Fr. Maximos on Recent Polemics
From the Anastasis Dialogue:
And there we come to the final, though probably the most long winded of the Ochlophobist’s post: his over-iterated apologia for Orthodoxy’s essential perfection. The central idea here is that Orthodoxy has no need of other Christians (can we call them that?) because she really has no need of anyone else. She has the Cross. She has Jesus. What more do you need?
Lurking behind this ecclesiology (and yes, that’s what it is—and not an “undefined” one, as is argued, but an ill-defined one) is, in my view, a kind of crypto-protestant “me and Jesus” attitude. Not everyone who cries, “Lord, Lord” will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The Church does not exist solely in relation to Christ; it is also the means by which Christ extends Himself through the Spirit to all creation.
I was going to post something of my own about all of these things, but why bother? Fr. Maximos stated it much better than I ever could. Read the whole post here.
posted by Arturo Vasquez @ 12:00 AM
5 Comments:
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East and West should be united
pray to the Theotokos, she can make it happen
The Catholic church also used to believe that it was sufficient unto itself, but it lost that when it was absorbed into the Modern world.
"How, indeed, will the church of the Greeks, no matter how severely she is beset with afflictions and persecutions, return into ecclesiastical union and to a devotion for the Apostolic See, when she has seen in the Latins only an example of perdition and the works of darkness, so that she now, and with reason, detests the Latins more than dogs? As for those who were supposed to be seeking the ends of Jesus Christ, not their own ends, who made their swords, which they were supposed to use against the pagans, drip with Christian blood, they have spared neither religion, nor age, nor sex. (...) They have even ripped silver plates from the altars and have hacked them to pieces among themselves. They violated the holy places and have carried off crosses and relics."
POPE INNOCENT III
Both sides need to repent of a number of things. The Catholic Church has come to recognize how she needs to do so. The Orthodox Church has not done the same for herself.
Best,
Mike
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