Falling for an Orthodox girl: revisited

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Mickey said:
I thought that was the Vatican “party line”?
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I’ve heard and read it far more often in Eastern Orthodox contexts than Catholic, and the official Catholic “party line” is that the EO are still art of the Church, just in schism.
 
Aramis said:
My experience is that the clergy are less likely than the faithful to speak of a belief in the heterodoxy of Catholics. Most of the clergy will spout the party line when asked in public… but hold a slightly softer stance in person. The faithful, however, are more likely to spout radical views on either side.

Some even believe revived Ecclesiastical Communion is long overdue, but impeded by Catholic desires for “Reunion.”
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Luckily I have not found any faithful to be radical toward me either. My wife is Romanian Orthodox, so maybe they are a bit less hard core than some of the other Orthodox. How could a Catholic desire for reunion be an impediment? I would have thought a desire for reunion would be a plus, not a minus.
 
Aramis said:
… the official Catholic “party line” is that the EO are still art of the Church, just in schism.
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This would have to be a relatively modern stance. It seems from history that this was not the interpretation of some earlier Popes, and Pope Eugene specifically anathematizes schismatics (which by your description covers the Orthodox).
 
Monty61 said:
How could a Catholic desire for reunion be an impediment? I would have thought a desire for reunion would be a plus, not a minus.
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I cannot speak for Aramis, so I am not sure what he meant, but I can tell you what I think.

Most Catholics (from my perspective) do not speak of “reunion” because there is in reality no “re-” to it. What most Catholics want … and expect … is something new, something not actually seen in the first millennium church. So ‘re-union’ is a misnomer, it would be a ‘union’ of a kind unknown between the western and the eastern churches previously.

I think that we all want to see some kind of reconciliation between us (but not at the expense of Truth), it would be heartwarming indeed.
 
I disagree that there “was no Union,” but would agree that the current typical Roman view of it is not what it was in the first milenium. Nor is the current average feet-in-the-nave Orthodox’s view accurate to what union there was.

Popes did successfully and with the approval of they local synods occasionally intervene in matters in the east.

The Syrian Churches drew parallels of the pope to patriarchs; in formal analogy format…
Pope:Patriarch::Patriarch:Bishop

But most don’t realize the exact power (and limitations) of a patriarch in that time, or that that has changed in both the West and the East.
 
mardukm said:
Dear brother Malfunkshun,

Jesus was asking a rhetorical question. It is called the dialectical method, and was a very popular form of reasoning in Jesus’ time. The question merely introduces the topic to be discussed, and moves the hearer’s mind to focus on that topic.

Yes indeed. The ONE servant must NOT CORRUPT his God-given authority. Strangely, you see in this verse not an exhortation and warning to the ONE servant, but rather a statement that he is not to be given any authority at all.:confused::confused::confused:

This is my own reflection on Scripture, and it has solidified my belief in the GOD-GIVEN office of the papacy.

Evidence abounds in history, but I don’t have time to talk about them right now. I expect to post regularly only after the first week of February, 2010. Until then, perhaps others will engage you on proofs of the universal nature of the Petrine primacy.

Blessings,
Marduk
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This thread went away without me, and I only just today thought to check it again. Apparently a lot of discussion has gone on in the interim.

However, in reply to Marduk, I have no problem in seeing it as a rhetorical question. However, juxtapose the rhetorical possibilities against human nature, and it is more likely that one person wielding the powers of Primal Papacy will abuse rather than use wisely those powers. Consider the abuse of these powers throughout church history. Therefore, I choose to interpret that verse as a warning against the use of said powers by imperfect humans. We are both merely interpreting Bible versus though, so who can say which one of us is correct? I believe that, considering human nature, that the power of Papal Primacy is a power of which humans are not worthy, and we are directed to use our free will to choose which is right… to make those supposed powers real, or to take that rhetorical question and learn the lesson which it was trying to teach.

