A Note for Evangelicals Considering Rome

A Note for Evangelicals Considering Rome By Clark Carlton Sooner or later, Protestants who are serious about their faith - serious about what it means to be a Christian and to be a member of the Church - begin to look beyond the borders of their limited denominational existence for a more profound spirituality, a God-centered experience of worship, and a concrete sense of belonging to an historical Christian community. In the 1970s this searching gave rise to a movement called Catholic Evangelicalism. This was a movement among Evangelicals to recover their lost catholic heritage while remaining within their Protestant denominations.1

This movement reached a high point with a gathering of 46 Evangelical leaders in 1977. The resulting Chicago Call was a challenge to the Evangelical world to take the past seriously and to recover much of traditional Christian life that had been thrown out with the bath water during the Reformation.2 Interestingly, however, several of the high profile signers of the Chicago Call discovered that they could not recover their catholic roots while remaining Protestant. Some became Orthodox and some, Thomas Howard in particular, became Roman Catholic.3

While Evangelical voices such as Christianity Today tried to pass these conversions off as romantic flights of fancy, the number of conversions continues to increase.4 More recently, two prominent American Lutherans have converted: (now Father) Richard John Neuhaus, author of The Naked Public Square, became a Roman Catholic, and Yale historian Jaroslav Pelikan became Orthodox.5

In short, there has been a definite movement, particularly among clergy and intellectuals, from Protestantism toward what may be termed the catholic tradition. The question that faces Protestants looking for the catholic tradition, however, is which Church embodies it: the Roman Catholic Church or the Orthodox Church?

In order to help Evangelicals make a reasoned evaluation of these rival claims, it would be beneficial to examine the reasons why some Evangelicals choose Roman Catholicism over Orthodoxy. To this end, let us turn our attention to the story of Scott and Kimberly Hahn, as recounted in their book Rome Sweet Home: Our Journey to Catholicism.6 Scott, a young Presbyterian minister, and his wife could hardly have started out more anti-Catholic. Since their conversions, however, they have become well-known Catholic apologists.

In particular, I want to focus on Scotts consideration - and rejection - of Orthodoxy. It takes him all of two paragraphs (out of 182 pages) to explain this, so I will reproduce the passage in full:

So I started looking into Orthodoxy. I met with Peter Gillquist, an evangelical convert to Antiochian Orthodoxy, to hear why he chose Orthodoxy over Rome. His reasons reinforced my sense that Protestantism was wrong; but I also thought that his defense of Orthodoxy over Catholicism was unsatisfying and superficial. Upon closer examination, I found the various Orthodox churches to be hopelessly divided among themselves, similar to the Protestants, except that the Orthodox were split along the lines of ethnic nationalisms; there were Orthodox bodies that called themselves Greek, Russian, Ruthenian, Rumanian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Serbian and so on. They have coexisted for centuries, but more like a family of brothers who have lost their father.

Further study led me to conclude that Orthodoxy was wonderful for its liturgy and tradition but stagnant in theology. In addition, I became convinced that it was mistaken in doctrine, having rejected certain teachings of Scripture and the Catholic Church, especially the filioque clause (and the son) that had been added to the Nicene Creed. In addition, their rejection of the Pope as head of the Church seemed to be based on imperial politics, more than on any serious theological grounds. This helped me to understand why, throughout their history, Orthodox Christians have tended to exalt the Emperor and the State over the Bishop and the Church (otherwise known as Caesaropapism). It occurred to me that Russia had been reaping the consequences of this Orthodox outlook throughout the twentieth century.

While Hahns investigation of Orthodoxy must have been more involved than he describes in this passage, it is clear that he did not put a great amount of effort into it. His reasons for choosing Roman Catholicism over Orthodoxy sound as if they came directly from a 19th century anti-Orthodox tract.

Orthodoxy and Ethnicism Let us begin with his meeting with Father Peter Gillquist. Now I have known Fr. Peter for many years, however, Fr. Peter himself would never claim to be a theologian or a scholar. I am not surprised, therefore, that Hahn found Fr. Peters thoughts on Roman Catholicism less than profound. He would have been better served by talking with people who have a first hand knowledge of Roman Catholicism, such as Fr. Alexey Young or Fr. Theodore Pulcini.

Furthermore, Fr. Peter is not a convert to Antiochene Orthodoxy. There is simply no such thing. Fr. Peter serves in the American archdiocese of the Patriarchate of Antioch. Orthodoxy, however, is Orthodoxy, whether it is practiced among Syrians, Russians, Greeks, or Americans. The claim that the various Orthodox churches [are] hopelessly divided among themselves, similar to the Protestants, except that the Orthodox were split along the lines of ethnic nationalisms is patently absurd. It is the kind of cliché that is often trotted out by Protestants and Roman Catholics alike who are too lazy to undertake a serious investigation of the matter.

To begin with, the division of the Orthodox world into various, self-governing national Churches has more to do with the Western European phenomenon of nationalism and the subsequent interference of western powers (Great Britain, in particular) in the internal affairs of the Balkan nations than it does with the internal logic of Orthodoxy.7 While nationalism has been and remains a problem for Orthodoxy, it is in no way of the essence of Orthodoxy. Indeed, in 1872 the Orthodox Church formally condemned as a heresy the theory that the Church should be organized according to ethnic make-up rather than according to territorial dioceses (phyletism).8

What Hahn fails to mention here is that each of these national Churches professes one and the same Orthodox Faith, observes one and the same liturgical life (albeit in different languages and local customs), and maintains full Eucharistic communion with the others.9 The fact that they do not all answer to a single bishop in a foreign country in no way means that they are not truly united in one, catholic Church. To liken the different local Churches to different Protestant denominations is ludicrous.

