Orthodox Reflections

By Michael Warren Davis, originally published at his Substack Yankee Athonite. Please support his Michael’s work by subscribing to his Substack at the supporter level, or donate directly to him via Venmo at @YankeeAthonite

My very dear friend Dominic Cassella wrote this thoughtful response to my recent post on Eastern Catholicism. (If you don’t follow Dominic’s newsletter Out of Shadows, you definitely should.) I’d like to offer a counter-response.

Also, Dominic and I will be appearing together on Fr. Nathan Symeon’s podcast Searchers of the Lost to talk about Orthodoxy and Eastern Catholicism. Subscribe to his channel and stay tuned!

To Deliver a Different Creed

Cassella’s rebuttal revolves around the whole question of the “development of doctrine.” For the sake of argument, I’ll grant him that it’s possible to “develop doctrine” in some way, shape, or form. Rather than get bogged down in semantics and abstractions, there’s a far more urgent question that we must ask: What is the correct means for developing doctrine?

If we study Church history, we see that Church-wide disputes are always resolved by an Ecumenical Council. But this is not how the Catholic Church operates today. Let’s take the example of the filioque. Cassella defends the substance of the filioque (i.e., the double procession of the Holy Spirit). But will he defend the means by which it was inserted into the Creed?

As we know, the Nicene Creed was assembled by the First and Second Ecumenical Councils, which took place in the years 325 and 381, respectively. In 451, the Fourth Ecumenical Council declared that no further revisions could be made to the Creed:

But such as dare either to put together another faith, or to bring forward or to teach or to deliver a different Creed (ἕτερον σύμβολον) . . . if they be Bishops or clerics let them be deposed, the Bishops from the Episcopate, and the clerics from the clergy; but if they be monks or laics: let them be anathematized.

A few decades later, the Third Council of Toledo—a local council in Spain—inserted the filioque clause into the Nicene Creed. Before long, the Frankish emperors began to champion its use.

From the very beginning, the Popes of Rome opposed the use of the filioque. Some disbelieved in the underlying theological principle: the double procession of the Holy Spirit. All, however, rejected the notion of altering the Creed.

For instance, Pope St. Leo III did not oppose the double procession on principle. He did, however, believe that the Creed itself was inviolable. So, he struck two huge silver plates, upon which the Symbol of Faith was inscribed without the filioque, once in Latin and once in Greek. He then hung the plates over the gates of the Vatican.

Concerning the plates, the holy pope said: “I, Leo, put these here for the love and protection of the Orthodox faith.” He also noted that, in formulating the Symbol of Faith, the First and Second Ecumenical Councils had “acted upon divine illumination rather than by human wisdom . . . and far be it from me to count myself their equal.”

Still, the Franks continued to push for the use of the filioque.

Then, in 879, Emperor Basil I convened the Fourth Council of Constantinople, also known as the Eighth Ecumenical Council. The bishops—including Pope John VIII—agreed that the Nicene Creed must be recited without the filioque. It declared that any cleric who made any addition or subtraction to the Creed should be defrocked, and any layman excommunicated.

In 1024, however, Pope John XIX adopted the filioque when reciting the Creed, violating the canons of the Fourth and Eighth Ecumenical Councils.

The Orthodox patriarchs did not accommodate Rome, nor should they have.

A Bishop of Bishops?

Most popes in the first millennium were like Leo III. They understood their duty to preserve the Orthodox, Catholic Faith; they were also aware of the limits of their office. Pope St. Gregory the Great was one such. That’s why he made his famous declaration:

I say it without the least hesitation, whoever calls himself the universal bishop, or desires this title, is, by his pride, the precursor of Antichrist, because he thus attempts to raise himself above the others.

Occasionally, however, popes needed to be humbled. That is why, when Pope Stephen I attempted to excommunicate the Eastern bishops over the dating of Easter, he was rebuked by St. Cyprian (a Western father) thus:

Even Peter, whom the Lord chose first, and upon whom He built his church, when Paul later disputed with him over circumcision, did not claim insolently any prerogative nor make any special claims for himself. He did not assert that he had rights of seniority and that therefore upstarts and latecomers ought to be obedient to him.

This belief was echoed by St. Ambrose of Milan (another Western father) who said that Peter possessed “the primacy of confession, not of honor; the primacy of belief, not of rank.”

Likewise, the Second Council of Carthage (a Western synod) declared:

No one among us sets himself up as a bishop of bishops, or by tyranny and terror forces his colleagues to compulsory obedience, seeing that every bishop in the freedom of liberty and power, possesses their right to his own mind and can no more be judged by another than he himself can judge another.

