Catholic-Orthodox Timeline: Bonocore Responds

[frjohnmorris]

Then again, maybe it is simply that the Orthodox have an official position on the essential things, and then leave everything else open. So as Augustine said, unity in essentials, freedom in the non essentials, in all things charity.

Everything else is not open. There are definite boundaries between Orthodox teaching and heresy. The doctrine of the Eastern Orthodox Church is very clearly defined. You cannot support abortion and be a faithful Orthodox Christian, for example. Actually, Eastern Orthodox are much stricter than Latin Rite Catholics on most issues. When I was growing up they always served fish in the school cafeteria for the Catholics. Now Catholics do not fast on Friday, except during Lent. Orthodox fast not only on Friday, but also on Wednesday and during the entire Lenten period. We do not just have only one Lent. We have the Lent of the Nativity of Christ (Advent) beginning on November 15, Great Lent before Pascha, Lent of the Apostles Peter and Paul, the length of which depends on the date of Pascha, since the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul is a fixed feast on June 29 and we do not fast during the Pascal season. Finally, we have Lent of the Theotokos during the fist two weeks of August.
We also fast after midnight before we receive Holy Communion at a morning Liturgy, or after Lunch if we receive Holy Communion at an Evening Divine Liturgy.
However, the fasting rules do not apply if one has a medical problem that requires them to eat certain foods. I cannot fast strictly because I am under doctor’s orders not to give up meat because I have severe hypoglycemia. I cannot fast before Communion or I will have serious low blood sugar problems.
On most moral issues we agree with the Catholic Church. The only exception is over conception control. Most Orthodox authorities do not consider the use of non-abortive methods of birth control sinful when used rightfully within marriage. We agree on abortion, but would not expect a woman to die if an abortion is necessary to save her life. Sometimes there are no good choices.

Fr. John

 

[frjohnmorris]

“Unity on the essentials.” I hear this from Protestants all the time.

Despite our administrative disunity, we have more unity among ourselves than most Protestant groups that have administrative unity, but not doctrinal unity. For example the Episcopalians who left the Episcopal Church because they objected to women’s ordination or ordaining openly practicing gays have divided into over a dozen different groups because once they decide that doctrine is important they find that they do not share a common doctrine. The new North American Anglican Church which is an effort to unite the continuing Anglicans have some Bishops who will ordain women and some who do not. All Eastern Orthodox share a common doctrine. You will hear the same doctrine being taught in any Eastern Orthodox Church you attend all over the world.

Fr. John

 

[Reuben_J]

Everything else is not open. There are definite boundaries between Orthodox teaching and heresy. The doctrine of the Eastern Orthodox Church is very clearly defined. You cannot support abortion and be a faithful Orthodox Christian, for example.

Fr. John

Perhaps you missed this. What are non-abortive birth controls that are allowed by the Orthodox?

 

[frjohnmorris]

Perhaps you missed this. What are non-abortive birth controls that are allowed by the Orthodox?

I am a Priest and an historian. I do not know that much about what birth controls prevent conception and what birth controls cause an abortion. Medications that cause an abortion are strictly forbidden in the Orthodox Church.
Sometimes, women have to take what are called birth control pills for other reasons than birth control. My daughter is unmarried and in under doctor’s orders to take birth control pills to avoid developing cysts in her ovaries.
I do not understand how there is any moral difference between what Catholics call natural family planning, which is having sex when a woman is not fertile, and using a condom or non-abortive method of birth control. Under both circumstances the couple is having sex in a way to avoid conception. I do not understand what difference it makes what method they use as long as it is not abortive.
Fr. John

 

[Cavaradossi]

I do appreciate all the attention you pay to me, Cav. Truly.

However, your tu quoque argument falls flat, and in response, a number of points may be made: First, Catholicism has a functioning magisterium that can decide that these matters are or are not essential differences. Second, the relevant schools of thought adhere to the teachings of the magisterium and, if their views were reprobated, would accept the results (or cease to be faithful Catholics).Finally, the fact that the Catholic Church has a magisterium means that there can be—and on the most important theological matters there is—an official Catholic position. There is no parallel standard in Orthodoxy that can speak for Orthodoxy.

