Which are you Catholic or Pagan. Make up your mind!
ECT Why shouldn't I convert from Evangelical Protestant to Catholic?
- Thread starter RichRock
- Start date
Stress isn't good for you, keep your hair on. Try meditation exercises
Maybe Judaism next?
then
I'm done with this thread.
Thanks. Don't forget those relaxation exercises.
What is your personal opinion? I thought the difference between your church and the Catholics was minor, only the Pope issue?
Cruciform
New member
In fact, the Pope issue is rather major, being the central factor separating Orthodoxy from the Catholic Church.
Gaudium de veritate,
Cruciform
+T+
Arsenios
Well-known member
My personal opinion does not matter -
Add $5 to it and you will still get no change back at Starbucks...
We thought the matter would come to its own conclusion after the passage of a hundred years or two... When your Cardinals walked into a Divine Liturgy in progress and slapped the Papal Bull of Excommunication in writing down upon the Altar, accusing us of having REMOVED the Filioque from the ORIGINAL Nicene Creed, our differences were minor... We had known about your heretical confession of your alteration in violation of the Councils for a long time, but you were the Latin Church, holding the Chair of Peter, the Chief of the Apostles, and your Church was politically weak and divided into many warring geo-political factions that were flat out dangerous, and there was no way for you to fix it all... It was at that point that the German Bishops took over the Vatican and declared their rulership over the whole of the Body of Christ on earth, and married the ecclesiastical with the political... And for the next bunch of centuries, it was a dangerous matter for anyone to differ in any opinion from the Latin Pope, who became an ecclesiastical kind of Head of State to whom Europe paid allegiance... Tithing their spoils of war to the Pope as they returned from the Crusades...
Yet it was not until the 4th Crusade that we finally "got it" that if the Latin Church could not rule us ecclesiastically, they wanted us dead, period... Because they came to Constantinople and killed and raped Christians, and then stayed there for decades pillaging and plundering that civilization that was the head of the Roman Empire of its bootie until there was nothing left to load up into the next ship, and then they left us at the mercy of the Turks to be destroyed... THEN we finally understood the depth of the depravity of the Latin Apostasis... Up to that point, we thought you were Brother Christians with differences of opinions that could be worked out, but instead you had married the Holy Power of the Church to the unholy power of the warring nations, where Knights were made out of Monks in the Holy War of establishing the unity of the Latin Faith in the west [Europe]... You had turned the Church into a geo-political-ecclesiastical monstrosity of evil which to this day STILL lives in the self-vanity of its special STATUS OVER the Church on Earth, and thinks she has something to OFFER the Orthodox Christian Church of the East by her Latin Communion...
Meanwhile Europe is functionally athiest, and the US is funtionally secular, and Islam is on the rise...
The only good news is that Orthodoxy is also on the rise in the west, but as a minority Church, and persecutions are coming, and the dying will begin soon as the Church comes under horrendous persecutions from the God-haters... I can only tell you that I am glad God is in charge, and not you and not me...
The "Chair of Peter" has always held Primacy of Honor in the Communion of Christ, until She elevated Herself to Primacy of Political Power OVER Christ on earth... And the Grace now found in her is a sad sight for our Orthodox eyes... The Ecclesiastical Grace is all but gone, yet as with the Protestants, God keeps elevating some... He did the same with the Jews in the first century, giving them every opportunity to repent from their error and embrace Christ in Jerusalem, until the window closed...
We are at that point now, I fear, for the Latin Church...
Which is why we pray for you with tears...
Arsenios
Arsenios
Well-known member
You are right - No Bishop has "Rule-Over" another Bishop in another diocese - And this according to the Canons... Bishops are required to remain in their own territory unless they are INVITED by the Bishop of another territory, because "wandering Bishops" had become a real problem at one point in the history of Christianity, as Satan tried first one way and then another to destroy the Church...
Were the Latins to repent from their heretical doctrine of Papal Supremacy, and return to the very Christian doctrine of Papal Primacy, of the "Chair of Peter", and then submit themselves to the Ekklesiastical Canons that were in place when Pope Leo proclaimed the Orthodox Confession of the Faith, the Latin Church would soon win the Communion She has desired and not had now for a thousand years...
Christ is the Head of the Church on earth, not the Latin Church, "For Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the Age..."
Arsenios
Cruciform
New member
The ecclesiological assumptions that you have derived from your favored non-Catholic tradition are noted.
False Dilemma Fallacy.
Gaudium de veritate,
Cruciform
+T+
Arsenios
Well-known member
Such "noted"ness is singularly unhelpful...
Christ OR the Pope as Head of the Body of CHRIST???
