teachings are concordant with Saint-Everybody Else.
But if you need a flesh-and-blood human in which to place Magisterium, in is in the hands of a right-believing Bishop, to-be-determined by the concordance of their teachings with those of the Saints. By extension, this authority extends from the Bishop, to the Priests, in that teaching ministry is also expected of Priests - again though, only if their teaching is in concordance with the Saints.
The Teaching of the Saints is the Holy Tradition. Notice, this includes the first Thousand Years of right-believing Popes, so it’s not like we don’t have them.
I didn’t really understand before that this was called a “Magisterium”, and I’m sure you don’t agree with it, since you’re convinced the Papacy is that. But there’s clearly some standard by which a Pope is judged as heretical-or-not by the Catholic Community. So it looks like the Latin understanding and the Orthodox understanding are probably fairly close.
You pointed out the Moscow-Constantinople Split as being evidence of “jurisdictional chaos” between Orthodox Churches. But basically any Orthodox will tell you those sorts of events happen all the time, and have essentially zero effect on the Magisterium (as I’ve understood it) of the Orthodox Church. Orthodoxy is not threatened at all by the bad behavior of these obviously-heretical bishops. “Everybody knows” they’re heretics. Nothing they say or publish has any weight with the Orthodox, in matters of ultimate Faith.
To Latin eyes, that probably looks and sounds bonkers. But it makes sense, if the only people we trust are Saints - and that being the consensus of the Saints, rather than every single opinion of every single Saint.
Now I knew the answer to this before I knew the word “Magisterium*, but I wouldn’t have known this-is-that. The question-and-answer; in whom resides the Magisterium of the Orthodox Church? In God’s Holy Saints. That is, people with “Saint” before their name, whose teachings are concordant with Saint-Everybody Else.
The Eastern saints seem to affirm the same view of the role of Peter and Rome as that which the Catholic Church still teaches - at least I do not see where they contradict this teaching.
I didn’t really understand before that this was called a “Magisterium”, and I’m sure you don’t agree with it, since you’re convinced the Papacy is that. But there’s clearly some standard by which a Pope is judged as heretical-or-not by the Catholic Community. So it looks like the Latin understanding and the Orthodox understanding are probably fairly close.
The Papacy is not the Magisterium, but it is the office through which disputes are clarified and teachings, like those put forward at councils, are given their authority. It is the final and clarifying voice of the Magisterium, without which we see the kinds of disputes with which the East is rife. Again, that's why the Seven Councils are seven and not five or nine - those are the early councils confirmed by the reigning pontiff.
To Latin eyes, that probably looks and sounds bonkers. But it makes sense, if the only people we trust are Saints - and that being the consensus of the Saints, rather than every single opinion of every single Saint.
The consensus of the saints is that Rome is the Highest See and nothing that is universal and doctrinal can be separated from Rome. This is true East and West, from Chrysostom to Augustine. And the most coherent Orthodox thinkers affirm the primacy of Peter, as you have - they just object to the contemporary Latin portrayal of it, but it is my opinion that this is a result of a misunderstanding either of what the Church teaches on this point, or a misunderstanding of what the early Doctors and Saints taught - for I see no contradiction between them whatsoever.
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