Confessions of a Magisterial Positivist, I see. I have a circle of good traditionalist Roman Catholic friends who would be driven up the wall by this sort of attitude, because to paraphrase their thinking, “it destroys the faith, by encouraging the faithful not to study and come to love the tradition of the Church and of the Fathers, but rather reducing the faith to a set of dogmatic essentials which have been promulgated by the Magisterium. There can be no sense of tradition in such a system, for the right faith will always be what is taught by the present Magisterium, even if it stands contrary to the traditions and customs of the Fathers.”

Needless to say, they do, however, remain faithful Roman Catholics (by which I mean that they are in communion with the Pope), but they reject this sort of Magisterial Conservativism—that is strict adherence only to what the current teaching authority says—which only began forty or fifty years ago, as a highly shallow modernist innovation. Though we do not always agree on everything (obviously, or else we would be coreligionists), they would absolutely cringe to see the argument you’re making now.

We do not need your Magisterial Positivism, for we have something far greater. We have the scriptures, the rules of faith of the fathers, the declarations of many councils (including the Ecumenical Councils, and Pan-Orthodox synods, the last major one of which was summoned to condemn Calvinism and Lutheranism), the body of our episcopate and the many faithful monastics and God-inspired laymen who through living a holy life and studying the Scriptures come to be living embodiments of the Tradition. For we do not merely study the tradition as a disinterested and academic subject, but rather we live through the common tradition which binds us together and unites us.

 

[Reuben_J]

I am a Priest and an historian. I do not know that much about what birth controls prevent conception and what birth controls cause an abortion. Medications that cause an abortion are strictly forbidden in the Orthodox Church.

I can understand if you don’t know much about birth control then. As I said in my earlier post, most artificial birth controls in the market today are abortive (when abortifacient is prescribed) as also are the IUDs; as they physically interfere/interrupt/stop life forming process which is God’s prerogative, while condoms and douchings prevent conception to take place.

These medicines and contraception cause abortion. The only method of birth control that does not cause abortion is by abstaining.

Sometimes, women have to take what are called birth control pills for other reasons than birth control. My daughter is unmarried and in under doctor’s orders to take birth control pills to avoid developing cysts in her ovaries.

Yes, in this case the birth control hormones are prescribed for medicinal purpose and they are legitimate. One does not have to be single but married women too can have this treatment.

I do not understand how there is any moral difference between what Catholics call natural family planning, which is having sex when a woman is not fertile, and using a condom or non-abortive method of birth control. Under both circumstances the couple is having sex in a way to avoid conception. I do not understand what difference it makes what method they use as long as it is not abortive.
Fr. John

Father, you are introducing different premise for reason of prohibiting birth control.

It is prohibited because it physically interferes or stops life forming process which is God’s and God alone. Abortion kills, some artificial birth control kills; that is why they are prohibited. It is not about spacing the children or wanting to have small family (though that in a way may not be morally right). But killing and taking away a life is definitely not right.

Thus I am interested to know the non-abortive methods of birth control that are allowed by your church as mentioned by you. If they are abortive in nature then perhaps you may want to consider whether such usage indeed does support abortion itself.

 

[frjohnmorris]

I can understand if you don’t know much about birth control then. As I said in my earlier post, most artificial birth controls in the market today are abortive (when abortifacient is prescribed) as also are the IUDs; as they physically interfere/interrupt/stop life forming process which is God’s prerogative, while condoms and douchings prevent conception to take place.

These medicines and contraception cause abortion. The only method of birth control that does not cause abortion is by abstaining.

Yes, in this case the birth control hormones are prescribed for medicinal purpose and they are legitimate. One does not have to be single but married women too can have this treatment.

Father, you are introducing different premise for reason of prohibiting birth control.

It is prohibited because it physically interferes or stops life forming process which is God’s and God alone. Abortion kills, some artificial birth control kills; that is why they are prohibited. It is not about spacing the children or wanting to have small family (though that in a way may not be morally right). But killing and taking away a life is definitely not right.

Thus I am interested to know the non-abortive methods of birth control that are allowed by your church as mentioned by you. If they are abortive in nature then perhaps you may want to consider whether such usage indeed does support abortion itself.

