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Historical And Theological Issues Surrounding The Catholic And The Orthodox Church

Decent Essays
There was many historical and theological issues surrounding the split between the Catholic and the Orthodox church. There were cultural factors that impacted how the religion was practiced. There was political factors, as per usual politics ruin everything. Aside from all the socio-political reasons the main reason there was a schism was because the east and west disagreed on aspects of religion.
The Great Schism, was the event that divided Christianity into Western (Roman) Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. All though it is normally dated to 1054, when Pope Leo IX and Patriarch Michael I excommunicated each other, the East-West Schism was actually the result of an extended period of estrangement between the two bodies of churches. The primary causes of the Schism were disputes over papal authority. According to Rome the Pope held authority over the four Eastern patriarchs, while the four eastern patriarchs claimed that the primacy of the Patriarch of Rome was only honorary and thus he had authority only over Western Christians,
Cultural differences that separated ancient Greece from ancient Rome still held true for the early Christian church. Language was an important factor in the schism, the entire early Christian world was split almost precisely along the Greek-Latin language boundary. Words, and ideas could not be precisely translated, and words often had multiple meanings in one language views them in another. The language problem was also symbolic of the
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