I could be wrong, but I didn’t think you were appointed as the official spokesperson for the Holy Spirit.
I do agree that your church does not want you or anyone else to convert to Holy Orthodoxy. Orthodox feel the same way about their members converting to Roman Catholicism. Essentially one who leaves the community is left to the mercy of God.
However, your church has publicly stated that the Orthodox have valid sacraments. That has to mean the the Holy Spirit is fully functioning in Orthodoxy, and has been. It further means (from a Roman Catholic perspective) that Orthodox and Roman Catholics are already concelebrating the one eternal cosmic Divine Liturgy.
Can you point to what your church says officially on the subject? I would like to see if your church agrees with you about this ‘offense’.
I think there needs to be a little clarification here. It sounds like the discussion may be headed south, if we’re not careful
Yes, the Catholic Church recognizes that Orthodox sacraments are valid.
But the Catholic Church also teaches a few things that the Orthodox reject - the primacy of Peter and the like. Because we think these truths were given to us by God, we
must believe that anyone who does not hold them is incorrect and not following the fullness of the faith as entrusted to the Church. This is not meant to attack anyone or insult anyone, it’s just a logical consequence of what it means to disagree.
Hence we logically must believe that to go from Catholicism to Orthodoxy is to reject at least part of the truth entrusted to the Church by the Holy Spirit. For it to be rejecting the Spirit Himself, of course, it must be done knowingly - which seems unlikely, I can’t imagine anyone who would consciously do something in opposition to the Holy Spirit would want to go to Orthodoxy, as as far as I know you people aren’t terribly fond of that notion either - but a rejection of truth would in fact be going on. Again, this is not an insult or attack, it is simply the result of us being in Schism and each side thinking that it is right.
So we can say things like “rejecting [part of] the truth of the Holy Spirit” because that truth is present in the Catholic Church and less present elsewhere, so to move from the Catholic Church to elsewhere must be to reject some truth. To admit otherwise would be to admit that the Catholic Church is wrong, and if we were willing to admit that we wouldn’t be Catholic anymore.
And yes, we know that the Orthodox could and do say similar things about us, but that really doesn’t affect things from the Catholic point of view and, being Catholic, I think you can guess which point of view we tend to write from.
What I do not know, and what Google has so far not yielded to me, is whether or not attending an Orthodox Liturgy would satisfy the Sunday Obligation. The question is not whether or not it would be a valid celebration of the Eucharist and/or a participation in the eternal Mass - it is, certainly - but whether or not attendance satisfies the legal requirement the Church has the authority to require. The answer to that question does not depend on whether or not the Liturgy is valid, or how correct or incorrect Catholics or Orthodox are, but on what is written in whatever book holds those types of laws.
But what I do know is that no Catholic can say that switching from Catholicism to Orthodoxy is a valid (not using the word “valid” to refer to the nature of the sacraments) move to make because we think that the Orthodox are incorrect, and it is never valid to move from full truth to not as full truth. And I also imagine that the Orthodox have the same opinion about us - this is the result of the whole stupid schism thing - but again, guess which point of view Catholics hold.
