The Lord Jesus Christ intended his kingdom present on earth, the Church of God, to be one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. Prior to the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, history tells of the most egregious division in the Church between the Latin West and Byzantine East in AD 1054 and following. How can it be that Catholics and Orthodox share a thousand years of ecclesial life together in one faith, sacramental order, and hierarchical government, only to have that bond of communion broken? Historians and theologians throughout the years have spilled much ink in recounting the causes and effects of this dreadful and heart-wrenching division, and among the many debates that exist between Catholics and Orthodox, none are as vital to the task of reconciliation as the subject of the papacy. In The Papacy: Revisiting the Debate between Catholics and Orthodox, Erick Ybarra examines sources from the first millennium with a fresh look at how methodology and hermeneutics plays a role in the reading of the same texts. In addition, he conducts a detailed investigation into the most significant points of history in order to show what was clearly accepted by both East and West in their years of ecclesiastical unity. In light of this clear evidence, the reader of The Papacy is free to decide whether contemporary Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy has maintained the heritage of the first millennium on the understanding of the Papal office.

The Papacy and the Orthodox examines the centuries-long debate over the primacy and authority of the Bishop of Rome, especially in relation to the Christian East, and offers a comprehensive history of the debate and its underlying theological issues. Siecienski masterfully brings together all of the biblical, patristic, and historical material necessary to understand this longstanding debate. This book is an invaluable resource as both Catholics and Orthodox continue to reexamine the sources and history of the debate.

At the sixtieth anniversary of Sacrosanctum Concilium, the situation on the ground for Catholics is more chaotic than ever. A liturgical reform, meant to usher in a new age of full churches and ecumenical rapprochement, delivered neither; instead, churches are emptying and closing at an unprecedented rate. Meanwhile, an ancient old rite, grown to maturity in the Middle Ages, encrusted with Baroque pearls, and officially pronounced dead in the 1960s, has made an astonishing return around the world. Tolerated by Paul VI, permitted worldwide by John Paul II, declared free for everyone by Benedict XVI, and most recently put under ban once more by Francis, the Tridentine Mass remains a powerful and polarizing reality in the Church of Rome—an ark of holiness and beauty to the priests and faithful who love it, a belligerent “backwardism” to those who seek its abolition. In this state of spiritual civil war, questions of authority and obedience are never far from anyone’s mind. Bound by Truth grapples with the momentous issues of authority, obedience, tradition, and the common good. Part I, “Papacy, Patrimony, and Piety,” addresses the teaching of Vatican I on the pope’s universal jurisdiction; the limits of his authority in light of other authoritative principles such as liturgical tradition and local custom; the properly Catholic way to interpret and follow the Magisterium; and the virtue of intelligent, God-fearing, and communally perfective obedience versus its vicious distortions—willful rebelliousness on the one hand, and a blind, thoughtless, self-destructive submissiveness on the other. Part II, “Faithful Resistance,” looks at historical examples of prelates who legitimately pushed back against papal overreach; discusses how clergy should navigate unjust episcopal decrees on private Masses, concelebration, the use of the Rituale Romanum, etc.; shares advice and strategies for laity who seek to promote and defend tradition in their dioceses; and draws inspiration from persecuted religious sisters, whether their tormentors were Soviet Communists or apparatchiks of the postconciliar ecclesiastical bureaucracy. “Peter Kwasniewski is a sane and learned voice crying out from within a Catholic Church which—in its earthly, visible aspect—seems to have lost its mind.”—SEBASTIAN MORELLO “Examines the difficult topics of authority and obedience with forthrightness and a willingness to engage even the most controversial debates… a timely guide to how Catholics might respond when truth and tradition are under attack by those who should be their foremost defenders.”—ERIC SAMMONS “As with his earlier books, so here, Kwasniewski emerges as an apostle of tradition and a paladin of the ancient Roman rite. A book to be treasured.”—MICHAEL SIRILLA “Both summarizes the author’s recent thought and serves as a guide and resource for beleaguered faithful… theoretically challenging and eminently useful.”—STUART CHESSMAN “Critiques the latest (and historically worst) abandonment of our grip on the cord that ties us, through tradition, to the Word Incarnate—and indicates the paths along which health and sanity will be recovered.”—JOHN C. RAO “Offered with his usual mixture of scholarship and wit, Kwasniewski’s analysis is primarily and accurately applied to the situation in the Church, but the principles he explores in this book also admit of far wider application.”—CHARLES A. COULOMBE “This thoroughly researched and cogently argued book could not have been published at a better time.”—BRIAN M. MCCALL

