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Question 420

Hi Thaskale, why, if there are any recorded accounts at the time, did the Christian religion split between orthodoxy and Catholicism?   

 

 

Answer to Question 420

 

The Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church are titles adopted to distinguish the two churches after their separation. If we take away their titles we can simply call them the Church in the east and the Church in the west and that’s how it was in the very beginning: one Church, one faith until the Great Schism of 1054. Everything before the Great Schism was common to both east and west. They shared the same Holy Scripture, the same Church Fathers, the same Saints, the same doctrines, the same priesthood, the same Sacraments. Until the Great Schism, the Orthodox Church shared the same Trinitarian Theology as the Roman Catholic Church. This changed with the introduction of the “filioque”.

 

When we are asked to explain the differences between the two churches, we usually mention the Primacy of the Pope, the insertion of the Filioque and certain dogmas like purgatory and the Immaculate Conception, but the differences are in fact far more numerous and quite profound. The main reason for the schism is usually considered to be the insertion of the Filioque in the Creed which in some places was inserted centuries before the Schism. Like the Filioque, a great many other differences existed long before the Great Schism of 1054 and many more developed after. Also, in modern times, since Vatican II, that major, if not tragic attempt, to “update” Roman Catholicism, the differences between Orthodoxy and the followers of the Pope have widened.

 

Some of these differences are external practices which can easily be rectified or ignored because they are not based on dogmas such as how we cross ourselves. Whether we cross ourselves from right to left or left to right, whether we use one, two, three or four fingers is not something that would keep us apart.  The things that have kept us apart for a thousand years are more serious because they have to do with faith, dogmas and our relationship with God and how we understand who God is. I have posted the differences between the churches before and to do so now would take a lot of reading.