In Christ,
Ash
 
Monty61 said:
I married an Orthodox girl 5 years ago. I am Roman Catholic. I go to the Orthodox Church with her and she comes to the Catholic Church with me. Some Sundays we actually do both. She is working on her PhD in Orthodox Theology. We don’t get too hung up on the differences, although she can easily give a lecture on them. Neither one of us plans to convert.

We had our church wedding in her Orthodox Church in Romania, with the permission of my Bishop. We had 2 Orthodox priests and a Roman Catholic priest. Everyone commented on how beautiful it was that we had both Churches represented, and expressed the conviction that they wished for unity with the Catholic Church. It was the Orthodox wedding ceremony and the Catholic priest participated.
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At first this post made me smile, then I started to say something about it and went to type it, and I realized I had nothing to say. Let the smile persist.
 
Sunflower15 said:
In your opinion, which would be the TOP 5 main differences in beliefs between Orthodox & Catholics?

I keep searching for those, and cannot find them…🤷 It sounds like semantics to me… for example, someone says that the Orthodox don’t add dogmas that were not there before in regards to Mary - say the Immaculate Conception- and then I find within the Orthodox Liturgy beautiful and specific mentions of Mary having been given special graces from the moment of her conception within her mother Anne… almost a textbook definition of the Immaculate Conception but without the terminology!]
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I don’t know about top 5, but you said you couldn’t find any…
  1. The issue of papal primacy.
  2. The filioque.
  3. The use of leavened vs. unleavened bread in the Eucharist.
I can’t think of any more, although I’m sure somebody else could. Suffice it to say, I don’t think any of the issues I just mentioned should be a deal-breaker when considering the legitimacy of Orthodoxy vs. Catholicism. I’m prejudiced towards Orthodoxy, which is a human failing, so I lean towards he Orthodox beliefs in regards to those issues, but it’s in God’s hands, not mine.
 
dzheremi said:
There many threads on that topic, Sunflower, but they are often closed in short order due to off-topic and needless polemics from both sides. From my understanding, which is far from authoritative or complete, the Orthodox rejection of the Immaculate Conception stems from much the same place as their rejection of Papal Infallibility and other issues that separate the two churches: The lack of support for such innovations in the writings of the Early Church Fathers outside of self-serving and erroneous quotes manipulated in Catholic apologetics. This points to a lack of evidence for such practices or dogmas in the early church, as if they had always and everywhere been believed there would have been some record in tradition, not just western sources dating back to later time periods. For example, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is traced back to Eadmer, the 12th century biographer of Anselm of Canterbury. Not exactly of the vintage needed to establish it as an early church practice, or even pre-Schism belief on behalf of the Latin Church, for that matter.
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What is this, about the Orthodox rejection of immaculate conception? Maybe I’m confused about what RC’s believe ‘immaculate conception’ to be, but I was of the belief that it meant that the Holy Spirit was the source of conception, which occurred within the womb of Mary, the blessed Theotokos, which resulted in the birth of Jesus. Am I mistaken here? Would anyone care to elaborate on the definition of ‘immaculate conception’?

edit:

I knew as I was typing the question that I could just look it up on Wikipedia, and I did after posting it. Anywho…

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immaculate_Conception

Apparently it’s the difference in beliefs between the two churches concerning Mary, and whether or not she was free from sin. I have to admit, this question is a new one to me. I had always considered Mary to be a normal human who was guilty of sin. As far as I know, Jesus was the only human free from sin. Is it a Catholic belief that Mary was free from sin, just like Jesus? If so, I have issues with that. Jesus was the only human being ever in existence who was free from sin.
 
malfunkshun said:
What is this, about the Orthodox rejection of immaculate conception? Maybe I’m confused about what RC’s believe ‘immaculate conception’ to be, but I was of the belief that it meant that the Holy Spirit was the source of conception, which occurred within the womb of Mary, the blessed Theotokos, which resulted in the birth of Jesus. Am I mistaken here? Would anyone care to elaborate on the definition of ‘immaculate conception’?
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Quoting from New Advent:
In the Constitution Ineffabilis Deus of 8 December, 1854, Pius IX pronounced and defined that the Blessed Virgin Mary “in the first instance of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace granted by God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race, was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin.”

