www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology Mary: Holy and Pure since her conception?

Alex,

Now be nice, seeing that my pastor went to St Vlad's and he is a very good Melkite priest of slavic descent!

Also, a side comment from a nother thread, I always thought that Kyiv was a typo when you type it. Don't assume that those of use outside of your cultural group understand what you are saying or mean. I am glad that you do not use the cyrillic characters like serge did though.


David

Dear David,

Actually, "serge" is a real typo . . .

"Kyiv" is now on all maps and is the official usage of the Ukrainian government, embassies, consulates, people etc.

Many of my cultural group in North America probably couldn't even spell "Kyiv" OR "Kiev" in English!

"Kyiv" is now the name of the capital of Ukraine in any language.

I think I am nice to Anastasius which is why I included a smiley .

If I didn't, then I wouldn't be.

Many of our parish priests - and bishops - would not like it if their priests did their seminary in an Orthodox environment, and that is a fact.

One of our Metropolitans, Met. Sulyk, had previously said that such training would be "incomplete" for service in the Eastern Catholic Church.

That was his view, but there you have it.

As for the Ukrainian Basilian tradition, you got to live it to know it - and Anastasius knows exactly what I'm talking about which is why he forgives my well-meaning jibes and diatribes.

Don't you, Anastasius? Anastasius?

Alex

I've just read this thread. And I'm going to make some comments that are at this time in my mind regarding this, part certitude and part question - as if that would be possible - but you get where I'm coming from.

First, Christ would have to be able to sin or this would negate his [full humanity]. He (Christ) was like us in all ways but sin - not that He couldn't sin - but that He did not sin. A human that can not sin needs not be tempted.

Secondly, what sort of logic says that the Virgin Mary was sinless yet born of sin? Eve was created of no stain of sin, but in the process of her life chose to sin (again the ability to sin = humanity). Adam the same thing. Now both Christ and the Virgin Mary being concieved without a stain of sin [truely] gives them the desreved Christian theological titles of the *new* Adam & Eve. I think the *Woman* being sent by God in Genesis and her offspring are grand theological and metyphisical refernces to the Imaculate Conception?

Thirdly, Alex if you may explain -- the Eastern C. and Orthodox Churches express their *infallible* Christian dogmas (as said through their Tradition) through their Liturgies in their Divine Liturgy - right? If this is so... then am I correct in stating that the with the "Toll Houses" (which sounds more like Orthodox reaching far to back up inferior theology then the charges that have been leveled against the Latin West) and visions of St Macarius of Alexandria celebrated in the Liturgy of the East... are dogmatic infallible truths of the Eastern Church.

I have a hard time understanding how said mystical visions can be the bench mark of Orthodox theology of salvation after the era of the Apostles? At least the Augustine of the West is subject to crtical arguments of reason, and infact has been and will be. Also whether Aquinas or Augustine the Latin Church theology is only depended on them so far as reason is concern, and Latin theology can be readjusted as necessary to proclaim a fuller understanding of the truth.

[ 05-01-2002: Message edited by: Maximus ]

PS My opinion Robert, is that within 4 years you will be a member of the SSPX Transapline Redemptorists. I'm not joking. Please get a good, eastern spiritual director.[/QB][/QUOTE]

Ill be in the SSPX because I believe that the Catholic Church is the one true religion founded by Christ

Excuse me for believing a dogma that was defined ex cathedra by practically every Pope there ever was! Anastasios, IMHO, since you sem to be so in agreement with them on practically everything, it is you who will leave the Catholic Church for Orthodoxy probably very soon. I feel that this relativist attitude of yours (AS well as many others) Towards not only the Orthodox but every other Christian sect and pagan religion created is just another product of the false ecumenism that is propagated in nearly every corner of our beloved Mother Church in these sad days.

It used to be rule number one for Catholics that no religion was as good as the other. There is only one true faith founded by Our Blessed Lord and sanctified by the blood of the Apostles and Martyrs - that is Christ Catholic Church!!! This is not a polemic but the honost fact and if that position is considered schismatic by todays standards then, boy, the Lord better hurry down here quickly cause, believe me, hes waaaaayyyy over due!!!!!

No one can change the dogma of the truth of the Catholic faith, not you nor even the present Pope. Doctrine can develope but it can never reach the point where it contradicts itself outright. No one living present, not even an ecumenical council, could change something that has been believed always, everywhere, and by all since the beginning as a public evelation.
There can never be any new public revelations on things that were closed as final with the New Testament because the era for public revelation died out with the apostles and no more such evelations will be given to mankind.

