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To: sionnsar
Thanks for the ping. The author I think may have been a bit generous on the size of the Eastern Churches in communion with the Pope. The history of these churches in Europe show that they were the result of certain dynastic maneuvers on the part of Roman Catholic monarchs. Their development in the East is rather different, with only the Maronites being most likely continuously in communion with Rome. The other Eastern Catholic churches in the Middle East came about through the actions of the Crusaders or the work of Jesuits, Franciscans and Dominicans as late as the immediate post WWI era. One of the odd things about all this is that the Maronites, who until the past 250 years or so were the most isolated of all, also became the most Latinized, or Francofied, of them all. For the past 15 years or so the Maronites have been working very hard to restore their own very distinctive Syriac heritage but it has been a hard row to hoe as the Latins intentionally destroyed almost all written trace of the original Syriac liturgies and services, hymnology and even theology. The Byzantine rites, like the Melkites and the Eastern Catholics in Europe, are liturgically almost line for line identical to the Orthodox Churches. Their submission to Rome, however, makes their ecclesiology, at least traditionally, almost completely Latin and utterly unlike their Orthodox counterparts, though this has so changed in a couple of groups that they left the Roman Church and came under the omophorion of one of the other patriarchates and of late there have been protests to Rome that these churches really are "sui juris" and Rome should butt out of their business. The foregoing notwithstanding, their theology, of course, is Latin, not Eastern Orthodox, despite what this author says. There is no point of theology, of which I am aware, where these churches come down on the Orthodox side in opposition to the dogmas of the Roman Church in such areas as the Immaculate Conception, Papal Infallibility or the filioque clause in the Creed among others.
13 posted on 03/29/2005 7:12:44 PM PST by Kolokotronis ("Set a guard over my mouth, O Lord; keep watch over the door of my lips!" (Psalm 141:3))
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To: Kolokotronis

When Eastern Catholics celebrate the divine liturgy in Greek, the filioque is nowhere to be found.


22 posted on 03/30/2005 7:33:40 AM PST by Romulus (Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?)
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