The reality of the matter is that reunion is not possible without one or both sides giving up truth claims they currently hold. That is the cold, hard reality that stands in the way of reunion. Catholics are no more willing to do drop their truth claims than the Orthodox. So I fail to see how either side is any more to blame than the other for the ongoing schism.
Agreed. As long as both sides think “I wish they would get over these beliefs they have held for two millenia and join us” no reunification is possible. Pity.
Do both sides DESIRE re-unification equally?
And that Church was larger than all the others in communion with Rome combined?
At the height of its expanse, it was certainly larger geographically, stretching from Egypt to China, and included parts of India and Indonesia. It may have been larger in terms of population. I don’t think there is any way to know with certainty what the populations of the various churches were at that time.
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Yes, this seems like a necessary step. :yup:
Can you say some more about this? What do the Orthodox call unity that Catholics don’t want?
Ok, but this is still a little vague for those of us that don’t have any experience in the Eastern model.
Do you think the Western concept of the Papacy is the biggest imepdiment?
Yes, just as a re-examination of the events with Luther resulted in the Joint Declaration on Justification, it has helped to clear up misunderstandings. I don’t see Catholics changing the concept of doctrinal development, but certainly an examination must take place, and dialogue around it, since these are the main things that maintain the schism.
Hi guanophore: I just learned that a couple of days ago. I am interested in this thread but at the moment don’t have anything to add. Will post depending what is posted. ThanksYou can also add yourself without posting by going to thread tools>subscribe.
While I agree that we need to strive toward that unity that Christ desires for His One Body, I think this allegation against the East is inappropriate and inaccuate. From and Eastern point of view, it is the West that has continued to “develop” doctrine (add the the once for all deposit of faith), adding (filoque) to the ancient creed and practicing corruption that resulted in the spawn of Protestantism.
The Orthodox churches are independent, self-governing bodies held together by shared beliefs and intercommunion. To fit into the Catholic model, every currently independent Orthodox church would have to come under the jurisdiction of the Pope.
I don’t think one side is more blameworthy but I do think the Catholic Church since Vatican II has made sincere efforts to heal the schism. The Orthodox side doesn’t seem much interested, or as you suggest, perhaps the obstacles are from their point of view simply too daunting. Whether reunification is possible or not I think it reflects favorably on Rome that she has changed course on that since VII.
I agree that the Catholic Church has made efforts since Vatican II. I disagree that the Orthodox don’t seem much interested. The Orthodox involvement with the ecumenical movement preceded that of the Catholic Church and Orthodox have been members of the World Council of Churches since its beginning. Furthermore, the Orthodox have participated in bilateral ecumenical dialogue with the Catholic Church. If they really weren’t interested, why participate in ecumenical dialogue?
Does every sui iuris (juris?) church have it’s own Bishop?
True enough, but then certainly the fact that the majority of that world does not recognize his jurisdiction or his role to be as he or your church believe it to be must count for something, right? At least in the context of ecumenical dialogue, if we are to have any.
Protestants may be considered differently than Orthodox precisely because they are the spiritual children of the Medieval Roman Catholic Church, as you yourself recognized by writing that their existence is to be laid entirely at the feet of the Roman Patriarch some posts ago. I would think a better example might be made out of Rome’s indelible mark theology, whereby I have had several of my former co-religionists claim that I am still beholden to the Roman Pontiff and am still technically a Roman Catholic in some way, despite having very explicitly rejected all the distinctives involved in claiming that identity some time ago, and again explicitly and very publicly at my baptism into the Orthodox Church in May of 2012. This means nothing to them, of course, because “once a Catholic always a Catholic”, so it does not matter that the Church I am in now holds no such similar view (in other words, if I were to leave the Orthodox Church and repudiate its teachings, as I have done in the case of the Roman Catholic Church, I would not be Orthodox anymore).
(Read: If you think that things like Universal Jurisdiction et al. seem patently wrong to the Byzantines when drawing on the first 1000 years of shared ecclesiastical history with the Latins, just imagine how absurd they must seem to those whose cut-off line in terms of shared history to examine ends some 600 years before that. You can point to Leo I or later Popes, and many later developments that do in their own way point to a centralization of power and governance of the Roman Catholic Pope in the West, and we will sit here, like the Biz Markie of apostolic Christianity, scratching our beards and saying “Yes, fine, but what does that have to do with us?” 
So it is a somewhat daring and at the same time quite reasonable suggestion, which I have heard from several Byzantine friends on these very boards, that Roman Catholics and sometimes also their own leaders are focused on the wrong schism, at least if they’re more interested in results than photographs…but I digress…and often…)Within a particular Church, a patriarch or metropolitan can have a certain measure of authority outside of his diocese. Dzheremi can correct me if I’m wrong but I believe the OO churches exhibit this a bit more strongly than the EO churches. However, this doesn’t extend outside that particular Church. For example, any directives from the Russian patriarch apply to the Russian church only, and not to the Serbs, the OCA, etc. This differs from the Catholic picture of a hypothetical united church in which all authority ultimately rolls up to Rome.
We would likewise say, as you have written, that all decisions of a given patriarch are for his church only, i.e., even when directly appealed to (as has been the case recently with the troubles facing the Orthodox Tewahedo Church of Eritrea, with the deposition of the rightly-elected Patriarch HH Abune Antonios), the patriarch of another church cannot force another autocephalous church within the communion to bend to his will or what have you. In that specific example, HH Pope Shenouda III (who, after all, was instrumental in recognizing the autocephaly of the Eritreans after their political autonomy from Ethiopia was achieved in the wake of the 1993 end of the Ethiopia-Eritrea war; in this case, it was not an overreaching of canonical boundaries or what have you, just the quite reasonable expectation that this recognition would be especially sought after from Alexandria since both the Ethiopian and the new Eritrean church are thought of by all three as the daughters of the Coptic Church, as the 1600 years of Alexandrian governance shows – it was after all HH Pope St. Athanasius the Apostolic who sent Axum her first bishops at the request of the apostle to Ethiopia, St. Frumentius) rebuffed Eritrean government representatives who came to the Church in Alexandria looking for the recognition of their puppet Patriarch, one Dioskoros. And since then it has been the common practice to commemorate HH Abune Antonios during the liturgy by name, and to hold that he is the sole legitimate Patriarch of the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church. In the absence of a pan-OO council to address the matter (there has not been one), this is what we can do to show everyone, inside and outside of the communion, where we stand. (And, similar to the situation with the Ethiopian “Synod in Exile” which has caused a division in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church following the election of our beloved reposed fellow Patriarch HH Abune Paulos, we do not commune those who are in communion with the Patriarch that we do not recognize.)
I do not study the ecclesiology of other communions, but from what I have seen if we are different in this fashion, that difference does not rise to the level of the difference between either of our communions and the Roman communion. So I’m at a loss as to what I should say about this, in the absence of specific examples.I don’t know either. I don’t know much about how the OOs operate internally. I just see it written on here all the time that the OO pope/patriarchs have “real authority” (whatever that means) as opposed to the EO patriarchs.As for whether or not our exercise of authority outside of a particular diocese is stronger or weaker than yours…I don’t know…how strong or weak is yours?