Back to the Beginning: A Brief Introduction to the Ancient Catholic Church

The culture is now flooded with bogus scholarship whose main purpose is to put Christianity — and especially orthodox Catholicism — on the defensive. But most Catholics have no idea how to respond, and more than a few take these books and documentaries at face value. After all, they have the imprimatur of the History Channel or a large publishing house like Doubleday.

Macaulay keeps laying it on, awestruck by the Church's perdurance through the centuries. The rhetorical excess is particularly striking coming from an agnostic who regarded history as a steady climb from religious obscurantism to secular enlightenment. But Macaulay's point is always worth making: No institution in history is remotely comparable to the Catholic Church. It is a subject that well repays study. And yet most Catholics know very little about their own history.

This is unfortunate for many reasons, but especially today, when a dinner-party conversation can suddenly turn to some specious best-seller that presumes to rewrite Church history. The culture is now flooded with bogus scholarship whose main purpose is to put Christianity — and especially orthodox Catholicism — on the defensive. But most Catholics have no idea how to respond, and more than a few take these books and documentaries at face value. After all, they have the imprimatur of the History Channel or a large publishing house like Doubleday.

The media have a sharp appetite for this recycling of 19th-century, anti-clerical scholarship, and so books by scholars like Gary Wills and Elaine Pagels get maximum exposure. And then there is The Da Vinci Code, which has sold a staggering nine million copies. Both the New York Times and National Public Radio seem to think that it is based on historical fact. Even its author appears to think so. But a book that claims that Christians did not believe in the divinity of Christ until the fourth century, that a Roman emperor chose the four Gospels, that the Church executed five million witches, and that Opus Dei has monks is obviously little more than a farrago of nonsense.

We live in a sea of false historiography, and so it is worth asking: What exactly happened during the first centuries of Christianity? How did a small band of believers, starting out in a despised outpost of the Roman Empire, end up the dominant institution of the Mediterranean world? What was "primitive Christianity"? John Henry Newman became a Catholic in the course of answering that question. History, he said, is the enemy of Protestantism. It is also the enemy of the newly vigorous anti-Catholicism that circulates among our cultural elites.

The word gospel means "good news," and the first thing to say about the early Church is that its members had an urgent message for a civilization that already contained the seeds of its own demise. Early Christianity was above all a missionary enterprise, an evangelical movement in a world ripe for its teachings. At the end of his public life Christ had said to His disciples, "Go"; and, in addition to the journeys recorded in the New Testament, tradition has the apostles spreading all over the map: Thomas to Parthia and India, Andrew and John to Asia Minor, Bartholomew to south Arabia. Each may have undergone exploits as spectacular as St. Paul's, but unfortunately there was no St. Luke to record them.

Early Church Fathers like St. Augustine believed that Providence had arranged ancient history so that Christianity could spread as rapidly as possible. The Pax Romana was a remarkable achievement, and the general law and order, combined with Roman road-building, made it easier to get around Europe at the time of Tiberius and Claudius than it would be a thousand years later. There was also a widespread Hellenistic culture, which meant that many people spoke Greek. This was the legacy of Alexander the Great, who not only spread a common tongue but, like other rulers of that era, had a mania for building cities. The large concentration of urban dwellers made evangelization more efficient, and within the space of about a century we find Christianity flourishing in all the vital nerve-centers of the Roman empire, which had a population of about 60 million.

The great tipping points of history often occur beneath the radar, and it is doubtful that anyone in the year 51 noticed an itinerant rabbi from Tarsus crossing the Aegean Sea into Macedonia. But this was Christianity's entrance into Western Europe, with incalculable consequences for the future. Christopher Dawson writes that Paul's passage from Troas in Asia Minor to Philippi did more to shape the subsequent history of Europe than anything recorded by the great historians of the day. Put simply: The Faith created modern Europe, and Europe created the modern world.

What Paul and other missionaries found everywhere in the Roman Empire was a spiritual vacuum: The Roman gods, practically speaking, were dead, the victims of much scoffing from intellectuals and poets. The upper orders had turned to Stoicism — self-cultivating itself in aristocratic isolation — but this spoke only to a small minority. Others with spiritual hankerings went to more dubious sources: mystery cults, Asiatic magic, exotic neo-Platonisms, whose goal was ecstatic visions and emotional release. There was a lot of philosophical mumbo jumbo in an atmosphere of tent revivalism, with a dash of emperor worship on the side. But no matter where it turned for solace, the late classical mind was steeped in melancholy, a kind of glacial sadness; it was utterly lacking in what Catholics would call the theological virtue of hope.

