Well…that was rather strange?
Also, it might interest you to know that from the Orthodox point of view the RCC is NOT the Catholic Church founded by Christ…they are. I think they also question the validity of the RCC apostolic succession and are highly concerned by RCC dogmatic innovations.
Ah, yes, it is true that the Orthodox do not view us as the true Catholic Church, and it is true that they believe our Apostolic Succession is invalid. May I point out that I for one am not offended by that? I strongly disagree with them, but unlike often Protestants seem to be by our beliefs I realize that they are only being faithful to the firm conclusions to which they have come. Though I hope that we can work things out and they can see that we
are the Holy Catholic Church, and thus be re-united with us, in the meantime I do not find them to be arrogant, bigoted, or deliberately blocking Christian unity as are Catholics often accused.
Considering, I must add, that the Orthodox Church is so very similar to the Catholic Church (compared to Protestantism), it really does nothing to discount anything that ljubim said. Ljubim believes in Apostolic Christianity, namely Catholicism, and ergo would not be Protestant. If, for the sake of argument, the Orthodox Church were the real Catholic Church, that would still leave ljubim with good reason not to be Protestant, as this still does nothing to discount the belief that One Apostolic Church holds the fullness of the Truth and gave us the Bible, an inspired Canon which is still nonetheless not the sole rule of Faith…that Church, which would affirm these things just as strongly as the Catholic Church does, would then simply be the Orthodox Church. The full extent of arguments as to why Catholics believe it’s the Catholic Church instead are probably too in-depth to cover at their greatest length in this thread.
As for Catholic “innovations,” I presume that you know of, even if you reject, the Catholic doctrine of development of Dogma, and I presume that you know that the term innovation is innapropriate even
if you personally do not believe that this development happened along the right path. Development, even if you think it is incorrect development, is not the same as innovation, which implies something with far less basis in what was already believed. In short, development of Doctrine means that the Church doesn’t just
invent new Doctrines over the years, but by the Holy Spirit She discovers, with greater clarity, certain truths that were at the very least vaguely evident and could be gathered from the deposit of the Faith that has existed for 2000 years. In other words, the Church gains new insights and new understandings about the Faith She has had all along, understandings that
could have possibly been gained from a review of the Faith from the very earliest days of Christianity because the whole package
was there from the beginning. When the Church does gain these understandings, She has the ability, from the Holy Spirit, to teach them infallibly (which the Holy Spirit will only allow if they are true understandings) which means that future generations of Christians never have to waste time trying to speculate about whether or not those specific understandings may or may not be true, and in fact know exactly what they should/must believe about the issue. It is quite handy, actually.
The Orthodox Church, with yourself, may misinterpret these things as innovations due to the fact that, with the Schism between the East and West and with the rejection of the Papacy (which has the potential to further along decisive action and deliberating), the Eastern Church (as in the Church that is no longer part of the Catholic Church; I do not mean Eastern
Catholics by that) entered more of a theological Freeze-Frame than Catholics did. That is to say, after roughly a 1000 years in which the Church, being part of (they would say united with) the Catholic Church, did develop doctrine–and therefore the Orthodox Church cannot altogether say that development of doctrine is anathema–they ceased to develop Doctrine at the same pace as the Catholic Church.
In fact, all the potential for Catholic developments in Doctrine which the Orthodox have not embraced lies nestled in Orthodox beliefs. With us, they believe that only someone sinless can enter Heaven, so there are the seeds for Purgatory, an understanding by which Catholicism has come to Infallibly explain how Christ, in His Grace, prepares a soul in His Grace but still stained by personal sins or sinful attachments–quite simply still imperfect by the time of death–to enter Heaven.
With us, they believe that Mary was a perpetual virgin and a most exemplary Christian, to the point of never (or perhaps in the Orthodox view, it may be “almost never”–I’m not sure) sinning, whose morality was singularly befitting to Her being the Mother of God, so there are the seeds for both the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption, which are one way of explaining and exploring those powerful implications which the Catholic Church has, yet again, infallibly defined so that anyone who cares no longer needs to speculate.
With us they believe that the Papacy in Rome is indeed a special office, even that it carries the Succession of Peter’s line, and that it serves a unitive purpose (if ever they reunited with Rome on their terms, they are willing to call the Pope a “first among equals”), and in that specialty, succession, and unitive purpose are the seeds of Papal Primacy and Papal Infallibility, which offer a fuller understanding of how one man could be a unifying factor even amid great controversy (his office has primacy so he can settle any issue so that irreconcilable disagreement doesn’t necessarily stall or halt us) and how that one man, if his unique position and privilege were truly upheld, would fail to ever derail the religion itself (because when teaching something that is to become an official, eternal part of
understanding the Faith we’ve had all along, the Holy Spirit protects him from error).
So you see, just because the Orthodox Church seems at first glance, due to Her being closer to theological stasis, to have a religion more identical to what Her members would have believed in at the time of the schism, it does not mean that the Catholic Church’s developments were
innovations rather than fuller
understandings of the Faith we had from the beginning, considering that all the seeds were clearly there even at time of schism. If anything, the theological stasis of the Orthodox Church serves to
prove by virtue of the seeds visible therein that there is a rational basis for Catholic beliefs as opposed to these beliefs being something we pulled out of thin air in the Middle Ages.
Blessings in Christ,
KindredSoul
.(and reaffirmed at the Council of Hippo, the first Council of Carthage, the second Council of Carthage… you get the picture.) This means that three hundred and fifty years after Jesus there was only Sacred Tradition for good christians to follow. Which we still have today. Read up on the early church fathers, look up the church’s hierarchy etc. There’s no doubt, what existed in the period between Jesus and the bible’s compilation is The Catholic Church, as we know her today. Same beliefs, same practices, same leadership, same everything.
When I wrote the last sentence of the last paragraph, “I Who Have Nothing” started playing in my head…
Peace