Ioannis,

I never disputed that the Immaculate Conception is Roman Catholic doctrine. It just has nothing to do with Orthodoxy. The RCC and the OC do not hold the same faith.

Or perhaps you were just introducing an example of previous RCC catechisms as Fr. Johannes suggested above?

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Paragraph 62, from the 1941 Baltimore Catechism [my only copy on hand. Question: “Was any human person ever preserved from original sin?”
Answer: “The Blessed Virgin Mary was preserved from original sin in view of the merits of her Divine Son, and this privilege is called her Immaculate Conception.”

This late medieval answer first appeared in the theological metaphysics of Duns Scotus [1266-1308], a Scottish Franciscan theologian and philosopher, not more than two centuries after the Great Schism.

Elaboration of the means of preserving the Theotokos from “original” or so-called genetic sin is laid out by Duns Scotus in several places. While Mary’s “haecceitic” preservation from the stain is unique to Scotus, the doctrine that sin is universal and required payment of debt by Christ’s sacrifice [cf. ‘Cur Deus homo’] had been received from Augustine and Augustine’s descendants such as Anselm.

Similar wording appears in the on-line “Catholic Catechism” on the Vatican website.

Yes, this is exactly what I meant. Thanks Scott. Sorry for the confusion, Christopher.

Christopher,

Whatever else may be true, the RCC invented a doctrine which states that the Theotokos was miraculously prevented from acquiring some elements of (the RCC’s concept of) original sin (excluding physical consequences like death, etc.). This divine intervention never happened. There was nothing to prevent. The Immaculate Conception is not a catholic teaching because it was not taught in the East before the Schism so it could not possibly be something that was believed “always, by everyone, everywhere” even by implication. It is a false doctrine solving another problem created by a false doctrine.

If the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception does not mean that the Theotokos was preserved from inheriting Adam’s guilt, but not prevented from inheriting the physical consequences of the first sin, then it is meaningless. If you are arguing that it is meaningless, then I agree. But why do you need a false miracle to accomplish – – nothing?

Or to put it a different way, that taint which the RCC claims is prevented by the Immaculate Conception, and which somehow would have defiled the Theotokos, and thus also Christ, is a taint which the OC denies exists. The fact that we agree that the Theotokos did not have it is not the point. Man does not have it.

Also, for someone who has previously suggested that Catholic encyclopedias aren’t necessarily accurate in their representations of doctrine, you seem to be relying on them quite heavily to prove your point.

Regardless, as I quoted above, from the same source:

“…by which gift every stain and fault, all depraved emotions, passions, and debilities, essentially pertaining to original sin, were excluded. But she was not made exempt from the temporal penalties of Adam — from sorrow, bodily infirmities, and death.” – From Catholic Encyclopedia, New Advent, article on Immaculate Conception [emphasis mine]

If the RCC wants to redefine their doctrines so as to be inoffensive to the Orthodox faith, they should just repudiate the Immaculate Conception and the Augustinian version of original sin along with Papal Infallibility, purgatory, indulgences; the absolute, immediate and universal jurisdiction of the Pope, created grace, etc. Trying to convince us that these doctrines do not mean what they originally purported to mean is useless. We already have a complete faith which we take seriously enough not to redefine for political purposes.

One other thing though, Christopher. I think you misunderstand the whole Orthodox attitude toward ecumenism. It is not a question of making the doctrines of the RCC “compatible” or “not incompatible” with those of the Orthodox Church. In our view, Rome left the Church long ago. Those innovations which she fostered before and after the Schism are no part of catholic doctrine. You speak as if it would be sufficient for Rome to explain its doctrines in a way inoffensive to the Orthodox Church. This misses the point. In order for reconciliation to take place, Rome would have to accept the Orthodox faith, on the Church’s own terms, including doctrine and ecclesiology, without addition, as the only dogma Rome holds.

That may take centuries, if ever.

Moscow, February 24, Interfax – The Holy Synod of the Constantinople Patriarchate deprived former Bishop Basil (Osborne) of Amphipolis of his holy and monastic orders as the latter decided to marry.

Three and half years ago, this person attempted to split the Russian Orthodox Diocese in the British Isles.

Early this year, Bishop Basil petitioned the Patriarch of Constantinople to grant him lay status “to enable him to have a family home with the possibility of marrying again.”

