How the Orthodox Church is different than Top Heavy Roman Catholicism w/ Fr. Joseph Lucas

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]I know you're probably a fan of G.K.

[00:00:01]Chesterton, right? Yeah, yeah.

[00:00:03]>> So, so here's So, I like to compare Orthodoxy ecclesiology analogically to his distributism for economics, right?

[00:00:11]>> one way that I thought of his model is whatever you can do locally, you do. And whatever the local community cannot do economically, well, then you have to start relying, you know, regionally. And then whatever the region can't do, you appeal to a larger and larger area so that when something is being done nationally or internationally, it's only like the bare minimum to make the local community be able to thrive. When you have a bunch of different pillars, you know, holding up the the economy because there's lots of ownership and lots of it so so wealth and and ownership and labor is spread across and everyone has a piece of it, then power gets spread out, right? And if a couple pillars fall, the whole thing stays. You know what I'm saying? And it's the kind of thing in the church, right? If a couple bishops go off the rails, it doesn't mean the Orthodox Church falls. It means, "Okay, well, those guys, hopefully eventually we'll resolve that and bring these guys back, hopefully."

[00:01:04]It prevents the the whole edifice from collapsing. Yeah. And that's and that's the subsidiarity model, which, interestingly, in like encyclicals like like Rerum Novarum and things like that, it seems to be that's okay for governance in the secular world, but that's not the model used within the Vatican, right? So, the Vatican says, "Oh, that's how the real world out there should work that way, but that's not how we operate internally. We operate the opposite way, where the whole of power is consecrated at the top, and then the top distributes it down the way it wants to, right? So, it's all in the in the the papacy." And so, it's the opposite model of that of this idea of kind of starting on the ground and the things that are done best at the upper level, you know, like if that's that's an opposite model from where um where the current ecclesiology of Rome is, I think, right now. Like you said, that top-down approach. Some people want one guy who's like the buck stops here in charge, Right? And he they want that person to have an absolute sort of authority to say, "Okay, you're wrong and you're right and here's what and this is what you have to do, okay?" Um and that lets that makes it possible for them to sleep at night, at least in theory.

[00:02:13]Until the guy who's at the top starts doing stuff they disagree with and then for them it's a nightmare, right?

[00:02:19]Whereas in the Orthodox Church, it can be messy because human relationships are messy. And this fractal pattern um when it works well, it works beautifully, right? But when, you know, but when there are tensions at various levels of this pattern, it because humans take take a while to repent and and and and turn back to God and and resolve these kind of issues and pride and all these things enter in, uh it just takes a while. It takes a while, but what it does prevent is it prevents the entire church from falling off the cliff because one person might be a bad leader, right? Which is what you see in Gregory the the Pope in the 6th century warns against. He says if you throw your chips all into one person, when that one person falls, the whole thing falls. Exactly.

[00:03:04]>> That's his point.

[00:03:04]>> I'd like to I know I think one of the things that I've noticed where there's a little bit of tension is that many Roman Catholics start with a top-down model.

[00:03:13]Right.

[00:03:13]>> Whereas Orthodox, as you mentioned, has a fractal model where we're we're really seeing the fullness of the church in the in the local church of the presbyters and the people gathered around the bishop Mhm. in the worshipping communities.

[00:03:25]>> That's a good observation, yeah. And it compounds, you know, all the way up and so we're not throwing all of our chips.

[00:03:31]It's almost like there's less and less importance the higher you go up, even though it's still important. Well, think about it. That's that's Like many things in Orthodoxy, it's just a very organic uh realistic model, right?

[00:03:46]Ask any Orthodox Christian, "What is your experience with the faith?" It's their local community. It's not even the diocese necessarily, it's going to be their local parish, right? And the their priest represents the first among equals of that community, right? He's the one that they're going to He's the one who's overseeing and guiding that. He's the one who presides presides over that local Eucharistic gathering in that little church, right? That church building.

[00:04:11]So, so it's only natural that our first understanding and interaction would be seeing it every single week in our local community that we go to and worship with and we see it in action, right? And then maybe maybe if you get more involved in church life, then you start getting involved in dioceses and things, right?