I suggest Anastasios, that instead of reading the writtings of those outside the visible fold of the Catholic Church, you start reading on the truths of your own religion by your own people before you end up doing something foolish like I did and abandone her. Believe me brother, where your going, I was let me tell you, its no paradise. There are plenty of good books available on our Catholic religion that will not only make you realise her truth but also inspire you with the courage and fortitiude of her numerous martyrs.

Robert K.

Dear Maximus,

I'm going back to church in a little while as this is our Great and Holy Friday, but wanted to quickly respond to your post.

The rule of prayer governing the rule of faith is something held sacred in the West as well.

The absolute truths of the Holy Trinity, Christ, the Church etc. have been established and celebrated and need no infallible pronouncements other than the constant teaching of the Church and her Councils.

The rule of prayer which is an expression of the heart and mind of the Church also governs the rule of belief concerning other matters in a hierarchy of faith.

One of these is that the Mother of God was sanctified from her very beginning in her mother's womb, as the Feast of the Conception of St Anne and that of the Nativity of the Mother of God (the liturgical texts) show clearly.

There is no need for "infallible" pronouncements, as the Eastern Church has always believed this as well as her bodily Assumption into heaven.

The liturgy is the Breath of the Holy Spirit which cannot err anyway.

That this rule concerning prayer and faith is observed in the West as well is illustrated by the fact of "equipollent beatifications" on the basis of an ancient local cult in honour of someone.

For example, the beatification of the English Martyrs venerated at the English College in Rome was precipitated by the fact of their veneration in the images on the chapel walls since their martyrdom.

Alex

Marshall,

In no way did I say I did not accept the Assumption, I merely said I could not figure out why the Latins made it "dogma".

Jesus is God, the Baptism of the Church, Holy Communion, the Trinity - that is dogma.

St. Gregory Palamas said she was a "little lower than angels" (based on Psalm 8) and while I might object to such an assertion and of course glorify the first of the Saints, I do not believe it is required for ones salvation to believe in the Assumption.

Put another way, I believe in the Assumption but do not believe the Assumption is salvific.

Could it be, as St. John Maximovitch once said about Latin Marion dogmas, "zeal not according to knowledge"?

Robert K.

With all due respect and sincere interest: Before you do anymore jurisdiction hopping, take some time to to discover and uncover God within you.

It is charaeteristic of antiorthodox teachings these days that the Lord's words, "within you", have been interpreted by the psuedo-orthodox not as "inside of yourselves" but as "in your midst." With this most cunning misinterpretation everythinq has changed, and the Lord's saying has been utterly overturned. Thus, instead of learning to seek the Kingdom (the uncreated presense) of God inside of themselves, they have learned the opposite - to search for it outside of themselves in their relations with other people.

"The church community", say the faith's distorters, "is a communion with other Christians, a giving to others, and love for one another."

These distortions are the results of not knowing God. Such people do not know that without God no communion of men is possible.

God is the place, the means, and the power of any communion. God is the communion itself, the love itself, because God is a Trinity, a loving communion of Persons. Only communion with God is capable of providing the communion of created persons. Any attempt whatever at direct communion among humans is doomed to failure because it is enervating.

Until you discover this you will always fail in misery.

(Lk. 17:21)

[ 05-06-2002: Message edited by: OrthodoxyOrDeath ]

Just to post a reminder on the subject of toll houses: it isn't meant to be an Eastern counterpart for the Western model of purgatory. Rather it is an Eastern understanding and diagram of diagram of the particular judgement.

In IC XC
Samer

Dear Marshall,

Actually our young, zealous friend, OrthodoxyorDeath, is quite correct in his explanation of the Assumption.

I would put it a bit differently to say that Theotokology is part of the inner life of the Church while Christology and Triadology are part of its missionary preaching.

But Orthodoxy in fact has always expressed its deep devotion to the Most Holy Mother of God liturgically, where it counts the most, and the liturgical texts leave no doubt as to how we are to consider Her exalted status and role.

Alex

OOD,

You may have some valid points on some things. And as far as the above is concerned, I'm sure if one was to get theologicaly deep - yes God could probably be said to be the root of all human commuion whether the people involved understood and recognized it or not.

But let me not get that deep, and just say simply, simple in a manner of basic humanistic interactions -- that I'll hazard a guess, and take the risk of saying, that maybe members of the French Foreign Legion would disagree.

Maximus,

Like you say, it all depends on how theological you are. By communion I of course mean communion with God.

Communion with God is a personal matter in the Holy Spirit and is not found between members of the French Foreign Legion. Whether a (Orthodox)Christian is in church, in the street, at home, in a crowd of people, or alone, the matter of communion with God is a matter of turning inward. It is in our heart that we will encounter God; and when we do, He will take us by the hand and put us in communion with others. And in our communion with others our bond will always be God Himself.

