Humanists Take on the World

On this week's episode it's just Dustin and Lauren. We talk about the Great Schism and differences between Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. In the news we have the Pope's latest failure to deal with Catholic sex abuse, Vatican women protesting censorship, terrible invocations, Facebook stuff, and more!Email us at contact@htotw.com or leave us a voice message at (541) 203-0666 or htotw.com/speakpipeSupport the show at htotw.com/donateSubscribe at htotw.com/subscribeDustin’ off the Degree - The Orthodox Churches: The Great SchismFrom Sylia via email:Hi Dustin!I'm kind of curious about the Russian Orthodox Church and what they believe in, how they came to be, and how they're different from mainstream Catholicism and Protestantism. How much do you know about the Russian Orthodox Church? Can you talk about that on the Dustin Off the Degree segment for a future Atheist Nomads episode?As it turns out as with everything related to religion, this is a really complex and big topic and there’s some background information we need to cover before we really get to the question.Using the colloquial terms there are really four main branches of Christianity:Oriental OrthodoxEastern OrthodoxRoman CatholicProtestantOften the Eastern Orthodox churches are just referred to as Orthodox and the Roman Catholic church is often just referred to as Catholic. But technically speaking the Catholic and Orthodox churches are all Catholic and all Orthodox. Catholic means universal and Orthodox means correct doctrine. They all view themselves as the church founded by Christ with the great commission and their bishops to be the successors to the apostles.Protestants are the newest branch, splitting off from the Roman Catholic Church during the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century in central and western Europe. The Protestants believe that Christians are saved by faith and not works, that the priesthood belongs to all believers with all Christians having direct access to Christ, and that the Bible is the only source for doctrine. Catholics on the other hand believe that your works will determine how quickly you get to heaven, that priests are a special class of believers, that only the Pope has direct access to Christ, and that church tradition what determines dogma.What this created was groups of Christians in the west that were not in communion with the Bishop of Rome, commonly referred to as the Holy Father, Papa, or Pope. The Christians that remained in communion with the Bishop of Rome remained part of the Roman Catholic Church.For the split between the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Church, we have to go back to the Roman Emperor Constantine. He converted to Christianity, made Christianity the official religion of the empire, and moved his capital from Rome to Byzantium, renaming it Constantinople. This disrupted the power dynamics in the church by making Rome less significant and moving the seat of government to the Greek side of the empire where there were far more Christians.When the empire split east to west, there was one patriarch, the Bishop of Rome, over the church in the Western Roman Empire with the remaining patriarchs left in charge of their provinces of the church in the Eastern Roman Empire. The Western empire and the church in it spoke Latin and conducted mass in Latin, while the Eastern empire and the church in it spoke Greek.By the time the western empire collapsed, the Bishop of Rome was already starting to fill the power vacuum that it created and quickly worked to created relations with the German kingdoms that were taking over the lands of the former empire, Rome then sent missionaries out to convert the Germans a created what was basically a diplomatic back channel throughout the region. Then when Charlemagne completed his conquests it was under the name of the Holy Roman Empire and he established his capital in Rome and the Pope Support the show