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Popes And Patriarchs: An Orthodox Perspective on Roman Catholic Claims
For any dialogue between the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches to be fruitful, we must first understand our differences. Popes and Patriarchs covers some of the distinctives in theology and worldview that separate the churches of the East from those of the West, focusing primarily on the claims of papal supremacy. Author Michael Whelton, a convert from Catholicism to Orthodoxy, discusses some of the theological and historical issues that led him to explore the teachings of the Orthodox Church, including the doctrine of original sin, the influence of Medieval scholastic thought on the Western Church, and the modern trend toward evolutionary Christianity. Part II examines in depth the true attitude of the early Eastern saints of the Church toward the papacy, an attitude radically different from that frequently attributed to them by Roman Catholic apologists. A final chapter is devoted to typical questions Roman Catholics raise about the Orthodox Church, including a comprehensive discussion of divorce and remarriage.
- GenresNonfictionReligion
177 pages, Paperback
First published May 15, 2006
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About the author
Michael Whelton
9 books6 followersMichael Whelton is an Orthodox writer. He is the author of the widely received Two Paths: Papal Monarchy—Collegial Tradition, in which he examines Rome’s claims of papal supremacy in the light of the teaching of the Orthodox Church.
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March 21, 2021
Popes, Patriarchs and Propaganda: A Study in Confirmation Bias.
Caustic, triumphalist, negative and overly simplistic. Michael Whelton specializes in anti-Catholic propaganda, and he plays fast and loose with the facts. His "scholarship" is dishonest. A garbage investigation dominated by animus and bias against the Catholic Church from which the Orthodox split. It contains falsehoods and contradicts their own Orthodox Saints. Eastern Orthodox apologetics is very disappointing. Don't expect a serious engagement with Catholicism. This book can be placed on the level of KJV only apologetic books. Reductionist and oversimplifies complex issues. Imbalanced and one sided. Typical Pop Orthodox apologetics. Orthodox can do better and have done better look elsewhere. See also the Eastern Catholic theologian Dr. Adam A.J. DeVille’s review of Whelton’s work found here http://www.cjoc.ca/pdf/Vol2-W-3%20Pop....
Some key quotes from Dr. Deville’s review that I think are worth quoting here are as follows.
“This book, in sum, can be counted upon to provide neither reliable Catholic perspectives nor reliable Orthodox ones. In no way can it be considered scholarly or even accurate. Its only salutary purpose is to demonstrate anew that many divisions between Orthodox and Catholics are not so much substantial as simply the result of what Jesuit casuists of the old school used to call “invincible ignorance.”
and
“Whelton thus tries to pass himself off as a serious researcher who has investigated the original sources, and judiciously weighed all the evidence. On p. 7 he claims to have based his book “at all times” on “the best of contemporary scholarship,” but that is a demonstrably false claim, not least in Whelton’s treatment of the papacy in the thought of Maximus the Confessor. Whelton is clearly ignorant of recent and serious Orthodox scholarship, including that of Andrew Louth (“The Ecclesiology of Saint Maximos the Confessor,” International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 4 [2004]: 109-20) and Jean-Claude Larchet (“The Question of the Roman Primacy in the Thought of Saint Maximus the Confessor” in ed. Walter Kasper, The Petrine Ministry: Catholics and Orthodox in Dialogue [Mahwah, NJ: Newman Press, 2005], 188-209).”
Finally
What is truly intolerable is that no attention whatsoever is given to such reputable and influential Orthodox scholars who have published numerous, serious books and articles in this area, including, inter alia, Olivier Clément, Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) of Pergamon, Archbishop Vsevelod of Scopelos, Vigen Guroian, John Erickson, Nicholas Lossky, Alexander Schneemann, Nicholas Afanassieff, Stylianos Harkianakis, Paul Evdokimov, Emmanuel Clapsis, Archbishop Mesrob (Krikorian), Thomas Hopko, Nicolae Durã, Vlassios Phidas, and Bishop Hilarion (Alfeyev). Does it not seem strange that a book purporting to offer “an Orthodox perspective” on the papacy (and patriarchates) would be almost entirely bereft of actual Orthodox thought from the above-named scholars and hierarchs? Does it not seem stranger still that John Meyendorff, whom Whelton does cite several times in his bibliography, edited a book, The Primacy of Peter: Essays in Ecclesiology and the Early Church, which Whelton does not list and seems not to have read.”
