God’s peace and rest on you and yours;
Greg R

Are some schisms (and schismatics) worse than others. Yes. To the Catholic Church, the Orthodox are in schism, and yet we still call them a Church with a capital ‘C’. They are our brothers in Christ, yes, but we still say they are in schism. They same the same thing about us. We both agree that the Church and Christ and all of us are hurt by this division. It is neither uncharitable nor untruthful to say so.

I think Luther was a well-meaning Christian who saw real problems in the Church and wanted to reform it. The Donatists were well-meaning as well, desiring purity for the Church. I would give less benefit of the doubt to Arius and many other schismatics, but they all broke from the Church in schism.

I have no problem agreeing with your last statements that members of the Catholic Church did great harm to Christ and the Church through their actions. They didn’t schism, but they failed to reform from within when they should have; they acted in worldly and not godly ways; they handled matters horribly and totally bungled crucial decisions; all of these things were bad.

My only desire with the original comment was to respond to Patrick who rephrased what I said by saying “meanwhile the Church suffers no real division but only appears to.” I wanted to point out that the Church may remain in her essential unity yet be grieved to the core by the divisions caused by schism from her. That’s all.

God bless Luther and you as well. That’s my final word on this matter–feel free to have the last word if you desire.

I just had a peanut butter and blackberry sandwich and am feeling expansive (literally). I’m feeling good as I write this,and smiling: dude, you have backpedalled from an admittedly bad ananlogy into an equally bad comparison. You want to make Luther and Sabellius roomies at the same hotel ? I’m not Lutheran, but I’ll make my appeal once again (and I am NOT feeling some kind of personal affront here): IF you call your protestant co-confessors in the shed blood of the LAMB “Brother”, then be careful how you describe them: you are in fact related, family.

As an aside, I’d say it is hard to ignore the great harm done by the RC in the time period you mention and come to the conclusion that the Reformers did greater harm. That’s a tough one to eat in one bite.

I do envy your zeal.
Greg R

I should have said “this is an IMPERFECT analogy” and it much more closely resembles someone apostasizing rather than a Protestant, who has not committed apostasy. The main point I wanted to make was that someone who goes into schism (as the original reformers did) hurts the Church, hurts Christ, and hurts his brothers and sisters. Arius, Novatus, Sabellius, etc. etc. all did so as well.

Protestants who are reared in some form of Protestant Christianity are not culpable for the schism caused by Luther and the other reformers. Unitatis Redintegratio talks about this specifically and is very helpful.

I apologize for my bad analogy. Apostasy vs. honestly following Christ though in a community which broke from full communion with the Church are two very different things.

It’s interesting how you notice that while I didn’t. Yes, you are correct that the Eastern Rite churches are in union with the Roman Church, that’s not what is meant by Roman Catholic.

While I can’t speak for Mr. Cross, I think the reason why “Roman Catholic” refers to the Latin (or Roman) Rite is that the Roman Catholic is considered a subset of Catholic as is Byzantine Catholic or Ukrainian Catholic. Roman Catholic just is more of a specific designation of Roman Rite.

This is the way it was taught to me in high school way back when. I read the Newadvent link and while I understand it, have never taken offense to the term Roman Catholic.

Regarding the Vatican I document, the Roman Church is considered catholic as it’s not just the “church in Rome” but rather the Roman See which governs the entire Catholic Church through her Bishops who are designated over every corner of the earth. I’ve heard it said–and haven’t verified–that there is a bishop over Antarctica.

Analogously, the Church and her members are hurt, as is Christ, when someone rejects the Church and leaves via apostasy or leaves and joins a schismatic Church or Protestant Ecclesial Community. One can be a Christian and yet not be in full communion with Christ’s Church. It is sad that the person is outside of full communion but mitigated by the fact that they have the Holy Spirit and love of God in them and so are rightly called Christians.