Reforming the patriarchate

This entry, The patriarchate, at open book led me to the following:

Ratzinger advocated breaking up the Latin Patriarchate at OrthodoxyToday.org.

In an essay written by the then Cardinal Ratzinger, the following argument is quoted at the OrthodoxyToday.org blog entry:

The image of a centralized state which the Catholic church presented right up to the council does not flow only from the Petrine office, but from its strict amalgamation with the patriarchal function which grew ever stronger in the course of history and which fell to the bishop of Rome for the whole of Latin Christendom. The uniform canon law, the uniform liturgy, the uniform appointment of bishops by the Roman center: all these are things which are not necessarily part of the primacy but result from the close union of the two offices. For that reason, the task to consider for the future will be to distinguish again and more clearly between the proper function of the successor of Peter and the patriarchal office and, where necessary, to create new patriarchates and to detach them from the Latin church. To embrace unity with the pope would then no longer mean being incorporated into a uniform administration, but only being inserted into a unity of faith and communio, in which the pope is acknowledged to have the power to give binding interpretations of the revelation given in Christ whose authority is accepted whenever it is given in definitive form.

That is definitely an interesting spin on the age-old question on the primacy of the Pope. In certain places evangelized by the Latin West, the West Indies and the East Indies for example, there are 'patriarchs', though they are not of the same grade as the ancient patriarchs of the Near East. If there was to be a large reorganization in the manner that Cardinal Ratzinger suggested, it would be quite a change indeed.

The big question would be the retention of the Pope's overall authority on doctrine. Let's face it, if that gets scrapped or subdued in a way that makes papal infallibility and interpretation of the Magisterium meaningless, then the Catholic Church would quite probably end up going the way of the Anglican Communion unless there was going to be an ecumenical council held every other year? (In Eastern Orthodoxy, the only way to do anything to decide questions of doctrine is through the vehicle of the ecumenical council.)