Bishop Basil (Osborne) was born in 1938 and married in 1962. Metropolitan Antony of Sourozh ordained him a deacon in 1969 and a priest in 1973. Following his wife’s death in 1991 he was consecrated a bishop of the Moscow Patriarchate Sourozh Diocese (Great Britain) in 1993. On July 30, 2003, shortly before Metropolitan Antony passed away, he was appointed an administrator of the Sourozh Diocese.

In 2006, Bishop Basil decided to leave Moscow Patriarchate for Constantinople. Some clerics of the Sourozh Diocese followed him and thus complicated situation in the Diocese and in Moscow-Constantinople relations as the latter accepted Russian without a letter of release.

In response to Bishop Basil’s actions, Patriarch Alexy II retired him “without the right to go to another jurisdiction” Some months later in June 2006, the Russian Church Synod forbade him from celebrating divine services.

In 2007, to avoid further temptations among Orthodox believers of British Isles and to preserve church peace, the Moscow Patriarchate granted him a letter of release so that he could join the Constantinople Patriarchate.

The same year, some clerics of the Sourozh Cathedral who supported Bishop Basil claimed their right over cathedral ownership. In course of legal proceedings, the British Prosecutor Office and the Supreme Court confirmed the Sourozh Diocese ownership as it acquired the Dormition Cathedral from Anglicans in the 1970s.

In fall 2009, the Constantinople Synod satisfied Bishop Basil’s request for retirement.

Boy, Scott, you sure are making me do my research!

I’m not an expert theologian by any means, but there is indeed an essential distinction surrounding this debate about ‘guilt’ that needs to be made.

You quoted an English version of one of the decrees of the Council of Trent including the phrase ‘guilt of original sin’, which unfortunately is not a theologically precise translation of the Latin original, ‘reatum originalis peccati’. Of course the Latin original is what is authoritative and I would posit it does not mean what you’ve implied it means in contradiction to the Orthodox position, although I could see how that conclusion could easily be drawn.

I found an explanation online that says it better than I could:

“In Catholic theology the guilt (culpa) for original sin rests with Adam and Eve alone. They were the ones who committed the sin, and they alone are held responsible for it. We, as their descendents, suffer the consequence (reatum) of their sin. As such, we are born without the benefits our first parents received as gifts from God, which include sanctifying grace and the preternatural gifts.

“This is how the Online Catholic Encyclopedia describes it:

“According to Catholic theology man has not lost his natural faculties: by the sin of Adam he has been deprived only of the Divine gifts to which his nature had no strict right, the complete mastery of his passions, exemption from death, sanctifying grace, the vision of God in the next life…. Original sin is the privation of sanctifying grace in consequence of the sin of Adam. This solution, which is that of St. Thomas, goes back to St. Anselm and even to the traditions of the early Church, as we see by the declaration of the Second Council of Orange (A.D. 529): one man has transmitted to the whole human race not only the death of the body, which is the punishment of sin, but even sin itself, which is the death of the soul [Denz., n. 175 (145)]. As death is the privation of the principle of life, the death of the soul is the privation of sanctifying grace which according to all theologians is the principle of supernatural life. Therefore, if original sin is ‘the death of the soul,’ it is the privation of sanctifying grace” (www.newad­vent.org; italics added).

“Confusion arises because the term “sin” is used here in a technical theological sense and not in a strictly moral sense. We are not held responsible for Adam’s sin, but we do suffer the effect of it.

“The allegation that we share in the guilt of the sin of our first parents is based on an incorrect reading of Canon 5 [sic – it’s from Art. 5 of the Decree on Original Sin from Session 5] from Trent, which states, “If any one denies, that, by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is conferred in baptism, the guilt of original sin is remitted; or even asserts that the whole of that which has the true and proper nature of sin is not taken away; but says that it is only rased, or not imputed; let him be anathema” (italics added).