Since The Da Vinci Code and other dubious best-sellers claim that early Christianity was anti-feminist, it's worth recalling that large numbers of women during these centuries thought otherwise. The Church's teachings about marriage and family, along with its strictures against divorce, abortion, and the exposure of newborn babies — all of which a pagan husband could force his wife to do, no questions asked — resonated with women who were treated like chattel under the old dispensation. In the Acts of the Apostles, Luke goes out of his way to mention female converts like Lydia and Damaris. Even at this early date, women played a key role in the Church's evangelical mission. No world religion has ever given women a more important place than Roman Catholicism. Even Protestantism would turn out to be largely a male enterprise.

These early Christians were conscious of a single responsibility that transcended and sustained all others. They were bound to preserve with the utmost fidelity what had been taught by the apostles. Long before there was a New Testament, there was a deposit of faith concerning the nature of God, His threefold personality, His purpose in making man, the Incarnation. It is already presupposed in the early letters of Paul as well as ancient documents like the Didache. Any departure from these teachings provoked the strongest possible response, and the Acts of the Apostles and most of Paul's letters show the Church facing her first doctrinal and disciplinary problems.

The determination to hold fast to "what has been handed on" (tradere, hence "tradition") is one explanation for the early Christian's veneration of the episcopal office. If there has been a revelation, then there must be an authoritative teaching office to tell us what it is. And so the role of bishops — whose job was, and still is, to teach, govern, and sanctify — was crucial from the beginning.

We do not know the precise details of how the Church's internal authority evolved in the first century. It is one of the most debated points of Church history. Protestants have an obvious bias toward an early congregationalism, but there is little evidence for this. We do know that from the original "twelve" there soon emerged a hierarchical church divided into clergy and laity. It seems that at first there were apostolic delegates, people like Timothy and Titus, who derived their authority from one of the apostles — in this case, Paul. These men governed the local churches under the apostles' direction, and, while some apostles were still on the scene, this arrangement naturally evolved into the college of bishops.

Within each city there was a single church under a bishop, who in turn was assisted by priests in the spiritual realm and deacons in the administrative. The latter devoted themselves especially to alms-giving, and a striking feature of primitive Christianity is its organized benevolence. These local churches were largely self-sufficient but would group around a mother church in the region — Antioch, Alexandria, Rome — and the bishops of each region would occasionally meet in councils. But they all considered themselves part of a universal Church — the Catholic Church, as Ignatius first called it — united in belief, ritual, and regulation.

From the earliest times we find one of these churches exercising a special role, acting as a higher authority and final court of appeal. We don't know much about the early development of the Roman church, and the lists of the first popes are not always consistent. But we do know that around the year 90 a three-man embassy bearing a letter from Rome traveled to Corinth, where there were dissensions in the local church. In that letter, Pope St. Clement speaks with authority, giving instructions in a tone of voice that expects to be obeyed. The interesting point is that the apostle John was still living in Ephesus, which is closer than Rome to Corinth. But it was Rome (at the time, a smaller diocese) that dealt with the problem. Here was the prototype of all future Roman interventions.

It is not difficult to find even liberal Catholic scholars who endorse the early primacy of Rome. In his popular history of the papacy, Saints and Sinners, Eamon Duffy writes that the apostolic succession of the Chair of Peter "rests on traditions which stretch back to the very beginning of the written records of Christianity." Around the year 180, St. Irenaeus, battling heretics who presumed to correct and supplement the Faith with their Gnostic speculations, wrote that if anyone wishes to know true Christian doctrine, he has only to find those churches with a line of bishops going back to one of the apostles. But it is simpler, and suffices, to find out the teaching of the Roman see: "For with this Church all other churches must bring themselves into line, on account of its superior authority."

The early Church was not only hierarchical, it was liturgical and sacramental. But it was above all Eucharistic. St. Ignatius, in his letter to the church at Smyrna, attacks local heretics who "abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of Our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins...." By the year 150, when St. Justin Martyr described the Sunday liturgy in some detail, all the principal elements of the Mass are in place: Scriptural readings, prayers of intercession, offertory, Eucharistic prayer, and communion. There was no need back then to remind the faithful that Sunday Mass attendance was obligatory, since they regarded the liturgy as absolutely central to their lives as Christians. It would not have occurred to them to forgo Sunday Mass for a brunch date or ballgame.

