Posted on 09/30/2004 4:42:17 PM PDT by Destro
Metropolitan Lwanga Eyes Orthodox African Seat (The First Black Pope?)
ORTHODOX MISSION IN TROPICAL AFRICA (Evangelizing Africa to Orthodoxy the old fashioned way)
In contrast, Peck said, the essence of Orthodoxy has remained unchanged since it was born in the first century.
Artificial methods of birth control are forbidden in the Orthodox Church. (Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Church, 1963, p. 302)
Concerning contraceptives and other forms of birth control, differing opinions exist within the Orthodox Church. In the past birth control was in general strongly condemned, but today a less strict view is coming to prevail, not only in the west but in traditional Orthodox countries. Many Orthodox theologians and spiritual fathers consider that the responsible use of contraception within marriage is not in itself sinful. In their view, the question of how many children a couple should have, and at what intervals, is best decided by the partners themselves, according to the guidance of their own consciences. (Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Church, 1993, p. 302)
The Orthodox don't constantly change their doctrine. Right.
The Christian Church was a single entity until 1054, when it split into two parts, Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy.
What about the non-Chalcedonian Orthodox or the Assyrian Church of the East?
Our newest liturgy is 1,300 years old.
The Divine Liturgy of St. Tikhon, based on the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, is certainly not 1,300 years old.
The issue of contraception is a straw man.
The Very Rev. John Peck said "the essence of Orthodoxy" has not changed - essence is a way of seeing things and coming to conclusions.
If I can offer my flawed explanation - The Orthodox are not like the fundamentalist Muslims who remained locked in their doctrine unchanged to the very letter. Orthodoxy can change because the Orthodox know that they are humans and humans are flawed beings. Ecumenical councils for example came about in order to remove errors that flawed human beings introduced into the Church.
In the world of the Roman Empire, the Greek word liturgy meant ‘any public work’ or ‘work done for the common good’. Thus the freemen stood in the forum, voted, and took part in the liturgy or public work of the Roman state. The assembly of Christians, free and slave, who stood in the church building and prayed, was a work done for the spiritual welfare and well-being of all, and was called the Divine Liturgy. The prayers of the Orthodox Church’s Liturgy are believed to uphold the whole world.
The Church’s Liturgy is divided into three parts: the preparation, the Liturgy of the Word (or Liturgy of the Catechumens), and the Liturgy of the Eucharist (or the Liturgy of the Faithful). The preparation is that part of the Liturgy when the bread and wine are prepared for the Eucharistic service. The Liturgy of the Word is much like the Jewish synagogue service, which consists of prayers, psalms and hymns, scripture readings, and a sermon. Catechumens [those preparing to enter the Body of Christ, the Church] were allowed to attend the Liturgy of the Word. Fulfilling the Lord’s commandment, the Liturgy of the Eucharist imitates what Christ did at the Last (Mystical) Supper, and by the power of the Holy Spirit changes bread and wine into the Body and Blood of the Lord. This Liturgy of the Faithful is closed to the catechumens. Only initiated Orthodox Christians are allowed to attend and receive the Eucharist.
This part changes of course (what is prayed, what hymns are used, what scripture is read, etc) and this is what you were linking.
If your argument is that the essence of the Divine Liturgy as a sacrifice of praise, thanksgiving and propitiation to God hasn't changed, of course we agree.
But that doesn't make sense in the context of saying that the liturgy hasn't changed in 1,300 years (it would be 1,970 years or so since the institution of the Eucharist) or comparing it to the 1970 reform of the Roman Missal.
"This Liturgy of the Faithful is closed to the catechumens. Only initiated Orthodox Christians are allowed to attend and receive the Eucharist."
Absolutely untrue!
Shame on you. I found that statement very accurate. Catholics were the "protestants" to the Orthodox - it is they who protested and changed Orthodox doctrine and left the Church. I have made this case many a time on here in the past.
The priest in the article said: "To the Orthodox, Catholicism is the Protestant Church,” he said. “It’s Orthodox-lite. I don’t mean that in a bad way. The framework of Catholic services is Orthodox. The Roman Church doesn’t do anything the way they did 100 years ago, let alone 500 or 1,000 years ago.”
Kolokotronis responded: "What a ridiculous, ignorant remark. Is this what the OCA is ordaining these days? A man who doesn't understand Greek, or Slavonic or Arabic; a man who carries his protestant baggage along with him into Orthodoxy so he can publicly, and undoubtedly privately, spread that "Catholicism is Protestantism" tripe among the Laos tou Theou; a man 5 years since baptism and/or chrismation and they make him a priest?
To the Roman Catholic readers of this thread, my family has been Orthodox at least 1700 years. I think I understand the Orthodox Faith and phronema. This "priest" is a disgrace. I am ashamed that he is identified with our ancient and Holy Church. To my Orthodox brethren, see what happens when in haste to ordain some overly pious newbie convert we end up not with a good Orthodox priest, but some American Protestant swinging the theemeato and pretending its 19th century Russia!"
