Uncover the deep-rooted connections and divisions that have sculpted Christianity into the diverse tapestry we see today. We navigate the historical and theological nuances that differentiate the Catholic Church from other Christian traditions. Unpacking the significance of the Second Vatican Council, we confront how Catholicism stands as the one holy and apostolic Church, distinct from the broader category of denominations. Diving into the contentious topics of scripture interpretation and the Sola Scriptura principle, we strive to foster a dialogue that stretches beyond mere labels, encouraging a broader perspective on what it means to identify as Christian within varying cultural contexts.
Navigating the once inseparable realms of church and state, we traverse the historical landscape that saw the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church split amidst a whirlwind of politics and theology. We dissect the complex ecclesiastical relationships and the concept of schism, revealing how such religious rifts birthed modern sovereign states. As the discussion unfolds, we reflect on the resilience of faith through human imperfection and the transformative evolution that led to the current secularism. Join us on this enlightening episode as we examine the profound influence of Christendom on politics and the enduring legacy of the church in shaping nations.
Have something you'd love to hear Fr. Stephen and John talk about? Email us at myfriendthefriar@gmail.com or click here!
Uncover the deep-rooted connections and divisions that have sculpted Christianity into the diverse tapestry we see today. We navigate the historical and theological nuances that differentiate the Catholic Church from other Christian traditions. Unpacking the significance of the Second Vatican Council, we confront how Catholicism stands as the one holy and apostolic Church, distinct from the broader category of denominations. Diving into the contentious topics of scripture interpretation and the Sola Scriptura principle, we strive to foster a dialogue that stretches beyond mere labels, encouraging a broader perspective on what it means to identify as Christian within varying cultural contexts.
Navigating the once inseparable realms of church and state, we traverse the historical landscape that saw the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church split amidst a whirlwind of politics and theology. We dissect the complex ecclesiastical relationships and the concept of schism, revealing how such religious rifts birthed modern sovereign states. As the discussion unfolds, we reflect on the resilience of faith through human imperfection and the transformative evolution that led to the current secularism. Join us on this enlightening episode as we examine the profound influence of Christendom on politics and the enduring legacy of the church in shaping nations.
Have something you'd love to hear Fr. Stephen and John talk about? Email us at myfriendthefriar@gmail.com or click here!
Speaker 1:
Welcome to our podcast friends. Thank you so much for listening. If you like our podcast and want to support us, please subscribe or follow us, and please don't forget to click the notification bell so you will be notified when new episodes are released. Thank you and God bless.
Speaker 2:
Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining me and my friend, the Friar Father Steven Sanchez, the giggliest Carmelite priest ever. I don't know what it is about this that just kind of tickles you, but I'm going to start counting how often you crack me up or what? Yeah, because I'm not doing anything. Oh goodness, and you're back in Dallas. Yes, how long are you in Dallas before you have to travel again?
Speaker 1:
I should be here almost a month.
Speaker 2:
I know. Praise the Lord. I know Maybe I'll even get to see you this time.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, hopefully, hopefully.
Speaker 2:
All right, so we are digging in. A lot of people always have questions about denominations. And this kind of piggybacks off of some of the things that I was talking about in episodes that precede this, about how I came to find my way back specifically to the Catholic Church instead of other denominations, and so this is going to be a bit of a history. I always want to say deep dive because, man, we go on and on, but it's so shallow.
Speaker 1:
There's so much there is. Yeah, the history of the church is so rich.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so yeah, let's get, let's get to it.
Speaker 1:
Well, first, good morning, how are you? Good morning. First I would like to say that a little correction there that we don't consider ourselves a denomination because we are the Wanchoo Church, so a denomination is our. We refer to the denominations, to those different parts of the communities that split from us right After the protestation. So we'll talk about that in a minute. So anyway, yeah, you know what?
Speaker 2:
Go ahead that. It's something that it irks me and I don't know why. Maybe I should chill out about it. But because before denominations existed, we were all just Christians, yes, and the church was Catholic, yes. And so there's something about saying I'm a Catholic that just irks me Right. Like I don't, I don't want to be a Catholic, I want to be Christian. Who is a member of the Catholic Church, yes, the universal church, yes. And it's so hard to unprogram myself from saying, oh yeah, I was raised Catholic. What does that mean? I was raised in the Catholic Church. That's more correct.
