The Harm Caused by Excessive Criticism of the Roman Catholic Church and Other Denominations

Fervent · Sunday at 3:18 PM

boughtwithaprice said:
Then you need to contemplate what your convictions allow you to embrace.

I have, thanks.

boughtwithaprice · Sunday at 3:29 PM

Fervent said:
I have, thanks.

Then tell me how your personal judgment upon God is any different than the enticement from the garden of Eden? You shall be as gods knowing good and evil? If the Church must pass before your judgment, are you not elevated to that level?

Fervent · Sunday at 3:33 PM

boughtwithaprice said:
Then tell me how your personal judgment upon God is any different than the enticement from the garden of Eden? You shall be as gods knowing good and evil? If the Church must pass before your judgment, are you not elevated to that level?

I am not the subject of this thread, and I have no interest in making myself as much. I will answer to God, but I will not allow any man to judge me. You are not my master, and I will stand or fall as He permits.

chevyontheriver · Sunday at 3:42 PM

Fervent said:
It's not a nerve, so much as a desire for restraint. I have my reasons for not believing in Apostolic succession as the EO and RCC understand it, and I don't think any good can come from our exploring those issues deeper than we already have. Let us each be convinced in our own minds, and embrace each other as brothers. If you must, pray my eyes be opened as at this point it would take a Divine message to convince me otherwise.

Thank you. I thought we were getting along better than you thought we were. Since you invited prayer, I will do so and drop the rest until your request further conversation.

Fervent · Sunday at 3:46 PM

chevyontheriver said:
Thank you. I thought we were getting along better than you thought we were. Since you invited prayer, I will do so and drop the rest until your request further conversation.

If I thought we weren't gettting on well, I would have been quite a bit shorter. Though I'm not sure my amicable character comes across in text, especially since my nature is to be skeptical which is why I consider myself a philosophical skeptic and the sole unassailable truth for me boils down to a committment to Christ and Him crucified. I appreciate our exchange, and my reservation was more that going down that road could very quickly become combative and while I am not conflict-averse I would prefer to maintain respectful disagreement where available. I appreciate your willingness and patience to engage with me, but there are some disagreements that I think wisdom dictates to simply agree to disagree.

The Liturgist · 2025-07-11T10:12:13-0500

BNR32FAN said:
Well the whole premise of this particular thread is refraining from excessive criticism of other denominations. So in this particular thread I would refrain from such criticism whereas in other threads I would feel more inclined to engage more freely in discussions without refraining. Anybody who knows me here in CF knows I have absolutely no problems speaking my mind.

I’ve never known you to engage in excessive criticism. The key word here is excessive.

I would define excessive criticism as criticism of a denomination that is continual, incessant, repeats arguments previously refuted, ignores contrary evidence, relies upon logical fallacies or historical inaccuracies, depends on a false dichotomy such as Protestant vs. Catholic*, to the extent that harm is caused as a result.

*Or indeed Eastern vs. Western; insofar as I am guilty of this I apologize, for there is indeed a blurry line which we find in places like Cyprus or Corinth or Venice, where the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Eastern Catholics and Catholics co-existed, and there are also degrees of Easternness, in that the Oriental Orthodoxy of the Coptic Church and the Ethiopian church and the Eastern Orthodoxy of Georgia and Serbia represent particular extremes, while that of the Armenians and Syrians or of the Antiochians of America and Carpatho-Rusyns reflect Western influences, and there is also Western Rite Orthodoxy, which is opposed by the Ecumenical Patriarchate (despite His All Holiness Patriarch Bartholomew having under his omophorion one of the most Western influenced churches in the form of the Church of Finland), but supported, correctly, by St. John Maximovitch and by the Antiochian and ROCOR jurisdictions.

Of course, when I’ve stressed the difference between Eastern vs. Western I have meant primarily the use of some church fathers more than others, so relying on St. Cyprian of Carthage and St. John Cassian as guides for an understanding of original sin and apostolic succession, for instance, and pursuing the Patristic model embraced by the Eastern Orthodox, the Oriental Orthodox, the Church of the East, and to a large extent by most of the Eastern Catholics, but also, to be fair, by many Anglicans (of course there are connections between Anglicanism and Methodism and Eastern Orthodoxy and other Eastern churches, and there also exists a curious indirect connection between traditional confessional Lutheranism and Oriental Orthodoxy).