On Pages 90-91 Whelton treats the issue of the condemnation of Pope Honorius. He oversimplifies this issue greatly. He mentions Dr. John Chapman in passing and cites from a work of Dr. BC Butler but misrepresents their conclusions. He also does not deal with the work of Dr. John Chapman on the subject "The Condemnation of Pope Honorius” or the work “Pope Honorius Before the Tribunal of Reason and History “ -by Paul Bottalla. He also fails to make note of important distinctions used on the subject of Pope Honorius in the west such as canonical crime of heresy, manifest heretic/heresy, formal heretic/heresy, and material heretic/heresy. He also doesn’t interact with Bellarmine’s treatment of the issue in his On the Roman Pontiff. (see the excellent translation by Ryan Grant)
He ignores or seems ignorant of the open debate in the western canonical tradition post schism about whether or not Popes can be heretics, and whether or not heretical popes could be deposed etc. Further Whelton fails to mention to his readers the fact that Pope John IV (640 A.D. -642 A.D.) and St. Maximus the confessor both held Honorius to have been orthodox. (See also Catholic apologist Erick Ybarra's articles on this issue found here https://erickybarra.org/?s=Honorius+&...)
He cites Ignaz von Döllinger’s work “The Pope and the Council” by Janus - on the issue of the papal forgeries but fails to interact with the response to Döllinger entitled “Anti-Janus: An Historico-Theological Criticism of the Work Entitled The Pope and the council” by Joseph Hergenrother the esteemed German Church historian and canonist. He also highly overrates Dollinger as a reliable objective source which he is not.
When he discusses the Orthodox vs. the Catholic view of the indissolubility of marriage he gives a rather short and simplistic view of the indissolubility of Marriage. Doesn’t take into account or interact with the internal form, the Pauline privilege, the Petrine privilege etc. For one of the best recent scholarly Catholic treatments of this issue see Dr. Matthew Levering’s work Marital Indissolubility. However I find it odd that he even goes into this and other issues not at all related to the Papacy. If he wanted a broader work that is fine, but the book is called Popes and Patriarchs and there are about 5 chapters irrelevant to that subject in this book.
Misrepresents scholasticism as a dry rationalism, caricatures western theology as legalistic in a pajoritive way without understanding the valid reasons the west used Roman legal categories as a theological conceptual apparatus. Straw man’s St. Augustine’s theology of original sin and justification, accuses him of having held to inherited guilt when it is more complex than that. For a more balanced and scholarly view see the Orthodox turned Byzantine Catholic Nathaniel McCallum’s paper entitled “Inherited Guilt in Saints Augustine and Cyril” file:///C:/Users/owner/Downloads/Inhe....
McCallum argues that St. Augustine meticulously avoided inherited culpa for most of his life. When forced into accepting the word culpa by Julian of Eclanum late in life, St. Augustine accepted the word only and used careful qualification of the word to avoid improper meanings. A fact lost on many Orthodox since the whole premise of their “critique” is that he held to improper meanings. Further McCallum identifies numerous points of borrowing of St. Augustine by St. Cyril. A fact certainly unknown by the likes of Whelton and other anti-St. Augustine Orthodox.
Sad to say but I am not surprised to find that Whelton and many Orthodox today are anti-St. Augustine unfortunately since the work of Romanides (The Ancestral sin and others) and the great Meyenedorff following Romanides interpretations, though he ought to have known better, set off an anti-St. Augustine sentiment and prejudice in 20th century Orthodox scholarship, which had drip down effects to laity. Prior in the Diptychs of both the Orthodox and the Coptic churches Augustine was venerated as a saint. He is a saint. Coptic’s seem to have a better time acknowledging Augustine’s sainthood yet disagreeing with elements of his western theology (the Filioque, predestination, Original sin etc.) I understand yet disagree with their criticisms of this illustrious saint. Orthodox like Whelton would do well to learn from them at least in this regard.
Selectively cites from Congar, Francis Dvornik and Walter Ullman where elsewhere if cited would undercut Wheltons thesis.
In his chapter entitled “The Roman Catholic Church” pages 19-36 Whelton makes a few blunders.
