Greek Catholic Church

“ But all the Catholic powers that are in any way concerned in the matter are the leading influence in the business to check the growing power of the Greek Church; hence it is a religious war. But the men to whose ancestors God has given Priesthood, and to whom in the last days the privilege of receiving it has been conferred, have been abroad, and published the principles of salvation, and the voice of the Prophet of God to the world, and now the nations are left to wrangle with and destroy each other. ”

“ In his knowledge of Greek he was surpassed by few of his contemporaries, and in the purity and ease of his Latin style he stood without a serious rival. Like many others of the Humanist school he delighted in attacking the ignorance of the monks and Scholastics, and in denouncing the abuses of the age, though, as was the case with most of the literary reformers of the time, his own life as an ecclesiastic was far from exemplary. ”

“ No doubt, if the Church of England and the Episcopal Church of the United States could make a combination with the Greek Church, on the basis of the Oriental standards of doctrine, it would be the most formidable rival possible to the Catholic Church. But such a union is impossible. The Providence of God does not permit heresy and schism to assume the attitude of Catholicity, but compels them to manifest their true character by disintegration. {53} And here lies another mark of the inconsistency of the theory of those who set up this claim of rival Catholicity against Rome. ”

“ The national pride of the Greeks had also created an aversion to foreigners, and made it difficult for such to gain their confidence, or awaken their gratitude by acts of benevolence. Then there were the arrogant assumptions of the Greek Church, more exclusive than the Roman, claiming for her clergy the only apostolical succession, and that her trine immersion, performed by her clergy, was the only baptism, while all not thus baptized were beyond the hope of salvation. Of course all Protestant preachers, whether episcopal or non-episcopal, were regarded by the Greeks as unbaptized heretics. ”

“ Until recent years we have had so few Greek Christians in the United States that it is hard for us to appreciate what the Greek Church means. It is one of the strong churches of the world. It has altogether about one hundred and twenty million members, or one fifth of all the Christians on earth, and more than two thirds as many as all the Protestants. ”

“ But the commonest charge levelled against the Greek Church is that of being non-missionary; and the charge which is so utterly untrue, is deemed sufficient to relegate her to the limbo of the effete and worthless. The truth is, that the missionary zeal, and activity of that Church, are among the most outstanding features of her history; and when we consider the terrible odds against which she has had to contend, both in Europe and Asia, we wonder at the success that has been achieved. ”

“ Nothing in the mode of worship distinguishes the Greek from the Roman Catholic. I would not speak with confidence, but it appeared to me that the people were more deeply religious than they are in Roman Catholic countries. It is not, as with the people in Italy and Spain, and more especially in France, merely a matter of form to be gone through with, and that the end of it. In the Romish cathedrals, it was rare that I could get into sympathy with the worshippers so as to feel devotional in a service foreign from that with which I was familiar. ”

“ Now, by a judgment of God, which is the chastisement of a fault of centuries, the Greek clergy are despised. They are despised not only by the unbeliever but by the believer; they are despised by the penitent whose confessions they hear, by the purified Christians to whom they give the body and blood of their God. This contempt is striking and universal; the pope or Greek priest bears it on his forehead as an avenging sign, and even the kiss of the Czar confirms and enlarges it. ”

“ All the clergy are "popes" in the Greek Church and the lower clergy are permitted to marry. The Greek Church gives and the Roman Church withholds the communion wine from the laity. The Greek Church uses leavened, and the Roman Church unleavened bread in the Eucharist. The Greek Church holds to the trine immersion in baptism, repetition of Holy Unction in illness, and infant communion. There is a difference in rites of worship, in language, in art, in architecture, and in the vestments employed. But both hold the fundamentals in the Nicene Creed ”

“ Think of the mighty task laid upon the Church to keep abreast of such a growth, and at the same time to keep the Faith alive in the mass,—for the great majority of this vast population are attached to the Orthodox Church. And this is the task to which the Greek Church addresses herself, to carry the blessings of Christianity to the farthest Russian outpost, and to keep the flame alive where it has already been kindled. ”

“ No; a faith created by political interests would never be a real and solid faith, and other political interests would cause it to be cast aside as easily as it had been accepted; it is the tree which the Father has not planted, and which will be rooted up. Besides, history proves it. More than once have the Greeks momentarily reunited themselves to the Catholic Church ”

“ The symbol of faith of the Greek Church, or the Nicene creed, they not only respect, but confess all that it contains to be truth; they merely, however, assign it a place among their common psalms.
They do not consider it to be essential to salvation, that a man should be a member of their society; they say, that it is necessary only to understand the ways of the Lord, and to walk in them, and to fulfil his will, for this is the way of salvation. ”

“ Like the Roman Christian, he believes in the divinity of the Virgin Mary, and consequently he is an idolater and no idolater can be admitted into the kingdom of 'Heaven." So away goes the old Greek Church, with her seventy million disciples, down into the world of endless woe, if the testimony of our Presbyterian brother is to be relied upon. And thus two-thirds of all Christendom, comprising the disciples of the Romish Church and the Greek Church, are doomed to an endless hell, according to their own witnesses. ”

“ Such questions as they cannot solve for themselves they reserve, until some one who can, passes through their village. They have become fully aware, by their study of the New Testament, that the Greek Church is not the one established by the Apostles. One of their earnest questions was, 'Can we find salvation in the Greek Church?' We found one enlightened priest in this village, and spent a half day conversing with him. ”

