AboutMarco Expertise I am a catholic physicist and I am married with four children. I can give a scientific
proof of the existence of the soul. I am very interested in the following issues: faith
and science, rational proof of the existence of God, christianity versus other religions,
the Bible, protestantism versus catholicism, miracles. Probably you will find interesting
my answers to questions such as: "How can I know that God exist?", "How can I know that
catholicism is the true religion?", "Why does evil exist?", "Who created evil?", "Why does
Hell exist?", "Why did Jesus have to suffer on the Cross?" , "If God knows everything,
why did He create those souls who go to Hell?"
Question What is the official RCC view of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Is there salvation in her?
You say the RCC is the true Church, where does this leave Orthodoxy? Are there two true Churches?
Answer Dear Michael,
as a catholic, I believe that also non-catholics can go to heaven; this is true for people of different religions, so it is certainly true for Eastern Orthodox. Let me discuss brifly the problem of salvation of non-catholics.
First of all, I would like to point out that some people may not be catholic because they have never known catholicism; some people may have in their heart a good concept of God, but they do not know that the God they believe in is the God of the Catholic Church.
In heaven there are only catholics, but most of us will not go directly to heaven; we will pass through Purgatory; Purgatory is an addictional phase in the afterlife, necessary for those who die without being perfectly sanctified.
Nobody can in fact go to heaven without being perfectly sanctified.
God loves us infinitely and He desires to lead each of us to the eternal life and to the true happiness. But God is perfectly Holy and Good; God cannot tolerate evil because evil is uncompatible with His good and holy nature.
So, we cannot go to heaven as long as we are not completely purified from our sins and sanctified.
Our sanctifcation is necessary for us to go to heaven.
God desires to sanctify us, but He has given us a free-will, so God needs our consent in order to purify and sanctify us. God respects our choices and therefore God cannot santify those who do not want to be sanctified and purified, those who do not want to stop sinning, those who do not want to live a holy life.
These are those who go to hell.
So, those non-catholics who truly love God in their heart (even if they do not know that the God they love is the God of the Catholic Church) will go to Purgatory and in Purgatory they will understand that the God they love is the God of the Catholic Church.
I would like to report some verses from the Bible.
I Timothy 4:10 (and for this we labor and strive), that we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, and ESPECIALLY of those who believe.
(My emphasis). The implication here is that there is also salvation for those who do not believe.
1 Pe 1:17 And if you address as Father the one who without partiality judges according to every man's work, then pass the time of your stay on earth in reverent fear.
Jesus says that only those who DO the will of God shall go to heaven:
Mt 7:21 Not every one who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
7:23 And then I will declare to them, I never knew you: depart from me, you who work iniquity.
Observe that Jesus says "depart from me you who work iniquity" and NOT "depart from me you who do not believe".
Besides Jesus repeatedly said that those who keep His commandments are those who love Him;
John 14:15 If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
14:21 He who has my commandments, and keeps them, he it is who loves me: and he who loves me shall be loved by my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.
14:23 Jesus answered and said to him, If a man loves me, he will keep my word: and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our abode with him.
Nobody can go the the Father but by Christ; this does not mean that those who are led to the Father by Christ are aware of their being led by Christ.
In fact, Christ can lead to the Father also people who never heard about Him, if these people desire to live a holy life.
These people unawarely love Christ, and when they will meet Him in the afterlife, they will know that they have unawarely loved Him.
Also Paul spoke about the possibility to be saved for Gentiles who lived before Christ.
Ro 2:14 For when the Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, though not having the law, are a law to themselves.
2:15 They show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts either accusing or perhaps defending them.)
2:16 On that day God shall judge the secrets of men through Jesus Christ, as my gospel proclaims.
Our salvation does not follow from a formal acceptation of Christ; we must accept Him in our heart; some people may have accepted Him in their heart, even if they have not consciously known Him.
Those who reject Christ will not be saved.
The question is: what does it mean to reject Christ?
Christ said that all those who keep His commandments love Him; if they love Him, it means that they do not reject Him, even if they may have doubts about the catholic faith.
Some people may reject the catholic faith because they have not correctly understood it.
Some people may reject the catholic faith because they have been disinformed
(this is the case of many protestants who reject the catholic faih on the basis of the many false anticatholic prejudices purposely diffused by many protestants).
