What's the difference between the Eastern Orthodox and the Catholic church?
From what I've read on line so far, this is a very complicated answer. So can I just say I only need this for my World History worksheet, and I only have a really tiny space to write it, so can someone just give me like a one sentence answer? It doesn't have to be correct per say, it just has to be true.
well Catholics from what i understand they take the wine, and the little cracker the priest hands out literally as in when they drink the wine they believe they are actually drinking the blood of Jesus, and when they eat the cracker they think they are really eating his body.
P.S. ID if the eastern Orthodox believe that to, but i know that's what makes the catholic church very different from every other sect pretty much
The Pope. The Catholics believe he is the top guy, the head dude, God's representative on Earth. The Orthodox re guard him as just another Archbishop, on an equal par with all the Archbishops of the universal church.
The ON real spiritual difference is the Filioque Clause in the creed. Basically, the FILOQUE CLAUSE in the Catholic version of the NICENE CREED states that the Holy Spirit comes from the FATHER AND THE SON, while the Orthodox version merely states that the Holy Spirit comes from the only FATHER. There are other, very minor, differences in other matters, but nothing that can't be resolved easily.
THE DUDE: Yes, the Orthodox do fully believe the bread and wine changes into the BODY AND BLOOD of Christ at the moment of consecration by the Preist.
Constantine moved from Rome to Byzantium (Constantinople, Istanbul), and part the church moved with him. But part of the church stayed behind in Rome. Both were like capitals of the Roman Empire.
The church in these two cities struggled to get along. Finally around 1050 or so, the church split into the Eastern church (Constantinople) and the Western church (Rome). Each church excommunicated the other. They kinda patched thing up a little in the 1980's.
As far as basic religious beliefs they are about the same the Orthodox Churches split off from the Catholic Church after the Great Schism of 1054. A schism is the refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him.
I believe the chief difference between the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic churches is recognition of papal authority (Catholics recognize the pope while Eastern Orthodox Christians reject the authority of the pope.) This was the primary reason why the two churches split in the Great Schism culminating in 1054.
Yes, it is a very complicated answer. Your World History class probably just picked one of the many differences, over-simplified it, and then explained it in the text. My guess is that you will have to consult your book for the correct answer. The odds of someone guessing what they are looking for are not good - they may as well have asked "What is the third letter on page 153 of your text book?"
But since you asked...
The differences between the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church are essentially the same as the differences between the Byzantine Empire and the Holy Roman Empire. They shared a common origin and had a few similarities due to that common origin, but they each had very distinct cultural, philosophical, and linguistic paradigms.
There are several doctrinal differences. The Eastern Orthodox Church has far less "official" dogma, and far more doctrines that are subject to debate (as long as the terms of the debate are kept within traditional guidelines). Orthodox theology is more distinctly Platonic, while Catholic theology is more distinctly Aristotelian. The Orthodox do not believe in purgatory, do not number the sacraments, do not believe in indulgences, allow married clergy, and do not believe in Transubstantiation (per SE). They do not use statues, and tend to shy away from realistic iconography. The Orthodox observe a combination of the Gregorian and Julian Calendars, and so tend to observe certain holidays on different calendar days from the Roman Catholics. The Orthodox see salvation as gradual process (i.e. as sanctification), and not as a change in state. The Orthodox do not believe in created grace, forensic justification, substitutionsRytonement, that all potential is actualized in God, or that the act of creation is a manifestation of the essence of God. They do not believe that hell consists of a created fire (i.e. that it is a created place), but rather a state of antithesis to the uncreated energy of God. Church government is also somewhat different. Rather than having a complex hierarchy headed up by a single Pope, Orthodox bishops are essentially independent (with some caveats). The Orthodox accept two Ecumenical Councils that the Catholics do not, and reject all of the Catholic Councils after the Seventh.
But that just scratches the surface of the issue. And most of this is based on the differences between the Greek Orthodox and the Roman Catholics - we haven't even looked at the Uniates, the Russian/Slavic Orthodox groups, the Monophysites, Armenians, or Nestorians, all of which have varying degrees of similarities to Roman Catholicism.
What's the difference between the Eastern Orthodox and the Catholic church?
