Archive for the ‘Ravenna Document’ tag
North American Response to Ravenna
The North American Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation met for its 77th session on October 22-24th. The meeting largely focused on forming a joint response to the 2007 “Ravenna Document” published by the JICTD. Both the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and the Standing Conference of the Canonical Orthodox Bishops of the Americas (SCOBA) recently issued press releases (here and here), including the joint response.
The response repeatedly emphasizes that “[t]hroughout, the [Ravenna] document attempts to include the whole Church, not just the bishops within the exercise of conciliarity,” and prods that discussion of the “authority of the baptized to discuss the authority of bishops as exercised in councils” should not be passed over.
It is also critical of the Ravenna document’s failure to clarify “the ecclesiological status of regional expressions of primacy and synodality” as related by analogy to the “order (taxis) which exists among the three persons of the Holy Trinity.” The joint response goes on to note that the only footnote of the Ravenna document is incomplete and seems to portray the ecclesiological self-understandings of both Churches as more exclusivist than they are in actuality.
Overall, the response commends the JICTD’s continuing efforts and welcomes the publication of the Ravenna document despite the fact that “the text remains at the level of principle rather than practice.”
