Adventist: amalgamation in CERTAIN races of men.

[The Liturgist]

I have yet to encounter a member of any religion who I do not consider to be sincere, even though my own opinion of the religion may be quite low. How do you know they were not sincere?

I’ve met people who claim to be Catholic and are sincere in their own beliefs, but their beliefs radically differ from Roman Catholic doctrine. “Cafeteria Catholics” basically.

Also I have met clergy in mainline churches whose believe system is radically different from the traditional beliefs of that denomination, but who prefer to avoid discussing what they actually believe with the congregation, in other words, who try to avoid theological controversy by passing themselves off as more mainstream than they actually are.

Also within some branches of Islam, such as Shi’a and some of the Sufi sects, and certain other minority religions of the Middle East like the Ishikist Alevis and Bektasis, who reject an Islamic origin to those sects, and the Alawis of Syria, dissimulation is a sanctioned method of survival, and members of these religions will pose as conventional Muslims in order to avoid the danger of being accused of heresies. The Alawis in particular under President Bashar Assad of Syria take this to an extreme, so in Damascus they worship in a manner consistent with conventional Shi’a Islam, but in the coastal areas where their religion is the majority, they worship according to the more traditional and secretive practices of their religion.

 

[The Liturgist]

You knew them well enough to know they were sincere? By some counts there are over a billion people in the world who consider themselves Catholic. Although Churches may call themselves Catholic including the name of a nation, in fact there is only one Catholic Church. The Church is worldwide. For those interested there are links below:

Polish National Catholic Church

Polish Catholic Church in Poland

www.oikoumene.org

The PNCC has as much right to call itself Catholic as any other church. Several traditional churches including Continuing Anglican churches and the Assyrian Church of the East have the word “Catholic” in their names. In the case of the Church of the East and the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, and I think the PNCC as well, but not the Anglo Catholics, these are among the churches whose sacraments are recognized as valid by the RCC, and whose members can receive the sacraments in Catholic Churches and vice versa, if out of range of one of their own church. And indeed the Assyrian Church of the East, unlike most Orthodox churches, will give the Eucharist to any Catholic who shows up, and allow its members to receive from Catholics. Indeed the Chaldean Catholic (sui juris Eastern Catholic in communion with Rome) Patriarch proposed uniting the two churches during the war against ISIS, but the Assyrians refused, primarily because the Chaldeans are an Eastern Catholic Church, and the Assyrians, like the Antiochians when a similar proposal was made by the Melkites, were concerned of the risk of being subordinated to the Roman Pope in such a scenario (and there is also the issue of being in communion with the Roman Rite, which uses the filioque, which the Orthodox and Assyrian churches reject).

The Eastern Orthodox Church regards itself as both Roman and Catholic, since we are the Catholic Church that existed in the Roman Empire until its conquest by the Turks in 1453; we refer to your religion as Roman Catholic for reasons of courtesy.

 

[Valletta]

The PNCC has as much right to call itself Catholic as any other church. Several traditional churches including Continuing Anglican churches and the Assyrian Church of the East have the word “Catholic” in their names. In the case of the Church of the East and the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, and I think the PNCC as well, but not the Anglo Catholics, these are among the churches whose sacraments are recognized as valid by the RCC, and whose members can receive the sacraments in Catholic Churches and vice versa, if out of range of one of their own church. And indeed the Assyrian Church of the East, unlike most Orthodox churches, will give the Eucharist to any Catholic who shows up, and allow its members to receive from Catholics. Indeed the Chaldean Catholic (sui juris Eastern Catholic in communion with Rome) Patriarch proposed uniting the two churches during the war against ISIS, but the Assyrians refused, primarily because the Chaldeans are an Eastern Catholic Church, and the Assyrians, like the Antiochians when a similar proposal was made by the Melkites, were concerned of the risk of being subordinated to the Roman Pope in such a scenario (and there is also the issue of being in communion with the Roman Rite, which uses the filioque, which the Orthodox and Assyrian churches reject).

The Eastern Orthodox Church regards itself as both Roman and Catholic, since we are the Catholic Church that existed in the Roman Empire until its conquest by the Turks in 1453; we refer to your religion as Roman Catholic for reasons of courtesy.

It doesn't sound like a courtesy to us to call every Church by the name they call themselves except for ours.

 

[The Liturgist]

It doesn't sound like a courtesy to us to call every Church by the name they call themselves except for ours.

The Roman Catholic Church is the official name of the Church of Rome presided over by the Patriarchate. Thus we use that name as a courtesy despite the fact that under other conditions we would call ourselves the Roman Catholic Church; Eastern Orthodox Christians in the Middle East overwhelmingly identify themselves, and are identified by others, using the demonym “Rum” which means “Roman” in Arabic. And the portion of the Ottoman Empire that contained the Balkans, Bulgaria, Romania and parts of Greece was called “Roumelia.”

As for the sui juris churches in communion with the RCC, their members prefer to be called Eastern Catholics or by the specific name of their church, for example, the Maronite Catholic Church, and that is what we do. We no longer call these churches “Uniate” because many of their members now regard that term as derogatory.

Likewise, among Oriental Orthodox only the Syriac Orthodox in India who are in communion with the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch want to be called “Jacobite,” which used to be a name commonly applied to all Syriac Orthodox and in some cases to all Oriental Orthodox.

