Why didn’t the mutual lifting of the 1054 Great Schism excommunications automatically mean reunification?

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Peter_J said:
That’s part of it, but there’s more.

Quite frankly, I don’t mind too much if this thread makes traditionalist Catholics look bad … but I’m certain that it make Catholicism as such look bad, in the minds of at least a few readers who are not very familiar with Catholicism. 😦

P.S. As a general suggestion to readers of this thread, I recommend doing a search for “ecumenism of return”. It may surprise some people that some – nay, most – results indicate that “ecumenism of return” is seen as a negative from a Catholic p.o.v.
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How many times are you going to personally attack me? Anyone who doesn’t like Catholicism because of this thread didn’t like it before seeing this thread. Even Jesus was unpopular when he spoke the truth.
 
Nine_Two said:
Really? Do tell.
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What do you mean? I think East and West should be united. Why do people think I’m so bad for wanting that? God is unity. Satan is division and disorder. Satan is the one who wants Christendom to stay divided, and the Schism really helped him to spread his evil and confusion through the world.
 
jimmy said:
Sure. There is nothing wrong with them both being correct. There is also a third patristic interpretation of the text, in which Christ is the rock. They are all correct, and there is nothing wrong with that. I don’t think most eastern Christians will argue with that. I think the primary reading would be the profession of faith as the rock though. The profession of Peter is what our faith boils down to. The statement, ‘you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ This is the basis of all doctrine and the history of theology. It sums up all of patristic theology.
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Yes, Christ is the rock, but this would not effect the fact that Christ made Peter a rock too, i.e., Peter shares in Christ’s rock solidness. If I would have to choose which interpretation is more apropos to the scripture in question, it would be that Peter is the rock, as St. John Damascene said, the confession cannot be separated from the man who confessed it.
 
josie_L said:
Yes, Christ is the rock but this would not effect the fact that Christ made Peter a rock too, i.e., Peter shares in Christ’s rock solidness. If I would have to choose which interpretation is more apropos to the scripture in question, it would be that Peter is the rock, as St. John Damascene said the confession cannot be separated from the man who confessed it.
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👍
 
Beyond the grammatical evidence, the structure of the narrative does not allow for a downplaying of Peter’s role in the Church. Look at the way Matthew 16:15-19 is structured. After Peter gives a confession about the identity of Jesus, the Lord does the same in return for Peter. Jesus does not say, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are an insignificant pebble and on this rock I will build my Church. . . . I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” Jesus is giving Peter a three-fold blessing, including the gift of the keys to the kingdom, not undermining his authority. To say that Jesus is downplaying Peter flies in the face of the context. Jesus is installing Peter as a form of chief steward or prime minister under the King of Kings by giving him the keys to the kingdom. As can be seen in Isaiah 22:22, kings in the Old Testament appointed a chief steward to serve under them in a position of great authority to rule over the inhabitants of the kingdom. Jesus quotes almost verbatum from this passage in Isaiah, and so it is clear what he has in mind. He is raising Peter up as a father figure to the household of faith (Is. 22:21), to lead them and guide the flock (John 21:15-17). This authority of the prime minister under the king was passed on from one man to another down through the ages by the giving of the keys, which were worn on the shoulder as a sign of authority. Likewise, the authority of Peter has been passed down for 2000 years by means of the papacy.

Karl Keating
 
dzheremi said:
None of whom he wrote that response to, Peter J. Come on…don’t pretend like you don’t know why that would be hilarious. Laugh a little bit. It’s the only way to get through the day. 🙂
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To be honest, I didn’t want to go back and find/read KyrieEleison17’s post.

Humorwise, the idea of blaming livingwordunity for the East-West schism was funny enough for my taste. (Though, to be fair, livingwordunity may not have intended it as a joke.)
 
Peter_J said:
I didn’t even know that I was suppose to attack you.
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You did so by saying that this thread (the one I started) is going to cause people to hate Catholicism. But, even with all my imperfections (none of us is perfect), I think it’s an unjustified and exaggerated claim to say that this thread alone should be the blame for someone deciding that Catholicism isn’t for them.
 
