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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheDevil&#039;sBane" data-source="post: 2758771" data-attributes="member: 919722">No.The thing is Jesus founded one Church the Apostles and their successors established many particular churches. If you take into consideration there were different Apostles that established different churches in different cultures you would end up with many different traditions this is how the early Church was one Church that was made up of many particular churches that had different traditions. You could place the Church of Rome which was established by the Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul and place it next to the Church of Alexandria which was established by St. Mark the Evangelist and they would be similar but different in how they celebrated the Sacraments.Now it was unchallenged that the Bishop of Rome was the head of the Church for the first three centuries being that Rome was made the capital of Christianity. The Bishops of Rome would exercise their authority as the leader of the Church outside of the Holy See of Rome to settle disputes amongst churches, excommunicated heretics, and they had the final say in any matters of the faith and moral teachings of the Church. This authority that the Bishop of Rome had would begin to wane during the 4th century in which other Holy Sees would seek to have this authority over the Church. Of course issues risen which lead to these churches to schism from the Catholic Church like the heresy Nestorianism which resulted in the Church of the East schism from the Catholic Church and the heresy of Miaphysitism which resulted in the Oriental (Coptic) Orthodox Church schism from the Catholic Church. The schism between the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church was always political in nature on who was the leader of the Church. I would have to say the final schism was not the Great Schism but rather the schism that followed the Council of Trullo in 692 AD when the four Eastern Holy Sees got together to divide that authority as the leader of the Church between themselves even though they also included the Holy See of Rome the Western Church Bishops refused to attend this council. To understand this the Bishop of Rome being the successor of St. Peter did not feel that they should undo the decree which Jesus Himself had made when He appointed St. Peter as the head of the Church here on earth. The interesting thing was the brief reunification between the Western Church and Eastern Church before the Great Schism because there were conditions made and one of those conditions was that the Eastern Church recognize the Bishop of Rome as the head of the Church in which it was agreed. But in turn the Western Church also agreed that the Patriarchs of the Eastern churches would remain the head of their church. In fact after the Great Schism over the centuries some of these churches had reunited with the Catholic Church and are currently under that same system as was established prior before the Great Schism.</blockquote>

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