The plain fact is that the Latin Communion NEVER dictated morals, doctrines and policies to ANY other Church in the EOC for the first thousand years of Christianity, and when they TRIED to do so, in 1054, they were rebuked and failed utterly...
Arsenios
Cruciform
New member
Only if you insist on missing the point.
Yes, that is a False Dilemma Fallacy. In fact, BOTH Christ AND the Pope are "heads" of the Church, though in very different senses.
Sure thing. As mentioned, the opinions of your preferred non-Catholic tradition are noted.
Gaudium de veritate,
Cruciform
+T+
Arsenios
Well-known member
No help...
Then the Body of Christ has two Heads according to your false theory... A Latin Head, and then Christ Himself... Never does Christ make Peter the Head of His Body, but is Himself the Head of His Own Body... See below...
"Christ the Lord called that Church the Catholic Church which maintains the true and saving confession of the Faith. It was for this confession that He called Peter blessed, and He declared that He would found His Church upon this confession." St. Maximos the Confessor.
As history has demonstrated, Saint Maximus—who was only a simple monk and not even ordained—and his two disciples were the ones who were Orthodox, and all those illustrious, famous and influential Patriarchs and Metropolitans whom the Saint had written against were the ones who were in heresy. When the Sixth Ecumenical Synod was finally convened, among those condemned for heresy were four Patriarchs of Constantinople, one Pope of Rome, one Patriarch of Alexandria, two Patriarchs of Antioch and a multitude of other Metropolitans, Archbishops and Bishops. During all those years, that one simple monk was right, and all those notable bishops were wrong. (pp. 60-62)
orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/ecum_canons.aspx
I should add that it is entirely disingenuous for you to call the Holy Orthodox Catholic Church: NON-CATHOLIC... Especially when your Pope himself has declared us fully catholic having fully "valid" [his word] Sacraments...
Arsenios
We do not know Christ according to the flesh 2nd Corinthians 5:16, yet we still acknowledge him spiritually. His body on earth is his Church, which includes baptized people such as yourself who do not confess the Catholic (i.e. the true Christian) faith in its entirety, and/or who do not maintain unity with the successor to Saint Peter the Rock upon whom Jesus' Church is built---just as Jesus said it would be---and his body on earth is not headless but she has a head, which through the mystery of marriage is Christ's own head, and her head on earth is composed of the Pope and those bishops in communion with him, and he teaches us infallibly through his head here on earth, the Catholic Church's Magisterium, in matters of doctrine, including moral doctrine. And this word "infallible" gets tossed around a bit here and there and I want to underscore just what infallible means in terms of teaching authority. It means that the infallible teachers are INFINITELY more reliable in matters of faith and morals, than anyone who disagrees with them. It is not as if we are to weigh the Magisterium's positions as 10 or 1,000 or one trillion trillion times more reliable than anybody who disagrees with them; that gives the fallible teachers too much credit. The subject is not physical or social science, it isn't mathematics, nor astronomy, where there are authorities but not infallible authorities. Authorities in these fields are proven wrong time and again throughout history, as is the process of human knowledge development. We converge on the truth in this fashion in all matters besides faith and morals, but of course our Lord would not leave us with such a process to determine spiritual, eternal truth, but we would expect that our awesome Lord would provide us the grace of a persistent, lasting teaching office, so that in every generation, he communicates to his flock clearly and unambiguously just what the eternal and spiritual truths are; and this we have in the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. The relationship between the reliability of those who disagree with the Catholic Church's Magisterium & the Magisterium itself is ZERO to infinity, which is the same mathematical relationship between ANY finite thing and infinity. The Magisterium---Christ's head here on earth---is infallible in her teachings on Christian doctrine; which concerns faith and morals.
The Catholic Church's Magisterium affirms that the Rock is both Saint Peter's confession & Peter himself; not either/or.
It's not disingenuous at all, let alone entirely, to say that you're not Catholic. Your parish doesn't say "Catholic Church," but it does say "Orthodox," and by displaying "Orthodox" prominently your parish is making it very clear that you are NOT Catholic. It's actually a bit disingenuous for you to make such an accusation.
Regardless however, here is what the Magisterium teaches us: "All men are called to this catholic unity of the People of God. . . . And to it, in different ways, belong or are ordered: the Catholic faithful, others who believe in Christ, and finally all mankind, called by God's grace to salvation." CCC836 You, and all believing protestants, are the underlined.
Cruciform
New member
Only if you insist on missing the point.
Not in the same sense, but in very different senses.
Gaudium de veritate,
Cruciform
+T+
Arsenios
Well-known member
Still no help...
You might try explaining what you mean...
