Brian Holdsworth and Myself on Why Not Orthodox

HGL's F.B. writings: If the Church is Very Reduced, the Pope Is at Some Risk of Being Bamboozled by Bigger Actors · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Brian Holdsworth and Myself on Why Not Orthodox

Reconsidering the Eastern Orthodox
Brian Holdsworth | 23 Aug. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4KyyoYFEBY

16:04 You are probably making too big a concession to the Orthodox by tracing the Western view to St. Augustine.

He wasn't a writer prior to being a bishop and in 395 he was made coadjutor.

However in 400, a council in Spain, Toledo I, mentioned the filioque basically "off topic" in a creed (off topic insofar as it's not apparent that Priscillian, whom the council was condemning, was denying it).

If the Church is Very Reduced, the Pope Is at Some Risk of Being Bamboozled by Bigger Actors
https://hglsfbwritings.blogspot.com/2025/06/if-church-is-very-reduced-pope-is-at.html

Concilium Toletanum primum
https://www.benedictus.mgh.de/quellen/chga/chga_043t.htm

Spiritum quoque esse paraclitum, qui nec pater sit ipse, nec filius, sed a patre filioque procedens.

This is before St. Augustine could reasonably have been influential in Toledo.

21:20 I think you overdo the problem in their own ecclesiology.

I'm a revert from the Orthodox, and I can relate to:

• old territories under old jurisdictions
• new territories (like lands to be Christened) or new old territories (like RC and Protestant lands) under whatever old jurisdiction comes there first.

In my own case, Russian was out of question, I'm a Swede, and Russia and Sweden have been enemies over centuries, both Charles XII and Gustavus IV Adolfus were opposing Czars in wars. On the other hand, I had been in Romania a few months of vacations when I was small and that was as close as I was to any Orthodox country at all. Now, less good reasoning. I was Neo-Himerite (corresponds to Patriarchate of Moscow) because I wanted to hold a hand in each direction of both Catholic Trads and Palaeo-Himerites (corresponds to Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia).

In my experience, Orthodox may have a harsh attitude on Catholics or a harsh attitude on Trads/Fundies, or both. But it's not neither. Perhaps I could have had that with Antioch, but wasn't available.

So having some Orthos frown on me because I didn't totally renounce Catholicism (I didn't abjure, and also didn't abjure on my return), others would do so because I was too traddy or fundie.

[Above apparently disappeared, as I saw when I tried to add the first of the two following lines]

Palaeo-Himerites never accepted me, and a Neo-Himerite Pentecost sermon criticised Antipope Ratzinger for exactly the wrong reason, pretending his view on condoms was uncharitable to Africans.

That's when I returned.