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To: defconw; utahagen; The_Reader_David
The three major sticking points are authority (Bishops), Marriage and annulment. No?

FWIU, the 3 major differences between us are authority, the filioque clause and unity.

Authority or Papacy: For the Roman Catholic Church, the Bishop of Rome, the Pope, has universal jurisdiction over all the Church. This is not true in Eastern Orthodoxy. They recognise the Bishop of Rome as being primus inter pares, first among equals, but as essentially equal to the other major patriarchs (Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem).

The filioque clause The famous cause of the Great Schism of 1054. This was a modification to the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. The question was whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, or from the Father and the Son. (filioque means "and from the Son".) For the Catholics, it is important that the phrase is used; for the Orthodox, it is breaking with tradition and perverting the doctrine of the Trinity. This problem is closely related to the above problems.

Church unity. What is necessary for the Church to be one? For Roman Catholics, it means participation in the organisation headed by the Pope. For the Orthodox, it means membership in one of the Orthodox churches, which are fully in communion with one another.

Insofar as married clergy, we have this in the Catholic Church, be it in converts to the Latin Church or in the Eastern Catholic Churches.

I have pinged one of our Orthodox freepers to help with this question.

16 posted on 07/23/2014 2:03:28 PM PDT by NYer ("Before I formed you in the womb I knew you." --Jeremiah 1:5)
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To: NYer

Thanks for that. I forgot about the filioque. Lack of sleep I guess.


17 posted on 07/23/2014 3:45:57 PM PDT by defconw (Both parties have clearly lost their minds!)
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To: NYer; defconw; utahagen

NYer gives a good summary of most of the most salient differences, though we Orthodox would regard his first and third points as part of the same issue — both represent a difference in ecclesiology.

There is, however, another one, which matters very much to our monastics, who will be the toughest crowd to convince should reunion become immanent: we Orthodox are dubious that you Latins hold a correct understanding of grace. Yes, I know, your latest Catechism shaded toward the Palamite view more than prior documents, but the Thomist notion of “created grace” has hardly been repudiated in favor of the Palamite view of the grace as the Uncreated Divine Energies, and the discussion of grace in the Acta of Trent sounds too much like the Thomist/Barlamite view to Orthodox hearers. (And if the promulgation of a new Catechism somehow overrules the acta of a council you profess to be Ecumenical, as some Latin posters here at FR tried to argue with regard to this point back when East-West religious discussions were much less cordial, prior to the election of Benedict XVI, I think another sticking point would arise on the ecclesiology front.)

From our point of view, you Latins’ more rigorist approach to marriage (the forbidding of the ordination of married men to major orders in the Latin Rite, and the lack of ecclesiastical divorce) is not likely to be a sticking point, unless you would propose to change our canon law on these points to fit yours, particularly when the pastoral use of annulments has become functionally indistinguishable from our ecclesiastical divorce — a point I realize offends your hard-liners and idealists, but a fact nonetheless. (Incidentally, we too have annulments, but they are exceedingly rare.)


29 posted on 07/24/2014 2:40:21 PM PDT by The_Reader_David (And when they behead your own people in the wars which are to come, then you will know...)
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