The Catholic Church, founded by our Lord Jesus Christ, spread from the beginning throughout the East, thanks to the preaching of the Apostles who shed their blood for it.
Newsdesk (Gaudium Press) The Fathers of the Eastern Church wrote excellent works that glorified the Bride of Christ. Among them, St. John Chrysostom, Patriarch of Constantinople (now Istanbul), capital of Byzantium, located between the Marmara and the Black Seas, shone in a special way in one of the most beautiful panoramas in the world.
But in Constantinople, in the middle of the 11th century, a terrible event broke out: the Schism of the East, which divided the Church of God.
It is a well-known saying nemo summum fit repenter – nothing great is done suddenly. Thus, this event had various antecedents, which we will summarize below.
Caesaropapism, Arianism, Photius
The Emperor Constantine, who in 327 transferred the capital of the Empire from Rome to Constantinople, defended the nefarious doctrine of Caesaropapism, according to which Caesar, that is, the State, should have the supreme government of the Church.
At that time, the heresy of Arianism also arose, which denied the Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ; it spread throughout the world and obtained important followers in the East.
Dr. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira comments:
“In general the emperors of Byzantium gave support to the Arians. The reason was that those potentates wanted to rule the Church, and the Arian bishops were willing to accept that, while in the Catholic Church they could not rule, because according to Catholic doctrine the Church is a perfect and sovereign society, that is, in its own sphere – which is the spiritual, and the temporal, in matters of Faith and Morals – nobody rules over it.
In the 8th century, the sect of Iconoclasm – which ordered the destruction of religious images – was propounded by emperors of the East.
Some time later, Photius, having supported the immoral life of the Emperor of Byzantium, became Patriarch of Constantinople. He advocated a heresy concerning the Holy Trinity and openly rebelled against the papacy. He was excommunicated by St. Nicholas I in 880.
Michael Cerularius
In Constantinople, which was so spiritually rotten, a terrible blow was struck in 1054: the Schism of the East.
He received this surname because, although he came from a senatorial family, he was guardian of the tapers that the faithful bought to be blessed and taken to the churches.
Intent on taking the throne of Byzantium, Cerularius led a conspiracy against the emperor, but was defeated and sentenced to deportation with his brother, who committed suicide in prison. He managed to be released, became a monk and became an advisor to a new emperor.
In 1043, the Patriarch of Constantinople died, and the emperor appointed Cerularius to occupy the vacant seat; he was then ordained a priest and assumed the office without the Pope’s approval.
Cerularius, repeating the errors of Photius, rebelled against the Pontiff and began to advocate, among other errors, the abolition of priestly celibacy. Thus we see how he was moved by pride, which opposes inequality, and by sensuality, which rejects purity.
Pope Saint Leo IX, in 1054, sent legates to Constantinople in order to hold talks with Cerularius, but the latter would not receive them. They then went to the crowded Basilica of St. Sophia; the head of the papal embassy, who was a cardinal, explained Cerularis’ attitudes to the people and placed on the high altar the bull of excommunication against him. As they withdrew, the legates shook the dust from their shoes, shouting, “May God see and judge us!”
Then the legates published a text, excommunicating anyone who received Communion from the hands of a cleric advocating the heresies and errors propounded by the impious Cerularius.
A few weeks later, Cerularius presented himself to the people claiming that he was the “only representative of the true religion of Christ”[2].
Ever driven by pride, he sought to dominate the emperor himself, who exiled him to a remote island in the Sea of Marmara where he died in 1058.
False label
Thus arose the so-called “Orthodox Church”, which spread to Russia and other Eastern countries. Concerning this title, Dr. Plinio wrote:
“The denomination ‘Orthodox’, with which the Russian Church and other Eastern branches separated from Rome are presented and by which they are generally known, has no reason to exist: it is a false label, as dangerously false as a glass of poison on which was written ‘Rose Water’. […]
“Indeed, the word ‘orthodox’ means right opinion, that which is in possession of the truth. But the separated East is wrong, for the reason that it does not accept the supremacy of the Pope; and if they are wrong, they cannot be Orthodox.
“Orthodox, in the true sense of the word, are we who profess the true Faith, which is taught only by the Holy Roman Catholic Apostolic Church, the only legitimate one.”[3]
“In reality they are heterodox, or more clearly, heretics. In fact, whoever denies the dogma of pontifical infallibility is nothing but a heretic.”[4]
“Orthodox” Church in Communist Russia
The Byzantines created great difficulties for the Crusaders who were moved by the sublime desire to liberate the Holy Land, dominated by the Mohammedans. During the Fourth Crusade, the Catholics took Constantinople in 1204 and established a Latin Empire with the aim of uniting the “Orthodox” to the true Church. But this Latin Empire, troubled by various disagreements, was destroyed by the emperor of Byzantium Michael Paleologus in 1261.
In 1448, the “Orthodox” Church in Russia split from the one based in Constantinople. The Turks having conquered that capital in 1453, that of Russia achieved primacy.
“The Schism of the East had only two causes. One, the arrogance of the Byzantines who could not bear that Rome in the West should direct religious life. The other was the unspeakable collusion with the greatest enemy of Christianity at that time: Islam. Many were the disastrous consequences of the Schism, but two are the principal ones: the fall of the Byzantine Empire to the Turks and the establishment of Communism in Russia.
When Communism overtook Russia in 1917, the “Orthodox” were persecuted. But after the détente promoted by the dictator Stalin in 1939, the “Orthodox” Church began to collaborate “with communism, raising a ‘crusade’, fulminating ‘excommunications’ against the anti-communists. […] It began to be a mere propaganda department of the Communists, inside and outside Russia.”[6]
By Paulo Francisco Martos
Notions of Church History
[1] CORRÊA DE OLIVEIRA, Plinio. “God desires pomp within the Church”. In Dr. Plinio. São Paulo. Year XXIII, n. 262 (January 2020), p. 24
[2] DANIEL-ROPS, Henri. The Church in Barbaric Times. São Paulo: Quadrante. 1991, v. II, p. 521.
[3] CORRÊA DE OLIVEIRA, Plinio. Legionário, São Paulo 26-4-1942.
[4] Idem. Legionário, May 30, 1943.
[5] Idem, ibidem.
[6] Idem, Folha de São Paulo, 3-10-1971.
Compiled by Roberta MacEwan