Speaker 1:
But I think yeah, I think part of it too is the fact that we're living in a Protestant country.
Speaker 1:
That is a lot of has influenced a lot on the way we perceive ourselves and the way we present ourselves right, so that has a lot to do with it as well. So, yeah, I agree, I agree so whenever, when you said denominations like wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait it's. It's one of my pet peeves too. It's like when people call sisters nuns like no, no, no, no, no, no no, no, there's a difference between nuns and sisters. So anyway, before we go off, on another tangent.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
So before we get started talking about denominations, excuse me, I want to read a quote from the decree on ecumenism from the Second Vatican Council. This is paragraph nine. We must get to know the outlook of our separated brethren. Study is absolutely required for this and it should be pursued in fidelity to truth and with the spirit of goodwill. Catholics who already have a proper grounding need to acquire a more adequate understanding of the respective doctrines of our separated brethren, their history, their spiritual and liturgical life, their religious, psychology and cultural background. So I wanted to put that up there first, because a lot of times we don't really recognize or we don't really know enough about the other traditions, the other faith traditions, and it's difficult for us to really understand them unless we actually try to study or try to understand where they're coming from.
Speaker 1:
For example, I'm having a talk with a member of the Free Will Baptist Church of when, back in the Stone Ages, when I helped with the any town there's an any town program and the other guy that was with me were bunking together watching over the children, over the teenagers. He was a free will Baptist. So I asked him I said so what's the difference between you and a missionary Baptist, a full gospel Baptist. He goes I have no idea, we don't talk to each other. I said okay. I said okay, never mind. But what the church is telling us here is that before we Discuss, before we enter into dialogue with anyone else, we need to understand when they're coming from. Now, yeah, they owe us the same respect, but usually we don't get that. So, but we have the obligation to understand, try to understand their, their foundation, right where, where they're building their, their understanding of Christianity from.
Speaker 2:
So again, I guess the the the trickiest part, even with that, is if they are Sola scriptura or solo. They are their own magic.
Speaker 1:
Yes, sir, yes right.
Speaker 2:
So every person individually. Yes is allowed to have their own interpretation.
Speaker 1:
Yes.
Speaker 2:
So you just it's personal, you just got to get to know the person, which goes back to relationship. I feel like we've talked about.
Speaker 1:
But it goes back to the whole idea of the separation, that the foundational separation between us and those that have been have separated, has to do with scripture, the interpretation of scripture, the authority to interpret scripture, which you've already talked about and we've talked about, and it goes back to that. That is where the fundamental difference comes and that's where you have to go back and and examine that right. So first let me give a definition of denomination, and this is a definition that I pulled from John Harden. Who's a, who's a gen a Jesuit? He wrote in the New Catholic encyclopedia under denomination. So this is from the New Catholic encyclopedia.
Speaker 1:
In the United States the term is used to describe a variety of religious bodies, mainly in the Protestant tradition. Properly understood church refers either to the whole body of Christians or to all members of a given body, such as the Baptists, methodists and Lutherans. When the religious group is described with stress on its particular spirit or ancestor, denomination is the preferred term. So If, what part of the Baptist right? What part of the Methodist church? What part of the Lutheran church? What part of the Anglican Episcopalian church right, then that would be that particular dot. Denomination will talk about that in a little bit. So denominations are juridically self governing. They're doctrally, doctrinally autonomous and legally erected bodies. They are entirely distinct, not only from other churches in a different tradition, for example Lutherans from the Reformed, or Anglicans from the free churches, and the reason we have to make that distinction too, because you also have all these storefront churches right, so they're completely independent. It's whatever, of whatever right church, temple of praise, right or whatever it is right.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, or something full of gospel or something tree, or the way or whatever right, just whatever name that you choose.
Speaker 1:
That's more of a sect and it's not really a denomination, because they belong to what they refer to as free churches, and so we'll talk about that when we get to that. So this is going to be several episodes and, again, this is not a deep dive, but, yeah, there's a lot to cover here.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and this comes at subscriber request, so you're welcome.