We also have the example of the Meletian Schism. In the middle of the fourth century, a schism erupted in the Church of Antioch between two rival claimants: Meletius and Paulinus. St. Basil the Great asked Pope Damasus I to intervene, as “first among equals,” and defend Meletius’s claim. Damasus does intervene… but in favor of Paulinus and “deposes” Meletius. Basil refused to accept Damasus’s decision. In an astonishing letter, he declared:

I congratulate those who have received the letter from Rome. And, although it is a grand testimony in their favor, I only hope it is true and confirmed by facts. But I shall never be able to persuade myself on these grounds to ignore Meletius, or to forget the Church which is under him, or to treat as small, and of little importance to the true religion, the questions which originated the division. I shall never consent to give in, merely because somebody is very much elated at receiving a letter from men. Even if it had come down from heaven itself, but he does not agree with the sound doctrine of the faith, I cannot look upon him as in communion with the saints.

Basil implicitly denies both papal supremacy and papal infallibility. In fact, he mocks the notion that popes have any special authority in the Church, listing Damasus among the mass of “men.”

Meletius died outside of communion with Rome. Damasus’s successor Siricius likewise supported Paulinus’s line. However, later popes admitted Damasus’s error. Not only did Rome eventually recognize the Meletian line: it canonized Meletius himself!

Likewise, in the sixth century, there arose a despute over a series of documents called the Three Chapters, which were supposed to teach Nestorianism. Emperor Justinian called an Ecumenical Council—the Second Council of Constantinople—to address the problem. Pope Vigilius refused to attend Constantinople II, insisting that the Three Chapters were perfectly orthodox. In response, the Council Fathers ratified its Sentences Against the Three Chapters, which (among other things) explicitly teaches a conciliar ecclesiology:

In order to persuade [Vigilius], we reminded him of the great example left us by the apostles and of the traditions of the fathers. Even though the grace of the holy Spirit was abundant in each of the apostles, so that none of them required the advice of another in order to do his work, nevertheless they were loathe to come to a decision on the issue of the circumcision of gentiles until they had met together to test their various opinions against the witness of the holy scriptures.

 

In this way they unanimously reached the conclusion which they wrote to the gentiles: It has seemed good to the holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things; that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from unchastity.

 

The holy fathers, who have gathered at intervals in the four holy councils, have followed the examples of antiquity. They dealt with heresies and current problems by debate in common, since it was established as certain that when the disputed question is set out by each side in communal discussions, the light of truth drives out the shadows of lying.

 

The truth cannot be made clear in any other way when there are debates about questions of faith, since everyone requires the assistance of his neighbor.

Read that final line again: “The truth cannot be made clear in any other way, because everyone requires the existence of his neighbor.” The Council Fathers did not make an exception for the Bishop of Rome. Indeed, they addressed these words to the Pope himself!

This Ecumenical Council dismisses that theological disputes may be resolved unilaterally by the popes. They must be solved by all the bishops coming together in a holy synod. Sure enough, Vigilius eventually submitted to his brother bishops.

By the way, Constantinople II was only following the Apostolic Canons: “But neither let him (who is the first) do anything without the consent of all; for so there will be unanimity, and God will be glorified through the Lord in the Holy Spirit.”

So, when the Patriarchs of the East resisted Rome in 1054, they were not rejecting the papacy. On the contrary: they were defending papal primacy as it was understood by the Fathers of the Church, including and especially the holy orthodox Popes of Rome.

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The Fruits of Papalism

Clearly, there was no papalism in the First Millennium. What’s more, the evolution of ultramontanism is proof in itself that Catholicism’s notion of doctrinal development is erroneous. For, as the Lord says, “You will know them by their fruits.” And the “development” of papalism in the Western Church has yielded bad fruit.

As Fr. John Meyendorff points out, no principle is affirmed by the Holy Canons more often or more consistently than this: Each bishop is the “supreme pontiff” of his own diocese.

According to the Apostolic Canons: “A bishop is not to be allowed to leave his own parish, and pass over into another, although he may be pressed by many to do so. . . . And this must be done not of his own accord, but by the judgment of many bishops, and at their earnest exhortation.”

According to the First Council of Nicaea, “There may not be two bishops in the city.”

According to the First Council of Constantinople: “The bishops are not to go beyond their dioceses to churches lying outside of their bounds, nor bring confusion on the churches. . . . And let not bishops go beyond their dioceses for ordination or any other ecclesiastical ministrations, unless they be invited.”

And we could go on. The point is that Pastor Aeternus is quite wrong. Papal supremacy and infallibility are not found in “the manifest and explicit decrees . . . of the general councils.” Just the opposite.