GaryTaylor said:
Beyond the grammatical evidence, the structure of the narrative does not allow for a downplaying of Peter’s role in the Church. Look at the way Matthew 16:15-19 is structured. After Peter gives a confession about the identity of Jesus, the Lord does the same in return for Peter. Jesus does not say, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are an insignificant pebble and on this rock I will build my Church. . . . I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” Jesus is giving Peter a three-fold blessing, including the gift of the keys to the kingdom, not undermining his authority. To say that Jesus is downplaying Peter flies in the face of the context. Jesus is installing Peter as a form of chief steward or prime minister under the King of Kings by giving him the keys to the kingdom. As can be seen in Isaiah 22:22, kings in the Old Testament appointed a chief steward to serve under them in a position of great authority to rule over the inhabitants of the kingdom. Jesus quotes almost verbatum from this passage in Isaiah, and so it is clear what he has in mind. He is raising Peter up as a father figure to the household of faith (Is. 22:21), to lead them and guide the flock (John 21:15-17). This authority of the prime minister under the king was passed on from one man to another down through the ages by the giving of the keys, which were worn on the shoulder as a sign of authority. Likewise, the authority of Peter has been passed down for 2000 years by means of the papacy.

Karl Keating
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Hey Gary,
there wasn’t really anything Karl said there that isn’t accepted by Orthodoxy apart from the last sentence. There we must agree to disagree.
 
livingwordunity said:
What do you mean? I think East and West should be united. Why do people think I’m so bad for wanting that? God is unity. Satan is division and disorder. Satan is the one who wants Christendom to stay divided, and the Schism really helped him to spread his evil and confusion through the world.
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You said if it were up to you (presumably as an envoy for the West) the union would already have happened. I want to know how you would have done it.

Or do you mean if you were able to dictate terms it would have already happened? Because I’m sure under those conditions it would have already happened were any Christian in that position. Personally if I could dictate terms I would anathematize Humbert and break up the Western Church into a number of autocephalous Patriarchates while I was doing the unionizing. But since it isn’t about what I want I have to be prepared for a union that doesn’t look that perfect.
 
Wouldn’t he have to have hair first before he could be forbidden from cutting it? I thought Pope Francis was bald or rocking the Friar Tuck look under his little hat.
 
To livingwordunity:

“I realize that I can’t be the one to decide this. If I were the one then the East and West would have already been reunited.”

REPLY: I echo the question that somebody else asked: How would you accomplish this?

“The problem is that it doesn’t matter how much us Catholics want reunification if the EOs are absolutely dead-set against it.”

REPLY: Nothing would bring us more joy than to have Old Rome return to Orthodoxy.

“I even offered a hypothetical scenario where they are basically given the Papacy, and one of the EO’s on here responded to me that even an offer like that would be rejected.”

REPLY: How could we accept such an offer? It is only a hair step above a bribe. It isn’t about power for us, it is about the Truth. What Old Rome does within his own Jurisdiction as far as governance is not the business of Constantinople or Moscow. If the Pope wants to be supreme within the Latin West, Well uh…ok. The problem came about when the Pope decided to impose himself onto his brother bishops, claiming authority he doesn’t have.

“So, it’s obvious that the EO’s are the ones who are being unreasonable and won’t compromise even an inch.”

REPLY: What are we supposed to compromise? We have maintained our Ecclesiology and Beliefs over the Centuries. What we are calling for is a return to how the Church more or less functioned for the first 1000 years of its history. I for one am certainly not saying Rome needs to becoming “Byzantine”…Keep what is Orthodox, declare other stuff to be Theologumena, and discard the rest.

“What we have now is division between Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox. And it’s intellectually dishonest if we simply redefine division to mean unity. Don’t people realize how much Satan is loving how Christendom has been split and how this has led to the massive world apostasy and rise of Islam we are currently seeing? There is so much apathy about how Christianity is divided.”

REPLY: I agree. We should not pretend that there is unity where none exists. I do however take issue with your insinuation that it is our “stubbornness” that is somehow letting Islam and Secularism run amok. There are real issues between us. From our POV, Rome Schismed. I would invite you to read some Orthodox sources and learn about our POV. You might be surprised by what you find.
 