Indeed the similarity of belief between the Continuing Anglo Catholics in the US and the Orthodox makes me hopeful that the much-desired admission of the Episcopal Church to communion with the Russian Orthodox Church, which was thwarted by the Bolshevik revolution in Russia and later by liberal theology taking root in much of the Episcopal Church, with some exceptions and in a paradoxical manner and with the remarkable survival of one traditionalist seminary that caters to both Episcopalians and other Anglicans, Nashotah House, which also used to provide education on the Bible to Orthodox seminarians at St. Vladimir’s and other Orthodox seminaries before they were able to afford an expanded faculty that addressed these subjects, could be realized in the form of the admission of a Continuing Anglican Church to the Orthodox Communion (in the same manner as some Continuing Anglican groups became part of Anglican Ordinariates in the RCC).

The Liturgist · 2025-07-11T10:21:19-0500

chevyontheriver said:
Eusebius the historian listed succession of bishops for multiple patriarchates. It's not just the Roman diocese.

Indeed, also for multiple regional dioceses with the Western church. And these lines have been traced since then.

There was an obscure group of Old Catholics who set out to obtain as many lines of succession as possible, usually from Episcopi Vagantes who had been sacked by their denomination for going off the reservation in one way or another. I think they were called “the Organization for Catholic Reunification” or something of that nature. Of course this depended on a purely Augustinian concept of succession rather than that of St. Cyprian of Carthage, who argued in the second century that a lack of orthodoxy invalidated Apostolic succession.

Now with regards to Donatism, St. Augustine was not wrong to insist on ex opere operanto, since the Donatists went too far in insisting only a righteous priest could confect the sacraments, and that sacramental efficacy was connected to the righteousness of the clergy; St. Augustine’s statements on apostolic succession need not be read in opposition to those of St. Cyprian but rather should be seen as responses to the excesses of Donatism, in that the problem with Donatism is the lack of inherent righteousness among the human race in general, so that it is only through God that we can be righteous, but we can also fall away, but everyone has enough skeletons in their closet that anyone boasting of being anything other than the chief of sinners, which Eastern Orthodox and other Byzantine Rite priests confess to (usually together with the congregation) during every Divine Liturgy, in the confiteor ante communionem, is difficult to regard with credulity, at least from an Eastern perspective.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Have mercy on me, a Sinner.

The Liturgist · 2025-07-11T10:48:22-0500

Fervent said:
I am not the subject of this thread,

That’s true, and I appreciate your desire to avoid the excesses that I urge members to avoid. That being said, some debate and criticism is legitimate, although one could also say it is strictly speaking off-topic for this thread, which you have observed, and which I again greatly appreciate.

I do also appreciate the very friendly manner in which you and @chevyontheriver have engaged in this thread, which in my view exemplifies how we should try to interact in this manner; I am not a fan of the Wesleyan remark of “agreeing to disagree” as I see it as being Pietistic and anti-doctrinal, representing the normalization of schism or the normalization of the minimization of doctrine (and Wesley, for all his good, did experience pietist influences, chiefly from the Moravians, as well as the influence of the similiar Latitudinarian movement within Anglicanism).

But without agreeing to disagree we can still agree to a dialectical model that is cordial, that refrains from logical fallacies or gross historical inaccuracies, such as the alternate histories of the early church proposed by some Restorationist denominations and also by the Landmark Baptists and those influenced by them*

*On the other hand, some skepticism of the generally accepted Patristic narrative such as evinced by your own beliefs is obviously something that can be accepted, particularly since some hagiographic texts are known to contain inaccuracies or accidental confusions, for example, the Copts regard the Ethiopian synaxarion to be more reliable than their own, for their own synaxarion confuses Eusebius of Caesarea with Eusebius of Nicomedia with regards to the incident surrounding the death of Arius, which is embarassing since the Syriac Orthodox, the historical main communion partner of the Copts, venerate Eusebius as a saint with the feast day of February 29th, which in the Byzantine Rite is the feast day of St. John Cassian interestingly (and for saints with their feast on the 29th of February there are rubrics for what to do when it is not a leap year at least in the case of St. John Cassian), but completely discarding it and instead, without any archaeological or historical textual evidence to support it, claiming that certain ancient heretical sects such as the Paulicans, Bogomils, Marcionites, etc were anachronistic proto-Protestants, when all historical evidence suggests that most Protestants including all confessional Lutherans, confessional Calvinists and creedal Anglicans would find their doctrines utterly abhorrent, is something else.

