You wrote:
“We Orthodox have not had problems with pedophiles”
Truth says otherwise: http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/bosnian-orthodox-priest-charged-for-pedophilia
“Group calls for Greek Orthodox to Stop Hiding Pedophile Priests” http://www.pokrov.org/display.asp?ds=Article&id=995
http://www.ocanews.org/news/SeraphimVisiting9.28.11.html
You also wrote:
“The Latins who lately had problems with pedophiles sent Crusaders to try to forcibly convert us back in the 13th century.”
Nope. No Crusaders were sent to “forcibly convert” you to anything. The Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade were in serious debt to the Venetians - and on their own authority - got involved is the sickening cesspool of Byzantine dynastic politics (Isaac II a usurper - blinded by another usurper, etc.). Make a long story short, the Crusaders had no money and were appalled at the actions of the Greeks, so the seized control of Constantinople and looted the city - for which they were condemned by the city. Try to get the story right.
“In his reply to the Crusaders’ demands that the Rus submit to Papal rule, St. Aleksandr Nevsky replied “Our doctrines are those of the Apostles. . . the tradition of the Holy Fathers of the Seven Councils we scrupulously keep. As for your words we do not listen to them and we do not want your doctrine.””
This is the same Nevsky who had no problem serving the pagan Mongols right? Not exactly a truly great hero. I guess when you’re the loser to the invaders, you can’t do much but kowtow to them though, right?
“though why the Latins, whose doctrine of salvation involves not theosis but “the beatific vision” “
Uh, Reader, you might want to actually read the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
460. The Word became flesh to make us “partakers of the divine nature”(2Pet 1:4): “For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God (Irenaeus)...”The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods” (Athanasius).
654. Justification...brings about filial adoption so that men become Christ’s brethren...We are brethren not by nature, but by the gift of grace, because that adoptive filiation gains us a real share in the life of the only Son, which was fully revealed in his Resurrection.
1996. Our justification come from the grace of God. Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life.
2009. Filial adoption, in making us partakers by grace in the divine nature, can bestow true merit on us as a result of God’s gratuitous justice. This is our right by grace, the full right of love, making us “co-heirs” with Christ and worthy of obtaining “the promised inheritance of eternal life” (Council of Trent). The merits of our good works are gifts of the divine goodness. “Grace has gone before us; now we are given what is due...Our merits are God’s gifts” (Augustine).
That should be “for which they were condemned by the pope” in regard to Constantinople.
This is what Pope Innocent III himself wrote:
“How, indeed, is the Greek church to be brought back into ecclesiastical union and to a devotion for the Apostolic See when she has been beset with so many afflictions and persecutions that she sees in the Latins only an example of perdition and the works of darkness, so that she now, and with reason, detests the Latins more than dogs?”
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1204innocent.asp
There’s no reason for anyone to spread falsehoods about the crusades when the truth - both good and bad - is so easily accessible.
By way of brief answer: Note that Abp. Seraphim was suspended, the Greek priest cited was defrocked.
It is precisely because the "pagan" (actually mixed religion -- some of the Mongol hordes were pagan, some Buddhist, some Nestorian Christian) Mongols did not interfere with religion -- the Mongol Empire was the first large-scale political entity with general religious toleration -- that Nevsky allowed Novgorod to become tributary to the Mongols, but fought the Teutonic Knights, who were blessed by the Pope to reduce the "schismatics" to Papal jurisdiction. Actually not fighting the Mongols, whose only interests were worldly is a sign of Nevsky's sanctity as much as fighting the Crusaders.
Yes, the last catechism shifted a lot of teaching 'eastward', but for over 1000 years, the "beatific vision" stood at the height of Latin teaching on salvation, and the basis for the veneration of relics as the bodies of deified men and women was missing. (If you teach the same, why are your bishops giving away relics?)