It’s true that the Bishop of Rome enjoyed a certain primacy in the First Millennium. But, as the holy popes Gregory I and Leo III make clear, the popes did not see themselves as exercising autocratic authority over their fellow bishops. Rather, they followed St. Ambrose, who said that the Peter held a “primacy of confession,” and St. Ignatius of Antioch, who said that Rome “presides in love.”

What’s more, the Ecumenical Councils clearly teach that Rome’s primacy is of ecclesial rather than divine right. According to the Council of Chalcedon: “The Fathers rightly granted privileges to the throne of old Rome, because it was the royal city.” Chalcedon goes on to say that the Fathers “gave equal privileges to the most holy throne of New Rome” (i.e., Constantinople).

In other words, the Pope’s primacy is granted, not by Christ, but by his brother bishops. And it was granted, not for any relationship to St. Peter, but because it was the capital of the Roman Empire.

Interestingly, Chalcedon also declared that, “if any one be wronged by his metropolitan, let the matter be decided by the exarch of the diocese or by the throne of Constantinople.” As Fr. Alexander Rentel, the renowned canonist, observes: “No other canon in the entire corpus is such supra-diocesan primacy spoken of for any bishop except for the bishop of Constantinople.”

This is why, in the 2016 Chieti Document, the Vatican admits: “the bishop of Rome did not exercise canonical authority over the churches of the East.” Likewise, as the 2023 Alexandria Document concedes, notion that popes possess “the fullness of power” (plenitudo potestatis) in the Church—and that the diocesan bishops merely “share in his solicitide” (in partem sollicitudinis)—only developed in the 13th century, long after the Great Schism.

Yet, despite these candid (and welcome!) admission of Pastor Aeternus’s error, Rome has not relinquished its autocracy. On the contrary.

You will all remember how Bishop Joseph Strickland was deposed by the Vatican as ordinary of the Diocese of Tyler, Texas. Strickland was not accused (much less convicted) of any canonical crimes. At the time, I asked a friend of mine, a well-known Catholic apologist, why Strickland didn’t appeal his deposition. My friend answered simply: He can’t.

Canon 1404 of Rome’s Code of Canon Law states: “The first see is judged by no one.” It goes on to specify: “A judge cannot review an act or instrument confirmed specifically (in forma specifica) by the Roman Pontiff without his prior mandate.” In other words, you can’t sue the pope in a canonical court unless he gives you permission.

By the way, that phrase—“The first see is judged by no one”—is a quotation from the Donation of Constantine, an infamous forgery.

I know many Catholics who were angry with Strickland’s deposition, but praised him for his obedience to Francis. This is more than a case of malpractice, however. If popes have the ability to depose other bishops on a whim, then the ancient canons are nonsense. There’s no way around it: the understanding of a bishop’s rights and authority found in the Ecumenical Councils is fundamentally incompatible with that taught by the First Vatican Council.

Put it this way. The U.S. Constitution gives some authority to the President of the United States. It does not, however, give total authority to the President. So, if the president were to grant himself the power to appoint and depose every member Congress and every Justice of the Supreme Court, this would not be a legitimate “development” of the U.S. Constitution.

It is illegitimate if only for this reason: The authority of the Executive Branch necessarily grows at the expense of the Legislative and Judicial branches. And, as we know, the Legislative and Judicial branches are assigned considerable power in the Constitution. Therefore, this is not a “development” of Constitutional government, but a departure from it.

Likewise, the pope’s authority has grown only at the expense of the authority of his brother bishops. And the fundamental equality of the bishops—their “supremacy” within their own dioceses—is established by the Early Church. It is established far more clearly than papal primacy. So, ultramontanism is not a “development” of the Apostolic ecclesiology, but a departure from it.

With Perfect Harmony

So, whatever we may say about the “development of doctrine” in the abstract, it’s clear that the Catholic understanding is faulty.

Rome has taken too many liberties with the deposit of faith. The Catholic Church has now departed completely from the ecclesiology of the first millennium.

This is a tragedy. As I wrote in my essay “An Orthodox Case for the Papacy”, the Orthodox esteem the See of Rome and venerate the holy orthodox popes. Gregory the First, Leo the First, Leo the Third, John the Eighth… These men truly walked in the footsteps of St. Peter.

Indeed, the title traditionally given to Peter is Coryphaeus, or “choirmaster.” The choirmaster doesn’t write the music. He ensures that everyone sings the exact words, the exact notes, which they have received from the Composer—“with perfect harmony,” as St. Irenaeus said.

I’ll give the last word to St. Peter himself:

The elders who are among you I exhort, I who am a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that will be revealed: Shepherd the flock of God which is among you, serving as overseers, not by compulsion but willingly, not for dishonest gain but eagerly; nor as being lords over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock; and when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that does not fade away.

Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!