He argues that since there were liturgical abuses in the Catholic Church that therefore Catholicism is refuted. This simply doesn’t follow, and any informed student of Vatican II knows this. He also like many rad trads mistakenly thinks that the source and origin of the liturgical abuse and post conciliar liberalism is the council documents themselves, which is far from the case.
It is true that there were liturgical abuses following the second Vatican council, that is undeniable. Such abuses should be decried and denounced, and have been by faithful Catholics. It is a problem that we do have in the Catholic Church but he places blame in the wrong places and gives rather misrepresentative examples. Don’t get me wrong there are many real and true examples of such abuse especially within the past 50 years, but not from the examples he drew from, Whelton gives distorted examples when he could have otherwise shown authentic and non-misrepresented examples of such abuse. But such abuse doesn’t logically or necessarily refute Catholicism in and of itself.
Also Whelton doesn’t use equal or fair scales since there has been infiltration of modernism and liberalism into different Orthodox churches, coupled with liturgical abuses as well. To be clear it is not as wide spread or the same as in the Catholic Church. Especially since there are more Catholics in the world than Orthodox. At the same time it is unfair and if in principle liturgical abuse rules out or falsifies a communion from being the true church then by his own logic Orthodoxy is refuted. We should avoid such fallacious and simplistic thinking.
Finally Whelton also doesn’t seem to note the various reform movements that have been going on to fight liturgical abuse, especially in the United States, and that many parishes throughout the world are doing better, not necessarily perfect or ideal but not as gloom and doom as Whelton would want us to believe.
Over blows and equates the modernist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s influence on the council with him influencing certain passages of GAUDIUM ET SPES (The Pastoral constitution on the Church in the modern world) as if to make it a ultra liberal and modernist document. It is a rather weak argument to say that just because parts of the first paragraph is similar to the modernist theologian that therefore the document is a weaponized ambiguous liberal modernist document. It is absurd. Read the document for yourselves it says nothing of the kind.
https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_c....
I do feel for the man I don’t know what I would have done if I lived through the tumultuous events of the 1960s and the post councilor church. I understand and empathize with many of his struggles and concerns he listed that he had during that time. However even with my empathy and sympathy in place it in no wise justifies his rather irresponsible and caustic polemic.
He misrepresents what is said about liturgical dancing. Yes there are abusive kinds of dancing that have been done and still are done in the church by irresponsible bishops and priests, by liberal’s modernists and dissidents but this is not the teaching of the church nor the orthodox Roman Catholic praxis. There are specified proper and improper forms of liturgical dance within the same document that he cites. Further he passes over the fact that there are liturgical dances in the Byzantine and Ethiopian rites and communions, Orthodox, Catholic, and non-Chalcedonian alike.
He cited from Davies there are better liturgical scholars such as then Ratzinger Benedict XVI, Congar, Fortescue to name a few.
Misrepresented/distorted the offering prayer in the ordinary form of the Mass. Its not some humanistic modernist statement it comes from a an ancient Jewish prayer. Catholics are free to prefer the Traditional Latin mass, and the Traditional prayers, as I myself do, but to say that this prayer is heretical is a massive stretch one that rad trads also make. Again we can criticize the prudential judgment of the mass of St. Pope Paul VI but there is no question of its orthodoxy and this shouldn’t be a hill to die on for Orthodox.
Caustic, triumphalist, negative and overly simplistic. Michael Whelton specializes in anti-Catholic propaganda, and he plays fast and loose with the facts. His "scholarship" is dishonest. A garbage investigation dominated by animus and bias against the Catholic Church from which the Orthodox split. It contains falsehoods and contradicts their own Orthodox Saints. Eastern Orthodox apologetics is very disappointing. Don't expect a serious engagement with Catholicism. This book can be placed on the level of KJV only apologetic books. Reductionist and oversimplifies complex issues. Imbalanced and one sided. Typical Pop Orthodox apologetics. Orthodox can do better and have done better look elsewhere. See also the Eastern Catholic theologian Dr. Adam A.J. DeVille’s review of Whelton’s work found here http://www.cjoc.ca/pdf/Vol2-W-3%20Pop....
Some key quotes from Dr. Deville’s review that I think are worth quoting here are as follows.