[00:04:29]You start going to like your diocese might have like maybe annual or maybe even a few times a year a gathering at the at the cathedral and the bishop's there in your hierarchical liturgy and a lot of people come from different places and you get to see the the fullness of the church in a in a full hierarchical liturgy, the bishop acting as the presider and all his presbyters standing around him and sitting down in the chairs around him in the apse and so forth, right? So So So maybe you get to see that.

[00:04:57]Very few people go beyond that even, right? Where they go to like uh national assemblies where the whole synod is there. But let's say you do. Let's say for example in my jurisdiction North America uh you know, we we would have our our North American, you know, assembly and when you go to those, we would each parish is allowed to elect a a representative to go with their priest to kind of be there and then they'll see the ones who get chosen for that might be one person in your parish that gets that opportunity. He goes there and he sees uh the metropolitan of North America for this local church surrounded by his presbyters. I mean so sorry surrounded by his bishops, right? Surrounded by his bishops. That next layer up, you might get to see that. Uh so another jurisdiction the Antiochian is going to be, you know, the uh the metropolitan like metropolitan Sava surrounded by all of his auxiliary bishops, right? It's going to be this model um that's one one step further up.

[00:05:57]And that's probably that's that's rare, right? One person in my community annually might be able to see that.

[00:06:03]So, it's natural that our understanding of the church um is going to be rooted in that fractal pattern at the bottom level, and we're kind of looking up. And and very rarely do people get up there like uh when people start telling me, uh especially inquirers, new catechumens, like, "Oh, it's so sad what these bishops are doing over in Eastern Europe about this or that thing."

[00:06:22]I'm like, "What does that have to do with you?"

[00:06:25]You're over here in an American parish with American bishops. You'll be lucky if you ever meet our bishop, right? If he gets to come here next year or the year after, you might get a chance to meet him before he has to take off to the next parish. And that's probably about as as as high as you might ever get a chance to go in terms of understanding and seeing in in real life the the the the interactions and operation of the church's ecclesiology, right? What what a couple bishops are doing over there in some part of the Balkans or something, really doesn't affect us, right? And and even things like schism and so forth, like, yes, Orthodoxy um has had and continues to have like local regional churches end up in schism from each other for periods of time. They don't last really, right? Uh we haven't had one that's lasted for uh since maybe the Old Believer schism, which is still you know, in Russia is still being slowly healed. That's probably the longest Well, the longest the longest-running one will probably be the Oriental Orthodox. I would say maybe it's still kind of going on. But uh but eventually these things tend to heal themselves through interactions and so forth. But again, if you're unless you're living in that place, it's really abstract, right? Unless you unless you were for example on the on in in a village where half like in Russia where half of are old believers and the other half are in communion with with the Russian church under Moscow, it's a very abstract thing. You can say whatever you want about them or or unless you're in a village in Greece where you have old calendar uh schismatics who break away and form a parallel community and that's affecting your village, it really is it really is it's it's something that people fret about these things, but the canons of the church have mechanisms for these things to eventually be resolved, right?

[00:08:11]It's only when when actual heresy enters in that it it it's a lot more complicated. When it's when it's ecclesiological, you know, over this or that prerogative or how they're interacting with things, those things tend to always come together again in the end.

[00:08:24]Yeah, and I've noticed those on the outside of this kind of issue will sometimes almost kind of make the problem sound a lot worse, even though it's a serious problem and it definitely needs love and it needs to be healed because you don't want it to get out of control.

[00:08:37]It can also be um over hyped in the sense of oh, there's like this massive schism and excommunications and and people are choosing their sides and it will never be resolved. You kind of hear sometimes this doomsday doomsday language uh and therefore people are like, well, maybe I shouldn't become Orthodox or or maybe we have no way of resolving this today. What would you say in response to that kind of doomsday language? First of all, historically, it's just not really the case unless accusations of of doctrinal aberration, right? Of some kind of dogmatic issue enters in. Those are the only ones that seem to persist. Uh the earlier ones, the Oriental and and Chalcedonian Orthodox, so Chalcedonian versus Oriental, these are these are big issues about what do we believe about doctrine, right? And that's until we resolve that, we can't resolve the ecclesiological.

