Sadly, Attwater’s work, although containing some excellent historical information on the Eastern Churches, was a work of Latin triumphalism typical of its day. Additionally, putting aside for the moment the blatant inaccuracy of the author’s editorial commentary, there are blatant errors in what passes for factual information in the material above.
While no Eastern Rite permits or has ever permitted the marriage of ordained men, the tradition among them (as with the Orthodox) is to permit the ordaining of men who have already been married, although they favor a celibate episcopate. (The marriage of ordained clergy appears to have been a Protestant innovation in Christendom.)
That is absolutely historically inaccurate. So much so and I think well-known, even to you, that I am not going to bother belaboring it. “
(F)avor a celibate episcopate”? - such has been the norm for centuries; it is not
favored, it is!
Disputes among the indigenous clergy and the immigrant Byzantine clergy have often resulted in whole parishes leaving the Catholic communion to be received back into Orthodox folds.
This comment has no applicability to the Melkite Church, as there is no record of any Melkite parish in the US returning to Orthodoxy as a consequence of the issues over clerical celibacy (or for any other reason), in part because virtually all Melkite missioners to this country during the late 19th and first half of the 20th century were monastics; almost none were patriarchal clergy, among whom would have been any married presbyters.
All such documented instances occurred in the instances of Ruthenian and Ukrainian parishes.
this group is headed by a patriarch who is accustomed to seeing himself as one of the equals among whom the Pope of Rome (the Patriarch of the West) is agreed to be the first.
This line mixes apples and oranges. The Pope, in his capacity as Patriarch of the West is “primus inter pares”; the Melkite Patriarch and all of the other Patriarchs are, in fact, his equals in that capacity. The Pope’s exercise of authority over other than the Latin Church is solely in his capacity as Pope.
Other sources of disagreement are the Immaculate Conception, Papal Supremacy and Infallibility, Purgatory, and the Filioque, and to a lesser extent remarriage after divorce; in short, all the matters that remain primary points of disagreement between Orthodox and Catholics. The terms of the original agreement are clear that agreement with Rome on these matters is expected.
The dogma of the Immaculate Conception was not defined until a century and a half post the “original agreement with Rome”, making it unlikely that it was considered or enumerated in the terms of such.
Indulgences are not a matter of dogma, last I recollect - additionally, they are not and have never been a concept within Eastern theological praxis. Similarly, Western conceptualization of Purgatory is foreign to Eastern theology; the Eastern understanding and expression of post-mortem purification of the soul has never embraced the purgative process described by the West.
See also, as I believe Maccabees already posted in the other thread,
Primer of Melkite Beliefs & Traditions, in which you can find a full statement with respect to the Magisterium and our acceptance/adherence to it.
I await your apology to my Patriarch.
Many years,
Neil
