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GLENDALE, ARZIONA
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Due to a variety of complex circumstances, the Western church, known today as the "Roman Catholic Church," split from the Eastern Orthodox Patriarchates of Constantinople, Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch in the 11th century. Roman Catholics, however, see it from the opposite perspective, namely that the Orthodox Church broke communion with the Roman Catholic Church.
We Orthodox believe that we are the continuation of the ancient Orthodox Christian Church, that we trace our history back to Christ and the apostles, and that the Church was "formally" established on the day of Pentecost. The Roman Catholic Church placed itself outside of this fellowship when it broke off communion with us in the 11th century.
Then, the Protestant Reformation was a movement in the 16th century to reform the Catholic Church in Western Europe. The Reformation was started by Martin Luther with his 95 Theses on the practice of indulgences (an indulgence is the remission granted by the Church of the temporal punishment due to sins already forgiven by God. Opposition to the granting of indulgences was one topic of Martin Luther's 95 Theses which sparked the Protestant Reformation in 1517). In late October of 1517 he posted these theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, commonly used to post notices to the University community. In November he mailed them to various religious authorities of the day. The reformation ended in division and the establishment of new institutions. The four most important traditions to emerge directly from the reformation were the Lutheran tradition, the Reformed/Calvinist, or Presbyterian tradition, the Anabapist (Baptist) tradition, and the Anglican tradition. Subsequent protestant traditions (Methodist, Episcopal, Pentecostal, Charismatic) generally trace their roots back to these initial four schools of the reformation.
The Orthodox Church today is an invaluable treasury of the rich liturgical tradition handed down from the earliest centuries of Christianity. The sense of the sacred, the beauty and grandeur of the Orthodox Divine Liturgy make the presence of heaven on earth live and intensive. Orthodox Church art and music have a very functional role in liturgical life and help even the bodily senses to feel the spiritual grandeur of the Lord's mysteries. Orthodox icons are not simply beautiful works of art which have certain aesthetic and didactic functions. They are primarily the means through which we experience the reality of the Heavenly Kingdom on earth. The holy icons enshrine the immeasurable depth of the mystery of Christ's Incarnation in defense of which thousands of martyrs sacrificed their lives.
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