The Way Forward

I am not certain of the way forward. I am reluctant to consider the idea that the clergy has the "spiritualities" and everyone else controls the "temporalities." Historically, the two go together, under the control of the Bishop, with a "Treasurer appointed from the clergy" for the temporalities so that we all know what belongs to the Bishop (his latifundiae) and what belongs to the Church. The idea was that since the Bishop was responsible for the souls of those in his charge, that giving him control of the property was alright since the property was not as important as the health of our souls.

The problem is that experience seems to be showing that this may be an incomplete understanding of things. We may be at a kairos point in the experience of the Church, if I may use it in Tillich's sense for a moment (though, I remember the admonition that every misbehaving person thinks of himself as some latter-day St. Maximos the Confessor), where we are groping toward a different self-understanding of the ecclesia that somehow doesn't destroy our hierarchical nature, but still creates some space for people to say something about physical assets. My understanding about the nature of the episcopal burden is that episkope is the fulcrum that unites the eccelesia that we see around us at the Liturgy with those who went before us in time, and those who are concelebrating with our Bishop elsewhere in space. In other words, the ministry of the Bishop unites us with other orthodox Christians both in time and in space.

Given this temporal and spatial nature, perhaps there is a theological formulation that allows us to say that the ecclesia as a whole can say something about physical property in order to prevent the Bishop from having this property as a complete usufruct for himself. In other words, perhaps the ecclesia's role can be seen as complimentary to the Bishop's responsibility to keep the physical assets available in time for those who will follow us all, leaving open a kind of iterative process between the Bishop and the rest of the ecclesia. Since the most powerful argument against the ultramontine papacy is the effect on the people who hold the office (cf. the Borgia popes), perhaps the establishment of some sort of restraint on the use of property can be seen as being for the spiritual welfare of those who exercise episkope among us.

One difficulty may be that this concern with checks and restraints tends to negate the eschatological nature of the Church, which means that we expect the parousia tomorrow, or even this evening, and so it isn't strictly necessary to have any sort of check on the use of physical assets entrusted to the Church. My tentative response (and, mind you, this is all tentative) is that we are reminded not to put the Almighty and Everliving to the test. So just as we ought not to dive into the ocean off a cliff without at least a bungee cord, perhaps we should entrust to no human person any sort of unrestrained discretion over money and other property.

This is the war within my mind --- wanting to say "contradicitur" like our Father among the saints Pope Hilary, but realizing that the angels might lose their flight control feathers from laughing so hard at my cheek in doing so .

Point well taken about the dictionary ... d'oh! (as the other Homer might say)