Feeling Lost from the Ubi Petrus vs. Erick Ybarra Debate? Want to Know Why Ybarra Doesn't Become Eastern Orthodox? Here is a Reflection and an Answer, Respectively.

I expected many to react this way to the debate between Ubi Petrus and me. Who can wade through all the documents and arguments to verify who was right or wrong? In some of the reviews, many, if not most, felt completely lost. I think the biggest reason for this takeaway by many is that they mistakenly came to the debate expecting to hear a debate between Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. And that is not unreasonable. Why wouldn't they?

However, if you want the raw facts, this debate resolution was extremely fine - Is the Papacy of Vatican 1 Manifest in the 5th/6th Centuries of the Undivided Church? If people just spent enough time learning the technical dynamics of debate, they would realize that the this is quite far from any specific debate on the truth of Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism. In fact, both Ubi and I could have been atheists and could have done the exact same debate, possibly with the same exact content. Why? Because the resolution had nothing to do with our respective religious convictions. I'm sure that might come as a surprise for some readers.

Now, did some of what was said during the debate intersect with the essence of a debate between Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy? Of course. But that really wasn't the debate, directly.

Nonetheless, many people came to the debate precisely to hear the case for Catholicism against Orthodoxy, and vice versa. And quite understandably so. What I don't understand is how people DECIDE to convert because of a debate performance. Debates can range far too much for it to be this decisive.

However, here it helps to understand, once again, the technical dynamics of a debate. The winner of a debate is not necessarily the one who is correct overall. Many factors go into a live debate that don't hinge on the verification of the winning side as matching truth. Sometimes, a debate is over theory, hypotheticals, or something not in existence. Other times, a particular side is arguing to defend the reality of something when, in truth, such a thing doesn't exist, or is wrong. But the winner of a debate depends on certain rules that don't reduce to an admission that the winning side is the side of the truth.

I'll give you an example. I think most of the debates between the Reformed Protestant apologist James White and Catholic apologists resulted in a Protestant victory rather than a Catholic one. I won't go into the specific ones that I have in mind. I didn't agree with White's claims and arguments. However, if I had to grade whether White did his job or the Catholic did his job, I judged the former to have performed more successfully. This is because James White is a skilled debater.

And this is probably why I don't take seriously the comments that come in during the live chat or in the YouTube comments. Most people don't know how to assess debates, let alone for one with a resolution so fine to the technicalities of 5th/6th century historical documents, figures, persons, and events.

"Ybarra DESTROYED Ubi!!!!!!"

"Ubi KILLED it!!!!"

We heard this left and right. To each his own. God forbid I stand in the way of people's freedom to announce such things. However, I reserve the right to not give it any serious consideration.

Now, when a scholar of late antiquity and the Middle Ages who has been peer-reviewed, published by top publishers like Oxford, Brill, De Grutyer, Baker Academic, and who is well-known across the continents on the history of the Papacy or Byzantium, sends me a message to tell me what he thought of the debate, I take it a lot more seriously. I did receive those messages, and that's what I largely rely on in the assessment of the debate. I also have some time to reflect on it myself. There are some debate reviews coming out soon, and Ubi and I will probably get on a live exchange again to discuss it.

Now, I'd like to move to something that I gathered from the above mistakes. I began to see posts online lamenting how if the determination of the true religion, between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, requires the kind of knowledge that would be required to win a debate such as the one I had, then this means that it is an impossible task for the average man and/or simply gives proof that a flexible Christianity such as one can find in Protestantism must be the truth so as to incorporate the learned, the scholar, the ignorant, the smart, the dumb, the non-researchers, or what have you.

So where does that leave us?

First, I'd like to prove that MOST people who convert from one religion to another, or, in particular, from within a Christian community to another, especially those who are at the fork between Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism, have already utilized history, biblical exegesis, and plain reason to chart their course. It is simply unavoidable. How many converts to Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy have you come across that haven't utilized history to exclude Protestantism as a feasible option? I'd imagine it is next to none.
But what about the contest between the Apostolic Churches?

And yet, at the sight of the Petrus vs. Ybarra debate, the sheer technicality of said debate leaves many people feeling hopeless. At that point, many throw in the towel because sifting through the facts is not practical enough for non-experts.

