tinually asserts,[1] and that none of the old Churches have ever doubted. This is a little piece of rationalism from Tübingen, of the kind that Orthodox bishops generally strongly resent in their clergy; but anything will do here if only it is anti-papal.[2] Lord Anthimos then draws up his accusations in a kind of litany, of which each clause is in this pleasant form: "The Church of the seven General Councils, one, holy, catholic, and apostolic, believes and confesses … the Papic Church (ἡ ἐκκλησία παπική) on the other hand, &c." One would not expect him in an official document to call us Catholics, but it would have been easy to find a word that is not discourteous. The Pope had spoken of the Eastern Churches; why not, in answering, call us the Western Church? The Latin or Roman Church would have been an inoffensive name too. "Papic" is, of course, just silly rudeness. His All-holiness of Constantinople even pretends that he despises the Pope too much to think it worth while to answer him: "We have been silent till now; we did not deign to cast our eyes upon this Papic Encyclical, thinking it useless to speak to the deaf." Is it necessary to give more examples of the rudeness of which the Orthodox themselves have since seemed ashamed? Pope Leo began by speaking of the dignity of those ancient Eastern Churches, from which the faith came to us. The Patriarch Anthimos begins: "The devil has prompted the Bishops of Rome to feelings of unbearable pride, through which they have introduced a number of impious novelties contrary to the Gospel."[3] A comparison of the two letters, then, makes one point clear; the Pope wrote with the most generous courtesy, the Patriarch could not even write like
- ↑ Nilles: Kal. i. pp. 107, 138, 193, &c.; Duchesne, o.c. p. 124.
- ↑ One need hardly say that St. Peter's Roman episcopate is as certain as anything in the 1st century of Church history, and is now admitted by serious scholars of every religion. It should be noted that the Orthodox (Kyriakos, for instance) still print St. Andrew's name as that of the first Bishop of Constantinople. The attitude of mind that can believe that absurd legend (p. 29) and yet doubt St. Peter's Roman See is indeed astonishing.
- ↑ Poor Anthimos, even before his Encyclical was published, was deposed by his own metropolitans. The Pope would at any rate not have tolerated that particular kind of impious novelty that really is opposed to all old Canon Law, and that is the most flagrant abuse of the Orthodox Church.
