Thank you Father John for this talk.

Orthodox here. ☦.The ecumenical dialog is stagnant and one of the reasons is the misrepresentation of the position of the Orthodox Church by the Roman Catholic one. No, we do not reject the guidance of the Church by ecumenical councils validated by the pope. We reject the idea that the Roman Church ALONE is able to hold ecumenical councils and is alone the one saint catholic and apostolic Church we evoke in the Creed. We also recite de Nicene creed every liturgy (every day in fact, rather than every Sunday) without the filioque addition of course and it includes "we believe in one saint catholic and apostolic Church". The difference is that we did not weaponize the word "catholic" to exclude other Christians as Rome did after 1075 and the proclamation by the encyclical Dictatus Papae that the Roman Church alone is universal by right. That right being the forged Donation of Constantine as I will explain in the next message for those who are interested by what happened and we found ourselves divided in 1054.

@Hope_Boat

2 ай бұрын

The filioque dispute started in 810 when the newly crowned (German) emperor of the west, Charlemagne asked saint pope Leo III to add the filioque clause into the holy creed. Charlemagne was the son of Pepin the short, a Frankish (German) king who took the byzantine province of Ravenna (including the ruins of Rome) and gave them to the pope in exchange of his own coronation. This gift was the first step towards the creation of the pontifical states. Charlemagne had even greater ambitions. He wanted to be emperor and to achieve this he needed a legitimization. The solution? A forged Roman imperial decree by which the 4th-century emperor Constantine the Great supposedly transferred authority over Rome and the western part of the Roman Empire to the Pope. The Donation of Constantine. Charlemagne was now emperor of the West but the Church of Rome was too obedient to Constantinople still. So he planned to create a schism. The instrument of the union was the creed. By pushing Rome to unilaterally change the creed he would inevitably create a schism. Saint pope Leo III rejected Charlemagne's idea and nailed two silver shields on the doors of his basilica with the unaltered Nicene creed engraved in Greek and Latin and this sentence : "I, Leo, did this for the sake and love of the orthodox faith". It's what defined Orthodoxy as we understand it in the Orthodox Church. The filioque dispute continued between the emperors of the Carolingian dynasty and the orthodox popes until the 8th ecumenical council held in Constantinople in 879 anathematized anyone who dares to add or remove anything to or from the Nicene creed. Saint pope John VIII validated the conclusions of the council, making that doctrine canonical as we all agree that the Church does not err when a ecumenical council is validated by the pope, don't we? Don't we? That anathematization put an end to the filioque dispute. Or did it? Well, for us Orthodox it did. The Holy Spirit had guided the Church and the dispute was over. But not everyone was happy about that. And saint pope John VIII was murdered in 882 with a hammer. A war hammer that is. You know the German weapon of choice. What happen next was pure chaos. I will enter in more details in the next message.

@Hope_Boat

2 ай бұрын

After saint John VIII's assassination, Rome fall in a period know as the Saeculum obscurum (dark ages) while Italian and German aristocrats fought over saint Peter's chair. Between 882 and 904 there was almost a new pope every year, sometimes two or three simultaneous popes and anti-popes. Pope Stephen had pope Formosus' corpse exhumed and brought to the papal court for judgment in order to nullify his pontificate. The Church of Rome fall under the power of the Theophylactus family, counts of Tusculum. This period is known as the Pornocratia or Rule of the Harlot,. Those Harlots were Theodora of Tusculum and her daughter Marozia. Marozia became the concubine of 45-year-old Pope Sergius III when she was 15 and later took other lovers and husbands. She ensured that the son she had with pope Sergius III was seated as Pope John XI. Some historians think that Marozia arranged the murder of her former lover Pope John X to secure the elevation of her current favourite as Pope Leo VI. The scandalous counts of Tusculum almost lost their grip on the chair of Peter in 1014 when Pope Benedict VIII was expelled from Rome by a rival. He asked the German king Henry II to help him military. They both returned to Rome and He was restored pope by King Henry II of Germany, whom he crowned emperor on 14 February 1014. The deal included the addition of the filioque clause into the creed. So Henry II's imperial coronation in Rome was the first time a pope recited the filioque, anathematzing himself by doing this according to the conclusions of the 8th ecumenical council of 879 (still acknowledge as valid by Rome until the 13th century) This completed the dream Charlemagne had to create the conditions of the schism that will soon happen as I will explain in the next message.

