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And telling your neighbor that he or she is outside the Church of Jesus Christ (and therefore endangering their soul) is the highest act of charity you can do for them. There is no such thing as pride regarding the keeping the true Faith; it is a matter of salvation or damnation, as simple as that.

It's not so simple when people are involved. It is quite understandable that the eastern Byzantine Churches would reject any union after being told that they are the ones who: changed the creed (when it was the West that did so), changed the Eucharistic species (East has always used leavened), etc. On top of these mis-statements, the unionisers at one time also wanted the Patriarch to kiss the feet of the Pope. If that isn't PRIDE, what is?!
You cannot fault a group of people for rejecting the Truth when the Truth is presented on a platter of pride and lies; it is for this reason the Orthodox are not the only ones at fault for schism - the Latin Church at the time forced schism onward.

Here is an interview with the Superior of the SSPX following his meeting with Pope Benedict. As mentioned above, they do indeed believe him to be a valid Pope and do desire explicit communion with Rome.

http://www.sspx.org/Superior%20Generals%20Ltrs/interview_re_aug_29_05_meeting_w_pope.htm

They do appear to be in schism, whether they themselves deny it or not. They seem to have a very Protestant mindset as well, with their private judgement/conscience overruling the Magesterium when there is conflict between the two. And I say this without ill-will towards "traditionalists", as I myself currently attend an indult Tridentine Mass.

adversus,

I think you are brave to pull the full-blown, Traditionalist Latin card here. Good luck to you on that.

However, it is exactly the mindset you put forth here that keeps the Orthodox out of communion with Rome. It is insulting and chauvanistic to insist that the Orthodox Churches must "submit" to Rome in anyway. And everyone here so far has been right when they say that Rome came up with the Filioque, Papal Infallibility, and Immaculate Conception all on their own, without recourse to the UNIVERSAL CHURCH, which includes the Eastern Bishops. Most in the East consider the Councils such as the Laterans, V1, and V2, etc, to be LATIN councils, and in fact, the term "ecumenical" was only added to them recently, showing that even the Latin Church didn't originally see them as really "ecumenical" (because they weren't).

Finally, the idea that the Orthodox would have to accept the Immaculate Conception is just ridiculous, and proves how little Latins know of Eastern Theology. The East does not share the West's view of Augustine's idea of Original Sin. Now, let the semi-Pelagian part of this argument begin!

Also, I think I'll visit my local Latin indult parish for Thursday's Immaculate Conception High Mass. I'm quite interested in this, but it conflicts with Sunday Divine Liturgy, usually. It's St. Boniface here in Pgh.

Dear Brother in Christ Adversus,

I am Catholic, born, bred, and raised. I try to follow the Word of God. I acknowledge that the Pope holds the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven as the successor to Peter as per Matthew, and he holds the seat of honor as being first among the Primates of the one Holy and Apostolic Church, however, he is not the only primate of the Church. The Pope is a man, as you and I are, and therefor, is subjected to constant temptations by the Evil One. As my spiritual guide has taught me, the more you grow within The Lord, the harder the evil one will torment you!

The Pope is a man, a very holy man, appointed with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, but so is his brothers in Christ, the other Patriarchs. The Apostles as a whole worked as a team, not individually. Sure, we have the churches founded by Peter, and by Mark, and by Andrew, and by Thomas, etc. but this is to recognize and honor the success of the Apostles, not to individualize and or denigrate the churches. Instead, it is a celebration of the Truth of The Word of God, and the Church that was placed upon this earth, to guide the sinful man closer to his/her personal Theosis!

There is one Church, created by The Word, to teach The Word, and should be managed by the whole team to bring us all closer to the Kingdom of Heaven. If only one Apostle went out and preached the Word, and the rest stayed back in Jerusalem, lamenting for Our Lord and Savior, I do not think the Church would have been established. Instead, the team of the Apostles, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, went out and across the world and spread the Good News. Acts shows that there were periodic calibrations between the Apostles to ensure the Word was given consistently on all fronts. Yes, there was a leader of the group, but never the less, this was a group, and they all acted in Unison.

