It is good to hear you say you, an Orthodox, are not anti-Catholic. I have to disclose to you that I sometimes went to the old forum and all I ever saw from EO was anti-Catholicism. I am willing to stipulate that you do not share their views.
I maintain that the distinction between “religion” and the modern use of the word “confession” is a distinction without difference. At best, “confession” is used as a polite euphemism to denote that there is a sort of vague unity of sentiment, where no real unity exists. At worst, it is an expression of denominational relativism.
A Catholic can legitimately say Catholicism and Orthodoxy are the same “religion” because the Catholic Church recognizes the validity of Orthodox sacraments. Orthodox cannot legitimately say the same, because the Orthodox Church(es) do not recognize the validity of Catholic sacraments. If you believe our sacraments are as much in vain as you believe Hindu bathing in the Ganges to remove sin is in vain, then, from your standpoint, Catholicism is not the same religion as Orthodoxy, and you should not try to put a sugar coating on it. Knowing the bitter pill lies beneath the sugar, I decline to take it.
I do not enter into the disagreements that may exist among families other than my own. Similarly, I am not interested in hearing you try to score debating points by citing this errant Catholic group or that. I might, within my family, be critical of my brother. But I will not listen to someone outside my family criticizing my brother to me. Such issues are “within the family”, and it is not your family. You would not appreciate it if I entered into the latest controversy between the Patriarch of Moscow and the Patriarch of Constantinople, or if I took the part of the latter in the dispute with the monks of Mt. Athos. Those are your family issues, not mine.
You have every right, if you wish to do it, to say all day long that Catholicism is heretical, errant and wrong, just as a Jehovah’s Witness has that right. But you cannot simultaneously claim some sort of unity and do it. Perhaps others on here want to hear that, but I don’t. What I think sometimes EO do not understand is that Catholics do think of Orthodoxy as a sister Church, however little Orthodoxy recriprocates it. I have read some of the writings of the Mt. Athos monks about Catholicism, so you cannot persuade me I’m wrong about that. If you go into a critique of Catholic institutions, as you seem to want to do, I will be tempted to reciprocate in kind. That, I do not want to do. So I’ll end it here.