Now it is certainly true that the presence of multiple, overlapping jurisdictions in America is a great problem and a cause for scandal. However, it must be noted that this sad situation is the result of particular historical circumstances well beyond the power of anyone to control. Before the Russian Revolution of 1917, North America was de facto the missionary territory of the Russian Church. Aside from the dominant presence of the Orthodox Church in Alaska (formerly Russian territory), Orthodox missionaries moved south along the West Coast during the 19th century.10

When Orthodox from the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe began to arrive in America, most went under the care of the existing Russian Church structure. The first Syrian bishop in America, Rafael Hawaweeny, was actually a bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church. While many Greek communities maintained a separate existence, bringing priests over from Greece, their requests for bishops were always denied, because there were already Orthodox bishops here, and the Churches of Greece and Constantinople were not willing to establish a parallel hierarchy.

The Russian Revolution, however, created problems not only for the Church in Russia, but for the Church in America as well. In the ensuing chaos, multiple Orthodox jurisdictions were established as the individual immigrant communities appealed to their mother Churches for help. As time went by, people got used to this unusual arrangement. Thus you can find in a single city a Greek, a Russian, and a Serbian Orthodox Church.

It must be noted here that no one today considers this situation to be normal or even acceptable. All Orthodox jurisdictions in this country are aware of the fact that the situation is uncanonical. Of course, if Orthodoxy had a universal pope, he could fix the situation by fiat. Then again, he could also infallibly define strange doctrines and compel everyone to assent to them under pain of excommunication. A certain degree of disorganization is the price the Church pays for not succumbing to the temptations of worldly success and order.

Caesaropapism There have, of course, been times when the Church was more or less forced into a more efficient mode of operation by secular powers, and the Church suffered dearly for such intrusions. That is what makes Hahns comments about caesaropapism so utterly galling. To suggest that the Orthodox Church accepted a state of affairs whereby the emperor decided Church policy and that this is in contrast to the way things worked in the West, where Rome claimed supremacy over the temporal powers, displays an appalling ignorance of history.

To begin with, Orthodox canon law specifically forbids state interference in the internal workings of the Church. That does not mean that emperors did not try to interfere in the Churchs business - most tried, and some were more successful than others. It does mean, however, that the Church never accepted this as a normal state of affairs. Indeed, the Church calendar is filled with saints who suffered mightily for their refusal to go along with imperial policy.11

There is a great irony here. By far the greatest impetus for reunion with Rome prior to the fall of Constantinople came from imperial political motives. It was in the interest of the emperor to have communion restored between the Orthodox and the Church of Rome because of the political advantages it would bring.12 The so-called union councils of Lyons (1274) and Florence (1439) were both promoted by the emperor, and both rejected by the body of the Orthodox faithful. Were Hahns views of caesaropapism correct, then the Church would have dutifully obeyed imperial policy, and Rome and Orthodoxy would be in communion now! 13

The fact is, the only place in the Orthodox world where caesaropapism was ever close to being an accepted reality was in Russia, subsequent to the reforms of Peter the Great. Peter abolished the office of patriarch, installed his own government oberprocurator for religious affairs to oversee the Holy Synod, and effectively made the Church a department of state. There is no doubt that this severely weakened the Church and contributed to Her inability to successfully counter the communist Revolution.14 What non-Orthodox historians invariably omit, however, is the fact that the Petrine reforms were based on church-state relations Peter had observed in the German and Scandinavian principalities. Thus, Petrine Russias caesaropapism was the direct result of western, non-Orthodox influences.15 Hahns comment that the sufferings of the Russian Church under the Soviet regime were the fruit of an Orthodox outlook is as misguided as it is insulting.

Before we leave the subject of church-state relations, let us consider the following:

It would be impossible for him to be corrupted by anyone, for he is a catholic in faith, a king in power, a pontiff in preaching, a judge in equity, a philosopher in liberal studies, a model in morals.16

A panegyric to a Roman emperor written by a sycophantic Orthodox bishop? Not hardly. This particular tribute was written by Alcuin in honor of Charlemagne, the Frankish usurper crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III in 800.

The crowning of Charlemagne is often cited as an example of papal supremacy over temporal powers. In reality, however, the Church in Western Europe became part of the Germanic feudal system, with clergy appointed and invested by secular rulers. Simony became a matter of course. This situation did not change until the Gregorian Reforms of the eleventh century. Even then, however, claims of papal supremacy over matters temporal did not always match reality. Pelikan observes:

What the history books describe as the investiture controversy was not merely the churchs defense of its own right to select and install its bishops. It was also the states defense against the claims of the church. The pope claimed the right to depose the emperor, and in the investiture controversy he tried to do just that. Repeatedly pope and emperor clashed over the limits of their respective jurisdictions. The zenith of papal power under Pope Innocent III (d. 1216) was followed less than a century later by the exile of the pope in Avignon and by the humiliating history of the papacy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Through it all the pope claimed authority over the state as well as the church, but conditions within the church seemed to many to prove that he could not rule even the church.17

Clearly, Hahns reading of church history is both selective and inaccurate. Ever since the time Jesus was presented with a Roman coin and asked about taxation, Christians have been trying to come to terms with the proper relationship between Church and state. No one in the East or in the West was able to come up with a perfect solution. Indeed, a perfect solution is not possible in this world, for the Reign of God is not of this world (Jn. 18:36).18

Theology With Hahns comment concerning Orthodox theology, he moves from the absurd to the surreal: Further study led me to conclude that Orthodoxy was wonderful for its liturgy and tradition but stagnant in theology. If the alternative to being stagnant means changing the creed (the Filioque), worrying about going to a non-existent place (purgatory), paying money to stay out of said non-existent place (indulgences), turning the Virgin Mary into some sort of super-human (an immaculately conceived Co-Redemptrix), and making the bishop of one city into an infallible, universal potentate with both spiritual and political sovereignty, then the Orthodox will gladly stay stagnant.