Speaker 1:
Maybe we should chart a Patreon thing.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, something.
Speaker 1:
Anyway. So first let me talk a little bit about the East-West split before I talk about the Protestant rebellion. I was going to say reform, because no, they didn't reform anything. We reformed ourselves, thank you. So before I say anything about the Protestant denominations, I do have to mention the split between the Eastern and Western churches that happened in 1054. Now that split had a religiosociopolitical root, that is, there was religious roots, there was sociological roots, there were political, all of these different things that contributed to that, just as in the Protestants, excuse me, just as in the protests of Luther and Henry VIII. So, if you remember, henry VIII defended the church against Luther and then wound up splitting because of the divorce.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, just like whatever, so anyway. So for us in the postmodern world, it is difficult to imagine a culture where religion, politics and the social structure are all one thing. But that is the reality. That was and something we must keep in mind when we examine that part of our history. We tend to think of it all being three different parts, and back then it was all one thing. As you were saying earlier, it was the Christian church, and the Christian church was everywhere, and so everybody everywhere was a Christian or a Catholic, and so kings and queens and everybody belonged to the church and there was just an understanding of religiosity that was prevalent and permeated everything. We don't appreciate that. We need to appreciate that when we look at our past history.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and you've talked about that before, we have this. We come from a framework of separation from church and state, but forever and ever and ever. That wasn't the thing. There was no separation, it was all one thing.
Speaker 1:
It was all part of the same machine. Yeah yeah, it wasn't until after the split then that these things started becoming part of the human reality, right? Yeah, so the Eastern churches we do not consider them denominations either. They are real churches. We're just angry at each other, we're kind of we've got the family dynamic going on there. So they do have sacraments, they do have priests and everything. But the Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox are not united to Rome, but they are a church, right?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and it's kind of strange too, because you can have and I can't remember which ones they really are, so this could be wrong or it could be right on accident, but it's like the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church. They've excommunicated one another, but the Greek Orthodox Church is communion with each of them. So if you're Greek Orthodox you can go to Russian Orthodox if you're, or Ukrainian, but if you're Ukrainian you can't go to Russian, but just Greek, and it gets all weird. And that's one of the things that was the biggest problem for me with Orthodoxy, because other than like the cultural part, like there's not a United States Orthodox, you know, it's like it's some other Orthodoxes. And what if you have in the US, like a Greek Orthodox Church and a Russian Orthodox Church in the same town?
Speaker 2:
and now they're competing instead of being united and all of that stuff. Just, it doesn't take long. It didn't take long for me to go. That's not how this was intended to be.
Speaker 1:
No, and it goes back to the whole Autosephalos, meaning the independent head right, Instead of being under the one head, under the chair of Peter, under the Petrine office, and we'll talk about that later on as well. So again, just want to emphasize that Eastern churches are not denominations. We do recognize their full sacrament of validity, they do have bishops, priests, sacraments etc. And we as Catholics would say that most of the Eastern churches are in schism, that is separated from us. They do not recognize the authority of the Holy See of Rome Again, and that happened after the split. Before the split, yes. After the split, no. Okay.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and I was reading this morning the saints, or the saint of the day, when I read my daily scriptures, and the saint of the day was a pope who, back in the let's see if I can find it back in the 600s, he came into conflict. What was his name? His name was Pope, and I'll butcher it Pope, saint Vitalian. Anyway, he got into an argument with the Archbishop Maris of Ravina because he had declared himself independent from the Sea of Peter, so there was no Vatican control over him either. So this was happening all the way back in the 600s too.
Speaker 2:
So, I think relationship is hard, unity is hard. It has to be something that you're always working toward.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and I think it's something that we need to always keep in mind. I think the fact is sometimes in administration, and again there's the human element, I mean is the person. You know the person might be a little off, might be a little cuckoo, you know they didn't have medication back then.
Speaker 1:
So there are situations, historical, social, political situations that lead to some of these disruptions, like, for example, back then Ravina probably had to do more with city state, you know, and fights between cities back then between Ravina and Rome, right, so yeah, and so come Lord Jesus, come, come Anyway. So what happened is between the Eastern churches and us, and they don't recognize the authority of the Holy See. The disagreements now are theological, but the root cause back then was also political and one of these days we'll go into a deep dive into the politics and how the split came between East and West and the consequences in history on both sides. That would be an interesting episode. However, there are some Eastern churches that are in union with the Holy See right.
