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→Primacy in Orthodox-Roman Catholic Dialogue
==Primacy in Orthodox-Roman Catholic Dialogue==
A joint commission of Orthodox and Catholic theologians agreed that recognized the prerogative, within the Pope has primacy over all bishopscontext of conciliarity, though disagreements about of "the extent bishop of his authority still continueRome as protos among the patriarchs". [http://www.zenit.org/article-21012?l=english Reference]. The Joint Commission for Theological Dialogue reached the agreement in a meeting in Ravenna, Italy in October 2007. This is not the same as saying, as some press reports of the document have suggested, that "the Pope has primacy over all bishops, though disagreements about the extent of his authority still continue". [http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?id=12208 Reference]The commission went on to state that: "It remains for the question of the role of the bishop of Rome in the communion of all the Churches to be studied in greater depth. What is the specific function of the bishop of the “first see” in an ecclesiology of koinonia and in view of what we have said on conciliarity and authority in the present text? How should the teaching of the first and second Vatican councils on the universal primacy be understood and lived in the light of the ecclesial practice of the first millennium?" (para 43). What is interesting here however is the apparent readiness of the Roman Catholic participants to consider the possibility of interpreting the decisions of the two Vatican councils (including presumably the statements of Vatican 1 on papal primacy) in the light of eccleisal practise of the first millennium.
Papal primacy is often recognized as the greatest single issue dividing the Eastern and Western churches. Fr. John Meyendorff wrote that "The whole ecclesiological debate between East and West is thus reducible to the issue of whether the faith depends on Peter, or Peter on the faith."{{ref|3}} Pope Paul VI said that "the pope…is undoubtedly the most serious obstacle on the path of [[ecumenism]]."{{ref|4}}
