I agree with Josie L that I doubt the Pope/Magisterium want false unity, either. From what I’ve seen on this board, however, it seems like plenty of lay Catholics want unity bad enough that they don’t take the time to understand the very real issues that divide us. I’m probably just as bad (after all, I’m not Orthodox), but from reading Orthodox apologetics (you can find them on places like
orthodoxinfo.com, which has a section devoted to what divides the two Churches specifically put together for RCs) I can kind of find myself agreeing with most of it. What is most interesting to me is how long it was once it became clear that the East and the West were developing radically different understandings of their common faith that the two stayed in union. Wasn’t it all the way back in the 4th or 5th century that the western liturgy was changed from Greek into the vernacular (Latin)? I would say that’s as good as starting point as any for what eventually became the Great Schism, and yet we had roughly 600 years of unity even as we nutured very different forms of what had been essentially the same faith. I think Pope Leo III’s opposition to adding the filioque to the Creed even as it had already been in use at Toledo for a long time says a lot about how we used to be in the West. “I, Leo, put here for love and protection of orthodox faith”, or so he is said to have declared.
When that sort of understanding is regained, then maybe the Orthodox will be more receptive to Catholic overtures. As it is, especially with the contention surrounding certain ideas circulating within the Catholic Church (see any of a million threads we’ve had on the Catholic understanding of Mary’s role as “co-redemptrix” or “mediatrix of all graces”), I don’t see it as possible. It seems like the Catholic side sees the two churches as being too similar for union to NOT eventually take place, while the Orthodox side sees the two churches as being too different for reunion TO take place, at least without some major changes that essentially would take the Catholic Church back many centuries in terms of its understanding of its role in world Christianity.
Myself, I’m in the middle. I think it is unwise to measure either Church by the standards of the other at this point. We have been separated for long enough that it is unrealistic to expect Roman Catholics to simply adopt eastern understandings of Christianity that we probably never held or understood as well as the easterners did/do. It’s simply a fact of history that much of the early Christian theology that is much more closely held to by the Orthodox than by Roman Catholics was originally formulated in the East, in Greek, Syriac or some other non-Romance or non-Germanic language, and so once knowledge of Eastern languages and cultures stopped being fostered in the West, our understanding of just what was going on over there would suffer. Likewise, it is foolish to expect eastern Christians to adopt Western understandings of the faith, for much the same reason (Western theological formulations are alien to them).
I think when people write “we need to understand each other” they really mean “you need to try to understand me as I understand myself”.
Boy, that’s tough…!
I can only speak as a western Christian of latin (as in Latin America) background, so obviously there are some limitations there, but I would think that the key to true progress (if not out-and-out “unity”, because it seems that both Churches have different ideas of what that means) would be to rediscover our own tradition as it was back when the western Churches nutured their own unique
yet complimentary understanding of the faith we shared with the East. This would no doubt be painful for many who are happy in the current environment, but many rediscoveries would probably be welcome among more traditional Catholics, and probably among Eastern Catholics as well.
It would be foolish to assume that there would be no pain at all involved in true dialogue, anyway. There are no doubt many Catholics and many Orthodox who would bristle (and probably leave) when it became clear that both sides had moved beyond pleasantries and gotten down to the real details of what impedes healing the schism. I don’t think I’m being unfair if I say that “ecumenism” is definitely a dirty word among some in both Churches (and if you think I’m being unfair, I can find appropriately nasty websites to back that claim up), so probably the first hurdle would be just proving that it wouldn’t be “business as usual” with the Pope and the Ecumenical Patriarch. I don’t doubt that many, jaded by centuries of nursing grudges or claims of heresy, wouldn’t go for it at all.
We have to do it, though. If we at all care for the people who we once shared communion with for about a thousand years, there is absolutely nothing that should stop us. I firmly believe that God wants it (though I know not how…), but His people are probably more apprehensive, not always without good reason.
Harpazo:
p) WOW reference. You could have said chess and at least stayed in the correct era for elderly patriarchs. 