Grigory Pronsky is Cao Jian's uncle. As a great nobleman of Ryazan, he was also one of the main figures involved in the Cao family's military recruitment plan that Guo Kang had learned from Joanna.
On the way, Guo Kang was going to briefly tell Theodora about this person's situation, but she said that she had known about it for a long time, which made Guo Kang quite embarrassed.
Finally, Guo Kang was taught a lesson by Theodora again.
"I've already said that you should pay more attention to business." She warned in a whisper: "You are now exposed to more and more things, and your level is getting higher and higher. Whether it's your uncle, aunt, or me, there will always be someone. I can't protect you. If you continue like this, sooner or later you will be tricked by these bad women with ulterior motives."
Apart from her inexplicable hostility, this actually makes sense. Guo Kang had no choice but to nod his head and agree.
"How did you find this Pronsky? Why did you come to the door at this time?" He thought for a while, but first asked Wu Han next to him to understand the general situation.
"Today Master Wang is going to receive the priests from over there. He probably got the news in advance and came with several priests from his territory." Wu Han replied: "Now Master Wang and several church The senior management is entertaining them and chatting briefly with everyone. We have a lot of work to do in the future, so let’s get to know each other now.”
"Is that what I said before about reorganizing the diocese?" Guo Kang asked.
"Yes." Wu Han nodded: "We plan to recruit qualified civilian priests, and the diocese will also adjust its planning. The situation there is too chaotic now, and we can't control it."
Guo Kang has heard about this for a long time, and he himself has made suggestions on this, so he doesn't feel strange. Theodora obviously knew about this, so she also nodded.
"Then what is Pronsky here for?" Guo Kang continued to ask: "Does he want to install his own people, or does he want to lobby us to change the plan?"
"I think he just wants to get close, and then convince us to support him so that he can get involved in the conscription." Wu Han expressed his thoughts.
Guo Kang nodded, thinking that this should be it.
Parish assignment is a very important matter. Because the division of parishes is actually the division of administrative districts. This is true for both the Eastern and Western churches.
There are generally three levels of local institutions in the church, with the lowest being called the pastorate or parish. As the name suggests, it is probably the area that a church is responsible for. A pastoral district may have more than one priest, the leader of whom is in charge of the church and is called the parish priest.
Several neighboring pastorates form a diocese. The word comes directly from the Roman dioceses, whose heads were called bishops.
Above the diocese, it is called a province. This word is "province" in Greek, and its meaning and positioning are also very clear. The head of an ecclesiastical province is called an archbishop or archbishop in the Catholic Church; in the Orthodox Church, he is generally called a metropolitan. This is the highest level local organization.
However, the current situation is that this system is maintained relatively well in Western churches.
As Roman rule in the western Mediterranean gradually collapsed, so did local administrative structures. However, the church system headed by the Bishop of Rome survived and continued to develop and improve.
Up to now, the Catholic Church has a very advanced local management structure - it not only always adheres to the centralized organizational method, but also has a "parallel county and state" structure and a subordinate "Tusi Church". For example, some church organizations that are too far away and have their own unique customs can achieve mutual recognition by recognizing the authority of the Bishop of Rome, granting them certain titles, and giving them courtesy.
The system of the church, known as the "Holy Tradition", began to take shape in the fifth century and gradually developed and matured thereafter. In a place full of strong tribal customs, this system is so advanced that it doesn't even look like it was from the same era. In fact, most of the time, it was the tribal customs and enfeoffment systems in various places that held the church back.
Moreover, without the support of strength, this system sometimes gets in the way. Authoritative kings often did not take the church seriously, and these actions not only affected the local structure of the church, but also affected the central church.
Not to mention the various acts of division and opposition in history, even though there are many examples in later generations. At the time when Guo Kang lived, the Catholic Church had been unable to do anything about the Seris area, so it insisted on the power of appointing bishops and would not let go, resulting in the two sides being unable to recognize each other.
In fact, the right to appoint bishops is not a big deal in the first place. In Europe, even those who have never confronted the Pope are embarrassed to say that they are a big country. No country with some power has ever competed for this power. Even in Poland, where the royal power was declining and the church was powerful, it was nothing for the king and nobles to appoint a few bishops on their own. As for the more recent ones, they have even appointed the pope on their own. After so many years, the church has long become numb.
The biggest problem may be that in order to demonstrate its achievements, the church previously established a large number of provinces and dioceses in Serris. This resulted in dozens of archbishops and hundreds of bishops rushing into the Vatican whenever there was contact between the two sides.
From the church's perspective, these people are obviously under the control of the Seris government - whether this is true is another matter, but it is not surprising that the church thinks so, after all, this is really the case in Europe.
And if so many people come in at once, it will directly destroy the political balance within the church, which is why no one dares to make concessions. This is also an unavoidable problem for an organization like theirs that places great emphasis on centralization.
As for the Eastern Orthodox Church, it is a different situation. Since the church had been under the administration of the emperor for a long time, priests and scholars in the west even directly called it the "emperor-patriarch system" and believed that the church was actually a department under the empire.
The Eastern Roman Empire has always expressed opposition to this. The reasons they gave included that the emperor himself was not a priest, and that the patriarch had the right to excommunicate the emperor. But in reality, this rarely happened, and the Patriarch's power only came into play when other political forces overcame an emperor.
Unable to explain this, Roman theologians used the word "harmony" instead to describe the phenomenon of mutual support between religion and political power.
In Guo Kang's view, the Eastern Roman system was actually more complete and should continue to develop in the future to fully incorporate the church. But the biggest problem is that the strength of the Eastern Roman Empire itself is no longer good.
Those new countries that emerged in the old territory of the Eastern Roman Empire and within the cultural influence range replayed the situation around Seris: to confront Rome politically, then culturally and religiously, they had to fight with the Orthodox Church, or to be precise, with the monarchs. Confrontation against the Patriarch of Tantinople. Therefore, in order to maintain their independence, as long as each country has the strength to maintain its independence, they will immediately find ways to build their own churches and get rid of the influence of the Patriarch of Castel.
The difference between them is not big. In Western Europe, they may not be considered church organizations with different rituals, not even that kind of "religious chieftain". However, if you don't do this, you will never be able to get rid of the state of dependence and will be absorbed back sooner or later. Therefore, even if it is created, some differences must be made.
In short, everyone has his own troubles. And this is also the root of many problems in the church currently.
The regional divisions of the Catholic Church are not necessarily consistent with the administrative divisions of various countries. Churches often lag behind. Outer Mongolia has been divided for decades, but the church still calls it Cullen.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the parish was restored. The first bishop was not a local, but a Filipino priest appointed by the church, named Bishop Huang Xudong.
(End of chapter)