I think it simply says that God exempted the Blessed Virgin from original sin at her conception. Reminds me of how Eve was not created with original sin. Fits well with how she is the New Eve.
 
Monty61 said:
If the original poster is still reading, good luck. I was very lucky to find my Orthodox girl, and I hope your success is just as good.
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Thanks. I find myself the recipient of luck beyond my own worth that I met her.
 
Yeah, I need to ask my priest about that. Since Jesus was both Man and God, it makes little sense to me that He should be born from a human who was without sin, although Jesus, being flesh, was without sin. Human nature, like it or not, is bound to sin, and to be born of a human without sin kind of negates the whole importance of the matter… I mean, Jesus was born of man, and since he’s God, he’s without sin, but man is a sinner, so to be born from a human who is without sin is to not be born from human.

I hope you get the gist, or did I just muddy up the waters?
 
malfunkshun said:
Yeah, I need to ask my priest about that. Since Jesus was both Man and God, it makes little sense to me that He should be born from a human who was without sin, although Jesus, being flesh, was without sin. Human nature, like it or not, is bound to sin, and to be born of a human without sin kind of negates the whole importance of the matter… I mean, Jesus was born of man, and since he’s God, he’s without sin, but man is a sinner, so to be born from a human who is without sin is to not be born from human.

I hope you get the gist, or did I just muddy up the waters?
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I cannot speak for everyone else, but may I respond to you as an individual Catholic?

I think the fact of the matter is that humans are broken and bound to sin ever since genesis. But I think that whole point was that God created us to be greater than that. God created us to be whole. Adam and Eve were sinless before they fell. I believe that we had as first parents Adam and Even. Maybe the name is representative or maybe it’s literal. Either way, humanity was created without sin. And even while the matter of fact situation is that we are sinful does not mean that is what humanity is meant to be.

As for Mary, the Dogma of Immaculate Conception does not include Mary being sinless for the rest of her life from what I understand. Mary being sinless is part of Church tradition. We believe that while Mary was human she did not submitted to sin in her life. That does not mean she is perfect in every way and all her mud pies taste like candy if she even made mud pies while alive.
 
T**he Orthodox do not believe that the Most Holy Virgin was free of original sin, and some still argue about her struggle to successfully resist sin whilst she was a mortal upon the earth.

However, the successful struggle against “sin” does not have anything to do with an “immaculate conception” - which would have made this effort unnessecary.

We EO believe that the Most Holy Virgin was mortal, and suffered as all mortals do - from the wages of original sin, and perhaps, but not conclusively, sinned during her life time.

Successful resistance of sin means that one is still suseptible to sin… and must resist it.

The “immaculate conception” dogma is totally foreign to the early Church.**
 
The Orthodox do not believe that the Most Holy Virgin was free of original sin, and some still argue about her struggle to successfully resist sin whilst she was a mortal upon the earth.
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Of course, the words “original sin” can mean different things to a Latin and a Greek.
However, the successful struggle against “sin” does not have anything to do with an “immaculate conception” - which would have made this effort unnessecary.
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Not necessarily - God gives all of us necessary graces to overcome sin and temptation in Christ, it is our acceptance and openness to that which determines the outcome. It is still an effort.
We EO believe that the Most Holy Virgin was mortal, and suffered as all mortals do - from the wages of original sin, and perhaps, but not conclusively, sinned during her life time.
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Some would say she suffered more than most mortals do - does that then mean she sinned more? No. We suffer because of collective sin in our fallen world - it does not necessarily conclude that a particular individual’s suffering is because of their personal sin.
Successful resistance of sin means that one is still suseptible to sin… and must resist it.
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Every human, except Christ, has to struggle; even Christ was tempted in His humanity.
The “immaculate conception” dogma is totally foreign to the early Church.
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Not necessarily, some fathers of the early Church emphasized this more than others - Mor Ephrem the Syrian comes to mind, for example.
 
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