What's the differences between the Roman Catholic Church and the Episcopal Church?

[gurneyhalleck1]

While I think the 8 times capacity thing is about as speculative and unscientific (LOL) as one can possibly get, I couldn’t agree with you more that women should not EVER be ordained. Amen! BTW, hope you’re doing well Kathleen! Blessings to you!

Have to pipe in…when it comes to women being ordained as men…well, we have a different constitution than men…Benedict speaks about this in ‘The Ratzinger Report’…My women’s group studied this back in '95.

Woman is the protected gender. We have 8 times the capacity to grieve than men.

I raised all of my 4 kids the same…I loved and coddled all of them, rocked them…the toddler girls fell down, go boom, and cry. The boy babies fell down, mumbled, and then wobbled up, and did it again…

‘Woman is the protected gender’…imagine a man enslaved with original sin, coming into a church where knows they have some women priests…he goes in but not to confess…and would these types even listen to a woman…?? My husband is finally starting to listen to me after 32 years.

 

[KathleenGee]

Thanks,Guerny…

I would recommend reading ‘The Ratzinger Report’…and definitely, the Church became too legalistic as well when it began thwarting the work of the Holy Spirit working in lay people,…lay people can minister…priests who are widowers also have a very deep insight in to every day life and provide invaluable advice…to indirectly causing Catholics to leave to join non-denominational ecclesial communities.

The past 40 years has developed lay participation at Mass and in parish life. The laity are the ones who make the Church a family. And we are still in the process of becoming…alot of work still.

What happened though at the beginning of Vatican II was, as everyone probably knows here, were false or deliberation misinterpretations of the Council, and the lay people bringing the spirit of the world into the church…The USA has had a serious problem with ego and parish power people…The past few years has seen a purging of this.

What I see lacking now in the life of the Church are our separated brethren with their gifts. I see alot of the protestant lay people here as potentially being alot of help to lay people in furthering the integration of the Word of God into every day life and drawing on all the graces available…trusting more in God’s providence, being hospital to newcomers…and again the great work so needed in the Western, bureaucratic parishes…making each parish a true Christian brotherhood.

Unity, as a bishop told me, is very fragile and it takes constant work.

About contraception, I believe Pope Paul VI was totally right and to many he is seen as a dry martyr.

St. Paul exhorts us to live as unmarried at times to draw closer to the Lord…that can only lead us closer to our spouses. We are seeing now the aftermath of contraception…and even the movie star, Raquel Welch has referenced the damage free sex has done…and the loss of human life, its degradation…In 2001, I think only 3% of American Catholics followed natural family planning. I remember being a sophomore in 1968, seeing that poster of Pope Paul VI saying ‘The Pill is a No-No’…and then seeing these roommates have sex parties…I moved out as soon as I could. I worked overseas, and came home to hearing co-workers talk about guilt free sex.

 

[gurneyhalleck1]

Wow, sex parties is always a good reason to run to the hills from a college! That’s crazy. There’s a lot of hypocrisy in most of the Christian colleges, sadly including most Catholic ones. The seminaries are liberal as heck, too. The need to purge is an understatement indeed!

My prayer before I go to Mass now is to try NOT to get mad when these nutty Eucharistic ministers try to “bless” my kids, to not get mad at all the holding hands during the “Our Father” and the communion in the hand stuff. Plus I’ll try to overlook the music, banal sermon, and lack of fire in these people’s bellies!

Gotta run!

Thanks,Guerny…

I would recommend reading ‘The Ratzinger Report’…and definitely, the Church became too legalistic as well when it began thwarting the work of the Holy Spirit working in lay people,…lay people can minister…priests who are widowers also have a very deep insight in to every day life and provide invaluable advice…to indirectly causing Catholics to leave to join non-denominational ecclesial communities.

The past 40 years has developed lay participation at Mass and in parish life. The laity are the ones who make the Church a family. And we are still in the process of becoming…alot of work still.

What happened though at the beginning of Vatican II was, as everyone probably knows here, were false or deliberation misinterpretations of the Council, and the lay people bringing the spirit of the world into the church…The USA has had a serious problem with ego and parish power people…The past few years has seen a purging of this.

