What would it take for the Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox to reunify?

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It isn’t heresy.
The Orthodox don’t necessarily even disagree with it. There has been dialogue.
Both sides make valid arguments.
It comes down to that the east believes that an ecumenical Council is the only one who can alter the creed and that was not the case. The west did because the Arian heresy laster longer in areas such as Spain. The east didn’t need to confront it. Historically that is the only reason it was added in the west.
 
An extraordinary blessing of God’s grace to overcome the hardness of the hearts of men.
 
Thomasbradley312 said:
It isn’t heresy.
The Orthodox don’t necessarily even disagree with it. There has been dialogue.
Both sides make valid arguments.
It comes down to that the east believes that an ecumenical Council is the only one who can alter the creed and that was not the case. The west did because the Arian heresy laster longer in areas such as Spain. The east didn’t need to confront it. Historically that is the only reason it was added in the west.
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The word for “proceeds” used in Greek has a different meaning than the word used in the Latin translation and the translations from the Latin. The difference would make it heresy when written in Greek.

You could conceivably substitute a different Greek word in for “proceeds” to make it work, but considering the Nicene-Constantinople Creed was originally written in Greek and that’s the form the Greeks use today, it really wouldn’t be appropriate to substitute a word in the original language.
 
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Don’t Orthodox allow birth control now?
If the Orthodox are truly the Apostolic Church, someone should read the Didache.

The notion the west goes with the political tide in that sense is erroneous and there are arguments both can make in that regard.
Both sides were at fault for the schism.
The only way I think the Orthodox could cause the Church to nullify any dogmas is by making the case they weren’t voting in any of the post schism Councils thus the Church could have not had the fullness of the Church and Magisterium.
Not saying that is correct and would probably be a disaster for the Church if they made that argument but it is the only one I can think of that could undo a Dogma.
That or Papal infallibility is only on the Latin rite, which is also very problematic.
The east views it just as a seat of honor but in reality all bishops are equal.
 
As a certain Austrian college professor who moved onto bigger things put it:

“Rome must not require more from the East with respect to the doctrine of primacy than what had been formulated and was lived in the first millennium . . . Rome need not ask for more. Reunion could take place in this context if, on the one hand, the East would cease to oppose as heretical the developments that took place in the West in the second millennium and would accept the Catholic Church as legitimate and orthodox in the form she had acquired in the course of that development, while, on the other hand, the West would recognize the Church of the East as orthodox and legitimate in the form she has always had.”

–Joseph Ratzinger, “Principles of Catholic Theology” (San Francisco), Ignatius, 1987, p. 199.

ZP
 
I think it’s much more profound than has yet been touched on here except perhaps in Post No. 14 which states the only possible scenario today would be for the Catholic Church to dissolve itself and direct all Catholics to join the Orthodox Church.

The whole situation is essentially unworkable. The Catholic Church is overwhelmingly larger than the Orthodox Church. And there is more than one Orthodox Church. The largest is Eastern Orthodoxy. Eastern Orthodoxy is overwhelmingly Russian in composition, the remainder being very small. The Moscow Patriarchy is very much associated with the Russian government, and is consequently profoundly distrusted by many other Orthodox as well as Catholics. Eastern Orthodoxy itself is not united, witness the enmity between the Kiev Patriarchy and the Moscow Patriarchy.

It becomes even more difficult when one realizes Orthodoxy is territorial. The Moscow Patriarchy claims exclusive jurisdiction over all of Asia and the Americas and most of western Europe, to the exclusion of all others. The Catholic Church is not territorial and claims the right to be anywhere on earth. Those positions are irreconcilable.

The split between Catholicism and Orthodoxy is not at all about the “filioque” or even about councils. Some of the Orthodox Churches reject some councils that some others accept. But that’s probably something that can be solved.

But there is no possibility of an ecumenical council including Catholicism and Orthodoxy, and precisely because Eastern Orthodoxy is “sedevacantist” in the sense that it holds there is no present bishop of Rome. The Pope is, to them, a usurper and is not a priest at all, let alone a bishop. Until the Pope is replaced by an Eastern Orthodox bishop, there can be no ecumenical councils according to Eastern Orthodoxy.

