Impossible to find the true church

[CatsAndDogs]

You assume that a “governing body” implies “a group of bishops that rank higher then the others”; but actually in both Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy (or should I say Roman “Catholicism” and Eastern “Orthodoxy”) all bishops are involved in governing the church.

OK. So there is no “head”, singular person, who makes final decisions. All decisions are made by some variety of consensus.

So, to get back to my earlier question:

Where do “Orthodox” go instead of the Magisterium of the Church for infallible pronouncements of dogma?

Who is the “you” in the phrase, “Whoever listens to you listens to me. Whoever rejects you rejects me. And whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.” (Lk-10:16)

So the “you” in that passage (phrase) to an “Orthodox” is “a consensus”. That’s rather what I thought.

Which is why I’m not “Orthodox”.

 

[ronald_g_w]

1234

 

[excaliber]

1234

Exactly…
It should not be difficult to explain the structure of the Orthodox church.

 

[RebeccaJ]

eather the latin church went into error. OR…EVERY OTHER SINGLE
SEA BUT THE LATIN CHURCH went into error.

There is more to the Catholic Church than the Latin Rite churches.

This thread has a good discussion re: the Eastern and Oriental Catholic Churches that are in full communion with the Holy See.

 

[Peter_J]

eather the latin church went into error. OR…EVERY OTHER SINGLE
-]SEA/-] SEE BUT THE LATIN CHURCH went into error.

There is more to the Catholic Church than the Latin Rite churches.

This thread has a good discussion re: the Eastern and Oriental Catholic Churches that are in full communion with the Holy See.

Hi excaliber and RebeccaJ,

I think you’re actually talking past each other here. Excaliber is speaking in the past tense, about when the schism happened. The thread that RebeccaJ provided (which is a good one, by the way ) is about the Roman Catholic Communion as it currently stands.

 

[mark_a]

Sister Benedict: Read what you’ve written, so Father O’Malley may hear it, Luther.
Father O’Malley: Luther? How did he get in here?
Sister Benedict: We never knew.

• Bells of St. Mary’s

I watched this movie once and wondered about this dialog too.

 

[mark_a]

It is impossible to be sure!!!
It is obviously between Catholic and Orthodox. These are the only two that Jesus could have started.

I have seen Orthodox and Catholics go back and forth…with out coming to any conclusion.

The bible is not a tie breaker. Because the scripture that Catholics use to say that Jesus was building his church on peter, has the Apostles fussing about who is greater later in the chapter.

The binding and losing was also referred to in scripture to the Apostles, not just peter.

Tradition obviously dosent solve it, because both should have the same tradition from the apostles.

Both have Aparations of Mary, Catholics at fatima, and Orthodox in egypt where Joseph and Mary lived while hiding from herod.

Both have miracles, Holy fire…and getting Jesus wounds in peoples hands and feet.

This is just plain ridiculous!!!

eather the latin church went into error. OR…EVERY OTHER SINGLE
SEA BUT THE LATIN CHURCH went into error.

And yet I hear that Jesus Christ is present in BOTH CHURCHES!!!
WHAT IN THE DICKENS!!!

The Orthodox say that it was the Coruption in the latin church (as a result of the Pope) that started the whole reformation!!!

A good tree canot produce rotten fruit. The reformation was rotten.

Some say the crusades was rotten.

It is hard to stand with the latin church, and thus stand against ALL the other seas. It is hard to stand with the Orthodox, and thus stand against the POPE.

as I said IMPOSSIBLE!!!
Satan gets another checkmate, and I hate it…But nothing can be done.

Join the church that every other church has at least some hatred for.

 

[RNRobert]

Join the church that every other church has at least some hatred for.

Agreed. As Hillaire Belloc wrote, “One thing in this world is different from all other. It has personality and a force. it is recognized, and (when recognized) most violently loved or hated. It is the Catholic Church Within that household the human spirit has roof and hearth. Outside, it, is the Night.” In my experience, the Catholic Church has a polarizing effect on people- they either love it or hate it- few are ambivalent.

 

[excaliber]

Agreed. As Hillaire Belloc wrote, “One thing in this world is different from all other. It has personality and a force. it is recognized, and (when recognized) most violently loved or hated. It is the Catholic Church Within that household the human spirit has roof and hearth. Outside, it, is the Night.” In my experience, the Catholic Church has a polarizing effect on people- they either love it or hate it- few are ambivalent.