What I see lacking now in the life of the Church are our separated brethren with their gifts. I see alot of the protestant lay people here as potentially being alot of help to lay people in furthering the integration of the Word of God into every day life and drawing on all the graces available…trusting more in God’s providence, being hospital to newcomers…and again the great work so needed in the Western, bureaucratic parishes…making each parish a true Christian brotherhood.

Unity, as a bishop told me, is very fragile and it takes constant work.

About contraception, I believe Pope Paul VI was totally right and to many he is seen as a dry martyr.

St. Paul exhorts us to live as unmarried at times to draw closer to the Lord…that can only lead us closer to our spouses. We are seeing now the aftermath of contraception…and even the movie star, Raquel Welch has referenced the damage free sex has done…and the loss of human life, its degradation…In 2001, I think only 3% of American Catholics followed natural family planning. I remember being a sophomore in 1968, seeing that poster of Pope Paul VI saying ‘The Pill is a No-No’…and then seeing these roommates have sex parties…I moved out as soon as I could. I worked overseas, and came home to hearing co-workers talk about guilt free sex.

 

[KathleenGee]

We have a Dominican church here with high liturgies and music, communion rails…people come in from all over…confessions almost every day, several times a day…stress is orthodoxy…

 

[JohnnyReb]

The morality aside, it’s mostly about pride, common sense, and history. The Orthodox aren’t going to budge on the infallibility issue. Primacy yes. Coryphaeus, yes. First among equals, yes. Infallible? No. Universal jurisdiction? No way. One-man council? Nope. The Orthodox are far more consistent with history and they don’t buy for one second the Vatican I reconstruction of the papacy.

And the Anglicans are just in pure implosion mode. They’re scattering like a bunch of gang-bangers in a drug sting. Running to and fro in all directions like deer in the headlights. Like the X-Files film, “I want to believe!” is their motto. Anglicans are so tired of too much incoherence that some, as you pointed out, are longing for Rome. They want all their decisions made for them, their thinking laid out, their ducks in a row. They just want order. And I can’t blame them. Anglicanism is a killer when it comes to order. They just want consistency for once. But at what cost? As I’ve said before, the overtures to Anglicans and the coetibus stuff has an endgame of total absorption IMO.

The irony must be that I am swimming against the current. I found Rome too rigid and dogmatic on many issues, and longed for the freedom of concious that Anglicanism offered. I found Pentecostal Fundamentalism way too rigid and legalistic as well. I can see where there too much freedom in Anglicanism, however, given the stance of some Anglicans on abortion and homosexuality. If only a middle ground could be found.

I would side with the Orthodox on the Papal issues as stated in your post. A big problem is that Anglicans and Orthodox do not have the same beliefs on original sin. Likewise, Anglicans currently use Filoque language in the creeds, which is huge area where differ.

 

[Julianna]

What are the major differences?

Episcopal…also known as “Catholic-light”…all the same sins…half the guilt.—Robin Williams

 

[JohnnyReb]

1. There are other and better reasons to become a Roman Catholic; and
2. The kind of “security” offered by Roman Catholicism is very different than the form offered by fundamentalism.

Well, you can dislike it all you wish. I don’t always like it either. But Christianity really isn’t just about what we like. It seems to me that this is actually one of the strongest arguments in favor of the RCC. The Popes aren’t getting up in the morning and making moral pronouncements based on their personal whims. They are reaffirming traditional Christian moral teaching. This is exactly what they are there for.

Now I can agree that the RCC’s overly legal approach has disastrous effects on the pastoral implementation of the teaching. But on the matter of principle, I don’t think we have much ground to stand on. I say this as someone who thinks that when it comes to women’s ordination, the theological arguments generally cited against it make little or not sense. (I find the arguments against contraception more intrinsically convincing, though they still have their problems.) But on both issues, we have the Pope and the tradition on the same side, and frankly that doesn’t leave us much choice if we want to be orthodox Christians in any sense.

In short, if you want to go up against the Pope on something, you’d best have a continuous tradition to support you. Otherwise you don’t have a leg to stand on.

Edwin

I was agreeing 100 percent with this post, except when I got to the very last line. Maybe its splitting hairs, but I will stand on the scriptures and then tradition only when the scriptures are unclear. I would rather have scripture on my side. The Pope can have tradition.