Speaker 1:
So those do exist and we'll talk about those later. So I needed to mention that before I talk about the protest. So the causes that led up to what we know as the Protestant Revolt were long in the making and were many in number. It would be very difficult to do the topic any justice in a short span of time. I would like to state that the majority of my research on this topic is based on the work entitled the Dividing of Christendom by Christopher Dawson, who is considered the clearest and the most unbiased authority on the subject. Though I do cite other authors as well, dawson is the fundamental source for me. So here's a quote from Dawson the great schism of the 16th century was preceded by a long, gradual process of disintegration which transformed the international unity of the early Middle Ages into a society of independent, sovereign states which were divided from one another ecclesiastically as well as politically. Thus the division of Christendom by the Reformation was closely related to the growth of the modern sovereign state. So what he's saying here is again.
Speaker 1:
One of the things to keep in mind too is the decay of civilization. So the Black Plague wars, the Hundred Year War, all those things, and again, because it was all one thing it was everybody belonged to the one church, it all. So, because it was such a united thing, a lot of these things had a huge, huge impact on what led to the Protestant revolt. So again, so that's part of the whole deal that we need to look at. It's not just theological, so a couple of contributing root factors. So in 1291, you have the fall of the Latin Kingdom and Palestine, so that falls to Islam. Then you have the suppression of the order of Templars by Philip IV of France to take all their money.
Speaker 1:
So, he got rid of the Templars. Then you have also the Holy See that is kidnapped by France. You have the Avignon Papacy from 1309 to 1378, and then you have the Western Schism from 1378 to 1417. So that's something to keep in mind as well. Also, it is important to keep in mind the great schism between East and West that occurred in 1054. And that was still something that the Holy See was attempting to address through the Council of Lyon in 1274 and the Council of Florence in 1439.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, Didn't they get back together for?
Speaker 1:
a second, a hot minute.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
Exactly, that was the Council of Florence. So and historical side note, hopefully I wouldn't get too lost in this but a lot of the Eastern fathers, a lot of patriarchs that came to Rome to work on the reconciliation, there is a reconciliation that occurs, and so the bishops sign it, the patriarch sign it, the Holy See signs it, the people, like everybody, signs these documents. Yeah, yay, we're back together, right. Then the emperor finds out that they sign this without his approval, the emperor in the East, and he says he's going to kill everybody that had anything to do with it when they come back. So what happens is they don't go back to the East, they stay in the West. And that is the beginning of the Renaissance, because now you have all these Greek-speaking patriarchs and wisdom figures staying in Rome and, all of a sudden, the study of Greek and contributing to the whole Renaissance in the West. So thank God that somehow something good came from that.
Speaker 2:
But anyway, so who was the emperor?
Speaker 1:
like Byzantine Empire, yes, yeah, constantinople, byzantine, yeah.
Speaker 2:
And then, who replaced the bishops that stayed, or because they stayed in Rome. So then, what happened?
Speaker 1:
They named other bishops over there because, again, that was part of the whole thing was the emperor could nominate people to take the sea, that takes patriarchs right, so he just nominated his own Politics. Politics.
Speaker 2:
Man talk about it. It'd be a good series like TV series or something. Watching all this.
Speaker 1:
Well, as long as it's not too Hollywoodized, right, yeah, yeah never mind, never mind.
Speaker 2:
It'd make a good book.
Speaker 1:
Thank you very much. So now the early Middle Ages. As we've said before, it is difficult for us to grasp the religio-sociopolitical realities of the early Middle Ages. It is an impossibly difficult not to untie, as well as being a difficult not to appreciate the existence of duchies, counties, baronial estates are all held loosely together under a king, but the idea of king in Christendom was understood as a Christian king and that the divine right of kings came from the Holy Sea. There were ecclesiastical principalities, like the German prince bishops and the great independent abbeys. There was also the military and religious orders. What we understand as a nation-state did not yet exist and it only began to bud forth in German form under the eyes of Ferdinand and Isabel in their unification of what is called the Spain's Las Espanas.