“ Refusing images, but clinging to pictures; allowing the Scriptures to the common people, but discouraging their use of the same; with an unmarried hierarchy of some education, and a married secular clergy of none,—the Greek church seems to me to be too flatly in contradiction with itself and with the spirit of the age to maintain long a social supremacy, a moral efficiency. ”

“ He told the bishop that he was convinced that the teaching and practice of the Greek Church were not in harmony with the gospel, and that he had decided to follow the teaching of God rather than that of men, but that he was ready to hear anything the bishop had to say to convince him that he was mistaken. The bishop began to read him a controversial tract recently prepared against the Protestant doctrine. ”

“ The cult of holy wells forms a chapter by itself in the observances of the Greek Church. This cult has an exceptional interest for those who have been touched by the classic influence, as offering one of the most visible points at which Christianity turned to its own use the customs of paganism. An ἁγίασμα, an áyazma as the Greeks colloquially call it, is nothing more or less than the sacred [337] fount of antiquity. ”

“ While the Roman Church attached most importance to its Catholicity and to the necessity of propagating the faith, the Greek Church always prided itself rather on its Orthodoxy. If the question were whether the empire was Christian, and if the test of being a Christian nation were the jealous guardianship of every dogma in the precise manner that it had been formulated by the Councils of the Church, then the Orthodox Church, to which the inhabitants of the capital and empire belonged, would take a very high rank among Christian nations. ”

“ The Greek Church has always gloried in her orthodoxy; she has more reason to be proud of her very existence, more ground for congratulation in the fact that she has not been worn down by the continuous friction of centuries of abuse and contempt. ”

“ A complete history of Greek religion ought, without doubt, to include at least the rise of Christianity and the growth of the Orthodox Church, but, of course, the present series of studies does not aim at completeness. We will take the Christian theology for granted as we took the classical Greek philosophy, and will finish with a brief glance at the Pagan reaction of the fourth century, when the old religion, already full of allegory, mysticism, asceticism, and Oriental influences, raised itself for a last indignant stand against the all-prevailing deniers of the gods. ”

“ Still we cannot gainsay the experience that as the religion establishes and organises itself, it draws nourishment from the old soil which is full of the living germs of past organisms. Therefore it was inevitable that Hellenic religion should leave a deep impress upon earlier and later Christianity; partly because the religious temper in the Greek world throughout the centuries immediately preceding the adoption of Christianity was more powerful and fervid than it had been in the days of Homer or Pericles, and mainly because Hellenic converts became the pillars of the Church. ”

“ They have not been improved for centuries, but the peasants are not unhappy or discontented and they do not know that their condition could be bettered. The Greek priests keep them in order and exercise a similar influence to that of the Roman Catholic clergy in Ireland and Italy, and while they have the credit of being honest and earnest, most of them are uneducated and some are actually illiterate. ”

“ The Greek bishops themselves who were established in their sees under the old regime, manifested by their open or tacit concurrence in the revolution that virtue had not completely died out under the pressure of a long slavery. Since the establishment of Grecian independence, the measures they have taken, in concert with the other members of the higher secular and monastic clergy and the government, for the amelioration of religion, are such as to reflect honor on themselves, and to give great promise for the future. ”

“ For illustration we need not fall back upon the past history of the Greek Church; even to-day she has not succeeded in living down the consequences of her [47] whilom policy of conciliation. The common-folk indeed profess and call themselves Christian; their priesthood is a Christian priesthood; their places of worship are Christian churches; they make the sign of the cross at every turn ”

“ Thus it was that Christian philosophy encountered Greek philosophy on the summit of Mars’ Hill, and silenced and dethroned it; and during twenty centuries thus has it silenced and dethroned every system that has come in conflict with it; and although its supremacy has been constantly disputed, it still remains supreme in the domain of reason and of truth. In cultivated Athens we behold the highest point to which unaided human reason can attain, and it is in cultivated Athens that we first find Christianity asserting its claim to be the gospel of reason as well as of faith. ”

“ The Greek Church held the worst errors of Popery, such as transubstantiation, worshipping the Virgin Mary, praying to saints, baptismal regeneration, and the inherent efficacy of ordinances to save the soul. The power of excommunication in the hands of the priests, was regarded by the people with extreme dread, as sealing the soul over to perdition; and believing, as they did, that salvation is certain in the Church, and nowhere else, they regarded every attempt at innovation as an attack upon their dearest interests, and resisted it with persecution, or turned away with disgust and scorn. ”

“ The soul goes out to him who heareth prayer for those who are bowing down to stocks and stones. And he whom they ignorantly worship I would find in their temples, for the way to him is through the open door in the side of his crucified Son. But the Roman Catholics do not get so near to God as these Greek Christians do, for the former seem to be so much engrossed with saints and the mother of Jesus, that they lose the joy and blessedness of coming right to Christ, who is in the Father, and by whom they are saved. ”

“ The orthodox Church of Greece, acknowledging our Lord Jesus Christ as its head, is perpetually united in dogma with the great Church of Constantinople and every other church holding the same dogmas, preserving, as they do, immutably the holy canons of the apostles and councils, and the sacred traditions. Nevertheless, it is autocephalous, exercising independently of every other church its rights of jurisdiction, and is administered by a sacred college of bishops. ”

“ Knowing the strong religious convictions of the Empress and the inborn characteristics of both classes, the Revolutionaries found in Rasputin a fitting agent of Imperial destruction.
The Greek Church is the most mediæval of religions ... it is quite harmless, so to speak, when modern conditions are not introduced into its practice; but modernity, ever a fatal element in religion, is especially fatal to the Greek Church. ”