Who can tell me the difference
M C Dawson
Rogier Klaase wrote:
> Who can tell me the differnce between the roman catholic church and
> the greek orthodox church?
>
> I do not mean the differnce in holy days or calander, but the
> difference in the way of thinking.
>
> Thanks for your help.
>
> RPK
Dear Rogier, As a former Roman Catholic I will try to show the
differences which seem to me to be important.
The primary difference is in philosophy.
Even before the actual split the West became fascinated by Greek
philosophy and the belief in rational argument. The East had abandoned
Greek philosophy in order to accept Christianity and Semitic thought.
This does not mean that the Eastern Church abandoned rational thought.
In fact the Fathers used Greek philosophy whenever it seemed useful and
had to fight the Greek philosophical schools while they lasted to show
that they were wrong. The Eastern Church was more interested in the
spiritual life and in studying it rather than philosophical argument. We
could take the case of St Arsenios the Roman who left his position as
tutor to the Emperial family to become a monk and who became the
disciple of a simple Egyptian monk. When he was asked how he, a man
known to be the greatest expert in Greek and Roman learning, needed to
spend time with an illiterate monk. He replied that despite his learning
he had lots to learn from this simple man who was closer to God than he
was. The great theological debates were not about things which were to
be resolved by rational argument but mattered because they affected how
we saw and approached Christ.
By contrast the western monks were obsessed with philosophical
arguments, some as silly as the well known problem of how many angels
could stand on the point of a pin. By contrast the east was concerned by
the meaning of theosis or becoming Godlike. Argument for its own sake
was not important in the eastern Church but only as a means to help us
in our relation to God. This last argument was resolved in the Eastern
Church by adopting St Gregory Palamas statement that mankind cannot see
or experience God in his essence but can in his energies.
In the Western Church after the schism this rational mode led to
ideas which were foreign to orthodox catholic thought such as the
doctrine of indulgences where excess virtue of saints could be
redistributed by the magisterium of the Church to other people who were
deficient in virtue.
Some people put the division of the two parts of the Church at the
coronation of the Emperor Charlemagne who demanded that the creed used
by his Church should be used, despite the fight which the bishops of
Rome had waged for it to be omitted. The next stage in the division was
in the First Western Reformation which was instigated from Rome and
deduced that the Church's weaknesses were due to too much lay influence
and the Reformers decided to make the Church independent of lay
influence. They did this by declaring that the spiritual power was
superior to the lay power and by ending clerical marriage and thus
separating the spiritual Church which was made up of the clergy from the
lay Church which was subservient to the Spiritual Church. This began a
battle to suppress clerical marriage which was still going on when the
Second Reformation, the Protestant Reformation happened. The Protestant
Reformers were even more obsessed with rational philosophy than the
Roman Reformers and made the Bible and rational thought the two pillars
of their system. While the Roman Reformers had accepted the tradition of
the Church and built on it as well as the Bible, the Protestant
Reformers dismissed everything except the Bible as the basis of rational
belief. They basically were the same as the Roman Reformers but differed
on the basic premises which could be accepted. At the same time lay
learning became a factor and the new lay scholars were ,like their
clerical fellows, very interested in philosophical argument but not in
theology and so modern science came into being. Science was seen as
different from theology, being studied by different sorts of people. Of
course clergy did make some of the advances but only by wearing a
different cap as it were. By contrast one of the greatest orthodox
theologians, Nicholas Cabasilas, was a layman.
While all this development was going on in Western Europe the
Eastern Orthodox Church was suffering under Moslem rule and without any
centres of learning in the western sense so that the West adopted a very
contemptuous attitude to the Orthodox Church which was shared by both
Roman and Protestant Reformed Churches. It was only when Russians came
as émigrés to Western countries that attention began to be taken of
them. Many Roman Catholics had become dissatisfied with the fossilized
form that their liturgy had become and began to study the liturgy to see
if it could be revived as a force in the life of the Church and then saw
that it had never ceased to be a vital part of the life of the Orthodox
Church.
Briefly the Roman Catholic church has made an almost complete separation
between the clerical and lay parts of the Church and made the lay be
called inferior. It has founded new doctrines on rational extending of
ideas in the Bible and Tradition. One of these is that the bishop of
Rome is the Vicar of Christ on Earth and therefore the universal bishop
unlike an ordinary bishop who can only operate within his diocese in
conjunction with the Pope of Rome. Another such doctrine is that he is
infallible when he proclaims a doctrine. The structure of the Roman
Catholic Church is similar to an absolute monarchy where the authority
of the sovereign is absolute.
By contrast the unit of the Orthodox Church is the diocese, where
the bishop is accepted by all the other bishops of the Orthodox Church.
The bishops may form larger units such as Metropolitanates where the
Metropolitan is regarded as the chairman of that group of bishops. The
Metropolitan should not interfere with matters inside of the bishopric
except if a matter of faith is involved. Groups of Metropolitans can
form a bigger body with a chairman called a primate or Patriarch with
the same proviso. Essentially a Patriarch is just a bishop who chairs a
group of other bishops. A priest is one of the faithful whom the bishop,
at the request of the people, appoints to deputize for him to carry out
the sacraments of the Church and pass on its teaching. Some churches
have a bishops throne in the church without it being a cathedral in the
western sense. The area behind the altar is another spot which a priest
cannot sit in because it is reserved for the bishop. Every Orthodox
church is a cathedral where the bishop is awaited. When the bishop is
present the parish priest cedes the bishop his rightful place.
The idea of excess merit is rejected by the Orthodox Church which
says that everyone is a sinner and can only get to heaven by God's
loving mercy. They reject the idea of indulgences. Most Orthodox
Christians are not happy with the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.
The Orthodox say that the Mother of God by her own choice chose to
become His mother. She was full of grace because of her faithful
acceptance of Judaism and its love of God. The Orthodox might be happier
with the latest Roman Catholic doctrine of Co-Redemptrix. Orthodox,
while they respect the clergy, do not see there is any division in the
church between clergy and faithful. The priest is close to the people, a
married man, like the other lay people. Other people in the parish
fulfill vital roles, such as the deacon , the Choir master or the
cantor, the choir and the parish committee. In fact one might say that
the Orthodox priest is the servant of the parish in making himself open
to them. Christ speaks of this when he says that those in charge should
be the servant of all. The same is true of a bishop. The words used by
Russians for a bishop Vladika though it comes from the word Lord is a
word of affection. The same is true for the words for the priest and his
wife, Vatiuska and Matiuska.
When we speak of our differences with the Roman Catholics, we should
always remember that they haven't rejected Tradition but covered it in
accretions which have distorted it. We also do not live up to tradition
but ignore it even knowing what we do is wrong. Jurisdictions in the USA
do not make Orthodox sense but human weakness stops Orthodox from taking
the decision to do the right thing.
I hope this helps
Colum Dawson
fro...@albany.net
>Rogier Klaase wrote:
>
>> Who can tell me the differnce between the roman catholic church and
>> the greek orthodox church?
>>
>> I do not mean the differnce in holy days or calander, but the
>> difference in the way of thinking.
>>
>> Thanks for your help.
>>
>> RPK
>
>Dear Rogier, As a former Roman Catholic I will try to show the
>differences which seem to me to be important.
> The primary difference is in philosophy.
Many thanks for this essay: I reposted it on the Lutheran newsgroup
for the edification of its readers.
in Him,
JFP