Speaker 1:
So another quote, that is, the whole Western Europe. Because the whole of Western Europe formed part of a single society, christendom. Not a political party, it is true, but much more than anything we understand by a common religion or common culture. It was rooted in the medieval belief that the whole Christian people formed a single body with a twofold organization the Regnum, the reigning secular arm, and the Sacherdotium, the religious arm, the Empire and the Papacy, and though the former never succeeded in making good its claim to universal authority, the latter the Papacy gave Western Europe a real internal organization which was far more powerful than the local and partial authority of the secular states. And that's where a lot of the division comes from. A lot of division comes from political parties fighting with other political parties, and they all belong to the same church.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, that's really interesting because I can see how the church would hold it all together, like England and France. Yeah, it's like they always want to kill each other, they're always wanting to go to war and all this kind of stuff, but then they're intermarrying because they're trying to do all this political stuff. But the thing I would imagine that and maybe this is true of the Viking raids in England eventually, when you become Christian as well, there's this concept of why am I killing my brother, why am I going to war with my brother? And we'd be working together and I can see how Christendom was the thing that held it all together for a long time.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and so what happens then is the political arm starts influencing the religious arm, and so now you have the Catholic King of England fighting, the Catholic King of France asking the Catholic kings of Sicily and Naples to help, and then all these. What happens is that they really separate themselves politically, even though they belong to the same church. Their emphasis as rulers is not as a Christian ruler as much as it is. I want a bigger piece of the pie, I want more importance or whatever, and so this is part of the whole problem with this whole idea, and that is why, eventually, we had, in the United States, the separation of church and state. Right, and it's not going to well for us right now either. So we'll see how that turns out, this experiment.
Speaker 1:
So what happens then is, during the time of the early Middle Ages, there began to develop within all these scattered territories a growing sense of power within the monarchies. So then now you have hereditary roles within this feudal system and began to be distributed to men who proposed the ideal of an absolute sovereign state, that is, an absolute monarchy, especially in England with Henry VIII, so that the regnum, the secular arm, began to compete with the sacerdotium, the religious arm, but it would find that it would not be able to provide the stability that the sacerdotium did the religious stability right. So this is something, then, that people need to step back and examine. They criticize the church and all that, but it's actually the church that held it all together. In spite of all the fights, in spite of all the betrayals and poisonings and murders and stuff. It is the church that held it together, because if the church was not present, yeah, we would have gone back to living in caves and clubbing each other, but anyway.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, because like thinking of England, right when the king is the head of the church or queen or whoever right, but just thinking back to Henry VIII when, so he goes, okay. So now you guys are my bishops and now, whereas the church, it was a check and balance where the church could say you know, this is really not something you should do. Now the king is telling the church what they should or should not do and they have to be obedient to him in all things, not just like who we're going to go to war with, but how are we going to interpret this religious aspect of whatever and man this is? I think it also speaks to how. What's the saying? Like we've been trying to destroy the church for 2000 years.
Speaker 1:
Yes, we haven't succeeded yet.
Speaker 2:
Because, like how many popes were there that got all the power. Went to their head too. And now? They're like oh, I'm going to go do some influencing and I'm going to go get a bigger piece of the pie for the church and I'm going to go do all this stuff, and by the church I mean myself, you know. So it's definitely been executed imperfectly. We'll put it like that Right, it's a. It is a perfect idea because it comes from God, but it is flawed because we are flawed.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, the human element. And that's, and, if anything, the proof that, the proof that the spirit abides with us, is the fact that for 2000 years, we haven't been able to destroy the church yet. And we've, yeah, we've done a lot, yeah.
Speaker 2:
Well, you know what? Let's? Because we've got so many of these to talk about. Let's go ahead and let's end this one. Let's wrap it up and we'll come back next time and we will see how this continues to play out, because I'm sure there are more countries than England that did what Henry did.
Speaker 1:
Yes, yes, there's a lot of contribution to this, yeah.
Speaker 2:
So thank you, god bless, yep. We'll see you all next time, see you. Bye.