Eastern Church \Eastern Church\
That portion of the Christian church which prevails in the
countries once comprised in the Eastern Roman Empire and the
countries converted to Christianity by missionaries from
them. Its full official title is The Orthodox Catholic
Apostolic Eastern Church. It became estranged from the
Western, or Roman, Church over the question of papal
supremacy and the doctrine of the filioque, and a separation,
begun in the latter part of the 9th century, became final in
1054. The Eastern Church consists of twelve (thirteen if the
Bulgarian Church be included) mutually independent churches
(including among these the Hellenic Church, or Church of
Greece, and the Russian Church), using the vernacular (or
some ancient form of it) in divine service and varying in
many points of detail, but standing in full communion with
each other and united as equals in a great federation. The
highest five authorities are the patriarch of Constantinople,
or ecumenical patriarch (whose position is not one of
supremacy, but of precedence), the patriarch of Alexandria,
the patriarch of Jerusalem, the patriarch of Antioch, and the
Holy Synod of Russia. The Eastern Church accepts the first
seven ecumenical councils (and is hence styled only
schismatic, not heretical, by the Roman Catholic Church), has
as its creed the Niceno-Constantinopolitan (without the later
addition of the filioque, which, with the doctrine it
represents, the church decisively rejects), baptizes infants
with trine immersion, makes confirmation follow immediately
upon baptism, administers the Communion in both kinds (using
leavened bread) and to infants as well as adults, permits its
secular clergy to marry before ordination and to keep their
wives afterward, but not to marry a second time, selects its
bishops from the monastic clergy only, recognizes the offices
of bishop, priest, and deacon as the three necessary degrees
of orders, venerates relics and icons, and has an elaborate
ritual. See also Greek Church, under Greek.
[Webster 1913 Suppl.]
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