The really amusing thing about Hahns comment is that it sounds like something one would expect to hear from the ultra liberal Episcopal bishop John Spong - complete with a patronizing reference to Orthodoxys wonderful liturgy. The development of doctrine is the excuse used by Roman Catholics to justify every change in doctrine from the Filioque to papal infallibility. Yet, liberals also believe that their modernizations are justified by the notion of progress. In the final analysis, what is the real difference between the improvements of Christianity made by the Roman Catholic Church and the improvements wrought by liberals such as Spong? 19

The similarities between a conservative Roman Catholic such as Hahn and a liberal Protestant such as Spong are more than superficial. In his classic introduction to Orthodoxy, Bishop Kallistos Ware quotes the nineteenth-century Russian theologian Alexis Khomiakov:

All Protestants are Crypto-Papists. To use the concise language of algebra, all the West knows but one datum a; whether it be preceded by the positive sign +, as with the Romanists, or with the negative -, as with the Protestants, the a remains the same.20

In other words, Roman Catholicism and Protestantism are but two sides of the same coin. They may present different faces, but the underlying substance is the same.

This explains why many conservative Protestants are attracted to Rome. Allegiance to Rome allows them to overcome the inherent inconsistencies in Protestantism without having to abandon the basic presupposition of Protestantism, namely that Christianity is an ideology derived from a text.21

Sola Scriptura is patently illogical. The popular Protestant saying, The Bible says it; that settles it makes no sense because, strictly speaking, the Bible does not say anything. It is a text, and like all texts it must be interpreted. An infallible book is only useful if you have an infallible interpreter, which is where the pope comes in. Where two or three Protestants are gathered together, there you have four or five different interpretations of the Bible. With an infallible pope, however, you only have to deal with one interpretation - at a time, that is.22 The pope says it; that settles it.

We have already discussed why the Roman Catholic doctrine of the papacy is fundamentally incompatible with the Orthodox faith, so I shall not recover that ground here. However, I do want to stress the fundamental unity of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. The Hahns did not really convert to anything; they merely exchanged one form of the same authoritarian, rationalistic religion for another.

Hahn and other Catholic apologists go to great pains to demonstrate that Catholicism (both those elements which are genuinely part of the catholic tradition and those which are peculiar to the Roman Catholic Church) are based on the Word of God, both in its written and its oral form. Even if a doctrine cannot claim an uninterrupted history back to the Apostles (i.e. the Immaculate Conception or papal infallibility), it can nonetheless be considered scriptural if it can be logically deduced from the Bible.23 This theological method deducing a doctrine from a text is the common heritage of Catholics and Protestants alike, even those Protestants who consider themselves to be the most anti-Catholic.

At this point, allow me to reiterate that Orthodoxy is in no way based on the Bible. Nor is it based or derived from a set of oral teachings running parallel to the Bible. The Orthodox Church is the living Body of Christ - the living experience in history of the union of mankind with God in the divine-human Person of the Only-Begotten. The Word of God is not a book, but a Person. The Prophets, both those of the Old Covenant and those of the New, are those who have seen and heard and touched the Word of Life.24 The Divine Scriptures and the writings of the Saints are the written witness to this experience, but they are not the source of this experience.

Thus, true and false doctrines are not discerned by whether or not one can logically deduce them from the text of the Bible or the writings of a particular Church Father - one can deduce just about anything from the Bible, as Protestantism has demonstrated several thousand times over - but whether or not the purported doctrine constitutes a faithful witness to or sign of the communion between God and man that is experienced in the Church. Thus, Orthodoxy rejects Roman Catholic doctrines such as papal infallibility or purgatory, not because they cannot be deduced from this or that Bible verse or patristic citation, but because they make a lie out of the Churchs experience of union with God in Christ. False doctrines are false witnesses. They derive from and lead toward false Christs.25

Evangelicals searching for the catholic tradition must understand that Orthodoxy is not simply an alternative ecclesiastical structure to the Roman Catholic Church. The Orthodox Church presents a fundamentally different approach to theology, because She possesses a fundamentally different experience of Christ and life in Him. To put it bluntly, She knows a different Christ from that of the Roman Catholic Church.

Final Considerations I converted to Holy Orthodoxy because I saw in the theology and life of the Orthodox Church a pure witness to the truth - the truth of my own being created in the image of God.26 It was not a matter of subjecting myself to an external authority, but of recognizing and embracing the truth of reality itself.

There is no question that the Roman Catholic Church is larger and better organized than the Orthodox Church. There is no question that the current Roman liturgy is more accessible to modern Americans than the long, sung services of the Orthodox Church.27 Nor can it be denied that Roman Catholicism is easier to grasp intellectually, being neatly set forth in a highly rationalistic system. None of this, however, makes Roman Catholicism true. Our Lord said, I am the Truth. He did not say, I am Efficiency and Convenience.

When I renounced Protestantism and embraced Holy Orthodoxy I implicitly renounced Roman Catholicism as well, for Roman Catholicism and Protestantism are truly two sides of the same coin. When I abandoned the heretical notion of Sola Scriptura, I also abandoned the presupposition that Christianity is an ideology that can be derived from a text. When I relinquished my role as an infallible Protestant pope, interpreting the Bible according to my own lights, I also relinquished the fantasy that there could be another infallible pope.

To put it another way, I was not content to settle for Protestantism repackaged in sacramental garb. I was looking for a truly new vision of the Christian faith, and I found that new vision in Orthodoxy. Of course, what was new to me was in fact the oldest expression of Christianity. Orthodoxy was the religion of the early Church - even in Rome - before the pope became an infallible sovereign, before purgatory became peopled with millions of souls trying to work off their sins, hoping that some of the excess merits of the Saints might fall their way.

If you want to know what life in the early Church was like, look at the Orthodox Church today. She still confesses the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed without changes, still baptizes by triple immersion, 28 still keeps Wednesdays and Fridays as fasting days, 29 still observes rather strict fasting rules for Lent and Advent, 30 and still celebrates the Holy Liturgy in forms that are much the same as they were in the sixth century.31

In short, Orthodoxy is what Roman Catholicism used to be. If, however, you are looking for a new and improved version of Christianity, then whether you remain Protestant or become a Roman Catholic matters little. Find a church or parish that meets your needs and fits your lifestyle, one where you are comfortable - a church with a gymnasium might be nice.

