Religion Greek bishops write letter to the Pope

[Second Summer]

On the occasion of Easter, two Greek metropolitan bishops have written a harsh 89-page letter to Pope Francis:

The two Greek Metropolitans address the Pope as “His Excellency, Francis, Head of State of the Vatican City”, making no mention of his Bishop status. In the opening line of their missive they state that their letter is addressed to him with “sincere love” and motivated by the need to remind “heretics” of their “holy obligation to return to the Orthodox Church” which the “Pope” (whose title appears in quotation marks throughout the text) decided to detach himself from. The authors of the letter separate themselves (though they really need not have, it is obvious) from “western and especially ecumenist “Christianity””, branding Rome’s “heresy” and “spiritual and ecclesiastical delusion” as “Papism”. The two Greek bishops say they “unceasingly pray that our Lord Jesus Christ gather together the deluded “Pope” and his followers, through repentance and the renunciation of your delusion and heresy, into the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Orthodox Church.”

[...]

The doctrine of “Papal Infallibility”, meanwhile, is described as “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit” which shows “the satanic pride of which” the Pope is “possessed”. “Papism” is not a “Church” but a religious community, a parasynagogue, a heresy … a total perversion of the Truth,” the two Orthodox Metropolitans write in their long letter.

Read more: Two Orthodox bishops accuse the Pope of heresy (Vatican Insider, 15. April 2014)

No compromises there! Far-out stuff.

 

[ledboots]

Wowow. I have bookmarked this to read later.

As a child raised by-the-book Roman Catholic, our family once in awhile attended the Orthodox Catholic church in town rather than miss a week (masses were at different times).

My immigrant Lithuanian grandfather was raised Orthodox Catholic but married an Irish woman in Boston, so my mom was raised Roman Catholic. The Orthodox church was familiar, yet different, and I liked it more than our regular huge parish church. They dipped chunks of real bread in red wine for communion and had all these saint statues in the church and lots of incense.

 

[Blobbenstein]

Papal Infallibility does seem blasphemous to me..The position of pope doesn't make his relationship with God any more relevant than a beggar on some dusty street on the planet's relationship with God.

I have been won over by the immaculate conception though. Who else was Jesus's father, Joseph?

 

[Joe]

I have been won over by the immaculate conception though. Who else was Jesus's father, Joseph?

No, dude. You've got this wrong. "Immaculate Conception" has nothing to do with who Jesus's father was. It has to do with Mary, Jesus' mother.

As Wikipedia states:

The Immaculate Conception is a dogma of the Catholic Church maintaining that from the moment when she was conceived in the womb, the Blessed Virgin Mary was kept free of original sin,[1][2] so that she was from the start filled with the sanctifying grace normally conferred in baptism. It is one of the four dogmas in Roman Catholic Mariology.[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immaculate_Conception

Recall the words of the familiar hymn:

Immaculate, Mary!
Our hearts are on fire.
That title so wondrous
Fills all our desire!

Ave, Ave, Ave, Maria!
Ave, Ave, Ave, Maria!

http://www.catholicfirst.com/thefaith/prayers/marianhymns.html#ImmaculateMary

 

[Second Summer]

Ah, I had no idea the "immaculate conception" and "the virgin birth of Jesus" are two separate doctrines.

 

[Joe]

Ah, I had no idea the "immaculate conception" and "the virgin birth of Jesus" are two separate doctrines.

The household I was brought up in was not only Roman Catholic it was "super"-Roman Catholic, so to speak. My parents verged on being religious fanatics. My father was a graduate of a Jesuit college. Although he was a major in business administration, he had to take a substantial load of religion and philosophy courses. He knew that stuff cold--better than the Bishop of Nashville. (I kid you not.) His children were expected to have the same exacting mastery of doctrine and teaching.

To be fair, though, as Wikipedia states,

Distinction from other doctrines
Mary's virginal conception of Jesus is sometimes confused[3] with the Roman Catholic doctrine of Mary's Immaculate Conception, namely, her being conceived in the normal way but free from original sin.[4][5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_birth_of_Jesus

If you had heard the hymn "Immaculate, Mary" as many times as I have (seems like a thousand times or more), it would be easy to keep these two different doctrines straight.

 

[Blobbenstein]

oh, right...I hadn't heard of that.