In one particular case, I saw someone use the debate in order to advertise for the "Come and See" method, i.e., a huge reliance on one's personal experience. Go to the nearest Eastern Orthodox Church and experience it for a few months, they say. Sure, we can use history and scholarship to drop the option of Protestantism, but from there the way towards the true Church has to be streamlined to an easy and obvious passageway—something for anyone and everybody to understand, and the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom is precisely how you would be infallibly convinced. The mystical feeling of the ancient ethos and God-honoring chant clearly gives confirmation over a short, austere, and lack luster Novus Ordo.

And so on.

Unfortunately for many of these types, I'll have to be as rigidly fair as I am with anything. Let me say briefly that most people who easily write off Protestantism probably haven't done enough study of both sides (i.e., the developed claims of the "Apostolic" churches versus the defenses for "Reformed" Christianity). Throwing Protestantism to the winds on the grounds of a study of the Bible, history, tradition, and plain reason can backfire if one does not carve it out sufficiently. I think, for example, Dr. Gavin Ortlund is a very good example of someone who has worked through Church History and has used precisely the variability and reformability laid out from the facts as an advantage from which to defend Protestant ecclesiology. You might disagree with him, but I guarantee he has done far more research than the average Protestant who converted to Catholicism or Orthodoxy. Just read the Catholic/Orthodox comments that criticize Ortlund. The majority of them can't hide their ignorance.

Returning to the "Come and See!" - There is another unavoidable problem that I've run into when it comes to this method. When I first began looking into Apostolic Christianity, I was exposed, without knowing it, to the Oriental Orthodox. I thought all along I was studying and looking at Eastern Orthodoxy, but I later learned that the liturgy I was mesmerized by was part of a Coptic Orthodox community.

If you are in that phase, it won't take long for a Chalcedonian Orthodox Christian to come along and start banging out the documents of the Council of Chalcedon (451) against Eutychios of Constantinople and Dioscoros of Alexandria. And if you really want to be diligent, you'll have to study the "Path to Nicaea" (and all its complexities) until you get to the Nestorian controversy. From there you'll have to wade through the "right way" of interpreting St. Cyril of Alexandria (which made up the competition between the Miaphysites (Oriental Orthodox) and the Chalcedonians). Pretty soon you'll be building some kind of a library with Miaphysite scholars against the Chalcedonian scholars. Perhaps, then, you'll find yourself looping out of the simple and settled "Come and See!" for a return to the tensions that exist in the hunt for truth. As it turns out, the veteran apologists from both the Oriental Orthodox and Eastern Orthodox sides return to the subject matter of DOCTRINE and HISTORY.

Don't believe me? Just work your way over to the SHAMOUNIAN YouTube channel and sub-search "Oriental Christology".

Personally, I've always been convinced of Chalcedonian Christology. So that means I could have become an Eastern Orthodox with the "Come and See!" method just fine, right? Not so. It wasn't very long into my personal journey into Orthodoxy that I became exposed to the division between the "True Orthodoxy" against "World Orthodoxy".

"Oh Erick, [sigh], this is so esoteric and small that one isn't going to notice this unless they are digging deep! Stop making this out to be such a noticeable problem!"

Only, it is not that easy to avoid. If you are a seeker of truth, your hunt will find this one way or the other. It is just a matter of time.

The Orthodox Church has undergone its own internal conflict with 20th-century humanism, ecumenism, pluralism, and the emergence of huge cultural integrations across the globe that have caused certain shifts in the way the Orthodox Church relates to the Christian world outside itself. Without getting too much into the weeds, the Orthodox Church itself has faced an issue with ecumenical ventures that severely challenge her own canonical tradition and which can only be explained away by appeals to partial infallibility and distinctions within the pool of Tradition that can tolerate adjustments and even reversals. Then you can find yourself in a battle between competing communions within Orthodoxy over who is truly keeping the canons. One Catholic who fell away that I knew was first introduced to the Antiochian Orthodox Church but then, through a study of the developments within 20th/21st century Orthodoxy, moved towards ROCOR, but did not stop there. He went further to joined ROCA, the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad (the original ROCOR) in order to be in the true canon-keeping Orthodox Church.

These problems stretch back to the early 20th century. For a history of the division between "True Orthooxy" and "World Orthodoxy", see The Struggle Against Ecumenism: The History of the True Orthodox Church of Greece from 1924-1994 published by HOCNA (Holy Orthodox Church in North America). Needless to say, a "Come and See" method isn't advertised in the historical, theological, and canonical argumentation that goes on between members of "True Orthodoxy" and "World Orthodoxy." I have never seen an Oriental Orthodox, an Assyrian Orthodox, a "World Orthodoxy" Eastern Orthodox, or a "True Orthodox" Eastern Orthodox resolve their issues through a "Come and See."