If, on the other hand, you are genuinely searching for an encounter with the living God, then forsake all thoughts of comfort or lifestyle. Seek the truth, and settle for nothing less. I can tell you that you will find the truth in the Orthodox Church. Here you will encounter God. Here you will find the guidance you need for the healing and salvation of your soul.

Endnotes 1. Cf. Donald G. Bloesch, The Future of Evangelical Christianity: A Call for Unity Amid Diversity (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1983), pp. 48-52.

2. The text of the Chicago Call may be found in Robert Webber, Common Roots: A Call to Evangelical Maturity (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1978), pp. 251-256.

3. Robert Webber and Donald Bloesch are somewhat conspicuous in that they have steadfastly remained in their Protestant denominations - denominations that are among the most liberal in America. Webber is a member of the Episcopal Church and, as far as I know, Bloesch remains a member of the United Church of Christ.

4. Perhaps the most visible Evangelical to convert was Frank Schaeffer, son of the late theologian Francis Schaeffer. See his Dancing Alone: The Quest for Orthodox Faith in the Age of False Religion (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1994).

5. Pelikan was received into the Orthodox Church on March 25, 1998 (The Feast of the Annunciation) at St. Vladimirs Orthodox Theological Seminary in New York.

7. Fr. John Meyendorff observes: In Greece and in the other Balkan countries of Bulgaria, Serbia and Romania, nationalism was generally promoted by a western-trained and western-oriented secularized intelligentsia which had no real interest in Orthodoxy and the Church except as a useful tool for achieving secular nationalistic goals. Ecclesiastical Regionalism: Structures of Communion or Cover for Separatism, originally published in St. Vladimirs Theological Quarterly 24 (1980), pp. 155-168. Reprinted in Meyendorff, The Byzantine Legacy in the Orthodox Church (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1982), pp. 217-233 (226). It should be noted that this essay was originally written for an ecumenical colloquium and is far from being anti-western. The reader should be aware, however, that Fr. Johns criticism of modern Orthodox regionalism and his expressed openness to the concept of Roman primacy in this article is part of an intellectual dialogue and can in no way be interpreted as a denial of the basic tenets of Orthodox ecclesiology, which clearly rule out concepts such as universal ordinary jurisdiction.

9. There are two primary exceptions to this world-wide Orthodox unity. The first involves the Church calendar. In 1923, Ecumenical Patriarch Melitios Metaxakis (whose career was colorful to say the least, and the legitimacy of whose election is highly questionable) abandoned the traditional Orthodox (Julian) calendar and adopted the Gregorian calendar. Leaving aside the fact that such a calendar change had been condemned by previous Orthodox synods, the action was undertaken without the universal consent of the other Orthodox Churches - a de facto denial of the conciliar structure of the Church. It was, to put it bluntly, the result of papal pretensions on the part of the patriarch. The calendar change was adopted by several (but not all) local Churches, prompting schisms in Greece, Romania, and Bulgaria that have lasted to the present day. The calendar change - and I am a member of a local Church that uses the new, Gregorian calendar - was an unalloyed evil and a curse for the Church. It would have never happened, however, had the conciliar nature of the Church not been utterly disregarded. For a decidedly unsympathetic treatment of Patriarch Melitios and the calendar change see Bishop Photius of Triaditsa, The 70th Anniversary of the Pan-Orthodox Congress in Constantinople in The Orthodox Church Calendar: In Defense of the Julian Calendar (Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1996), pp. 5-29. The second exception to Orthodox unity is a direct result of the Russian Revolution: the division between the Church of Russia (Moscow Patriarchate) and the Russian Church Abroad (a.k.a. the Synod ). With the demise of the Soviet Union, however, tentative efforts have begun to heal this breach. Lest Roman Catholics get too smug in observing these inner-Orthodox problems, however, we should point out that the entire Reformation, with its thousands of resulting denominations, started out as a schism within the Roman Church. Furthermore, there exist other bodies that claim to represent true Roman Catholicism, notably the Old Catholic Church of Utrecht and the Polish National Catholic Church.

10. For the history of the Alaskan mission as well as a general treatment of Orthodox missiology, see the two excellent studies by Fr. Michael Oleksa: Alaskan Missionary Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1987) and Orthodox Alaska: A Theology of Mission (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1992).

11. Caesaropapism, however, never became an accepted principle in Byzantium. Innumerable heroes of the faith were constantly exalted precisely because they had opposed heretical emperors; hymns sung in church praised Basil for having disobeyed Valens, Maximus for his martyrdom under Constans, and numerous monks for having opposed the iconoclastic emperors in the eighth century. These liturgical praises alone were sufficient to safeguard the principle that the emperor was to preserve, not to define, the Christian faith. John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes (New York: Fordham University Press, 1983), p. 6.

12. Remember that Constantinople was facing overwhelming odds in defending herself against the Moslems.

13. From the thirteenth century on, all discussions between the popes and emperors regarding reunion took place in an atmosphere dominated more by political than by religious considerations, the Byzantine Church itself remaining largely outside the picture. Moreover, those discussions showed that the West harbored completely false ideas about the existence of Byzantine caesaropapism and thought that it was sufficient to win over the emperor to gain the allegiance of the whole Church. It was with this in mind that the popes encouraged the personal conversion of the Emperor John V in 1369. Even today the view is quite common that the Byzantine schism had its roots in caesaropapism; nevertheless it is a fact that from the eleventh century the emperors were almost consistently in favor of reunion with Rome because of the undoubted political advantages to be derived from it, and they tried to bring reunion about at all costs, even by the use of brute force. Equally consistently, since the time of Michael Caerularius, the patriarchs, or most of them at any rate, opposed their efforts in the name of the true faith. By relying so much on the emperors to bring about reunion, the popes were relying, actually, on a caesaropapism which did not in fact exist. John Meyendorff, The Orthodox Church: Its Past and Its Role in the World Today (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1981), pp. 59-60.

14. The Patriarchate was re-established at an All-Russian council literally during the October Revolution. Unfortunately, the reforms came too late to stop the communist take over of the government. Interestingly, the newly elected patriarch, St. Tikhon, had been the Archbishop of New York, overseeing the American mission before his election. For an account of the reform movement prior to the Revolution, see James W. Cunningham, A Vanquished Hope: The Movement for Church Renewal in Russia, 1905-1906 (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1981).

