From its inception Christianity has employed familial language to help believers frame their relationships, first to God, who was their common ‘Father’, and to one another. In the early church this was also true of bishops, and especially to the Patriarchs of Rome and Constantinople, where one is struck by the frequent use of fraternal language in order to establish their respective positions within the church. However, by the medieval period a shift took place whereby Rome began to reference itself not as the ‘brother’ or ‘sister’ of other churches but as ‘mother’ and ‘father’. Calls to reunion were thus increasingly framed in terms of filial obedience, with the return of the prodigal son becoming the West’s chief paradigm for understanding reunion. This continued for centuries, until the mid‐twentieth century, when Rome once again began to employ fraternal language in its dealings with the Orthodox.

中文翻译：

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父亲，母亲，兄弟，姐妹：至高无上和家庭语言

从成立之初起，基督教就一直使用家族语言来帮助信徒们建立关系，首先是与他们共同的“父亲”-上帝，以及彼此之间建立关系。在早期的教会中，主教也是如此，尤其是罗马和君士坦丁堡的宗主教，在那儿，他们经常被使用兄弟语言来确立他们在教会中的地位而感到震惊。但是，到中世纪时期发生了变化，罗马开始不再称自己为其他教堂的“兄弟”或“姐妹”，而是称自己为“母亲”和“父亲”。因此，越来越多的人以孝顺的眼光来组织团圆的呼吁，浪子的归来成为西方理解团圆的主要范式。这种情况持续了几个世纪，直到二十世纪中叶，