Dear Lida,
Actually, it was Andrew who said he was being flippant, not me . . .
I'm never flippant . . .
That the later 14 Latin Councils of the RC Church are Local Councils is a thesis that has been defended and it is entirely possible for the RC Church to define them as such.
The RC Church has never infallibly defined Orthodox as schismatics and, in any event, doesn't use that terminology today. Neither does it say the stuff the Florentine council said about Jews and Muslims.
In fact, what it says would ONLY apply if someone believed in the truth of Catholicism and still stayed where they are outside of the Catholic Church.
As for the Marian doctrines, we Eastern Catholics and Orthodox have believed Mary's total holiness and assumption into heaven for centuries, from the very beginning.
It is only in the Latin Church that you had people who could legitimately hold otherwise (until the formal dogmatic pronouncements, that is).
If a Roman pope defines an article of faith infallibly, then the Eastern Catholic Churches will accept it.
But as long as they don't ALREADY believe it as part of their Eastern Catholic patrimony of faith.
In the case of the Marian doctrines, they already DID accept both.
And, did you know, that the Eastern Churches also accept the holiness of the Conception of St John the Baptist and that of St Nicholas of Myra?
TAK!
My great-uncle, by the way, was Metropolitan Volodymyr Sterniuk of the underground Church.
A very wonderful man!
Alex