In other words, the fact that a person rejects the catholic faith does not necessarily implies that he rejects Christ; this person may believe in the true love and the true righteousness, without understanding that this is the christian concept of love and righteousness.
I would like now to report some verses from the Cathechism, where the official teachings of the Church are reported.
846 How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers?[335] Re-formulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body:
Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.[336]
847 This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church:
Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience - those too may achieve eternal salvation.[337]
848 "Although in ways known to himself God can lead those who, through no fault of their own, are ignorant of the Gospel, to that faith without which it is impossible to please him, the Church still has the obligation and also the sacred right to evangelize all men."[338]
I give you a paragraph about the greek scism I have taken from tha Catholic Encyclopedia
at the following link:
The Greek Schism, about which space permits us to say very little (see PHOTIUS; MICHAEL CALUBARIUS), was caused by something that must have seemed trivial at Constantinople. On 23 November, 858, the Patriarch Ignatius was deposed, and on 25 December in the same year Photius succeeded him. Ignatius was deposed because he had refused Communion to the Emperor Bardas, who was living openly in sin with his daughter-in-law. It was not the first time at Byzantium that for more or less lawful actions an orthodox patriarch had been deposed and another appointed in his place. Thus, among other examples, Macedonius II had succeeded Euphemius in 496; John III had succeeded Eutychius in 565; Cyrus had succeeded Callinicus in 706, and John VI had replaced Cyrus in 712, without causing any great commotion. Ignatius might then have let things take their course and waited in his retreat till fortune turned his way once more. This he did not do, and, if he was somewhat lacking in suppleness, his right was incontestable. Once he had refused to consent to his deposition, Pope Nicholas I was bound to uphold him and to condemn Photius, who was an outright usurper. Photius was clever enough to see that a rupture with Rome on this point would not satisfy even the Greeks, so he cast about for another issue. He took, one by one, the many causes for separation that had been in the air for centuries and united them into a body of doctrine; then, confident in his learning and prestige, he decided to give battle. The insertion of the "Filioque" clause in the Creed, the procession of the Holy Ghost ab utroque, etc., were so many reasons which were bound to have their effect upon the leading minds when the question of the separation came up. Then again the popes' acknowledgment of the Frankish kings as Emperors of the West was bound to carry weight in Byzantine political circles. Moreover, it was evident by this time that between the Latin and Greek worlds there existed a chasm which must grow broader with the years. However, the Photius affair was arranged. Ignatius forgave his rival and, it appears, on his death-bed designated him as his successor. Pope John VIII sanctioned this choice, and if subsequent popes excommunicated Photius it was for special reasons not yet sufficiently known.
In 886, Photius was deposed by the Emperor Leo VI, who disliked him, and, between 893 and 901, a reconciliation of the two Churches was effected by Pope John IX and the Patriarch Antonius Cauleas. During the entire tenth century, and the first part of the eleventh, relations between the Roman and the Greek Churches were excellent. There were, no doubt, occasional difficulties, always unavoidable in societies different in customs, speech, and civilization, but we may almost go so far as to say that the union between the Churches was as deep and sincere as it was during the first three centuries of Christianity. Michael Cærularius, however, desired a schism for no other reason, apparently, than to satisfy his pride, and in 1054 he succeeded in making one at the very time when everything seemed to promise a lasting peace. For this purpose he brought forward, besides the theological reasons stated by Photius, many others that Photius had neglected or merely hinted at, and which were judged particularly fitted to catch the popular fancy. The use of azymes, or unleavened bread, in the liturgy, the celibacy imposed on all priests in the West, the warlike manners of Western bishops and priests, the shaven face and the tonsure, the Saturday fast, and other such divergencies of practice were used to discredit the Latin Church. Thoughtful men may not have been misled by these specious arguments, but the mass of the people and the monks were certainly influenced, and at Constantinople it was they who made up public opinion. For this very reason the policy of Michael Cærularius, petty and superficial as it was, was better fitted than that of Photius to bring about permanent results. Indeed, so thoroughly did it cut off the Greek peoples from Rome that since then she has never won them back.
Apart form these historical elements, I would like to give you some considerations about the main differences about the catholic and the orthodox faith.