It is my understanding that the birth control pill prevents ovulation. In that case there is nothing to be conceived. Certainly a condom prevents fertilization of an egg.
We agree that abortion is a terrible sin. We completely agree that killing and taking away a life is the equivalent to murder.
I am vehemently anti-abortion. When my wife became pregnant while I was in seminary, she had rubella during the crucial period of her pregnancy. The doctors including a doctor at a Catholic hospital, told us to have an abortion because our child would be physically deformed or mentally retarded. We refused to kill our child. Instead, we trusted in God and asked the Theotokos and Ever Virgin Mary to pray for us and our child. My wife received the anointing of the sick on the Feast of the Annunciation. Our son was born on the Feast of the Assumption. He was fine, although the blood tests did show that he had been exposed to rubella in the womb.

Fr. John

 

[frjohnmorris]

He continues to lose more credibility because he shows that he has never actually read the writings of Severus of Antioch and other early oriental saints. If he did he would realize that they rejected eutyches’s teachings. Instead he calls the miaphysite position historical revisionism. Any basic reading of Cyril and Severus would show otherwise.

The problem is that the non-Chalcedonians falsely accuse Chalcedon of Nestorianism. That is not true. Chalcedon only adopted the Tome of Leo after a committee compared it to the 12 anathemas of St. Cyril of Alexandria against Nestorius and decided that the Tome was in conformity with the decisions of the Council of Ephesus. Before the council approved the Tome of Leo, the letter of St. Cyril to John of Antioch was read and approved. Besides, the 5th Ecumenical Council, Constantinople II in 553, reaffirmed the condemnation of Nestorianism when it condemned the Three Chapters. Thereby declaring that Chalcedon must be interpreted in conformity with the Christology of St. Cyril of Alexandria. The decree of Chalcedon contains the words “without separation.” That alone should be enough to prove that the council did not reject Ephesus and embrace Nestorianism.
I might add that St. Cyril was wrong when he thought that the phrase, “One nature of the Incarnate Logos” came from St. Athanasius. It actually came from the heretic Appolinarius.
The Council of Chalcedon was right to condemn Dioscorus because he presided over the Council of Ephesus of 449 that rehabilitated the heretic Eutyches. His Egyptian monks so abused St. Flavian that he died soon after the council. Dioscorus also refused to allow the Tome of Leo to be read at the council.
Severus may not have been a Monophysite, but he was guilty of promoting schism and of rejecting Chalcedon on the false charge that it had embraced Monophysitism.

Fr. John

 

[Reuben_J]

It is my understanding that the birth control pill prevents ovulation. In that case there is nothing to be conceived. Certainly a condom prevents fertilization of an egg.
We agree that abortion is a terrible sin. We completely agree that killing and taking away a life is the equivalent to murder.
I am vehemently anti-abortion. When my wife became pregnant while I was in seminary, she had rubella during the crucial period of her pregnancy. The doctors including a doctor at a Catholic hospital, told us to have an abortion because our child would be physically deformed or mentally retarded. We refused to kill our child. Instead, we trusted in God and asked the Theotokos and Ever Virgin Mary to pray for us and our child. My wife received the anointing of the sick on the Feast of the Annunciation. Our son was born on the Feast of the Assumption. He was fine, although the blood tests did show that he had been exposed to rubella in the womb.

Fr. John

It does not matter what we think or what the Catholic doctor would do, but abortion is wrong, period. It is sin and you know it is when you start to justify it.

In any case most artificial birth control pills are abortive. Ovulation (the releasing of the ovum) still takes place and therefore conception would occur during sexual act at this time. The fetus would then descend to the womb from the fallopian tube and implanted itself on the uterus wall where it will grow accordingly. This is where the effect of the artificial birth control pill comes into play – it will cause the implantation of the fetus to cease. The uterus wall which is thickened for the purpose of pregnancy will deteriorate and together with the fetus, will be excreted as menstrual discharge.

Thus it is actually an abortion albeit at early stage of pregnancy.

It is not enough to be anti-abortion without pro-life. Why the anti-abortion? Is not it about preserving life? Well, we are not preserving life but destroying it when we used artificial birth control.

 

[frjohnmorris]

It does not matter what we think or what the Catholic doctor would do, but abortion is wrong, period. It is sin and you know it is when you start to justify it.