@Hope_Boat

2 ай бұрын

After the Tuscullum era, the German emperor appointed the first German pope who died within a year as well. The second German pope was the count Bruno von Egisheim-Dagsburg, who took the name Leo IX in 1050. Leo IX claimed the imperial insignia of the now extinct Carolingian dynasty for himself, constituted a Pontifical State, including a senate (cardinals) and a state chancelor (Humbert of Moyenmoutier). The Normans were invading Sicily that was part of the Byzantine empire as well as the south of Italy. Leo IX attacked the Normans leading himself his personal army. While in Sicily he ordered the local bishops to drop the Byzantine rite in favor of the Latin mass. The Patriarch Michel of Constantinople wrote to his bishop that they should maintain the Byzantine rite. Pope Leo IX was infuriated and send a letter to patriarch Michel claiming that popes have universal jurisdiction over the entire Church based on the Donation of Constantin he trusted to be genuine. Meanwhile he suffered total defeat at the Battle of Civitate on 15 June 1053 and became hostage of the Normans. Chancellor Humbert of Moyenmoutier ruled the Pontifical State in his absence and he was traveling towards Constantinople when he learned that pope Leo IX had died on 19 April 1054. Nevertheless he went to Constantinople where he delivered an insulting letter to the Patriarch Michel on behalf of the deceased pope in which he accused the Patriarch to be a woman in drag. After a successful meeting with the emperor, Humbert when to the basilica Agia Sophia to deliver an excommunication bull in which the dead pope allegedly excommunicated Michel for bogus reasons, one of which was the suppression of the Fillioque from the Nicene Creed. As we all know today, the Nicene Creed didn't contain the filioque clause and therefore Patriarch Michel didn't remove it. But on the other hand the popes, since Benedict VIII, have added the filioque despite the condemnation of those who dare add something to the Nicene creed by the ecumenical council of 789. That was obviously huge issue for the papacy and in the next message i will tell you how it was solved.

@Hope_Boat

2 ай бұрын

The schism Charlemagne wanted in 810 finally occurred in 1054. As soon as Rome is not longer accountable to the orthodox Church, new dogmas are pouring out : 1075 Dictatus Papae proclaimed that the Roman pontiff alone is called universal by right (that is the Donation of Constantin as Leo IX explained in his letter to Patriarch Michel of Constantinople). That he alone can use the imperial insignia. That all princes are to kiss the feet of the pope alone. That for him it is licit to depose emperors. That he himself must be judged by no one. That one is not to be held to be catholic, who does not concord with the Roman church. Etc. Bud despite the fact that the Roman Pontiff himself must be judged by no one there is still a stone in the pontifical shoe : The 8th ecumenical council of 879 which anathematized anyone daring add or remove anything to or from the Nicene creed. And despite what Humbert de Moyenmoutier wrote when he excommunicated patriarch Michel, the evidences are unequivocal : Rome added the filioque to the Creed, not the other way around. The solution? Nullify the 8th ecumenical council of 879. How? Heasy peasy : Remove John VIII from the list of the popes by accusing him to be... a woman in drag! Pope Joan. And that why in 1479 the entry for John VIII in the biography of the popes written by the prefect of the Vatican library states : "Pope John VIII: John, of English extraction, was born at Mentz (Mainz) and is said to have arrived at popedom by evil art; for disguising herself like a man, whereas she was a woman, she went when young with her paramour, a learned man, to Athens, and made such progress in learning under the professors there that, coming to Rome, she met with few that could equal, much less go beyond her, even in the knowledge of the scriptures; and by her learned and ingenious readings and disputations, she acquired so great respect and authority that upon the death of Pope Leo IV (as Martin says) by common consent she was chosen pope in his room. As she was going to the Lateran Church between the Colossean Theatre (so called from Nero's Colossus) and St. Clement's her travail came upon her, and she died upon the place, having sat two years, one month, and four days, and was buried there without any pomp. " There was even a bust of pope Joan in the Vatican among the busts of the popes. The forgery became a weapon used against the papacy in the hands of the Protestants. So in 1601, Pope Clement VIII declared the legend of the female pope to be untrue and John VIII was rehabilitated among the popes. The bust of Joan was removed and destroyed. But for some reasons the 8th ecumenical council of 879 he validated is still ignored by Rome till this days. But... but... but... I though that Rome acknowledges the guidance of the Holy Spirit whenever an ecumenical council is validated by the pope??? What happened to that rule? Also, despite the fact that John VIII is the only pope or Rome murdered during his office since the dioclesian persecution, Rome forgot to canonize him. Oups! Oups Oups.! Of course he's a saint martyr for the orthodox Church. Things became quite uncomfortable again when those annoying Greeks managed to free themselves from the Turks in 1830. In a desperate attempt to avoid to reopen the filioque dispute, Rome multiplied the adoption of new dogmas, the most important being pontifical infallibility (1870 if I remember well). That didn't turn as expected and since Vatican II a new line of defense was invented : panecumenism. Since Rome can't defend her doctrinal inconsistency the solution is to tolerate all contradictory doctrines, Protestantism, orthodoxy and even the Quran, Pachamama and now the LGBTQ ideology. In the vain hope that the filioque anathematization will be buried among all the others trash. Let's embrace pan-heresiesm! There is truth everywhere! The path is large! "Who am I to judge?" etc. Jesus is the truth, the narrow path and the narrow door. No one comes to the father but through Him. Jesus will judge. Lord have mercy on us all sinners. Kyrie eleison.