So there is no other path to the Kingdom of God but the one which leads to our heart, the one which leads "within you". This is why hesychasm is one of the deepest characteristic of Orthodox life and why heretics are generally either outwardly / wordly oriented, concerned about the social order of man, or intellectualists.

And this turning outward, rather than inward, is also a mark of the "ecumenical movement". People are so worried that true Christian purity cannot be acheived until all have been reconciled. The call of the world is never sent naked but cloaked in the delusion of love. "Go save your brothers. Don't you see that they seek help?" And the Orthodox goes into the world or concerns himself with the world, and ceases to find God. And once a Christian believes he will help save the world, he has become a victim of the evil one.

Robert must realize these things quickly before he hops through his last faith and ends of a lifelong atheist. And if does realize this, he will be drawn to true Orthodoxy.

Dear OOD,

Actually, Robert always was and always will be a loyal Catholic.

He fell in love with the Byzantine Church and he can now have both experiences in the Eastern Catholic Church.

He will not lose faith, but I agree that it is amazing how someone so Catholic could have joined the ROCOR in the first place!

Will wonders never cease?

Alex

Robert must realize these things quickly before he hops through his last faith and ends of a lifelong atheist. And if does realize this, he will be drawn to true Orthodoxy.[/QB][/QUOTE]


So what was I suppost to do, deny the rational thinkling that lead my to analyise both Orthodoxy and the Catholic Church which made me finally convined of the truth in the latter. Yes, I admit that evn during my tenure in Orthodoxy, I had Catholic leanings and was not , in my heart, accepting of Orthodoxy as the true and saving faith. Besides my love for the Eastern Church, I thought that by escaping to Orthodoxy I would, in a sense, box myself off from the rest of the world and the things that I found disturbing in it.

But you cannot close your eyes to the truth forever. Hiding out in the meditations of your own mind as you seek to save yourself will not stop the floodgates of reason from seeping through. What you seem to espouse sounds as if we should turn our minds aware from any form of rationalization over the things we believe and instead consentrate more on leading a life of inner prayer to attain some spiritual height. Well, I believe that the Catholic Church is the one true religion founded by Christ and came to that belief because I, on the one hand, looked at what Catholocsm is, and on the other, what Orthodoxy is, and then at Christ words of promise about what the Church would be and came to the conclusion that Orthodoxy, no matter how much of an Apostolic succession that she possesses, cannot claim to be a universal Church since half the world has not even heard of her.

Did Christ found a Church that was to be known and available to all men, or (AS you seem to imply) one that was a sort of neo-gnostic society founded only for a few who could obtain the spirit of ascetism? Face it, Orthodoxy is so unknown to the west that it even chooses to reffer to itself as its "best kept secret"! Is the Church of Christ some sort of secret that is to be hidden from all men save only those wise enough to come to it through advanced learning? That sounds mor like Freemasonry to me then Catholic!

While ascetism and mysticism are very important compnents of the East, I feel that they, just like western scholasticism gets about legalism, tend to get so caught up in mystiscism that it can supersede any sot of rational thought. For instance, while thousands of monks prayed and theosized themselves on Mt. Athos, thousands of Catholic missionaries preached the gospel the world over converting many nations. The Orthodox were so caught up it seems in saving themselves that they could care less about evangelization. THis, if you ask me, is certainly a weakness to always looking inward instead of looking out to the rest of the world ans seeing what can be done there.

OOD talks of true Orthodoxy that is obtainable only to a few who will be the final reminant that willbe saved. Thus he implies that God has instead of setting up a Church for all men instead has only established nothing more then a gnostic sect that holds the truth. People like him are the very same elk that think a Church can loose grace if its members think incorrectly or that grace is only available to certain segements of true believers as opposed to being made available to all of humanity in genral through the univeral Church and her life dispensing sacrements. His "true Orthodoxy" is so vague and fulll of gnostic overtones that one wonders if you can even cal it Christian.

Robert K.

Dear Robert,

Now that you have crossed the Tiber and joined the Catholic Church (in spirit, if not yet in fact), can I give you some advice?

O.K.?

Now you need to fill out your knowledge of Catholic and Orthodox church history, liturgics and theology.

Once I determined where my spiritual home was, I began reading and reading and reading.

Now that I'm married, I can't read all the time .

But that is why I envy you being so young and having the time and freedom to read and study religion!

A little knowledge, I have always found, is always a bad thing. A comprehensive view of theology and spirituality is what is needed.

You are on your way. God be with you!

Alex

Alex, can you suggest any good books :rolleyes:
just curious

Dear Kim,

I'll send you one that I think you will enjoy just as soon as "She who must be obeyed" and I are moved into our new home!

Alex