In any case most artificial birth control pills are abortive. Ovulation (the releasing of the ovum) still takes place and therefore conception would occur during sexual act at this time. The fetus would then descend to the womb from the fallopian tube and implanted itself on the uterus wall where it will grow accordingly. This is where the effect of the artificial birth control pill comes into play – it will cause the implantation of the fetus to cease. The uterus wall which is thickened for the purpose of pregnancy will deteriorate and together with the fetus, will be excreted as menstrual discharge.

Thus it is actually an abortion albeit at early stage of pregnancy.

It is not enough to be anti-abortion without pro-life. Why the anti-abortion? Is not it about preserving life? Well, we are not preserving life but destroying it when we used artificial birth control.

I am not a scientists, but I do not think that you are right. It is my understanding that at least some birth control pills prevent the production of an egg. In that case there that is not a form of abortion which I agree is a terrible sin.
I am pro-life.
Fr. John

 

[Reuben_J]

I am not a scientists, but I do not think that you are right. It is my understanding that at least some birth control pills prevent the production of an egg. In that case there that is not a form of abortion which I agree is a terrible sin.
I am pro-life.
Fr. John

Well, I do have medical background and I am quite certain, at least about this.

Yes, there may be pills that prevent ovulation, but on the whole what are used as artificial birth control pills are in fact abortifacient – they cause abortion due to the failure of implantation of the fertilized egg on the uteral wall.

I commend you for being pro-life which we, as Christians, should be. We also have to know that our action should not lead to being contrary to what we profess. Artificial birth control is not pro-life.

Now with the advance medical technology today, we can easily play with life – destroying or preserving it. Thus prohibition of artificial birth control is not very popular among modern days marriage couples simply because it is so convenient to use it and plan their lives. Again, it is not a matter of popularity or that Christians find it difficult to comply but that it is morally wrong. If the Church is supposed to be the Pillar of Truth and the guardian of it, she has to make a stand on this issue no matter how difficult and unpopular it is instead of flowing with the popular trend of modern man.

 

[Reuben_J]

In that case there that is not a form of abortion which I agree is a terrible sin.

I am pro-life.

Fr. John

This is another aspect of pro-life. You may ask why do you have sex and not open to life? Because it is not abortion and you think it is alright? Similarly in using condom or douching – having sex but not willing to allow its objective to happen.

In the Old Testament, it was wrong to ‘spill the seed on the ground’ without allowing what it is intending to do. When one is pro-life, it comes to reason that one is open to life, at least not obstructing the act of union between husband and wife to achieve its purpose.

 

[Peter_J]

Despite our administrative disunity, we have more unity among ourselves than most Protestant groups that have administrative unity, but not doctrinal unity. For example the Episcopalians who left the Episcopal Church because they objected to women’s ordination or ordaining openly practicing gays have divided into over a dozen different groups because once they decide that doctrine is important they find that they do not share a common doctrine. **The new North American Anglican Church which is an effort to unite the continuing Anglicans have some Bishops who will ordain women and some who do not.
**

The ACNA isn’t a Continuing Anglican group. I would call it an attempt to offer a not-so-liberal Anglican province as an alternative to the EC-USA.

 

[Randy_Carson]

I am a Priest and an historian. I do not know that much about what birth controls prevent conception and what birth controls cause an abortion. Medications that cause an abortion are strictly forbidden in the Orthodox Church.
Sometimes, women have to take what are called birth control pills for other reasons than birth control. My daughter is unmarried and in under doctor’s orders to take birth control pills to avoid developing cysts in her ovaries.

This would be permitted in the Catholic Church, also, because the prescription’s primary purpose is not contraceptive.

I do not understand how there is any moral difference between what Catholics call natural family planning, which is having sex when a woman is not fertile, and using a condom or non-abortive method of birth control. Under both circumstances the couple is having sex in a way to avoid conception. I do not understand what difference it makes what method they use as long as it is not abortive.
Fr. John

Lots of ink has been spilled over this very topic, so you can learn the answer online whenever you wish.

In brief, one works with the natural cycle that God designed while remaining open to the possibility of life at all times; the other works against nature by artificially ensuring that there is no possibility of life. However, the Church recognizes that both couples may be avoiding pregnancy for the wrong reasons, and in this case, both couples would be sinning regardless of the method.