How, in good conscious then, can a member of the team of God impose dogmatic changes without the calibration and consensus of his brothers?

This poses questions to me that may doom my spirit and soul to hell, but I really have to ask it. +Blessed Pope John Paul II is truly a saint, but not all Popes can fit into that category. The sin of pride. Pray for me because I really need it now.

Last but not least, Catholic is Greek for Universal, not Latin for exclusive.

Time for confession again! And on St. Nicholas Day!

Michael

I assume the Orthodox know now that submission to the Pope is part of being in the Church. So what is stopping them from obeying now? If it's the truth now, shouldn't they assent to it?


(No Orthodox Christian accepts that. So, no, we don't know that...)


And it has also been clearly established that Catholic theology has always taught that the Pope has jurisdiction over the whole Church, and he has jurisdiction over the Orthodox now.


(Clearly established?! By whom?! The Early Church never knew it...No Father ever taught it. Quod ubi sit semper and all that...ET EST NON DOCIT SEMPER.)

The hang up is with "schism". I will say this. Adversus, check the mutual renunciation of the anathemas of 1054 both in 1964 between Athenogoras and Pope Paul the VI; and again the renunciation of the anathemas was renewed between Pope John Paul II and Patriarch Bartolomeos. "Renunciation of anathemas" is quite clear.

Now check the ipso facto excommunication of the four bishops of the SSPX along with Msgr. Lefebvre. Most definitely still in force, as recently we were reminded by our new Holy Father.

These are two seperate worlds and realities. There is clearly no canonical obfuscation between these two situations. The SSPX can not validly claim they are in a similar situation to the Orthodox. Besides, according to their primary "theologian", Fr. Schmidberger, the Orthodox are actually heretical (a statement which in itself is a drastic departure from Catholic teaching).

And furthermore regarding the Orthodox, check out Unitatis Redintegratio, especially Paragraph 17. With the Orthodox, there are complex historical, cultural, etc. factors weighing in on the almost 1,000 years since 1054.

With the SSPX, it is not much more than overt refusal to submit to the Pontiff. The deal was good enough for the likes of the Fraternity of St. Peter, the Benedictine monastery of Le Barroux, and the entire diocese of Campos, Brazil led by Bishop Rifan.

I used to teach at an SSPX college, was there in 1988 during the schism (in St. Mary's, Kansas) so I do speak with some degree of personal experience.
Deacon Diak

Fr. Deacon Diak,

Don't forget that most Latin diocese offer at least one parish which serves the indult Tridentine Mass. I know that not all do, and some of the more liberal bishops have more or less outlawed it. But add to the indult those groups you've mentioned; the SSPX is not needed.

Another favorite I've heard from LatinTrads is: "What if they totally "updated" the Divine Liturgy and changed everything you held sacred, what would you do?"

I said I'd become Orthodox. To which our SSPX friend will no doubt reply: "See, told you so; schism shmism."

Two misconceptions that should be cleared up here.

Number 1:
I'm no liturgical scholar, but even if you reduce the Eucharistic Liturgy to simply the Missal you use, the Tridentine Missal is NOT the Missal of Pope St. Gregory.

The "Tridentine Mass" is a simplification of the greater Medieval Mass for the Roman Curia, dating from around 1400. From, say, 900, there were several elements in common in the general Medieval Mass, but regions and sometimes even individual dioceses had their own variants, with significant differences from the later Tridentine Missal (and we're not talking about Mozarabics or Ambrosians here).

Moreover, the earliest Roman Missals of the post-Gregorian era are quite different from the Tridentine Missal. The one element that has stayed more or less the same throughout all this is the Roman Canon.

Moving away from Missals to a more holistic view of Liturgy, including vestments, archicecture, and music, these elements have changed TREMENDOUSLY over the years.

Number 2:
What I would do if I were Greek Catholic and found my bishop changed the liturgy overnight?
I'd do similar to what I'd do as a Latin who dislikes much what I see liturgically:

- I'd teach my children to be respectful to the Liturgy regardless of their context, and encourage my sons to enter the priesthood.

