Here lies all the difficulties people have with the Rome issue.
the Fathers rightly granted privileges to the throne of old Rome because it was the royal city.
Asteriktos got a reply
because he made a post.
Fabio can come in and out of Brazil
because he is Brazilian and (so far) has no criminal record.
Getting a reply is not an attribute of Asteriktos, but a consequence of his making a post about a certain subject. Coming in and out of Brazil is not an intrinsic privilege I have, but a consequence of my natural birth and legal standing.
"because it was the royal city" shows that in the view of the Fathers it is the *imperial order* that is the cause of whatever privileges, in this case, a consequence of being the ex-capital and original city of the empire. He/she that concedes the privilege is the one that truly holds the power (a concept the popes understood very well in relation to the western kings later). So, what the quote proves is that even the Fathers knew that Rome had no ontological privileges, but only those granted by the Empire, thus, being natural that these privileges could be given by their true holder, again, the Empire, to another city, which eventually happened.
Rome makes an ontological claim about its ecclesiastic privileges. What all the explicit and implicit *becauses* in all the Fathers show is that there is no such ontological privilege. And this is only one of these "becauses". Other fathers will explicitly or implicitly present others: "because it was a city with many martyrs", "because both St. Paul and St. Peter lived and were martyred there", "because it has kept orthodoxy among many storms of heresies". The Orthodox rationale is "If you are historically important, both from secular and ecclesiastical point of view, if you have a track record of defending the orthodox faith against heresies and you are currently orthodox as well and if you are the first in the agreed diptychs, then you are the primate see". Rome, though, performed the great inversion: "I have been granted supernatural authority, therefore, it is I my faith that is the orthodox faith, therefore everytime I fight those who disagree with me I am fighting heresies, what makes all my history relevant secularly and ecclesiastically." Or in short, the orthodox stand is "You are king because you have succesfully defended the orthodox faith." The Roman stand is: "I am king because said so, and that makes what I say the orthodox faith."
There never was "privilege of Rome". That's the whole point. What the Church has always kept was the "privileges" of the Primate See, which was Jerusalem first, then Antioch, then Rome, then Antioch.
Please see...
"For the Fathers rightly granted privileges to the throne of old Rome, because it was the royal city. And the One Hundred and Fifty most religious Bishops, actuated by the same consideration, gave equal privileges to the most holy throne of New Rome, justly judging that the city which is honoured with the Sovereignty and the Senate, and enjoys equal privileges with the old imperial Rome, should in ecclesiastical matters also be magnified as she is, and rank next after her" - 4th Ecumenical Council, Canon 28