EP: "No point in a pan-Orthodox meeting, since we would just disagree"

[Iconodule]

Patriarch Bartholomew has publicly responded to the Church of Antioch's request for a pan-Orthodox meeting to discuss the dispute over Ukraine. Evidently the only worthwhile meetings are ones where agreement is pre-determined.

In response, we inform you that after four Orthodox churches, without reason from an ecclesiological and theological point of view, refused to be present during the work of the Great and Holy Council, for which there is no excuse– and your ancient church was one of them– the Ecumenical Patriarchate has good reason to refrain from such a meeting at the Pan-Orthodox level, which would be useless inasmuch as it would only lead to agreement that the participants are in disagreement with each other.

Read the rest here:

https://orthodoxsynaxis.org/2019/03/02/patriarch-bartholomews-response-to-patriarch-john-xs-request-for-a-council/

 

[LizaSymonenko]

Didn't Antioch bow out of the Crete Council? 

....and if they and the other Churches who boycotted Crete, boycott on the grounds of personal issues and situations.... (Antioch vs Jerusalem, etc.).... then we can assume that these issues have since been resolved, as they are now willing to sit together to pass judgement upon another Church.  Right?  ....then this is great news!  I am glad they've worked out their differences.

 

[Iconodule]

Didn't Antioch bow out of the Crete Council? 

....and if they and the other Churches who boycotted Crete, boycott on the grounds of personal issues and situations.... (Antioch vs Jerusalem, etc.).... then we can assume that these issues have since been resolved, as they are now willing to sit together to pass judgement upon another Church.  Right?  ....then this is great news!  I am glad they've worked out their differences.

A nice quip, if a bit petty, but alas such sniping does not apply to the churches of Cyprus, Serbia, Romania, and Poland, all of whom did attend the Crete council, and have also called for a synaxis.

 

[Luke]

Sounds like Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew is bearing a grudge.  People are supposed to disagree at meetings.  That is where, hopefully, things get worked out.

 

[Rohzek]

Didn't Antioch bow out of the Crete Council? 

....and if they and the other Churches who boycotted Crete, boycott on the grounds of personal issues and situations.... (Antioch vs Jerusalem, etc.).... then we can assume that these issues have since been resolved, as they are now willing to sit together to pass judgement upon another Church.  Right?  ....then this is great news!  I am glad they've worked out their differences.

You mean the EP who decided to table the Antioch-Jerusalem issue for years and instead hold it at a council, when in fact the EP is supposed to be able to judge these things without the arbitration of an "ecumenical" council according to its own interpretation of itself? You mean the EP who thinks circling prearranged documents, refusing to allow further delay to consider them or amend them before that said meeting, and then only having 2 weeks for that said meeting is enough for a "pan-Orthodox" council to actually work out, to actually have debate? You mean the EP who expects the world to acknowledge the authenticity of uncanonically violating the jurisdiction of other patriarchates, while simultaneously refusing to acknowledge the OCA as autocephaleous based upon an arcane interpretation of a canon from a long-dead empire that regarded all foreigners in a typical xenophobic fashion as barbarians? You mean the EP who thinks it is its Gospel mission to proclaim equally both Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ and to induct the Third or Fourth Sophistic? You mean the EP that is at the very least, just as personal, petty, pathetic, and power-hungry as a great many other bishoprics and patriarchates throughout history and the present?

 

[Alpha60]

Didn't Antioch bow out of the Crete Council? 

....and if they and the other Churches who boycotted Crete, boycott on the grounds of personal issues and situations.... (Antioch vs Jerusalem, etc.).... then we can assume that these issues have since been resolved, as they are now willing to sit together to pass judgement upon another Church.  Right?  ....then this is great news!  I am glad they've worked out their differences.

Antioch refused to attend the Council of Crete for the very important reason that the Ecumenical Patriarchate refused to address at the Council the intrusion on Antioch’s canonical territory by the Church of Jerusalem, something which Antioch appealed to the EP years ago under Canon 28 of Chalcedon, and which the EP has refused to rule on.  This is not a personal issue but a canonical-ecclesiological issue of extreme importance, because Canon 28 both gives the EP its juridicial authority as a court of appeal, from which people like the Metropolitan of Bursa extrapolate the “First without equals” nonsense, and which also defines the canonical boundaries of the ancient Patriarchates.  What is more, Canon 28 is the basis for the claims of the EP that it has sole and exclusive jurisdiction in Western Europe, and in all of the “lands of the Barbarians”, which in turn is the basis for its claim to be the only legitimate jurisdiction in North America and its claim to be able to revoke autocephaly (with which the Czech-Slovak church was threatened, and a provision pertaining to which was included in the Tomos of Autocephaly issued to the OCU).  Indeed the authority from which the EP claims to have the ability to grant autocephaly to the OCU flows from a particular interpretation of Canon 28.

