Orthodox & Catholic: What are the differences?

[Zauba'a]

I was just wondering if anyone here has any concise (but interesting and detailed) information about the history and fundamentals of Orthodox christianity? What are their core beliefs? How did they come about? Do they have a huge heirarchy like Catholicism? Thanks in advance.

[ICantSpellDawg]

they have patriarchs like in the catholic church, but no head of all of them - that was their main problem with the catholic church (the pope). Earlier in their history they went through a massive statue/art destroying iconoclasm that made all of their churches less gaudy and more focused on jesus rather than saints and expensive things. over time it changed and, in my opinion, orthodox churches tend to be more gaudy than catholic ones.

i think they believe in the real presence like catholics and anglicans and all in all - from my limited understanding of the eastern churches position, the problem is just the Greek rites vs the latin rites. imagine if the catholic church had no pope and practiced more traditional koine greek christian values rather than the pauline roman ones

but i havnt gone to religion class in a while

[Postino]

Martin Luther started it all a long time ago, posting 100 hieratices(SP) of the Catholic Church on the Popes front door. he went on the run and started printing bibles in common tounge, not greek, i think early germanic(not sure). that is a big no-no, printing the bible in other than latin(BS really, heberew is the purest form of it, but hey, who in the catholic church gives a damn about the jews) and the church wanted him hung. McGruff is right, the difference is less focus on ritual and more focus on worship, for whatever that matters. there was/is plenty of heresy and false prosecution in the the protestants denominations, and no real difference save in what building they go to on sundays. Martin Luther was a good and virtuious man, but one should never under-estimate the powers of human stupidity.

odd stuff: the US was populated mostly by WASP's(white anglo-saxon protestants). more protestants commit suicide than catholics, due to a lessor sense of belonging in the differentdenominations. protewstants pray to Jesus, catholics pray to him saints and mary(rarely do you hear a catholic tack "in jesus's name" to the end of a prayer)

[Mr Frost]

The short answer is :they are spelled differently

The Orthadox Church and Catholic Church were the two main branches of the origonal Roman christan church .
When Rome finally divided into two {Western and Eastern Empires} the church was also split between them {so to speak} .
When Western the Roman Empire fell , the church {Catholic} survived and created a virtual Emperor to govern it {the Pope}.
Origonally the church was run by the Emperor Constantine then successive Emperors , that's why it split , there were two Emperors thus two church heads thus two churches} .
The Eastern Roman Empire {Byzantium to us} survived basically intact for another thousand years and kept the origonal tradition of the church head being the Emperor {things were more complex "on paper" but that was the socio-political/religous reality} .
When Byzantium fell , Russia , which was Orthadox and wanted to stay such , saw it's chance and steped in to claim leadership of the Orthadox church ... naturally there were those who questioned this . Today some look to Alexandria and the Koptic {Orthadox and sort of Byzantine in culture} whilst others seem to look to Greece {The commies in Russia caused great damage to Russias' claims to leadership in the Orthadox world} ... as usual , these modern religions can't make up their minds
The basic differences are cosmetic , but in practical terms as I understand it , Orthadox Preists can {and I gather are encouraged too} marry and breed , worship focused on Icons {special "holy" pictures} as representing a connection to whatever they are of {ie : an Icon of the virgin -or at she said she was -Mary would be a mystical conection to Mary rather like a web-cam internet connection {to the catholics , this is Idolatry and thus a sin} .
I would imagine that the Orthadox church is still rather well organised due to having been created by the highly bureaucratic Byzantines {it was after all an official organ of state and arm of Government} just like the catholic church inherrited the Western Roman Empires' love of monolithic bureacratic structure .
Orthadox people tend to be a bit less "anal" than catholics and less masochistic , but more fatalistic {mostly due to various events in history such as the Mongol conquest of Russia and Turkish domination of Greece etc} . It is traditional for Orthadox preists to grow a full beard {this was the Tradition in the Eastern Roman Empire} and for Catholic to NOT grow a beard {as the origonal Romans considered beards barbaric ... strange that they considered slavery and genocide civilised but that's Romans for you} .