Indeed among the Orthodox and Catholics committed to a Patristic theological model of the church, an accurate historical record and critical editions of the Patristic corpus and of liturgical texts such as the Divine Liturgy of St. James (the Byzantine version of which until recently lacked a good, robust translation free from speculative interpolations from a 19th century Greek translator, but ROCOR has provided a really good translation in English and Church Slavonic that also avoids weirdness like celebrating the liturgy versus populum on a makeshift altar in front of the Iconostasis being deleted, for this kind of thing confuses the laity and is not actually called for by the ancient rubrics, and is further anachronistic in that historically there was a templon or curtain and the Bema of the Armenian and Assyrian churches, but the full iconostasis as seen in contemporary Byzantine, Coptic and some Syriac churches took a while to develop from early proto-iconostases). Thus we want to make sure our historical record is accurate, even though we do accept many events which I believe you have expressed a view of as being incredible.

But in general, your conduct has been that of a responsible debater, who has never caused any of the harm I alluded to in the OP.

Recently in another thread also where you and my friend @BNR32FAN and our mutual friend @Xeno.of.athens have been present the three of us shared the unpleasant experience of encountering what one might call a “trackless trolley” minus the “ey”, by which I am not referring to a trolleybus, but rather one dewired in an altogether different way and in a manner than what sometimes happens to busses powered by overhead electric cables such as one finds in San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, Philadelphia, Dayton, and until recently also in Boston.

Which takes me to another point - these overly intense theological debates create enmity which prevents us from discussing other fun subjects like, for example, mass transit systems, which i absolutely adore. I would love to discuss mass transit for hours with any member of the forum who is interested in the subject. When I was in my youth I persuaded my parents to obtain for me, at great expense, a copy of Jane’s Urban Transport Systems (then in one of its earliest editions as a standalone apart from Jane’s World Railways) and i recall reading breathlessly about the different transit systems in Tashkent, Torino and Toronto and in Dalian, Delhi and Dortmund, and the different manufacturers, particularly of monorails, peoplemovers, hovertrains (like the Otis peoplemovers used to access the Getty center in Los Angeles, which ride on a cushion of air, or the even more aggressive Aeromovel of Brazil, and of course full-fledged maglevs such as the Transrapid in Shanghai which sadly I did not get the chance to ride on before its maximum speed was decreased from 256 MPH to 186 MPH) and the new Shinkansen maglev being developed of necessity in Japan due to overcrowding on a portion of the original conventional Shinkansen line, and other specialized high tech transit systems (but not hyperloop, which has been overdiscussed, and is also, as Elon Musk may have conceded by calling the related company he established The Boring Company, kind of literally boring, and as exciting as Tunnel Boring Machines are to some, I am not an enthusiast, since they engage in too much boring for me, although I do appreciate the fruits of their boring).

Fervent · 2025-07-11T13:54:10-0500

The Liturgist said:
That’s true, and I appreciate your desire to avoid the excesses that I urge members to avoid. That being said, some debate and criticism is legitimate, although one could also say it is strictly speaking off-topic for this thread, which you have observed, and which I again greatly appreciate.

I do also appreciate the very friendly manner in which you and @chevyontheriver have engaged in this thread, which in my view exemplifies how we should try to interact in this manner; I am not a fan of the Wesleyan remark of “agreeing to disagree” as I see it as being Pietistic and anti-doctrinal, representing the normalization of schism or the normalization of the minimization of doctrine (and Wesley, for all his good, did experience pietist influences, chiefly from the Moravians, as well as the influence of the similiar Latitudinarian movement within Anglicanism).

But without agreeing to disagree we can still agree to a dialectical model that is cordial, that refrains from logical fallacies or gross historical inaccuracies, such as the alternate histories of the early church proposed by some Restorationist denominations and also by the Landmark Baptists and those influenced by them*

*On the other hand, some skepticism of the generally accepted Patristic narrative such as evinced by your own beliefs is obviously something that can be accepted, particularly since some hagiographic texts are known to contain inaccuracies or accidental confusions, for example, the Copts regard the Ethiopian synaxarion to be more reliable than their own, for their own synaxarion confuses Eusebius of Caesarea with Eusebius of Nicomedia with regards to the incident surrounding the death of Arius, which is embarassing since the Syriac Orthodox, the historical main communion partner of the Copts, venerate Eusebius as a saint with the feast day of February 29th, which in the Byzantine Rite is the feast day of St. John Cassian interestingly (and for saints with their feast on the 29th of February there are rubrics for what to do when it is not a leap year at least in the case of St. John Cassian), but completely discarding it and instead, without any archaeological or historical textual evidence to support it, claiming that certain ancient heretical sects such as the Paulicans, Bogomils, Marcionites, etc were anachronistic proto-Protestants, when all historical evidence suggests that most Protestants including all confessional Lutherans, confessional Calvinists and creedal Anglicans would find their doctrines utterly abhorrent, is something else.