Misplaced_Book said:
To livingwordunity:

“I realize that I can’t be the one to decide this. If I were the one then the East and West would have already been reunited.”

REPLY: I echo the question that somebody else asked: How would you accomplish this?
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In the hypothetical situation, the decision would rest on me, and therefore the reunification would happen. But it was a fantasy hypothetical situation in response to something someone else said just to make the point that I believe strongly that the East/West Schism should not have happened. The Pope is apparently against the ongoing schism between East and West, too, or he would not be making efforts at reconciliation with the Eastern Orthodox churches. The ECF were also strongly against schism. I don’t have delusions of grandeur, if that’s the impression that anyone got. Perhaps a better way I could have said it is, if everyone hated the schism as much as I do there would be no schism.
 
Misplaced_Book said:
“What we have now is division between Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox. And it’s intellectually dishonest if we simply redefine division to mean unity. Don’t people realize how much Satan is loving how Christendom has been split and how this has led to the massive world apostasy and rise of Islam we are currently seeing? There is so much apathy about how Christianity is divided.”

REPLY: I agree. We should not pretend that there is unity where none exists. I do however take issue with your insinuation that it is our “stubbornness” that is somehow letting Islam and Secularism run amok. There are real issues between us. From our POV, Rome Schismed. I would invite you to read some Orthodox sources and learn about our POV. You might be surprised by what you find.
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To me, the question of who is to blame for the Schism is irrelevant. We have to forget about that and try to work at healing the schism. I think the Pope is willing to do everything short of denying the role of the office of Peter which was established by Christ. Rome’s motivation isn’t motivated by any grudge, but the same can’t be said for the Eastern Orthodox who constantly remind us of the wrongs of 500 or more years ago. The fact that the EO always bring these historical grudges up in the discussion shows that it is a significant motivating factor for why they don’t want reunification. Someone else made the point that the average Eastern Orthodox church goer wouldn’t see any significant change in the liturgy. From what I can see, Rome is always reaching out for reconciliation but keeps getting rejected. Perhaps I’m unaware, but have the Eastern Orthodox ever initiated a move to reconcile with Rome?
 
livingwordunity said:
To me, the question of who is to blame for the Schism is irrelevant. We have to forget about that and try to work at healing the schism.
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I completely agree.
livingwordunity said:
I think the Pope is willing to do everything short of denying the role of the office of Peter which was established by Christ.
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Really? So the Pope is willing to reduce several dogmas not accepted by the Orthodox to mere theolougomena?
livingwordunity said:
Rome’s motivation isn’t motivated by any grudge, but the same can’t be said for the Eastern Orthodox who constantly remind us of the wrongs of 500 or more years ago. The fact that the EO always bring these historical grudges up in the discussion shows that it is a significant motivating factor for why they don’t want reunification.
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I think you are over-generalizing. Furthermore, I think, at least with respect to Orthodox bishops, it is incorrect to assume that they don’t want reunification. What they will not accept is unification without doctrinal agreement. So far as I understand it, neither will the Catholic Church.
livingwordunity said:
Someone else made the point that the average Eastern Orthodox church goer wouldn’t see any significant change in the liturgy. From what I can see, Rome is always reaching out for reconciliation but keeps getting rejected. Perhaps I’m unaware, but have the Eastern Orthodox ever initiated a move to reconcile with Rome?
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Are you aware of the fact that the Orthodox began participating in the 20th century ecumenical movement before the Catholic Church did? What the Orthodox reject are terms that are unacceptable to them. So does the Catholic Church.
 
livingwordunity said:
That’s really a stretch to blame the division between the East and West on me. The point is that we currently have bad relations or we would not be divided.
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It is also true that whenever a Catholic makes a stout defense of our faith, the same voices cry out that we are harming relations…but I have never seen ANYONE criticize the EO for harming relations with us by their outrageous statements against the papacy, our liturgy, etc…

Why is that, do you suppose? :rolleyes:
 
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