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I posted this on an Orthodox forum. A discussion of it is also going on at the Catholic Convert forum. Should be interesting.

Can someone please tell me whatever is the excuse for continued division between East and West when this is an Orthodox liturgical text?

www.holymyrrhbearers.com/litur...gical_texts.htm [holymyrrhbearers.com]

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I don't get it. Disobedience to Jesus' prayer for unity recorded in John 17 over what?

Dan Lauffer

Dear Dan,

This is exactly what St Josaphat pointed to when he visited the Orthodox monks of the Kievan Caves Lavra in his lifetime!

He actually told them to show him where in their own liturgical texts is St Peter NOT the Rock on which Christ built His Church or where Rome is NOT the inheritor of Peter's leadership - and, if they could do so, HE, Josaphat, would become Orthodox and join them in the Lavra . . . (This is in the biography of St Josaphat by Fr. Wysochansky OSBM).

So now, let's leave the question wide open to our Orthodox brothers here, shall we?

If you can show us the same, WE will join with you!!

Whenever you are ready . . .

Alex

Well, I believe it is for the Defenders of those extraordinary pronouncements at Vatican I to show how these are somehow relatable to the Ethos of the Eastern Church

Brian,

You may, but not really, have found an excuse for schism for that last century or so but what excuse do you give for the centuries preceding that?

Dan Lauffer

Dear Professor Dan,

That's right - go after those "schism-loving" brothers of ours! (As mentioned in the Service to St Josaphat.)

Alex

Would you say that the Reply of Holy Orthodox Patriarchs to the pronouncements of Vatican I were really excuses??? Or were they just astonished at innovations? The Papal Claims to Infallibility and to Universal Jurisdiction over the Entire Church are seen as great innovations and alien to the Conciliar spirit of the Eastern Church.
Indeed, the Pope himself has felt the need to say that his role needs to be reexamined.

Professor Alex,

I think that there are lovers of schism all over the place. Didn't the serpent tell Eve that eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil wouldn't really cause death but would make us all like gods? Isn't that schism? And don't Catholics sometime act like they are better than others? At least some of my theology students do.

I really believe that the reason separation continues is because of human pride...and there is an aweful lot of that. I have to repent of it all the time.

Dan Lauffer

BTW Brian I just read your post. I agree. Imagine how history would have been different if the Orthodox and Catholics had turned their swords into plows before VCI?

Dan Lauffer

Dear Brian,

But haven't you "schism-loving" brothers thrown out the baby with the bath-water?

(I just can't help myself - the old Greek-Catholic is coming alive in me . . . ).

Alex

Dear Professor Dan,

I agree - we both know annoying Roman Catholics as well as Orthodox .

And, in one sense, both Catholics and Orthodox are in schism from one another.

Brian is right (please don't count me among the schism-loving brothers though!).

The role of Peter is something that both Churches affirm.

It is when we get to the "how" this is to be expressed that things break down.

The fact that the RC's have the Pope does not mean that their ecclesiology is complete according to the Patristic vision of the pre-schism Church.

And "Peter" is also represented in the ENTIRE Episcopate and in the Orthodox Patriarchs too.

No one denies that the Pope is a descendant of Peter or that he is the first bishop in the Church.

One just doesn't want Rome crawling up one's ecclesial backside, as has often been the Orthodox complaint.

Although in not so many words . . .

Over to you, Brian!

Alex

Alex,

I certainly understand this:

"One just doesn't want Rome crawling up one's ecclesial backside, as has often been the Orthodox complaint."

And in many ways their complaint is justified. However, Byzantium no longer exists and despite the horrible experiences of 1203 I doubt that it could have survived the Moslem onslaught no matter what happened. One need remember that the West shed much blood in defense of the East. Doubtless shedding more blood for the East than against it. I would suggest that Constantinople helped do itself in by not caring for her charges properly, though I wouldn't push that too far. The Arab Muslims were (are?) indeed barbaric.

But does the East really anticipate a Western led destruction of all things Orthodox if there really is joint communion?

Dan Lauffer

AMEN, DAN!!!!!!!!!! AMEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We agree on something!!

When I was a seminarian at the Pontifical College of St. Mary's Seminary (from which I graduated in 1973), we were taught that it was upon the CONFESSION of St. Peter that Jesus is Lord that the Our Saviour founded His Church and NOT upon the person of St. Peter. Now are you telling me that the Holy Father's Pontifical Seminary (the oldest Roman Catholic seminary in this land...founded by French Sulpicians in 1791) is/was teaching error? I will stake my salvation on that confession and have.

In His Holy and Precious Name,
+Father Archimandrite Gregory

Dear Dan,

I think our friend Daniel the Byzantine Ascetic just may!

Or else, he would if his spiritual Father told him so!

(Alex, stop that, stop that now!!)

Alex

Father,

I am completely in the dark about this. If this is so, and it is either/or and not both/and I don't know why the Catholic Church exists. I should think CCC paragraphs 552-53 indicates both Peter and His confession. But please correct me if I'm wrong. If what you say is true what has held Catholicism back from becoming Eastern Orthodox?

Dan Lauffer

Alex,

I must go back and read some of daniel's posts. Perhaps I've read them too cursorily. At any rate, please don't abandoned the Forum again announcing that this recent comment has forced you to leave forever. Ok?

Dan Lauffer

PS Well, I see what you mean: "According to some Orthodox Priest that I have talked to about it, it is a heresy. Of course a Eastern Catholic is going to give his explanation for the belief, but I believe what I have been taught by priest who a look to as my teachers the way the explain it, I believe it is a heresy.

In Christ
Daniel"