Re: CHAT: Strictly CHAT: Uniates and sacraments (was: Brithenig/Aelyan

At 10:45 am -0400 13/4/00, John Cowan wrote:
>Raymond Brown scripsit:
>
>> ...and here we get onto thorny ground where debate can get acrimonious.
>> Apostolic Succession alone is not enough.  If, e.g. a neo-Nazi regime
>> established itself in, say, California (I am *NOT* implying anything by
>> this - I'd guess that probabaly CA is one of the least likely places) and
>> the State seceeded from the Union, although they retained the Governor &
>> all the governmental institutions, would that make those institutions
>> automatically valid?
>
>Well, going from religion to politics......
>
>No State can secede from the Union: that was settled by the sword in 1865.
>
>Assuming the neo-Nazis came to power by election, the way Hitler did,
>their government would be legitimate and their institutions valid.
I know about the session business.  That's why I said 'seceded' - the
government would not be regarded as any longer legitimate nor the
institutions valid - the more so if the government changed from democracy
to autocracy.  The government would no longer have the same intention as
that of the US.

I know so-called parallel examples are never perfect & the seccession of
the Anglican church from Rome under the Tudors was rather different, I
trying to make the point that mere retention of apparently the same
institutions does not necessarily make them valid in the eyes of the
nation/church from which the seccession was made.

>
>>
>> Now one can argue till the cows come home (as we say)
>
>So do we: the Sundering Sea has not sundered our homely metaphors.
Good  :)

>> Orthodox orders are valid (not conditionally, they are).  The choice for an
>> Orthodox priest joining the Roman Catholic fold is whether to retain his
>> own rites and be a 'Uniate' or to change over to the Latin rite.  AFAIK
>> such priests normally retain their Eastern rites.
>
>Current policy is actually to insist on the retention of the Eastern rites,
>I believe.
I believe it is.

[snip]
>
>There was an organization called FICOB, the Federation of Independent Catholic
>and Orthodox Bishops, an umbrella organization for bishops
>and archbishops that have the A.S. but are in schism for one reason
>or another.  FICOB is now defunct,
Hopefully because the reasons for the schism are healed.  I would dearly
love to see a heaking of the schism between my Church & the Orthodox
communities before I leave this world.

Ray.



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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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