It's been interesting to see the thaw between Catholics and Orthodox. When Pope John Paul II went to Greece, there were fairly big protests. The Catholics have forgotten the Fourth Crusade and...
It's been interesting to see the thaw between Catholics and Orthodox. When Pope John Paul II went to Greece, there were fairly big protests. The Catholics have forgotten the Fourth Crusade and ensuing colonisation, but the Orthodox sure haven't.
Granted, Leo went to Turkey and not Greece, but I feel that venom isn't quite there anymore, at least this time.
I'm sure Errors of the Latins booklets were given out regardless though.
Is there an equal an opposite reaction to Orthodoxy from the Catholic side? A Stubbornness Of The East booklet or something? I think Orthodox people are okay to reconcile if Rome makes a bunch of...
Is there an equal an opposite reaction to Orthodoxy from the Catholic side? A Stubbornness Of The East booklet or something? I think Orthodox people are okay to reconcile if Rome makes a bunch of changes, sure, but do the Catholics feel the same way in reverse?
To be frank, Catholics don't feel anything about the Orthodox. I'd be surprised if your average Catholic knew what an Orthodox person was beyond "a Russian", and even that's a maybe. The...
Exemplary
To be frank, Catholics don't feel anything about the Orthodox. I'd be surprised if your average Catholic knew what an Orthodox person was beyond "a Russian", and even that's a maybe. The "boogeyman" of Catholics is Protestantism.
There'll be exceptions to this, like Croatia. As in, Catholic countries that have an ongoing relationship with Orthodox countries (E.g. Serbia), but for the vast majority of Catholics (Africa, the New World, etc) the relationship with Orthodoxy was just never a thing. I honestly don't think you could get the average Catholic on the street to tell you what the Great Schism was, or rattle off the pentarch seats. There's just no equivalent trauma on the Catholic side for the fourth crusade, so there's no reason to feel anything for the most part.
It's different for the leadership. I'm sure the Cardinals think about the Orthodox a lot, but I'm sure they also think about the Church of the East and the Oriental Churches a lot too.
I don't get the feeling that healing the schism is possible. The Orthodox (rightly) won't want to give up on the traditions that got them through Ottoman occupation, made possible by the Latins stabbing them in the back. The Catholics don't particularly see a need to change their ways either, as this is just not a relevant topic to the average joe, and the Pope will absolutely never give up being the head of the church, which is anathema to the Orthodox.
The Orthodox despise innovation, and define any differences between them and the Catholics as innovation. The Catholics "won" and won't make any changes for the weaker party. I don't see how either side finds a way out of this.
:) There is one thing the Catholic church has that could be an advantage: what new guy says, goes. Maybe when there is a Pope who doesn't actually care about being head of the church. Maybe it'll...
:) There is one thing the Catholic church has that could be an advantage: what new guy says, goes. Maybe when there is a Pope who doesn't actually care about being head of the church. Maybe it'll take a whole series of them making small changes every term.
And the Orthodox are not totally stuck either, at least not uniformly stuck: the Orthodox Church of Ukraine moved to new calendar in 2023; some parts of the Church went with multiple spoons for Holy Communion during COVID despite what the Ecumenical Patriarchate said. "Ecclesiastical Economia" makes this side more flexible than Rome, sometimes.
It's true that the lack of autocephaly in the Catholic Church lets the Pope make more overall changes! But it does have limits. Push too far and you risk another schism. There were quite a few...
It's true that the lack of autocephaly in the Catholic Church lets the Pope make more overall changes! But it does have limits. Push too far and you risk another schism. There were quite a few openly disloyal American bishops during Francis' tenure, for example, and they had to be handled very gently.
And I should probably not speak in absolutes about Orthodoxy. While the Orthodox are far more unified in worship (even while autocephalous) than most other denominations, they're also not robots, like you say. And I'm mostly talking about the Greek side (and the Ecumenical Patriarchate) when I talk about history. I suspect that a Romanian Orthodox is still familiiar with the history to an extent, but don't feel that horrible inherited sense of betrayal that a Greek person might.
That said, the sort of changes Catholicism would demand would be massive, starting with the primacy (and not just first among equals) of the bishop of Rome. I don't think to that a Pope that doesn't believe in the concept of Popes is ever going to be elected, and the Orthodox will never accept a head of the Church with this much power. And this one isn't an elite theoligical thing either, if there's one thing your regular Catholic cares about is that there's a Pope and that he's the head of the Church. Like the emperor of old in the Orthodox rite, it's the Pope's name Catholics wish good health on during mass. The concept is foundational to Catholicism.