The primacy of the bishop of Rome, the pope, as it was finally shaped in the Middle Ages and later defined by Vatican I and II has been one of the thorniest issues in the history of the Western and Eastern Churches. This issue was a primary cause of the division between the two Churches and the events that followed the schism of 1054: the sack of Constantinople by the crusaders in 1204, the appointment by Pope Innocent III of a Latin patriarch of Constantinople, and the establishment of Uniatism as a method and model of union. Always a topic in ecumenical dialogue, the issue of primacy has appeared to be an insurmountable obstacle to the realization of full unity between Roman Catholicism and the Orthodox Christianity. In this timely and comprehensive work, Maximos Vgenopoulos analyzes the response of major Orthodox thinkers to the Catholic understanding of the primary of the pope over the last two centuries, showing the strengths and weaknesses of these positions. Covering a broad range of primary and secondary sources and thinkers, Vgenopoulos approaches the issue of primacy with an open and ecumenical manner that looks forward to a way of resolving this most divisive issue between the two Churches. For the first time here the thought of Greek and Russian Orthodox theologians regarding primacy is brought together systematically and compared to demonstrate the emergence of a coherent view of primacy in accordance with the canonical principles of the Orthodox Church. In looking at crucial Greek-language sources Vgenopoulos makes a unique contribution by providing an account of the debate on primacy within the Greek Orthodox Church. Primacy in the Church from Vatican I to Vatican II is an invaluable resource on the official dialogue taking place between the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church today. This important book will be of broad interest to historians, theologians, seminarians, and all those interested in Orthodox-Catholic relations.

The Russian Church and the Papacy, edited by Father Ray Ryland, is an abridgement of Vladimir Soloviev's classic work, Russia and the Universal Church. This is a powerful defense of the papacy from Soloviev, a Russian Orthodox theologian who was committed to the cause of Christian unity and spent years attempting to convince his Orthodox brethren to reunite with Rome. Soloviev uses Scripture, history, and hardheaded logic to prove that the papacy is essential to Christian unity and truth, and without it the early Christian Church would have disintegrated into hundreds of competing sects.

Two different paths. In the West, for about a thousand years, the Roman Catholic church has claimed papal supremacy over the entire Christian world. In the East, since the first centuries, the Eastern Orthodox Church has remained faithful to the Church's original conciliar vision: local churches meeting together in council. How did these two paths develop? What were the cultural, historical, and theological issues that led to their development? What are the Roman Catholic claims about the Orthodox and vice versa? In Two Paths, Michael Whelton dives deeply into Roman Catholic sources to document the development of papal supremacy: 1) Saint Peter and the papacy 2) The ecumenical councils and the papacy 3) The Filioque 4) The Gregorian Revolution and its effects on Roman Catholicism 5) The influence of falsified documents such as the "Donation of Constantine" on the rise of the papacy- Papal infallibility 6) The Council of Constance, and the First Vatican Council 7) The Second Vatican Council. Whelton also uses ancient Christian sources to document the development of the Orthodox conciliar vision of the Church, from the first Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15) through the Seventh Ecumenical Council. For layman and scholar alike, Whelton's work is the best and fullest work dealing with this topic from an Orthodox perspective in the English language.

It has been my strong desire for some time now to revise my book in order to emphasize ecumenism and unity proportionately a lot more than in the first (2004) edition. I'm much more interested in finding common ground. I've also learned a thing or two about Orthodoxy over the past decade. I wanted this volume to be able to read by Orthodox and also Eastern Catholics, without having seizures or going into apoplectic fits (caused by my ignorance or overly polemical or biased writing). I exaggerate, of course, but perhaps not by much! Toward that end I have enlisted a very qualified Eastern Catholic friend to contribute significant portions to the revised edition: Fr. Deacon Daniel G. Dozier. The revision remains an apologetic for Catholicism and respectful critique of Orthodoxy, but now it also includes friendly ecumenical discussion and dialogue: feedback and input from the Eastern theological perspective. The overall tone, tenor, and goal is considerably different. Unity is stressed as much as apologetics.