[00:09:26]So, that's a whole different issue. Same thing the same kind of issue we have with Rome. There's doctrinal things, not just ecclesiological things. the Wise phone 2, which I currently use as my phone. It's an amazing phone that helps you not doom scroll or be addicted to social media and other vices because it doesn't have a web browser, but it does function like a phone. You can call, you can text, you can take pictures, you can do videos, and it even has apps like Uber and Lyft. You can order food, maps to get around town, all the things that you kind of need in this modern life, but at the same time being able to have a boundary between you and work or [music] you and distractions. So, you can be more present with your family, with your kids, with your spouse, whomever. This has been a very freeing experience for me to have the Light [music] Phone 2. Again, you can get $40 off through my discount code king today.

[00:10:09]What you start to see emerging in the earliest church is uh well, kind of to borrow what Jonathan Paget oftentimes speaks about, a fractal pattern. You see, you know, these repeating patterns uh in faith in the world. Uh as you zoom out, the pattern keeps repeating itself on bigger and bigger scales. That's what you see with the ecclesiology in the early church. You see a localized pattern that can also be scaled up all the way to the church at large. So, from the local community all the way to the church at large is like a fractal pattern. And as you kind of zoom back, you see the same themes repeating themselves.

[00:10:44]So, Zizioulas kind of begins with this idea of the one who presides. Uh in Greek, the proistamenos, the one who presides or the president, right? Of an assembly. Um it seems to be implied in scripture when it talks about uh when it starts to separate the role of bishop away from like uh deacon or when it seems to talk about presbyters in general, and then it talks about a bishop, you know, that's already starting to develop or or starting to be understood in the apostolic time that you have somebody, it seems drawn from the presbyterium.

[00:11:17]Like there's this group of elders in the church that are responsible for that local community, say in Corinth or in Thessalonica or wherever whatever city we're talking about. There seems to be this this group of presbyters, elders, um that are responsible for the for the administration and sacramental life of that local community.

[00:11:36]But, it becomes clear that there's some someone who's sort of uh a head in some way above them, right?

[00:11:44]And Zizioulas kind of shows through early writings up to the 2nd century, St. Justin Martyr, and these other fathers uh that it seems that there's only one person who's cho- chosen to preside.

[00:11:55]If you if you take a look at at him, you look at uh St. Ignatius of Antioch, where this has the this person has the title of the bishop, and he's surrounded by his presbyters.

[00:12:04]So, you have this idea of the presbyterium, this council of of clergy, so to speak, that are set apart, which clergy, that's what it means, means kind of set apart with a specific role.

[00:12:14]Uh and then one of them is the one who presides, and he starts to have the title episcopos, which means the overseer, the one who's kind of above uh the rest of the elders or presbyters.

[00:12:24]So, already there we see a pattern, right? He's technically of the priesthood in general, he's one of the presbyters, but he's also the first amongst them uh who has special duty, special um you know, special uh roles within that local community. Uh primarily, the way the canons will develop is uh is that the primary thing that a bishop can do that no one else can do is create other clergy, right? The laying on of hands it uh has to be done by him. He is the head. So, he heads up the local Eucharistic assembly, that's kind of his first duty, but then the other duty he has that uh remains unique to him as the local community grows is this unique role of saying, "Okay, I can put other other presbyters in place."

[00:13:13]Because uh Zizioulas talks about this expansion that happens from the late 1st through the 3rd century, where the local church is growing in size.

[00:13:22]And so, it develops from just this local community that meets in the middle of the city somewhere to a diocese, right?

[00:13:28]It it it uh it develops into more of a a local regional space. Cathedral in the center where the bishop is based at.

[00:13:37]And then and then the presbyters role starts to be more delegated out into satellite communities.

[00:13:46]So, if you have the bishop that is central cathedral saying Corinth, there might be a bunch of little satellites just outside the city, maybe in the villages around you know, Corinth and maybe north, south, east, west of it slightly.

