Catholicism is bigger, on everything it seems

[Claudius]

I recently was doing a lot of reading on Church history and looking at what eventually became of different heretic groups that split off from the Holy Catholic Church. In doing so I discovered an interesting trend. The Catholic Church, and specifically the Latin Rite has two big groups of schismatics to worry about right now, the protestants and the sedevacantist. One group is a buch of people that don’t want anyone to tell them what to believe, so that they can believe any error they can think up, and the other group has raised the physical motions of the religion to such a degree that they are locked into the form but forgot the faith.

So we look at the Church of Russia. They had the soviets as one perralell and also have the Old Believers as another. Constantinople had the Inimassi and now have to deal with the Old Calendarist. The Coptic Orthodox church has the Holy Landers on their hands who think their pope has gone too far in capitulating to the Muslims. The Assyrian Church had two different churches going for a while because a lot of people would not accept a new Patriarch based on inheiritance. One could even argue that the Muslims are the protestants of Assyrian Christianity.

The common element it seems are that some people want to reject everything that has come before and start something new and force everyone else to do the same. The other group wants to hold onto tradition but does so by making form synonomous with faith and this group really wants to kick as many other people out as they can.

Isn’t it interesting that so many of the same parallels are there. Now it is time for the Catholic Church to step up to the plate and show everyone who the Real True “One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church” is and solve this division problem so that these other churches have true convertion to Catholicism.

 

[Joe17]

Well, form should be synonomous with faith, when the transmittance of the faith requires it. I would suggest you do a little research on the Vatican’s website. Particularly on “Guidlines for Admission to the Eucharist between the Chaldean Church and the Assyrian Church of the East.” The Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity released it in 2001, in agreement with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, with the approval of John Paul II.

It speaks of the schismatic Assyrian Liturgy using the Annaphora of Addai and Mari and how, even though it is recognized that there are no words of consecration in this liturgy, that the Blessed Sacrament and Precious Blood appear on the altar after their calling down of the Holy Ghost over the gifts.  This has not been approved by the Catholic Church ever before, as the document states.  

Please look at this and read it with thought and having prayed for the virtue of understanding.  Those of us who do not accept the changes since John XXIII, the sinners that we are, just want to live the faith as it has always been transmitted, even if we do not always do so perfectly.

Joe

 

[mschrank]

Interesting post cladius. I think you might of made a word mistake though- form and faith do go together- according to the Catholic belief (i.e., form of consecration). Did you mean the outward appearances or accidents?

 

[Seamus_L]

The problem with Sedevacantists is that they think the ship is sinking, and so they bail out. What they should be doing is to help us throw overboard the things that are making us sink.