And I am glad for Kolokotronis' response!
To the Orthodox, Catholics are not Protestants. Our churches are less beautiful, out liturgy has been foreshortened and the mystery taken all out of it, and we've mangled some doctrines by ill-advised innovations (in the Orthodox view, of course, and in the view of not a few traditionalist Catholics!), but we are still identifiably Christians of the sacraments and the sacred Tradition in Orthodox eyes. There is a strain of bad doctrine, perhaps even heresy (again, in Orthodox eyes) among us Latins, but we are not Protestants, nor even close to being Protestants.
We're the evil twin. Protestants are the country cousins.
The Creed of course a central part of the Liturgy and since then the Orthodox have not diverted from the 8 councils. The general councils after this date were no longer called Ecumenical, but rather Pan-Orthodox Councils. They have added on to them with Pan-Orthodox Councils which do not in any way negate or update the 8 previous councils and the Orthodox consider these councils binding only to Orthodox.
The Orthodox will not call a council ecumenical unless the Bishop of Rome is present and won't happen since the Western Church is in schisim and heretical in the eyes of the Orthodox.
I see no difference in Father Luthor nailing his theses to the church door to the act Pope Leo IX's legate, Cardinal Humbert, delivering a Bull of Excommunication to the Orthodox Patriarch Michael Cerularius on the altar of the Church of the Holy Wisdom at Constantinople while the patriarch prepared to celebrate the Divine Liturgy, condemning him and his court. Without waiting for a response, Humbert exited the church and declared, "Let God look and judge."
If you call the part about "initiated Orthodox Christians are allowed to attend" part untrue - yes they can be in Church observing the service - I think the journalist mixed up that a little - but this following part is 100%true "Only initiated Orthodox Christians are allowed to receive the Eucharist".
Can you provide proof that this Council was approved by the Pope? Even in the Orthodox model the Council has to be approved by all five patriarchs before it becomes ecumenical.
"The Catholics are protestant since they protested the Orthodox not accepting the Frankish innovation of the Filioque clause to the Creed.
I see no difference in Father Luthor nailing his theses to the church door to the act Pope Leo IX's legate, Cardinal Humbert, delivering a Bull of Excommunication to the Orthodox Patriarch Michael Cerularius on the altar of the Church of the Holy Wisdom at Constantinople while the patriarch prepared to celebrate the Divine Liturgy, condemning him and his court. Without waiting for a response, Humbert exited the church and declared, 'Let God look and judge.'"
Interesting that you see no difference, because the difference is rather obvious. Martin Luther was a priest. He actually did have some valid points, but he went over the top in expressing them. He was just a priest who did not even colorably have the authority to do as he did.
By contrast, Pope Leo IX was the Pope, the leader of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, which at the time included both the East and the West. The Orthodox Church to this day recognizes that in a reunited Church, the Pope is primus inter pares, the first among equal, the leader who should call Church Councils, etc.
Where agreement breaks down, and broke down then, was over the EXTENT of the Pope's power. Nobody pretended then that the Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople were exactly equal. The Pope was primus inter pares - first among equals. The question was "How much first?" Did the Seat of Peter, with its "Power of the Keys" have as much power as Leo IX rashly asserted in excommunicating the Patriarch of Constantinople?
The Catholics thought then, and think now: Yes.
The Orthodox thought then, and think now: No.
But that is not a Catholic "protest" of anything. It was an assertion of Papal power that was, and remains, in dispute. Certainly one can go all the way back into Eusebius, writing in the 300s about the earlier Pope Victor's threat to excommunicate from the entire Church the adherents to a certain heresy. He was prevailed upon by cooler heads not to do that, but Eusebius does not himself indicate any doubt but that the Pope COULD have done such a thing (unwise though it may be), and the reaction of the other clergymen trying to talk the Pope out of doing that also indicates that they, at least, understood that the Pope COULD do such a thing even back then before the Constantine conversion.
I am not trying to argue here that Leo was RIGHT in doing as he did. Personally, I think that it was a hotheaded, rash and terribly destructive move, and the world would be better off today if he had restrained himself. Nor am I even really interested in arguing that the Pope had, or didn't have, the power he asserted when he excommunicated the Patriarch of Constantinople.
I note that this was not the moment of permanent separation from of East and West. East and West came to temporary union again from time to time all the way until the Council of Florence, in the mid-1400s. These temporary reunifications were almost completely political, and fell apart again as soon as a fresh insult came, but in 1054 the Catholic and Orthodox Churches did not definitively split. And they still danced around reconciliation and reunification until the 1400s and the fall of Constantinople to the Turks.
That's why the Protestant/Catholic split is not comparable to the Catholic/Orthodox split. In the former case, there was no pretence of authority to do what Luther did. Rather, he asserted what amounted to natural law rights to leave what he saw as a corrupt Church. But in the case of the Catholic and Orthodox, there was a real doctrinal dispute over the extent of real authority which both sides acknowledged could be legitimate in certain cases.