Note , Orthadox is NOT the same as Protestant That is another branch again . Postino was wrong there . Protestantism was begun by Martin Luther {who was a rabid anti-semit , who wanted to exterminate Jews , Gypsies and bring back the worst excesses of the witch hunts but thankfully never got enough support in that . Reading his writings is a strange experience to say the least ... apparantly Hitler was quite impressed by them as he translated much of Luther from old to modern German for his own twisted speaches . History is weird at times} as an attempt to change the Catholic church its' self and then {when that failed} grew to become a separate church in its' own right and is as such more a child of Catholisism whereas the Orthadox church is equal to the Catholic Church in origin as both of those came from the same beginings at the same time and are direct children of the origonal Roman Church which is a Child of several Periods of Pre-constantine christianity {including a period where they exterminated most Mithralites , then took many Mithralite dogmas and practices -like 25th december for their gods' birthday , communion and confession ... bizare history} which is a child of Judaism .

An intersting point of fact is that Jesus was actually a Nasarine which is a branch of Judaism which still exists ... christianity in general is thus flawed from the get go {also , the town of Nasarus did not even exist until nearly three decades after his supposed death ... it is one of many flaws in successive translations whiich are convienently ignored by the various churches as keeping their flocks happy and loyal is more important that keeping their own dogma truthful ... religion is weird }

Do a web search on The Orthadox Church and you will get a lot of information .

Hpoe that helped some .

[Postino]

DOH

right on Frost, i stand corrected. i was drunk last night and had my orthoxies and protestants confused, and i had the urge to bitch about something.

[ICantSpellDawg]

i heard that nazareth didnt exist at jesus birth, but later found that it, in fact, did (but not the nazareth we know today) - there was some more wierd stuff about that in holy blood/holy grail, but it actually isnt true.

the early romans (julius, augustus) believed that beards were barbaric but were not christian at the time. the later ones (such as hadrian) adopted a more greco/roman view and began wearing them. Beards were signs of piety in the orders and many many preists in the roman church wore them even early on

[Major Robert Dump]

Their hats are a little different.

[Paladin]

The Orthdox faith is alot closer to early organized Christianity than is Catholicism. Catholicism in many ways is a cult or diversion from the original foundations of Christianity. There is nothing in the Bible or any writings of the early fathers of the Church referring to things like "pergatory" or the idea that a Priest can't be married (which is one reason why you have a huge pedophile problem in the Catholic Church).

On the other side, you have Orthodox Christianity which sticks alot closer to how the Church was formally organized in the A.D. 300's.

But, one thing that really bothers me about both Churches is their reliance on Mary and the Saints. There is NOTHING in the Bible or any teaching by Jesus or the Apostiles that even remotely suggests that dead people can hear what you are saying. The idea that you can call to Mary and have her hear your prayers and expect her to act as an intercessor between you and God is absurd and would have been blasphemy to the early Christians.

Why you would even need an intercessor between you and God when we already have Jesus is utterly ridiculous. The problem is that when Greeks converted to Christianity they brought with them their old beliefs of having "minor gods" who you can pray to to help you with all sorts of little things. Old traditions die hard.

[Mr Frost]

lol postino .


I forogt to mention that the churches also have different "holy" languages : the Catholics use what is called Church Latin {at least I think it's called that} which is rather different from what a budding Schollar might learn in a secular {non-religous) univerity or a Roman citizen would have understood ; the Orthadox use a form of Classical Greek .
They each will tell you all sorts of artfull reasons , but the truth of it is that a cerimony in an interesting yet "alien" language sounds more impressive than when in your own {Greeks will likely have as much success following Orthadox Classical Greek as we would following a dialect of Shakesperean English in a Glassweigan accent }; it lends a sense of otherworldlyness without the awkwardness of some layman with a brain saying "hang of preist ; that's bullshit you're speaking , and I'll prove it to you ... "

[ICantSpellDawg]

Paladin

Quote[/b] ]Why you would even need an intercessor between you and God when we already have Jesus is utterly ridiculous

why would you need to pray to jesus when you have god and why would you pray to god when he knows what you are thinking anyway?

maybe people pray through saints because it helps them understand Jesus who helps them understand God who helps them understand the meaning of existence. when you already have a middle man why not add more if they help get the job done.

Catholic christianity has just as many inane beliefs as other religions whether youd like to admit it or not. Both orthodoxy and catholicism are completly removed from aramaic christian judaism anyway

everyone likes to villify the church these days - and it is really terrible that people see none of the good things it has done lately, only the bad things in the past.