 

[Randy_Carson]

Confessions of a Magisterial Positivist, I see. I have a circle of good traditionalist Roman Catholic friends who would be driven up the wall by this sort of attitude, because to paraphrase their thinking, “it destroys the faith, by encouraging the faithful not to study and come to love the tradition of the Church and of the Fathers, but rather reducing the faith to a set of dogmatic essentials which have been promulgated by the Magisterium. There can be no sense of tradition in such a system, for the right faith will always be what is taught by the present Magisterium, even if it stands contrary to the traditions and customs of the Fathers.”

This is simplistic and needlessly polemic. I DO study the faith, etc.; however, in the event of a deep theological divide within Catholicism, the matter can be referred first to the local bishop and ultimately to Rome for final dispensation. Wayward theologians, university professors and clergy ARE disciplined by the Vatican, and when necessary, faculties are removed. So, the mechanism for final arbitration is there. Nothing like this exists in Protestantism, and the more I listen to EO here, the more I realize that autocephalous seems to mean “unity in name only”.

Needless to say, they do, however, remain faithful Roman Catholics (by which I mean that they are in communion with the Pope), but they reject this sort of Magisterial Conservativism—that is strict adherence only to what the current teaching authority says—which only began forty or fifty years ago, as a highly shallow modernist innovation. Though we do not always agree on everything (obviously, or else we would be coreligionists), they would absolutely cringe to see the argument you’re making now.

I doubt it. The explanation is sound. Perhaps the problem is that you need a rebuttal to everything I write, and this is what you came up with.

We do not need your Magisterial Positivism, for we have something far greater. We have the scriptures, the rules of faith of the fathers, the declarations of many councils (including the Ecumenical Councils, and Pan-Orthodox synods, the last major one of which was summoned to condemn Calvinism and Lutheranism), the body of our episcopate and the many faithful monastics and God-inspired laymen who through living a holy life and studying the Scriptures come to be living embodiments of the Tradition. For we do not merely study the tradition as a disinterested and academic subject, but rather we live through the common tradition which binds us together and unites us.

Gee, Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition and the Magisterium…just what Catholics have been saying all along.

And what do the scriptures say about settling disagreements, Cav? If your Orthodox brother has something against you, take it to the Church. But which Church? The Antiochian Orthodox Church? The The Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia? Which Patriarch has authority over members of two different churches? None of them. They are not all even in communion with one another.

From your study of the New Testament, is it your conclusion that this is what Jesus intended when He prayed that we would all be one and established Peter as the Royal Steward over His household and the Vicarious Shepherd over His flock?

One Lord. One Faith. One Baptism. One Shepherd. One Flock. One God and Father of us all.

So, please, from scripture, show me how your model of church governance (which has resulted in the creation of multiple ethnically homogenous and geographically-oriented autonomous “churches”) even remotely resembles the unity that was SUPPOSED to be a witness to the world that Jesus was sent by God.

From scripture.

 

[1Tim215Mommy]

Actually, we can see that it is leavened bread, not an unleavened wafer Catholics use today.

Actually, the story of Lanciano is that it occurred while an Eastern priest was celebrating the mass in the Latin rite with unleavened bread. Supposedly, he doubted interiorly whether the “transubstantiation” actually took place since the bread was unleavened. The miracle was given as a sign for him that he should not worry about the presence or absence of leaven. Pretty much all the eucharistic mirales I have heard of took place after unleavened bread became the norm.
www.therealpresence.org/eucharst/mir/a3.html

I think there is a misconception present in this thread that the Latin Church had only used leavened bread up until some point in the Middle Ages where the use of unleavened bread was arbitrarily imposed for the first time. What actually happened was the use of unleavened bread was not made normative and universal until that time. In all likelihood, the reason the Eucharist was celebrated with leavened bread so widely was because that was the common bread and the presence or absence of leaven did not matter, not because Christ mandated that leavened bread be used. If St. Paul used leavened bread in his liturgy, he ought to have said, “Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the new leaven of sincerity and truth,” rather than saying to keep the feast with the “unleavened bread” of sincerity and truth. St. Paul of all people wouldn’t insert any ammunition for Judaizers on this point if he exclusively used leavened bread in the Eucharist.