Although I wouldn't be opposed to witnessing a full blown ecumenical council! It's been a hot minute since the last.one 🤣
Oh, it'd probably be an absolute disaster! Although this time, you can't call someone a heretic and ask the emperor to please kill them, so less bloody overall. In seriousness, I think it would be...
Oh, it'd probably be an absolute disaster! Although this time, you can't call someone a heretic and ask the emperor to please kill them, so less bloody overall.
In seriousness, I think it would be nice. No one would change their minds and no schisms would be healed, but it's good to just talk and see that other people are people that sincerely believe in their beliefs.
Regarding your story, that's really fascinating! I think the Orthodox are far more familiar with their saints than the bulk of Catholics. My upbringing is Catholic, and I don't think I could name a saint that's not one like an apostle or Peter or a basic one like that. Most of my education revolved around Jesus, God the Father and of course the weirdly-similar-to-an-earth-goddess Mary.
I understand this is different in some countries like Mexico and Ireland where definitely saints are a bigger deal, but many (most?) Catholic countries have a much less emphasis on saints. Definitely compared to the Orthodox anyway, as there's no Catholic equivalent to the Orthodox iconodulism. You'll have an image of Mary or Jesus, but you wouldn't be kissing it.
All this to say, I think it's really cool when members of a religion are able to preserve their stories.
I must thank this post because, after a quick search, I now finally understand the filioque. I think. Apparently, Catholics believe that the Holy Spirit comes from both Father and Son (Christ)....
I must thank this post because, after a quick search, I now finally understand the filioque. I think. Apparently, Catholics believe that the Holy Spirit comes from both Father and Son (Christ). Orthodox believe the Holy Spirit only originates from the Father.
That may be an irrelevant distinction to an outsider, but that does sound like a big deal for ancient churches.
To be clear, it's a big deal to theologians. The average Greek speaker in Thessaloniki in the 18th Century wouldn't have been able to explain this to you. But much like other religions, it becomes...
To be clear, it's a big deal to theologians. The average Greek speaker in Thessaloniki in the 18th Century wouldn't have been able to explain this to you. But much like other religions, it becomes a cultural demarcation and grows stronger the longer the two sides are separated.
During the Great Schism, the differences between both sides weren't that large. But it was politically fraught to have an emperor appointing patriarchs in the areas under imperial control vs having an independent bishop of Rome that quite enjoyed his independence thank you very much, with growing cultural differences in the Latin West and Greek East domains of the former ancient Roman Empire.
So I'd be surprised if your average Anatolian could tell you why bread was meant to be leavened or not leavened. But they sure as hell would've been sure that the Frankish barbarians were wrong.
This makes me feel somewhat better about my immediate reaction to the Wikipedia article being “man, this reads like fandom drama writ large”. I don’t like to trivialise other people’s sincerely...
To be clear, it's a big deal to theologians. The average Greek speaker in Thessaloniki in the 18th Century wouldn't have been able to explain this to you.
This makes me feel somewhat better about my immediate reaction to the Wikipedia article being “man, this reads like fandom drama writ large”.
I don’t like to trivialise other people’s sincerely held beliefs (I might well disagree with them, but that’s a very different thing!), but that kind of minor difference on a topic that ultimately comes down to an unknowable question of subjective interpretation anyway does seem, well, trivial as a reason for such a stark divide. Having it as a cause célèbre to reinforce broader cultural or political differences makes more sense to me, even if that does seem unfortunate.
Yup. Not to demean the issues themselves, I'm certainly not trying to settle millenia of theology with a flippant comment on an internet forum. But these sort of honest differences of belief are...
Yup. Not to demean the issues themselves, I'm certainly not trying to settle millenia of theology with a flippant comment on an internet forum. But these sort of honest differences of belief are generally tied to ethnic, national or social differences, and become the markers in a group.
Does it matter too much that Samaritans believe the holiest place in the world is Mount Gereizim and not Temple Mount? Probably not, you could probably reconcile the difference in a vacuum, but it's like one of the 4 or 5 core differences between Jews and Samaritans, so to the tiny 900 man Samaritan community it's extremely extremely important.
It can be unfortunate because it leads to war and death but... I don't know, I think it's kinda neat. There's a lot of history that would otherwise be lost in these esoteric little differences. A lot of identities that would've been eaten by the mainstream managed to barely hang up to the present day because of anchors like these.
That's a very interesting perspective I hadn't considered before, that, much of a divide is ethnocultural, reinforced by the years, hardened by trauma caused by "the other side". But looking at it...