15. Cf. Fr. Georges Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology, Part One; Vol. 5 in The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky, Tr. by Robert Nichols (Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1979). Peter wished to organize church administration in Russia just as Protestant countries ordered it. Such a reorganization did not just correspond to his own estimation of his authority or merely follow from the logic of his general conception of state authority or the monarchs will. It also conformed to his personal religious perception or opinion. Peters outlook was wholly that of a man of the Reformation world, even if he retained in his personal life an unexpectedly large number of habits and impulses belonging to the Moscovite past (pp. 117-118). The Reformation remained an act of secular coercion, compelling the body of the church to wither but finding no sympathetic response in the depths of the churchs consciousness (p. 120). And again: The churchs mind and conscience never became accustomed to, accepted, or acknowledged this actual caesaropapism, although individual churchmen and leaders frequently with inspiration submitted to it. The mystical fullness of the church remained unharmed (p. 121).

17. Jaroslav Pelikan, The Riddle of Roman Catholicism, p. 44. At least one Roman Catholic writer cites the Churchs involvement with secular rule as a tragedy: But from the time the popes entered the temporal arena, heavy and irremovable chains were forged around their churchly kingdom. Malachi Martin, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Church (NY: Putnam, 1981), p. 14.

19. Hahn has added his name to the list of Roman Catholics petitioning the pope to declare the Virgin Mary as Co-Redemptrix. He, and another professor from the Franciscan University at Steubenville have prepared a three-part audio series on the doctrine. According to the advertisement for the tape: Scott explains how Mary was a stumbling block in his conversion, and why he was, as a new Catholic, reluctant to support a new Marian dogma. He then shows how this dogma captures Marys vital importance, especially as the new millennium draws near, which Pope John Paul II anticipates will be a new springtime for the Church. If the new millennium demands new dogmas, might it just as well demand a new code of morality?

20. Timothy (Kallistos) Ware, The Orthodox Church (NY: Penguin Books, 1984), p. 9.

21. I develop this idea in The Way: What Every Protestant Should Know About the Orthodox Church (Salisbury, MA: Regina Orthodox Press, 1998).

22. Popes, have, of course disagreed with one another. This also assumes that there are no anti-popes, thus making it difficult to tell which is the real infallible pontiff.

23. I am using deduced here in its general sense, rather than in the way it is used in formal logic. Most of these deductions are in fact inductions, for very few could claim to be logically necessary.

25. Consequently, when the heretic lays hands on the traditional faith he lays hands on the life of the faithful, their raison detre. Heresy is at once blasphemy towards God and a curse for man. This is the reason why the entire organism and the spiritual health and sensitivity of Orthodoxy has from the beginning reacted against the destructive infection of heresies. Archimandrite Vasileios, Hymn of Entry, p. 21.

27. This is due in no small part to the continual dumbing-down of the Roman Mass since Vatican II.

28. Roman Catholic children are lucky to get the tops of their heads wet. Where in the Gospels did our Lord enjoin his Disciples to sprinkle all nations?

29. Even the famous practice of fish on Fridays has largely been abandoned by Roman Catholics, at least in the United States.

30. By and large, fasting in the Roman Church has been reduced to giving up something for Lent.

31. This is easily contrasted with the folk masses, mariachi masses, polka masses, and even clown masses that have become staples of the modern Roman Church since Vatican II. Indeed, contemporary Roman Catholic worship looks more and more like the baby-boomer friendly seeker services that have become so popular in the Protestant world.

The epilogue of Clark Carltons The Truth: What Every Roman Catholic Should Know about the Orthodox Church.

Clark Carlton earned a B.A. in philosophy from Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City, Tennessee. While studying as a Raymond Bryan Brown Memorial Scholar at the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina, he converted to the Orthodox Faith.

Mr. Carlton earned a Master of Divinity degree from St. Vladimirs Orthodox Theological Seminary in Crestwood, New York in 1990.

In 1993, he earned an M.A. in Early Christian Studies from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. At the time of this writings he was working as an adjunct instructor of philosophy at Tennessee Technological University in his home town while completing his Ph.D. dissertation on the dogmatic and ascetical theology of St. Mark the Monk (5th c.).

The sinlessness of Mary has nothing to do with the 10 commandments.

Nor for that matter does the importance of Jesus father in life translate to overiding scriptural and spiritual importance to the church doctrine.

From Orthodox Wiki:

The Holy Theotokos and Virgin Mary
The Virgin Mary is the Theotokos, the mother of Jesus Christ, the Son and Word of God. She conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit. She was cared for by her betrothed husband, Joseph, who took the child and his mother into his home as his own. One very strong tradition in the Orthodox Church holds that the birth of Jesus was also miraculous and left Mary's virginity intact as a sign; it is also the tradition of the Church that Joseph and Mary did not have relations after the birth of Jesus.

Third Ecumenical Council
Theotokos (in Greek, ????????) is a Greek word that means "God-bearer" or "Birth-giver to God."
As a title for the Virgin Mary, Theotokos was recognized by the Orthodox Church at Third Ecumenical Council held at Ephesus in 431. It had already been in use for some time in the devotional and liturgical life of the Church. The theological significance of the title is to emphasize that Mary's son, Jesus, is fully God, as well as fully human, and that Jesus' two natures (divine and human) were united in a single Person of the Trinity. The competing view at that council was that Mary should be called Christotokos instead, meaning "Birth-giver to Christ." This was the view advocated by Nestorius, then Patriarch of Constantinople. The intent behind calling her Christotokos was to restrict her role to be only the mother of "Christ's humanity" and not his Divine nature.
Nestorius' view was anathematized by the Council as heresy, (see Nestorianism), since it was considered to be dividing Jesus into two distinct persons, one who was Son of Mary, and another, the divine nature, who was not. It was defined that although Jesus has two natures, human and divine, these are eternally united in one personhood. Because Mary is the mother of God the Son, she is therefore duly entitled Theotokos.
Calling Mary the Theotokos or the Mother of God (????? ????) was never meant to suggest that Mary was coeternal with God, or that she existed before Jesus Christ or God existed. The Church acknowledges the mystery in the words of this ancient hymn: "He whom the entire universe could not contain was contained within your womb, O Theotokos."
The title "Theotokos" continues to be used frequently in the hymns of the Orthodox Church.