ALSO - look into this, more child molestation cases occur in non-catholic christian churches on average - the catholic church is just a larger institution with deep pockets (as a response to your statement about priests being pedophiles)

Im sorry if i come off as a jerk, but your post seemed to divert from the question of the thread into a stab at catholicism

[Teutonic Knight]

Quote[/b] (Paladin @ Dec. 29 2002,06:29)]The Orthdox faith is alot closer to early organized Christianity than is Catholicism. Catholicism in many ways is a cult or diversion from the original foundations of Christianity. There is nothing in the Bible or any writings of the early fathers of the Church referring to things like "pergatory" or the idea that a Priest can't be married (which is one reason why you have a huge problem in the Catholic Church).

On the other side, you have Orthodox Christianity which sticks alot closer to how the Church was formally organized in the A.D. 300's.

But, one thing that really bothers me about both Churches is their reliance on Mary and the Saints. There is NOTHING in the Bible or any teaching by Jesus or the Apostiles that even remotely suggests that people can hear what you are saying. The idea that you can call to Mary and have her hear your prayers and expect her to act as an intercessor between you and God is absurd and would have been blasphemy to the early Christians.

Why you would even need an intercessor between you and God when we already have Jesus is utterly ridiculous. The problem is that when Greeks converted to Christianity they brought with them their old beliefs of having "minor gods" who you can pray to to help you with all sorts of little things. Old traditions die hard.

try the book of Macabees1

the fact that priests cannot be married is a matter of tradition, and is not the reason for ia, many protestsant ministers who are married still commit many more acts of ia than priests do, but it just doesn't get the media attention....

[Hakonarson]

Actually Catholic priests CAN be married - if they are before they take the holy orders then they remain so, and there are a very small number who have done just that - inevitably they're a bit older & have "lived" a bit.

What they must be is CELEBITE - which is somethign else entirely.

[Lord Of Storms]

So many misconceptions due exist in the telling of church history but some facts due exist to show that indeed "Nazareth" was a small town located in Galilee between Caserea and Tyre at and before the birth of Jesus this is a matter of historic record from the writings of Josephus and Eusubius to name a few who chronicled the times and bear record of the town under Roman rule.As for the "Nazarite"sect this does exist member of note Samson,the doctrines of the Nazarite include abstainingfrom strong drink and the cutting of their hair you can find this in the Bible in Numbers chapter 6 "The Vows and laws of the "Nazarite" Nazarene is what Jesus was called this denotes His being from Nazareth.

[rasoforos]

ok heres my 2 cents : ( or the full guide to the orthodox church with a hint of hymour )


the two churches were seperated quite a lot after the separation of the empire. The reason was politics , according to th church all the patriarchs were equal but the patriarch of constantinople was 'first among equals' so more or less he was taking the decision on who the christians should burn next . The pope did not like that , the fact that peter? was the first patriarch of rome made things even worse , he wanted more influence. Since the patriarch and the pope could not just go out and say ' i am the best , damn the other' , a theological difference was devised , it is called 'filiocve'(spelling here) , more or less the pope said ' the holy spirit is sent only by the father' the patriarch' no its also sent by the son you £%£$£' ( a pretty stupid argument if you ask me ), so now they had a ground to call eachother heretic and excommunicate each other , and both were happy more or less. For this reason the sign of the cross the christians do in church changed and also the 'declaration of faith ' did also in the catholics . The original text is still in Greek , even the pope recites it in greek but he says ' tou patros ekporevomenon' while the patriarch says ' tou patros kai tou yiou ekporevomenon' ( if you know some greek you understand).
Finally things are getting better between them and they lifted the excommunications after a good 1200 years and they also 'appeared' together in Italy and did a whole service together. However when they said together the declaration of faith they kinda chewed their words in the part mentioned earlier. So this is the main theological difference.

Appearances(BUILDINGS) : orthodox churches tend to be smaller , they have no statues but are full of icons , many believed some icons have powers , and since the church makes a lot of money out of these 'worsippers' who make pilgrimages , they do not proclaim its heresy. Moreover orthodox churches are full of gold , more than the average catholic church. The shapes tend to be the same as the mesobyzantine ones , cross-shapes or basilica . You wont find a gothic style , or modern style orthodox church.

Appearances ( PRIESTS) : i suppose you all know how a catholic priest looks like. An orthodox priest wears a black piece of clothing that covers his whole body , its called 'rason' ( guess where my nickname comes from ) , he also wears a high black hat , he always wears a bierd although latelly priests tend to wear them shorted than they used too , the whole profile is very black and camouflaged so its very easy to run over a priest while driving in a dark road , the orthodox priest can marry once in his life ( non-clerical orthodox christians can marry 3) but if he is to be a high rank cleric he has to be unmarried , so most church-priest have a wife , the bishops who cannot marry do the same the caholic priests do ( hmmm...you know what i mean ).
I believe that the orthodox priest keeps himself away from the 'world' more than the catholic does , his ancient clothing helps to that direction.