That's a very interesting perspective I hadn't considered before, that, much of a divide is ethnocultural, reinforced by the years, hardened by trauma caused by "the other side".
But looking at it from a brotherhood of all humanity angle, it's an argument between brothers: you started it, nuh-uh you did, you're wrong, says you etc. @Greg said fandom drama, and I hope this is one of those things where there is still anything to fight over because of a common love for the same Kingdom
That’s a nice way of looking at it, actually - in my cynicism I was definitely equating division with outright conflict, but if that can be kept down at a simmer then it’s good to have that avenue...
That’s a nice way of looking at it, actually - in my cynicism I was definitely equating division with outright conflict, but if that can be kept down at a simmer then it’s good to have that avenue for the preservation of culture.
I try to be positive about it, though you're absolutely right that a lot of suffering comes out of it as well. Another good and probably more familiar example is Egyptians Copts. It's not that...
I try to be positive about it, though you're absolutely right that a lot of suffering comes out of it as well.
Another good and probably more familiar example is Egyptians Copts. It's not that Christianity and Islam are better than one another or even native to the land of Egypt, but Christianity preserves a lot of ancient Egyptian characteristics that the Arab Egyptians lost, like the liturgical language of Coptic (the modern version of the ancient Egyptian language), the Coptic script from the Ptolemaic era, and even their own endonym (rem en keme/lem en kemi/rem en khemi). That kem is derived from Kemet/Kumat/kmt. As in, the ancient and indigenous name of Egypt. Without Christianity, these features get absorbed into the sprawling emerging Islamic culture, which is indeed what happened to the vast majority of the Muslim world (to an extent, it's more complicated than that).
I mean, it's one of a series of things. :/ it's been a bunch of hundreds of years, afterall. But at the end of the day, we have a lot more in common with the Catholic than with Protestants or...
I mean, it's one of a series of things. :/ it's been a bunch of hundreds of years, afterall. But at the end of the day, we have a lot more in common with the Catholic than with Protestants or those outside of the Christian confession. For example, at this meeting they were able to greet the saints the same way, and do the doxology prayer the same way together. We're old old old siblings that go way back.
I'm not sure how they can be convinced to give up on the filioque, primacy of Rome and a bunch of stuff. I'm just layity of course, so, on a personal level, if my bishop says hey we're doing this and we're giving up on x y z for unity and love, and I can see that we are indeed doing this for unity and love, I can give up on a few things.
So! Maybe in a few decades if I'm thinking speedy Reunion!
I was raised Angelican as well, and one of my favorite Christian writers, C S Lewis, was (is?) Anglican :) I used to have all the answers when I was a Protestant, which, turns out, I was wrong on...
I was raised Angelican as well, and one of my favorite Christian writers, C S Lewis, was (is?) Anglican :) I used to have all the answers when I was a Protestant, which, turns out, I was wrong on almost everything so I'm not going to try now.
Dedicated episode of a podcast from a priest explaining it here: Rome, part 1b - I'm hoping maybe you can tell me
Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy
Rome - Part 1b
In the second half of his first talk on Rome, Fr. Andrew looks at the filioque, papal infallibility, and created vs. uncreated grace.
I think at the end of the day, folks who are kind to each other are going to be honoured well above folks who didn't, doctrine or no doctrine. Belonging to the OG Church is a bonus for my benefit...
I think at the end of the day, folks who are kind to each other are going to be honoured well above folks who didn't, doctrine or no doctrine. Belonging to the OG Church is a bonus for my benefit so I can receive better correction for the many times when I'm not being loving to others; it does not provide stat bonus, just speedier hospital care for however often I am sick.
It's been interesting to see the thaw between Catholics and Orthodox. When Pope John Paul II went to Greece, there were fairly big protests. The Catholics have forgotten the Fourth Crusade and ensuing colonisation, but the Orthodox sure haven't.
Granted, Leo went to Turkey and not Greece, but I feel that venom isn't quite there anymore, at least this time.
I'm sure Errors of the Latins booklets were given out regardless though.
Is there an equal an opposite reaction to Orthodoxy from the Catholic side? A Stubbornness Of The East booklet or something? I think Orthodox people are okay to reconcile if Rome makes a bunch of changes, sure, but do the Catholics feel the same way in reverse?
To be frank, Catholics don't feel anything about the Orthodox. I'd be surprised if your average Catholic knew what an Orthodox person was beyond "a Russian", and even that's a maybe. The "boogeyman" of Catholics is Protestantism.
