Catholic and Roman Catholic

[Mere Nick]

 I am only offering the Catholic POV:

1. The Church itself is not "Roman" per se.  

I understand the Roman Catholic POV would vary from others' POV, yes.

I believe Jesus built one church, however, I don't believe the Pope is head of it anymore than I believe Joe Torre is head of baseball.  Joe Torre knows alot about baseball and the Pope knows alot about things pertaining to Christ.

[BaLou]

I am only offering the Catholic POV:

1. The Church itself is not "Roman" per se. 

I understand the Roman Catholic POV would vary from others' POV, yes.

I believe Jesus built one church, however, I don't believe the Pope is head of it anymore than I believe Joe Torre is head of baseball.  Joe Torre knows alot about baseball and the Pope knows alot about things pertaining to Christ.

Many Catholics will tell you that the Pope's role is to be the head servant of the church.

[trifecta]

How about the Orthodox, they believe in one Church. I doubt they would agree with being called Catholic either.

Actually, they don't.  There are many Orthodox branches...Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Ukranian Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox...and I met someone who was a Carpathian Orthodox.

Each has their own leader or patriarch....so to say that they are in essence one Church would not be correct.

Broach,
  As you know, I agree with many things that you say, but I can't here.

There is much misunderstanding about this subject.   Let me try to clarify.  There are few places where there is more than one Orthodox church for people to go to.  One of those places is America.  For example, Albanians in Albania go to the Albanian Orthodox Church.

To be honest, I wish the situation in America were that of one American Orthodox Church.  They are working in that direction, but we are not there yet--and I believe that  is to our shame. 

However, all Orthodox Churches are in communion with each other.  That means that an Orthodox Christian can receive communion in any Orthodox church.  There is something to say for that.

Yes, we have different leaders in the same geographical area, something for which I am ashamed, but, frankly, so does the RCC.  The existence of the Eastern Rite churches in America proves this.    Here you have overlapping jurisdictions as we do. 

Furthermore, let me be bold and say, the Orthodox Churches are closer in unity in belief than the RCC.  Fortunately, John Paul II cracked down on liberation theologians in Latin America, but this trend shows how far church believes have wandered across the globe.  And how about the Jesuits?  Have you read their stuff recently?   The one thing that makes Catholics Catholic is their allegience to the Pontiff.  Pope Benedict, whom I like, recently said that the Orthodox Churches were "defective" because they did not submit to the authority of the Bishop of Pope.   I admire his honestly, even though I disagree with his statement.   

What makes that the Catholic Church Roman is the allegiences of all Eastern Rite, Roman, Melkite, Marionite and other branches of the RCC to one authority, the Bishop of Rome.

[trifecta]

DCR,

As usual, you make good posts.  I agree with this one especially.  Let me make
some comments, from an Orthodox perspective.

When I think about all this, it quite honestly depresses me.  It's the tragedy of Christian church history.

I agree.  But I also think the tragedy of modern Christianity is that people don't know church history.  Many of the things that we argue about now were settled years ago. 

I do believe that the Roman Catholic Church has strayed off path on some things.  And, some of the teachings do make me uncomfortable (veneration of Mary/saints, central papal authority/infallability, etc.).

I appreciate your charity here.

And, so at different times in history, people come along with their fresh and what they believe to be their more true interpretation of Christianity.  So, they split off and do their own thing.  Then, a little while later, their spiritual descendents believe that they don't have it all together, so they split off and split off and split off.

This unfortunately has been the way of Protestants.  In the old days (pre 1000 A.D.) they argued for control of the church.  They fought, suffered, and argued.  All the big issues were ironed out by 787 A.D. (Begging the question what happened then--the last ecumenical council.)

Note that the Reformation was not over doctrine, but practice.  Unfortunately, the Reformers took the opportunity to inject their own opinions of church history and none of them agreed, but rather than fight it out with the Catholics, they formed their own churches and the trend continues.

Then, some rogue sectarians emerge and declare the whole of Christiandom in error because it allegedly doesn't have the "true," "pure," "historical" Gospel (whatever your code word of choice is) that they have discovered.

This happened early on as well.  The difference was those guys tried to take over the church, and at times almost succeeded, but by God's grace failed.   An early church father (I can remember who) said that schism is worse than the doctrinal error.  Unfortunately, this was forgotten later.

Anyway, it all seems so sad and hopeless at times.  We can only hope and pray that God is working through it in spite of ourselves.

As do I.  I see cause for hope, but the disunity of believers is something we will have to answer for.