To make it clear, NO mere priest of EITHER the Catholic or Orthodox Church could go nail up a bunch of new doctrines on any Church door in either Church and start proclaiming himself the head of a new Church. That would be obvious heresy and "protestant" separation.
By contrast, suppose the problem between the Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople was not over a doctrinal point but something more fundamental. Suppose the Patriarch had gone made, proclaimed the Emperor a God and commanded Hagia Sophia into an altar for sacrifices of children to Molech. In that case, nobody in Eastern Christendom would have objected...indeed they would have applauded...had the Pope exercised his inchoate primus inter pares authority to excommunicate the mad patriarch and remove him from his seat. Of course had the Pope then gone further and asserted the right to handpick and place the patriarch's successor, that would have been the sort of issue of power over local church governance that might well have provoked the Schism.
My point is simple enough: the problem was not that the Pope had absolutely no basis at all in asserting the power to excommunicate a Patriarch over a fine point of doctrine. It was, rather, that the extent of the Pope's powers, and limits thereon...the parameters of how far "primus inter pares" extended and where it stopped...were NOT completely clear. Pope and Patriarch each asserted conflicting positions and ran the issue to the point that it exploded. Each was convinced he was in the right on theories within the Church. Luther, by contrast, knew he had no basis at all in canon law to do as he was doing, and instead of arguing one, he said that canon law itself was flawed and that he would stand to found a church that would produce a whole new set of rules, change the sacraments, etc.
When Rome and Constantinople clashed, and clash, each is asserting a legal position within an established traditional system which BOTH want to preserve intact. They just have differing views about the parameters of what the tradition really was.
I think it is hurtful for modern Catholics to call the Eastern Orthodox either schismatics or heretics. They are neither. And I think it is hurtful for Eastern Orthodox to pretend that Catholics are Protestants with no basis of argument for anything that they have done. It's not fair, and it is not helpful, and it isn't even true. We are not that different. Christ prayed for our unity. It is incumbent on us, therefore, to avoid repeating another iteration of hotheaded old Pope Leo and his Patriarchal counterpart, and insteading of trying to excommunicate each other all over again, to remember what Jesus wants of us and seek, rather, ways that can reconcile us. Calling each other names that aren't even really descriptive of the real history is not going to help reconcile us.
The Catholic disctionary: Eighth Ecumenical Council: Constantinople IV (869)
The Fourth General Council of Constantinople, under Pope Adrian II and Emperor Basil numbering 102 bishops, 3 papal legates, and 4 patriarchs, consigned to the flames the Acts of an irregular council (conciliabulum) brought together by Photius against Pope Nicholas and Ignatius the legitimate Patriarch of Constantinople; it condemned Photius who had unlawfully seized the patriarchal dignity. The Photian Schism, however, triumphed in the Greek Church (whatever that means - Catholic spin I guess), and no other general council took place in the East.
The last part means that according to the Catholics their councils were THEE ecumenical councils after that. The Catholics recognize 21 Ecumenical councils!!! - 13 more "ecumenical" councils after the 8th and true last one!
Again from the Catholic dictionary online:
It appears that what the Catholic spin means by "The Photian Schism, however, triumphed in the Greek Church" is that the Orthodox called the Latins heretics as Photius once did.
"We see, too, how well Photius's idea of calling Latins heretics had been learned. Caerularius had a list, a longer and even more futile one, of such accusations. His points were different from those of Photius; (So how can that be the same schisim!! Shame on the Catholic encyclopedia compilers) he had forgotten the Filioque - (At this point I have to laugh. The Patriarch could not forget what never existed in the Creed!)".
As a discussion topic I have also postulated the theory that the Latin Rite (or as I like to call it after it became such - the Frankish-Latin Rite) went like the "protestants" over the adoption of the filioque clause innovation.
As you wrote, Martin Luther was just a priest but had no authority to do as he did and introduce innovation outside of the council systen. My point is that the Pope, without calling a Church Council also adopted what the Orthodox still see as an innovation to the faith when he had no authority to do so. Being "First among Equals" does not grant any Pope the authority of an ecumenical council.
"What Orthodox church do you belong to that will give the communion of the Bood and Blood of Christ to someone unbaptised in the Orthodox Church?"
What you said was:""This Liturgy of the Faithful is closed to the catechumens. Only initiated Orthodox Christians are allowed to attend and receive the Eucharist."
I am Greek Orthodox. We do not give communion to people who have not been chrismated. Other than at a Pre-sanctified Liturgy during Great Lent, when have you ever seen a priest announce, "Let the Catechumens depart. Let all Catechumens depart...." and even then have you ever seen anyone actually leave or met a priest who expects them too? Our entire Liturgy is open to whomsoever wishes to respectfully attend.
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