The Banned said:
I think you see a massive gap, where I see some small quarrels that could be assuaged by reasonable men. Take the philioque. There have been patriarchs in the East that have seen room for compromise. It's just not mainstream enough to catch on, because as you've pointed out, there are many bishops involved and not all are willing to be on the same page. You see it as consolidating power. I see it as preventing any one diocese from staying separate in their theology. It even appears in some cases that reconciliation cannot be reached because some patriarchs desire to retain their current power rather to see a united Church again.
The tenants of the faith need to be uniform. I don't see how one can get around that. How can one be ok with one diocese calling a particular action a sin and others saying it is not? How can one be ok with saying Mary's role is XYZ and the other says different? As you point out, we're much closer on things like baptism and the Eucharist than we are to modern baptists, but under your view I still struggle to see we can say baptists are wrong at all. Sure we can point to church history and tradition, but there is no authority to definitively say they are wrong. Once enough agree with the modern Baptist teaching versus the traditional Catholic one, you just have a church split. There's just no way maintain a unity with this model and no way to truly determine who is correct.
I see the authority being given to a "head honcho" to be an absolute necessity. Seems Jesus did as well. I don't need my tradition to tell me this. All I have to do is look at what has happened to Christianity since the reformation to know that authority is required. It's common sense. And I would disagree this is based on my tradition and not scripture/history to begin with. The primacy of Rome has always been around. I believe scripture is clear on Peter's role as well, and his successors retained that privilege, but I know this will simply be beating a dead horse by trying to argue it. I believe in a "first among equals" in a sense, but at the end of the day, just like in marriage, if there needs to be a final vote on a contentious topic, an individual with that final vote must exist.
For your ETA: Francis has given me great hope in the Catholic Church. I feel he would gladly toss out many of our teachings if he could, but he is bound by the teachings of the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit. Even he has said gay men can't be married, can't be in the clergy, that trans ideology is satanic and women can never have a place in liturgical practices. I don't see this is literally any other denomination right now outside of individual evangelical non-denom churches. The German bishops can spout all their nonsense, but it will never become teaching, and this gives me peace. Even when truthful bishops, like Strickland, are unnecessarily punished and the Latin mass is constricted.
Understand your criticisms but I think you live in a glass house. A thousand years of splitting and doctrinal changes has trained you to view scripture in that way (east west, reformation, CoE, old Catholics, etc.) and given you tradition and catechesis to enforce it. Just like every other ancient rite.
There's obviously some irony in lamenting that other bishops won't humble themselves before the bishop of Rome to unite the church when it's your tradition alone that elevates him so far above (primacy and first among equals is not the same as the power of office given to him, though we agree on the concept you define in this response).
If all bishops were on the same page, would we have needed councils? These are not new issues and were solved this way before. If someone goes rogue you follow the process of discipline and break communion (really this isn't a deal breaker, that a bishop goes rogue). I don't view Baptist theology as correct or perfect, and the Eucharist and baptism are absolutely stumbling blocks to unity with them. Absolute power doesn't bring them into the fold, though; in the roman context it merely gives you license to expel others. In a liturgical context though baptists aren't the stumbling block to Eastern and western unity. I don't say the Filioque when we recite the creed but I have license to do that at my church because of my heart in it.
The RCC has the same problems as everyone else. What good is your central authority when it punishes the most devout by abolishing Latin mass? When it restricts Strickland but father Martin has free reign? Biden and pelosi receive communion still, yes? What happens to these bishops who don't enforce your ideas of sin? No my friend, it has not saved you from the same forces that come for us all.
