Catholic vs Orthodox: What's the difference?

[Jehoshua]

Is being saved not supposed to feel good?

salvation only comes after your dead and your particular judgement, IF you end up being saved. Catholic teaching is not universalist.

So long as your alive your salvation is not guaranteed and you should work it out with fear and trembling as scripture says. The Church is there to guide people on the difficult narrow way, not indulge or facilitate their every desire and watch as people go through the wide gate to hell. The path to hell makes people fell good in this life, the path to heaven, although filled with spiritual joy is not a path of the pleasures of this world and comes with sufferings also.

You've directly contradicted yourself here. If the church exists to save souls, and the souls are saved through the church, then clearly it is the church's reponsibility to work at keeping people involved in the church. Many protestant churches, particularly evangelicals, and Mormons, work at keeping their young adults involved in day to day, week to week, participation in at least something that the churches are sponsoring. As a result these people become adults much more committed to all aspects of the churches. Catholics, on the other hand, drift away because there is nothing beyond their own motivations keeping them involved.

Clearly if the church is not happy with this outcome, it is their responsibility to do something about it.

On the contrary, the Church teaches the faith and proposes it to young people. Those young people then either must make a choice to follow that faith and live it within the context of the whole community, and that includes fidelity to the gospel and participation in the life of the Church, or they reject it. For those who reject the teaching of the Church the Church does not exist to compromise and provide entertainment, to provide a youth program, to entice them into the pews through a watering down of its practices or dogmas. What use is that! they may be sitting there, they may find mass amusing, but although they may be in the Church once they are out the church door they are just as poorly catechised as before.

A parish community should organically develop its own bible study groups, catechetics classes, there is adoration and the devotions, and there are other events like speeches and of course the various sodalities and lay societies. Young people are supposed to be involved in these things as part of the entire community and the community itself is supposed to provide a Catholic life in all aspects of ones living especially within the core family. The reason many young people are not involved and people even talk about "youth groups" is because of the collapse in faith on the part of many in the years after VII. This decimated Catholic parish and family life and destroyed this developmental path, this along with the followers of the same revolt failing to impart actual Catholic teaching to them ha resulted in the great apostasy that has occured.

Either way though, the way to combat this problem is not to make compromises, to found youth groups with rock music and so forth. It is to teach the faith properly and develop strong, faithful communities collectively (not artificially dividing them into groups) that practice the faith. Indeed Im not speaking from ignorance here, what you suggest has and is being done, but its fruits show its lack of merit. Where however an orthodox devotional life has been restored in a parish or has always been practiced, where families live the faith rather than relegate it to a sunday, there you find young people involved, not where some newfangled "youth program" has been established by some old folks desperately trying to make the faith "relevant" when its relevance is precisely in its eternal truths.

 

[Traitorfish]

It isn't that obvious. It may just as well mean that the church was so powerful, few states dared oppose it.

I think that Dachs' point is that until the Early Modern period, the state apparatus consisted largely of clergy and of church institutions. Most government offices were filled by clergymen, almost the entire civil services would be comprised of clergy and monks, and sub-national government was very often organised around the ecclesiastical structure of parish and diocese rather than the fragmented domains of the secular aristocracy.

salvation only comes after your dead and your particular judgement, IF you end up being saved. Catholic teaching is not universalist.

So long as your alive your salvation is not guaranteed and you should work it out with fear and trembling as scripture says. The Church is there to guide people on the difficult narrow way, not indulge or facilitate their every desire and watch as people go through the wide gate to hell. The path to hell makes people fell good in this life, the path to heaven, although filled with spiritual joy is not a path of the pleasures of this world and comes with sufferings also.

Well, there's your problem: your organisation is misanthropic and boring, both qualities which people generally find unpleasant and wish to avoid.

 

[Cutlass]

salvation only comes after your dead and your particular judgement, IF you end up being saved. Catholic teaching is not universalist.

So long as your alive your salvation is not guaranteed and you should work it out with fear and trembling as scripture says. The Church is there to guide people on the difficult narrow way, not indulge or facilitate their every desire and watch as people go through the wide gate to hell. The path to hell makes people fell good in this life, the path to heaven, although filled with spiritual joy is not a path of the pleasures of this world and comes with sufferings also.

Yeah, I got no use for a god that expects me to go through life with fear and trembling that he's going to punish me eternally for not bowing and scraping in the approved manner. If that's what god's about, then screw him.

 

[Jehoshua]

Well, there's your problem: your organisation is misanthropic and boring, both qualities which people generally find unpleasant and wish to avoid.