That thinking should not be necessary. If a Jehovahs witness compared his church to the Catholic church, The Jehovahs witness would be flooded with scriptural and historical evidence that showed the Catholic church to be correct.

However if a knowledgeable Catholic and Orthodox debate, one
never seems superior to the other.

The Orthodox confuse me because they have qualities that protestant churches are famous for, they also have apostolic succession that the
Catholic church is famous for.

Why dosent every church have a strong dislike for them?
Well why would they?
The reasons people dislike the Catholic church is because it looks like Catholics worship idols,
It looks like Catholics worship mary,It looks like the Catholic church just moved priest that had sex with children around to different parishes instead of getting rid of them immediately.
It looks like popes alowed coruption into the church that was so bad people began to protest and start there own churches.
let me stop here,even though the list goes on.

It seems that people don’t have a strong hatred for the Orthodox because they weren’t involved in all this,that’s perfectly logical.

Catholics can be viewed as easy targets by other churches because of this. Why would a protestant church target the Orthodox?

 

[Peter_J]

It seems that people don’t have a strong hatred for the Orthodox because they weren’t involved in all this,that’s perfectly logical.

Catholics can be viewed as easy targets by other churches because of this. Why would a protestant church target the Orthodox?

I would refer you to the Ecumenical complacency? (Re: Eastern Orthodox) thread (although it did unfortunately get a little off-track).

 

[RNRobert]

Catholics can be viewed as easy targets by other churches because of this. Why would a protestant church target the Orthodox?

How many Protestants even KNOW of the Orthodox Church? Most people know of the Catholic Church whether they love it or hate it, but I would say most non-Catholics would be dimly aware at best of the existence of the Orthodox Church. Until I met someone who was Orthodox (they were a convert, btw), if you were to ask me my impression of the Orthodox church, I would have told you they were a bunch of guys with long beards wearing funny black hats who lived far away in Russia. I think the Orthodox are too constrained by ethnicity and national origin to be widely known.

 

[excaliber]

How many Protestants even KNOW of the Orthodox Church? Most people know of the Catholic Church whether they love it or hate it, but I would say most non-Catholics would be dimly aware at best of the existence of the Orthodox Church. Until I met someone who was Orthodox (they were a convert, btw), if you were to ask me my impression of the Orthodox church, I would have told you they were a bunch of guys with long beards wearing funny black hats who lived far away in Russia. I think the Orthodox are too constrained by ethnicity and national origin to be widely known.

It is true that its hard to find information about them.
It is true that outside the Greek Orthodox church I visited there was a greek flag if I remember correctly. It seemed that some of the members were greek.
Im not exactly sure what this has to do with anything…
But they said the Orthodox church is THE BEST KEPT SECRET…this was an immediate turn of. Because if someone says your church is a secret, it should be very offensive if your evangelical.

 

[RNRobert]

But they said the Orthodox church is THE BEST KEPT SECRET…this was an immediate turn of. Because if someone says your church is a secret, it should be very offensive if your evangelical.

I agree. the Church is to be a “city on a hill” (Matthew 5;14), not some secret society squirreled away somewhere. The Church’s mission is to evangelize and save souls- how can it do that if no one is aware of it’s existence?

 

[RebeccaJ]

Hi excaliber and RebeccaJ,

I think you’re actually talking past each other here. Excaliber is speaking in the past tense, about when the schism happened. The thread that RebeccaJ provided (which is a good one, by the way ) is about the Roman Catholic Communion as it currently stands.

ha, good catch. I was thinking of today, because excalibur is making a decision today, not 1000 or so years ago.

I liked your comment about all of the catholic churches being led by a group of bishops. As a new convert, this took me a while to “get”.

 

[RebeccaJ]

It is true that its hard to find information about them.
It is true that outside the Greek Orthodox church I visited there was a greek flag if I remember correctly. It seemed that some of the members were greek.
Im not exactly sure what this has to do with anything…
But they said the Orthodox church is THE BEST KEPT SECRET…this was an immediate turn of. Because if someone says your church is a secret, it should be very offensive if your evangelical.

As far as doctrine goes, I like the Orthodox wiki…I go there sometimes to understand catholic doctrine, because whoever has been contributing to that wiki, explains things very concisely.

(Yes, I understand there are doctrinal differences between East and West, but, there are more similarities than differences, and the Orthodox wiki entries on our shared doctrines I find very useful.)

 

[a_mirror_dimly]

Join the church that every other church has at least some hatred for.