The readings at these early Masses were from both the Old Testament (then simply called "Scripture") and from many (but not all) of the documents that eventually would comprise the New Testament. And how did the New Testament canon come together? Although some Protestants seem to think otherwise, this was not a spontaneous process. Humanly speaking, it involved a lot of institutional machinery. The 27 books themselves were a kind of providential accident. Christ Himself did not write anything, nor (so far as we know) did He tell His disciples to write anything. There is, after all, something about hearing, rather than just reading, the Christian message. "Faith comes by hearing," writes Paul, who, even though a scholar, does not say "by reading." Books are wonderful evangelical tools, but it is still true that most conversions are brought about by personal witness.

In the ancient Middle East, the preferred medium for passing on the teachings of a religious master was oral, and people had strongly trained memories. Christ spoke in the traditional rhythms of Jewish speech, often using parallelisms that are easy to remember: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." The Old Testament is shot through with this kind of mnemonic device. Christ's immediate disciples probably did not write down His words during His lifetime. Being a close-knit Jewish community with a strong oral tradition, they didn't have to.

But as time went by and the Church spread out, the danger of inaccurate reporting grew. This was especially true when Christianity moved into the Greek-speaking cities of Asia Minor and Macedon, where the habit of oral transmission was not strong. So the practice of giving the earliest Christian missionaries little books, or manuals, with the sayings and miracles of Jesus may have arisen. If there was such a document, it has not survived. Yet scholars reasonably posit an ur-document they call Q, which is said to be a sourcebook for the Gospels.

But we may leave the Jesus Seminar to find out what really happened. First, the scholarly consensus is that the three synoptic Gospels were written much earlier than heterodox "experts" wish us to think: Between 50 and 65 A.D. John's Gospel was written last, perhaps as late as 95, when John, the only apostle not martyred, was a very old man. More than any documents in history, these four books have been the target of the "hermeneutics of suspicion." It is therefore worth pointing out that the four evangelists were closer to their material than were most ancient historians. The biographers of the caesars — Tacitus and Suetonius — were not better placed to get accurate information about their subject than were the evangelists about the life of Christ.

Even though the four Gospel writers differ markedly from one another and have diverse agendas — Matthew is proselytizing his fellow Jews, Luke is fact-gathering for Gentile converts, Mark relates Peter's version of events, John is responding to heresies that deny the Incarnation — the striking thing is how strong, consistent, and identifiable the personality of Christ is in all four books. C. S. Lewis remarks that in all the world's narrative literature, there are three personalities you can identify immediately if given a random and even partial quotation: Plato's Socrates, Boswell's Johnson, and Jesus Christ of the Gospels.

Most of the documents in the New Testament are ad hoc; they address specific issues that arose in the early Church, and none claims to present the whole of Christian revelation. It's doubtful that Paul even suspected that his short letter to Philemon begging pardon for a renegade slave would someday be read as Holy Scripture. Moreover, there is no list of canonical books anywhere in the Bible, nor does any book (with the exception of John's apocalypse) claim to be inspired.

Who, then, decided that these books were Scripture? The Catholic Church. And it took several centuries to do so. It was not until the letters and decrees of two popes and three regional councils near the end of the fourth century that the Catholic Church had a fixed canon. Prior to that date, scores of spurious gospels and "apostolic" writings were circulating around the Mediterranean basin: The Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, Paul's Letter to the Laodiceans, and so forth. Moreover, some texts later judged to be inspired, such as the Letter to the Hebrews, were controverted, and there were also cogent arguments to jettison the Old Testament. All these issues were sorted out by the hierarchy, and, as Augustine logically remarks, it is only on the authority of the Catholic Church that we accept any book of Scripture.

Mired in the evil of creation, the Gnostic sought liberation by joining an elite band of believers who through gnosis — arcane speculation, philosophical pirouetting, secret verbal formulas — sought to obtain Promethean control of the spiritual realm. The object was a mystical knowledge that separated the believer not only from the corrupt world but also (and even better) from his neighbors. The initiate, moreover, was above sexual taboos, since the body is of no account. The resulting mixture of hedonism and mystical exclusivity was heady stuff, and the power of Gnosticism to assimilate elements from any source — Platonism, Persian dualism, even Judaism — made it very dangerous when it encountered Christianity and tried to subsume it into a higher and more beguiling synthesis.