Kinda humbling, I know...
Might prove helpful...
Then you do believe that the Body of Christ has TWO HEADS - One who is someone OTHER THAN Christ, and one who IS Christ, Who is Her head...
The simple truth is that Christ is the Head of His Own Body, the Church, and not the Patriarchs, Popes, Cardinals and Bishops and Priests and Deacons...
Christ is the ONLY Head of His Body, the Church...
Giving His Body TWO Heads is simply wrong... And it matters not a whit how you use two very different senses of what the Head of the Body might mean...
When Christ gave his messages to the 7 Angels of the 7 Churches in Revelation, He did not send Peter, or the Roman Pope, or anyone other than the Apostle John...
When the Church began baptizing Gentiles into Christ, it was not Peter who commanded that they be so baptized, but was instead Iakovos, the brother of the Lord, who was the "Pope" in Jerusalem at that time, and not Peter...
The second was a conciliar decision, and the first direct correction from God... No Petrine authority anywhere, and the Councils for the first thousand years of the Christian Faith were not under the authority of the Italian Pope...
Arsenios
Arsenios
Well-known member
Nihilo said:
There is NO Apostolic Church on earth other than the Latin Church that takes this passage to mean Peter the Person Himself...
We are the Orthodox Catholic Church - We have been from the beginnings... Peter and Paul were our Apostles in Antioch before they ever made it to Rome... The simple FACT is that it is the Church, the Body of Christ Who is Her Head, that is Catholic...
Catholic Answers Forum banned Orthodox posters who insisted on calling themselves Catholic... They could not answer the fact that wherever the Body of Christ and His Holy Blood are consecrated and consumed by His faithful, THERE is the Catholic Church, because the WHOLE of Christ is served in EVERY celebration of the Eucharist...
The Latins in the West WERE the Catholic Church in the West, until they became the Papal and Petrine Church of Peter, thinking in this that they were the ONLY Catholic Church, not realizing that they had, by this move to Papalism, DEPARTED FROM the Catholic Church, which is the Communion of Apostolic Churches...
The accusation was from the Pope Himself, who affirms the "validity" of our Sacraments, which means that we are Catholic...
The "WHOLE" of Christ is in every EUCHARIST... And in every morsel served in that Eucharist...
Arsenios
Well OF COURSE NOT else they'd be CATHOLIC. Your sentence is equivalent to saying that no non-Catholics are Catholic.
But they wound up in Rome.
And you and your Church knows that the Roman diocese was the preeminent Church from then on, because they "made it to Rome." The poetry of it all is startling if you're able to admit it; the capital city of God's people switched in the Apostolic generation from Jerusalem to Rome, the capital city of the pagans.
Yes, in its etymologically historical sense, yes. And the Magisterium of the Catholic Church has defined it as such, so that even Orthodox and all other protestant truly believing Christians, are the catholic small c church small ch (I personally reserve Church capital CH for brick and mortar dioceses), according to the Catholic bishops.
Tell me what is the Orthodox position on who makes up the body of Christ? Are non-Orthodox truly believing Christians even possible in Orthodox teaching? Like Saint Peter the fisherman, the Catholic Church casts a very large net; I don't get that impression from the Orthodox Churches at all.
Because it's disingenuous, I'm guessing.
The Forum is not run by bishops. You cannot condemn the Magisterium of the Catholic Church for the misunderstandings of any Catholic faithful.
This is just another way of saying that you're not Catholic. IOW, if you didn't believe this, you'd be Catholic.
And that's why I ask, what is the Orthodox teaching on this matter? Are Catholics Christians, members of the body of Christ, according to Holy Orthodoxy?
Please provide then the Orthodox teaching on the bishops, priests, and deacons? What is their relationship within the church to the rest of the faithful, and what is their relationship to Christ, apart from the relationship of the catholic church to Christ? The Catholic explanation I find to be without error.
If Saint John the evangelist was the only living Apostle at the time, that wouldn't surprise me in the least. Surely a genuine original Apostle supersedes any Apostle's successor? I don't believe the Catholic faith believes that Saint Linus for instance would be preeminent to a living John, or to any other Apostle who could have survived Saint Peter.
BTW, did you know that Peter's reign as Roman pontiff remains the longest papal reign even after almost 2,000 years and 260 some odd popes?
The first mention of non-Jewish-convert Gentiles being received into the Church was through Peter.
He was the bishop of the Jerusalem diocese, and he was not an Apostle. And his conciliar pronouncement was exactly as Peter had recommended early in the Jerusalem council.
Did the "Italian Pope" ever contradict the conciliar results?
Arsenios[/QUOTE]