www.byzcath.org Forums Mysteries: The Life of Worship The Other Sacramental Mysteries BAPTISED IN POLAND, UNBAPTISED IN GREECE

So catechumens and photizomenoi are not members of the Church of Christ stricto senso, they are not "inside the bounds of the visible Church" strictly speaking....

....but both the Catholic and the Orthodox Church venerate, for example, Saint Adrian of Nicomedia, who publicly confessed his Christian faith, though he had not been baptised or admited as catechumen by the Church. He was not a Christian stricto senso, he was not "inside the bounds of the visible Church" strictly speaking, whereas his wife Saint Natalia was a baptised Christian, a Christian "inside the bounds of the visible Church".

Before their martyrdom they belonged to the Church but in different ways. Both of them, because of the blood they shed for Christ, belong now to the triunphant Church on heaven.

In more recent times...

Phew, Francisco! so many citations. Would you be able to pick out the salient points and explain what you want to communicate to us.

Romanov family was canonized in 1981 as new martyrs by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. They were canonized along with their servants, who had been killed along with them. The canonized servants were their court physician, Yevgeny Botkin; their footman Alexei Trupp; their cook, Ivan Kharitonov; and Alexandra's maid, Anna Demidova. Also canonized were two servants killed in September 1918, lady in waiting Anastasia Hendrikova and tutor Catherine Adolphovna Schneider. All were canonized as victims of oppression by the Bolsheviks. The Russian Orthodox Church did not canonize the servants, two of whom were not Russian Orthodox: Alexei Trupp was Roman Catholic and Catherine Adolphovna Schneider was Lutheran.

To be continued...

Just a quick comment! Those who have received baptism in the Church (groups two and three) will NEVER NEVER be baptized again. The Baptism of the Church is UTTERLY irrepeatable. Saint Cyprian of Carthage holds EXACTLY the same position .... as have ALL Orthodox for the last 2,000 years.

These two servants of the Imperial family Alexei Trupp and Catherine Schneider who were mistakenly canonised by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, have now been removed from the Canon of the Saints.

Yes but when they were mistakenly or not canonised (a quite Western concept by the way) by the ROCOR, the members of the Holy Synod of the ROCOR considered that they belonged to the Church in some way (if they were not "of the Church", using Saint Basil´s terminology, at all, the bishops of the ROCOR would never had proclaimed them martyrs, there is no martyrdom "outside the bounds of the Church"). For the bishops of the ROCOR Saint Alexei Trupp and Saint Catherine Schneider, were, "of the Church", just as Saint Adrian was, although they were not members of the Orthodox Church (they were not "inside the bounds of the visible Church"). And the bishops of the ROCOR were, as I believe, perfectly aware of the words of Saint John Chrysostom in this Homily 11 on Ephesians (Ephesians 4:4-7), frequently, understood as referred to heretics and schismatics:

"What then is this? He said, that not even the blood of martyrdom can wash out this sin. For tell me for what do you suffer as a martyr? Is it not for the glory of Christ? Thou then that yieldest up your life for Christ's sake, how do you lay waste the Church, for whose sake Christ yielded up His life?"

The bishops of the ROCOR considered, mistakenly or not, that they "suffered as martyrs" (the ROC-MP considered that the Romanov family were not martyrs but passionbeares) not only "for the glory of Christ" but also for the glory of his Church, for "Christ's sake" yes, but also and as faithful members of the Church and not as enemies of his unity.

The "canonization" of Saint Alexei Trupp and Saint Catherine Schneider was a mistake (the Moscow Patriarchate was right, the ROCOR was wrong), what about the baptism of former Catholics and Protestants?

At the time there was no way of checking the data in the Soviet Union. There was almost zero communication.

Alexei Trupp and Katherine Schneider undoubtedly suffered martyric deaths but it is certainly not our right to interfere in the internal affairs of the Roman Catholic or Lutheran Churches. It is the prerogative of those Churches to acknowledge their own martyrs.

Could you please review your lengthy citations and point out what you want us to notice.

Actually it is not. "Canonisation" comes to us from Greek and in this instance simply means to add a name to the Canon of Saints.

At the time there was no way of checking the data in the Soviet Union. There was almost zero communication.

OK. No problem with this.

But...I suppose they were perfectly aware of the fact that they were not Orthodox Christians? Were not they? These data were not in the Soviet Union records but in the records of the members of the Russian Family and other Russian institutions in exile (as the ROCOR).

I consider that the bishops of the Holy Synod of the ROCOR glorified a Catholic martyr and a a Lutheran martyr because they believed and they still believe that the Orthodox Church is the Church of Christ (the ROCOR being a Local Church) and not just a branch of the Church of Christ (the Catholic and the Orthodox Church do not admit the branch theory, they agree in this point).

They, as far a I understand, believed, wrongly or not, that this particular Catholic martyr and this particular Lutheran martyr belonged, in some way, to the Church of Christ (obviously in a different way that the Orthodox martyrs of the Romanov family belonged to Church and in a different way Saint Adrian belonged to the Church). So they considered that their glorification was the business of the Orthodox Church (the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church) and not the business of the Catholic or of the Lutheran Church.