There'll be exceptions to this, like Croatia. As in, Catholic countries that have an ongoing relationship with Orthodox countries (E.g. Serbia), but for the vast majority of Catholics (Africa, the New World, etc) the relationship with Orthodoxy was just never a thing. I honestly don't think you could get the average Catholic on the street to tell you what the Great Schism was, or rattle off the pentarch seats. There's just no equivalent trauma on the Catholic side for the fourth crusade, so there's no reason to feel anything for the most part.
It's different for the leadership. I'm sure the Cardinals think about the Orthodox a lot, but I'm sure they also think about the Church of the East and the Oriental Churches a lot too.
I don't get the feeling that healing the schism is possible. The Orthodox (rightly) won't want to give up on the traditions that got them through Ottoman occupation, made possible by the Latins stabbing them in the back. The Catholics don't particularly see a need to change their ways either, as this is just not a relevant topic to the average joe, and the Pope will absolutely never give up being the head of the church, which is anathema to the Orthodox.
The Orthodox despise innovation, and define any differences between them and the Catholics as innovation. The Catholics "won" and won't make any changes for the weaker party. I don't see how either side finds a way out of this.
:) There is one thing the Catholic church has that could be an advantage: what new guy says, goes. Maybe when there is a Pope who doesn't actually care about being head of the church. Maybe it'll take a whole series of them making small changes every term.
And the Orthodox are not totally stuck either, at least not uniformly stuck: the Orthodox Church of Ukraine moved to new calendar in 2023; some parts of the Church went with multiple spoons for Holy Communion during COVID despite what the Ecumenical Patriarchate said. "Ecclesiastical Economia" makes this side more flexible than Rome, sometimes.
It's true that the lack of autocephaly in the Catholic Church lets the Pope make more overall changes! But it does have limits. Push too far and you risk another schism. There were quite a few openly disloyal American bishops during Francis' tenure, for example, and they had to be handled very gently.
And I should probably not speak in absolutes about Orthodoxy. While the Orthodox are far more unified in worship (even while autocephalous) than most other denominations, they're also not robots, like you say. And I'm mostly talking about the Greek side (and the Ecumenical Patriarchate) when I talk about history. I suspect that a Romanian Orthodox is still familiiar with the history to an extent, but don't feel that horrible inherited sense of betrayal that a Greek person might.
That said, the sort of changes Catholicism would demand would be massive, starting with the primacy (and not just first among equals) of the bishop of Rome. I don't think to that a Pope that doesn't believe in the concept of Popes is ever going to be elected, and the Orthodox will never accept a head of the Church with this much power. And this one isn't an elite theoligical thing either, if there's one thing your regular Catholic cares about is that there's a Pope and that he's the head of the Church. Like the emperor of old in the Orthodox rite, it's the Pope's name Catholics wish good health on during mass. The concept is foundational to Catholicism.
Although I wouldn't be opposed to witnessing a full blown ecumenical council! It's been a hot minute since the last.one 🤣
Oh boy, can you imagine? Complete with horse murder / resurrections, cloak paddle boarding, and other fun miracles please.
Oh, it'd probably be an absolute disaster! Although this time, you can't call someone a heretic and ask the emperor to please kill them, so less bloody overall.
In seriousness, I think it would be nice. No one would change their minds and no schisms would be healed, but it's good to just talk and see that other people are people that sincerely believe in their beliefs.
Regarding your story, that's really fascinating! I think the Orthodox are far more familiar with their saints than the bulk of Catholics. My upbringing is Catholic, and I don't think I could name a saint that's not one like an apostle or Peter or a basic one like that. Most of my education revolved around Jesus, God the Father and of course the weirdly-similar-to-an-earth-goddess Mary.
I understand this is different in some countries like Mexico and Ireland where definitely saints are a bigger deal, but many (most?) Catholic countries have a much less emphasis on saints. Definitely compared to the Orthodox anyway, as there's no Catholic equivalent to the Orthodox iconodulism. You'll have an image of Mary or Jesus, but you wouldn't be kissing it.
All this to say, I think it's really cool when members of a religion are able to preserve their stories.
I must thank this post because, after a quick search, I now finally understand the filioque. I think. Apparently, Catholics believe that the Holy Spirit comes from both Father and Son (Christ). Orthodox believe the Holy Spirit only originates from the Father.
That may be an irrelevant distinction to an outsider, but that does sound like a big deal for ancient churches.
