Orthodox and Catholic

What you'll notice

If you grew up Catholic, you'll know where you are within five minutes, which is its own kind of disorienting. There's a priest in vestments at an altar facing east. There are candles, incense, a Gospel book kissed and carried, a creed, an offertory, a great prayer of consecration, and a line for Communion. You know the shape of this. You could probably mark the moment the Mass would say "Lift up your hearts," and you'd be right. Then come the small surprises. The bread is leavened. Communion comes on a spoon, bread and wine together. A toddler in front of you receives. The priest's wife is in the third row with their four kids. Nobody mentions the pope, and the Creed is missing three words you've said your whole life.

Close cousins. Same family resemblance, different houses.

What it's called

Both churches claim both words. The Creed calls the Church "one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church,"¹ and the Orthodox say it every Sunday and mean "catholic" as much as Rome does. Hapgood's 1906 service book is titled for the "Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church."² In ordinary English, "Catholic" means the Roman Catholic Church, in communion with the pope. That includes the Latin Church you probably grew up in and the Eastern Catholic Churches, some of which pray the very Liturgy in this guide (Who Are the Orthodox? describes them). Catholics call their Sunday Eucharist the Mass; the Orthodox call theirs the Divine Liturgy. A Note on Words has the story of both names.

What's actually happening

What we share

More than either side usually remembers. Seven sacraments, or Mysteries (the Church's sacraments), with the Eucharist at the center and the bread and wine believed to become the Body and Blood of Christ. Bishops in apostolic succession, with priests and deacons serving under them. The first seven ecumenical councils and the Creed they handed down. The Fathers, from Ignatius and Irenaeus through Basil, Gregory, and Chrysostom, read as common inheritance. Honor for Mary as the Mother of God (Ephesus, 431), prayer to the saints, icons and relics, and prayer for the dead. A Catholic who walks into an Orthodox church isn't a visitor from another religion. They're a relative with a different last name.

Where we differ

Named plainly, and in the Catholic Church's own words where it has them.

The papacy. Catholics hold that the pope, as Peter's successor, is "the perpetual and visible source and foundation of the unity" of the Church, with full, supreme, and universal power over it.³ The Orthodox honor the bishop of Rome as having held, historically, the first place among the ancient patriarchates, a primacy of honor. They don't believe that primacy carries universal jurisdiction or the power to define doctrine for the whole Church.⁴ The Orthodox decide the big questions the way the first councils did, with bishops together. Rome's voice mattered at those councils: popes generally didn't attend in person, but they sent legates who took full part, and Pope Leo's letter to Flavian, the Tome, was read and acclaimed at Chalcedon in 451. What the Orthodox don't see in the councils is a pope whose word settles the matter on its own.

The filioque. The Creed of 381 says the Holy Spirit "proceeds from the Father" (John 15:26). The Latin West later added "and the Son," the filioque. The Catholic Catechism itself notes that the phrase does not appear in the Creed confessed in 381, and treats the Eastern and Western formulations as complementary.⁵ The Orthodox object on two grounds: the theology, and the principle that one part of the Church shouldn't change the whole Church's creed by itself. The Creed stop has the short version.

Purgatory and indulgences. Catholics teach a "final purification of the elect" after death, called purgatory, and indulgences connected with the sacrament of Penance.⁶ The Orthodox pray for the dead too, every Sunday, but they haven't defined a place or process of purification, and they don't have indulgences. Where Catholic teaching is precise, Orthodox teaching is deliberately reticent; What Happens After Death? maps it.

The Immaculate Conception. Catholic dogma since 1854 holds that Mary was preserved from original sin from her conception.⁷ The Orthodox call her all-holy but don't hold this as dogma; Mary and the Saints explains why.

Smaller things that aren't small to anyone who lives them. The Latin Church uses unleavened bread; the Orthodox use leavened.⁸ Latin priests are normally celibate; Orthodox parish priests are usually married, and bishops come from the celibate clergy. The Catechism notes the Eastern discipline with respect.⁹ Orthodox infants receive Communion from their baptism, while Latin Catholics usually make First Communion around age seven.

Why it matters

For the Orthodox, sharing the cup is the sign of a unity that already exists, not a tool for building one. Two churches that disagree about who has the last word in the Church can't yet stand at one altar as if they didn't. That's why a Catholic who feels completely at home at an Orthodox Liturgy is still asked not to receive. Can I Take Communion? explains why.

The differences also aren't a list of one missing item. If you've heard that Orthodoxy is just Catholicism without a pope, the myth entry takes it apart.

Where it came from

The two churches were one communion for a thousand years and came apart slowly. Language drifted, Latin in the West and Greek in the East; the papacy and the filioque became sharper questions; the mutual excommunications of 1054 named individuals, not churches; and the sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204 did more damage than any bull. Reunion councils at Lyon (1274) and Florence (1438–39) were rejected by the Orthodox at home. On December 7, 1965, Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras lifted the excommunications of 1054 from the Church's memory.¹⁰ It didn't end the schism. It did end the habit of treating each other as excommunicated. The full story is in A Short History.

What you do

If you're Orthodox: when a Catholic friend visits, start with what you share before you get to the differences. Don't argue the filioque in the narthex. If they ask about Communion, be honest and kind, and point them to the page that explains it.

If you're visiting: you're welcome, and you'll be more at home than most first-timers. If your first question is "so where's the pope?", the myth entry answers it, and this page lists the rest. Communion is reserved for Orthodox Christians, for reasons Can I Take Communion? explains. The blessed bread at the end is offered to visitors in most parishes; The Cross and the Bread says how.

Go deeper

• John 15:26 and John 17:20–23.
• Catechism of the Catholic Church 246–248, 880–882, and 1030–1032, read in its own words.
• Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church, the chapter on the Great Schism.
• The Catholic-Orthodox Joint Declaration of December 7, 1965.

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