I am a Church History PhD student at the Catholic University of America. I am here to help answer any question that you might have regarding the history of the Catholic Church. If I am not able to immediately answer your questions, I will research the topic and get back to you. This is as much a way for me to deepen my understanding of my field of study as it is to assist you in finding answers for your historical questions.
Sounds like a made up College ; ) Welcome to the forum!
I see a lot of back & forth between the Ortho Bros. and the Catholic Rad Trads on Twitter about who broke off from whom. Did the Catholic Church break off from the East or did the Orthodox break off from the West? I prefer to just think of us as both having a shared history.
I know this is a topic that Church Historians have written entire books about, but if you could simplify it and present it in an honest and true way, I would be interested in what you know/find.
Also can you give me a list of Early Church Fathers and Theologians prior to the Schism and which were from the East and which were from the West? I use an Orthodox Bible App that does a great job of clicking on any verse in the Bible and see what various Church Fathers had to say about the verse. I love it! St. Agustina, St. Hilary, St. Jerome, and St. John Chrysostom had a lot of wisdom to share. I often which ones came from which region (East or West). I’m not trying to start a beef between these men (like Biggie vs. Tupac), but it would help me better understand where each is coming from.
At the present time, one question I have is: how long in the Roman Rite have palms been blessed and the Passion been read on the Sunday now known as Palm Sunday?
Here’s one I was thinking about yesterday: How exactly does intercessory prayer work when Catholics ask a Saint to intercede for them?
Is the Saint aware of the prayer intercession in their name only when the person invokes the name of the Saint? A person is only aware of and privy to a phone call when it’s a call they’re a part of even though there are countless phone calls happening all the time.
If Saints were aware of all prayers all the time regardless of who they’re directed to (ie hear all prayers all the time), they’d be Omniscient and I don’t believe that’s the case.
Spiritual reality isn’t bound by physical constraints. For example, being Mary the Mediatrix of ALL graces, that doesn’t make her a godess, just a creature from God, participating in God’s infinite power.
Why did most of Bishops, including the one in Rome, accept the bribe from Governments to lockdown Churches and schools, when it was obvious, at least after the first fortnight, that no curve was being flattened and that epidemiologists were right about the idiocy of locking the healthy under the false pretense that there could be asymptomatic spreaders:
Contrary to popular belief, one Church did not break off of another. For the first century and a half, the Great Schism was seen more as a political rivalry between the Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople. A group of three Papal Legates in Constantinople excommunicated the Patriarch for not accepting the primarily civil claims of authority made by the Pope. The Patriarch and a small collection of bishops then excommunicated the three legates and '“all who supported them.” The Pope had actually died immediately before these events so the legates had technically acted on their own authority, not that of the Pope, and thus had no canonical right to excommunicate the Patriarch. As such, the only people excommunicated during the beginning of this schism were the three legates. It wasn’t until the sacking of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade by the Latin armies that the 1054 excommunication controversy was used as a theological explanation to justify the East’s hatred of the West for committing such a crime against the Eastern Christians, despite the fact that the Pope had condemned the sacking of Constantinople and actually excommunicated anyone participating in it.
When it comes to the early Fathers of the Church, this isn’t an official title that the Church bestows upon someone so there isn’t an official list. The title simply refers to any Christian writer before 800AD that was not condemned as heretical during their lifetime. Because of this, figures like Origen and Theodore of Mopsuestia, while not recognized as Saints by the Catholic Church, are still colloquially referred to as Fathers of the Church. Then there are those Fathers of the Church where we don’t know anything about them except a name on their writings, like Pseudo-Dionysius or Gildas the Wise (two of my favorites for different reasons).
As a universal feast in the Roman Rite, the celebration that we know today as Palm Sunday dates back to the 1570 Missale Romanum after the Council of Trent by St. Pius V. This is somewhat of a technicality because the concept of ‘rites’ did not begin until Trent. Before this, there were many local traditions which incorporated ‘Donkey walks’ into a reenactment of Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem. While the Passion narrative was often read during these walks, the celebration was considered extra-liturgical and distinct from the Mass that took place afterward inside the local Church.