Translation of Theotokos
While some languages used by various Orthodox churches often have a single native word for Theotokos, it gets translated into English in a number of ways. The most common is Mother of God, though God-bearer and Birth-giver to God are also fairly common. There are difficulties with all these translations, however. The most literally correct one is Birth-giver to God, though God-bearer comes close. Theophoros (????????) is the Greek term usually and more correctly translated as God-bearer, so using God-bearer for Theotokos in some sense "orphans" Theophoros when it comes time to translate that term (for St. Ignatius of Antioch, for instance). The main difficulties with both these translations for Theotokos is that they are a bit awkward and difficult to sing.
The most popular translation, Mother of God, is accurate to a point, but the difficulty with that one is that Mother of God is the literal translation of another Greek phrase which is found on nearly all icons of the Theotokos: ????? ???? (Meter Theou), usually in the standard iconographic abbreviation of ?? ??. Additionally, a number of hymns employ both Theotokos and Meter Theou—translating both as Mother of God can yield some rather nonsensical language, and it destroys the distinction that the hymnographer intended.
The usage that seems to be most dominant in English-speaking Orthodox churches in North America is to adopt the original term itself into English (something English speakers have traditionally done with foreign words almost since the earliest known history of the language), Latinizing the spelling simply as Theotokos. British usage gives preference to translating Theotokos as Mother of God.
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Ever-Virginity