- I'd pray for and encourage the good priests I know, especially those who might feel called to say the Liturgy more respectfully.

- I'd volunteer for "music ministry" and there learn and sing Gregorian Chant.

In short I would not go somewhere else looking for a phantasm. I would stay where I am. Who knows - maybe other parishoners would support my efforts?!

I wanted to add something to what Teen said in the beginning of this thread. He stated that the SSPX offers the old Latin Mass and only that.

While this is true of the SSPX I believe that they are affiliated with, or totally control, the Transalpine Redemptorists who call themselves bi-ritual and do offer the Divine Liturgy.

It is my understanding that the Transalpine Redemptorists are heavly latinized.

CIX!

Trent certainly codified the Latin liturgy, but it is in no way the oldest liturgy - that honour, I believe, goes to the liturgies of the Syriac-speaking churches. After all, they use the oldest liturgical language of us all.

Just my two hrivs..

Edward

FIRST VATICAN COUNCIL (1869-1870)

Session 4 : 18 July 1870
First dogmatic constitution on the Church of Christ

Chapter 1
On the institution of the apostolic primacy in blessed Peter

1. We teach and declare that, according to the gospel evidence, a primacy of jurisdiction over the whole Church of God was immediately and directly promised to the blessed apostle Peter and conferred on him by Christ the lord.

2. It was to Simon alone, to whom he had already said You shall be called Cephas [42], that the Lord, after his confession, You are the Christ, the son of the living God, spoke these words:

Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of the underworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven [43] .

3. And it was to Peter alone that Jesus, after his resurrection, confided the jurisdiction of Supreme Pastor and ruler of his whole fold, saying:
Feed my lambs, feed my sheep [44].

4. To this absolutely manifest teaching of the Sacred Scriptures, as it has always been understood by the Catholic Church, are clearly opposed the distorted opinions of those who misrepresent the form of government which Christ the lord established in his Church and deny that Peter, in preference to the rest of the apostles, taken singly or collectively, was endowed by Christ with a true and proper primacy of jurisdiction.

5. The same may be said of those who assert that this primacy was not conferred immediately and directly on blessed Peter himself, but rather on the Church, and that it was through the Church that it was transmitted to him in his capacity as her minister.

6. Therefore, if anyone says that blessed Peter the apostle was not appointed by Christ the lord as prince of all the apostles and visible head of the whole Church militant; or that it was a primacy of honor only and not one of true and proper jurisdiction that he directly and immediately received from our lord Jesus Christ himself: let him be anathema."


Encyclical of the Eastern Orthodox Patriarchs, 1848
A Reply to the Epistle of Pope Pius IX, "to the Easterns"

"21. Therefore, brethren, and sons beloved in the LORD, having purified your souls in obeying the truth (1 Pet. i. 22), let us give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. (Heb. ii. 1.) The faith and confession we have received is not one to be ashamed of, being taught in the Gospel from the mouth of our LORD, witnessed by the holy Apostles, by the seven sacred Ecumenical Councils, preached throughout the world, witnessed to by its very enemies, who, before they apostatized from orthodoxy to heresies, themselves held this same faith, or at least their fathers and fathers' fathers thus held it. It is witnessed to by continuous history, as triumphing over all the heresies which have persecuted or now persecute it, as ye see even to this day. The succession of our holy divine fathers and predecessors beginning from the Apostles, and those whom the Apostles appointed their successors, to this day, forming one unbroken chain, and joining hand to hand, keep fast the sacred inclosure of which the door is Christ, in which all the orthodox Flock is fed in the fertile pastures of the mystical Eden, and not in the pathless and rugged wilderness, as his Holiness supposes (p. 7.1.12). Our Church holds the infallible and genuine deposit of the Holy Scriptures, of the Old Testament a true and perfect version, of the New the divine original itself. The rites of the sacred Mysteries, and especially those of the divine Liturgy, are the same glorious and heartquickening rites, handed down from the Apostles. No nation, no Christian communion, can boast of such Liturgies as those of James, Basil, Chrysostom. The august Ecumenical Councils, those seven pillars of the house of Wisdom, were organized in it and among us. This, our Church, holds the originals of their sacred definitions. The Chief Pastors in it, and the honorable Presbytery, and the monastic Order, preserve the primitive and pure dignity of the first ages of Christianity, in opinions, in polity, and even in the simplicity of their vestments. Yes! verily, "grievous wolves" have constantly attacked this holy fold, and are attacking it now, as we see for ourselves, according to the prediction of the Apostle, which shows that the true lambs of the great Shepherd are folded in it; but that Church has sung and shall sing forever: " They compassed me about; yea, they compassed me about: but in the name of the Lord I will destroy them (Ps. cxviii. l1). Let us add one reflection, a painful one indeed, but useful in order to manifest and confirm the truth of our words:�All Christian nations whatsoever that are today seen calling upon the Name of Christ (not excepting either the West generally, or Rome herself, as we prove by the catalogue of her earliest Popes), were taught the true faith in Christ by our holy predecessors and fathers; and yet afterwards deceitful men, many of whom were shepherds, and chief shepherds too, of those nations, by wretched sophistries and heretical opinions dared to defile, alas! the orthodoxy of those nations, as veracious history informs us, and as St. Paul predicted."