“This book, in sum, can be counted upon to provide neither reliable Catholic perspectives nor reliable Orthodox ones. In no way can it be considered scholarly or even accurate. Its only salutary purpose is to demonstrate anew that many divisions between Orthodox and Catholics are not so much substantial as simply the result of what Jesuit casuists of the old school used to call “invincible ignorance.”
and
“Whelton thus tries to pass himself off as a serious researcher who has investigated the original sources, and judiciously weighed all the evidence. On p. 7 he claims to have based his book “at all times” on “the best of contemporary scholarship,” but that is a demonstrably false claim, not least in Whelton’s treatment of the papacy in the thought of Maximus the Confessor. Whelton is clearly ignorant of recent and serious Orthodox scholarship, including that of Andrew Louth (“The Ecclesiology of Saint Maximos the Confessor,” International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 4 [2004]: 109-20) and Jean-Claude Larchet (“The Question of the Roman Primacy in the Thought of Saint Maximus the Confessor” in ed. Walter Kasper, The Petrine Ministry: Catholics and Orthodox in Dialogue [Mahwah, NJ: Newman Press, 2005], 188-209).”
Finally
What is truly intolerable is that no attention whatsoever is given to such reputable and influential Orthodox scholars who have published numerous, serious books and articles in this area, including, inter alia, Olivier Clément, Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) of Pergamon, Archbishop Vsevelod of Scopelos, Vigen Guroian, John Erickson, Nicholas Lossky, Alexander Schneemann, Nicholas Afanassieff, Stylianos Harkianakis, Paul Evdokimov, Emmanuel Clapsis, Archbishop Mesrob (Krikorian), Thomas Hopko, Nicolae Durã, Vlassios Phidas, and Bishop Hilarion (Alfeyev). Does it not seem strange that a book purporting to offer “an Orthodox perspective” on the papacy (and patriarchates) would be almost entirely bereft of actual Orthodox thought from the above-named scholars and hierarchs? Does it not seem stranger still that John Meyendorff, whom Whelton does cite several times in his bibliography, edited a book, The Primacy of Peter: Essays in Ecclesiology and the Early Church, which Whelton does not list and seems not to have read.”
On Pages 90-91 Whelton treats the issue of the condemnation of Pope Honorius. He oversimplifies this issue greatly. He mentions Dr. John Chapman in passing and cites from a work of Dr. BC Butler but misrepresents their conclusions. He also does not deal with the work of Dr. John Chapman on the subject "The Condemnation of Pope Honorius” or the work “Pope Honorius Before the Tribunal of Reason and History “ -by Paul Bottalla. He also fails to make note of important distinctions used on the subject of Pope Honorius in the west such as canonical crime of heresy, manifest heretic/heresy, formal heretic/heresy, and material heretic/heresy. He also doesn’t interact with Bellarmine’s treatment of the issue in his On the Roman Pontiff. (see the excellent translation by Ryan Grant)
He ignores or seems ignorant of the open debate in the western canonical tradition post schism about whether or not Popes can be heretics, and whether or not heretical popes could be deposed etc. Further Whelton fails to mention to his readers the fact that Pope John IV (640 A.D. -642 A.D.) and St. Maximus the confessor both held Honorius to have been orthodox. (See also Catholic apologist Erick Ybarra's articles on this issue found here https://erickybarra.org/?s=Honorius+&...)
He cites Ignaz von Döllinger’s work “The Pope and the Council” by Janus - on the issue of the papal forgeries but fails to interact with the response to Döllinger entitled “Anti-Janus: An Historico-Theological Criticism of the Work Entitled The Pope and the council” by Joseph Hergenrother the esteemed German Church historian and canonist. He also highly overrates Dollinger as a reliable objective source which he is not.
When he discusses the Orthodox vs. the Catholic view of the indissolubility of marriage he gives a rather short and simplistic view of the indissolubility of Marriage. Doesn’t take into account or interact with the internal form, the Pauline privilege, the Petrine privilege etc. For one of the best recent scholarly Catholic treatments of this issue see Dr. Matthew Levering’s work Marital Indissolubility. However I find it odd that he even goes into this and other issues not at all related to the Papacy. If he wanted a broader work that is fine, but the book is called Popes and Patriarchs and there are about 5 chapters irrelevant to that subject in this book.
