Orthodoxy And The Roman Papacy

For any dialogue between the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches to be fruitful, we must first understand our differences. Popes and Patriarchs covers some of the distinctives in theology and worldview that separate the churches of the East from those of the West, focusing primarily on the claims of papal supremacy. Author Michael Whelton, a convert from Catholicism to Orthodoxy, discusses some of the theological and historical issues that led him to explore the teachings of the Orthodox Church, including the doctrine of original sin, the influence of Medieval scholastic thought on the Western Church, and the modern trend toward evolutionary Christianity. Part II examines in depth the true attitude of the early Eastern saints of the Church toward the papacy, an attitude radically different from that frequently attributed to them by Roman Catholic apologists.A final chapter is devoted to typical questions Roman Catholics raise about the Orthodox Church, including a comprehensive discussion of divorce and remarriage.

The Papacy and the Orthodox examines the centuries-long debate over the primacy and authority of the Bishop of Rome, especially in relation to the Christian East, and offers a comprehensive history of the debate and its underlying theological issues. Siecienski masterfully brings together all of the biblical, patristic, and historical material necessary to understand this longstanding debate. This book is an invaluable resource as both Catholics and Orthodox continue to reexamine the sources and history of the debate.

Two different paths. In the West, for about a thousand years, the Roman Catholic church has claimed papal supremacy over the entire Christian world. In the East, since the first centuries, the Eastern Orthodox Church has remained faithful to the Church's original conciliar vision: local churches meeting together in council. How did these two paths develop? What were the cultural, historical, and theological issues that led to their development? What are the Roman Catholic claims about the Orthodox and vice versa? In Two Paths, Michael Whelton dives deeply into Roman Catholic sources to document the development of papal supremacy: 1) Saint Peter and the papacy 2) The ecumenical councils and the papacy 3) The Filioque 4) The Gregorian Revolution and its effects on Roman Catholicism 5) The influence of falsified documents such as the "Donation of Constantine" on the rise of the papacy- Papal infallibility 6) The Council of Constance, and the First Vatican Council 7) The Second Vatican Council. Whelton also uses ancient Christian sources to document the development of the Orthodox conciliar vision of the Church, from the first Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15) through the Seventh Ecumenical Council. For layman and scholar alike, Whelton's work is the best and fullest work dealing with this topic from an Orthodox perspective in the English language.

Among the issues that continue to divide the Catholic Church from the Orthodox Church—the two largest Christian bodies in the world, together comprising well over a billion faithful—the question of the papacy is widely acknowledged to be the most significant stumbling block to their unification. For nearly forty years, commentators, theologians, and hierarchs, from popes and patriarchs to ordinary believers of both churches, have acknowledged the problems posed by the papacy. In Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy: Ut Unum Sint and the Prospects of East-West Unity, Adam A. J. DeVille offers the first comprehensive examination of the papacy from an Orthodox perspective that also seeks to find a way beyond this impasse, toward full Orthodox-Catholic unity. He first surveys the major postwar Orthodox and Catholic theological perspectives on the Roman papacy and on patriarchates, enumerating Orthodox problems with the papacy and reviewing how Orthodox patriarchates function and are structured. In response to Pope John Paul II’s 1995 request for a dialogue on Christian unity, set forth in the encyclical letter Ut Unum Sint, DeVille proposes a new model for the exercise of papal primacy. DeVille suggests the establishment of a permanent ecumenical synod consisting of all the patriarchal heads of Churches under a papal presidency, and discusses how the pope qua pope would function in a reunited Church of both East and West, in full communion. His analysis, involving the most detailed plan for Orthodox-Catholic unity yet offered by an Orthodox theologian, could not be more timely.

If you could sit down with St. Thomas Aquinas over a pint of beer and ask him any one question, what would it be? Pints With Aquinas contains over 50 deep thoughts from the Angelic doctor on subjects such as God, virtue, the sacraments, happiness, alcohol, and more. If you've always wanted to read St. Thomas but have been too intimidated to try, this book is for you.So, get your geek on, pull up a bar stool and grab a cold one, here we go!""He alone enlightened the Church more than all other doctors; a man can derive more profit in a year from his books than from pondering all his life the teaching of others." - Pope John XXII

The Lord Jesus Christ intended his kingdom present on earth, the Church of God, to be one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. Prior to the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, history tells of the most egregious division in the Church between the Latin West and Byzantine East in AD 1054 and following. How can it be that Catholics and Orthodox share a thousand years of ecclesial life together in one faith, sacramental order, and hierarchical government, only to have that bond of communion broken? Historians and theologians throughout the years have spilled much ink in recounting the causes and effects of this dreadful and heart-wrenching division, and among the many debates that exist between Catholics and Orthodox, none are as vital to the task of reconciliation as the subject of the papacy. In The Papacy: Revisiting the Debate between Catholics and Orthodox, Erick Ybarra examines sources from the first millennium with a fresh look at how methodology and hermeneutics plays a role in the reading of the same texts. In addition, he conducts a detailed investigation into the most significant points of history in order to show what was clearly accepted by both East and West in their years of ecclesiastical unity. In light of this clear evidence, the reader of The Papacy is free to decide whether contemporary Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy has maintained the heritage of the first millennium on the understanding of the Papal office.

The union of the churches is one of the crucial issues of our time. Yet it is often forgotten that any discussion about it must begin with an understanding of what the Church itself is.The Church - The Episcopate - The Conciliar Structure - Two Rival Ecclesiologies - The Papacy - Perspectives and Formulas of Schism - The Christology of Schism - Trinitarian Doctrine and the Schism.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1871.