I think the same just may apply here with regards to your repeated efforts, valiant and faithful to the Catholic Church though they are, to try to convince the Orthodox windmill that our Pope is not a CEO. He is not. But many here would dearly love him to be so and won't be convinced otherwise.
Possibly, but I'm not convinced that people on this forum think of the pope as a CEO to begin with (in which case the effort to convince them otherwise is definitely in vain
).
Thank you Peter. From my perspective, the futility/recurrance of this debate comes largely from the fact that the two sides are actually having separate discussions. The RCs want to discuss 'how' the Pope exercises his authority (i.e., 'not like a CEO', 'in/after consultation with his bishops', etc). Orthodox are not concerned about 'how' he exercises his authority but in 'what' authority he has, and after that 'why' he exercises what he has in any particular way.
In other words, it's a Roman concern whether the Pope exercises his power 'like a CEO', 'like a king', 'like a good shepherd', 'like a dictator', 'as the vicar of Christ', etc--you assume the authority and so only find how it is or should be expressed to be interesting. For Orthodox, on the other hand, that question is entirely marginal to *does* he have the authority.
Thus the question on this thread--does the Pope have the authority to put out a formal bull stating 'first communion should always follow confirmation'? Or to put it another way, if the Pope did put out such a bull, would RC's consider it as authoritative (i.e., something they *had* to follow or be in rebellion against the Church)? If the answer is 'yes' (as I believe Papist has implied it is), then simply saying 'the Pope is not a CEO' doesn't answer the question of why he chooses not to use it.