Posted on 12/11/2014 6:31:51 AM PST by marshmallow
Makes sense. Francis doesn't speak the Truth and tell anyone they must be Catholic.
By "Church, of course you mean the ROMAN Church. Hardly a different model, the so-called "Holy" Roman Empire ruled Europe for over a thousand years, the Roman Church and secular Rome as one. Hardly the kind of oneness that Jesus spoke of in John 17.
As to the individual vs the collective, obedient faith is strictly a personal thing. Nobody else can have it for you. Even if we assemble together with other who do have faith, their faith is not mine as if by osmosis, I still have to have it for myself.
“Francis doesn’t speak the Truth and tell anyone they must be Catholic.”
Why, pray tell, would anyone, Pope or otherwise, think it necessary to tell an Orthodox Christian, a member of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church (our term, by the way), that he or she must become a “Catholic”?
“It is wonderful to hear positive feedback from Orthdox Metropolitan Ioannis. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything like that before from the East.”
He and +BXVI are and have been close for years. He is the EP’s point man in the dialogs with the Church of Rome. I ahve been told by a member of the synod at Constantinople that he is also close to and re3spects +Francis, as do most Orthodox I know.
It isn't. Jesus was speaking of the faith. And Holy Roman Empire, or no, the faith is one. Secular models of government, democracy, republicanism have nothing to teach the Church. The Church is a top-down, not a bottom-up construct.
As to the individual vs the collective, obedient faith is strictly a personal thing. Nobody else can have it for you. Even if we assemble together with other who do have faith, their faith is not mine as if by osmosis, I still have to have it for myself.
None of which is in dispute, but it begs the question; which faith? One which is some form of personal construct or one which was handed down from Jesus to the Apostles?
Thank you for your feedback. It's most interesting.
Because that is Traditional Catholic teaching and popes are supposed to uphold Catholic teaching. According to Catholic teaching, the Orthodox is in schism. I don’t expect you to agree.
“According to Catholic teaching, the Orthodox is in schism. I don’t expect you to agree.”
Of course there’s a schism, and you folks are welcome back anytime....
The foregoing notwithstanding, what does the schism have to do with who is or is not a member of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church? The fact that our bishops and your bishops are not in communion has nothing, from a theological stand point, to do with the validity of your sacraments or ours. Indeed, as I am informed, I am welcome to receive any sacrament from your priests. If I am not “Catholic”, how can that be?
It wasn’t always that way. Pre-Vatican II schismatics were not allowed to receive Catholic sacraments. This is just another example of how New Church deviates from Traditional Catholicism.
And that has always been my concern in this thread. It wasn’t meant to get into an argument or debate with you.
I in all honesty haven’t looked at our exchange as a debate or an argument. I was simply curious about your understanding.
“Pre-Vatican II schismatics were not allowed to receive Catholic sacraments.”
Latins still are not allowed to receive sacraments in the Orthodox Church precisely because they are schismatics, but not because they are not Catholic. It has been observed that the Latin Church these days looks at allowing me, for example, to receive communion as a “means towards unity” while we look at such reception by me, or you for that matter were it allowed by us, as a false symbol of a unity which does not yet exist.
And you know what? Even though we are on the opposite sides of the “Schism” and I believe the Catholic Church is the True Church, I do think you guys are correct in not allowing communion to those outside of your church, etc. The Latin Church, as you call it, should NEVER have changed its practices to allow non-Catholics to receive communion.
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