I don't want to get too carried away here and I truly do hate to be the bearer of bad news. Aside from the variability that exists from this criterion, there truly is no escaping the individual's responsibility to "test all things" (2 Thes 5:21). Even Saint Paul, who had the utmost experience of Christ on the road to Damascus, is recorded as engaging in debates: "And he spoke boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus and disputed against the Hellenists" (Acts 9:29). He went around "explaining and demonstrating" from "the Law of Moses and the prophets" "that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead" (Acts 17:3; 26:22). "For he mightily refuted (διακατηλέγχετο) the Jews, and that publicly, showing by the scriptures that Jesus was Christ" (Acts 18:28).

Whether we like it or not, God has allowed the evil of error and heresy to run its course. In some cases, the error can create a massive tangle of wires that can trap the simple-minded (or even the strong-minded). Whoever thought Tertullian had a low I.Q. is in for a rude awakening if you just read the available sources. And yet he ended up a charismatic Montanist.

Thankfully, in every era we have had a company of saintly men to untangle those wires and pursue the natural course of argumentation to demonstrate the falsity of the error. And God has used these means to promote His Kingdom. God forbid we throw a blanket over such efforts!

Paul fought vigorously against the Judaizers on the covenantal inclusion of Gentiles without full observance of the "Old Law", yet people still debate what Paul meant in his epistles 2,000 years later. Heck, my favorite bookstore has a whole section devoted to Pauline scholarship. I remember being so excited over the blow-up of Pauline scholarship in the years 2000's but it can be nauseating how many new books are being written to "get Paul right." I don't think we'll see the end of it, to be honest.

In any case, there were always heresy hunters that the Church has been happy to harness. The Gnostics motivated St. Irenaeus to write his famous "Against the Heresies." St. Epiphanius of Salamis added his own "Against the Heresies." John of Damascus sought to dispel errors in his "De Fide Orthodoxa". There came to be the "Byzantine Lists" in the 9th to 11th centuries, as well as another "Against the Heresies" by Symeon of Thessaloniki (on the Greek Orthodox side).

In some cases, these debates made the difference between schism and the eternal life of the true communion. Think of all the children who were raised by Donatist, Arian, Monophysite, Monothelite, and Iconoclastic Christian parents. Were all the children supposed to be able to instantly solve the theological competition between what their parents and theological educators were telling them and the opposing Councils that had condemned them (and vice versa)? Resign themselves to experience? Would you not have handed them Augustine's "Against the Donatists"? Or "On the Incarnation" by Athanasius? The Tome of Leo? The writings of Maximus the Confessor? The apologia for icons and image veneration by John of Damascus or Theodore the Studite?

St. Possidius (+437), Bishop of Calama, a personal friend to St. Augustine, describes the latter in a way that makes it clear the saintly Western Father utilized debate as a way to remedy the ailment of error:

"He laboured at this task day and night continually. He even wrote personal letters to some of the bishops of that heresy-- the more prominent, that is to say-- and to laymen, trying to persuade them by reasoned argument that they ought either to alter their perverse opinions or else meet him in debate. But they had too little confidence in their own case even to answer his letters, but merely raged against him in their anger, denouncing him in private and in public as a seducer and deceiver of souls. They used to say, and argue at length, that he was a wolf to be killed in defence of their flock and that there could be no doubt whatever that God would forgive all the sins of those who could achieve this fear; for they felt neither dear of God nor shame before men. Augustine for his part took pains that everyone should know of their lack of confidence in their own cause and they, when they met him in public conference, dared not enter into a discussion with him." (Vita S. Augustini ; F.R. Hoare, The Western Fathers, p. 204)

[As an excursus, see this article for how Augustine and Jerome said the true Church is found]

"That sounds fine. But the debate between Ubi and Erick just seems impossible to discern. Augustine probably made things crystal clear."

Well, Augustine is still debated, hated, despised, and MOST of all, misunderstood even to this very day. But I digress.

"Can finding the true Church, the true version of Christianity, the version that Christ so desperately die for us to live by, be THIS hard???"

This question can force us to back up quite a bit. And not just away from the books, but even so far as to consider that the root of the problem may not be in humanity itself (finite beings that we are) but in divine hiddenness. The "problem" of divine hiddenness, an issue widely discussed in Theism vs. Atheism debates, can be used to try and make the claim that God's "true Church" is either hidden or it is widely diffused among a variety wherein the true Christ and His salvation can be obtained. Of course, this notion had always been condemned by the Apostolic Churches. Even in today's Catholicism, there are only elements of sanctification that exist outside the visible bounds of the Catholic Church which are still, themselves, proper only to the Catholic Church. If they are dispensed to the benefit of souls outside the visible Catholic Church, it is in the form of an exceptional application.

