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Welcome
Enjoy... But remember
"Don't give in to winning the argument
and losing one of your eternal crowns..."
God bless you...
Enjoy... But remember
"Don't give in to winning the argument
and losing one of your eternal crowns..."
God bless you...
You Wish So Simple, eh? 
Reconciliation, Towards Unity: JOINT STATEMENT BY POPE, ORTHODOX PRELATE (Matthew Tan Yew Hock)
PAPAL APOLOGY TO GREEK ORTHODOX (Matthew Tan Yew Hock)
"Enemy" Churches Praying Together: Pope and Orthodox Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens (Matthew Tan Yew Hock)
Read What Christodoulos Says to John Paul II (Christopher Yip)
Reflections on the Sack of Constantinople in 1204 and Lesser-Known Byzantine Atrocities (Matthew Tan Yew Hock)
Greek Atrocities Against the Latins (Matthew Tan Yew Hock)
Tit for tat eh? (Christopher Yip)
Good. I am NOT replying to Christodoulos. So, the Pope condemned those Crusaders who abused their missions. eom. (Matthew Tan Yew Hock)
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The killing is the side issue. Sure he condemned the crusaders, who wouldn't? If Pius XII, during the Holocaust, has done something like that, he would have been spared the ignominy of an antisemitic. There is more to that.
http://www.patriarchate.org/book/Western_Hostility_Grows.html Western Hostility Grows In the eleventh century the Byzantine Empire began to decline in strength. This was not only because of the parade of external enemies constantly attacking the empire's territory (often simultaneously on three or even four fronts) but because of internal unrest and decay. Ultimately, owing at least in part to Western (especially Venetian) economic rivalry, even of cupidity for Byzantium's trade and riches, and to political rivalry with Constantinople, the West became increasingly hostile to the Byzantines. Because of the prevailingly religious temper of the age, this antagonism was most clearly expressed in the growing ecclesiastical rift between the two churches, in the rivalry between the patriarch of Constantinople and the pope of Rome. Constantinople as the "New Rome" now claimed an equality of honor with old Rome, while Rome insisted on its jurisdictional authority over the Eastern patriarchs. The Churches differed over the dogma of the filioque, and in the liturgical question of the azyma -- that is, the use by the Orthodox of leavened bread in the Eucharist in contrast to the unleavened bread of the Roman Church. Finally, there was the difference in the epiklesis, different beliefs as to the moment when the miracle of metavole -- the change of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ -- occurs in the liturgical service… It was specifically in order to annul or cancel these historic mutual excommunications of 1054 (lasting up to modern times) that, largely at the initiative of the late great Patriarch Athenagoras, these mutual personal excommunications of 1054, which have always in symbol marked the final division of the two great branches of the Christian Church were finally lifted in 1965 at the historic meeting in Jerusalem between Patriarch Athenagoras and Pope Paul VI. This did not, however, revoke the long-lasting schism between the two churches. http://www.patriarchate.org/book/Third_Period.html In the third period of patriarchal history, from 1261 to 1453, but increasingly after the late fourteenth century, the last but greatest enemy of the Byzantines, the Ottoman Turks of Asia, advanced closer and closer to Constantinople. In this period, the once mighty Byzantine Empire had so shrunk in territory that by 1300, almost all that remained, besides Constantinople itself, was part of what we call today Greece, Macedonia, Thrace, and a strip of western Asia Minor. (Asia Minor of course had earlier been entirely Greek and the very backbone of the Byzantine Empire.) The danger from the advancing Turks soon became so pressing that in order to secure military aid, the Emperors were forced to turn to the greatest source of power in the West, the Papacy. But the popes of Rome would offer no aid unless the Greeks accepted the popes as the head of their church, in other words, unless they converted to Roman Catholicism with its beliefs and practices. (Chris: NOW we know the truth!) The Byzantine common people of course violently objected to this, as did the monks, nuns, almost all of the middle class, and the larger part of the upper class. Some of the upper class, including very few prelates, for the sake of political expediency (or sometimes from even an admiration for the vigor of the Latin Scholastic philosophy) supported these Emperors who were willing to pay the papal price for military aid. Actually, the Greek people soon became split into two factions, the pro-unionists and the far larger group of anti unionists, over the question of whether aid from Rome should be accepted. The problem became so acute that in 1274 (at Lyons in southern France) and again in 1439 at the famous Council of Florence, Italy, religious union between the two churches was (temporarily) achieved, or at least signed. But the Byzantine people in general adamantly refused to accept these two councils. They insisted that since all five of the patriarchs were not present at both these councils (as Byzantine canon law demanded since no subsequent council had declared them to be "ecumenical" and since most Greeks believed the Byzantine delegates were coerced into acceptance, both Councils of Lyons and Florence were invalid. The Patriarch himself, followed by the vast bulk of the Greek populace, therefore refused to compromise his Orthodox beliefs by accepting papal jurisdiction as well as belief in the filioque and the azyma in order, presumably, to save the Empire.
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