Page 209 - Prophet Jesus (Pbuh): A Prophet Not A Son, Of God

HARUN YAHYA 207

Orthodox and Protestant Churches

The Catholic Church's control of the Christian world was rocked by
an internal division in the ninth century. For a long time, the Eastern
Churches, affiliated to the patriarchs of Constantinople, Jerusalem,
Antioch, and Alexandria, had disagreed with the Catholic Church.
Finally, they broke away from Rome. This conflict, which was actually
political in origin, had emerged following the division of the Roman
Empire into eastern (Greek) and western (Latin) sections. The various
disagreements between the two sides became a permanent schism when
the Roman Church consecrated the Holy Roman Empire. The most dis-
tinguishing of the many differences between the two sides is that the

Roman Church used Latin as its liturgical language, while the Eastern
Churches used Greek.
After breaking with Rome, the Eastern churches, also known as the
Orthodox churches, could not establish any internal hierarchy. The
Patriarch of Constantinople was always regarded as senior, but the oth-
ers were independent entities. Furthermore, new divisions gradually
emerged and national Churches were formed, such as the Armenian,
Greek, Bulgar, Serb, and Russian national churches.

The Catholic Church maintained its hegemony in Europe until the
sixteenth century, when the German priest Martin Luther (d. 1546) shat-
tered that hegemony by launching the Protestant movement. Developed
first under the leadership of Luther and then of such priests as John
Calvin (d. 1564) and Huldreich Zwingli (d. 1531), it sparked off a huge re-
bellion against the Church of Rome and papal authority. For over a cen-
tury, Europe was the scene of endless bloody wars between Catholics
and Protestants. Behind these wars, which were superficially religious,
lay political calculations and conflicts of interest between European
monarchs who wanted to be free of the papacy and its related taxes and

those who sought to maintain the status quo. The bloodiest squaring of