We don’t believe in trying to open the head and dump in knowledge. You can’t gain knowledge of Orthodoxy that way. You might be able to learn some of the garments surrounding Orthodoxy, but not the spirit itself.
Catholics believe in a “beatific vision” that in Heaven we will see God as he truly is. Orthodox call that heresy. God can reach out to us and we can meet him when he reaches out, but it is radically, utterly, and absolutely impossible for us to ever know God as he truly is. Neither our being divine by grace nor our glorification in Heaven can ever overcome God’s absolute transcendence.
Christ is really incarnate in every member of the Church, and the Incarnation is not an anti-natural exception, but the pattern for being Christian. The purpose of being Christian is what Orthodox call “theosis,” or “divinization,” or “deification.”
The Descent of Christ into Hades in Eastern and Western Theological TraditionsBy Bishop Hilarion (Alfeyev) - A lecture delivered at St Mary's Cathedral, Minneapolis, USA, on 5 November 2002
Today, in a country that was officially atheist about two decades ago, there are again hundreds of newspapers, magazines and newsletters covering the world's largest Orthodox church. There are about 3,500 Russian Orthodox Web sites, and some priests are even blogging.
St Innocent (Veniaminov)....While in Spanish California, Veniaminov visited the Franciscan missions along the coast, conversing with the Spanish monks in Latin. In a rare gesture of ecumenical goodwill for the time, Veniaminov even built small pipe organs for at least two of the Catholic missions.
A Good Article to Review: especially with the political power plays of Metropolitan PHILLIP/ ANTIOCH, REDUCING ALL American Antiochian Bishops to auxiliary bishops...
AND the war of words/ "PAPAL OVERTURES" OF THE EP, with claims of authority over all "diaspora" churches, included all those in America; AND Metropolitan JONAH defending the years of work by Orthodox here in America to solve the multiple jurisdictional problems and strive for unity and a canonical American Autocephalous Church
Ecclesiastical Regionalism: Structures of Communion or Cover for Separatism?\nRev. John Meyendorff\nIssues of dialogue with Roman Catholicism. In discussing issues of ecclesiology, the temptation is always great to manipulate concepts and doctrinal definitions, while avoiding a critical approach to their application in practice. It is easy, for example, for an Orthodox theologian to describe the ecclesiology of St. Ignatius of Antioch and to construct an apologetic argument in favor of the contemporary Orthodox position concerning Roman Primacy. But it is more difficult to analyze ecclesiastical institutions - as they developed in East and West - in their existential role of maintaining the faith, shepherding the faithful, and accomplishing the Church's mission in the world.