Sentences with phrase «ecclesiastical unity»

It is often assumed that Protestantism, by disrupting the ecclesiastical unity of Western Europe, was chiefly responsible for the disappearance of that spiritual commonwealth which characterized the Western Europe of the Middle Ages.

Pastor Silleck thinks I have done some quite terrible things» abandon reason, adopt an «unholy posture,» embrace a «neo «gnostic myth,» and «strike a deal with the devil»» because I believe it highly unlikely, in any foreseeable future, that Lutherans and Catholics will achieve ecclesiastical unity.

It was at this moment of common faith and common baptism — akin to the union of spirituality and ethnicity in Judaism — that the ecclesiastical unity was fractured.

Not exact matches

The traditional ecumenical goal, «organic unity» among the churches, has fallen on bad days, largely because it is thought to call for a needless suppression of diversity achieved through a generation or more of ecclesiastical self - preoccupation.

Protestantism made impossible a single ecclesiastical structure for Western Europe, but even had the outward unity of the Church in Western Europe been preserved, it is hard to believe that the Popes, as the spokesmen for that comprehensive body, would have had more voice in international affairs than they actually possessed or that a more effective unity of culture would have been preserved.

Certain matters of ecclesiastical discipline may legitimately vary from place to place; but when one asserts the autonomy of an individual bishop to such an extent that his authority can be exercised against the norms of the universal Church, ultimately one fractures the unity of the Church.