True and it stretches credulity too far to believe that it was due to stupidity or naivety.
“True and it stretches credulity too far to believe that it was due to stupidity or naivety.”
True; the policy was neither stupid nor naive. It was and is completely cynical and so easily disposed of Eastern Christians because the practioners of the policy don’t view them as real Christians.
BTW, it has always fascinated me that there are so many similarities, if not a shared total identity of thought, between the “...far brighter reality: the true and joyous liberation that inevitably involves letting go of the self” taught by Vajrayana and Theravada Buddhism and the “dying to the self” process of theosis in Orthodox Christianity.