Folia Canonica 4. (2001)

STUDIES - George Nedungatt: Who is to Administer Church Property? - The Answer of the Ecumenical Councils

122

GEORGE NEDUNGATT

synod. If there are any who are wronged by their own metropolitan, let their case be judged either by the exarch of the diocese or by the see of Constantinople, as has already been said. If any city has been newly erected, or is erected hereafter, by imperial decree, let the arrangement of ecclesiastical parishes conform to the civil and public regulations [read: pattern, /.’1

According to this canon, not only the cathedral church but also the parishes of the countryside (including, as Balsamon says, both private oratories and places of worship shared by a whole village) were under the administration of the bishop. But disputes could arise particularly as regards boundary parishes: under which bishop did they come? The forum for the judicial settlement was the provincial synod presided over by the bishop of the metropolitan city. If the metropolitan himself was involved in the dispute, the case had to be filed in a higher patriarchal court. As for newly established cities, their territorial jurisdiction was to be the pattern for the territorial jurisdiction in the Church as well.

With reference to the metropolitan, already Apostolic canon 34, based on canon 9 of Antioch, speaks of the protos (“the First”) of the province, who would gradually get specified as primate, metropolitan or archbishop or patriarch, etc.

The bishops of every nation are to acknowledge him who is the first among them and regard him as their head. They are to do nothing beyond the ordinary business without his consent, but each one is to mind what concerns his own diocese and the country places dependent on it. But neither let him who is the first do anything without the consent of all. For thus there will be oneness of mind, and God will be glorified, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.11 12

In the ideal set forth here for the relationship between the bishops and their Protos the hierarchy of superior-inferior relationship is transcended on the Trinitarian pattern. However, this surely does not mean, as this canon is sometimes interpreted by certain Orthodox writers, that the Protos has only a honorary rank, that is of being the first among equals (primus inter pares), without real jurisdiction.13 Such a distinction is foreign to the ancient sacred canons and is anachronistic.14

Just as the bishop has to act in concert with the metropolitan, so must the parish priest deal with his bishop. This is laid down in the canonical collection of the local Council of Carthage, in which it is taken for granted that the administration of the temporal property of the Church rests with the clergy. Canon 33 reads:

11 Tanner (ed.), Decrees (nt. 3), 95.

12 Joannou, Les canons, 24.

13 Aa. Vv. „Der Protos” und seine Jurisdiktion in Kanon IX, Wien 1989.

14 B. E. Daley, “The Position and Patronage in the Early Church: the Original Meaning of ‘Primacy of Honour’”, Journal of Theological Studies 44 (1993) 529-553. “The ‘primacy’[of honour] these canons ascribe to the bishops of both Rome and Constantinople among their episcopal colleagues must be understood, in their original context, as having clearly practical, even juridical implications” (531).