Technically, these donkey walks weren’t even “Palm” Sundays. The literal Biblical translation is ‘branch’. Palms were not used in the celebrations well into the Renaissance. When the great obelisk from Nero’s Forum was being moved from its original location to its current spot in St. Peter’s square, the Pope had forbidden anyone in the crowd from speaking while they transferred it upon pain of death, lest they spook the donkeys and break the obelisk. When the ropes began to smoke from the strain, one man risked his life to cry out to water the ropes before they broke. The Pope ordered it done and the obelisk was saved. This is notable because that obelisk is the only piece left of the circus in which Peter was crucified and most likely the last thing that he saw before he died. The man who cried out was rewarded with a papal commission to provide all Roman basilicas with branches for their Entry Sunday celebration. The man was a merchant who imported palms and reeds for basketry and thus all Roman basilicas began to use palms instead of the more traditional olive branches. Other churches took their cue from Rome and it became a near-universal tradition.
First thank you for responding to my questions. Now I’m curious about why you like these two. Was it their writings, you just like their name, or for some other reason? If you would rather not say publicly, you are welcome to direct message me. Enquiring minds want to know : )
Pseudo-Dionysius (also known as St. Denis or Denys): I spent six years as a contemplative brother before discerning that I was instead called to a lay vocation as a historian before I took final vows and Pseudo-Dionysius was at the center of most of the contemplative works that led me into that prayer. Pseudo-Dionysius is a primary theological source of some of the greatest contemplative traditions of the Western Church Church: the Carthusians, the Anchorites, the Victorines of Paris (University of Paris), and even Theresa of Avila and John of the Cross.
Now a word of warning about Pseudo-Dionysius: he writes in a language deeply rooted in both sixth-century Byzantine theology and direct experience of contemplative practice. If someone reads Pseudo-Dionysius without training in this theology or already having an experiential knowledge of contemplative practice, it can be very easy to misread him, as exhibited by some who try to read him as a Christian version of Buddhism.
Gildas the Wise: One of my historical passions is pre-Norman English Church history. Gildas was a British monk who gave us the first great history of Christianity in Britain. He describes the Saxon conquest of Britain as God’s judgement upon the British for turning away from their faith. In my private research, I’ve found that this understood turning away was Pelagianism’s hold on the populace who had largely turned away from supporting their bishops and monasteries, leaving bishops, clergy and monks to nearly starve. Gildas presents us a vibrant last view of the ancient British Church before it is overrun by the Saxons and eventually reconverted through the efforts of the Irish missionaries and St. Augustine of Canterbury.
The recognition of the Holy Spirit dates back to the Jewish understanding of creation. The Ruach, or Breath of God was breathed out from God in the speaking of his Word of Creation and all that exists came to be. We can see this recognition of these three distinct actors within the one God in Genesis 1, “Let us make man in our image.” As such, the early Church’s understanding of the human person followed the Trinitarian three-part model. Just as the Trinity was composed of the speaker, Word, and Breath (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), humans were made in the image of God as soul, body, and spirit. St. Paul recognizes these three parts of the human person in 1 Thes. 5:23. The body and soul are well recognized today, but the human spirit has fallen into obscurity and, along with it, some of the understanding of the Holy Spirt. To all inhabitants of the ancient Mediterranean world, not just Christians, spirit was an external force or breath which bound the soul to the body, sustained life, and allowed the person to offer themselves to others through a spiritual offering. If we look at the Holy Spirit in this manner, not only is he the Person of the Trinity breathed out in Creation, his presence in our lives sustains our existence as human beings, it enables us to partake in all the graces that have been offered to us by Christ’s sacrifice and finally allows us to pour out our own prayers and offerings back to God for either ourselves or others.
Respectfully, this statement is foreign to Catholic belief. The Council of Ephesus in 431 AD anathematized any belief that Mary participates in the divine nature of God beyond the redemptive act of Jesus toward all humanity. The recent Vatican document Mater Populi Fidelis lays out Mary’s place with respect to the divine mission of the Persons of the Son and the Holy Spirit. She is inherently a creation. No human soul, including Mary’s pre-exists creation.
Anathematization is a binding declaration that anyone who holds a specific belief is automatically excommunicated from the Church.
This concept of distinct gods coexisting was anathematized at the Council of Nicaea in 325. It was considered so important to reject the this doctrine from the Church that it was included in the recitation of the Nicene Creed until 381 AD when the Council of Constantinople expanded upon the earlier creed and cemented it as the definitive standard for Christian belief.
