No, Orthodoxy is not Roman Catholic
According to my calculations, it has been 94 days since my christmation and reception into the Orthodox Church. It has been a wonderful 3 months. My journey started over 4 years ago and culminated in what I can only describe as one of the most wonderful experiences of my life. I don't know how else to describe it.
Many protestants don't know anything about the Orthodox church, and when pressed upon for an opinion, those who do know something will either say "Oh, they are just like the Catholics", or "Oh, they are simply another denomination of Christianity." I'd like to examine these two statements in order to refute them, and in doing so, hopefully the truth of Orthodoxy will cause some of my protestant friends to begin their own journey into Orthodoxy.
First of , the claim that they are just like the Roman Catholic Church. Protestants know something about Catholicism. Indeed, most of their doctrines have been defined in opposition to a Catholic doctrine. For protestants in general, theology is really simple: Christ died for your sins so that you can be justified before God, and therefore, if you trust him as your personal saviour, you will go to heaven when you die. Since this is a pretty simple concept, it makes a protestant scratch their head when looking at the Catholic church. Praying to saints, praying for the dead, the insistence that the host and the wine is the real body and blood of Christ. Confession. Having an hierarchical clergy. Icons. Kissing the hands of the clergy. Crossing yourself. All of this is unnecessary - it's not part of the salvation equation. It becomes unnecessary in a protestant worldview, and therefore, because the Catholics hold these practices with deep reverence, they are viewed with great suspicion by the protestant.
I'm not going to argue for these practices right now, suffice it to say, the Orthodox share pretty much all of them. So the difference between Orthodoxy and Catholicism to a Protestant becomes the same difference between Sunni and Shia Muslims - yeah, there's a difference, but they are so much like each other that when compared to Protestantism, the difference seems to vanish. Protestants have no reason to consider Catholic practices of any benefit, so why would they consider the practices of Orthodoxy to be of any value?
The thing is, there are a lot of similarities between Orthodoxy and Catholicism. But there are also very many differences. The first and foremost is that there is no Pope in the Orthodox church. There are only two "levels" of clergy: the priest and the bishop. Outside of that, everything else is simply honorary titles. No one bishop has any say what goes on inside the jurisdiction of any other bishop. There is no one supreme ruler who speaks for the entire church. It is only the bishop. And we pray for the bishop several times during the Divine Liturgy on Sunday mornings that God would have mercy on him and keep him teaching the word of truth.
At this point, many people will point out the fact that the Catholics have added to the Nicaean-Constantinopolitan creed by use of an additional phrase when speaking of the Holy Spirit: that He proceeds from the Father "and the Son" whereas in the Orthodox church we say only that He proceeds from the Father. The reason this was able to happen back in 1054 when the east and west split, was because the west had one man in charge of everything. It's much easier for one man to change something than to convince hundreds of men to change something. Once supreme power was given to the Pope, things could change and be added with relative ease. In the east, because each Bishop is in charge of his own jurisdiction only, the only way for a widespread "change" in doctrine to occur is to have everyone in agreement (I use quotes because the whole premise behind councils is to define the faith once delivered to the saints - not invent new doctrines). And this happens in councils - not in the decree of a single man at the top. In this way, the Orthodox church has been able to preserve the original teachings of the apostles without decay or additions.
And without the Pope, there are no universal papal decrees of new dogmas that are to be believed in order to be saved. Dogmas such as indulgences, papal infallibility, and the immaculate conception of Mary all belong to only the catholic church: there is nothing of them in Orthodoxy. And practices which do have a similarity with Orthodoxy, such as the veneration of the Virgin Mary, the Orthodox doctrine is usually more simple and easily seen as the forerunner to an evolved more complicated Catholic doctrine. For example, Catholics call Mary the co-redemptrix with Christ, that Christ co-operates with her when saving us. This is easily the evolution of a simple veneration of Mary that exists within Orthodoxy. Purgatory is another one. There is no purgatory for the Orthodox church, but we do pray for the dead. It's a simpler doctrine that the Catholic church has embellished - making it something it was never meant to be.
