The Patriarch is NOT our Pope

Archimandrite Auxentios

[Now Bishop of Etna and Portland]

"A definition of Orthodoxy which posits anything but the absolute equality of Bishops, be they Popes, Patriarchs, Archbishops, or whatever, is a definition of precisely what Orthodoxy is not. Where a right-believing Bishop with Apostolic Succession is found, there and there alone is Orthodoxy found." With these blunt words my former mentor, Father Florovsky, distinguished Orthodoxy from papism. So fundamental is this idea to the ecclesiology of our Church that the Oecumenical Patriarch has always been careful to limit the honor due his great See by calling himself the "first among equals." Orthodoxy is decidedly non-papist.

Some time ago, I was speaking to a Uniate convert to Orthodoxy. I commented to him that, while I respected his decision to convert to the Orthodox Church, I had some serious reservations about the abuse of economy by which his reception into the Church was accomplished. Understandably, he had no grasp of the issue which I was addressing, but defended what he mistakenly thought was a challenge to the validity of his conversion by saying, "Well, we are recognized by the Patriarch of Constantinople." I was a bit surprised at this naive response. It highlights what a disservice the modernist Orthodox Churches in this country are doing to converts.

This poor man has, in being misguided about the actual beliefs of the Orthodox Church, come to believe that, in converting to Orthodoxy, he traded a Pope for a Patriarch. As I have noted, this is not the case. The Pope being inerrant with regard to matters of faith, his approval insures one's good standing in the Latin Church. A Patriarch, however, is just a Bishop. If he should err, as he can, he and those who follow him collapse in the Faith. His approval of any act or issue has, as such, no significance whatever outside his fidelity to Holy Tradition. And even then, that approval has no more authoritative weight than the approval of any other, true-believing Orthodox Bishop.

In what is unfortunately an unnecessarily polemical and at times uncharitable little volume, the third chapter of Alexander Kalomiros' Against False Union (tr. George Gabriel; Boston, MA, 1967) constitutes a succinct and brilliant statement with regard to authority in the Orthodox Church: "A local Orthodox church[,] regardless of her size or the number of her faithful[,] is by herself alone, independently of all the others, catholic. ...She has all the grace and truth. ...She is the one flock, and the bishop is her shepherd, the image of Christ, the one Shepherd" (p. 54).

Again, as Father Florovsky emphatically states, the Orthodox Church exists where there is a right- believing Bishop in Apostolic Succession. The criterion of validity in Orthodoxy is focused on that right-believing Bishop, not on a Pope or on some papist notion of Church authority. In fact, defending the validity of one's Orthodoxy by adherence to a Patriarch or some special Church "authority," as opposed to right belief and Holy Tradition, can lead to error.

Many zealots on Mt. Athos, for example, will not commemorate the Patriarch of Constantinople. Because of his uncanonical relations with the Roman Papacy and his unfounded claims to leadership in the Orthodox world, these zealots reckon commemoration a participation in his deviation from the Faith. Even many of those who do commemorate the Patriarch speak of his actions as a great scandal to the Faithful and shun his counsel. Thus, a papist-like fidelity to the present Patriarch of Constantinople risks error.

The papism which has appeared in Orthodoxy since the calendar change in 1924 has misled many converts in the West. This innovation, Kalomiros notes, is expressed in titles such as "Archbishop of All Greece," or "Archbishop of North and South America," or, as it is often said of the Patriarch of Constantinople, "leader of Orthodoxy." "All [of] these are manifestations," he insightfully writes, "of the same worldly spirit, of the same thirst for worldly power, and belong to the same tendencies which characterize the world today.

"...The Orthodox people must become conscious of the fact that they owe no obedience to a bishop, no matter how high a title he holds, when that bishop ceases being Orthodox and openly follows heretics with pretenses of 'unions' on 'equal terms.' On the contrary, they are obliged to depart from him and confess their Faith, because a bishop, even if he be patriarch or pope, ceases from being a bishop the moment he ceases being Orthodox" (p.61).

With all of the recent publicity about the "leader of world Orthodoxy," we would all do well to return to a study of the basic tenets of the Orthodox Faith and heed with great seriousness the errors which are being taught in the name of Orthodoxy! We are not a Patriarchal Church, a Church which has extended the prerogatives of papism beyond Rome to include a multiplicity of papal authorities. The head of the Orthodox Church is Jesus Christ. Through Apostolic Succession, every Orthodox Bishop, together with his flock, constitutes the fullness of the Church, to the extent that he and those with him adhere to the teachings of Christ, the Apostles, Scripture, the Holy Fathers, Holy Tradition, and the Canons of The Church.

Whenever anyone begins to teach, in the name of Orthodoxy, that spiritual authority resides in a Pope or Patriarch, he is initiating a movement that is essentially inimical to our Church's nature—even if he who teaches this is a Patriarch!

 

Source: Orthodox Tradition, Vol. VII (1990), No. 4, p. 4.