Differences Between Catholicism and Orthodoxy

Father James Bernstein updated a fabulous, easy to read chart which demonstrates why Orthodoxy is the only one true Faith and the numerous reasons why we should NOT unite with Uniates/Rome.

CONTRASTS BETWEEN ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND ORTHODOXY (2) 20000228

Mrs. Monomakhos

Comments

    • Interestingly, this is a Western Rite Orthodox parish that no longer exists. It is where Fr. Joseph Gleason http://www.Russian-Faith.com editor began his priesthood before moving to Russia. Like Fr. James Bernstein’s presentation, this one is simplistic, but covers a lot of ground.

  1. This is awesome. I wish I had known about this when i was converting from Catholicism to Orthodoxy

  2. Mark E. Fisus says

    The idea that the Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son is the same as saying the Father and Son are the same person, i.e. the Father was put on the cross. The filioque is a modalist heresy.

    Although modern Catholics are not responsible for the insertion of the filioque, they should renounce it for the blasphemy that it is.

    • Modern Roman Catholics would probably be considered heretics by every pre-Vatican 2 Catholic.
      The majority of them are so thoroughly un-catechised that they wouldn’t be able to tell the difference from Catholicism and Lutheranism, sad that conservative Lutherans have a better liturgy than modern RC’s
      All of this actually works in the favor of Orthodoxy though.

    • Pat Reardon says

      The idea that the Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son is the same as saying the Father and Son are the same person, i.e. the Father was put on the cross. The filioque is a modalist heresy.

      I recited the Nicene Creed with the filioque for a half-century. I NEVER understood it in this way, and I don’t know any Roman Catholics who do.

      • Mark E. Fisus says

        As Justice Neil Gorsuch would say, only the written word is law. If the Catholics actually understand the Creed the way we do, without the insertion of the filioque, then they should not insert the filioque.

        • Pat Reardon says

          If the Catholics actually understand the Creed the way we do, without the insertion of the filioque, then they should not insert the filioque.

          Correct, but that does not make them Sabellians.

          Modalism is a dreadful heresy, which the Mother Church of the West has condemned repeatedly.

          • Yet St. Photios condemned the filioque as semi-Sabellianism, “Sabellius reborn, or rather some semi-Sabellian monster”. Also, the “Mother Church of the West” left the Church a thousand years ago.

    • If the Father and the Son are the same person,
      the Holy Spirit cannot be the love between them;
      for there would be no them to be between.

  3. Lexcaritas says

    Thank you, Father Pat, and Brendan. Like Father As a Roman Catholic and Anglican for half a century I, too, would never have understood as our brother Mark suggests. And as Brendan says if Father and Son were the same Person there would have been no need for the -que would there? Things are more subtle than this and we might want to consider the what being begotten of the Father means versus proceeding from Him, and then consider our Lord’s own statement that whatever the Son sees the Father do He does and that in fact the Persons of the Holy Trinity, distinct though they be, have one divine will and all act together and never apart.