Roman Catholic looking into Orthodoxy

[Fr_Ambrose]

?

Dear Katolik,

I am glad that you have popped up here. May I ask a question?

You have been using this as your signature line, up until today:

"The Jews are the enemies of God and therefore of our Holy Religion. - Padre Pio"

We have been discussing this on another thread. Are you sure this was said by Padre Pio? Can you give a reference for the quote?

 

[Fr_Ambrose]

Mickey:

I consider myself to be an Orthodox in full communion with Rome and the Pope.

How can you be an Orthodox when you are not in communion with the Orthodox?

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“We are unchanged; we are still the same as we were in the eighth century… Oh that you could only consent to be again what you were once, when we were both united in faith and communion!” -Alexis Khomiakov

 

[Fr_Ambrose]

katolik:

Gift of tears?
What does that mean?

In The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Bishop Kallistos (Ware, of the UK) believes that Saint John Climacus discussed three levels of tears:

**Contranatural tears ** which arise when our will is thwarted, for example tears of anger, jealousy, or frustration

**Natural tears ** which arise in response to emotional and physical suffering, whether such suffering is experienced by ourselves or by others with whom we feel sympathy. Examples are tears of grief, pain, or compassion. These tears seem to contribute to our healing.

**Supranatural tears ** are what mystics are referring to when they speak of the gift of tears. In the passage which follows, St. Isaac of Nineveh likens these tears to the tears wept at birth. The mystic who experiences such tears is being reborn into the age to come, and as such is experiencing a foretaste of heaven:

The fruits of the inner man begin only with the shedding of tears. When you reach the place of tears, then know that your spirit has come out from the prison of this world and has set its foot upon the path that leads towards the new age. Your spirit begins at this moment to breathe the wonderful air which is there, and it starts to shed tears. The moment for the birth of the spiritual child is now at hand, and the travail of childbirth becomes intense. Grace, the common mother of us all, makes haste to give birth mystically to the soul, God’s image, bringing it forth into the light of the age to come. And when the time for the birth has arrived, the intellect begins to sense something of the things of that other world – as a faint perfume, or as the breath of life which a newborn child receives into its bodily frame. But we are not accustomed to such an experience and, finding it hard to endure, our body is suddenly overcome by a weeping mingled with joy.

(Kallisto Ware adapting a passage from “Mystic Treatises by Isaac of Nineveh” ET A.J. Wensinck, p. 85, quoted by Ware on pp. 26-27 of The Ladder of Divine Ascent)

Somewhere between normal and supranormal tears are the tears shed in mourning over one’s sins. Like normal tears, these tears bring healing. However with reconciliation, tears of sorrow begin to mingle with tears of joy and take on a supranormal quality.

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“We are unchanged; we are still the same as we were in the eighth century… Oh that you could only consent to be again what you were once, when we were both united in faith and communion!” -Alexis Khomiakov

 

[GAssisi]

Dear John,

You and Father A seem to be woefully misinformed on the issue of contraception and NFP.

Here’s a synopsis to back up what Hlgomez said:

INTENTIONALLY BLOCKING the sperm from meeting with the ovum (including killing one or the other) WHILE HAVING SEX is what is considered CONTRACEPTION, and nothing else.

How can NOT HAVING SEX be considered contraception (though many of us are aware that the secular media has advertised abstinence as the best form of “contraception”)? Please answer.

It is obvious that when non-Catholic polemicists have to resort to jabs at the morality of individuals (with attendant statistics at that!), they are getting desperate.

I disagree with some here that Tradition serves the Church. Scripture, Tradition and Church are equal vehicles from the one divine Font of the Holy Spirit. This is what the Catholic Church TEACHES. Read Dei Verbum, chapter 2. To those non-Catholics who have sought to refute the notion expressed by some here, it is obvious you are not as well-informed about the Catholic faith as you pretend – a pretense you seem to cling to so unconditionally. If your intent here is to promote the truth, you would simply need to quote official Catholic sources, instead of perpetuating false dichotomies between the Catholic and Orthodox faiths (i.e., “Orthodox Christians afford Tradition a greater place than the West allows” – that’s simply not true). It’s fine to be unconditionally faithful to your own doctrines if you so choose, but to be unconditionally loyal to your false perceptions about another Faith is merely falling short of the mark.

God bless,

Greg

P.S. The “gift of tears” is also a Catholic phenomenon. Some of the more famous ones are St. Clare, St. Ignatius of Loyola and St. Alphonsus Liguori

 

[Fr_Ambrose]

GAssisi:

WHILE HAVING SEX is what is considered CONTRACEPTION, and nothing else

I wonder how this is seen by KFK and other Catholics looking into Orthodoxy.

How do they see the Roman Catholic total prohibition on contraception in comparison to the more lenient Orthodox attitude which allows, even though reluctantly, contraception in some circumstances?

 

[Maccabees]

Irish Melkite:

Mac,

Eastern Catholic Churches which serve the Divine Liturgy only on Sunday are the exception, not the norm, other than on aliturgical days. This is generally true only in mission parishes and those which are one of two parishes served by a single presbyter.

