Help re the Schism please.

[diocamtrinanotted]

I'm asking for the same help in understanding the schism both in the Catholic and the Orthodox sub forums.
Both claim origination from St Peter.
Were each separate from day one.
If not when did they first become two.
My crude understanding is that RC claims Papal headship whereas Orthodox does not....is that true.
I'm a complete dumbo as regards this aspect of religious history so please keep any help as clear and simple as possible (at least to begin with)

If the question is already covered please bear with me while I search.

Thanks.....Dio.

[CDHealy]

Dio:

You will hear the date of 1054 as the date of the Great Schism, when the Eastern Churches and the Western Churches split.  This is not quite true.  The date is only a handy marker, a short hand.

In reality, the Great Schism was a long time in coming.  As early as the sixth century, the Council of Toledo Spain in an attempt to fight Arianism inserted the filioque (claiming the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son) into the Creed.  This was only a local council and the Western Churches did not accept this.  Then in the ninth century, the Western Emperor was seeking political power as was the Pope, and both essentially joined forces to begin to proclaim universal papal jurisdiction and on the basis of that to insert the filioque into the Creed.  The Eastern Churches rejected this.  But despite these tensions, the Churches of the East remained in communion with the Churches in the West.

In fact, all the Great Schism of 1054 did was to put the Partiarchal sees of Rome and Constantinople out of communion with one another.  The remainder of the Eastern Churches were in communion with Rome and vice versa.  In fact, it wasn't until the Gregorian reforms in the fourteenth century that Rome began to accelarate the pace of innovations (papal jurisdiction, the filioque, mandatory priestly celibacy, and liturgical changes).  So as late as the 1200s, the Churches in the West still looked like the Churches in the East.

But the Gregorian reforms did cause Rome to depart more and more from the Christianity practiced in the East, and the institution of the filioque didn't help as it inevitably distorted both the doctrine of the Trinity and instituted the Western innovation in Christian theology of absolute divine simplicity.

Because Rome is the one that added the new innovations to the Gospel tradition, things that weren't there before, this created over time greater and greater schism.  So Rome departed from the common deposit of the faith.  She then didn't help matters by twice sacking Constantinople in the Crusades, but most notably in the fifteenth century.

So, the Church was one for a very long time (there was no Roman Catholic Church until the thirteenth century, up till then it was all one Church).

Yes, the Orthodox reject universal papal jurisdiction since it never existed until the Pope suddenly declared it in the ninth century and tried to impose it on the Churches of the East.

[diocamtrinanotted]

CDHealy that was a terrific help.

Thank you very much indeed.

Any more will also be appreciated.

Dio.

[Macrina]

diocamtrinanotted, again I ask, why do you ask for this information.

You have started two threads on this subject, the other in which you name us as "succesionists".