Armenian Apostolic and Rome?

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thephilosopher6

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It seems to me, out of all the eastern Churches not in communion with Rome, that the Armenian Apostolic Church has the closest relationship with Rome and they’re by far the closest to coming back into full communion with the Catholic Church. I have even heard that Armenian’s allow Catholic’s to partake of their Eucharist. I don’t know if that’s true, but if it is than that is awesome! I really hope there is unity between us soon, I don’t understand why there just can’t be unity between our two Churches already.
 
I found an old thread from CAF that you might be interested in. I’ll provide a quote from it:
The Armenian Apostolic Church officially recognizes the “validity” of the Sacraments and Orders of the Catholic Church(es), but there is no formal agreement on the practical application of this mutual recognition. There is, however, informal sharing on the parish level.
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And the person who stated that said that Catholics could go to Armenian Apostolic churches and participate in the sacraments there, and that the practice is even common, but you’d need to speak to an Armenian priest beforehand.
 
You can’t have piecemeal unity with just the Armenian Church. You would have to have unity with the entire Oriental Orthodox Church. That’s no where near happening.
 
Dmitri77 said:
You can’t have piecemeal unity with just the Armenian Church. You would have to have unity with the entire Oriental Orthodox Church. That’s no where near happening.
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The Armenians could just break from the Oriental Orthodox Communion though.
 
thephilosopher6 said:
The Armenians could just break from the Oriental Orthodox Communion though.
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And Catholics wonder why there is so much anti-Catholic sentiment in some Orthodox countries. You can’t advocate tearing apart of a Church and then expect people to be okay with that.
 
Dmitri77 said:
And Catholics wonder why there is so much anti-Catholic sentiment in some Orthodox countries. You can’t advocate tearing apart of a Church and then expect people to be okay with that.
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It is their choice to come into communion with us. It’s not like we can ever force them. And I find you to be quite hostile and rude. :mad:
 
thephilosopher6 said:
It is their choice to come into communion with us. It’s not like we can ever force them. And I find you to be quite hostile and rude. :mad:
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Well I’m not sure what was hostile or rude about what I said but if I offended you I’m sorry. But as to my point it’s just a matter of history that the unia is one of the main reasons there is strong anti-Catholic sentiment is places like Russia.
 
Dmitri77 said:
Well I’m not sure what was hostile or rude about what I said but if I offended you I’m sorry. But as to my point it’s just a matter of history that the *uniate is one of the main reasons there is strong anti-Catholic sentiment is places like Russia.
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the term “uniate” is often considered pejorative towards Eastern Catholics.
 
thephilosopher6 said:
Oh, I thought that is what you meant. Sorry.
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Well the terms are related. Unia was the practice of peeling away large portions of Orthodox Churches and setting them up in the Catholic Church as a group that still used the Orthodox liturgical forms. That is how the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church came into existence as an example. So these groups that were founded as a result of the unia were called uniates. So the term “uniate” is considered a pejorative, the term “unia” is not.
 
Dmitri77 said:
Well the terms are related. Unia was the practice of peeling away large portions of Orthodox Churches and setting them up in the Catholic Church as a group that still used the Orthodox liturgical forms. That is how the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church came into existence as an example. So these groups that were founded as a result of the unia were called uniates. So the term “uniate” is considered a pejorative, the term “unia” is not.
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There are only about 9 million Byzantine Catholics when all put together. Compared to the 250 million Eastern Orthodox Byzantine Catholicism is small.
 
thephilosopher6 said:
There are only about 9 million Byzantine Catholics when all put together. Compared to the 250 million Eastern Orthodox Byzantine Catholicism is small.
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It is small but historical memories in that part of the world are long my friend.
 
Dmitri77 said:
And Catholics wonder why there is so much anti-Catholic sentiment in some Orthodox countries. You can’t advocate tearing apart of a Church and then expect people to be okay with that.
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There’s nothing hostile or rude about this statement. It is true. Also even suggesting breaking from Orthodox communions is against the expressed current Catholic objectives of reunion dialogue.

Anyway, I don’t see the Armenians particularly closer than the Syriacs. Syriacs also permit Catholics to receive the sacraments in their Church, and it is not out of a sense of ecclesial proximity per se as much as it is tending to fellow Apostolic Christians. They would not commune Protestants because of a question of orthodoxy, but the Oriental Orthodox have never had the historical enmity towards the West that the Greeks have had.
 
MorEphrem said:
There’s nothing hostile or rude about this statement. It is true. Also even suggesting breaking from Orthodox communions is against the expressed current Catholic objectives of reunion dialogue.

Anyway, I don’t see the Armenians particularly closer than the Syriacs. Syriacs also permit Catholics to receive the sacraments in their Church, and it is not out of a sense of ecclesial proximity per se as much as it is tending to fellow Apostolic Christians. They would not commune Protestants because of a question of orthodoxy, but the Oriental Orthodox have never had the historical enmity towards the West that the Greeks have had.
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The way it came off was rude. Also, he said we’re “tearing” apart Churches almost as if we’re deliberately going out there and making Churches break from their original communion. As if we’re sowing discord between Christians. On the contrary, all we want is unity! It is a particular Churches choice on whether or not they want to come into communion with Rome.
 
I don’t believe that the various Orthodox Churches all have unity with each other yet.
 
thephilosopher6 said:
Because not everyone agrees with us yet. Most Christians want unity. But we still all have our differences.
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If Roman Catholics really and truly wanted unity with the Armenian Church, they could have it by agreeing to what the Armenian Orthodox church teaches, instead of demanding that everyone has to agree with the Roman Catholic Church, especially the doctrines of papal infallibility and universal papal supremacy, which Orthodox have never accepted. IMHO, it makes no sense for Roman Catholics to go around saying that they want unity on the one hand, but on the other hand, to refuse to modify and make acceptable teachings that they know the Orthodox will not accept. The Orthodox can do the same thing and say that in a spirit of brotherly love and reconciliation, we want unity with Rome and what they could mean by that would be that Roman Catholics join the Orthodox church and renounce the teachings offensive to the Orthodox Churches.
Neither Church is budging from its position, and it is obvious that there will be no full unity until some compromise is reached.
 
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