I’d say that if anyone can lay claim to such a title it’d be the LDS church, or perhaps a small denomination with unsound extreme beliefs. While one should expect that a church speaking truth should find itself coming into conflict with elements of a fallen world, simply looking at how much they’re hated is certainly not something I’d consider a primary criteria in discerning what is true.

 

[agent_grey]

there is a quote in the gospel were somebody touches Yeshua’s coat or cloak and is Healed. Christ says… I felt the spirit proceed from me.

Christ breaths on them the Holy Spirit!

Filoque Case closed.

Also please research Sedevacantism.

If you do go for communion somewhere and you know Christ by communion you are on the right track. That is by Communion and not by prayer. Christ tells us that there will be cults saying you can go to him directly in prayer(inner room, closet, etc) and they will be liars.

Christ also tells us that you will know his desciples by the healing of the sick and the casting out of demons.

 

[Isa_Almisry]

Well, there is no “Orthodox Church” per se–what you call the “Orthodox Church” is actually a collection of many autocephalous nationalistic churches, many of whom are not even in communion with one another.

There you go again. We are in communion with each other, as I posted:

If you go to any mass at a church under the Vatican, at mass they will commemorate the pope of Rome, and then the local bishop. This is also a change, an important one, that the Vatican has instituted in a practice called the diptychs, and the Orthodox practice is still as it was in the first millenium: when I go to Divine Liturgy, the priest has a cloth, called the antimens, with means (in Latin!, the term came about when both Old and New Rome used Latin officially) “instead of the table” i.e. the bishop’s altar. It is signed by the bishop, given us permission to celebrate Divine Liturgy on it, because the bishop is the oridinary minister. As St. Ignatius writes:

the post fully explains, too much for space limitations here.

In Greece there are more than 30 different churches all claiming to be the REAL Greek Orthodox Church!

And there’s number of men running around claiming they are the REAL Pope of Rome. For a selection:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antipope#Modern_claimants_to_papacy

If you don’t have a figurehead, like the pope, how do you determine which one is the real church?

Amazing as it might seem, we don’t have this problem.

Btw, ever hear of the Great Western Schism?
Doubt still shrouds the validity of the 3 rival lines of pontiffs during the 4 decades subsequent to the still disputed papal election of 1378. This makes suspect the credentials of the cardinals created by the Roman, Avignon, and Pisan claimants to the Apostolic See. Unity was finally restored without a definitive solution to the question; for the Council of Constance succeeded in terminating the Western Schism, not by declaring which of the 3 claimants was the rightful one, but by eliminating all of them by forcing their abdication or deposition, and then setting up a novel arrangement for chosing a new pope acceptable to all sides. To this day the Church has never made any official, authoritative pronouncement about the papal lines of succession for this confusing period; nor has Martin V or any of his successors. Modern scholars are not agreed in their solutions; although they tend to favor the Roman line
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_schism

So I guess the so-called “Orthodox Church” doesn’t cut the test for being the ONE true Church, because it isn’t one at all.

All those Churches on the Diptychs say ONE, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

And so we are.

Remember the four marks of the true Church–(1) One, (2) Holy, (3) Catholic, (4) Apostolic. Which Church meets all four requirements? The Eastern “Orthodox Church” definitely does not meet (1) or (3).

The Orthodox are One. If you like to explain your SSPX, Old Catholics, let alone the Protestants etc, let us know.

And Catholic means time as well as space (the Orthodox Church is on every Continent, including Antarctica). As for time, the Vatican has been backtracking on the filioque after centuries of defending the filioque after centuries of banning it.

 

[Isa_Almisry]

I follow Jesus and what he states; Mathew 16:18
And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock** I will build my church,** 13 and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.
19
I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. 14 Whatever **you **bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever **you **loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."

Where is Peter today?

In the Orthodox Catholic Church, with unbroken succession to the present Patriarch who sits in Peter’s chair Patriarch Ignatios IV.

And (according to Pope St. Gregory), with unbroken succession to the present Pope ho sits in Peter’s chair (via St. Mark) Pope Theodore II.

All other Catholics not in communion with Peter and his successors, are dealing with the problem of “authority” not the fundamental Catholic belief. You cant go wrong if you follow Jesus who has the final say.

 

[Peter_J]

ha, good catch. I was thinking of today, because excalibur is making a decision today, not 1000 or so years ago.

I liked your comment about all of the catholic churches being led by a group of bishops. As a new convert, this took me a while to “get”.

Thanks.