The history of the Church vividly bears witness to the salvific interaction of the Orthodox East and the Orthodox West in their organic unity, in the conciliarity of their lives, which is beneficial for the entire Church of Christ. In the person of its great theologians, the Fathers of the Church, the Orthodox East defended the purity of the Faith, it played a leading role (with the exception of the Fourth Ecumenical Council, where the leading role belonged to Pope Leo I) in the theological defense and formulation of the dogmas of the Church of Christ, the East fertilized the thought of the Orthodox West, and the Orthodox West, in the person of its authoritative primates of the ancient Apostolic Roman See, gave courageous and steadfast assistance to the Orthodox East in its struggle against the Heresies and, being independent of the secular authorities, was an invaluable support in the struggle for the observance of church discipline. But the Church of Rome was unable to preserve a clear understanding of its mission, its calling to be an elder brother in the Church of Christ and to "lead in the service of love," as a result of which, with the beginning of the striving of the bishops of Rome for domination over the entire Church, the principles of its participation in the general life of the Church, its participation in the service of the Truth of the Church, began to be gradually distorted. This distortion, as we have seen, took place in two directions: 1) in the assertion of the dominion of the Bishop of Rome over the whole Church and dominion over the world, and 2) in the proclamation of papal infallibility in matters of faith.

The desire for temporal power and participation in the political struggle was not the business of individual popes, but stemmed from the entire papal system. Pope Pius IX declared it religiously obligatory for a Catholic believer to recognize the secular power of the Bishop of Rome. He denounced as a fallacy the view that "the Church has no power to produce violence and has no secular power at all, either direct or indirect." The desire for secular power forced the popes not only to plunge into political intrigues, but also to wage wars, even to lead their own troops (Pope Julius II).

More serious and fatal for Rome and for the whole Church was the striving of the Roman primates of the Church to affirm the infallibility of the Pope in matters of faith, which was culminated in the Vatican Council of 1870. The teaching of the Latins about infallibility flows, said Khomiakov, from cowardice and unbelief. For the Church is an object of faith, inasmuch as it is the Body of Christ and the abode of the Holy Spirit. With the Latins, the place of the invisible Head is taken by the visible "vicar Dei," the "vicar of Christ," and instead of the invisible Spirit of God living in the Body of the Church, they have placed a visible, external oracle of truth in the person of the pope, in order to submit to him. We have before us a pitiful picture of the loss of a mystical understanding of the essence of the Church and the decline of faith in the Church.

In history we do not find the infallibility of the popes in matters of faith. History bears witness to the mutually annihilating contradictions of individual popes, clothed in the solemn toga of universal teaching. Thus, Pope Liberius (354) signed, not as a private person, but as bishop of Rome, the Arian Creed; Pope Zosimus (417-418), in contrast to his immediate predecessor Innocent I, first speaks in favor of Pelagius; Pope Vigilius (537-55) changed his mind three times in the dispute over the three chapters. "He finally submitted to the decision of the Council, declaring to himself that he had hitherto been, unfortunately, an instrument of Satan, working for the overthrow of the Church, and was therefore drawn into discord with his concelebrants, the bishops of the Council, but now the Lord enlightened him"; The example of Pope Honorius I (625-38) in the Monothelite dispute is striking: "At the very beginning of the dispute, Pope Honorius, questioned by three patriarchs, spoke in favor of heresy," and at the Sixth Ecumenical Council (681), the deceased Pope Honorius was condemned among other preachers of this heresy; Pope Leo III, contrary to the demand of Charlemagne, forbade the insertion of the insertion "and from the Son" in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, and Pope Benedict VIII adopted the "filioque" in the Creed, and this insertion became a dogma of the Latin Church; Pope Sixtus V, under threat of anathemas, declared the text of the Vulgate corrected by him personally and published under his direct supervision to be binding on the faithful and having the dignity of an original, but this text turned out to be so teeming with errors that the successor of Sixtus V had to withdraw it from use as soon as possible. All this cannot be reconciled with the dogma of infallibility in matters of faith. The tragedy of Roman Catholicism is not in the sins and personal crimes of individual Primates of the Roman Church – there were many personal sins everywhere – but in the fact that the spirit of this world, the spirit of power, the spirit of legal, utilitarian and earthly distortion of the mysteries of God was introduced into the very foundation of the Christian doctrine and spiritual order of the Church. And this spirit led to slavery, the seal of which manifested itself in the desire to transfer the law of the life of the Spirit to the language of external mechanical counting, merit, number, and measure, which was especially reflected in the doctrine of indulgences and in casuistic morality. God's commandment is perceived not as an internal organic norm of a morally free life in Christ, but as an unbearable yoke, as a demand of a harsh lender, which must be lightened. Hence the legitimization of the so-called "mental reservation," i.e., the deliberate misleading of one's neighbor through a deliberately ambiguous mode of expression; hence the teaching about the "superfluous works of the saints", from the treasury of which the pope can cover the shortcomings of the faithful; Hence the excitement instead of spiritual equilibrium and spiritual sobriety, and religious sentimentalism with its characteristic desire to strike the nerves, to touch and amaze the imagination of man.