Misrepresents scholasticism as a dry rationalism, caricatures western theology as legalistic in a pajoritive way without understanding the valid reasons the west used Roman legal categories as a theological conceptual apparatus. Straw man’s St. Augustine’s theology of original sin and justification, accuses him of having held to inherited guilt when it is more complex than that. For a more balanced and scholarly view see the Orthodox turned Byzantine Catholic Nathaniel McCallum’s paper entitled “Inherited Guilt in Saints Augustine and Cyril” file:///C:/Users/owner/Downloads/Inhe....
McCallum argues that St. Augustine meticulously avoided inherited culpa for most of his life. When forced into accepting the word culpa by Julian of Eclanum late in life, St. Augustine accepted the word only and used careful qualification of the word to avoid improper meanings. A fact lost on many Orthodox since the whole premise of their “critique” is that he held to improper meanings. Further McCallum identifies numerous points of borrowing of St. Augustine by St. Cyril. A fact certainly unknown by the likes of Whelton and other anti-St. Augustine Orthodox.
Sad to say but I am not surprised to find that Whelton and many Orthodox today are anti-St. Augustine unfortunately since the work of Romanides (The Ancestral sin and others) and the great Meyenedorff following Romanides interpretations, though he ought to have known better, set off an anti-St. Augustine sentiment and prejudice in 20th century Orthodox scholarship, which had drip down effects to laity. Prior in the Diptychs of both the Orthodox and the Coptic churches Augustine was venerated as a saint. He is a saint. Coptic’s seem to have a better time acknowledging Augustine’s sainthood yet disagreeing with elements of his western theology (the Filioque, predestination, Original sin etc.) I understand yet disagree with their criticisms of this illustrious saint. Orthodox like Whelton would do well to learn from them at least in this regard.
Selectively cites from Congar, Francis Dvornik and Walter Ullman where elsewhere if cited would undercut Wheltons thesis.
In his chapter entitled “The Roman Catholic Church” pages 19-36 Whelton makes a few blunders.
He argues that since there were liturgical abuses in the Catholic Church that therefore Catholicism is refuted. This simply doesn’t follow, and any informed student of Vatican II knows this. He also like many rad trads mistakenly thinks that the source and origin of the liturgical abuse and post conciliar liberalism is the council documents themselves, which is far from the case.
It is true that there were liturgical abuses following the second Vatican council, that is undeniable. Such abuses should be decried and denounced, and have been by faithful Catholics. It is a problem that we do have in the Catholic Church but he places blame in the wrong places and gives rather misrepresentative examples. Don’t get me wrong there are many real and true examples of such abuse especially within the past 50 years, but not from the examples he drew from, Whelton gives distorted examples when he could have otherwise shown authentic and non-misrepresented examples of such abuse. But such abuse doesn’t logically or necessarily refute Catholicism in and of itself.
Also Whelton doesn’t use equal or fair scales since there has been infiltration of modernism and liberalism into different Orthodox churches, coupled with liturgical abuses as well. To be clear it is not as wide spread or the same as in the Catholic Church. Especially since there are more Catholics in the world than Orthodox. At the same time it is unfair and if in principle liturgical abuse rules out or falsifies a communion from being the true church then by his own logic Orthodoxy is refuted. We should avoid such fallacious and simplistic thinking.
Finally Whelton also doesn’t seem to note the various reform movements that have been going on to fight liturgical abuse, especially in the United States, and that many parishes throughout the world are doing better, not necessarily perfect or ideal but not as gloom and doom as Whelton would want us to believe.
Over blows and equates the modernist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s influence on the council with him influencing certain passages of GAUDIUM ET SPES (The Pastoral constitution on the Church in the modern world) as if to make it a ultra liberal and modernist document. It is a rather weak argument to say that just because parts of the first paragraph is similar to the modernist theologian that therefore the document is a weaponized ambiguous liberal modernist document. It is absurd. Read the document for yourselves it says nothing of the kind.
https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_c....
I do feel for the man I don’t know what I would have done if I lived through the tumultuous events of the 1960s and the post councilor church. I understand and empathize with many of his struggles and concerns he listed that he had during that time. However even with my empathy and sympathy in place it in no wise justifies his rather irresponsible and caustic polemic.
