That the Roman Church does not root out the dissidents, rebels, and heretics which openly and loudly infest her is further witness against her.
Not at all. Didn't Jesus say that the field which is the kingdom of God would bring forth both wheat and tares until the end of time? The Church is not Heaven nor is it perfect on earth in regards to the behavior of members within it.
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But all in all, the Roman Church is inclined to seek unity in ritual practice and government to the detriment of unity in faith and doctrine. This is part of why the Roman Church is more eager to pursue ecumenicism than are the Eastern Orthodox.
Something which those of us who are Traditionalists are considerably upset about. This is why the Byzantine Church gets converts from the Latin Church. We have a number of parishoners who left because of such administrative follies.
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Of course, neither the issue of papal authority nor the controversy regarding the filioque are matters readily dismissed.
As they shouldn't be.
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The papacy goes straight to the heart of what constitutes the church and how the church is to be governed, and the filioque has profound implications on the understanding of the nature of the Trinity.
True. But theologians I have read on the filoque admit that the filioque is more of a matter of semantics. Both the East and West hold to the orthodoxy of opinion on the deity of Christ. Both the East and the West were trying to defend the deity of Christ against heresy. But due to the politics and emotions of the time, reconcilliation was not easy in this matter.
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But what about the differences in the theory of the atonement between the Roman and Eastern Orthodox Churches? This issue is highlighted in the very article that began this thread: whether Christ's death was a ransom to appease God's wrath against man (the Western view, which is attacked as making God hateful and unloving)
Certainly the scriptures speak of the issue of atonement and propitiation. I would be foolish to deny that. But the real issue has to do with whether that propitiation is for a certain class of "the elect" or if it was a more federal atonement in which Christ paid for the sins of Adam to reconcile mankind to God and restore the original plan of God.
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or whether Christ's death was a ransom to purchase sinners from Satan (which is the common Eastern view). Or how about basic anthropological differences, i.e., that the West believes that the guilt of original sin extends to all the descendants of Adam, whereas the East rejects that view? Are these matters so unimportant?
Are they? I don't know at this point in time because I have not thoroughly studied them out, my interests lying elsewhere at this time....however, I would suggest that rather than being in opposition to each other, perhaps both views are like the two sides of a coin.
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The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches are not in communion, so your union with Rome means either that you are going against the authority of the Eastern Orthodox church or else that you are not a member of her.
No, you do not realize that there was a group of Eastern Orthodox in the Ukraine who united with Rome back in the 13th century at the Union of Brest and the Union of Ushurod.
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While the Roman Church sees the Eastern Orthodox as a kind of sister to Rome, the Eastern Orthodox insists that she is the fullness of the Church. The Autocephalous Orthodox Church in North America (OCA) declaims any unity with Rome.
Understand.
Look at this:
This is an Orthodox Church. Our Liturgy is the Orthodox Liturgy which was written back in the 5th and 6th century. It is St. Ann's Byzantine Catholic Church, of which I am a member. If you ever visit our Liturgy, you will see nothing even close to a Roman liturgy. You will see an Orthodox liturgy and praxis.
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There is a major administrative difference between the churches of the "Catholic Faith" as you've defined it, and it centers on the Bishop of Rome, which only those churches in communion with him accept his unique authority as vicar of Christ.
Catholicism includes all bodies which submit to the authority of the Holy Father in Rome. The Eastern Orthodox do not accept that authority, but at one time they did. They still have valid priestly orders, and thus are considered as "sister churches" while yet not in communion with Rome.
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I could rightly mention that the Protestant churches are generally in agreement as to the centrality of the Scripture over and above tradition, the number of the sacraments, the rejection of a single visible head of the church, the penal substitution theory of the atonement, and the importance of faith-based justification, but their differences still remain.
The issue is that they each have a different authority over them eclessiastically. This makes them independant of each other. And they do not agree on some of the things you mentioned, such as the Sacraments. Baptists do not accept sacramentalism at all.
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Fair enough, but note the words of Paul: "For there must also be factions among you, so that those who are approved may become evident among you" (I Cor. 11:19). We await the coming day when the church shall truly be one, and we work to bring it about through the preaching of the gospel and adherence to the faith once delivered and handed down to us through the Scripture; but if we cannot be united in the truth, we must be divided by it. Truth is non-negotiable.
Indeed. Which is why the Catholic Faith will never relinquish it. I'm sorry, but the Reformers changed 1500 years of teaching as if it never existed prior to them. And now they try to tell us that their particular brand of theology was that taught by the apostles, which, of course, is impossible, since they cannot even agree among themselves. Just get a good Presbyterian Calvinist and a Landmark Baptist together and start a discussion about who's doctrine was the doctrine taught by Jesus and the apostles. Would be worth the price of admission. <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />
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