 | Bishop: Encyclopedia II - Bishop - Bishops in Catholic Orthodox and Anglican churches
Bishop - Bishops in Catholic Orthodox and Anglican churches
Although many Protestant churches have rejected the place of bishops in church leadership, churches rooted in tradition continue to ordain bishops to lead the church. Bishops form the leadership in the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, the Anglican Communion, and the Independent Catholic Churches.
The traditional role of a bishop is as pastor of a diocese (also called a bishopric, eparchy or see). Dioceses vary considerably in their size of area and population. Some dioceses around the Mediterranean Sea which were Christianized early are rather compact; whereas dioceses in areas of rapid modern growth in Christian commitment, as in some parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, South America and the Far East, are much larger and more populous.
As well as traditional diocesan bishops, many churches have a well-developed structure of church leadership that involves a number of layers of authority and responsibility.
Archbishop
An archbishop is the bishop of an archdiocese. This is usually a prestigious diocese with an important place in local church history. The title is purely honorific and carries no extra jurisdiction, though most archbishops are also metropolitan bishops.
Metropolitan bishop
A metropolitan bishop is an archbishop in charge of an ecclesiastical province, or group of dioceses, and exercises some oversight over the other dioceses. Sometimes a metropolitan may also be the head of an autocephalous, sui juris, or autonomous church.
Suffragan bishop
A suffragan bishop is a bishop subordinate to another. In the Roman Catholic Church this term is applied to all non-metropolitan bishops (diocesan and auxiliary bishops). In the Anglican Communion, the term applies to a bishop who is a full-time assistant to a diocesan bishop: the Bishop of Warwick is suffragan to the Bishop of Coventry (the diocesan), though both live in Coventry. Some Anglican suffragans are given the responsibility for a geographical area within the diocese (for example, the Bishop of Stepney is an area bishop within the Diocese of London).
Titular bishop
A titular bishop is a bishop without a diocese. Rather, the bishop is head of a titular see, which is usually an ancient city that used to have a bishop, but, for some reason or other, does not have one now. Titular bishops often serve as coadjutors or auxiliary bishops. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, bishops of modern diocese are often given a titular see alongside their modern one (for example, the Archbishop of Thyateira and Great Britain).
Auxiliary bishop
An auxiliary bishop is a full-time assistant to a diocesan bishop (the Roman Catholic equivalent of an Anglican suffragan bishop). Auxiliaries are almost always titular bishops, and are often appointed as the vicar general of the diocese in which they serve.
Coadjutor bishop
A coadjutor bishop is a bishop who is given automatic right to succeed the incumbent diocesan bishop. The appointment of coadjutors is often seen as a means of providing for continuity of church leadership.
Honorary assistant bishop
This title is usually applied to retired bishops who are given a general license to minister as episcopal pastors under a diocesan's oversight.
Primate
A primate is the bishop of the oldest church of a nation. Sometimes this carries jurisdiction over metropolitan bishops, but usually it is another honorific. An exarch is like a primate in the Eastern churches. The title Presiding or President Bishop is often used for the head of a national Anglican church, but this title is not usually associated with a particular episcopal see like a primate. The primate of the Scottish Episcopal Church is chosen from among the diocesan bishops, and, while retaining diocesan responsibility, is called Primus.
Cardinal
A cardinal, although not until recently necessarily a bishop (e.g., Jesuit theologian Henri de Lubac), is usually a primate, patriarch or titular bishop within the Roman Catholic Church. Their primary duty is to elect the pope.
Major archbishop
Major archbishops are the heads of some of the Eastern Rite churches in the Roman Catholic Church. Their authority within their sui juris church is equal to that of a patriarch, but they receive fewer ceremonial honors.
Catholicos
Catholicoi are the heads of some of the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches, roughly similar to a Catholic major archbishop.
Patriarch
Patriarchs are the heads of certain ancient autocephalous or sui juris churches. Some of these churches call their leaders Catholicos; the patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Alexandria, Egypt, is called Pope. While most patriarchs in the Roman Catholic Church have jurisdiction, all Latin Rite patriarchs, except for the Pope, are honorary.
Bishops in all of these communions are ordained by other bishops. Depending on the church, there need to be two or three bishops for validity or legality.
Apart from the ordination, which is always done by other bishops, there are different methods in different churches as to the actual choosing of a candidate for ordination as bishop. In the Roman Catholic Church today, the Congregation for Bishops oversees the selection of new bishops with the approval of the Pope. Most Eastern Orthodox churches allow varying amounts of more or less formalized laity and/or lower clergy influence on the choice of bishops. More information on this topic is needed.
Only a bishop can ordain a bishop, priest, or deacon.
In the Eastern Orthodox Church and in the Eastern Rite liturgical tradition, a priest may celebrate the Divine Liturgy only with the blessing of a bishop. An antimension signed by the bishop is kept on the altar partly as a reminder of whose altar it is and under whose omophorion the priest at a local parish is serving.
The Pope of Rome, in addition to being the Bishop of Rome and head of the Roman Catholic Church, is the Patriarch of the Latin Catholic Church. Each bishop within the Latin Catholic Church is only answerable directly to the Pope and not any other bishop except to metropolitans in certain oversight instances.
In the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches and the Anglican Communion, the cathedral of a diocese will have a special chair set aside for the exclusive use of the bishop. This is the bishop's cathedra, which is often called the bishop's throne. In some other Christian denominations, other churches besides the cathedral will maintain a chair for the use of a Bishop when he visits their parish.
Catholic, Anglican, and Orthodox Christian bishops claim to be part of a continuous sequence of ordained bishops since the days of the apostles, the apostolic succession. Since Pope Leo XIII issued the bull Apostolicae Curae in 1896, the Roman Catholic Church has insisted that Anglican orders are invalid because of that church's changes in the ordination rites. The Roman Catholic Church does recognize as valid (though illegal) ordinations done by breakaway Roman Catholic bishops, and groups descended from them, so long as the people receiving the ordination conform to other canonical requirements; this gives rise to the phenomenon of episcopi vagantes. Roman Catholics also recognize the validity of ordinations of bishops, priests, and deacons in the Orthodox churches.
Some provinces of the Anglican Communion have begun ordaining women as bishops in recent decades. The first was Barbara Clementine Harris, who was ordained to the epsicopate in 1989.
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