What is the difference? (beliefs, churches, dogma, Holy Spirit, worship)

[James the Persian]

Originally Posted by jimbob

Back to the telon's question. The main difference is that back in the 1400's or 1500's, (forgive me if i can't remember the right date) luther broke off from the catholic church and started his own religion, that followed many procedures of the Catholic Church. Up till then, the only christian church, was the Catholic church, which had been instituted by Christ. Later, Calvin broke up too. From Luther and Calvin, came all the protestant churches that are now here. They may not be lutheran or calvin, but the majority of protestant churches have evolved from the original protestant churches.

Prior to the Reformation, there was not only one Catholic Church. Have you forgotten about Chalcedon and the Great Schism? There are three churches that are often referred to as the Apostolic churches and we all consider ourselves Catholic. There are the Oriental Orthodox who split off because they would not accept the Council of Chalcedon, us Orthodox and you Roman Catholics (we going our separate ways in 1054 over Papal supremacy and the filioque). That last split is about 500 years before Luther. The Roman Catholic church might have been the only pre-Reformation church in western Europe, but it was barely present at all in Eastern Europe, North Africa or the Middle East, where the Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches made up the overwhelming majority of Christians. Please try not to have such a skewed, western centric view of Church history.
All three churches are much closer in belief and practice to each other than we are to the Protestants, however, as I pointed out in my last post, which just goes to show that the vast majority of Christians now and throughout history have believed in doctrines condemned by Protestants (such as the veneration of saints) - it is the Protestant position, not the Catholic one, that is unsupported by Church history and that springs from a few men in 16th century western Europe rather than the teachings of the Apostles.

James