Organisation : the orthodox church is run by the patriarch of Konstantinople , however many countries have declared their churches independent although under the leadership of the patriarch . This pisses the patriarch off a lot and the orthodox church leaders discussions are often worse than the jerry springer show . An example is the fight between the Patriarch and the Arch-Bishop of the independent church of Greece. They cannot stand eachother because the patriarch wants to control the church directly. Lower than the patriarchs are the 'mitropolitai' , they are something like bishops more or less. Did i mention that orthodox high ranking clerics are very vain as well? Their 'rasson' is different , its full of gold , they wear hats of gold and hold a golden staff , they also tend to wear golden amullets around their necks ( something like AliG ) , these uniforms cost a fortune , some up to 150.000 pounds , over 200.000 euro or dollars , they also drive really expensive cars , all the above prove how much they value the virtues of poverty and sharring :P and also shows where all the money the christians donate to the church go . Here are some pictures of the patriarch and some ranking priests . In this picture you can see the difference between the black rasson and the golden ones ( this is real gold thread guys) , you can also see the ALIG style amulets. This is how a normal priest looks like , scary isnt it?

Power of the church : The orthodox church is very powerfull , not because of its 500.000.000 followers but because of its immense political power . YES , the orthodox church does not believe in the separation of religious and political state , they believe they should control the state and if you say they shouldnt you are in league with the satan , atheist , communists etc etc ( a bit of sarcasm here , i hope i dun get flammed for that ) . To show you what i mean i will talk about the church i am most familiar with . The independent church of Greece. This church is small in numbers , about 10.000.000 people but huge in influence. The church owns immense pieces of land all around Greece , when i say immense i mean it , they are probably the biggest landowner in Greece . They rent this land or make profit from it otherwise. They also own Hotels , Resorts , Huge printing factories ( the greek version of Penthhouse was being printed in a church owned facility , and many other 'above 18' magazines as well ...i guess business is business eh? ) and have a large amount of investment in other sectors and shares in many companies. Since they do not like people to see where their money go they do not talk about their financial activities. Even churches work to make money , when you enter you buy a candle , the candle is a simple one , it costs almost nothing , however they sell it for a minimum of ussually 30 eurocents , they also sell icons , other religious items and they make a lot of money from the pilgrimages. All in all their economic power is immense , and its growing continiously ( you saw how these people dress didnt you) , moreover since all old people are very religious in Greece they use them to try and control the government through their votes , they even support a political party right now named LA.O.S ran by a semi-crazy guy ( the archbishop was caught on tape urging people to vote for the good christian leader of the party for mayor in athens , the archbishop claims he did not do so ). Their last political effort has to do with the Greek ID cards. These cards had the religion written on them , the government decided this is a personal datum and the new ones do not. The archbishop managed to gather crouds of up to 1.000.000 people in the two main cities of greece to complain about this ( 99% of the were above 60 , all armed to the teeth with crosses and icons). Now you should ask ' why do these people care about the ID' . well for a simple reason ... acording to the greek IDs 99% of the Greeks appear to be Orthodox Christians , this is more or less plasmatic since you become e christian at the age of 1 or 2 by being baptised , and you get your ID ar 16-17 when you cannot change your religion without your parents consent . So everyone appears to be christian and the church appears allmighty. Even i ,who am not a christian have an ID card saying i am. Why didnt i change it? 1) cannot be bothered 2) changing it involves tons of bureaucratic procedures 3) my religion of choice is not on the list .... Yes in Greece being an Ethnic ( the original greek religion ) is not a choice , the reason? its not a recognised religion. OK how do we make it recognised? ....heres the funny part : the person who can declare a religion as officially recognised is the orthodox Archbishop , the guy who calls us idolaters for breakfast , lunch , and before he goes to sleep. SO go figure
Concluding this part , the church is unbelievably rich , unbelievble power ( through their army of old people) , and has a taste for politics . If you though the catholics were doing that now you see they found more than a match


Ok , this is the end of my satirical guide to the orthodox church , i hope you guys enjoyed

[Rosacrux]

A tad biased and more than a tad overdue (it's satire, after all) but all in all a fair (albeit funny) representation of the Orthodox church, raso.