So, hopefully by now I've convinced you to at least take a reasonable look at Orthodoxy without thinking it is "just like the Catholics".
Hmm... This is getting pretty long. I will write about the second claim in my next post.
Many protestants don't know anything about the Orthodox church, and when pressed upon for an opinion, those who do know something will either say "Oh, they are just like the Catholics", or "Oh, they are simply another denomination of Christianity." I'd like to examine these two statements in order to refute them, and in doing so, hopefully the truth of Orthodoxy will cause some of my protestant friends to begin their own journey into Orthodoxy.
First of , the claim that they are just like the Roman Catholic Church. Protestants know something about Catholicism. Indeed, most of their doctrines have been defined in opposition to a Catholic doctrine. For protestants in general, theology is really simple: Christ died for your sins so that you can be justified before God, and therefore, if you trust him as your personal saviour, you will go to heaven when you die. Since this is a pretty simple concept, it makes a protestant scratch their head when looking at the Catholic church. Praying to saints, praying for the dead, the insistence that the host and the wine is the real body and blood of Christ. Confession. Having an hierarchical clergy. Icons. Kissing the hands of the clergy. Crossing yourself. All of this is unnecessary - it's not part of the salvation equation. It becomes unnecessary in a protestant worldview, and therefore, because the Catholics hold these practices with deep reverence, they are viewed with great suspicion by the protestant.
I'm not going to argue for these practices right now, suffice it to say, the Orthodox share pretty much all of them. So the difference between Orthodoxy and Catholicism to a Protestant becomes the same difference between Sunni and Shia Muslims - yeah, there's a difference, but they are so much like each other that when compared to Protestantism, the difference seems to vanish. Protestants have no reason to consider Catholic practices of any benefit, so why would they consider the practices of Orthodoxy to be of any value?
The thing is, there are a lot of similarities between Orthodoxy and Catholicism. But there are also very many differences. The first and foremost is that there is no Pope in the Orthodox church. There are only two "levels" of clergy: the priest and the bishop. Outside of that, everything else is simply honorary titles. No one bishop has any say what goes on inside the jurisdiction of any other bishop. There is no one supreme ruler who speaks for the entire church. It is only the bishop. And we pray for the bishop several times during the Divine Liturgy on Sunday mornings that God would have mercy on him and keep him teaching the word of truth.
At this point, many people will point out the fact that the Catholics have added to the Nicaean-Constantinopolitan creed by use of an additional phrase when speaking of the Holy Spirit: that He proceeds from the Father "and the Son" whereas in the Orthodox church we say only that He proceeds from the Father. The reason this was able to happen back in 1054 when the east and west split, was because the west had one man in charge of everything. It's much easier for one man to change something than to convince hundreds of men to change something. Once supreme power was given to the Pope, things could change and be added with relative ease. In the east, because each Bishop is in charge of his own jurisdiction only, the only way for a widespread "change" in doctrine to occur is to have everyone in agreement (I use quotes because the whole premise behind councils is to define the faith once delivered to the saints - not invent new doctrines). And this happens in councils - not in the decree of a single man at the top. In this way, the Orthodox church has been able to preserve the original teachings of the apostles without decay or additions.
And without the Pope, there are no universal papal decrees of new dogmas that are to be believed in order to be saved. Dogmas such as indulgences, papal infallibility, and the immaculate conception of Mary all belong to only the catholic church: there is nothing of them in Orthodoxy. And practices which do have a similarity with Orthodoxy, such as the veneration of the Virgin Mary, the Orthodox doctrine is usually more simple and easily seen as the forerunner to an evolved more complicated Catholic doctrine. For example, Catholics call Mary the co-redemptrix with Christ, that Christ co-operates with her when saving us. This is easily the evolution of a simple veneration of Mary that exists within Orthodoxy. Purgatory is another one. There is no purgatory for the Orthodox church, but we do pray for the dead. It's a simpler doctrine that the Catholic church has embellished - making it something it was never meant to be.
So, hopefully by now I've convinced you to at least take a reasonable look at Orthodoxy without thinking it is "just like the Catholics".
Hmm... This is getting pretty long. I will write about the second claim in my next post.