Gnosticism's attempt to insert itself into Christianity involved the production of its own scripture, which it tried to smuggle into the Christian canon. The most famous Gnostic text, the Gospel of Thomas, comprises 114 "secret" sayings of Jesus. You don't have to read more than a few of them to recognize that the author has simply skimmed material from the original Gospels and given it a strange "spiritual" twist. Christ is now something of a Magus, a shadowy dispenser of puzzles and gnomic utterances. He bears no resemblance to the Christ of the four evangelists.

In her best-selling books, Pagels makes much of these "forbidden gospels" whose message — despite the occasional anti-feminist hiccup — gives her a fuzzy inner feeling. It seems that the modern Gnostic can retreat into a cozy realm of the spirit and then do whatever he or she pleases. There are no dogmas or commandments to scandalize the post-Christian academic mind. Pagels plays down the intellectual rubbish in these documents, and she's not entirely forthcoming about their elitism and anti-Jewish bias. And finally, it's ridiculous to speak of the Church's exclusion of these spurious second-century documents as a power play by a self-appointed male hierarchy bent on eliminating genuine spiritual impulses. Pagels ought to read the lives of the saints, which include not a few early popes and bishops.

The Church did Western civilization a huge favor in beating back these esoteric, anti-humanist ideas, as it would in the 13th century when it crushed the Cathar heresy, another nihilistic doctrine that had blown into Europe on the winds from Persia. In fact, no institution has done more for the surrounding culture than the Catholic Church. And it is identifiably itself from the beginning. To paraphrase Hilaire Belloc, there was no such thing as a religion called "primitive Christianity." There is and always has been the Church, founded by Christ around the year 30 A.D. That Church has always been hierarchical and sacramental. And it saved Western Europe from both pagan barbarism and Eastern nihilism.

In fact, almost everything we value in our civilization — hospitals, museums, universities, the idea of human rights — is by origin Catholic. These things did not come from the Vikings or northern German tribes; they certainly did not come from the Gnostics. But our modern secular culture displays a willful amnesia on the subject of our Catholic patrimony. The technocrats currently drafting a new constitution for the European Union don't even want to hear about it. As Chesterton quipped, first Catholic, then forgotten. Perhaps we can change that by getting out a clearer picture of the splendors and perils of the early Church.

I have a question for you, since you hold to the idea that the Latins are heretics...Perhaps it will give you cause for thoughtful reflection.

As far as I know, the Eastern Orthodox Church now, and before the Great Schism, has always believed in the infallibility of the Church, correct? This infallibility, as far as I can tell, has been exercised through the college of Bishops in an Ecumenical Council. Proof of this exists in the view of Orthodoxy on the first seven Councils.

However, HOW can this position be maintained when Eastern Orthodox Bishops are in Schism from the Church, the Roman Catholic Church, which claimed infallibility? By refusing to join the Roman Catholic Church, are you not implicitly DENYING the infallibility of the Church in its ongoing decisions, which the Catholic Church had made in Ecumenical Councils SINCE Nicea?

Protestants can justify schism based on this very idea - that the Church is NOT infallible (which is the VERY THING that Eck questioned Luther on - and shut the door on any further communication - whether Councils were infallible. Luther responded "no". Eck said "then you are as a taxcollector and a heathen to me".) But what about Eastern Orthodox Christians? HOW CAN AN INFALLIBLE CHURCH FALL INTO HERESY?

Those who separate from this infallible Church were no longer catholic (meaing "according to the whole") precisely because they had separated from the visible Church. Thus, according to Bishop B.C. Butler's book, "The Church and Unity", he argues "...for {St.} Jerome, both ecclesiastical communion and doctrinal orthodoxy depend on Rome". Rome was and continues to be seen as the visible unity of the Catholic Church. The doctrine of infallibility of the Church is closely allied to the doctrine of visible indivisible unity. Since one depends on the other, again, a contradiction rears its head for the Orthodox...If the Church is NOT infallible in its doctrine, it is unable to preserve that visible unity because at some time or another, one part of the body will secede from the other.

WHO is to say authoritatively that it SHOULD NOT, if the Church is itself is not infallible? Thus, visible unity is seen to depend on infallibility, as a precondition of permanent communion within the Church. And quite naturally, the college of bishops CANNOT exercise their own charism of infallibility WITHOUT the unifying authority of the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome. Certainly, the Orthodox Bishops realize this, as they have not convened an Ecumenical Council for 1000 years without Peter.

Does the Primacy of Peter truly have no significance or relevance to the above questions? If the Church is to have an infallible authority, then that infallible authority, to be effective, must be exercised through an individual, who is Peter's successor. This charism is given to the Church by Christ HIMSELF! The Church is the continuation of the Incarnation, and thus, an indivisible visible unity and an infallible authority centered in one must be recognized as a gift from God to continue the mission of Christ and the Spirit - the calling of people into the Kingdom of God.

Your comments show very little trust in God's Divine Providence and promise to keep the Gates of Hell from prevailing on His Church. Nor do they show an understanding of the very limited action of the charism of infallibility or his use of this "power" over the other bishops.

Regards

1. I have never seen a catechism material that talks of infailability.

2. Rome chose to bring itself into heresy. This is no different for instance that they monosyphites.

3. Protestants come from they already schismatic Roman church, they are illrelevant to the discussion.

4. I don't see how this is news to you since this is the exact same position Rome has held for a thousand years. You may recall, and if not I can link you to quotes, that teh Cardinal of Paris said the Crimean war was god-pleasing for killing the [Orthodox] heretics.

5. I again ask you why if the pope has inherited the primacy of Peter why he does not exercise the same sort of absolute removal from the church Peter undoubtably would with regard to homosexual clergy abusing children. Do you honestly feel Peter would wait years until everyone weighed in, moving clergy from place to place? I sincerely doubt it, I suspect he would come down quite strongly against this sinful heresy in the priesthood. Please explain to me why the current 'heir of Peter' finds this behavior acceptable enough that he acts so slowly against it.

1. Do the Orthodox consider the first Seven Ecumenical Councils as infallible teachings or not? Simple question.

2. We are in Schism with each other. Your terms are that of polemics, not of desiring reuninification. We are not in heresy - unless you are going to say that an infallible Church is not really infallible (see question 1)

3. Protestants have a valid excuse, since they deny that the Church's infallible teachings are infallible. You, on the other hand, appear to be hypocritical by calling the Latin Church heretics, YET, proclaiming that the Church of the first millenium was infallible. Can't have it both ways, brother. Either the Church never was, or remains infallible in its teachings.

4. I can quote numerous Orthodox men who say similar things about Rome and the Latin Church. What does the Cardinal of Paris have anything to do with the question I posed to you?

5. The Pope is not sinless. Do you recall in the Scriptures when Paul found it necessary to remind Peter of his behavior in Galatians Chapter 1? The Pope apparently trusted that the bishops would do a better job of watching the flock. Isn't this the rule of thumb in the East? Allowing the Bishops to watch their own flocks without outside interference? Now, you say we should have a more centralized government of Church? Which would you prefer, NO Pope, or an overly disciplinary Pope? Seems you are arguing for BOTH simultaneously...

Granted, I would have to believe that MOST of the Popes of the past would have "come down harder" on those bishops responsible - PRESUMING that Rome even KNEW about what was happening! Do you think that the priests and bishops have some sort of daily report in to the Curia? As I said before, Rome doesn't deal with such matters until it is obvious that the Bishops can't handle things. In the sexual abuse cases, Rome allowed the US Bishops as a group to submit a plan of action - again, Rome doesn't micromanage. Rome here is not dealing with a matter of faith and morals. NO ONE ever questioned whether sexual abuse was WRONG or that the Church was taking the wrong stance! It was universally condemned. Thus, where is the "heresy"? While technically, the Bishop of Rome has the power to act within another Bishop's jurisdiction, in practice, that Bishop is expected to take care of things. You are misled in thinking that Rome has the inclination or desire to overrule the actions of how another Bishop runs his particular flock. As long as the Bishop is not teaching outright heresy, Rome generally stays out of such matters.