One of the more puzzling traditions regarding the Theotokos for modern Christians is the teaching that she is Ever-Virgin, that is, that she remained a virgin before, during, and eternally after the birth of Jesus Christ.
That the Holy Virgin Mary is Ever-Virgin (Aeiparthenos) is not to elevate her to some special status or to incite us to worship the creature rather than the Creator. Rather, it is an affirmation of who Christ Jesus is. Because He has chosen her to be his mother, to conceive Him, to give flesh to Him, to give birth to Him, we understand her as a finite dwelling place of the infinite God. Thus, because she is in this sense this new Holy of Holies, her ever-virginity is a natural characteristic of such an awesome reality.
The whole tradition of the Orthodox Christian Church has always held her to be in truth Ever-Virgin, knowing her personally from the beginning and then passing the truths on from one generation to the next, never expanding nor subtracting from what was known in the beginning. Except for a few instances here and there in history, never have Christians regarded her in any other fashion until relatively late in the Protestant traditions. There are many testimonies to her ever-virginity, so let's consider a few:
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Testimony from Scripture
The principal understanding of the Virgin Mary as Ever-Virgin in Scripture is expressed in terms of her being a new Ark of the Covenant, a created thing which somehow contained the uncontainable God. The reason that St. Joseph the Betrothed (as tradition names him) did not enter into marital relations with her is that he understood her as one would understand the Ark, that she had been set aside for use by God, and that her womb had in some sense been made into a temple. The language used for the Virgin in the New Testament parallels that used for the Ark in the Old:
From an email circulated on the Internet:
For the first time God's presence has descended upon a person as the new ark of the Covenant. . . . Rene Laurentin speaks of the subtle use of ark imagery [early in Luke]. For instance, he shows how in 2nd Samuel 6, there was a journey to the hill country of Judah that the ark of the covenant took. Likewise, the same phrase is used to describe Mary's journey to the hill country. . . . Both david and Mary "arose and made the journey." In 2nd Samuel 6:2 and Luke 1:39. Laurent goes on to describe how when the Ark arrived and when Mary arrived, they were both greeted with "shouts of joy." And the word for shout or the word for Elizabeth's greeting, anafametezein, is very rare. It's only used in connection with the OT liturgical ceremonies that were centered around the Ark. It literally means to 'cry aloud, to proclaim or intone.'
Elizabeth greets Mary the same way the Ark of the Covenant was greeted. The entrance of the Ark and the entrance of Mary are seen then as blessing an entire household. Like Obededom's household was blessed, so Elizabeth sees her household as blessed. Laurentin goes on to talk about how both David and Elizabeth react with awe, "How shall the Ark of the Lord come to me?" David says in 2nd Samuel 6:9. And likewise Elizabeth says, "Why should the mother of the Lord come to me?" The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of our Lord are in a sense two ways of looking at the same reality which is becoming clearer and more personal with Our Lady. Then finally, the Ark of the Covenant and Mary both remain in the respective houses for three months, 2nd Samuel 6:11 and Luke 1:56.
In Luke 1 and 2 we have the annunciation of Gabriel to Zecharaiah and six months later the annunciation by Gabriel to Mary, then nine months later Jesus is born, and thirty days later He is presented in the temple. You add up 180 days (in the six months) 270 days in te nine months and the 40 days in the presentation and it adds up to 490, which is a very rare number that is found in one of the most memorable prophecies in the OT, Daniel 9.. . .Luke is once again giving a surplus value, a surplus meaning to those who are really willing to dig deep into the text to see all of the inspired meanings behind what God has done to inaugurate the New Covenant salvation in Christ and in His Blessed Mother.
This is the Ark of the Covenant. Now let's go back and conclude our time in Revelation 11 and 12. We have Mary the Ark of the Covenant. We have Mary the true tabernacle. We have in Mary a figure for the New Jerusalem because at the end of Revelation, how is the New Jerusalem described? As being a bride that is pure and yet also being a mother of God's children Well, how is it that you could be at the same time virginally pure and maternally fruitful? It seems impossible in human nature, but not for Mary, not only in mothering Jesus, but in John 19 at the cross and also in Revelation 12 where we read at the very end of the chapter, verse 17, we discover that Mary becomes by grace the mother of all God's children.
How is it that our Lord would have brothers? Many look at the story of Ss. Mary and Joseph and see a young couple about to embark on their married life together, but Church tradition holds differently. St. Joseph was a much older man, a widower, and had children by his previous marriage, thus his sons were in some sense Christ's step-brothers, and their being older than Jesus can also account for some of the way He is treated by them as being the baby of the family, somewhat out of His mind. Joseph takes in Mary as something like his ward, because in leaving her life as a Temple virgin, she could not go out into the world alone. That is why Joseph, a righteous, respected man, was chosen to take her in. His being much older than her also accounts for the notion that they should have had relations -- she had already dedicated herself to a life of virginity, whereas he was a much older man who had already had his children and whose wife had died. Another possible understanding is that these "brothers" of our Lord were His cousins -- St. Jerome holds this view, that these were the children of St. Joseph's brother Cleopas, who had died and left his children and widow in Joseph's care, according to Jewish custom.
Additionally, both the Hebrew and Greek terms for "brother" are often used to refer to relatives who are not necessarily what we in English would term "brothers," i.e., perhaps a cousin or an uncle, or some other relative. For example, Abraham and Lot are called adelphoi in Gen. 14:14 in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the OT used by the Apostles), though they are certainly not what we would call "brothers." Jacob and Laban are also called "brothers" (Gen. 29:15), though Laban would have been Jacob's uncle. In any event, the words do not mean the precise thing that the modern English "brother" does.
Beyond that, it is nowhere to be found in Scripture that any man other than the God-man Jesus Christ is called the child of Mary.
Some would cite the use of the "until" in Scripture ("...and he knew her not until [Greek = eos] her having brought forth her firstborn son..." (Matthew 1:25; Luke 2:7)) to indicate that after she gave birth to the God-man, that St. Joseph then "knew" her maritally. Again, this is a translation problem.
From this webpage:
This verse seems to be often translated as "he knew her not until after..." This is not, however, what is meant. The Greek original, eos, indicates the true meaning, of "he had no sexual relations with her prior to her giving birth." The Evangelist makes this statement in order to assure us that Joseph had no part in the conception of Jesus. The term eos ou does not require the understanding that he had relations with her after Christ was born. It merely indicates that, as regards the birth of Jesus, Joseph had not had relations with Mary prior to the birth, thus, he was not the father of Jesus. This is merely a usual turn of phrase, the use of a standard and familiar form of expression. This same term and meaning is used elsewhere in the Bible as a standard expression, and it clearly does not indicate what the heterodox (non-Orthodox) claim it does. At 2 Samuel 6:23, for instance, we read, "And Milchal, the daughter of Saul, had no child until [eos] her death. Did she, then, have children after her death? Of course not!, and neither did Joseph "know" Mary after the birth of Jesus. At Genesis 8:7, we read that Noah "sent forth a raven; and it went forth and did not return till [eos] after the water had gone from off the face of the earth." We know from Scripture that in fact, the raven never returned to the ark. It says that it did not return "until after," but in fact, it never returned at all. The Scripture says that "Joseph knew her not till after...", but in fact, he never "knew" her at all. In another example, the Bible says, 'The Lord said to my Lord, 'Sit at my right hand until [eos] I make Thine enemies Thy footstool" (Mark 12:36). Does this mean that Christ will cease to sit at the right hand of the glory of the Father once His enemies have been overcome? Of course not ! Hence, the Bible does not say that "Joseph knew her not until after she brought forth her first born, but then he did." The Bible says, "He did not know her before (up until) she had brought forth her firstborn," meaning simply and clearly, "Joseph was not the father. He had not come together with her before her pregnancy, thus he was not involved in the conception of Jesus."