Okay, so they lifted the excommunications from each other, but WHAT does that change? We are still not in communion, there is still not one Church, and, to my knowledge, neither had repudiated any of what is written above.

If truth changes, like everyone on this forum likes to think, than both Churches are liars, and the Christianity is a worthless religion. This is a hard truth, and we don't have to be mean about it, but unless you want to deny the principle of non-contradiction, you can't have your cake and eat it too. ("I'm Catholic and Orthodox.")

If this disturbs you, all I can say is pray and work, but don't give in to mushy thinking. It just doesn't help.

Of course one can choose a third path that sees both the Orthodox's desire to limit the primacy of Rome to something just short of impotency and Rome's desire to use the primacy to interfere in the internal matters of any Church at its whim as wrong.

One that sees the post-schism councils as not ecumenical but not heretical either.

I suggest reading Archbishop Elias Zoghby's:
We Are All Schismatics
A Voice from the Byzantine East
available from the Melkite Eparchy of Newton's Educational Services
and
Ecumenical Reflections
Available from Eastern Christian Publications

Fr. Deacon Lance wrote:

"Of course one can choose a third path that sees both the Orthodox's desire to limit the primacy of Rome to something just short of impotency and Rome's desire to use the primacy to interfere in the internal matters of any Church at its whim as wrong."

Well, it's a start anyway.....

No, truth doesn't change, but our understanding of the truth does. Wouldn't you agree that our understanding of the nature of God has changed since, say, Old Testament times? But God hasn't changed at all.

Just the same way, in the heat of anger and argumentation, our responses to those who rebel against, and leave, the Church today will be different from those of our descendants a few generations from now, because presumably they'll be able to look at the arguments more dispassionately and without the smoke of anger coloring their responses.

Theist Gal wrote:

True in one sense, very dangerous in another. It is very common in the postmodern, subjectivist mind for us to say: "Well, the Council of Florence did not know it was talking about," or conversly, "Mark of Ephesus was having a bad day that day (maybe he had a tooth ache) and that's why he rejected the union..." The other side of the coin in the gift of hindsight is the gift of distortion: we like to think we know better, we like to think that those in the past didn't have a clue of what they were doing. We like to think that the Papal legate who slapped the decree of excommunication on that altar on that fateful morning in Constantinople didn't know what he was doing. We would like to think....

But will this one day happen to us? Will, one day, today's Lefebvrist "bad" schismatics be tommorrow's Orthodox "good" schismatics? Will it be that one day they will put our own opinions on these matters into the dustbin of history?

Such is the danger of situationalist ecclesiology.

I am far more sympathetic to Eastern Catholics and Orthodox than I let on here. I know perfectly well all the concerns involved. None of the objections posed here are new to me. But I have not received any satisfactory answers to them, and I am not going to hold my breath the way things are looking now.