What is the term for the authority, of a local church separated from Rome due to distance or other factors such as war, to govern itself and carry out the apostolic mission without the central guidance of Rome? This may include the right to appoint its own Archbishops, etc., or the right to create new dioceses.
I think this term was used in Walter Miller Jr.'s “A Canticle for Leibowitz” to describe the Roman Catholic Church that was established in outer space by humans fleeing from global nuclear war. I don’t have the book on me so I can’t look it up right now, and it is damn hard to google.
I’m pretty sure the word is not “autocephaly” but I may be wrong.
This question has been nagging me for a few days. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks.
I don’t believe they exist in Catholicism. In Eastern Orthodoxy, though, they’re called, as you mentioned, autocephalous churches. Catholicism does have seperate rites, and the head if each rite can set his own rules of discipline for those churches using that rite.
I think a local Catholic church can take on all of these responsibilities normally identified with the Holy See itself, if extreme circumstances such as war or long periods of isolation prevents regular communication between Rome and the local church. Of course this arrangement is temporary, and once communication is re-established Rome will assume control.
I can’t think of any historical examples and this techinicality might never have been invoked in real life because no church ever got into such a tight situation, but I’m pretty sure provisions for this scenario exist in canon law. I just need to locate that word for it…
The closest historical example might be the Maronites, who, finding themselves isolated from the rest of Christendom in the 7th century due to geography and Muslim invasion, appointed St. John Maron as their patriarch. After several more centuries of isolation and war with the Byzantines, during the Crusades they came back into communion with Rome and remain an Eastern-rite Catholic church to this day.
The Maronite situation might be a good approximation of this technicality. Althogh the Maronites accepted heresy sometime in the 6th or 7th century, and were heretics throughout their isolation, but reconciled with the Roman church. So there is controversy whether they were in communion with the church during the isolation.
I’m thinking of the situation where an established Catholic church like the archdiocese of Boston, which has always been in communion with Rome, somehow became separated from Rome by some sort of dark magic, but remained in communion during the isolation but not in communication. After a long period of time passes without word from Rome perhaps a synod of some sort elects the archbishop when the office becomes vacant. And perhaps the archdiocese sends a mission to Nunavut and establishes new dioceses and parishes among the Inuit. Later contact is reestablished but Rome and Boston remain in unbroken communion during the entire ordeal. I’m fairly certain there is a word for this.
I didnt know what the Impeded See is, but I looked it up and it is not what I mean.
I would also raise the issue of the Province of Utrecht, which Old Catholic apologists, apparently accurately, indicate as having been autocephalous for several centuries before the formal break with Rome in 1870. Perhaps a history-of-religion scholar with neither Roman nor Utrechtian axe to grind might clarify the facts of the matter here.
Actually, your Nunavut/Inuit example is very close to another historically accurate example: the Greenland Vikings were Catholic Christians for the majority of their existence, and separated from the rest of Scandinavia by worsening climate preventing any regular contact. (We’re talking a period of about 1200-1400 here, post Norse Conversion and pre-Reformation. There were about a dozen churches among the two settlement areas, with a bishop at Gardar (now Igaliko).
Interesting points. I don’t know too much about the Greenland settlement, but the Greenland Viking population sounds like the scenario I’m describing, where a church without any contact with Rome for decades or even centuries can still function. Although, the Nunavut example I brought up was to illustrate how an isolated church (in this case Boston) can build new dioceses and parishes without the input of Rome. A Nunavut mission, built outside the regular laws of apostolic succession, would be different from the Greenland mission which seems to have begun while still in direct contact with Rome and the rest of Roman Catholic communion.