Indeed among the Orthodox and Catholics committed to a Patristic theological model of the church, an accurate historical record and critical editions of the Patristic corpus and of liturgical texts such as the Divine Liturgy of St. James (the Byzantine version of which until recently lacked a good, robust translation free from speculative interpolations from a 19th century Greek translator, but ROCOR has provided a really good translation in English and Church Slavonic that also avoids weirdness like celebrating the liturgy versus populum on a makeshift altar in front of the Iconostasis being deleted, for this kind of thing confuses the laity and is not actually called for by the ancient rubrics, and is further anachronistic in that historically there was a templon or curtain and the Bema of the Armenian and Assyrian churches, but the full iconostasis as seen in contemporary Byzantine, Coptic and some Syriac churches took a while to develop from early proto-iconostases). Thus we want to make sure our historical record is accurate, even though we do accept many events which I believe you have expressed a view of as being incredible.

But in general, your conduct has been that of a responsible debater, who has never caused any of the harm I alluded to in the OP.

Recently in another thread also where you and my friend @BNR32FAN and our mutual friend @Xeno.of.athens have been present the three of us shared the unpleasant experience of encountering what one might call a “trackless trolley” minus the “ey”, by which I am not referring to a trolleybus, but rather one dewired in an altogether different way and in a manner than what sometimes happens to busses powered by overhead electric cables such as one finds in San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, Philadelphia, Dayton, and until recently also in Boston.

Which takes me to another point - these overly intense theological debates create enmity which prevents us from discussing other fun subjects like, for example, mass transit systems, which i absolutely adore. I would love to discuss mass transit for hours with any member of the forum who is interested in the subject. When I was in my youth I persuaded my parents to obtain for me, at great expense, a copy of Jane’s Urban Transport Systems (then in one of its earliest editions as a standalone apart from Jane’s World Railways) and i recall reading breathlessly about the different transit systems in Tashkent, Torino and Toronto and in Dalian, Delhi and Dortmund, and the different manufacturers, particularly of monorails, peoplemovers, hovertrains (like the Otis peoplemovers used to access the Getty center in Los Angeles, which ride on a cushion of air, or the even more aggressive Aeromovel of Brazil, and of course full-fledged maglevs such as the Transrapid in Shanghai which sadly I did not get the chance to ride on before its maximum speed was decreased from 256 MPH to 186 MPH) and the new Shinkansen maglev being developed of necessity in Japan due to overcrowding on a portion of the original conventional Shinkansen line, and other specialized high tech transit systems (but not hyperloop, which has been overdiscussed, and is also, as Elon Musk may have conceded by calling the related company he established The Boring Company, kind of literally boring, and as exciting as Tunnel Boring Machines are to some, I am not an enthusiast, since they engage in too much boring for me, although I do appreciate the fruits of their boring).

I appreciate your words, and the respectful exchanges we've had despite our differences. I agree that "agree to disagree" is the wrong approach, at least if it is applied to all doctrinal matters. As I mentioned in the other thread, I see doctrine as being a layered issue. There are some areas where there is room for disagreement because there isn't a clear exposition or negation in either the Bible or traditional authorities. Then there are issues that rise to the level of separation, but not disfellowship. These for me tend to be issues of authority, where there is substantial traditional or Biblical reasons to maintain or deny the issue but there is still some room for debate. Then there is the nonstarters, the well defined heretical positions that have been consistently maintained throughout church history and have been expressly anathematized by ecumenical councils. The stuff that touches on either Christ's deity or othe Christological concerns that disagreeing with renders a person outside of Christian theology entirely and into some other theistic belief. I am not saying such individuals are not saved, simply that their theology cannot be tolerated and any implication of tolerance must be avoided.

I don't believe reunification is possible at this point, but I do desire a broad sense of ecumenical respect and understanding which I appreciate the reciprocation that has been present within this thread.

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The Harm Caused by Excessive Criticism of the Roman Catholic Church and Other Denominations

Fervent

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boughtwithaprice

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Fervent

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chevyontheriver

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Fervent

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The Liturgist

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The Liturgist

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The Liturgist

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