A reverently conducted mass is not boring. Indeed the sacraments, the peace they endenger in the pious soul along with fidelity to the teachings of Christ, and the joy that comes after the trials of the purgative way once one recieves some of the glory, the graces, that come from the Father outweigh fleeting pleasures and provide one with real satisfaction. The narrow way does have trials, it does have sufferings and difficulty, it is challenging. But at its end one finds spiritual joy that far exceeds the empty pleasures of an earthly life. Indeed the happiest people I know are my Catholic friends.

Yes, the Church is not there to entertain people, pleasure and entertainments is not what its supposed to give people. Its supposed to help them find that joy in Christ and their salvation through proposing eternal truth. Im reminded here of a documentary I watched, where an anglican cleric spent time as a hermit in the deserts near St Anthony's monastery. No sane man you would htink would go out and suffer in the desert, yet after the suffering the hardship there came with God's grace contentedness.

I suppose you simply have to understand that there is a distinction between joy and pleasure. Although perhaps it may not be easy for you to comprehend the joys of the spirit compared to the pleasures of the worldly life.

 

[_random_]

No, they're not. There's a lot in common, but they're really not. Plot summarized it pretty nicely.

Building on this, you really can't expect any organizations with nearly a millennium of formal separation (and a good while of limited communication preceding that) to be "nearly identical." Not only did they have some different ideas to start with, each built on those ideas and took them to places that seem alien to the other. When the Catholics developed ideas about Immaculate Conception and Purgatory and the Orthodox came up with some neat ideas about Hesychasm and iconography, they did so in response to controversies that didn't and couldn't exist in the other.

I don't know man, these people can't even agree on the divinity of Jesus! How are they going to agree on something as complex as hat design?

Christology seems fairly consistent across the board (as long as we're not counting the Oriental Orthodox as Orthodox). If nothing else, the deity of Christ is pretty much confirmed across the board.

But man, those Catholic hats look so absurd. Maybe if they just abolished the Latin Rite we could start talking.

 

[Traitorfish]

I suppose you simply have to understand that there is a distinction between joy and pleasure. Although perhaps it may not be easy for you to comprehend the joys of the spirit compared to the pleasures of the worldly life.

Maybe people don't like the Church because its adherents are superior and condescending? It's bloody well turning me off you, at any rate.

 

[Jehoshua]

Maybe people don't like the Church because its adherents are superior and condescending? It's bloody well turning me off you, at any rate.

of course the written word often does not transmit the intended tone, and often transmits the wrong one in the mind of the reader. I do know that I tend to write in a style that often makes me seem like a pretentious arse to those not used to it. I know also I get impressions from other peoples writings, your included, that may or may not be the reality and have at times responded based on a wrong presumption based on my own reading of their texts. Anyways I did not intend the statement to be superior and condescending, rather a simple statement that you may not really understand the distinction Im trying to convey, with this informed by the fact that in the modern world the spiritual life is often neglected.

Indeed particularly in the modern age, people do not really have an experiential, or even intellectual, understanding of how the interior spiritual life works or progresses since we are so absorbed in the day to day, by what we want or out of concern for some issue thats come up. I know I myself have the same sort of problems as well as most people have. Its on the basis of the reality of worldly distraction that afflicts everyone that I made my comment.

 

[Dachs]

It isn't that obvious. It may just as well mean that the church was so powerful, few states dared oppose it.

I don't see how it's possible to draw that conclusion from the evidence.

 

[timtofly]

Because the sovereigns of the day, and the societies being of a certain religion made it so.

Until modern times the idea of a "separation of Church and State" simply did not exist, it would of been seen as absurd for the government to NOT support or hold an official religion. As such official recognition of the Christianity as a state religion by governments was an inevitable outcome in consideration of the mentality of the period. Indeed we see this even after Westphalia with the Cuius Religio, Eius Religio understanding between Catholic and protestant rulers.

The church should have said: "Thanks, but NO thank you!". It seems the dogma of the church was a heavenly kingdom on earth, not an earthly kingdom doing heavenly stuff. It is pointed out that the modern church can not "keep" the youth. You are correct in that the church cannot force any one to do anything. It seems they have learned this the hard way though. I would also like to point out the futility of the church controlling the state, in case any future protestors try to resurrect the dead kingdom.

 

[NBAfan]

It seems to me that the Catholic experience in the US is that the church does very little on the modern era to keep young adults involved in the church. Once Confirmation is past and catechism is over, other than being expected to go to mass once a week, there is nothing keeping young people involved. And I can't help but think that that plays a huge role in the lack of deep commitment to the church by that generation of people raised in the church. And without that deep commitment by the young adults, that has to effect the numbers of people willing to dedicate themselves to the life of a priest.

You do have point, our youth programs are very watered down, while young adult programs are non-existent. That needs to improve.

