www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Intercommunion taken to an extreme?

I don't know the forum you're referring to but know what you mean.

I would bet you've been there at some point. It's probably the best-known Catholic web-forum, and it has an Eastern Catholic section (that Eastern Catholics don't like) and a Traditional Catholic section (that traditional Catholics don't like).

The church can no more revoke papal infallibility than it can approve gay marriage; it's not mainline or Mormon; it can't revoke a doctrine.

That said, I appreciate what Vatican II ostensibly was trying to do by balancing out/completing Vatican I by emphasizing local bishops. But it's still a non-starter in Orthodox theological opinion, so after a schism 75 years ago that never should have happened (in a way nothing to do with doctrine, you're right, DMD; the church did abandon your family; I can't tell you how sorry I am)

DMD and I are talking about a canyon an inch wide but infinitely deep: the nature and scope of the papacy, the ONLY real difference IMO between Catholicism and Orthodoxy.

It was not conceived as such by the Kyivan bishops who initiated the push towards union. They believed it possible to be in communion both with Rome and with the Orthodox commonwealth; they did not seek to break communion with either Moscow or Constantinople, but felt only communion with Rome under terms similar to those of the Union of Florence, could ensure their survival at a time when they were under severe legal, social and economic pressure within the Kingdom of Poland. With Constantinople enfeebled under the Ottoman thumb, and Moscow actually hostile to Poland

Rome was the only Church that could provide them with protection.

Unfortunately for the Kyivan bishops, much had changed in the world since Florence, mainly the Reformation and the Council of Trent, whose exclusionary ecclesiology could not admit to the existence of other true Churches outside of the Church of Rome. Corporate reception of the "Ruteni" as an ecclesial entity was thus rejected, and in the end (per the Bull Magnus Dominus of 1598), they were received only as an aggregation of repentant schismatics, "Roman Catholics" who were allowed to retain their unique liturgical and disciplinary customs by "dispensation". Thus, the phenomenon of "uniatism" was born.

The Orthodox Churches responded to this development by breaking communion with the Uniates (though never completely, as any honest history of the region will acknowledge), and hardening their attitudes towards Rome. The real losers in all this were the Uniates themselves, who lost their ecclesial connection with their Mother Church, while at the same time being reduced to "spiritual helots" (Fr. Serge Kelleher's term) of the Church of Rome.

Let's see what the Pope has defined ex cathedra: Mary's all-holy and was assumed into heaven. Filtering out the anti-Catholic sophistry from Orthodox apologists, all pious Greeks and Russians believe some form of both (Mary is Panagia/пресвятая). So what's the problem?

Not quite. Recent actions/statements of the Vatican on the issue (and also the absence of actions/statements when not only warranted, but requested) reveal either uncertainty or duplicity-but definitely not certitude of the Faith.

By the way, Catholic doesn't necessarily mean ultramontanist. As a traditionalist I'm actually a papal minimalist, more interested in organic immemorial custom just like the Orthodox. The Pope is a distant figure to most Catholics; he's rarely used his office's infallibility; in 200 years he's used it twice, and to define things Catholics already believed. So it doesn't make sense to us when non-Catholics get upset over papal power.

While I miss Pope Benedict, and realize Francis probably isn't a friend, so what? The nature of his office is he can't teach heresy. So I'm not leaving the church because of him or declaring him an antipope (sedevacantism). But I'm realistic. He's not high-church traditionalist and not interested in that. So I hope he leaves us alone.

He's not interested in the Eastern churches either. Much has been made in parts of the Catholic press of his role in Argentina as the default ordinary of Eastern Catholics there but that was just part of his job due to circumstances (no Eastern Catholic bishops there).

I'm not really sure what you're referring to.

Well, that ringing endorsement is sure to set the Orthodox on fire with enthusiasm to submit. What did we need a supreme pontiff for again?

One example each:
https://www.byzcath.org/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/381927/1

The other I can't find the thread: it was the Vatican's synod of its Middle Eastern bishops 2 years ago now? that brought up the lack of movement on the promises in the Codex canones ecclesiarum orientalis for the power to ordain married men in the "diaspora."

Well, if you "needed" the pope in the sense you mean, then we never would have renounced proselytizing your members (individually or otherwise). [Linked Image]

.. Liberal academic Orthodox and pseudo-Orthodox dissenter Catholics want to sit with the cool kids, going to conferences to give talks on 'Women Deacons Would Be Neat' and 'Why My Reading of the Fathers Is Right and the Catholic Church Is Wrong'. They don't want to be embarrassed by a bunch of conservative Catholics fleeing the abuses in the Novus Ordo by coming to their church. They can push all the right political-correctness buttons: anything but Rome and anything but '50s America. They're exotic (diversity coolness points; Westerners converting to Orthodoxy is a boutique religion like becoming a Buddhist) and can claim to have been oppressed (as sometimes Eastern Catholics were, as in the case of the Chornock schism).

I can see from your website that you obviously like 50's America, but I'm wondering what that has to do with any of this and when have any Easterners said anything bad about it?

The comment about Westerners becoming Orthodox is extremely offensive. You're insulting the entire population of Orthodox converts in the West, as well as Roman Catholics who cross over Eastern Catholicism and who have a similar conversion experience in that they feel called to the Eastern patrimony and spirituality. I would think most of these people feel it is a call from God. You seem to be calling them all frauds or so shallow as to be only wanting to be "cool" or different. I'm at a loss for words to describe how offensive and hurtful that is.