That said, Antioch in response to this rather dismissive reply from the EP (which I strongly doubt was personally written by Patriarch Bartholomew) has the basis from which to convene a council itself to address these issues.  Indeed, several Orthodox churches have been leaning in the direction of calling for a council, and I expect one might well be convened.

It is also imperative to pray for Patriarch Bartholomew, as I am extremely concerned for his personal welfare and wellbeing, given that in recent months statements have been issued in his name which contradict earlier statements he made on the nature of autocephaly, the ecclesiology of the Orthodox Church, and related matters.

 

[DeniseDenise]

Regardless of the 'they went' they didn't go'  status of any prior council.....

What does saying 'We might as well not meet, you don't agree with me anyhow'  say about the councilarity of our Church?


Playing the back and forth blame game about Crete, does little to move forward....if we cannot meet again until everyone -agrees- with everyone else.......then where are we? no discussions ever.....

 

[Alpha60]

I think there is an obvious subtext to the statement issued in the name of the EP, and that is that “there is no point in a pan-Orthodox meeting, since everyone else would just disagree with us and what we have committed to doing.”

If you look at the numbers it seems probable that the EP would lose any conciliar vote held on this issue.

~

I would also argue it was legitimate for several of the churches which recused themselves from the 2016 Council to do so, given that the agenda of the council was pre-determined and also particularly given the numerous heterodox assertions by the EP that the entire Orthodox church would be “bound” by the decisions of the council, which is of course not how councils work, not in this church at any rate (the idea one can snap one’s fingers and declare a council ecumenical is decidedly Roman).

 

[Alpha60]

Regardless of the 'they went' they didn't go'  status of any prior council.....

What does saying 'We might as well not meet, you don't agree with me anyhow'  say about the councilarity of our Church?


Playing the back and forth blame game about Crete, does little to move forward....if we cannot meet again until everyone -agrees- with everyone else.......then where are we? no discussions ever.....

Precisely.  +100000

 

[Agabus]

Based on the EP's interpretation of itself, can't HAH just order it?

 

[Luke]

Regardless of the 'they went' they didn't go'  status of any prior council.....

What does saying 'We might as well not meet, you don't agree with me anyhow'  say about the councilarity of our Church?


Playing the back and forth blame game about Crete, does little to move forward....if we cannot meet again until everyone -agrees- with everyone else.......then where are we? no discussions ever.....

I agree.

 

[hecma925]

It really is pointless to go tonsuch meetings when one is the source of the Church.

 

[Iconodule]

Jad Ganem, as usual, has some worthwhile observations here.

 

[DeniseDenise]

Jad Ganem, as usual, has some worthwhile observations here.

Indeed. 

Ignoring the current issue......where would councils in general be if they were not the place to actually discuss disagreements.....

unless my catechesis was a total waste of time...were there not members of all the 'opposing' ideas or groups at pretty much all the Councils?  Did they not hash out....via discussion as  a council....all the important things of our faith?

saying there is no point in meeting unless there is some pre-agreed agreement is both modernism at its worst...and frankly the opposite of every council in the history of councils...

 

[WPM]

Don't you mean a social gathering? …

 

[Alpha60]

Jad Ganem, as usual, has some worthwhile observations here.

Indeed. 

Ignoring the current issue......where would councils in general be if they were not the place to actually discuss disagreements.....

unless my catechesis was a total waste of time...were there not members of all the 'opposing' ideas or groups at pretty much all the Councils?  Did they not hash out....via discussion as  a council....all the important things of our faith?

saying there is no point in meeting unless there is some pre-agreed agreement is both modernism at its worst...and frankly the opposite of every council in the history of councils...

Indeed.  However such an error on the part of the EP would perhaps explain the interminable series of pointless preconciliar meetings before the Council of Crete and the lack of means for attendees at the Council to object to any item on the agenda or raise issues not on the agenda...the entire affair was like a giant rubber-stamping process, but presumably given the damp squib of pronunciations to come out of it, if the EP was hoping to rubber stamp anything controversially they were unsuccessful.