However, even the ecclesiology that says Christ and His Church are flexibly diffused throughout many communities of divergent beliefs, i.e. Protestantism, this too can only found, for many researchers, after digging your hand in the weeds and testing the whole panorama of Church history. And therefore, this Protestant conception has its own corner in the scientific laboratory and is not the simplest answer for both the smart and the dumb. In other words, Protestant ecclesiology, or at least the rightness of it, is ALSO, from a reasonable perspective, just another "hidden" solution from the eyes of many. Just go try telling Catholic and Orthodox converts that Protestantism was right all along and see how much clarity you will be providing. I promise you; it won't go over well. And as it turns out, Protestantism itself is just another configuration that one comes to after long, hard, and intensive research. As expected, the venue of Protestantism doesn't alleviate anyone of the hunt.

I haven't solved anything here. I am simply giving my immediate thoughts in response to some of the reactions to the Ubi Petrus vs. Erick Ybarra debate. I can see people decrying the need to study "that much" in order to find a confident answer to all our theological questions. From this, it can be easy to despair the discipline of study altogether. I don't think any rational mind in these journeys are espousing that kind of extreme. But if while we are seeking God, knocking on His door, and requesting for Him to reveal the truth to us, we cannot sever this from the process of study, research, and wading through arguments, then I'm not exactly sure we should be so frightened by the Petrus vs. Ybarra debate more so than encouraged to dig deeper. Instead, I think we just need to realize that God loves us and providentially has us where he does. We should never tire from pursuing the truth. We simply go on asking God to deliver us from error and to continually shine the light of truth in front of our feet.

"But Erick.... good Christians go in different directions!"

Aye, but they also contradict each other. Does that mean God is the author of said contradictions? Of course not. Christian contradiction cannot be the basis for our espousal of divine contradiction. So likewise, the multiplicity of denominations and free-church models are not the necessarily implication of one's intellectual nausea from an Ubi Petrus vs. Erick Ybarra.

Now, what I can say is that the Gospel of Christ presents a Lord and Savior who made His own initiative in seeking to save the lost world of humanity. He promises to save all who believe in Him. Among the diverse Christian communities, I can't imagine that Christ is going to damn someone for not being able to figure out if the Filioque is true or not.

"But Erick, if you grant the availability of salvation between Orthodox, Catholics, and Protestants/Evangelicals, because of the difficulty in ascertaining the truth between these 3 categories, who is to draw a line that would disallow the application of this to all well-meaning people who seek to follow "Jesus" such as Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, 7th Day Adventists, on and on and on."?

This is a strong question, and I feel the weight of it. I always have. If I answer that there is sufficient clarity to render Trinitarian Christianity an obligation that can't be excused, an exclusivist Coptic Orthodox could raise his voice and say, "Ah! But if Trinitarian theology is clear enough, so is Miaphysitism and the falsity of Chalcedon!" without a principled way to say he can't push that extreme. We are then in a chaotic world of pressing our assumptions without a truly principled grounding that could escape "begging the question."

It seems to me that there must be a metaphysical boundary wherein Christianity becomes sufficiently clear so as to create a culpability for rejecting it. Otherwise, how could it have been that St. Paul could tell certain Jews who disbelieved the Gospel that they were culpable for rejecting the Gospel: " It was necessary that the word of God should be spoken to you first; but since you reject it, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, behold, we turn to the Gentiles" (Acts 13:46).

Can we know precisely what that boundary is? Perhaps not. It seems we can't know precisely the level of culpability of anyone in particular. At least, not with infallible certainty. Some amount of certainty existed in the Apostle Peter who told Simon Magus: "Your money perish with you, because you thought that the gift of God could be purchased with money! You have neither part nor portion in this matter, for your heart is not right in the sight of God. Repent therefore of this your wickedness, and pray God if perhaps the thought of your heart may be forgiven you. For I see that you are poisoned by bitterness and bound by iniquity" (Acts 8:21-23)

If someone is filled with a good will, proves to be a sincere seeker, is striving to relinquish all their rights for the sake of Christ's own right over their life, and humbles themselves to the normal means of obtaining the content of Christ's gospel, I can't imagine they will be rejected by God. However, I also can't imagine how they could be in this disposition and ultimately end up a Mormon or a Jehovah's Witness. Where precisely, in the nexus of Trinitarian Christianity that upholds the basic Gospel of Jesus Christ (all terms that simply accentuate the need for firm definitions by a firm definition-giver), is the boundary that separates the doomed and the saved, I can't pretend to know.

