Well, I agree with you in the sense that "this is what we believe, and it's enough, and we shouldn't go further". But in two threads, somehow that didn't seem to answer "what is the difference between Orthodox and Catholic?" It may be partly my fault, because I wasn't sure of the meaning of the language used in Catholicism, so I didn't know if we could affirm (parts) or not, but I did say (I'm pretty sure) that it goes beyond. And I'm still prone to get drawn into these kinds of philosophical discussions if I'm not careful, because I'm curious about things in general.
Well, no, I'm not saying that it's anyone's 'fault' that it is this way (with metaphysical discussions going on and all that), or even that it's necessarily a problem, in itself, that it goes on. I'm just saying that as an outsider to either side, I don't understand it. It does not make sense to me, because it is foreign to my approach to the faith to engage in this sort of speculation, even through from what I have read in this thread it is at least
explainable how the West got to where it is on this particular question (completely separate from whether or not my Church would agree with how they answer it, as that is immaterial; in my own tradition, this is not a question to begin with/nobody would think to ask "how", as the answers we can have are already given in our prayers).
So I guess I was kinda hoping to hear from some of our Western Christian friends why it is that this is the way that they do it, beyond "heretics challenged us", because I think we can all understand the need to respond to heresies specific to the church in a specific place (i.e., if something popped up in the West, of course the Western church should address it). Heretics challenged the churches of the East and Orient as well, but that the response in those cases would be so different than the response in the West could perhaps go some way toward answering the question of the OP regarding differences between the RCC and the Orthodox concerning the Eucharist. Is it that the
nature of the heresy was different (memorialism vs. neo-Eutychianism or whatever), or is it something deeper, by which we can learn something about the
ontological difference(s) of Eastern and Western Christianity, if we can even agree that there are some? (I believe there are, but I would not be surprised if Roman Catholics objected to this.) I can't say; I can only really present my view as a Coptic Orthodox individual, so I'd be interested to hear from others.
All4Christ rightly posted our relevant parts from the Divine Liturgy, and like you, THAT is what we believe. Period.
Yup.
Btw, I'm rather curious that your Liturgy is provided with transliterated Greek? There are not historically OO's in Greece, are there? I thought other ethnicities and cultures were more relevant? Just curious.
This is standard practice, and it really has nothing to do with the country of Greece, and everything to do with the city of Alexandria, where there was this mix of native Egyptians and Greeks (Alexandria having been built on the site of a preexisting Egyptian settlement, Rhakotis). HH St. Athanasius the Apostolic was born there, for instance. And as a result of this multicultural environment, to this very day, almost all of the deacon's responses are given in Greek, as well as certain set responses of the congregation (and some parts of the priest, as you can see: "Irini pasi"). From what I have read, something on the order of about 10% of the liturgical hymns are Greek -- not mixed Greek/Coptic or translated into Greek, but Greek in their origin (albeit probably non-standard relative to the Greek spoken in
Greece; not Egypt as my earlier typo said...arghhh). These include very recent hymns borrowed into the Church from the Greeks in the 1800s (during a brief period when reunion was supposedly very nearly achieved), such as "Asomen", as well as very old hymns such as "O monogenes Yios" (which in our tradition is attributed to HH St. Severus of Antioch, not Justinian). It is even reported in some
Arab Muslim sources of the Middle Ages such as Al Maqrizi (in his "News of Egypt" from the 15th century) that the Copts remained fluent in Greek at that time, though that claim is certainly challenged by modern scholarship (see, e.g., Maged S.A. Mikhail
From Byzantine to Islamic Egypt, which makes the point that Greek remained a perfectly good vehicle of communication among non-Chalcedonians in Egypt into the 10th century or so, but does not push it to as late as Al Maqrizi claimed, because also by the 10th century you had the very first Arabic-language work composed in the Coptic Orthodox Church, by HG Severios Ibn Al-Muqaffa'/Severus Al Ashmunein, who specifically states that he is writing it in Arabic because people are losing their
Coptic language, and makes no mention of Greek -- perhaps Greek was already entirely confined to the liturgy by then, in terms of being
spoken).
Anecdotally, many lay Copts don't seem to realize any of this, and think "Irini pasi", "Ke to pnevmati sou", etc. are Coptic phrases (after all, they appear in our liturgical books written in Coptic!
), but the reality is that if you go to any Coptic liturgy you will be exposed to quite a bit of Greek. Obviously nothing like in an actual Greek church, but you might be (pleasantly?) surprised if you are coming from a Greek background.
Funny story on that: During the holy fifties after the Resurrection, we, like all Orthodox people, greet one another with the Paschal greeting, "Christ is risen!" ("Indeed/In truth, He is risen!"). If it is not given in Arabic ("Al masih qam!" "Haqqan qam!/bil-haqiqati qam!"), it is given in Greek. It is
very rarely given in Coptic. Wanting to change that sad fact and increase the people's knowledge of their forgotten ancestral language, we have had priests and bishops give it thusly: "Pekhristos aftonf!", to which the people are taught the reply, "Khen oumethmi aftonf!" Soooo, being naive and new to the parish some years ago, during my first time experiencing the Coptic Pascha, I give the response in Arabic, and when abouna says (this was during the agape meal, after liturgy) "Okay, now in Coptic", I say "Khen oumethmi aftonf!",
expecting to be in line with everyone. Nope! Following what I would learn (thanks to embarrassments like this) about Coptic people thinking that Greek is Coptic or vice-versa, everyone says "Alithos anesti!" and precedes to look at me like I'm a freak. Great, just great.
"Abouna, what is he doing?" And our priest was very happy, actually, because he knew it, so every subsequent Pascha at the beginning of the agape meal, we would give it in Arabic, then in Greek, then
everyone would turn to me (hahaha) and abouna would say "Pekhristos aftonf!", and I would reply "Khen oumethmi aftonf!" And as the days went by during that period, more and more people would say "Khen oumethmi aftonf". (Probably now that I am gone they are back to "Alithos anesti" only, hahaha.
)
It's the little things, y'know?
But that's kinda characteristic of language issues in the Church: people are very wedded to the way they do things, so we've kept a lot of Greek in the liturgy even if everyday people don't realize it at a conscious level. They
do know what they are saying, because it's all provided in translation anyway (and these are small phrases that are memorized, so you absolutely can say them in one language and process them in your own, simultaneously, in the same way that there's a lot of that going on in any church that keeps a traditional language, I would think), but probably if you ask them
why it's there, they'll look at you funny. (And here I would emphasize that a very large portion of the Church is composed of farmers in the South/Upper Egypt, the area known in Arabic as the "Sa'id" -- Sa'idi people are kind of stereotyped as the country bumpkins of Egypt, so it's not entirely surprising that they would keep doing things for centuries without needing to have any of it explained, since they already know it by the virtue of how it is ingrained in their way of being...
hey, look, it's a tie-in to the actual thread topic, maybe! )