Another testimony from Scripture is that on the cross, our Lord gave His holy mother into the care of the Apostle John (John 19:26). This might seem a merely practical thing to do, but if we recall the Mosaic Law would have dictated that she be given into the care of other natural children, since her firstborn Son was dying. Christ, Who kept the Law perfectly, would not have violated it in any detail, and so when He gave His mother to the Apostle to look after, He did so only because she had no other children who could take her in, and St. Joseph at that point had long since passed away.
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Testimony From the Ancient Church
The Church continued to call the Theotokos the "Virgin" even after when she supposedly would have had other children, as some say. It would be a rather odd thing to keep calling a woman "the Virgin" and even "Ever-Virgin" when one was standing next to her other offspring in Church.
Additionally, throughout the earliest liturgies of the Church, she is continually called "Ever-Virgin." One can also find references to her ever-virginity in the Fathers' writings, such as in those of Peter of Alexandria, Epiphanius, Athanasius, Didymus the Blind, Jerome, Cyril of Alexandria, Leo, Sophronius of Jerusalem, John of Damascus, John Cassian, Ephrem of Syria, and the capitula of the II Council of Constantinople in 553 A.D. (In short, nearly everywhere.) One such example is in St. Ambrose of Milan (4th century): "The virgin did not seek the consolation of bearing another child" (See Letter 63; NPNF v.10, pg. 473). There are many other such quotes. Anyone familiar with the writings of the Church Fathers will see her being called "the Virgin" and "Ever-Virgin" frequently.
Hippolytus was a scholar, bishop, and martyr, who lived in or near Rome and wrote in Greek; he was martyred in A.D. 235. He is considered to be one of the most important witnesses as to how the early church worshipped.
Listen to some brief excerpts (ca. A.D. 210?) regarding the Blessed Theotokos:
But the pious confession of the believer is that, with a view to our salvation, . . . the Creator of all things incorporated with Himself a rational soul and a sensible body from the all-holy Mary, ever-virgin, by an undefiled conception, without conversion, and was made man in nature, but separate from wickedness: the same was perfect God, and the same was perfect man; the same was in nature at once perfect God and man." (AGAINST BERON AND HELIX., Frag VIII).
Notice that Hippolytus refers to Mary as all-holy, and ever-virgin. Since he does this in passing, we may be sure that he is introducing no new teaching about Mary, so that it was common to refer to Mary in these terms before Hippolytus wrote.
Thus, too, they preached of the advent of God in the flesh to the world, His advent by the spotless and God-bearing Mary in the way of birth and growth, and the manner of His life and conversation with men, ..." (A Discourse on the End of the World)
Here Hippolytus casually refers to Mary as spotless and God-bearing. I assume this latter term is the equivalent to Theotokos in the Greek, which means Bearer of God, commonly translated Mother of God (the Son). This title was that affirmed by the Council of Ephesus.</blockquote>
St. Ephrem (4th century):
Some dare to claim that Mary became fully Joseph's wife after the Savior's birth. How could she who was the dwelling-place of the Spirit, who was overshadowed by the divine power, ever become the wife of a mortal and bear children in pain, according to the ancient curse? It is through Mary, "blessed among women", that the curses uttered in the beginning have been removed according to which a child in such torments cannot be called blessed. Just as the Lord entered through all closed doors, so he came out if an original womb, for this virgin bore him truly and really without pain."
The Second Council of Constantinople, 553, Capitula II:
If anyone shall not confess that the Word of God has two nativities, the one from all eternity of the Father, without time and without body; the other in these last days, coming down from heaven and being made flesh of the holy and glorious Mary, Mother of God and always a virgin, and born of her: let him be anathema.
The ancient Christian titles for Mary, Theotokos ("Birth-giver to God") and Meter Theou ("Mother of God"), are not to be understood in the sense that she somehow created God. Even mothers giving birth to exclusively human children do not create their children. Rather, these titles for the Virgin are an affirmation that the Christ contained in her womb is indeed God, the Theanthropos ("God-man"). She is not His origin nor the source of the Godhead, but she did quite literally give birth to God. If we affirm that Jesus Christ is God, then we must call her Theotokos, for she gave birth to God Himself. Nestorios the heretic in the ancient Church refused to call her Theotokos, preferring instead Christotokos, because he couldn't get his mind around the idea that a creature could give birth to the Creator, yet is this scandal not at the heart of the Incarnation? Nestorios's doctrines insisted on a separation between the divine Logos and the man Jesus, that somehow the Son of God had inhabited a man, not that God became man as the Christian faith has always held. Is the one who was in her womb God? Then we must call her Theotokos.
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Testimony From the Protestant Reformers
Though the Orthodox Church does not follow the teachings of the Protestant Reformers, their views regarding the Theotokos's ever-virginity are a point of commonality with Orthodoxy. Many of the major figures amongst the Protestant fathers in the faith believed in the Theotokos's ever-virginity.
John Calvin:
He says that she [Mary of Cleophas] was the sister of the mother of Jesus, and, in saying so, he adopts the phraseology of the Hebrew language, which includes cousins, and other relatives, under the term 'brothers.' - John Calvin, Commentary of the Gospel According to John, on John 19:25
The word 'brothers', we have formerly mentioned, is employed, agreeably to the Hebrew idiom, to denote any relative whatever; and, accordingly, Helvidius displayed excessive ignorance in concluding that Mary must have had many sons because Christ's 'brother' are sometimes mentioned. - John Calvin, Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, vol. II, p. 215 (on Matthew 13:55)
[Note: Helvidius was a 5th-century Christian who denied the perpetual virginity of Mary and was rebuked and refuted by Jerome in his treatise, "On the Perpetual Virginity of Blessed Mary Against Helvidius"]
Huldrych Zwingli:
I give an example: taught by the light of faith the Christ was born of a virgin, we know that it is so, that we have no doubt that those who have been unambiguously in error have tried to make a figure ofspeech of a real virgin, and we pronounce absurd the things that Helvidius and others have invented about perpetual virginity. - Huldrych Zwingli. "Friendly Exegesis, that is, Exposition of the Matter of the Eucharist to Martin Luther, February 1527", in Selected Writings of Huldrych Zwingli, Volume Two, trans. and ed. by H. Wayne Pipkin, Pickwick Publications, 1984 p.275.
Then the pious mind finds wonderful delights in searching for the reasons why the lamb chose to be born of a perpetual virgin, but in this other case it finds nothing but a hopeless horror. [The other case that Zwingli here refers to is the Real Presence] - Huldrych Zwingli. "Subsidiary Essay on the Eucharist, August 1525", in Selected Writings of Huldrych Zwingli, Volume Two, trans. and ed. by H. Wayne Pipkin, Pickwick Publications, 1984 p.217.
Martin Luther:
A new lie about me is being circulated. I am supposed to have preached and written that Mary, the mother of God, was not a virgin either before or after the birth of Christ, but that she conceived Christ through Joseph and had more children after that. - Martin Luther, "That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew", in Luther's Works, vol. 45, ed. Walther I. Brand, 1962, Muhlenberg Press, p. 199.
The form of expression used by Matthew is the common idiom, as if I were to say, 'Pharaoh believed not Moses, until he was drowned in the Red Sea.' Here it does not follow that Pharaoh believed later, after he had drowned; on the contrary, it means that he never did believe. Similarly when Matthew says that Joseph did not know Mary carnally until she had brought forth her son, it does not follow that he knew her subsequently; on the contrary, it means that he never did know her. Again, the Red Sea overwhelmed Pharaoh before he got across. Here too, it does not follow that Pharaoh got across later, after the Red Sea had overwhelmed him, but rather that he did not get across at all. In like manner, when Matthew says, 'She was found to be with child before they came together,' it does not follow that Mary subsequently lay with Joseph, but rather that she did not lie with him. - Martin Luther, "That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew", in Luther's Works, vol. 45, ed. Walther I. Brand, 1962, Muhlenberg Press, p. 212.
John Wesley:
I believe that he was made man, joining the human nature with the divine in one person; being conceived by the singular operation of the Holy Ghost, and born of the blessed Virgin Mary, who, as well after as before she brought him forth, continued a pure and unspotted virgin. - John Wesley "Letter to a Roman Catholic"
Protestants who deny the ever-virginity of the Theotokos are breaking even with their own fathers in faith.

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