So then, does this all then give more points to Protestantism, ultimately? That all depends. Here I think we can draw the 2 pathways that form a fork between the route that Protestantism takes and the route that Newmanian-Catholicism takes. The former roots its infallible source in the objective word of God alone (as delivered in the Old and New Testaments... another platform that raises further questions as to the origin of religious justification) while the other posits that the very need for an infallible Interpreter of divine revelation is sufficient evidence for its existence, since without it we have all the woes heretofore explained. How else can we become certain of Christ's Gospel?

Interestingly enough, it was precisely because Newman did not see the Patristic era up through the Middle Ages to be a clear-cut instruction manual perfectly resulting in a picture of 19th-century Roman Catholicism that he rested more so on the metaphysical need for an infallible oracle to ever-presently interpret the sources of divine revelation than he did history being a showcase for which Christianity is true. History is not an instruction manual to prove this or that. Here, Newman and Cardinal Manning intersected quite well, despite what is often erroneously said to diverge the two from each other. However, with that being said, Newman (and Manning) did hold that historical evidence does exist to point in the Catholic direction, but never did he think it was overwhelmingly clear for everyone to see that. In other words, history does give us this clear notion that the universal Church should be unified in belief, government, and sacramental economy (i.e., "that they all be one...", "I give unto you the keys.... and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven," and "Go into all the world... baptizing them [...]"). History does give us this clear notion that the Church's government has a hierarchy, and that the Bishop of Rome had an all-embracing function in gathering the whole flock into one sheepfold, and that this role was not authored by post-Apostolic machinations, but was veritably originated in the very design of the King of Kings, Jesus Christ Himself (Matt. 16:18). These clear notions, I've argued, land the projection of Patristic Christianity in the neighborhood of today's Catholicism, leaving the remaining lanes and turns to be explained by organic developments. Thus, Newman.

However, speaking much more to philosophical practicality, Newman was famous for identifying the NEED for a fixed and stationary interpreter that is both living and immunized from error as THE PROOF that said organ exists. And this, for Newman, was more decisive in leading him to Catholicism than anything else.

Nor was Newman the first to speak of this need. The quest for an epistemic paradigm that instantiates a principled objectivity to the ongoing interpretation of divine revelation can be dated into the earlier centuries in the writings of Pope Leo the Great, Pope Gelasius, Pope Hormisdas, and many others. But one interesting example of such an epistemic framework comes from a Syrian Christian Theodore Abu Qurrah who died around +825 AD. In his writings, Theodore steps back to ask the more philosophical question of how we can know that Christianity is the true religion and how can we know which version of Christianity is true? In many ways, Theodore anticipated Newman (but also many unknown predecessors to him) and serves as a nodal point graduating from the limited "canon" of St. Vincent de Lerins (+445). Among other things, Theodore highlights the need for a singular headship that could make for a principled guarantee that ecclesiastical councils were infallible. This he found was created by Jesus Christ in St. Peter and the person of his successor. There is no doubt that this is supported by countless voices throughout the 1st millennium.

Does this remove all the difficulties? I dare not affirm. But I think it has the potential to help more than any of the other options available.

Now, to get to the last part of this long-winded article. I recently posted an answer I gave to someone who, in sum, asked me to steel man Eastern Orthodoxy. I wrote that, in addition to avoiding the clear tensions created by the Papacy and its history, it shines in the following ways:

"Their maintenance of monastic regulation, the liturgical tradition, its emphasis on free will (against "predestination", c.f. Confession of Dositheus ratified @ the Council of Jerusalem 1672) without the tension of unconditionally elective foreknowledge, the unity of the sacraments (Baptism, Chrismation, Communion) for infant members, the communal fasting regulation, their strong adherence to the 7 Ecumenical Councils (c.f. Ratzinger's comments on it), their focus on ontological renewal rather than legalistic frameworks in soteriology (c.f. Rome's mathematics on temporal debt/purgatory vs. toll-houses and the EO emphasis on "cleansing" - and please don't mention Rome's recent opening to the latter), their flexibility on the Biblical canon (as opposed to Rome's fixity), the mystical experience one can fall in love with, and the wonderful chants (c.f. Vladimir of Kyiv's emissaries who reported on their visit to New Rome: Then we went to Greece [Constantinople], and the Greeks (including the Emperor himself) led us to the edifices where they worship their God, and we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it. We only know that God dwells there among men, and their service is fairer than the ceremonies of other nations. For we cannot forget that beauty. Lastly, that Rome today basically views her as not just functionally valid but treats the EO with the respect of Christian brotherhood. There is almost no one in Catholic leadership that will be speaking about the spiritual dangers of being EO anymore."

