Posted by Ibrahim on April 23, 2002 at 12:12:05:
In Reply to: It's thanks to ignorant people that people are ignorant posted by Evanthia on April 22, 2002 at 01:20:30:
I have to take issue with the comments you made.
The Orthodox Church was not the foundation of Western Christianity. Basically, the Catholic and Orthodox Churches evolved
from the same root, and split into their respective churches at the time of the Schism. By the same logic on could (falsely) claim
that the Catholic Church was the foundation of the Orthodoxy. In its turn, Protestantism, the other main arm of Western
Christianity, was born as a reaction to Catholicism. Orthodoxy played no part in this crucial development.
Also in other spheres the influence of the Orthodox Church on Western civilization is just about zero. It is a plain absurdity to
claim that a fundamental and unique cultural flowering such as the Renaissance was in any way influenced by the Orthodox
Church. You claim that Orthodoxy was the "hand that fed" the West, that western Europeans are a product of the Orthodox
Church. I say this is baloney. In the development of Western civilization
Orthodoxy was nothing more than irrelevant. Western civilization owes a great deal to Greek culture, but nothing at all
to Orthodoxy.