In the ancient years, prior A.D 1054, there existed a single monolithic Christian church. During A.D 1054, there was an excommunication on the idea of the trinity between the patriarch of Constantinople and the pope; this resulted in a great schism (Lynch &Adamo, 2014). The Catholics emphasized on Trinity unity whereas the Orthodox claimed the personhood distinction of the Trinity. The great schism denotes a period in which the single Christian church separated into two core groups: the West Catholic Church and the East Orthodox Church. The two denominations share a significant number of beliefs and practices but also vary in some practices. The Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox Church co-share various core beliefs. Both doctrines believe in Jesus Christ divine power. They also believe that Jesus Christ died and resurrected as well as His virginal birth.
The Bible is a holy scripture both in the orthodox and catholic church. Nevertheless, their approaches to this holy book do differs. In Orthodox Church, its followers use the liturgical and patristic methods. Liturgical involves the art of reading short scriptures from the bible in a preset cycle such as daily or weekly (Parkes, 2015). Patristic scripture interpretation approach combines strategies of intensive reading, allegorical and typological understanding that leads to the location of connecting points between a wide range of moral, intellectual, mystical topics and the scriptural passages. The Catholics majorly uses the liturgical and the divine reading approaches. Divine reading (LectioDivina) treats the Scripture as a living word, and it combines the art of reading, prayer, and meditation.
Both the Orthodox n the Catholic Church use religious arts as a teaching aid to help the Christians to grasp the lessons effectively. However, religious arts subscribed by the Catholic and the Orthodox churches also differs. For instance, there is a significant difference in the spiritual arts of Baroque and Renaissance. The orthodox arts adopt a characteristic style of non-naturalistic representation. Orthodox arts lack human sense features. The Catholic Church adopts a naturalistic representation of Renaissance with core human sense organs.
Symbols are part and parcel of the two religious groups. The symbols play a paramount role in the religious groups as they are core objects of thoughts and prayers. The Catholic specific symbols include the crucifix, pelican (symbol of Eucharist), cross, sacred heart (symbol of Jesus love to humans, Fleur-De-Lis, Fish (symbol of Christianity), crossed keys (symbol of papacy), CHI-RHO, the dove, the lamb, and the Dominican dog (Martin, 2016). The orthodox specific symbols are the all seeing eye, ark, candle, chalice and cross, dove, fish, grapes, lamb, Lily, olive branch, peacock, phoenix, shamrock, ship, triquetrous, wheat, and the ten commandments.
The Orthodox shares similar religious rituals with the Catholic. Baptism is one of the most common rituals exercised by the catholic and orthodox faith (Edles, 2016). Also, both religious groups exercise a confirmation exercise: also known as Chrismation. Moreover, they both (the orthodox and the catholic) do perform Eucharist and confession exercises. Although these two groups of faith share the same rituals, the material aspect of the rituals slightly varies. For instance, the Orthodox applies a complete immersion baptism protocol whereas the Catholics do not exercise the immersion protocol.
References
Edles, L. D. (2016). Sociology of Religion and Beliefs. The SAGE Handbook of Cultural
Sociology, 357.
Lynch, J. H., & Adamo, P. C. (2014). The medieval church: a brief history. Routledge.
Martin, K. J. (Ed.). (2016). Indigenous symbols and practices in the Catholic Church: visual
culture, missionization and appropriation. Routledge.
Parkes, H. (2015). The Making of Liturgy in the Ottonian Church (Vol. 100). Cambridge