Inevitably, many asked me to follow up with a defense of why I'm not Eastern Orthodox. So I will do that here in the most brief way possible.

First, in order of the presentation I gave up. First, the Monastic and Liturgical tradition of the West has been greatly injured but it is not destroyed. There exist many hopes that we will one day restore its old beauty. We can pray. As for the Orthodox emphasis on free-will (c.f. 3rd Decree of the Confession of Dositheus), I implied how this is attractive, but I didn't say I could live with it. The reason being is that I think it contradicts the Old and New Testament mystery that form what we call the tension between divine sovereignty and human responsibility. I couldn't reconcile the 3rd decree of the Confession of Dositheus with the Biblical data. Fortunately, in Catholicism, the Augustinian/Thomistic tradition has liberal breathing space, even if, in contemporary times, it has been lessened by New Theologians. Some breathing space is better than none! As I understand it, the Confession of Dositheus is universal dogma in Eastern Orthodoxy. So, while the temptation to resolve the tension with the absolutization of free will over unconditional election, I don't think I could enjoy it with a good conscience.

As for purgatory, temporal debt, and the process of indulgences – these can all be very difficult to defend. How could it be otherwise? It describes the process by which sinners are in the process of cleansing. While I think the Orthodox emphasis on an ontological repair as the full breadth of what constitutes the sanctification of man, both here and in the intermediate state, I can't help but notice that the Western Fathers, including some notable Eastern voices, manifest the doctrine in the Latin way. And therefore, a synthesis of both ontological repair and legal satisfaction is conceptually more respectful to the ecclesial monument than choosing one over the other.

On the separation of initiatory sacraments. This is lamentable, for sure. However, it is not a total knockout. Baptism is absolutely essential, and it will always successfully remove the barriers of the infant's way to eternal redemption and make it 100% guaranteed. The only thing to frustrate this is the commission of a mortal sin which cannot happen until the age of reason. It just so happens that this is exactly when the Catholic Church has assigned the fitting reception of communion and confirmation. But even then, mortal sin is a possibility. So what is being lost in the Western praxis of delaying communion and confirmation? There is a great deal that is lost, but nothing that would threaten the salvation of anyone. In some cases, young children can garner more respect for the sacraments that strengthen their baptism when they consciously long for it through catechetical instruction. Much more could be said about this, but I'm forced to be brief.

The biggest 2 reasons I find myself unable to become Eastern Orthodox are their dogmatic rejection of Papal supremacy and the Eternal/Hypostatic Procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son. Both realities are to be found within the "undivided" tree trunk of the 1st millennium coming from eminent Saints and Theologians that have been canonized by both East and West. For me to embrace the Eastern Orthodox anathema against them would be to cut the tree trunk in half. And that kind of injury penetrates far too deeply for me to conceive of it as safe.

And so, while Catholicism has taken a hit big time in many ways that are more visible than Eastern Orthodoxy, I can't help but calculate that the latter has, perhaps hiddenly, struck a blow far deeper, albeit not easily noticeable, into the essence of Christian history than Catholicism has. So no matter how much we cycle the news of this terrible, nauseating, and lamentable issue in contemporary Catholicism, and no matter how tempting it can be for someone to dangle the immense beauty of the Eastern tradition in front of my eyes, it never makes me blind to the heart-shot that has been done by the Greek anathemas on the Patristic heritage, effectively cutting her own tree in half (at the very least). And despite what appears to be an over-blown objection by Catholics against the so-called disunity within the 14 Autocephalous bodies of Eastern Orthodoxy, there is still something to be said about the divisions existing to this day on matters of faith, morals, and even discipline. I've made a list of these issues here.

Catholicism has done more to sustain both halves of the tree trunk as possible. More importantly, I've not seen Catholicism dogmatically and definitively condemn a doctrine of Scripture and Apostolic tradition. Unless I can be shown otherwise, it appears to me Eastern Orthodoxy (and Protestantism) has done this. God help me.