Back to the Future in Roman Catholicism

 

In Old Rome under the heathen emperors, prior to St Constantine, one could pretty much worship as he pleased so long as he sacrificed to the prescribed Roman gods as well.

This same principle has risen once again, only now within the Roman Catholic Church:  One may hold to whatever doctrines he wishes, even those explicitly condemned in official Roman Catholic teachings, so long as he makes a public oath of obedience to the Pope of Rome.  For instance, the Chaldean Catholics honor the heretic Nestorius as a saint; Jacob of Serug, a Monophysite, is considered a saint in the Roman Catholic Church; and the Eastern Rite Catholics honor as saints three men (Sts Photius the Great, Gregory Palamas, and Mark of Ephesus) who in no uncertain terms denounced Roman Catholic teachings about the Filioque, absolute divine simplicity, purgatory, etc.

A short talk on this is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrSU0afdDrs

A longer discussion is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmWddWkiVe4&t=6352s

On a certain level, however, this confusion is not unexpected.  If God, per Roman Catholic (and Protestant) teaching, is an absolutely simple divine essence, which is utterly beyond human perception or understanding or contact or etc., if there is no essence/energies distinction in God, if He can only be known by created effects/intermediaries, then the hypostatic union of the two natures, divine and human, in the Lord Jesus Christ is impossible, and one is left with either a Nestorian solution (two separate hypostases/persons and two separate natures:  Jesus the man and Christ the God) or a Monophysite solution (one person with one nature:  Christ was either wholly God or wholly man, but not both).  Thus, the chaotic situation within Roman Catholicism regarding the sainthood of a Nestorius or a Jacob of Serug is not such a surprise.

Make no mistake, then:  Relativism is just as much a problem within Roman Catholicism as it is within Protestantism.  Come home, Southron, to the safe harbor of the Orthodox Church.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!