Well I suppose that when you die as martyr you die as martyr of Christ and of Christ´s Church and not for the Pope´s sake or for Luther´s or his ideas´ sake.

The Roman martyrs (before the schism), for example, belong not to the Pope or to the Catholic Church but to the Church of Christ.

Obviously is the business of the Church of Russia, for example, the glorification of the faithful of the Church of Russia and the business of the Church of Bulgaria the glorification of the faithful of this particular local Church, but obviously we are talking about Churches in full communion. I can not imagine the ROCOR, not being in communion with the Church of Rome, asking the Catholic Church for the glorification of a Roman Catholic. I suppose that the bishops of the ROCOR believed that this particular Roman Catholic belonged after his martyrdom to the triunphant Church in heaven and not to the the Roman Catholic Church.

For me is not an easy question, a question that can be solved just saying that it was a mistake of the Holy Synod of the ROCOR, or that the bishops had not enought information, but obviously I am not a member of this local Church (as father Ambrose is, if I am not wrong) and I know very little about the ROCOR. I tend to believe that behind Church decisions are, appart for the action of the Holy Spirt, the Spirit of the Truth, solid theological and canonical reasons.

No, the bishops were very embarrassed when the religious affiliation of these two people emerged later. Can you really imagine the bishops of the ultra conservative Russian Church Abroad adding a Catholic and Lutheran to the Canon of Saints? Let the heavens fall! :-)

Since the 2007 union with Moscow ROCOR has the status of a self-governing Church within the Church of Russia. This status is less than autocephalous or autonomous.

I.e., you are free to govern yourselves, except when you are not. Very Russian.

Yes! We have probably less freedom than the Eastern Catholic Churches which are all constituted as autonomies.

Gosh, that sorta sounds like something else, doesn't it?

Would be the veneration of Emperor Constantine the Great as saint of the Church (Orthodox, Catholic) compatible with those historical sources that say that the baptism of the first openly Christian Emperor was performed by Eusebius, the Arianizing bishop of Nicomedia and author of the Vita Constantini?

If these sources were right could we say that the baptism of Saint Constantine was celebrated "inside the bounds of the visible Church"?

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_the_Great
Sickness and death

Constantine had known death would soon come. Within the Church of the Holy Apostles, Constantine had secretly prepared a final resting-place for himself.[245] It came sooner than he had expected. Soon after the Feast of Easter 337, Constantine fell seriously ill.[246] He left Constantinople for the hot baths near his mother's city of Helenopolis (Altinova), on the southern shores of the Gulf of İzmit. There, in a church his mother built in honor of Lucian the Apostle, he prayed, and there he realized that he was dying. Seeking purification, he became a catechumen, and attempted a return to Constantinople, making it only as far as a suburb of Nicomedia.[247] He summoned the bishops, and told them of his hope to be baptized in the River Jordan, where Christ was written to have been baptized. He requested the baptism right away, promising to live a more Christian life should he live through his illness. The bishops, Eusebius records, "performed the sacred ceremonies according to custom".[248] He chose the Arianizing bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia, bishop of the city where he lay dying, as his baptizer.[249] In postponing his baptism, he followed one custom at the time which postponed baptism until after infancy.[250] It has been thought that Constantine put off baptism as long as he did so as to be absolved from as much of his sin as possible.[251] Constantine died soon after at a suburban villa called Achyron, on the last day of the fifty-day festival of Pentecost directly following Pascha (or Easter), on 22 May 337.[252]

And yes I know perfectly well that there are traditions both in the Eastern and the Western Churches saying that Constantine was baptised noy by Eusebius but by Pope SylvesterI.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Raphael_Baptism_Constantine.jpg

At the on line "synaxarion" of the OCA there is nothing about the identity of Constantine´s "baptizor":

After the Council of Nicea, St Constantine continued with his active role in the welfare of the Church. He accepted holy Baptism on his deathbed, having prepared for it all his whole life. St Constantine died on the day of Pentecost in the year 337 and was buried in the church of the Holy Apostles, in a crypt he had prepared for himself.

http://oca.org/saints/lives/2013/05...d-emperor-constantine-with-his-mother-he

Actually, nobody is quite sure who baptized Constantine (but it sure wasn't Pope Sylvester), and, moreover, even if it was Eusebius of Nicomedia, he was still a bishop in good standing within the Church. It is unfortunate that people like to reduce the theological disputes of the time to a simple black-and-white Arianism vs. Niceanism, but the truth is far more complex: the Nicene homoousios was deliberately ambiguous because its intention was to create a general consensus within the Church--and on that criterion, it was a real success. However, it turned out to be so vague as to allow interpretations that some Nicenes thought were Arian, and some Arians considered ditheite. There were thus many different gradations of Nicene Christianity, and many different gradations of Arianism, and the situation was not resolved until the Second Council, in 381, which, in adopting the Cappodocian theology of Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and above all, Gregory Nanzianen, created a newer, more refined theological synthesis which finally put Arianism to bed. Even then, Rome, ever conservative, held to the Paleo-Nicene theology of the First Council, and did not accept Constantinople I until the Council of Ephesus fifty years later.