I like your diatribe, but the political power of the Orthodox isn't even near what you believe it to be, rasoforos.

I am even more puzzled about you choosing that name, as you don't particulary like those who wear rasa...

[rasoforos]

well said
i admit it is biased but as you said its because i didnt wanted to give another 'serious' view.


the nick comes from the fact that i wear only black and i shave once every month or two months. i kinda look like a monk or a priest so to speak.

[Teutonic Knight]

Quote[/b] (Hakonarson @ Feb. 12 2003,22:00)]Actually Catholic priests CAN be married - if they are before they take the holy orders then they remain so, and there are a very small number who have done just that - inevitably they're a bit older & have "lived" a bit.

What they must be is CELEBITE - which is somethign else entirely.

no you can't get married and then be a priest, the only exception to this is if you are an episcopal priest who is married and you convert and be a Catholic priest

[DemonArchangel]

damn, someone was right about orthodox being less anal than catholics, i mean, the catholic church would never own a company that prints porn magazines,


well anyway... maybe i'll go to greece and take a look at a greek porno, i wonder what it's like?

[Teutonic Knight]

Quote[/b] (DemonArchangel @ Feb. 13 2003,14:03)]damn, someone was right about orthodox being less anal than catholics, i mean, the catholic church would never own a company that prints magazines,


well anyway... maybe i'll go to greece and take a look at a greek o, i wonder what it's like?

I don't think there is such a thing, I mean they wouldn't even allow videogames in their country until just recently.......so.........

[Hakonarson]

Quote[/b] (Teutonic Knight @ Feb. 13 2003,10:23)]

Quote[/b] (Hakonarson @ Feb. 12 2003,22:00)]Actually Catholic priests CAN be married - if they are before they take the holy orders then they remain so, and there are a very small number who have done just that - inevitably they're a bit older & have "lived" a bit.

What they must be is CELEBITE - which is somethign else entirely.

no you can't get married and then be a priest, the only exception to this is if you are an episcopal priest who is married and you convert and be a Catholic priest

http://www.catholic.com/library/Celibacy_and_the_Priesthood.asp

[DemonArchangel]

actually, ktonos said that he could play MTW freely in greece, shrugs, dunno who's right.

[rasoforos]

Of course you can play videogames freely in greece. the whole 'ban of electronic games' was created because the members of the parliament are all 70yr old seniles , they wanted to ban' fruit machines ' like 6 months ago from places other than casinos ( which is agreeable to me ) but since they have no idea they made a law against 'any game of electronic form' . Of course the law was declared innactive from practically the next day, anticonstitutional after a bit , and was cancelled in less than a month. And its not like any games were taken off the shelf. Actually Greece is a good market for games as well because the prices are better than the UK at least ( my copy of warcraft III was purchaced for 26 pounds a week after it came out i think ) .It just makes you wonder in which century our politicians live on thuogh

Teutonic Knight , as far as countries go , greece is considered one of the most 'free' when it comes to 'entertainment' . For example there is no age limit for buying alcohol (or if there is some godforsaken law noone enforces it ), or going clubbing , i was going clubbing from 14 , could buy alcohol even earlier ( so no need to fake IDs or hope you look above 16 in Greece ) . Moreover you do not need to go to 'exclusive stores' to buy adult material. Cheap games , no restrictions...So more or less its a nice place to spend your adolescence on )

[DemonArchangel]

DAMN why am i not living in greece, where i can drink alcohol until my liver breaks down???

[Rosacrux]

I was clubbing from the age of 11, drank alcohol at the same age for the first time, bought cigarettes at the same age and porn magazines (not good ones, though, they were pretty crap back then - that is 20something years ago, nowadays they are on par with pretty much everything you could buy in USA or Germany) a year earlier. Of course there are drawbacks: unlike other European countries, here they put you behind bars if you smoke a joint.

But generally yes, Greece is a freaking free country. Especially in entertainment. Probably that's why hordes of Brits come to Mallia every summer and they drink themselves unconscious in the middle of the street... I used to live close to Mallia (in Heraklion) and once I went clubbing in Mallia, I literally had to jump over 50 or 60 lying brits to get to a clubs entrance. The scenery would look much alike MTW after a bridge battle

[DemonArchangel]

that's cuz american lawmakers are anal-retentive bastards, but america is cool enough, i'll go to greece and check it out one day or another though.

[Teutonic Knight]

http://www.catholic.com/library/Celi...Priesthood.asp[/quote]
are you a Catholic Hakonarson?