When the Carolingian dynasty took upon itself the power to appoint the bishops of the Roman Church, their particular function was much the same as the Greek bishops under the Turks, to police and control the Roman population, which was gradually reduced to the state of subjects and serfs.  The Teutonic nobility was gratified to discover there was great profit to be made by selling bishoprics to the highest bidder.  It was then that the Roman bishops within Francia lost their personal contact with, and their experience of, the core of Christianity, a core that had survived among the people, clergy and monks of Francia.  In addition, the Frankish rulers and bishops were ignorant of the Church Fathers of the Roman Ecumenical Councils; their sole teacher and exemplar was Augustine, bishop of Hippo, who was not one of those Fathers, and who wrote only in Latin. Romanides emphasizes that there are not two sets of Orthodox Church Fathers - Latin and Greek - but only Latin-and Greek-speaking  Roman Fathers of the Church.

In addition, knowledge of the core of the Christian faith was lost due to loss of contact with the living tradition and experience.  This loss also explains the Frankish doctrinal initiatives of the 8th and 9th centuries, all of which were done without any consultations with the Roman Orthodox and their bishops. 

What does Romanides view as this vital core of Christianity?  It is the personal experience of illumination and glorification.  This experience is mediated through the Church, which functions as a hospital for sick souls, because humankind is in a fallen, sick state.  The fallen state is a self-centred, self-indulgent one,  expressing only selfish love and pursuing its great goal - individual happiness and gratification.  The restored, healed state is Christ-centred, having as its goal to express unselfish love, to become Christlike, and to live in union with God.

The Church is a hospital for sick souls and aims at their cure, here, in this lifetime.  Its clergy and bishops function just as our doctors in a hospital do.  Like doctors, their aim is to cure, and they start with the purifying the human soul   Christian doctors, however, receive their own cure and perfection from the true and only Physician of Souls, the Lord Jesus Christ.  The Apostles, and the Apostolic and Church Fathers, having themselves experienced this cure of illumination and glorification in Christ, proceeded to find it also in the history and experiences of the Old Testament patriarchs and prophets, and they then passed it on to their successors in the church.  Romanides explains it as follows:

 The normal human being is he who has been led into all the Truth by the Spirit of Truth, i.e., into a vision of Christ in his father's glory (Jn.17).  It is because the apostles and prophets are glorified in Christ that the people believe God has sent His Son, and that they too can be cured by selfless love. Humans who do not see the uncreated glory of God are not normal...