 

[RyanBlack]

So, please, from scripture, show me how your model of church governance (which has resulted in the creation of multiple ethnically homogenous and geographically-oriented autonomous “churches”) even remotely resembles the unity that was SUPPOSED to be a witness to the world that Jesus was sent by God.

From scripture.

Rubbish, especially considering that we Catholics have “multiple ethnically homogenous and geographically-oriented autonomous (sui iuris) churches.” Furthermore, why the scare-quotes around the word churches? The Catholic Church teaches that the various Eastern Churches not in communion with Rome are indeed true churches.

 

[Randy_Carson]

Rubbish, especially considering that we Catholics have “multiple ethnically homogenous and geographically-oriented autonomous (sui iuris) churches.” Furthermore, why the scare-quotes around the word churches? The Catholic Church teaches that the various Eastern Churches not in communion with Rome are indeed true churches.

Thank you for your continued interest in my postings. I am always confident that I will receive brotherly correction from you, Cavaradossi and so many others whenever I comment in these threads.

So, how many “churches” did Jesus promise to build, Ryan?

The “scare quotes” were meant simply to illustrate the multiplicity of “churches” which are in stark contrast to the One. Beyond that, I do understand that the Catholic Church recognizes other churches, but here I must ask for your help.

You, Cavaradossi and others are far more knowledgeable about these autonomous, autocephalous things than I am…perhaps you can explain the relationship between the One Church and the “particular churches” as described in Dominus Iesus here:

1. **Therefore, there exists a single Church of Christ, which subsists in the Catholic Church, governed by the Successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him.**58 The Churches which, while not existing in perfect communion with the Catholic Church, remain united to her by means of the closest bonds, that is, by apostolic succession and a valid Eucharist, **are true particular Churches.**59 Therefore, the Church of Christ is present and operative also in these Churches, even though they lack full communion with the Catholic Church, since they do not accept the Catholic doctrine of the Primacy, which, according to the will of God, the Bishop of Rome objectively has and exercises over the entire Church.60

On the other hand, the ecclesial communities which have not preserved the valid Episcopate and the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic mystery,61 are not Churches in the proper sense; however, those who are baptized in these communities are, by Baptism, incorporated in Christ and thus are in a certain communion, albeit imperfect, with the Church.62 Baptism in fact tends per se toward the full development of life in Christ, through the integral profession of faith, the Eucharist, and full communion in the Church.63

“The Christian faithful are therefore not permitted to imagine that the Church of Christ is nothing more than a collection — divided, yet in some way one — of Churches and ecclesial communities; nor are they free to hold that today the Church of Christ nowhere really exists, and must be considered only as a goal which all Churches and ecclesial communities must strive to reach”.64 In fact, “the elements of this already-given Church exist, joined together in their fullness in the Catholic Church and, without this fullness, in the other communities”.65 “Therefore, these separated Churches and communities as such, though we believe they suffer from defects, have by no means been deprived of significance and importance in the mystery of salvation. For the spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them as means of salvation which derive their efficacy from the very fullness of grace and truth entrusted to the Catholic Church”.66
The lack of unity among Christians is certainly a wound for the Church; not in the sense that she is deprived of her unity, but “in that it hinders the complete fulfilment of her universality in history”.67

Many thanks in advance for your explanation of these paragraphs.

 

[RyanBlack]

So, how many “churches” did Jesus promise to build, Ryan?

The “scare quotes” were meant simply to illustrate the multiplicity of “churches” which are in stark contrast to the One.

You do realize that the Catholic Church is a communion of 23 particular churches, just as the Orthodox Church is a communion of particular churches, most of which are geographically and ethnically based? The fact that there are multiple Orthodox Churches is simply something that we Catholics have no basis for criticizing.

 

[Randy_Carson]

You do realize that the Catholic Church is a communion of 23 particular churches, just as the Orthodox Church is a communion of particular churches, most of which are geographically and ethnically based? The fact that there are multiple Orthodox Churches is simply something that we Catholics have no basis for criticizing.

Yes. I’m also told by some in these forums that the “particular churches” of the East are not in communion with each other. Do the Catholic “particular churches” have a similar problem? Are Ruthenians and Maronites both in communion with Rome but not with each other?

And your thoughts on Dominus Iesus?