***The Church Fathers were NOT united in teaching the Eucharist was / is a sacrifice for atonement, nor did they consistently teach ‘real presence’ in the later sense.***
One must differentiate between debate and scholarly discussion and Church doctrine. The Eucharist was understood as sacrifice for atonement; the balance between worship / supplication and sacrifice is slightly different between East and West, but the doctrine still exists. Again, the consistency of the Church does not reflect the debates of the Church Fathers. It is declared and the Church moves on. If a great Church Father cannot accept the Consensus Patrum, he is evicted - in the case of Origen, in disgrace.
***It has no Priests, except in the sense of a universal priesthood of believers who offer a sacrifice of praise and good deeds.***
I believe that kosta has posted some good information above on the role of priests versus bishops versus deacons versus the laity.
***Your developing theology first forced out the Orthodox and later the Reformers. Far from keeping unity, the Bishop of Rome has shattered it.***
The only differences between Orthodox and Latin is in the furniture. The filioque is, when one looks at it and defines it correctly, immaterial. The bishops will handle it during any unification methodology talks that arise.
***Eucharist is a thanksgiving, not an atonement. As kosta50 pointed out on another thread, the type is the Passover. The first Passover put blood on the lintels so the Angel of Death would pass over. Subsequent Passovers were remembrances, not recreations. They were proclamations.***
That’s the type of its initial conception, sure, but the Church soon worked on developing the doctrine as they settled down and tried to understand just what they were taught. Remember that the formulation of the Trinity took hundreds of years to get their arms around and still to this day, many if not most Christians really don’t have a clue as to what the Trinity is.
And annalex has posted some more over on http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2370551/reply?c=222.
One thing that many Protestants accuse us of is being an unthinking monolith; the debates of the Church Fathers and the debates that go on to this day in the Church should indicate otherwise.
Those who continue in debate and disagreement are heretics in the same fashion of the arians who denied Christ's divinity.
The mainstream protestants agree with the Church in regards to the arian heresy than reject those same Fathers they agree with on other issues due to self pride and elevation of self interpretation of Bible for man centered obedience to self
If a great Church Father cannot accept the Consensus Patrum, he is evicted
This consensus was agreed upon with the dogma of Immaculate Conception as well and did not end with in the 11th century schism
Do you? Do you know what God is? The Church says that the Holy Trinity is incomprehensible to human minds and cannot be understood (or as the Orthodox like to put it "where words fall silent"). God is the Supreme Mystery, "beyond everything and all".
It must be believed. Not taught, but "revealed." So, not even the Church can describe the undescirbable, or explain the incomprehensible, or know the unknowable. No one can. For the Church, God is a supreme Mystery. Man is limited to knowng God by knowing what God is not, and not what God is.