It’s that bad.
 
That’s true, isn’t there an ongoing Moscow-Constantinople schism ongoing currently?
 
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Thomasbradley312 said:
That’s true, isn’t there an ongoing Moscow-Constantinople schism ongoing currently?
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Yes. I don’t know all the details, but among other things, Moscow condemned the Patriarch of Constantinople for concelebrating a Mass with the Pope. Constantinople is not as intractable as Moscow, but as I said, the overwhelmingly greatest number of Eastern Orthodox are Russians in Russia.
 
pacloc said:
Catholics don’t expect Protestants to reunify, because they have strayed from the faith and want them to give up those errors
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Permit me to mildly dispute this. Orthodox regard Protestantism as a Latin Church aberration, and to some degree they’re right. Catholicism has a much greater chance of converting (or even reunifying) with certain protestants than it does with Moscow Patriarch of E.O.

The truth of the matter is that many, many, many protestants already believe a great deal that’s borrowed from Catholicism. Look at the confessions of faith of some of the protestant sects. Most of them say almost nothing. The rest of their beliefs are mostly borrowings from Catholicism that they don’t even realize are borrowings.

I think Catholic author Flannery O’Connor put it well. She said (and I’m paraphrasing) southern fundamentalists would be surprised to learn they hold more in common with Catholicism than they do with Protestantism. That’s just one segment of Protestantism, but it’s a very big one in the U.S.
 
It was for celebrating with the Pope?
I was under the impression that it was because the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew l, gave Ukraine an autonomous Church and that angered Moscow because it had been part of their jurisdiction for a very long time.
 
That too. As I said previously, some of the E.O. have a great deal of antipathy toward Russia, and therefore to the Moscow Patriarchy. There’s probably no fix for that, as they see the Moscow Patriarchy and the Russian government as hand-in-glove.
 
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Yah true.
Anglicanism, well High Church Anglicans anyways, and Lutherans are probably the most likely from the Protestant side to have a chance of reconciliation.
Has the Orthodox ever had any sort of Reformation on their side or was that purely a western phenomenon?
 
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I was Orthodox for two and a half years over the Council of Florence and returned to communion with Rome last week having been once again convinced the filioque is true.

There is a fundamentally insoluble schism between Constantinople and Moscow because Constantinople believes it is first without equals, having all the privileges of Old Rome as it sees them (the new Greek Archbishop of America wrote the paper with that title) and Moscow denying there is anything beyond first in honor among equals. If either should manage to put together a council proclaiming its view to be true the other can just claim it was a robber council.

There is much to admire from the outside (the lack of liturgical scandals being chief among them) but in the end the visible principle of unity found in the Pope of Rome proves to be necessary.
 
I live in the Bible Belt. We get a lot of converts in my parish. Virtually all are from fundamentalist sects, not the “high church” folks like Anglicans and LCMS Lutherans. I think there’s a reason for that. If you ask the former fundamentalists what the number one reason they had for joining the Church, they’ll say “the Eucharist”.

Think about it. Fundamentalists are pretty strict folks, morally. But their number one desire to be “close to Jesus”. They don’t have much in the way of doctrine and don’t care much about it. But being “close to Jesus” is everything to them. And there’s nothing on this earth that brings a person closer to Jesus than the Eucharist.

Flannery O’Connor was right when she said in the future the number one source of converts in the U.S. would be among southern fundamentalists.
 
I think you’re right. I do think some of the E.O. of the Constantinople Patriarchy might. But I don’t think the Russians are at all interested.
 
Thomasbradley312 said:
It isn’t heresy.
The Orthodox don’t necessarily even disagree with it. There has been dialogue.
Both sides make valid arguments.
It comes down to that the east believes that an ecumenical Council is the only one who can alter the creed and that was not the case. The west did because the Arian heresy laster longer in areas such as Spain. The east didn’t need to confront it. Historically that is the only reason it was added in the west.
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Are you saying that the East didn’t need to confront the Arian heresy? The entire East was enveloped in Arianism. At one point, 75% of Eastern sees were occupied by Arian bishops.
 
Yah at one point.
This was centuries afterward that it was added. The east had been eradicated from it at this point.
 
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