Topic: The Fifth Ecumenical Council on Pope St. Leo's infallibility

[Peter J]

I think the difference is that your faith is "magisterial" and based firmly on official statements.   Outside of magisterial definition and teaching doctrinal things are not so clear-cut.  Over the past millennium you have been quite busy defining more and more of your faith by magisterial definition.  There is probably not much left now to officially define.

Good thing, I'm exhausted.

[Irish Hermit]

I think the difference is that your faith is "magisterial" and based firmly on official statements.   Outside of magisterial definition and teaching doctrinal things are not so clear-cut.  Over the past millennium you have been quite busy defining more and more of your faith by magisterial definition.  There is probably not much left now to officially define.

Good thing, I'm exhausted.

Yes, with all the definitions over and done with you are probably approaching the state of theological stagnation so feared by Scott Hahn.
  

I guess you could always consider removing a few more books from the Catholic Bible, just to keep the development going?

[ialmisry]

The Spirit is descended!

The Spirit is descended!

There's really no official Catholic position regarding the possibility of the Pope falling into heresy. Some say that he could, and he would then automatically cease to be pope. Some say that it's impossible for him to fall into heresy. Neither of these are mandatory Catholic beliefs.

The Vatican's supreme pontiff Gregory VII, ex cathedra, disagreed:

As I'm sure you're already aware, Vatican I said that ex cathedra statements are infallible, but it never said how many there have been, or even whether there have been any.

Sure, proving how useless Pastor Aeternus is and how hollow the boasting of "infallibility" of the supreme pontiff that we are told we are missing.

What you're missing is that I've no idea what Orthodox believe on these things:

1) Calendar
2) Birth Control
3) Transubstantiation vs. Consubstantiation or Sacramental Union
4) Validity of Holy Orders outside the Greek Church and its offshoots
5) The legitimacy of the Filioque as interpreted in light of the misunderstandings in translation
6) Whether or not Orthodox and Catholic Christians can commune from the same chalice
7) Which autokephalous Greek churches are canonical or not

Every bishop is an island.

It drives me nuts. And sure, you can supply an answer - but there are Orthodox bishops who would disagree with you on each count.

It's impossible to get a straight answer.

1) the bishops in the Orthodox diptychs of the Catholic Church agree to disagree
2) I've heard of one or two bishops who disagree with the statement of the Russian Holy Synod on the matter.  No a great dissent.  On the other hand, the "dissent" on Humanae Vitae was the majority, and since your supreme pontiff refused to give a straight answer on whether it was given ex cathedra, you are deluding yourself to think your ecclesiastical community has a common answer to this question.
3) I had to renounce Consubstantiation/Sacramental Union when chrismated.  There is no Orthodox bishop that disagrees on that.
4) is irrelevant
5) any Orthodox bishop that thinks filioque is legitimate, per the Council of Constantinople IV 879 should repent or be deposed
6) any Orthodox bishop that allows that should be deposed, as the Holy Synod of Romania recently demonstrated, to the cheers of the other Orthodox Churches.
7) The OCA is the only one whose autocephaly is questioned, and all 14 of the other Churches find it canonical.

So at most each bishop is an island in an archipelago.

The fact that you list 6) demonstrates that you are grasping at straws, as the second largest EO Church, Romania, forced one of its highest bishops to repent of allowing this, and stating that any bishop that did so would be automatically deposed, a statement greeted with approval and no dissent by ALL the Orthodox Churches.   In other words, you aren't looking at the answers staring you right in the face.

I can talk to any of the bishops that Lefebvre ordained, and I'm sure I'll get answers different from your supreme pontiff Benedict XVI, let alone Cardinal Martini.

No, because I've tried to get answers on these and despite the fact that one polemicist on the internet thinks the answers are staring me right in the face, there is an Orthodox priest who has specifically argued against me that consubstantiation and sacramental union are valid ways of looking at the Eucharist. Fr. Anastasios says that birth control is wrong, period. You guys don't even know whether or not you can say that you can't know that the monophysite Orthodox churches have valid holy orders.

And you'd have to excommunicate the entire Antiochian Church when it comes to the intercommunion.

And you admitted yourself we've no idea if OCA is canonical. What about Ukraine? Is the matter that clear cut? Or ROCOR? Sure, you guys patched that up - but who was right when the Russian Church was controlled by the communist party?

Sorry, but you get no dice. Orthodoxy is a confusing mess to me, an outsider.

I had a conversation with my Catholic priest today. Here is what he told me:

1) The Catechism is too strict in certain areas.
2) The rules of Catholicism need to be interpreted
3) An archbishop issuing an Imprimatur or a Nihil Obstat can be grievously mistaken (and by extension, so can a Censor Librorum)
4) Any devotion that guarantees saving grace (The First Five Saturdays, the Scapular) don't actually secure saving grace.
5) It's not necessary for a Catholic to attend the Catholic church every Sunday.
6) The Catholic Church has applied "mortal sin" to too many categories, and there is a difference between mortal and grave sin.
7) The Lutherans and the Anglicans have valid orders and a valid eucharist, even if they don't call it transubstantiation or realize that their Eucharist is actually the body of Christ.
8 ) Catholicism is many spiritualities, not just one.

So this has pushed me straight into the Orthodox camp. You'd think a 60-year old priest wouldn't need to bring things down to "you have to interpret things" in order to support the faith. You'd also think that he'd know what Catholicism teaches about the validity of the Lutheran orders...

I know this isn't strictly Orthodox-Catholic discussion, but please let me know what you guys think...