Many years,

Neil

That is the case in some of the eastern parishes in my area.
Like I said I am aware of EC that have liturgy every day and some that it once a week. There is a shortage of priest in the EC in much of the U.S. so this shouldn’t come as a suprise
You might be in an area is that is more fortunate than others.

 

[Mickey]

Fr Ambrose:

How can you be an Orthodox when you are not in communion with the Orthodox?

The Eastern Orthodox Church is fragmented along national lines and has experienced ethnic and regional splintering. I believe there are now eleven independent Orthodox Churches. The Byzantine Catholic Church has the richness and beauty of the Orthodox traditions and the advantage of full communion and unity with Rome. I’m sorry that you were confused by my comment, but communion with the Orthodox Church does not carry the same concept of unity. This is my humble opinion. God Bless you.

 

[Fr_Ambrose]

Mickey:

The Eastern Orthodox Church is fragmented along national lines and has experienced ethnic and regional splintering. I believe there are now eleven independent Orthodox Churches…
… I’m sorry that you were confused by my comment, but communion with the Orthodox Church does not carry the same concept of unity. This is my humble opinion. God Bless you.

Dear Mickey,

This is a repeat of something I posted earlier.

It is a quite common mistake for Catholics to think that the Orthodox have some lesser form of unity than the Catholic Churches. What they mean is that the Orthodox Church does not have the same organisational structure as the Roman Catholic Church.

Again, I refer you to an answer provided to Cardinal Kasper when he was having his own problems recently understanding the unity of the Orthodox Church.

An Orthodox Reply to the Opinion of Cardinal Walter Kasper:
‘The Orthodox Church does not really exist’.

Cardinal Walter Kasper, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, has recently spoken of the difficulties of the Vatican in ecumenical dialogue with the Orthodox Church, stating: ‘We are increasingly conscious of the fact that an Orthodox Church does not really exist’. He went on to explain his words, saying that the Vatican had expected that the Patriarchate of Constantinople played a similar role in the Orthodox world to that played by the Papacy in the Roman Catholic world. He had realised that it does not. Hence his personal revelation.

Our reply is that the Orthodox Church does really exist, but, it is true, not at all in the Roman Catholic form imagined by the Cardinal. The latter had conceived of the Orthodox Church as a monolithic and basically secular organisation headed by an Eastern Pope, apparently the Patriarch of Constantinople. This statement by a senior Vatican official once more goes to prove how little the Orthodox Church even today is understood in Rome. The very basics of Orthodox ecclesiology, the Orthodox understanding of the Church, and beyond that, the Orthodox teachings on the Holy Trinity and the Holy Spirit, are still novelties to the mind of the Vatican.

Firstly, the Orthodox Church has no Pope or Papacy, a system which was born out of a mindset foreign to the Church. The Head of the Orthodox Church is Christ and Christ alone…

The full article is at
orthodoxengland.btinternet.co.uk/cardinal.htm

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“We are unchanged; we are still the same as we were in the eighth century… Oh that you could only consent to be again what you were once, when we were both united in faith and communion!” -Alexis Khomiakov

 

[Mickey]

Fr Ambrose:

What they mean is that the Orthodox Church does not have the same organisational structure as the Roman Catholic Church

Dear Fr Ambrose:

I understand where you are coming from. I love the richness, beauty, traditions, and history of the east and the west. I am deeply moved at matins, vespers, royal hours, great compline, divine liturgy, etc. I attend a local Byzantine monastery frequently for my spritual nourishment. I can’t get enough of the church fathers (east and west–including the desert fathers of the Coptic Church). I read the the Philokalia. But I am also still deeply moved by the Roman Catholic mass. The unity of which I speak is East and West–breathing with both lungs. It is the kind of unity that I envision the Church had before the great schism. This is why I pray everyday for Catholic/Orthodox unity.Let us love one another so that with one mind we may profess. The Father, and The Son, and The Holy Spirit, The Trinity, one in substance, and undivided.

 

[hlgomez]

Oh but there is sex, but it is left for times when the couple are not going to be able to conceive. So all those sperm go swimming for nought.

Prodromos,

You have absolutely no idea what NFP is. Please read more about the subject and what the Catholic Church teaches in this regard.

The Catechism says: (2368) A particular aspect of this responsibility concerns the regulation of procreation. For just reasons, spouses may wish to space the births of their children. It is their duty to make certain that their desire is not motivated by selfishness but is in conformity with the generosity appropriate to responsible parenthood. Moreover, they should conform their behavior to the objective criteria of morality:
(2370) Periodic continence, that is, the methods of birth regulation based on self-observation and the use of infertile periods, is in conformity with the objective criteria of morality.158 These methods respect the bodies of the spouses, encourage tenderness between them, and favor the education of an authentic freedom. In contrast, “every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible” is intrinsically evil:

(2366)… So the Church, which is "on the side of life,"151 teaches that “it is necessary that each and every marriage act remain ordered per se to the procreation of human life.”

Pio

 

[prodromos]

*(2370) *Periodic continence, that is, the methods of birth regulation based on self-observation and the use of infertile periods

Dear Pio,
how exactly does this differ from what I said?