Xristoforos McAvoy
19-12-2006, 10:34 AM
Why does the Western Roman Catholic Church recognize only 50 Canons of the Apostles whereas the Eastern Orthodox Church recognizes all 85 Canons of the Apostles?
I read on the newadvent.org RC encylopedia:
Nevertheless, from their first appearance in the West they aroused suspicion. Canon 46 for example, that rejected all heretical baptism, was notoriously opposed to Roman and Western practice. In the so-called Decretum of Pope Gelasius (492-96) they are denounced as an apocryphal book, i. e. not recognized by the Catholic Church (Thiel, epistolæ Rom. pontificum genuinæ, 1867, I, 53-58, 454-71; Von Funk, op. cit., II, 40), though this note of censure was probably not in the original Decretum, but with others was added under Pope Hormisdas (514-23). Consequently in a second edition (lost, except preface) of his Collectio canonum, prepared under the latter pope, Dionysius Exiguus omitted them; even in the first edition he admitted that very many in the West were loath to acknowledge them (quamplurimi quidem assensum non prœbuere facilem). Hincmar of Reims (died 882) declared that they were not written by the Apostles, and as late as the middle of the eleventh century, Western theologians (Cardinal Humbert, 1054) distinguished between the eighty-five Greek canons that they declared apocryphal, and the fifty Latin canons recognized as orthodox rules by antiquity.
This certainly does not make my Church look very "Orthodox" ;)
I read on the newadvent.org RC encylopedia:
Nevertheless, from their first appearance in the West they aroused suspicion. Canon 46 for example, that rejected all heretical baptism, was notoriously opposed to Roman and Western practice. In the so-called Decretum of Pope Gelasius (492-96) they are denounced as an apocryphal book, i. e. not recognized by the Catholic Church (Thiel, epistolæ Rom. pontificum genuinæ, 1867, I, 53-58, 454-71; Von Funk, op. cit., II, 40), though this note of censure was probably not in the original Decretum, but with others was added under Pope Hormisdas (514-23). Consequently in a second edition (lost, except preface) of his Collectio canonum, prepared under the latter pope, Dionysius Exiguus omitted them; even in the first edition he admitted that very many in the West were loath to acknowledge them (quamplurimi quidem assensum non prœbuere facilem). Hincmar of Reims (died 882) declared that they were not written by the Apostles, and as late as the middle of the eleventh century, Western theologians (Cardinal Humbert, 1054) distinguished between the eighty-five Greek canons that they declared apocryphal, and the fifty Latin canons recognized as orthodox rules by antiquity.
This certainly does not make my Church look very "Orthodox" ;)