Catholics assert that Orthodoxy's rejection of the papacy is inconsistent with the nature of the Church through the centuries. No one denies the existence of the papacy in some form in the early period. Orthodoxy, however, regards the authority exercised by popes historically (or which should have been exercised) as simply that of a primacy of honor, rather than a supremacy of jurisdiction over all other bishops and regional churches. To counter that claim, Catholics point to biblical Petrine evidences and the actual wielding of authority by renowned popes such as St. Leo the Great (440-61) and St. Gregory the Great (590-604), honored as saints even by the Orthodox. The papacy, according to Catholic Tradition, is a divinely-instituted office, not merely (as Orthodoxy considers the papacy and Roman supremacy) a political and historical happenstance. Rome was apostolic, and preeminent from the beginning of Christianity, whereas Constantinople (the seat of the Byzantine Empire) was not.
There are some important points about Papacy I would like to point out :
1) Catholic and orthodox bishops have different positions in matter of faith and morals (for example, the indissolubility of marriage).
This fact proves that the apostolic succession is not a sufficient condition to have the Holy Spirit safeguarding the Truth, because the Holy Spirit cannot contradict Himself. We need then an addictional criterion to establish which bishops have this gift and are really teaching the Truth.
2) The Lord gave only to Peter the keys of the kingdom of Heaven, and so the Lord established a special role for one person in the Church.
This is the addictional criterion we need to establish which bishops are teaching the Truth, and they are those bishops who are united to Peter's successor. In fact when Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit (John 16:12-13), He was speaking directly to the apostoles when they were together with Peter, and so this promise is to be considered valid only for those bishops united with the Pope.
3)The fact that Jesus gave the keys of the kingdom of heaven to one person only, means that this role is unique in the Church of Christ.
We may have then only one true successor of Peter. Who received these keys after Peter's death in Rome? I think that the most logical answer is Peter's successor in Rome.
Likewise, Orthodoxy accepts the doctrinal development which occurred in the first eight centuries of the Church, but then allows little of any noteworthiness (with some notable exceptions: see first link below) to take place thereafter. For instance, the filioque, i.e., the doctrine that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, rather than from the Father alone (which the West added to the Nicene Creed), was rejected by the East, and has been considered by the Orthodox a major reason for the enduring schism, yet Catholics would reply that it was a straightforward development of trinitarian theology (one of many accepted by both East and West). Aspects of doctrines such as the Blessed Virgin Mary and purgatory (not defined doctrine, although the Orthodox pray for the dead), which experienced a measure of development in the Middle Ages and after, are not recognized in Orthodoxy. For example, Orthodoxy doesn't define the Marian doctrines of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption, but it should be noted that Orthodox individuals are free to believe these without being deemed "heretical." Catholics feel that Orthodoxy is implicitly denying the notion of the Church (past the eighth century) as the living, developing Body of Christ, continuously led into deeper truth by the Holy Spirit (John 14:26; 16:13-15).
Catholicism and orthodoxy have different positions concerning divorce.
Catholics also believe that Jesus and the Apostles, and ancient Christian Tradition, considered a valid sacramental marriage between two baptized Christians as absolutely indissoluble. An annulment is essentially different from a divorce in that it is the determination (based on a variety of possible reasons) that a valid sacramental marriage never existed. Orthodoxy accepts second and third marriages, in contraddiction with Jesus’ commandments (see the verses reported above about divorce).
I hope this may help,
your brother in Christ,
Marco
PS I think that faith cannot come only from logic, because to have faith in God means to trust and love God.
I think however that logics and science prove the existence of our soul and the existence of God and that there are many rational arguments strongly supporting the christian faith.
The explanation of these aguments is rather long and Allexperts allows only to give short answers. You can find such arguments in the following site
where I analyse the incongruencies of the materialistic conception of the mind, on the basis of our present scientific knowledges about brain and matter.
This analysis points out how the laws of physics prove that the brain cannot generate consciousness, which existence implies the presence in man of a unbiological/unmaterial element. The problem of consciousness is then strictly connected to the one of the existence of the soul and, consequently, the existence of God.
In the first article entitled “Mind and brain...” you can find a general discussion of the mind and brain problem from a scientific point of view.
In the second article entitled “Scientific contraddictions in materialism”
you can find an explanation of the fundamental inconsistencies of the typical arguments used by materialists, such as the concept of emergent, macroscopic or holist property, complexity, information, etc.
In the section called “FAQ: answers to visitors' questions” you can find the answer to many typical questions, such as "Are there any scientifically proved miracles?", "Does the existence of the universe imply the existence of God?", "Can science explain God?", "Can science establish which is the true religion?", "Can science explain consciousness in the future?", and many others.
