Folia Canonica 5. (2002)
PROCEEDINGS OF THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE "Tra Chiesa universale e Chiesa particolare", Budapest, 2nd February 2002 - Gennadios of Sassima: The Canonical Status of the Ecumenical Patriarch in the Canonical Order of the Orthodox Churches: Nature and Extension of its Authority
274 GENNADIOS OF SASSIMA tomary order of the “primacies of honor” and the most important constituent of the canonical administrative “primacies of honor”.7 IV. Primacy and Primacies of Honor The “Primacy” was always a basic institutional concept of authority in the organization and function of the body of the Church. Already during the apostolic times this authority was exercised by the Apostles, and during the post-apostolic period by the disciples of the Apostles, considered to be the authentic bearers an interpreters of the apostolic tradition. By the end of the second century the apostolic succession was expressed through the local bishops who were ordained by the Apostles or their disciples. During the second century the concept of an exceptional super-local ecclesiastical authority was linked to the recognition of the validity of the living experience and the continuous testimony of the most flourishing apostolic local churches, which had proven apostolic roots, unbreakable continuity and experience in the apostolic tradition and circumstantial evidence of the apostolic faith. This exceptional ecclesiastical authority was expressed by the term “primacies of honor”. In this spirit the customary “primacies of honor” were established the conscience of the Church as expression of a type of authority, which operated in local and broader frameworks through the actualization of the synodical conscience of the Church. This is evident, because during the first three centuries every local church had internal autonomy and was not involved in specific administrative relations with the other local churches. This, is exceptional authority, based upon the “primacies of honor” and recognized through the customary praxis, was really exceptional and in any case not purely theoretical. During the function of the synodical system of the Church the observation of the “primacies of honor” was inseparably linked to the presidency of the local synod. In this understanding the local churches, revered with the primacy of honor, embodied at least in the framework of the function of the synodical system the basic elements of the authority ’’primacy”, because presiding the synod they exercised a great influence upon a broader or narrower circle of neighboring local churches. The First Ecumenical Council (381) introduced the metropolitan administrative system to the life of the Church,8 whereby the local primacies of “honor” were absorbed by the authority of the Metropolitans. Practice was not full covered but this administrative recognition because the exceptional authority had developed this ecclesiastical influence in more than 7 See V. Phidas, The Historical and Canonical Problems for the Function of the Institution of Pentarchy of Patriarchs, Athens 1970, 50 (in Greek). 8Cf. Nie. ce. 4,5,6 and 7.