 

[Arakhor]

If a church claims to be there to save your soul and treats this as their sole mission, then, as has been said up-thread, they should go out of their way to keep you involved in church life. This would seem to be absolutely essential.

 

[Cutlass]

If a church claims to be there to save your soul and treats this as their sole mission, then, as has been said up-thread, they should go out of their way to keep you involved in church life. This would seem to be absolutely essential.

Oddly enough, the Catholic church has always done many more things than that. Charity, education, science....

 

[NBAfan]

Oddly enough, the Catholic church has always done many more things than that. Charity, education, science....

Well, getting to heaven kind of involves doing good things for others....

 

[Veles]

Sadly, I can't contribute anything substantial to the theological discussion, since all this talk bores me pretty mightly. Some pretty pictures instead.

Spoiler :

 

[innonimatu]

It isn't that obvious. It may just as well mean that the church was so powerful, few states dared oppose it.

Some rulers got into trouble by opposing some factions of the clergy. But european medieval kingdoms knew how to use the church and more often than not had the upper hand. Long after the fight between Pope and HRE over the appointment of bishops, there were still several kings appointing bishops at will. The portuguese and the spanish even used the inquisition as another arm of the state. One can counter that the state was also at the same time made a tool of the church, but that didn't stop prime-ministers in the absolutist regimes from giving the jesuits a well-deserved kicking and curtailing the influence of the church almost overnight.

To be fair, it wasn't overnight. Something happened across continental western Europe in the mid-18th century: nobles and wealthy families ceased sending their second or third sons and daughters to monasteries, states founded schools independent of the clergy to educate bureaucrats, universities started cutting their ties to ecclesiastical sponsors, and so on... the abolition of the jesuits was symbolic of the defeat of the catholic church's old monopoly on education, it was the end of a process, not a beginning. The church kept some of its bureaucratic monopolies (recording births, marriages and deaths, lesser education) but ceased monopolizing education or being a vital tool for state governments: it became just one more interest group to be managed.

Why this change happened throughout the 18th century? I don't know, and I don't think anyone has given a definitive answer. But my view is that the church was indeed regarded as indispensable in european medieval kingdoms. Some kings could go as far as "nationalizing" it, but they wanted an organized religion - preferably just one, though some tolerated several. Why? As a tool, certainly, but there was more: the upper classes tended to be very much tied to religious institutions because there were precious few other enduring institutions: for example, monasteries were sponsored by noble families and were kind of part of the family patrimony, with the advantage that they were inalienable. They offered "good jobs" for the sons and daughters of the upper classes.

Then in the 18th century that changed: state bureaucracy expanded, and with that the choice of attractive jobs for the upper classes. That undermined the political and financial power of monasteries, and made a religious education less useful and the clergy a comparatively uninteresting career (for a parallel, think of another big change, that of 5th century Europe when noble families cut their investment in literary education in favor of military activity). It was this change, imho, that led within a couple of generation to such a weakening of the church (the big families no longer had many people there) that their former stranglehold on education and influence on politics was easily swept aside by the absolutist regimes.

I don't know if orthodox Russia went through similar transformations during its absolutist phase, but I expect that there too the influence of the orthodox church was reduced during the 18th century.

 

[Tahuti]

Why this change happened throughout the 18th century? I don't know, and I don't think anyone has given a definitive answer.

What were the other trends at that time? Absolutism and centralisation comes to mind. It wouldn't surprise me if there was somehow a link between "secularisation" and the aforementioned others.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Well, there's your problem: your organisation is misanthropic and boring, both qualities which people generally find unpleasant and wish to avoid.

You'd think so, but have you SEEN those E-cards people share on facebook?

 

[Veles]

To be fair, it wasn't overnight. Something happened across continental western Europe in the mid-18th century: nobles and wealthy families ceased sending their second or third sons and daughters to monasteries, states founded schools independent of the clergy to educate bureaucrats, universities started cutting their ties to ecclesiastical sponsors, and so on...

I don't know if orthodox Russia went through similar transformations during its absolutist phase...

Four words: Peter the f**king Great

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Orthodox priests look like mighty wizards. Catholics priests just like old men in dresses.

Fun fact: When I visited my family in Bosnia during my metalhead phase -ponytail, long beard, mostly dressed in black- a lot of people in my fathers hometown assumed that I was a priest.

Sadly, I can't contribute anything substantial to the theological discussion, since all this talk bores me pretty mightly. Some pretty pictures instead.

You forgot the most important one:

Please disregard the minarets.

And here's the Serbian knock-off

 

[Arakhor]

I assume that the top one is the Agia Sophia, but the AC series never visited Serbia, so I don't know about the bottom one.