He misrepresents what is said about liturgical dancing. Yes there are abusive kinds of dancing that have been done and still are done in the church by irresponsible bishops and priests, by liberal’s modernists and dissidents but this is not the teaching of the church nor the orthodox Roman Catholic praxis. There are specified proper and improper forms of liturgical dance within the same document that he cites. Further he passes over the fact that there are liturgical dances in the Byzantine and Ethiopian rites and communions, Orthodox, Catholic, and non-Chalcedonian alike.
He cited from Davies there are better liturgical scholars such as then Ratzinger Benedict XVI, Congar, Fortescue to name a few.
Misrepresented/distorted the offering prayer in the ordinary form of the Mass. Its not some humanistic modernist statement it comes from a an ancient Jewish prayer. Catholics are free to prefer the Traditional Latin mass, and the Traditional prayers, as I myself do, but to say that this prayer is heretical is a massive stretch one that rad trads also make. Again we can criticize the prudential judgment of the mass of St. Pope Paul VI but there is no question of its orthodoxy and this shouldn’t be a hill to die on for Orthodox.
January 6, 2011
as an ex-Catholic, now Orthodox Christian I grabbed this book off the shelf!
The author touches on many issues and adds a lot of supporting evidence. Ironically, I walked away from the book with a much better understanding of why the RC church claims what she does. I suspect that that was not what the author intended.
All of these types of books that I have read have one unfortunate common thread: the Anti-Catholic bashing. Do we really need to do things like call them "heretics" to explain why we believe what we believe? I dont see them feeling the need to do that to us. It's embarrassing and I pray that one of these books doesnt land in the hands of one of my RC family or friends.
I'm always bewildered by the fact that the authors themselves (of the ones I have read) are all converts from Catholicism --- it seems as though they would be 'softer' about a faith they once held so dear.
The author touches on many issues and adds a lot of supporting evidence. Ironically, I walked away from the book with a much better understanding of why the RC church claims what she does. I suspect that that was not what the author intended.
All of these types of books that I have read have one unfortunate common thread: the Anti-Catholic bashing. Do we really need to do things like call them "heretics" to explain why we believe what we believe? I dont see them feeling the need to do that to us. It's embarrassing and I pray that one of these books doesnt land in the hands of one of my RC family or friends.
I'm always bewildered by the fact that the authors themselves (of the ones I have read) are all converts from Catholicism --- it seems as though they would be 'softer' about a faith they once held so dear.
April 23, 2009
Though he seems to be an armchair theologian, Whelton nevertheless draws careful attention to the main problems concerning the Roman papacy from an Orthodox standpoint. He supports his arguments with very convincing documents of early church fathers, as well as brings light to forgeries used to support papal superiority over all bishops and papal infallibility. Yet, his desire to use early church fathers backfires on him a little bit, as it shows that arguments for papal superiority date back to the 4th century, not later as many Orthodox writers and believers seem to suggest. Dating it back so early could lend more credibility to assertions of papal claims, and deflate the notion that it was just something the Western Church came up with in the 11th century to adopt the filioque doctrine, among other things. One more problem I have with the book is his liturgical purism. While the Orthodox liturgy is certainly one of the most beautiful things on earth, Whelton proceeds to critique Catholic liturgy by pointing to the fact that it has adopted Protestant praise songs and hymns, putting this fact on par with the Latin Church's descent into secularism (even heresy!). I found that jab to be a little below the belt, as it seems any Christian would want to celebrate a legitimate expression of worship of God, even if it is aesthetically or even theologically beneath yours. That aside, Whelton employs a breadth of resources to support his claims, some even from Roman Catholic scholars. It's a thorough introduction to this millenium-old problem, and it can certainly lead one to thicker tomes with more complex questioning.
January 14, 2024
As with his book Two Paths, Michael Whelton cuts right to the core and debunks many of the popular pop apologetic claims Roman Catholics continue to attempt to use to defend their claims. His break down of the various forgeries and cherry picked quotes that have been used to defend the various papal innovations of the last millennia are of particular note as well as the twisting of history concerning the events surrounding the time of St. Photios the Great of Constantinople.
Highly recommended read.
Highly recommended read.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews