In researching our differences, I came across the following statement which immediately struck home.
"Latin Catholicism tends to be overly intellectualized, due to it's humanistic foundation. Orthodoxy tends to be both "mystical" and "ascetical," due to it's theanthropic foundation. This issue is perhaps the key difference between the two Churches since almost all the other differences, to at least some extent, emanate from this difference."
Holophotal
There are many ways to be a Catholic. When people think of Catholicism, they too often think that the Tradition of Roman Catholicism is the only way that Catholics live out their faith commitment. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth. There are in fact many Catholics whose spiritual, liturgical, historical, even disciplinary Traditions are closer to the Eastern Traditions of the Church and the Eastern origins of Christianity.
Since March of this year, I have been attending a Maronite Catholic Church, with theological roots in Ancient Antioch. The Maronite liturgy begins with calling on God's mercy, whereas the Latin Rite liturgy begins with "let us call to mind our sins." Though the distinction may be subtle, the difference is profound. The Maronites also acknowledge their sinfulness, but greater stress is laid on God's mercy. As one prayer says, "Your mercy, O Lord, is greater than the weight of the mountains..."
As a Roman Catholic attending an Eastern Catholic Rite liturgy, I have been truly captivated by the eastern traditions. They speak to the heart and soul, rather than trying to appeal to the intellectual.
<"Latin Catholicism tends to be overly intellectualized, due to it's humanistic foundation. Orthodoxy tends to be both "mystical" and "ascetical," due to it's theanthropic foundation. This issue is perhaps the key difference between the two Churches since almost all the other differences, to at least some extent, emanate from this difference.">
EXCELLENT!!!
NYer wrote: "As a Roman Catholic attending an Eastern Catholic Rite liturgy, I have been truly captivated by the eastern traditions. They speak to the heart and soul, rather than trying to appeal to the intellectual."
I agree. The Eastern rites have equal worth. And the sacraments in Eastern and Western rites are the same sacraments, and efficacious for improving grace and finding salvation.
The different intellectual and organizational thrusts of the different Churches are cultural and historical. Remember where the Eastern Church grew up: in the ancient, urbanized, sophisticated East, where the pyramids and the other ancient wonders towered over men and had been there longer than the time between us and Christ! Also, remember that in the East there were, and are, different cultural and political centers with millions of people: Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, the ancient cities of Greece.
Now look at the ancient West. There was one civilized nation: Rome. Everywhere else were frank, utter barbarians, and very nasty and savage barbarians too. Where there was sophistication and the possibility of debate and persuasive conversion in the East, the potential converts within the Western Empire were semi-civilized conquered Celts. And the potential converts outside of the Empire were violent savages that had to be turned back by the legionaries' swords even as the missionaries attempted to make headway among them.
Before the conversion of the Empire, the Western Church bore the brunt of particularly violent persecution, since the Seat of Peter was also in the City of Nero. After conversion, the Imperial Court itself shifted from violent Rome to the more peaceable and sophisticated East.
And then, it was the West that was utterly overrun by Germanic tribesmen, and left without the civil guard. The Church had to convert these tribesmen alone, and it had to do it with persuasion; it lacked the Emperor's legions to fend off the darkness. The more settled and sophisticated East would not experience the shock and horror of swimming in a sea of enemies, with enemy rulers, until the Muslim invasion centuries later.
The Western Patriarch, at Rome, had a particular set of regional challenges to deal with at a particular time in history. The histories of the East and West are not simply different because of (later) political and theological disputes. They are different because the whole course of events was radically different, and the enemies and challenges faced were different. The flock of the West was composed of semi-civilized barbarians, and nearly uncivilized barbarians, and Romans themselves, all of whom (because of each other) were organized for war, with clear command structures and clear authority. Greece and the East were lands of philosophy and trade. Rome and the West were lands of law and war. Christianity did not create either starting condition, but the different parts of Christianity had to adapt to meet the conditions of their regional flock. Of course the West had to be monarchical! When the Empire fell, what was the choice? Odoacer was an Arian barbarian. Vandal and Ostrogoth and Langobard, Angle, Saxon and Jute were warriors following leaders and customary laws. If the Patriarch of Rome did not buckle together the Western Church as a church militant, and military, with its own laws and its own chain of command...and use its own organization and structure to overawe the barbarian mind and make him adopt the Church's law as his own, the Catholic Church would not have survived. The monarchical church was a product of history, and it existed for half a millenium before the first schism.
I note too that the Schism of 1054 was not final and absolute. There were moments of reunification. The final schism which has not yet been repaired only occurred with the repudiation of the Council of Florence in the 1500s.
The Church cannot reunify by imposing the Western monarchic Church on the East. That was the primary cause of the Schism in the first place. And it cannot reunify by imposing all of the Eastern norms on the Western Church. The Western Church survived in the face of an environment of incredible hostility...Nero and the Visigoths!...BECAUSE OF the distinct features it evolved to meet the threats in the violent and barbaric West.
The Eastern traditions suit the East. The Western traditions suit the West. They do not need to be imposed, one upon the other.
Frankly, there are features of the East that the West could use as modern innovations. For example, the greater authority of the laity over bishops. With the terrible sexual abuse scandals in the Western Church, and the connivance in secrecy on the part of bishops, the easy assumption of old Catholicism that the Bishops know best has been fatally disproven. They have proven themselves not just fallible and venal, but actually complicit in covering up evil. The monarchic model of episcopal authority without check by the laity was necessary and worked in the face of Ostrogoth, Visigoth, Nero and Commodus. But in the face of the individual temptations in the flesh posed by Satan, it has actually proved a HINDRANCE to cleaning up the clergy. The greater participation of the laity in episcopal decision taking that is de rigeur in the Orthodox Church would not have worked in the Catholic Church of the West circa 800 AD, or perhaps even 1700 AD. But the full monarchic Church with bishops unanswerable to the Catholic laity DOES NOT WORK in AMERICA circa 2004 AD. There are, what, 20,000...30,000...100,000 raped boys to prove it. And no, we cannot just overlook that and pretend that everything will be ok if we just soldier on under the traditional governmental rule of the Church. The traditional governmental rule of the Western church: clear monarchical authority, was ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY in the barbaric West of old. The Latin Rite has nothing to apologize for, because it was this organization and priestly celibacy that allowed it to withstand the hurricane that overcame the Western Empire, but not the Western Church. Indeed, it was precisely because of this monarchic, powerful organization that it was the Western Church able to come to the aid of the Eastern Church in the first onslaught of the Muslims.
But the organization of yesteryear is a hindrance today.
That bishops should not be answerable to their flock at all is NOT a theological or sacramental issue. It is a disciplinary matter. Rome made it that way, for good reasons, and Rome can change that now, for good reasons. If that simultaneously restores confidence and moral control over the episcopate in America and elsewhere so traumatized by abuse AND makes reconciliation with the East much, much easier to achieve, then there can be no objection to it other than stubbornness. And stubbornness is not a godly virtue on matters such as this.
Without the monarchic Latin Church, the Muslims would have won at Tours and in Southern Italy, and Vienna, and swept Europe into Islam. Without the monarchic Latin Church, the Mongols would have ravaged not just Russia, but swept through Poland as well. Without the monarchic Western Church, Europe would have been the center of an aggressive Arian Empire. Without the monarchic Western Church, Scandinavian paganism would have burnt the Atlantic seaboard to the ground, instead of turning Viking and Angle into Christians. The West cannot, and should not, apologize for the way it organized itself to defend Christ's Church.
But that was then.
Today, the problem is not Visigoths, Vandals, Vikings and the hordes of the Caliphate. It is the predations of Satan from within, and the scattering of the flock. For that, we in the West do need to unbuckle our literal body armor and sheath our literal sword and mace, and look to our own brethren WITHIN the Church to heal the wounds within. Paradoxically, the very weapons of command and control which the Latin Church required to resist lightning bolt after lightning bolt from without, are like a heavy axe: fitter to bruise than to polish when used within. We cannot go about issuing imperious commands to each other within the Church. IT DOES NOT WORK. And we cannot simply turn to the men in the mitres with unconditional trust: they let the priests rape our little boys for 50 years. We have to have some say, some control.
The East knows how to do this, and it is our duty to the Catholic Church that we learn from them how.
Seriously.
The problem is not theological. It is organizational.