Very long rant: It has become clear to me that any claim of a particular church communion to hold an entirely unchanged faith and practice from the time of the Apostles (no development) is at best mistaken, at worst deliberately deceptive. The fact is, Christianity has developed.

Certain traditional Catholics sometimes fall into the error of claiming an absolutely unchanged ancient faith and practice (re TLM) in the face of Vatican 2, however, by and large, Catholics accept the idea of doctrinal development as postulated by John Henry Newman.

More often, such claims to possess a completely unchanged church come from the Eastern Orthodox.
A large part of the appeal Eastern Orthodoxy has, especially to westerners now living in a de-Christianised, secularised nihilistic culture over which rootless Evangelicalism is...

...increasingly impotent and V2 Catholicism is more of a communion of social workers than a Church, is the claim that there is some unaltered pristine wellspring of Christianity, which is characterised in mystical terms contrary to the perceived rational exclusivism of the west.

More to the point, the claim is that unlike Western Christianity, Eastern Christianity hasn’t been tainted or corrupted, hasn’t been subject to real changes in doctrine or practice like Catholicism, and hasn’t fallen into factionalism like Protestantism. A type of Orientalism.

This massages subconscious anti-western tendencies among many people today, attracts converts, and encourages views that see anything distinctly western as bad, which in turn strengthens the notion of a pristine unchanging Eastern faith vs constantly changing western offshoots.

Ultimately this results not only in a rejection of western Christian patrimony to various degrees, but in a widespread denial of doctrinal development in any form, as well as a stifling attitude when it comes to intellectual study, but also issues of plain historical fact.

For example, because of the centrality of the Divine Liturgy and experientialism, it is common rhetoric in certain circles to point out the liturgical development of the Latin rite and claim it to be evidence of “drift”, while simultaneously ignoring comparable developments...

...in the Byzantine rite, which it should be pointed out, did not exist at all in a general standardised form before the 6th century, let alone in its modern form. In such polemics there is little room for nuance with regards to such things as the monastic focus of the...

...Byzantine influenced east vs the secular diocesan focus of the Latin west. 4th-7th century sources tell us that distinct expressions of divine worship were already clearly distinguishable. Liturgical uniformity was never a measure of Orthodoxy, let alone exclusive use of...

...a single rite. Eastern Orthodox polemics gleefully talk about the changes to the Roman rite over the centuries, but they won’t talk about the fact that a recognisable Roman rite was initially established by Pope Gregory the Great, which pre-dates the synthesis that created...

...the Byzantine rite. They’ll lecture you for days about how Catholic historians admit that the Roman rite underwent substantial development from Gregory’s time through the Middle Ages, but they won’t mention how the Byzantine rite is quite literally a mix of two rites that...

...occurred over centuries as Constantinopolitan cathedral traditions merged with distinctly monastic ones. They won’t mention how much of the ecclesiastical turmoil in Russia in the 17th century was to do with the lack of uniformity between the Russian version of the rite...

...and the Greek version, leading to a forced uniformity that resulted in a schism still active today.
This isn’t even a rant against uniformity, it is a rant against inconsistency and dishonesty.
Stop it.
Eastern Orthodoxy today is not absolutely unquestionably identical...

...even to what it was in the 13th century, let alone what Byzantine Christianity was like in the 6th. Whether you like it or not, development has occurred, and as broad a category as “liturgical changes” is, we can go beyond even that. I could talk about changing attitudes...

...towards iconography (what’s acceptable, what isn’t), original sin more recently (which I’ve talked about at length before), Hesychasm as a linchpin point of opposition vs Roman Catholicism, etc.
Sorry e-Orthos, your Church isn’t an unchanged throwback to the 4th century...

...let alone to the Apostles.
Now, I want to be clear, I am not dissing all development.
I am making the point that pretending it doesn’t exist at all is untenable. The refrain used by some along the lines of “our liturgy is named after Saint John Chrysostom, it is fully...

...Eastern and unchanged, unlike your mutilated Papist Latin rite hurr durr” or that RC theology is singularly developmental, is simply silly. Unless the basic truth of these matters is recognised we cannot have any meaningful conversion.
One can’t talk about what constitutes...

...legitimate development unless one recognises that development has in fact occurred. Changing focus, I mentioned earlier that Catholicism has the idea of doctrinal development courtesy of John Henry Newman.
This indeed gives Catholicism an easier time of coming to terms with...

...historical reality, but it is worth noting just how controversial the theory was when Newman first postulated it.
You see, before then, Catholicism was comfortable with liturgical progression and changes to canon law or practices, but nothing substantial. The general idea...

...with regards to doctrines, not identical to Eastern Orthodoxy but somewhat close, was that they hadn’t meaningfully changed.
The 18th century more or less=4th.
For this reason Newman’s theory was unpopular in the Vatican, only truly gaining traction with Vatican 1 because...

...the theologians realised that the propositions on papal power were foreign to the Fathers unless you posited that doctrines could substantially develop.
Reference: “Authority, Dogma and History: The Role of the Oxford Movement Converts in the Papal Infallibility Debates”...

...edited by Kenneth Parker snd Michael J Pahls. Whether or not Vatican 1 got it right or Newman’s ideas were correct, the point is however you look at Christianity; modern Roman Catholicism, medieval Byzantine Christianity, Protestantism, there has been development of some kind.

Therefore, especially when it comes to practice, claims of an unchanged continuity at the expense of other Christian communions are untenable. Only when this is recognised can we talk about what constitutes legitimate development.
I’ll leave other Eastern Ortho issues for now.

To conclude, it is unwise for anyone to present their church as wholly the same in faith and practice to the 4th century Church without qualification. I am not denying the One Church, I am denying historically absurd claims.
Not all Orthos do this thankfully.

End of rant.