The name-dropping pope

  • Appar­ently, the pope is will­ing to shed the title of “West­ern Patri­arch” in the inter­est of appeas­ing the Ortho­dox. Notice the prob­lem? Yep, So did I.

    My priest, Fr. Elias, sent out an e-mail with this arti­cle from Bp. Hillar­ion of Viena enti­tled “Pope’s Title “Patri­arch of the West” Removed. What Does It Mean for the Orthodox?”

    The mass media reported that in the new edi­tion of the “Annuario Pon­tif­i­cio” for 2006 the pope’s title “Patri­arch of the West” has been dropped. Now the offi­cial list of titles includes: “bishop of Rome, vicar of Jesus Christ, suc­ces­sor of the prince of the apos­tles, supreme pon­tiff of the Uni­ver­sal Church, Pri­mate of Italy, arch­bishop and met­ro­pol­i­tan of the Roman Province, sov­er­eign of the State of the Vat­i­can City, ser­vant of the ser­vants of God”.

    Some ana­lysts saw in this omis­sion the desire to improve the rela­tions with the Ortho­dox Church. The for­mer pre­fect of the Con­gre­ga­tion for the Ori­en­tal Churches, Car­di­nal Achille Sil­vestrini is reported to have said that the dele­tion was a “sign of ecu­meni­cal sen­si­tiv­ity” on the part of Pope Benedict.

    I’m hop­ing that there’s some­thing that got left out some­how, because this is just too obvi­ous for words: ‘Patri­arch of the West’ isn’t the title we would’ve had a prob­lem with.

    Or, as Bp. Hilar­ion puts it (a lit­tle more calmly):

    … it is not at all clear how the removal of the title could pos­si­bly ame­lio­rate Catholic-Orthodox rela­tions. It seems that the omis­sion of the title “Patri­arch of the West” is meant to con­firm the claim to uni­ver­sal church juris­dic­tion that is reflected in the pope’s other titles, and if the Ortho­dox reac­tion to the ges­ture will not be pos­i­tive, it should not be a surprise.

    The pope will still be addressed as “supreme pon­tiff of the Uni­ver­sal Church” (“Big-guy hon­cho in charge of every­thing every­where”), but we’re sup­posed to be pleased that he’s drop­ping the title “Patri­arch of the West” (“Historically-accurately-named head of Euro stuff”)? That’s like telling us that we would be expected to sub­scribe to orig­i­nal sin and the immac­u­late con­cep­tion, but it’d be okay to keep the red Easter eggs and you’re welcome.

    So the attempts to bridge the Great Schism with a cou­ple 2×4′s goes on. We don’t under­stand each other, we’ve grown apart for a mil­len­nium or so, the Roman Catholic Church thinks we’re a smarter but poorer step­brother and we think they’re a kooky rich uncle that you can’t trust around your daugh­ter. Or your son. Or your cat. But it’s okay. We’ll have a meet­ing or two and straighten it all out:

    The model of church unity between East and West will be dis­cussed by the Mixed Catholic-Orthodox The­o­log­i­cal Com­mis­sion that will meet after a six-year break in the fall of 2006. It is clear that this model will be hypo­thetic, since there remain many obsta­cles, both of dog­matic and of eccle­si­o­log­i­cal char­ac­ter, for the restora­tion of the full com­mu­nion. How­ever, the main obsta­cle to unity, accord­ing to many Ortho­dox the­olo­gians, is the teach­ing on the pri­macy of the Bishop of Rome. It is this teach­ing that will be dis­cussed in the frame­work of the Mixed Commission.

    It would be a glo­ri­ous thing to see the East and West come back together in my life­time. (Think of the base­ball games we could have.) But it doesn’t seem that there’s a real inter­est in the East — in fact, the Arch­bishop of Athens got a bomb threat when he announced he was vis­it­ing the Vat­i­can. And it doesn’t seem like there’s the slight­est hint of a spirit of real com­pro­mise in the West. It seems that we’ll be wel­comed with open arms just as soon as we stop being Ortho­dox and start being Catholic.

    Not to men­tion the fact that The Pope For­merly Known as the Patri­arch of the West is a lit­tle out of touch about the scope of the prob­lem, at least to judge from this quote from an interview:

    But draw­ing nearer to each other in com­mu­nion, in the com­mon expe­ri­ence of the life of faith, is the way to rec­og­nize one another as chil­dren of God and dis­ci­ples of Christ. … Hav­ing this expe­ri­ence is fun­da­men­tal, and it seems to me, per­haps, that the con­vic­tion of some, of a seg­ment of the monks of Athos, [?!] against ecu­menism, is due in part to the fact that this expe­ri­ence is missing …

    It’s been a good day. The pope shed a title, and I picked one up, because appar­ently I and a lot of other Ortho­dox laity I know are now a Tiny Lit­tle Divi­sion of the Monks of Athos.

    I’m mak­ing a t-shirt.

    Follow-up
    I re-read this and decided I’m doing my typ­i­cal smarty-pants thing, and I’d like to cor­rect that. I really would love to see the East and West Churches re-unite, but my cyn­i­cism comes from observ­ing that we can’t even agree on the minu­tiae, like when to cel­e­brate Easter/Pascha. And the fear I have is that high-ranking clergy with an eye more to the admin­is­tra­tive issues would think that they could will a union into exis­tence with­out deal­ing with the very real schism that still exists. Right now, the Catholics seem like the ones who are mak­ing more of an effort at this, but then ges­tures like this name-dropping thing make me won­der if they really know who we are. If they don’t and still want to re-unite, I think we are right to be leery of whether they mean to just think of us as new Catholics.


    Related posts:

    1. der Pope-meister!
    2. Guerilla patri­arch (and pope)?
    3. Pope Bene­dict opens the can
    4. Fred­er­ica on unity and chaos
    5. Pope detente and good lions

    March 7th, 2006 | Grace | No Comments |

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