Eastern Orthodoxy and Evangelization

[Michael Wilson]

Aethel,

inally, it's also worth pointing out that you are assuming Modernist cultural ideas regarding multiculturalism which wasn't always the norm in even Western Europe's history. Ever heard of St. Joan of Arc? I'm sure there was a war going on between English and French people, and they didn't like each other.

The 100 years war, was not strictly speaking a war between the English and the French, but between a disputed dynastic claim in which English and their French/Burgundian allies were on one side and the French were on the other.

When Roman Catholicism only used Greek and Latin, did that nullify Rome's Catholicity because it didn't include the Chinese or the Ethiopians? No.

No. The Catholicity isn't essentially about language, but about the Church uniting all men regardless of ethnicity or nationality in one religion, all professing the same doctrine and obeying the same head. The unity of liturgical language helped to illustrate or make this unity more explicit; and it also helped to unite peoples with different languages such as in Africa, were several different ethnic and linguistic groups live within a relatively small area.

Catholics need better apologetics, especially if they want to attract more intellectual and talented people to their Church. The Orthodox have better apologetics because Catholic apologetics tend to be cliche, mundane, and fallacious: you have to go out of your way, usually in the Byzantine Catholic bookstores, to find good apologetics for Rome and Church history. Byzantine Catholics are typically familiar with Orthodox arguments.

Hardly. The Catholic Church has always had its share of both great intellectuals and excellent apologetics.