The Living Tradition An Orthodox Archive of the Church Fathers and Early Church

For Catholic readers

For readers coming from the Catholic Church

The two Churches share the first millennium, seven councils, the same sacraments, the same Creed apart from four words, and a great deal else. This track sets out where the real disagreements lie, using the texts both Churches inherit, and says plainly where this site cannot yet state the Catholic side in Catholic words.

  • Historical consensusBroadly agreed among historians working from the surviving evidence. Consensus can shift when the evidence or the method changes.

Awaiting official-source verification Content last reviewed 2026-09-04

What still needs checking (3)
  • Obtain the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Vatican I's Pastor Aeternus and Vatican II's Lumen Gentium and Dei Verbum, without which no page here can state Catholic teaching in Catholic words.
  • Obtain the 1965 Joint Catholic-Orthodox Declaration, which is the document readers most often ask about in connection with 1054.
  • Obtain an OCA or other official Orthodox statement on relations with the Roman Catholic Church, so this track carries a tier A or B route.

Report an accuracy issue on this page

If you are Catholic, most of what you believe is what an Orthodox Christian believes. The Trinity, the Incarnation, the two natures of Christ, the Theotokos, seven sacraments, the real presence in the Eucharist, apostolic succession, prayer for the departed, the veneration of saints and their images, monasticism, the seven councils: all shared. It is worth saying that first, because comparative pages usually do not.

What follows is not a list of reasons to leave anything. It is an attempt to state the actual disagreements accurately, which is harder than it sounds and is done badly on both sides of the internet.

Topics

  1. The Filioque Does the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father, or from the Father and the Son?
  2. Primacy, and how the Church decides Does the bishop of Rome hold universal jurisdiction over the whole Church, or a primacy of honour among equals?
  3. Whether doctrine develops Can the Church come to define as dogma something the early Church did not articulate?

Not yet covered

These belong in this track and are not here. They are listed so that their absence is a stated gap rather than a silent one, and so that nobody mistakes this for a complete account.

  • Purgatory, and the difference between praying for the departed and a defined state of purification
  • The Immaculate Conception, which requires stating both the Catholic definition and the different Orthodox account of ancestral sin
  • The Assumption and the Dormition, where the practice is close and the dogmatic status differs
  • Leavened and unleavened bread, and why a matter of rite became a matter of dispute
  • Clerical celibacy and married priesthood
  • Created and uncreated grace, and the essence-energies distinction

Sources for this page

  1. Tier C The Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Undivided Church Henry R. Percival (ed.); Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (series eds.) The Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Undivided Church annotated edition of conciliar texts The shared conciliar inheritance on which this track is built. Source record

Tiers are explained in the methodology. No page on this site has been reviewed or approved by any bishop, priest, synod or seminary.