No, I mean people like the Fathers who I actually quoted. Common fathers (e.g., shared by OO/EO/RC alike), not a council that is not recognized by anyone you are talking to.
Besides, the point is not the presence of
the word mystery (and here I will acknowledge that my way of presenting the information might have made it seem like that is the point, which is my fault). The point is actually that the early Church Fathers do not support the admittedly-later philosophical bent of the RCC but by the insistence that they do, as they do not talk about substance and accidents as you do, but about mystery.
So yes the Catholic Church and the Church Fathers are locked in step.
I respect the fact that this is sincerely how you and your Church see it, but I do not agree when it comes to this particular topic.
There has not been one post in this entire thread were I even attempted to claim that I know what the Coptic or Greek Churches teach over the members of said Churches.
You did just write in post 323 that what the Coptic Orthodox people experience physically in partaking of the Eucharist is its accidents, while what we partake in spiritually is its substance. Yet we do not say that. That's the entire point. You are pushing your philosophical divisions of the Eucharist into this or that on a people and a Church Who do not have this way of looking at things.
This is the difference in a lot of attempts at Orthodox/RC dialogue: As the RC side is so committed to their idea that there are not really substantial differences between the RCC and the Orthodox Church, when you have Orthodox people telling you straight up "No, we don't have XYZ", it still seems appropriate to explain how they/we actually
do have XYZ, and if we could only get straight what we teach and believe, and recognize in the early fathers the kind of support for these doctrines that the RCC sees in them, we'd "understand things properly" and then we could all come together and so forth.
Meanwhile, the Orthodox (at least the ones around me) say "Here are our prayers; these are what we believe and affirm and you will not find in them the kinds of things that the Latins are claiming is the faith of the universal Church. Just read them and see."
To me the difference between the two is as night and day, and the assumptions are primarily on the RC side, as I do not know anyone among the Orthodox -- whether of the EO or of my own Church -- who says that we have the same faith as the RCC.
You know here is the thing here. For me, this should not be the reason why we are against each other.
Pardon? I'm sorry, I did not mean to give off the impression that I am against you or against Roman Catholics as a group. I simply do not see anything fruitful coming from the RC approach which does not seem to admit differences that are very clear to everyone you're talking to or about. Again, the thread is "true differences", not similarities. If the people you're talking to say that this is a difference, why is that not enough to show that there are such differences?
The strength of the Catholic Church back in the early centuries was this very fact. Even from the beginning, there were, as you say, ontological differences between the Patriarchates. Its always been this way. Why? Because our Patriarchates have grew in different cultures, different ways of thinking, different emphasis.
This is not what ontological difference means in this context. Obviously Russians are not Greeks and Arabs are not Romanians, just as Copts are not Syriacs and Ethiopians are not Armenians. So it not a matter of different cultures, as different cultures all exist alongside each other in all of the different communions. Ontological difference in terms of the ways of being Christian has to do with the faith proclaimed, such that if that faith is the same, the cultures may vary as any do. Here I will quote one of the letters of HH Severus of Antioch, the famous Syriac Orthodox patriarch (512-538), who writes concerning the Egyptians as follows:
"..you must not recognize any distinction between those who are banished from the East, and made illustrious by the combat of confessorship, and the saintly bishops in Egypt, and that you must reckon that to be one church which is compacted together in the Orthodox faith, and confession and communion, and is most pure and serene through the non-association with the heretics..."
And from the Egyptian side, from an oration of HH Pope Anastasius (605-616) as recorded in the
History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria, we read:
"At this hour, O my friends, we must take the harp of David, and sing with the voice of the Psalm, saying 'Mercy and the truth have met together' (Ps. 85:10). Athanasius and Anastasius have kissed one another. The truth has appeared from the land of Egypt, and righteousness has arisen from the East. Egypt and Syria have become one in doctrine; Alexandria and Antioch have become one Church, one virgin-bride of one pure and chaste bridegroom, who is the Lord Jesus Christ, the Only-Begotten Son, the Word of the Father."
This is what sustains communion (or reestablishes it in the case of any dispute or schism, as seems to have been going on at the time that HH Pope Anastasius gave his oration). It's not a matter of culture. It's a matter of mutual recognition of the faith.
Today, even in the Roman Catholic Church, not including the Eastern Catholic Churches, you can see the same thing. The RCC in Africa is "ontologically" different than the RCC in North American, which is "ontologically" different than the RCC in Europe, which is different from the RCC in South America, which is different from the RCC in China, etc., etc., etc. In all reality it is our strength.
See above. If ontological differences extended to the level you are talking about, then presumably nobody could be in communion with anyone else, as Russians and Arabs don't speak the same language, and Eritreans and Copts don't eat the same food or whatever. That doesn't matter. The faith is what matters. Obviously RC churches the world over share the same faith, or at least enough of the same faith to mutually recognize each other as being all the same communion.
The fact of the matter, whether you like it or not, there are ontological differences either growing and/or have grown between the Coptic Church in Egypt and lets say the Coptic Church in America.
I don't mean this as any kind of comment on you personally, but it's not clear to me that you understand what is meant by ontology. Obviously the Coptic Orthodox Church in America is in America and that in Egypt is in Egypt (and in Bolivia in Boiivia, and so on). We have the same faith regardless, however. I can't count the number of times I have received from the hand of a priest whose first language is clearly not English (and a fair number who spoke no English at all, who were visiting from Egypt for Holy Week), and even in those cases -- or perhaps especially in those cases -- the unity of faith has been clear to me entirely through the work of the liturgy itself, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit Who descends among the gathered worshipers to sanctify and transform the oblations. It is absolutely the same faith and the same Lord proclaimed before and by all people whether we affirm the holy body and precious blood in this language or that one or another.
It is the nature of the Church living in different cultures. Think about how quickly the these differences occurred in the Church 2000 years ago, and it grew within the Roman Empire!
Again, this is not the point. If the Latins were Orthodox in faith, it would not matter that they are Latins, as there were centuries of Latin-speaking or culturally Latin (in terms of eccelsiastical affiliation, as is the case with the native Berber Christians of North Africa) Orthodox fathers, including Popes of Rome, prior to Rome's derailment in c. 451 or c. 1054, depending on who you ask. No doubt those loyal to other visions of Christianity would and probably do say the same regarding my own Church and communion.