But we Orthodox are no less to blame for having dropped our catholic name, save at Baptism or when reciting the Creed or the Prayer for the Catechumens.
I don't think most people even notice it. And in Slavonic churches, the Greek word is translated into соборност (sobornost), so that the word "catholic" is never actually mentioned unless it is in reference to the Roman Catholic.
I have heard a few Serbs in America object to English liturgy precisely because the word "Catholic" is used liturgically for "fear" that it would be "misconstrued."
You hardly ever hear any Orthodox clergyman refer to EOC as "Catholic" for fear of being misidentified (is that a "bushism?") as "Greek-Catholic" or "Byzantine-Catholic," etc.
The idea that we are a Catholic Church not in communion with the Bishop of Rome has completely evaporated over centuries, especially in the past one hundred or so years. The whole idea that there is One Church in which some bishops do not commune with others, is completely obliterated.
That we are one Church is without a doubt. How else can we explain that priests who cross from one communion to the other do not need to be re-ordained, unless it is one and the same Church? The same doesn't hold for the "priests" of other "branches." Anglican priests who choose to return to the Church are always re-ordained in the East and in the West.
When we start to think of each other (again) as One Church, in disagreement (which can be resolved in a General Council), and when we treat each other as family who don't see eye to eye on some issues in the house, but not as two different households, perhaps using the word Orthodox and Catholic will not be restricted to capital letters or as exclusive lables for one communiyt or the other.
When we begin to refer to our Church as Catholic, and Latin rite Catholics begin to refer to +Ignatius as an Orthodox saint, proclaiming a Catholic Faith, or when we say that +Leo the Great is an Orthodox Saint (which he is) instead of "the Pope," the idea that the Church is Orthodox and the Faith is Catholic may sink in again.
Much sense to me.
Would you be willing to Freepmail to me your own personal translation of Mat 24—the verse about “this generation” and if you are generous, the verse before it?
If too bothersome, no sweat.
Thx,