[00:14:02]And you start to see where the bishop now gives all of his authority to the presbyters in the sense that they can go and oversee and be president of that local Eucharistic assembly on his behalf. The only thing they can't do is ordain somebody, right? They can't themselves appoint other presbyters.

[00:14:20]They get sent forth. So, the diocese becomes the local church.

[00:14:24]So, Zizioulas' argument is from St. Ignatius up to the canons that you have in the Apostolic Constitutions and other early canons, it's obvious that the local community that St. Ignatius describes with the bishop surrounded by the presbyters, deacons, and the faithful rooted in the Eucharistic assembly becomes the same thing. It's it's synonymous with the diocese by the 3rd century.

[00:14:44]And that's an important development because what that means is when when Ignatius refers to the local church as he's the first one to use the term Catholic.

[00:14:52]And he uses Aristotle's basic idea of it cuz it's sort of an Aristotelian term of what what defines wholeness or completeness, right? According to what is whole. Kata holos, according what is whole.

[00:15:05]So, so for St. Ignatius, what is the whole community we call the Catholic community is that local community he's writing to.

[00:15:12]He says the bishop there presiding over the Eucharist with his presbyters, deacons, and the faithful, right? That is a Catholic church. A The church is that local entire and complete community where you And then that uh that is what becomes the diocese. So, the diocese is basically um is a Catholic Church. It has a cathedral in the middle. It has everything you need.

[00:15:33]So, this is a I think this is a very important development to see that that this crystallizes very early on.

[00:15:39]And um and it's it's based in this idea of of kind of um you know, a fractal pattern of leadership where the bishop is still one of the priesthood.

[00:15:49]He's still one of the priests. Um and you see this develop even architecturally where the the ear- the earliest cathedrals, the basilicas have this uh thing thing called the synthronon, which is this rounded set of chairs in the eastern apse of their church. At the center is the bishop's chair cuz he's the first amongst that presbyterium, and around him his presbyters would sit when they're all together at the cathedral serving with him. So, whenever there was a hierarchical liturgy, that that that symbolism of them going back there, the bishop is sitting in the center, being an icon of Christ, and the and then the presbyters, like St. Ignatius says, being uh like the apostles gathered around Christ, you know, is a sign of that unity and that pattern. So, that's the local the most local pattern, right? I think that's important to note as well because sometimes in in dialogues with with other other groups, such as as Roman Catholics, it's people will very quickly jump to associating the apostles always with the bishops.

[00:16:50]But when you read St. Ignatius of Antioch and others, sometimes they associate the apostolic college with the presbyters.

[00:16:57]Yeah.

[00:16:58]>> With with the bishop being the icon of Christ, sitting on the seat of Peter, that would be St. Cyprian, even being a high priest figure surrounded by the priests.

[00:17:07]Uh so, that there's a pattern going on there, as you said. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

[00:17:11]And Cle- And Cle- Clement does that.

[00:17:12]Clement sort of maps over uh his epistle, um you know, the the high priest, the priest and the Levite to bishop, presbyter, deacon, you know, so he's using those to describe the three those three Old Testament offices he's using to describe the church's offices. So that's that would map over nicely like high priest, priest and and and and Levite, you know, to the church's you know, the church's structure there.

[00:17:40]Hey guys, I just want to share a few books with you that have left a big impact on my life. One of them is Bearing God the Life and Works of St. Ignatius of Antioch the God-Bearer by Father Andrew Stephen. Many people have a paradigm shift when they begin reading the letters of St. Ignatius of Antioch.

[00:17:54]Well, this little book by Father Andrew is so helpful in navigating his letters and summarizing the key theme. So I think you'll enjoy this book. I've also had Father Joseph Lucas on the show. I think this is going to be a classic.

[00:18:07]Just came out last year How to Read the Holy Fathers a Guide for Orthodox Christians. It takes you through the different genres, different styles of writing by the church fathers because you're going to read poetry and hymns differently than you're going to read it against the heretics. So check out these books and more. Many of them are by Ancient Faith Publishing. All right guys, we'll see you next time.