What is more, insofar as the Orthodox Church does not routinely refer to itself as Catholic despite this being part of the formal title of the Communion as a whole and also various autocephalous and autonomous churches, we are being even more considerate, which is why

I would also argue that even if we were not referring to your church by its official name, it would be a bit rich to complain about this while at the same time complaining about the names of other churches like the Polish National Catholic Church that identify as Catholic.

Catholicity is a subjective opinion, which different denominations define differently according to their ecclesiastical model. For example, traditional Lutherans such as my friends @MarkRohfrietsch @ViaCrucis @Ain't Zwinglian and @JM commonly identify as Evangelical Catholics of the Augsburg Confession, and I feel this identification should be honored.

Likewise, no one owns the word “Orthodox.” Aside from the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox, there is the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, the Anglican Orthodox Church, the historical movement known as Lutheran Orthodoxy, and several other denominations using the word, and I have no problems with that. And from everything I have read the Roman Catholic Church considers itself to be Orthodox as well.

We might, if we are lucky, get away with exclusively using the Church Slavonic words such as Pravoslav or Pravoslavie (the latter translates to “Orthodox” or “Right Glorifying” whereas Pravoslav means “Highly Glorifying”).

#

This argument is in any case moot and utterly irrelevant, since at no time has the Roman Catholic Church ever complained to the Eastern Orthodox about the terminology we use to refer to them.

 

[Valletta]

This argument is in any case moot and utterly irrelevant, since at no time has the Roman Catholic Church ever complained to the Eastern Orthodox about the terminology we use to refer to them.

You can call your own church whatever you wish.

 

[The Liturgist]

You can call your own church whatever you wish.

Indeed, but we don’t, out of respect for the Roman Catholic Church and our ecumenical dialogue with them.

 

[Valletta]

Indeed, but we don’t, out of respect for the Roman Catholic Church and our ecumenical dialogue with them.

My Church is the Catholic Church. It's a matter of whether you want to extend the courtesy of calling our Church by the name we call it or not.

Catechism of the Catholic Church

 

[The Liturgist]

My Church is the Catholic Church. It's a matter of whether you want to extend the courtesy of calling our Church by the name we call it or not.

Catechism of the Catholic Church

The name Roman Catholic Church is an accepted name for your church. If I were to call your church the Catholic Church, not only would it deny the Catholicity of all other churches which adhere to the Nicene Creed, by signaling that I agreed with RCC ecclesiology that states that your church is the Catholic Church referred to in the Creed, which my church as well as those of my non-Catholic friends disagree with, it would also imply that my many friends in the sui juris Eastern Catholic Churches who are in full communion with the Pope of Rome are less Catholic than their Roman Rite counterparts. At any rate, your church has never complained to my church about how we refer to your church, and you are one of only two people I’ve encountered on this or any other online forum who has complained about the use of the name “Roman Catholic” and the only one who has complained about churches not in communion with the Roman church using the word “Catholic” in their names. It would also make it impossible to abbreviate the name of your church in a manner that could easily be recognized, for example, when speaking of RC/EO ecumenical relations and joint theological statements.

Most Roman Catholic members of the forum have historically appreciated my stalwart defense of the RCC against unwarranted and unfair criticism from SDAs and other Restorationist and Protestant members, and indeed prior to Traditiones Custodes and then Fiducia Supplicans I had no substantial criticism of your church at all, although some actions of Pope Francis were troubling, but it had not reached the current level.

 

[The Liturgist]

That is certainly one way of looking at it. Unfortunately, a lot of sincere Catholics in Poland did not see it that way and we now have the Polish Catholic Church.

The Polish National Catholic Church, which I assume is what you were referring to, actually originated in North America among the Polish emigre community, some of whom had grievances with the RCC hierarchy. Thus, the PNCC is the only canonical Old Catholic church to have originated in North America. It was expelled from the Union of Utrecht, whose members had originated in Europe, in the early 2000s for not being sufficiently liberal (it refused to ordain women or perform homosexual marriages); liberal members from the Union of Utrecht tried to seize its parish in Toronto but ultimately lost in court, and the church formed the new Union of Scranton with the Norwegian Catholic Church, which unlike the PNCC, did actually originate, and is primarily located within, Norway.

The Union of Utrecht, before it was taken over by extreme liberals (except for the two jurisdictions that comprise the Union of Scranton), consisted of the Archdiocese of Utrecht and certain other bishops in the Roman Catholic Church who objected to the doctrine of Papal Infallibility that was adopted at Vatican I. There had been a resistance to Ultramontanism at Utrecht for some time prior to the council, but afterwards the result was the emergence of the Old Catholic movement, although I would argue that Old Catholicism is now limited only to the Union of Scranton and a few other smaller Old Catholic jurisdictions in the US, since the Union of Utrecht was effectively taken over by groups who would more accurately be described as Liberal Catholics, basically people who would be Roman Catholic but disagree with the position of the RCC on sexual immorality, the ordination of women and certain other issues.

Considering that in the US, there is a schismatic breakway Anglican church that uses the New Zealand BCP because they believe the Episcopal Church USA is homophobic and prejudiced against women, and that the 1979 BCP is inherently defective for not using gender-neutral language, it seems unlikely that even if Pope Francis or the German bishops succeed in changing the position of the RCC on these issues, that the Union of Utrecht would reunite with them.

 

[Valletta]

Indeed, but we don’t, out of respect for the Roman Catholic Church and our ecumenical dialogue with them.

They are a number of valid rites within our Catholic Church and all of those people should be respected. None should be made to feel they are being excluded.