Slava Isusu Christu!
I was wondering what the Tradtionalist Orthodox, positon is on the validity of Catholic Sacraments is. I was told by a ROCOR priest that Catholicism doesnt have valid Sacraments which would mean no Apostolic Succsession. Is this correct?
In Christ
Yes, that would be right. They left the true Faith so their 'sacraments' and not true mysteries. This is why Traditionalist Orthodox Churches Baptize converts as a rule.
there is but one Mystery, the Church and what she does. Those who have by their own heresies (or those of their ancestors) cut themselves off from the church are completely and totally without Grace. The only Grace which could exist in such a situation is the Grace to convert ot Orthodoxy.
If Papist sacraments had valdidity (this very line of thinking being an errant western one) what would be the point of being Orthodox? I mean there is a papist church in just about everytowm, in some towns on every corner. Why the hardship of driving, in some cases, more than halph of a 24 hour day to get to and from Church?
"Narrow is the Gate and steep the Path that leadeth unto Salvation."
Nicholas Zollars
For although the beginning of the apostasy arose through schism, yet those who fell away from the Church no longer had the grace of the Holy Spirit. For the power of imparting grace disappeared because the lawful succession was cut off. For those who first fell away had received consecration from the fathers, and through the laying on of their hands had the spiritual gift. But when they fell away, becoming laymen, they had power neither to baptize, nor to lay on hands, and could not confer on others the grace of the Holy Spirit, from which they themselves had fallen away. Therefore, those who came from them to the Church, being considered to have received baptism from laymen, were of old commanded to be cleansed anew by true ecclesiastical baptism
from the 1st Canon of St. Basil
OrthodoxLearner,
I was wondering what the Tradtionalist Orthodox, positon is on the validity of Catholic Sacraments is. I was told by a ROCOR priest that Catholicism doesnt have valid Sacraments which would mean no Apostolic Succsession. Is this correct?
To avoid repeating myself too much, I would recommend you see my post on the other thread dealing with this subject, which I issued as a response to our Roman Catholic friend, LatinTrad.
While it seems apparent (though this is becoming increasingly less apparent, as the RCC has substantially changed practically all of their sacramental rites since they held the Second Vatican Council) that the Roman Catholics have the outward aspects of the sacraments, and even apostolic succession, these things are ultimatly not meaningful if they are divorced from the Church to which they are proper (the Orthodox Church, which Rome was once a part of.)
So, yes, it is true that the Roman Catholics have the basic form of "baptism", and the basic form of the "eucharist", etc. It is also true they have the historical, outward dimension of laying hands, from bishop to bishop (which is a part of what is meant by "apostolic succession.") But they are all being used outside of their only legitimate context - this would be the Church which Christ established, and which in fact is His Body.
I'll try to use a simple analogy, which I hope will illustrate what I mean.
Let's say some sick individual attacks you, and chops off your hand. While it is certainly possible for him to take your physical hand and run off with it, can he cut out your soul, or even a piece of your soul, and use this to animate that stolen hand? Of course not. So while he could run around using your hand for all sorts of sick/strange purposes, it would ultimatly be a dead limb, and certainly no one would attribute whatever he did with it to you (ex. if he decided to slap someone across the face with it, no one would say "OrthodoxLearner slapped so-and-so in the face".)
This analogy illustrates the situation of heterodox groups who still preserve the basic, "valid" (in an exterior sense) forms of the Holy Mysteries of the Church of Christ. While they can take the Church's method (or some variant on it which is still the same in the basics) and go ahead and "baptize" people, or take bread and wine and call it a "eucharist", they cannot, by doing this, make themselves what they are not - the Church, which is Christ's Body...thus, when the Church baptizes someone, it is in fact Christ Who is Baptizing...just as when the Church offers the Holy Eucharist as a spiritual sacrifice and spiritual food, it is Christ Himself Who is doing this. To say that heretics who illicitly use the outward forms of the Church, can use them as the Church Herself uses them, is to say that someone can somehow force God to do that which is against His will. It transforms, unwittingly perhaps, the sacraments into some kind of "magic", which can produce results so long as the "right spell" is used. Obviously, such an idea is blasphemous, and has no similarity at all to prayer, which is fundamentally what the Holy Mysteries are. The ministers of heterodoxy and schism, can no more compell God to honour their misuse of the "sacramental forms", than the priests of baal who challenged the Prophet Elijah, could call down fire from Heaven upon their sacrificial offerings.
Seraphim
