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: