Although there are important theological and dogmatic disagreements among these three groups, nonetheless in some matters of traditional practice that are not matters of dogma, they resemble each other in some ways in which they differ from Catholic and Protestant churches in the West. For example, in all three groups, parish priests administer the sacrament of chrismation to newborn infants just after baptism; that is not done in Western churches. All three groups have weaker rules on clerical celibacy than those of the Latin Rite (i.e. Western) Catholic churches, in that, although they forbid marriage after ordination, they allow married men to become priests (but not bishops). For these reasons, it sometimes makes sense to generalize, saying "In the Eastern Church, it is customary to ..." etc.
Western Churches are those that either gravitate around Rome or broke away from her at the Reformation.
EasternChurches depend originally on the Eastern Empire at Constantinople; they are those that either find their centre in the patriarchate of that city (since the centralization of the fourth century) or have been formed by schisms which in the first instance concerned Constantinople rather than the Western world.
EasternChurch, 326); the ludicrous scandal at Monastir, in Macedonia, when they fought over a dead man's body and set the whole town ablaze because some wanted him to be buried in Greek and some in Rumanian (op.
Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, which regards the Holy Spirit as proceeding from the Father and the Son, the Eastern Orthodox Church claims that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son.
The collapse of the Byzantine empire in 1453 meant that, apart from Russia, the Orthodox Church lay under the rule of the Ottoman Turks.
The icon is of particular importance for the Orthodox Church since it is seen as the dwelling place of God's grace, creating in the faithful a sense of the presence of God.
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