Shouldn't have the Bishops in the US settled the matter by themselves? Hindsight is 20/20. This says very little about the office of the Pope. At the worse, it merely says Pope John Paul II was not a disciplinary Pope (which history bears out as true. Most philosophical/scholarly Popes are not disciplinary types)

Regards

+Ignatius, +Polycarp, +Justin Martyr and +Clement of Rome then +Irenaeus. Read them prayerfully and as if you are listening to a priest give a fine sermon just to you. Don't look to find confirmation of what you believe (we all do that, its hard not to); learn what they believed. Don't look for common threads, they'll find you. Keep your bible handy.

Thanks for the advice. I had already read all of Ignatius' and Polycarp's writings. A bit of Justin and Clement. And Ireneaus, I read "Proof of Apostolic Preaching", rather than his more well-known "Against Heresies". I intend on returning to them. I think I am going to have to try to limit my time here and do more spirtual reading instead. So much to read... I think the trick is that you mention - read them prayerfully. I've read them more for information in the past. Now, that I have read some of their works and have read other people's expositions on their doctrinal teachings, I need to go back and prayerfully read them.

Thanks again for your patience and advice.

Brother in Christ

1. I fail to see the relevance.

2. The Orthodox view regarding the Catholics being in schism is shared by the Catholics in fact. The Catholic church repeatedly states that there can be no healing of the schism without other churchs confesing Catholic doctrine. The Catholic church is no more up for compromise than are the Orthodox. Heresey is black and white you either follow doctrine or don't.

3. The Latin church departed from the 7 councils when the Bishop of Rome changed the creed. Since then the Bishop of Rome has added a handful of other heretical beleifs to Catholic doctrine. Protestants and Catholics are both from the same vein of heretical addtion to doctrine after the 7 councils.

4. The fact is the Catholics have only recently stopped waging war on the Orthodox. The Cardinal of Paris made those statements before during the Crimean war, which the Catholic likely started.

5. I have repeatedly stressed that within the Latin church the pope should be exercising the patriarchial authority given a patriarch over his church. The church in America has one patriarch the one in Rome. I have said this repeatedly and it has nothing to do with a centralized church leader. The Patriarch of Moscow defrocked a priest for performing a same sex marriage. Why does the Bishop of Rome refuse to use his patriarchial authority to govern his flock? The Vatican has known about things for quite some time. The moment the matter came to the Vatican's knowledge the Bishop of Rome was responsible for doing something. There is no precedent for patriarchs knowing of heretical bishops and allowing them to continue in heresy it is the job of the patriarch to combat just that.

The Patriarch of the Latin church is the Bishop of Rome.

A case can be made for not using his power in Ukraine if in fact we are going back to the pre-1054 notion of the primacy, and the pope is viewing the Uniate church as the modern Patriach of Kiev.

Such a case cannot be made for Ameirca, the clear Patriarch of the Latin church in America is the Bishop of Rome.

1. You refuse to answer the question? Do the Orthodox consider the first seven Councils as infallible??? Why is that so hard to answer? The reason, of course, is that you do not wish to show the contradictory stance of some in the Orthodox Church who CLAIM that Rome is in heresy - they claim that the Church is infallible, then, accuse the Church of being heretics? Explain how an infallible Church can be heretics... Your refusal to answer speaks volumes.

2. There is a difference between schism and heresy. We are in Schism. YOU (not the Orthodox Church) says the Latins are heretics. Before we continue in this conversation, perhaps you should reconsider what you are saying. (see #1 above, again...)

3. Ridiculous. First, you say you don't see the relevance of whether the Councils are infallible, then you claim we are heretics for abandoning the entire first 7 Councils because a change of a couple words? Which is it? Can you make up your mind?

4. LOL!!! Next, you'll be claiming that the Pope, not Heinz Guderian, was leading the Panzers across the steppes of Russia in 1941!

5. Rome also "defrocks" or laicizes priests. Sorry it isn't to your satisfaction. NONE of the Bishops were heretics! Boy, you sure like that word, don't you. Again, I ask you to look up what it means before you give everyone that stamp... As to your "precedent", that is utterly ridiculous. Have you any knowledge of Church history? How many Arian bishops were removed after Nicea? After Constantinople? A couple? Please.

I appreciate your concern for us here in the United States. Perhaps you could pray for our bishops here. They seem more concerned with running a business than preaching and teaching the faith. But be that as it may, the Pope isn't about to remove bishops from their posts for doing lousy jobs. Only for teaching outright heresy. There is a difference between the sexual abuse cases and heresy.

