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SJ:

Christ is in our midst!!

I'd say you need to find an Eastern Catholic catechism that treats this area. Or you might go through the archives here where you'll find a wealth of information about this and so many topics. If you're looking for some "official pronouncement" such as you are used to in the Latin Church, that may be a bit harder to find because the Christian East is not given to making so many official pronouncements as the Latin Church. You need to look in the liturgical books to see what they say; you might try an Eastern Catholic priest or an Orthodox priest to explain the approach to you; or you might try The Orthodox Church by Bishop Kallistos Ware--he treats this topic and compares the approaches.

I think I'd step back and consider that the recent Popes have said publicly that there is, from the Catholic viewpoint, very little that stands in the way of full communion withe the Orthodox Church. You can't be in full communion when one portion is in heresy; that just doesn't stand to reason; and heresy is no small matter.

In Christ,

BOB

SpiritualJourney:

Christ is in our midst!!

I'd be remiss if I didn't point out to you that the current Catholic teaching about "heresy" and "schism" is that only Catholics are able to be in either of thees categories. People born into other Christian confessions--whether Churches or ecclesial communities--cannot be considered to be in either category. In other words, only a Catholic can get off the track and move on down the road to heresy and only a Catholic can move on down the road into formal schism.

And we might consider that there are those who have not formally gone down either road but who have gone down that road in their hearts where the Lord can discern it even when they give lip service to being faithful.

BOB

Of interest to this thread are the brief comments on original sin by Anthony Dragani [east2west.org]. What I find curious about his presentation is the following statement:
I do not doubt that this for a long time may have been the popular understanding, but I do question whether this is and was the proper theological understanding. In my judgment, which may well be wrong, the central concern of the Western view of original sin, at least since the time of high scholasticism, is the deprivation of the Holy Spirit: humanity is born into a condition where the Holy Spirit is absent in a way where he should not be absent. The phrase "original guilt" is simply shorthand for designation this deprivation of sanctifying grace and thus the need for baptismal regeneration.

Do you disagree?

Thomas Aquinas speaking of inherited guilt
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2081.htm

Fr Ambrose, I certainly do not deny that Western reflection on original sin has shaped by what might be called juridical concerns--hence the language of guilt, penalty, expiation, etc. But I do question whether these concerns in fact express the heart of the matter. As I'm sure you would agree, St Thomas's reflections on original sin need to read in the context of the whole of his theology: specifically, Q.81 needs to be in conjunction with Q.82. When we do so we discover that the nature that humanity inherits from Adam is a nature that has been alienated from the life of grace (see Bryan Cross's brief summary of Aquinas's construal of original sin [calledtocommunion.com]). If we make original guilt our principal concern, we make it look as if God directly punishes humanity for a sin, viz., Adam's sin of disobedience, for which it is not personally responsible--which of course would be unjust.

My interpretation is supported by the Tridentine Decree on Original Sin [history.hanover.edu]. How does baptism remit the guilt of original sin? Through the spiritual regeneration of the baptizand and the gift of a renewed human nature in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. The "stain" that needs to be washed away by the waters of baptism is that fallen and disoriented nature into which we have each been born.

But don't we still have a fallen nature post-Baptism?

Alexis