“The phrase “guilt of original sin” (reatum originalis peccati) is once again a euphemism for the privation of sanctifying grace. The following article gives the details:

“It is essential here to focus on the dogmatic term being translated as ‘guilt’: the Latin reatum. Its meaning in what is now a long-dead language is primarily legal, and is weaker than that of the English term ‘guilt.’ As the classicist and philosopher Scott Carson has pointed out: ‘In Roman law to be reatus means to be liable to or actually under an indictment or a sentence; culpa refers to actual guilt for wrongdoing. (In some contexts, culpa refers to the actual act of wrongdoing, while reatus refers to the state of the wrongdoer that accrues as a consequence of the culpa.)… The two words are sometimes used together in theological contexts in such a way as to suggest that reatus is used to mean guilt in the sense of having incurred a guilt-debt as a consequence of wrongdoing. Two significant usages are: reatus poena and reatus culpa. The former refers to our guilt-debt of punishment for sin, the latter our guilt-debt of moral culpability or fault for sin. It is our reatus culpa that is removed by absolution; our reatus poena remains, hence we perform some penance…. Now when the dogmatic texts speak of the reatum of original sin, they are speaking of a kind of reatus poena, which means “liability to punishment” without presupposing personal fault (i.e., culpa) on the part of the one thus liable. So, the descendants of our first parents are made liable to punishment, i.e. reatus, for what was really only the culpa of our first parents, i.e. the Fall'” (mlic­cione.blogspot.com).”
(newoxfordreview.org/letters.jsp?did=0608-letters)

Sorry for the lengthy quote. The point of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is not that a certain Augustinian view of transmitted culpability is definitively true, and in fact it seems that’s not what the doctrine was talking about at all.

Instead it seems the doctrine’s point is to definitively and authoritatively teach that the Blessed Virgin was never without Our Lord’s sanctifying graces, in contrast to the rest of us. If that is how the doctrine is understood than I think my original point is still valid, i.e. that it does not contradict but reinforces what most Orthodox Churches believe about Our Lady.

5. If any one denies, that, by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is conferred in baptism, the guilt of original sin is remitted; or even asserts that the whole of that which has the true and proper nature of sin is not taken away; but says that it is only rased, or not imputed; let him be anathema. – Fifth Session, Decree on Original Sin, Council of Trent

I still don’t think we’re getting at the root of the problem, but that’s why there are Joint International Commissions for Theological Dialogue! Wouldn’t it be cool to be a fly on the wall for those conversations!

George, thanks for your comments. I think you’re right on about the coming barbarism. I think Generals Benedict and Kyrill and Hilarion and their ilk want to marshall Christians in defence. That said, I don’t think we shouldn’t have union for union’s sake, just that it has to be properly prepared and happen in God’s time. After all, Jesus prayed specifically for unity, so that alone is a good enough reason to work for eventual union. In other words, we shouldn’t unite by papering over our differences but by growing together in charity and mutual understanding. Uniting in arms to ‘stave off the barbarism’ is a step in that direction.

Similarly the split a thousand years ago didn’t happen overnight, but as Scott said previously, because we developed independently in different locations and contexts, and did so without enough charity for each other. Crusader atrocities, political polemics and cultural differences certainly didn’t help either.

Father Johannes wrote: “In Orthodox practice, a dogma that is later shown to be inaccurate gets rejected. Since we don’t dogmatize teachings as much as the Roman Catholic Church does, it really is not much of a problem.”

This has apparently caused you some confusion, Christopher. I think what Fr. Johannes was trying to say is not that the Orthodox invent and later repute dogmas; i.e., teachings that the Church has endorsed in an ecumenical council received by the laity. He used “dogma” in the simple sense of teaching. It seems that he used “dogmatize” in the sense of adopting as official Orthodox dogma. In that sense all of the above is accurate: When teachings arise within the Church that are latter shown to be inaccurate, they are rejected. Backpedaling is not so much a problem for us because we are much more reluctant to declare a teaching as official dogma.

“…by which gift every stain and fault, all depraved emotions, passions, and debilities, essentially pertaining to original sin, were excluded. But she was not made exempt from the temporal penalties of Adam — from sorrow, bodily infirmities, and death.” – From Catholic Encyclopedia, New Advent, article on Immaculate Conception [emphasis mine]

“‘It is unjust to make us responsible for an act committed before our birth.’ Strictly responsible, yes; responsible in a wide sense of the word, no; the crime of a father brands his yet unborn children with shame, and entails upon them a share of his own responsibility.” – From Catholic Encyclopedia, New Advent, article on Original Sin (addressing objections thereto) [emphasis mine]

The quotes above are from The Catholic Encyclopedia published in the early 1900’s which received official approval from the RCC at that time: “Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. 1907. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor. Imprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York.”