Regards

1. It is irrelevant to the question of the canonical powers of the Bishop of Rome and the Vatican I hertical view of the primacy. The 7 councils have zero to do with what we are discussing. It speaks volumes about the fact they have zero to do with this discussion.

2. The schism was CAUSE BY HERESY. A beleif counter to the true doctrine of the church.

3. The Catholics are heretics, this fact and the reason behind it has been explained to you several times not simply by me.

4. You should be prepared when the Roman's history is discussed to acknowledge the violent clearly non Christian deeds some (especially in Europe) have done. To deny it makes you look ignorant of history.

5. My satisfaction? Tell that to the parents of the kids Roman priests raped. My satisfaction is irelevant. Thee pope failed to act and kids got raped and scarred for life as a result. Why? Because one man can fail and pinning the entire church on that failable man is stupid, and uncanonical.

It was the dispute between Catholics and Orthodox as to the keys of the Holy Sepulchre that immediately caused the Crimean War (1853).

That's from a Catholic Site:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08364a.htm

"B.) The Cause of the War
In December 1852 the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, giving in on French pressure, transferred the key to (and control over) the CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE (hitherto Orthodox) to the Catholic Church. Russia, claiming to be the protector of the Orthodox christians living in the Ottoman Empire, demanded it to be restored to the Greek Orthodox Church. Britain and France were opposed to an expansion of Russian influence in the region and dispatched a fleet to the Dardanelles (June 1853); in August, the Russians occupied the Duchies of MOLDAVIA and VLACHIA.

http://www.zum.de/whkmla/military/19cen/crimeanwar.html

In 1690 the Ottoman Sultan granted to the Roman Catholic Church the dominant authority in all the churches in Nazareth, Bethlehem and Jerusalem; then in 1740 a Franco-Turkish treaty stated that Roman Catholic monks should protect the Holy Places. This was intended to ensure the safety of Christians and to enable pilgrimages to Jerusalem; furthermore, the French had asserted their right to rebuild the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem as a Catholic church. However, between 1740 and 1820 the influence of the Roman Catholic Church had been allowed to lapse by natural erosion: there were not many Roman Catholics in that part of the world and Christians tended to belong to the Eastern Orthodox Church. Consequently, protection of the Holy Places had gradually devolved to Orthodox monks. Russia represented the Orthodox Church as its protector and Czar Nicholas I seems to have thought that he had been ordained by God as the leader of the Orthodox Church and the protector of Orthodox Christians. By the 1840s, Russian pilgrims were flocking to the Holy Land, which gave the Czar the excuse to demand that the Russians should be able to provide some form of protection for his subjects there.

Map of the Ottoman Empire. The map has been taken from the Ottoman Souvenir website with the kind permission of the webmaster, Musa Gursoy, to whom thanks are due. Copyright, of course, remains with the Ottoman Souvenir web. Click on the image for a larger view

In 1850, Louis Napoleon of France decided to champion the cause of Roman Catholics to control the Holy Places; technically he was within his rights but his demands on behalf of the Church allowed him to divert attention from problems in France and also helped him to advocate the idea of a second French Empire. In order to win the support of the majority of the French, Louis Napoleon needed to be seen as a 'good Catholic'; he also wanted to wreak his revenge on Czar Nicholas I for the insult of "mon ami" rather than the traditional "mon frère".

Traditionally, the Pope nominated the Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem but over many years the office had become a meaningless title; the Patriarch did nothing and lived in Rome. However, in 1847, Pope Pius IX -- who had been elected the previous year -- sent the Patriarch to live in Jerusalem because in 1845 the Orthodox Patriarch Cyril had chosen to go to live in the city. In 1847 and 1848 there were unseemly scuffles between Catholic and Orthodox Christian monks and priests in Jerusalem; the representatives of the Orthodox Church emerged truimphant: for example, at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, Catholics had placed a silver star to commemorate the place of Jesus' birth. It was prised out and stolen, allegedly by Orthodox monks.

http://www.victorianweb.org/history/crimea/immcauses.html

Let me try this one more time.

The reason why I ask about whether the first seven Councils are considered infallible (which they are) by the Orthodox is because then it would be a contradiction for YOU to call the Latin Church "heretical". You did it again in question #2. Your attitude completely ignores that you contradict yourself, over and over. It IS relevant!

