Even more interesting: What would happen to the Maronites, or the Chaldeans?
They would almost certainly remain as they are.
I suppose if the Assyrian Church of the East somehow returned to Catholic orthodoxy, they and the Chaldean Catholics could be joined. But in all honesty, there are way more Chaldean Catholics than there are ACoE members already, so I can’t see any scenario in which the former would be integrated into the latter.
And then there’s the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church. They too seem to have no counterpart, as the Church of the East is no longer a unified presence anywhere in the world.
If the Coptic Catholics and Ethiopian Catholics and others who apostasized from the OO Church would be going back to their Oriental Orthodox Church, then you can’t really have reunion between Byzantium and Rome without first having reunion between the OO and the EO, right?
You can; it’s just that in that scenario, some eastern Catholic churches would be reunited to their Orthodox mother churches, while others would remain as they are.
And it seems somewhat less than likely that the Maronites would return en masse to the Syriac Orthodox, given a history of bad blood between the two, such as the claim that 350 Maronites were martyred by the Syriac Orthodox following the Council of Chalcedon (I believe that they still commemorate this yearly, though the Syriac Orthodox of course disavow that such a thing ever happened).
Besides, the Syriac Maronite Church of Antioch is
not the Catholic equivalent of the Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch. The Catholic equivalent of the Syriac Orthodox Church is the
Syriac Catholic Church.
Given how strong the general sentiment against “uniatism” is, it’s pretty surprisingly to hear this ^^ sort of “reverse uniatism”.
I’m surprised you haven’t heard this before. It’s the standard response to this question, and is the official position of
at least the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, if not others.
But ACROD comes from the Ruthenian Catholic Church, not the other way around.
I was about to say that; you beat me to it.
What if the Byzantine Catholic Church in America were joined with… the Orthodox Church in America? I know they’re not formally connected, but just look at their very names…
You call the 12th century fairly recent? That’s the time the Maronites re-established communion with Rome.
That’s not really fair to the Maronites to say… they never broke communion in the first place, nor acknowledged any such break. It’s not their fault they were out of communication with the Latin Church for so long.
I for one honor their claim of always being in communion with Rome.
I remember my RCIA director telling us some Protestants went the EO route because it was “Catholicism minus the pope.” You had the smells, the bells, the sacraments, the history, etc. but without anyone firmly at the top as an authority. (Yes, I know that’s simplistic. But it might sum up some people’s thoughts.)
Then of course there’s the bad blood, suspicion, and prejudice between some Catholics and some Protestants…and EO becomes the mysterious “other ancient church(es)” they hadn’t known about before–and because it’s relatively unknown and mysterious, it seems a lot more pure. Maybe it’s easier for a western non-Catholic/non-Orthodox believer to project onto the EO what they think the ancient Church ought to be, simply because they aren’t as used to it as they are the Catholic Church, or because they’ve been scandalized by some Catholics, but don’t even know enough Orthodox to have an opinion.
I think you hit the nail on the head. For instance, take a look at this statement from the website of the Orthodox community (a ROCOR parish) nearest to where I live:
Feature Story Gold CBD Alpilean What are the Conveniences of Buying Gold and Silver Investing on gold and silver can be a great method to expand your profile and also bush versus financial unpredictability. Gold and silver can supply stability when stocks, bonds, as well as other financial...
www.allsaintsofamerica.org
The Christianity that we in America and Europe know is that which moved from the Middle East, where Christianity began, to the West; to Rome, Europe, and America. We know how the faith and practice in these western lands changed, leading eventually to the Protestant Reformation. Later non-denominational Churches also tried to determine from the Bible what the Ancient Church “must” have been like. Unhappily, different people reading the same Bible understand it differently, and now there are hundreds of quite different denominations of Churches in the West.
But what happened to Christianity in the East, where Jesus Christ established it? What of the Christians in Jerusalem, in Alexandria, Antioch, and Constantinople - all of the major centers of the Faith other than Rome in the earliest years of Christianity? All of them were founded directly by Jesus’ Apostles, blessed to do so by Jesus Christ. Did these Christians follow along the same road as the Roman Church?
Western teachings of Purgatory, the selling of “indulgences” to get out of Purgatory, the Primacy of the Pope, the infallibility of the Pope, the subtle change of the fundamental statement of Christian Faith (the Creed) of the Early Church, none of these “innovations” of the Roman Church were ever accepted or taught in the East. There was no Protestant Reformation in the East, because there was no need for one. No one had to break away, or try to decipher from the Bible what the New Testament Church probably would have been like before the Roman Church changed it, because in the East, it hadn’t changed. There was no need to resurrect the ancient Faith, because in the East, it never died!
The Church that Jesus Christ founded in the East is still alive, still filled and guided by the Holy Spirit, still maintains an unbroken, living connection straight back to the Apostles, and to Jesus Christ Himself.
Virginia is
by far majority Southern Baptist, and you can see from that webpage exactly how they’re attempting to appeal to a typical American Evangelical Protestant mindset in
precisely the ways you mention, AlwaysCurious. Of course, they don’t mention the things they have in common with Rome: asking for the intercession of the saints, honoring our Blessed Mother, prayers for the dead, the Real Presence, the ordained priesthood, no “sola Scriptura,” etc.
The whole idea that Protestants convert to Orthodoxy because they want Catholicism without the pope is flawed beyond belief for the simple fact that Orthodoxy is not Catholicism without the pope. If evangelicals choose to convert to Catholicism over the Episcopal Church, would anybody ever speculate that they do so because they want High Church Anglicanism without women bishops? If an Orthodox Christian converts to the LCMS rather than the Catholic Church, would it be sensible to say that he wanted Western Christianity without the pope? If a Catholic chooses to convert to Oriental Orthodoxy instead of Eastern Orthodoxy, would it be sensible to say that he wanted to have Apostolic Christianity without Chalcedon or the Tome of Leo? Of course not! Yet when a Protestant converts to Orthodoxy rather than Catholicism, it’s ok to speculate that he wanted to have Christianity without the pope. It’s utter nonsense, although I could see how some might find such speculation comforting.
Whoever designed the ROCOR parish website that I linked to above seems to think otherwise. It’s quite strategically aimed at introducing Protestants to Orthodoxy.