“The Greek patristic understanding of man never denies the unity of mankind or replaces it with a radical individualism. The Pauline doctrine of the two Adams [cf. 1 Cor 15:22], as well as the Platonic concept of the ideal man, leads Gregory of Nyssa to understand Genesis 1:27 — “God created man in His own image” — to refer to the creation of mankind as a whole [De opif hom 16; PG 44:185B]. It is obvious, therefore, that the sin of Adam must also be related to all men, just as salvation brought by Christ is salvation for all mankind; but neither original sin nor salvation can be realized in an individual’s life without involving his personal and free responsibility…. A number of Byzantine authors, including [Patriarch] Photius, understood the -eph ho- to mean ‘because’ [from Romans 5:12 “because all men sinned”] and saw nothing in the Pauline text beyond a moral similarity between Adam and other sinners, death being the normal retribution for sin. But there is also the consensus of the majority of Eastern Fathers, who interpret Romans 5:12 in close connection with 1 Corinthians 15:22 — between Adam and his descendants there is a solidarity IN DEATH just as there is a solidarity IN LIFE between the risen Lord and the baptized….The sentence [of Romans 5:12] then may have a meaning which seems improbable to a reader trained in Augustine, but which is indeed the meaning which most Greek Fathers accepted:

‘As sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, so death spread to all men; and BECAUSE OF DEATH, all men have sinned….’

“There is indeed a consensus in Greek patristic and Byzantine traditions in identifying the inheritance of the Fall as an inheritance essentially of mortality rather than of sinfulness, sinfulness being merely a consequence of mortality.” (John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology : Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes [NY : Fordham Univ Press, 1974], page 143-145)

“What does this mean, ‘Because all have sinned’ [Rom 5:12] ? In that fall even those who did not eat of the tree — all did from the transgression [of Adam] become mortal….” (Chrysostom, Homilies on the Epistle to the Romans 10:1-2)

Now whatever Rome wants to reinterpret it’s dogma of 1854 as meaning, it should be clear from the above that: a) original sin in the RCC means, at least in part, guilt, (if not, then a dogma is a mere construct of words which can be gutted and filled with any meaning you like, much like the Warren Court’s view of the Constitution) b) it does not mean guilt in the Orthodox understanding, c) the Immaculate Conception was invented to solve the problem of the transmission of guilt, not death, to the Theotokos and, therefore d) it is incompatible with Orthodox teaching.

It just doesn’t seem to be getting through to you that the very fact that Rome proclaimed as dogma the Immaculate Conception is, in itself, contrary to Orthodox teaching. They had no authority to do so and, regardless, the doctrine was invented to solve a problem created by an erroneous understanding of original sin. There’s no way to reconcile that with Orthodoxy. It is meaningless to us, except as a symptom of an erroneous understanding of the Christian faith.

Christopher, I totally agree with your assessment. Just because we may never unite theologically/ecclesiologically doesn’t mean that we can’t unite to stave off the coming barbarism. I very much don’t believe that +Benedict wants a union for the sake of union. He doesn’t even care if the RC church becomes smaller. He’d rather have more sincere people in it than nominalists.

And no, challenging the notion of infallibility does not introduce uncertainty in the proclamation of the Gospel because the Gospel is true not because it is infallible, but because it reveals Him who is Truth. The Gospel, which is to say the spoken words from God (through the words of the Apostle), precedes even the Church.* “Peter preached and then the Lord added to the Church those who would be saved…” The Church, properly understood, is constituted by the Gospel, the ekklesia — or “called out ones” (which distinguishes it from synagogue). The Church does not constitute the Gospel. In fact, some Churches, in refusing to live in the Gospel left Christ and then became, as St. John says, the “synagogue of Satan” (while maintaining their liturgies no doubt).

*God’s spoken world precedes everything — even creation. He spoke the world into existence out of nothing.

If there are Orthodox priests who say that a council may one day sanction women priests, most likely they are ignorant of what this portends and think of the question only in terms of popular culture (a “rights” issue and all that). Once you begin to explain why a male priesthood is necessary to the integrity of the Church however, they may change their opinion relatively quickly. If not, they will have to chose whether or not to remain Orthodox. If there is no voice left to raise an objection, then we are dead and there is nothing left to save anyway.

Even councils are subject to the final determination of the Gospel. A synod of Bishops led by the Patriarch of Antioch was responsible for one of St. John Chrysostom’s exiles. If conciliar infallibility was the criteria that “proves” the truth is indeed true, then you would have to argue that the Council was right. Clearly they were wrong. Only those living in the Gospel however, would have the eyes to see it. And, if they repudiated this conciliar decree, they would be counted as faithful because they did the truth.

Glad you like the blog.