And those who say, “there once was when he was not”, and “before he was begotten he was not”, and that he came to be from things that were not, orfrom another hypostasis [Gr. hypostaseos] or substance [Gr. ousias, Lat. substantia], affirming that the Son of God is subject to change or alteration these the catholic and apostolic church anathematises. (Nicaea 1.2)
Not only this, but the statement is contradicted by the earliest Christian text outside of the Scriptures, even predating some of the books of the New Testament. St. Clement of Rome’s Letter to the Corinthians, rejects the concept of multiple gods, “Do we not have one God, and one Christ, and one gracious Spirit that has been poured out upon us, and one calling in Christ?” (1 Clement 46:6)
I am confused as to this claim. You state you are not arguing against the faith of the Catholic Church and yet you reject the most important premise of all Christianity, that there is one God. To talk about Gods (plural) is to reject the inherent foundation of Christian faith.
In the 2nd Vatican Council, the Marian Schema was brought into question over where it should be put into the Constitution or not. Ultimately, they decided to put it into the Constitution of the Catholic Church, instead of it having it’s own seperate document. Results showed a massive decrease in Marian devotion. My question is why. Why did it decrease so much? I feel like this adjustment would’ve only made Marian devotion increase, if anything. So, again I ask, why?
From what research I’ve done concerning the Second Vatican Council, the reason that the Marian schema was not given its own document was due to the fact that the Fathers of the Council desired that the Council be pastoral rather than dogmatic. Vatican II was the first council to publish constitutions, decrees and declarations rather than canons. This might seem like splitting hairs, but there are very specific conciliar procedures for the production of these documents.
If the Council had chosen to publish a document on Mary, technically the Second Vatican Council would have needed to be closed and a Third Vatican Council would have needed to be immediately convened with a different structure. For the pastoral documents, the text would be written, edited, and initially approved in a working group before being presented to the whole council for a vote. In essence, the Council was producing documents that Pope John XXIII and Paul VI could have made autonomously, but felt the issues were so important that they needed to be written by all the bishops of the full Church. This was also why Vatican II was the first Council in which all ordinaries (bishops that are the head of a diocese rather than titular or auxiliary) were invited. For doctrinal documents involving canons, however, the entire assembly of bishops would need to propose, edit, and vote on the texts as a unified body. This is why doctrinal councils in the past were deliberately limited in their members and why it would have been logistically impossible for Vatican II to function in this capacity.
From the data that I have seen, all religious devotion, including Marian devotion, had been on a steady decline from the end of the nineteenth century. The reason that so many people point to Vatican II as the start of the decline is that it was at Vatican II that the bishops came to a realization that the devotional decline was not localized to their dioceses or regions but was a world-wide phenomenon in the post-industrialized world. It was only after Vatican II that major international studies were done regarding devotional practices.
I saw another recent topic discussing whether Catholic priests visit other Catholic priests for confession (the answer being yes), so, of course, that includes the Pope. My only question is, who does the Pope seek out for confession? (It’s not church history related but…)
The position of Papal Confessor has been an official part of the Papal household since at least the fourteenth century. This is a priest whose primary duty was to be available on demand to the Pope for confession. At various points during history, this priest also took up differnt duties within the Archdiocese of Rome with regards to confession, indulgences and the celebration of the Jubilee years. The organization which formed under the Papal Confessor to assist him in his duties is known as the Apostolic Penetentiary and eventually was split from the Papal Confessor when the duties of running such an organization impeded him from being available to the Pope for confession. It is actually during the time of the Papal Confessor being head of the Apostolic Penetentiary that the title of ‘Chaplain to His Holiness’ was granted to various prests of note around the orbit of the Pope for confessions in case of emergencies. During the general reforms of the Curia over the years, the Chaplains were the only ones to officially retain the address of ‘Monsignor’. Today, technically any monsignor is officially allowed to hear the Pope’s confession.
You have repeatedly stated in this topic and others that Mary is God. This is inherently contradictory to the faith of the Catholic Church. In the terms of the Early Church, the Son was known as the Logos, the divine logic of God. To declare that the logic of the Church is false is to reject the presence of Christ within the Church. You cannot separate the truth of the faith from the explanation, the logic, of the Church for why we believe what we believe.