To be clear, it's a big deal to theologians. The average Greek speaker in Thessaloniki in the 18th Century wouldn't have been able to explain this to you. But much like other religions, it becomes a cultural demarcation and grows stronger the longer the two sides are separated.
During the Great Schism, the differences between both sides weren't that large. But it was politically fraught to have an emperor appointing patriarchs in the areas under imperial control vs having an independent bishop of Rome that quite enjoyed his independence thank you very much, with growing cultural differences in the Latin West and Greek East domains of the former ancient Roman Empire.
So I'd be surprised if your average Anatolian could tell you why bread was meant to be leavened or not leavened. But they sure as hell would've been sure that the Frankish barbarians were wrong.
This makes me feel somewhat better about my immediate reaction to the Wikipedia article being “man, this reads like fandom drama writ large”.
I don’t like to trivialise other people’s sincerely held beliefs (I might well disagree with them, but that’s a very different thing!), but that kind of minor difference on a topic that ultimately comes down to an unknowable question of subjective interpretation anyway does seem, well, trivial as a reason for such a stark divide. Having it as a cause célèbre to reinforce broader cultural or political differences makes more sense to me, even if that does seem unfortunate.
Yup. Not to demean the issues themselves, I'm certainly not trying to settle millenia of theology with a flippant comment on an internet forum. But these sort of honest differences of belief are generally tied to ethnic, national or social differences, and become the markers in a group.
Does it matter too much that Samaritans believe the holiest place in the world is Mount Gereizim and not Temple Mount? Probably not, you could probably reconcile the difference in a vacuum, but it's like one of the 4 or 5 core differences between Jews and Samaritans, so to the tiny 900 man Samaritan community it's extremely extremely important.
It can be unfortunate because it leads to war and death but... I don't know, I think it's kinda neat. There's a lot of history that would otherwise be lost in these esoteric little differences. A lot of identities that would've been eaten by the mainstream managed to barely hang up to the present day because of anchors like these.
That's a very interesting perspective I hadn't considered before, that, much of a divide is ethnocultural, reinforced by the years, hardened by trauma caused by "the other side".
But looking at it from a brotherhood of all humanity angle, it's an argument between brothers: you started it, nuh-uh you did, you're wrong, says you etc. @Greg said fandom drama, and I hope this is one of those things where there is still anything to fight over because of a common love for the same Kingdom
That’s a nice way of looking at it, actually - in my cynicism I was definitely equating division with outright conflict, but if that can be kept down at a simmer then it’s good to have that avenue for the preservation of culture.
I try to be positive about it, though you're absolutely right that a lot of suffering comes out of it as well.
Another good and probably more familiar example is Egyptians Copts. It's not that Christianity and Islam are better than one another or even native to the land of Egypt, but Christianity preserves a lot of ancient Egyptian characteristics that the Arab Egyptians lost, like the liturgical language of Coptic (the modern version of the ancient Egyptian language), the Coptic script from the Ptolemaic era, and even their own endonym (rem en keme/lem en kemi/rem en khemi). That kem is derived from Kemet/Kumat/kmt. As in, the ancient and indigenous name of Egypt. Without Christianity, these features get absorbed into the sprawling emerging Islamic culture, which is indeed what happened to the vast majority of the Muslim world (to an extent, it's more complicated than that).
Anyway, I'm rambling! I like cultures.
I mean, it's one of a series of things. :/ it's been a bunch of hundreds of years, afterall. But at the end of the day, we have a lot more in common with the Catholic than with Protestants or those outside of the Christian confession. For example, at this meeting they were able to greet the saints the same way, and do the doxology prayer the same way together. We're old old old siblings that go way back.
I'm not sure how they can be convinced to give up on the filioque, primacy of Rome and a bunch of stuff. I'm just layity of course, so, on a personal level, if my bishop says hey we're doing this and we're giving up on x y z for unity and love, and I can see that we are indeed doing this for unity and love, I can give up on a few things.
So! Maybe in a few decades if I'm thinking speedy Reunion!
I was raised Angelican as well, and one of my favorite Christian writers, C S Lewis, was (is?) Anglican :) I used to have all the answers when I was a Protestant, which, turns out, I was wrong on almost everything so I'm not going to try now.
Dedicated episode of a podcast from a priest explaining it here: Rome, part 1b - I'm hoping maybe you can tell me
I think at the end of the day, folks who are kind to each other are going to be honoured well above folks who didn't, doctrine or no doctrine. Belonging to the OG Church is a bonus for my benefit so I can receive better correction for the many times when I'm not being loving to others; it does not provide stat bonus, just speedier hospital care for however often I am sick.