In the Roman Church one must believe ALL[u][/u] dogma of the church. Is this the case of the Orthodox and/or Eastern Catholic Churches?

For that matter is there a defined set of dogma, other than the creeds?

For instance the sinlessness of Mary... is that dogma or just hopefull speculation.. not required either way?

All Catholics of whatever liturgical tradition are united in faith and morals. All Catholics are bound to believe what the magisterium of the Church teaches as revealed by God.

Thus, all Catholics are to believe that the Most Holy Theotokos was sinless from the moment of her conception.

Some Orthodox Churches will say that the Theotokos was sanctified at the moment of the Annunciation but, this is not what the Catholic Church teaches.

The Melkite Greek Catholic Synod of Bishops affirms that we believe everything that Orthodoxy teaches. The only thing that differentiates us from Orthodoxy is the fact of our communion with Rome. This is also the opinion of the greatest living Church historian, Fr. Robert Taft, S.J., as well as one of the greatest departed Church historians, Fr. Cyril Korolevsky.

Eastern Catholics do believe in Mary's sinlessness, but the question is really whether or not she was conceived without "original sin." The "dogma" of the Immaculate Conception is so steeped in the Latin understanding of "original sin" that it simply doesn't make sense from a Byzantine perspective (I can't speak for the Orientals, but I get the vibe that it's not such a problem for them).

I'm a Catholic and I sure don't believe everything the Eastern Orthodox Church proposes; ergo, I have never been a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and I suspect I will never be.I certainly have no plans to join it. So that's why I think it is an oversimplification to assert the only thing separating our Churches is that we are in communion with the Pope of Rome.

I'm willing to agree that that particular point of disunion is a place we can start in our efforts to dialogue, work together, and above all, love and resect each other.

That proposal also makes the concept of being in communion exceedingly thin.

I submit, then, that for 1000 years, our actual communion was amazingly thin. Things were so much better in the subsequent 1000 years. Amazing how some people want to make issues today out of matters that did not affect unity in the first millennium.

If not a problem for them, then not a problem for us.

All I can talk about on this subject is my own experience of being in communion with Rome. My subjective, personal experience of it is indeed rather thin. Whether this is good or bad I can't say because I don't know...
Seems to me issues arose since the first millinium of the Church's existence which gradually and decisively made that original unity with the Bishop of Rome mighty difficult for the majority of Byzantine Christians.

His yoke is easy, his burden is light. Communion is not submission or subordination, it is a sharing of faith. The separation of the Churches arose out of a long and gradual process of estrangement, in which each began to go off on its own tangent without reference to the other. Undoubtedly, had the communications that existed between East and West prior to the 7th century and the onset of the "Dark Ages" (which affected both Byzantium and the West), a good many misunderstandings could have been avoided, a consensus maintained, and unity preserved. There is plenty of blame to go around, but no excuse for us to continue to maintain the divisions that resulted from the errors of people long dead and consigned to God's mercy.

Communion with the Bishop of Rome most assuredly involves some degree of sudmission/subordination to his authority. Communion with him ain't all sweetness and light.
And I agree: we do indeed have the duty of at least looking for ways to take the stinger out of the reasons for the divisions between us and the Orthodox. it's a 2-way street, though. I'm not always persuaded the Orthodox want to be involved in these efforts.

When ecclesial relationships are modeled on the Holy Trinity, which is hierarchical but does not involve either subordination or submission, but perfect knowing and mutual deference, there can be no subordination or submission of one Church to another. And this is borne out by the repeated statements of the Holy See regarding the restoration of unity with the Orthodox Church since the dialogue reopened in the 1960: what is sought is not submission, or subordination or assimilation, but true communion in the Holy Spirit.

Poster: sielos ilgesys
Subject: Re: Required Dogma to be Orthodox/ Eastern catholic

I'm a Catholic and I sure don't believe everything the Eastern Orthodox Church proposes; ergo, I have never been a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and I suspect I will never be.I certainly have no plans to join it. So that's why I think it is an oversimplification to assert the only thing separating our Churches is that we are in communion with the Pope of Rome.

I'm willing to agree that that particular point of disunion is a place we can start in our efforts to dialogue, work together, and above all, love and resect each other.

*************

Stuart and Sielos both make a good point. You won't find complete agreement in any Church. The various Orthodox Patriarchates have varying degrees of agreement among themselves as do the various Bishops and Primates of the Roman Catholic Church.

That being understood, if asked to officially state their positions the hierarchies would finally state their agreement within their Church, Eastern or Western. However, splitting hairs and discussing various viewpoints does make interesting conversations on a forum and it hopefully broadens our understanding.

Podaj, Hospodi.

1 further thought that might be helpful to Dave's question:

I suppose the whole idea of the term "Orthodox in Communion with Rome" (have you heard us describing ourselves by it?) may be helpful to you and your wife. It is a term that is becoming more and more popular. I first learned it from some of our eminent theologians.

The term is trying to articulate the idea of Eastern Catholics being, as the Holy Synod of the Melkite Church put it "Orthodox in Faith" whilst being part of the Catholic Communion of Churches.

The use of the term "Orthodox" for ourselves means we are trying to get away from the the concept of being Byzantine (more or less) in liturgics but interiorily Latin in doctrine; and even more trying to not be or even some ethnic variation of the "Catholic faith" - e.g. the term "Ukrainian Catholic" per se meaning something like the Ukrainian version of being Catholic.

Plus using that key phrase "in Communion With (Rome)" instead of other formulations such as "Orthodox 'under' Rome" or even the less precise (but older term) "in union with" Rome - is the attempt to express a position of doctrinal uniformity with Orthodoxy and an ecclesial polity of equal sister churches wherein the Pope's role is more the guarder of the unity of the inter-ecclesial Communion rather than a model of monarchial rule, wherein he is not only the patriarch of the Latin Church, but the patriarch of all the other Churches of the Catholic Communion.

Therefore do Eastern (and speaking for my own Church's rite, Byzantine) Catholic have doctrine articulations at variance with the Latin Church and uniform with the Eastern Orthodox churches, I would say: yes, of course.

Otherwise we would not be implementing and living out of e.g. Vatican II's Orientalium Ecclesiarum or the spirit of the Articles of Uniya of Brest. There are many examples of such, e.g. the immaculate conception, the filoque, the status of monastics, original sin.

The big difference between Orthodox and Byzantine Catholics, other than "being in Communion with (the 1st) Rome" is that Byzantine Catholics do not hold that such differences are such that we must break our Communion with each other, whereas the Orthodox hold that such differences mean a sundering of Communion and such a fundamental difference in Faith that we cannot be in Communion with each other.

Eastern Catholics would look upon such fairly fundamental theological differences firstly as vitally important theological differences - i.e. we would not minimise the contradictions. Yet we would hold that they are either different articulations of a deeper truth, or perhaps better, clearly conflicting theological articulations of such a great Mystery that theological articulation is unable fully to define without apparent antinomies.

Finally, while I totally understand Dave's question and it is a valid question, I have a feeling that a more Byzantine approach would be less focused on dogmatic allegiance (given that Orthodoxy has not even finished defining the number of Sacraments there maybe) and perhaps more focused on the big picture of has one embraced and been embraced by God in the totality of the experience of the spiritual life in our Church - esp. its liturgical prayer life.

Of course this may not solve one's problems if one has problems not just with Latin dogmatics but also Orthodox dogmatics...