7.

 The textbook gives a cause of the developing disunity between Rome and the Church. What was this cause?

            One cause was due to the different political situations in the East and West, which in turn caused the Church to assume different outward forms. From the start, there had been a certain difference of emphasis between the East and West so that in time, people came to view Church order in conflicting ways.

            The East had many Churches of Apostolic foundation, and it had a strong awareness of the equality of all bishops and of the collegial nature of the Church. It saw the bishop of Rome as the first bishop, but first among equals.

            In the West, only one great see dated back to the Apostles — Rome, which caused the West to see Rome as the Apostolic see. Also, while Rome adhered to the decisions of the Ecumenical Councils, it did not play an active role in them, nor did it see the Church so much as a college as it saw it as a monarchy — the monarchy of the pope.

            The textbook goes on to describe how a further political development reinforced this initial divergence: in the political vacuum created by the barbarian invasion of the West, the pope came to get involved in both the political and spiritual life of Western Europe. Not only did he act as an arbiter of contentions between disputing sovereigns, but he came to assume the role of an autocrat and absolute monarch over the Church.

            As a political leader himself, the pope, after a prolonged dialectical process in the European Middle Ages, arrogated imperial authority to himself and assumed the right to appoint and depose kings and emperors. In spite of St. Jerome's dictum let the lust for Roman power cease, many popes became involved in a relentless campaign to increase the scope of their authority, thereby establishing the foundation of papal absolutism and dictatorship. As Archimandrite Sergius, former Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Sofia, Bulgaria, notes of that dictatorship, “Papism's earthly centralization and leadership are alien to the heavenly centralization of Christ's Church, as a Theanthropic body, headed by the glorified God-Man, Jesus Christ” (Mt 28:18). The papacy's earthly leadership is inconsistent with the authority of Christ both in Heaven and on earth.” Even so, Rome's shrill demand for submission was to become an invariable feature governing its relations with Byzantium.