HOW CAN AN INFALLIBLE CHURCH BECOME HERETICAL?

IF a Church can become heretical, how can you claim that the first seven Councils were infallible, then???

Can you answer that question? Can you now understand the relevance of my question? IF the Orthodox consider that the First Seven Councils are infallible, HOW ON EARTH could the eighth one NOT be INFALLIBLE? And the NINTH? And so forth. Thus, Vatican ONE IS Infallible. Whether you like it or not, simply denying it won't work. As I have stated before, the Church ALSO has always believed that Rome is the utlimate visible protector of the faith - even back to St. Ireneaus and the men of that era.

Now, the formula, the words of infallible statements can be written to better reflect the Church of 2005 - but the fact remains that the Church has ALWAYS believed itself as infallible - especially in its counciliar statements. Our beliefs are infallible, not the statement or words themselves. Thus, it IS relevant to our discussions.

2. We don't believe anything contrary to Nicea. This has been explained numerous times. The WORDS are not infallible. It is our belief itself that is infallible. One can only explain your intransigence by the fact that you hate the Catholic Church, despite your denials.

3. Those that claim the Catholic Church are heretical don't know what they are talking about either. This is simply explained by question #1, which you can't understand the relevance for...

4. Is it necessary to post the sins of the Orthodox members? You can keep your hypocriticism to yourself, please.

5. THREE POPES failed to act? Please. And are we to deny that there has never been a scandalous act by an Orthodox priest who was never removed from office? Hardly. Yes, the Pope can fail. ALL MEN can fail. But no one ever denied that. AGAIN, you continue to misunderstand Catholic teachings. Try to read this slowly... The Pope is not perfect. Got it? The Pope is infallible only in his official statements on faith and morals when speaking from his apostolic chair. These statements are quite rare, only made twice in 150 years. So please try to understand that. By the way, this IS canonical and infallibly stated by an infallible Church.

One final reflection for you. Why, when communities separate from the Catholic Church, such as the Coptics, were declared as heretical - but when the Orthodox separated from the Catholic Church, the Catholic Church became heretical? Quite ridiculous and arrogant, I might add. Where in Church history is the Eastern Church the determiner for what is orthodox throughout the entire Church?

Regards

1. Do you deny that the official Catholic view of the Orthodox church is that it is heretical?

2. From Orthodoxwiki on the 8th Council(You're Catholic I'll let you find and quote the official Catholic View:

Eighth Ecumenical Council
The Eighth Ecumenical Council was a reunion council held at Constantinople in 879-880. This council was originally accepted and fully endorsed by the papacy in Rome (whose legates were present at the behest of Pope John VIII), but later repudiated by Rome in the 11th century, retroactively regarding the robber council of 869-870 to be ecumenical. The council of 879-880 affirmed the restoration of St. Photius the Great to his see and anathematized any who altered the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, thus condemning the Filioque.

[edit]
Ecumenical?

This council is not regarded as ecumenical by all Orthodox Christians, but some major voices in the Orthodox world do so, including 20th century theologians Fr. John S. Romanides and Fr. George Metallinos (both of whom refer repeatedly to the "Eighth and Ninth Ecumenical Councils"), Fr. George Dragas, Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos) of Nafpaktos.
Further, the Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs refers explicitly to the "Eighth Ecumenical Council" regarding the synod of 879-880 and was signed by the patriarchs of Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria as well as the Holy Synods of the first three.
Those who regard these councils as ecumenical often characterize the limitation of Ecumenical Councils to only seven to be the result of Jesuit influence in Russia, part of the so-called "Western Captivity of Orthodoxy."
An interesting external attestation to the consideration of this synod to be the Eighth Ecumenical Council is the Roman Catholic Church's Catholic Encyclopedia (1907), which describes the council of 879-880 as the "Pseudosynodus Photiana," noting that the "Orthodox count [it] as the Eighth General Council."[1][2]

The Catholics seemed to think the 8th was failable.

With regard to your last sentiment you fail to acknowledge the Catholic church also considers any schismatic church to be heretical. Certainly the Copts similarly consider the Orthodox and the Catholics to be heretical. There is nothing at all odd about that. The Bishop of Rome left in heresy [heresy being beleifs against the doctrine of the church].

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