The Catholic Church is the Roman Church. Roman not because its center is in Rome, not because of its language, not because it once almost coincided with the Roman part of the empire. It is Roman in the spirit and law it has adopted from the Empire, in the Roman idea that underlies it. Therefore, it would be a mistake to assert or assume that the theory of the papacy came out of manipulations, outright forgeries, historical errors, distortions of the New Testament, on silences and other types of distortion of truth and historical reality – all this served only as a foundation in psychology for an ingrained idea. "The history of Catholicism is the history of the development of the Roman Catholic idea as a spiritual force that is born in the recesses of the spirit and subordinates everything to itself – teaching, events, theories, and forms of life."

Chapter X: The Apostasies of Rome in the Celebration of the Sacraments

The Roman Church allowed deviations in the ancient tradition and in the celebration of the sacraments.

"The One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church of the Seven Ecumenical Councils performed baptism through three immersions in water; Pope Pelagius calls triple immersion the institution of the Lord, and as early as the thirteenth century baptism was performed in the West through three immersions in the name of the Holy Trinity, as is clearly evidenced in the ancient churches of Italy by the preserved sacred baptismals." But in later times, baptism by sprinkling and pouring was introduced in the Roman Church, and from the fifteenth century the formula of the sacrament was also changed, namely: instead of "the servant of God (the name of the rivers) is baptized in the name of the Father, Amen, and of the Son, Amen, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen" – "I baptize thee (the name of the rivers) in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." According to ancient tradition, the oblivants should not be elevated to the priesthood (St. Cyprian of Carthage).

The formula in the sacrament of chrismation has also been changed: instead of "Seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit" – "I sign thee with the sign of the cross and confirm thee with the peace of salvation in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit," and the sacrament of chrismation can be performed by the Roman Catholics only by a bishop.

Following the example of the Saviour, for more than a thousand years the Holy Church in the East and in the West celebrated the Holy Eucharist on leavened bread, but the Roman Church from the eleventh century introduced an innovation – the use of unleavened bread in the sacrament of the Eucharist, which contradicts both the Gospel narrative of the Last Supper and the ancient church tradition; The Church of the Seven Ecumenical Councils accepted that the Precious Gifts are sanctified after the invocation of the Holy Spirit through a priestly blessing, but the Roman Church subsequently introduced an innovation here too: it abolished the "epiklesis," i.e. the invocation of the Holy Spirit, as a result of which in their Mass the moment of the consecration of the Gifts is no longer felt as the central moment of the Liturgy, and adopted the opinion that the consecration of the Gifts is performed with the proclamation of the words of the Lord: "Take, eat: this is My Body," and "Drink of it, all of you: this is My Blood." Following the Lord's commandment: "Drink of it, all of you," the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church administered Communion to all from the Holy Chalice, but the Roman Church from the ninth century and finally in the twelfth century deprived the laity of communion of the Holy Blood of Christ, and this contrary to the universal practice of the ancient Church and contrary to the institution of the Lord Himself. Children are not allowed to receive Holy Communion until the sacrament of Chrismation has been performed over them, i.e. up to 10-12 years of age.

The people of the Church at the Liturgy among the Roman Catholics are more silent – the altar boy answers the priest for them in a low voice, while in our country the people loudly answer the serving priest through the mouths of the choir. The legal principle of "counting" and "counting" is partly introduced into the celebration of the Liturgy – hence the mass of their frequent masses, performed one after the other in a tongue twister on the same altar and by the same priest, and even simultaneously by several priests on different altars of the same church, for, say the Roman Catholics, the more masses are celebrated, the more holiness is brought into the world.

In the sacrament of unction, the oil must be consecrated by the bishop, and the sacrament itself is performed not on the gravely ill – according to the words of the Apostle James (V, 14-15), but on the dying as a preparation for a peaceful end and is called by them "the last anointing".