Shall I change churches? Need advice.

[Xenia of Petersburg]

Nevermind.

[Ekaterina]

Sometimes in this crazy mixed up world, where we depend on others to guide us, we forget to listen for God's Voice in our hearts and minds.

Xenia.....go where you feel God is calling you. Asking everyone here where to go is open to jurisdictional discord and disharmony. Don't fear the language problem. I have a friend who speaks no Russian but who could follow a Slavonic service better than I ( a Russian speaker). (Back when I used a prayer book to "understand" better.) GOd will give you understanding and a way to follow along.
.
Katya

[Jean-Serge]

The only answer is pray, and pray and ask to be enlightened... on your future way...

[joasia]

Katya wrote:

Asking everyone here where to go is open to jurisdictional discord and disharmony.

Amen.

Whatever church you go to...stand in one place, keep your eyes to the floor and pray from your heart.

God will guide you, if you pray with sincerity. Guard your heart and keep your faith safe from any negative intrusions.

Remember that all the ups and downs in our lives is to teach us, for the benefit of our salvation.

God bless.

Joanna

[OrthodoxyOrDeath]

Xenia.....go where you feel God is calling you.

The fathers of the Church have never said any such thing. Often what we "feel" is very very wrong, and this certainly has nothing to do with feeling good - no offense Katerini.

The Holy Fathers of Christ's glorious and sacred Church unanimously implored people to go ONLY where the Truth of Orthodoxy is being preached. This is what everyone should do according to their conscience.

[Xenia of Petersburg]

The fathers of the Church have never said any such thing. Often what we "feel" is very very wrong, and this certainly has nothing to do with feeling good

My thoughts as well. Although I do believe I might "feel" better if I were in the correct church. Right now I feel pretty disatisfied with the situation.

[jobrien]

Hi, Hobo,
I think you need to see this because the Popes through the centuries have defended the doctrine "outside the Church there is no salvation." (Its found at: www.http://www.traditionalcatholic.net/ ... tside.html

Pope Pelagius II (A.D. 578 - 590): "Consider the fact that whoever has not been in the peace and unity of the Church cannot have the Lord. ...Although given over to flames and fires, they burn, or, thrown to wild beasts, they lay down their lives, there will not be (for them) that crown of faith but the punishment of faithlessness. ...Such a one can be slain, he cannot be crowned. ...[If] slain outside the Church, he cannot attain the rewards of the Church." (Denzinger 246-247)

Pope Saint Gregory the Great (A.D. 590 - 604): "Now the holy Church universal proclaims that God cannot be truly worshipped saving within herself, asserting that all they that are without her shall never be saved." (Moralia)

Pope Innocent III (A.D. 1198 - 1216): "With our hearts we believe and with our lips we confess but one Church, not that of the heretics, but the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church, outside which we believe that no one is saved." (Denzinger 423)

Pope Leo XII (A.D. 1823 - 1829): "We profess that there is no salvation outside the Church. ...For the Church is the pillar and ground of the truth. With reference to those words Augustine says: `If any man be outside the Church he will be excluded from the number of sons, and will not have God for Father since he has not the Church for mother.'" (Encyclical, Ubi Primum)

Pope Gregory XVI (A.D. 1831 - 1846): "It is not possible to worship God truly except in Her; all who are outside Her will not be saved." (Encyclical, Summo Jugiter)

Pope Pius IX (A.D. 1846 - 1878): "It must be held by faith that outside the Apostolic Roman Church, no one can be saved; that this is the only ark of salvation; that he who shall not have entered therein will perish in the flood." (Denzinger 1647)

Pope Leo XIII (A.D. 1878 - 1903): "This is our last lesson to you; receive it, engrave it in your minds, all of you: by God's commandment salvation is to be found nowhere but in the Church." (Encyclical, Annum Ingressi Sumus)

"He scatters and gathers not who gathers not with the Church and with Jesus Christ, and all who fight not jointly with Him and with the Church are in very truth contending against God." (Encyclical, Sapientiae Christianae)

Pope Saint Pius X (A.D. 1903 - 1914): "It is our duty to recall to everyone great and small, as the Holy Pontiff Gregory did in ages past, the absolute necessity which is ours, to have recourse to this Church to effect our eternal salvation." (Encyclical, Jucunda Sane)

Pope Benedict XV (A.D. 1914 - 1922): "Such is the nature of the Catholic faith that it does not admit of more or less, but must be held as a whole, or as a whole rejected: This is the Catholic faith, which unless a man believe faithfully and firmly, he cannot be saved." (Encyclical, Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum)

Pope Pius XI (A.D. 1922 - 1939): "The Catholic Church alone is keeping the true worship. This is the font of truth, this is the house of faith, this is the temple of God; if any man enter not here, or if any man go forth from it, he is a stranger to the hope of life and salvation. ...Furthermore, in this one Church of Christ, no man can be or remain who does not accept, recognize and obey the authority and supremacy of Peter and his legitimate successors." (Encyclical, Mortalium Animos)

Pope Pius XII (A.D. 1939 - 1958): "By divine mandate the interpreter and guardian of the Scriptures, and the depository of Sacred Tradition living within her, the Church alone is the entrance to salvation: She alone, by herself, and under the protection and guidance of the Holy Spirit, is the source of truth." (Allocution to the Gregorian, October 17, 1953)

Then, as though to set this constant teaching of the Fathers, Doctors and Popes "in concrete," so to speak, we have the following definitions from the Solemn Magisterium of the Church:

Pope Innocent III and Lateran Council IV (A.D. 1215): "One indeed is the universal Church of the faithful outside which no one at all is saved..."

Pope Boniface VIII in his Papal Bull Unam Sanctam (A.D. 1302): "We declare, say, define, and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff."

Pope Eugene IV and the Council of Florence (A.D. 1438 - 1445): "[The most Holy Roman Church] firmly believes, professes, and proclaims that those not living within the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics cannot become participants in eternal life, but will depart `into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels' (Matt. 25:41), unless before the end of life the same have been added to the flock; and that the unity of the ecclesiastical body is so strong that only to those remaining in it are the sacraments of the Church of benefit for salvation, and do fastings, almsgiving, and other functions of piety and exercises of Christian service produce eternal reward, and that no one, whatever almsgiving he has practiced, even if he has shed blood for the name of Christ, can be saved, unless he has remained in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church." RC