[Kolokotronis]

"Fourth, it recommends the same solution I did: agree that the original Nicene Creed is still good (I went farther and recommended an especial reverence for and ecumenical use of the Apostles Creed, given its great antiquity and the lack of any disagreement over it), and suggesting a preference for its use in documents and transactions between the Western and Eastern Orthodox Rites."

What the statement says is "... in view of the fact that the Vatican has affirmed the "normative and irrevocable dogmatic value of the Creed of 381" in its original Greek version, the Consultation recommends that the Catholic Church use the same text (without the Filioque) "in making translations of that Creed for catechetical and liturgical use,".

Now that is hardly saying that the two formulations are equally correct and that the original form only be used in inter Church matters, but rather in fact recommends that the Western Church in both teaching the Creed and in using it in the Liturgy, drop the filioque.

I don't mean to count coup here, but what the agreed statement says is pretty clear. By the way, I agree that for the overwhelming number of people in the pews, it won't make a tinker's dam worth of difference, but in the East, given our 2000 year old tradition of arguing fine points of theology at the "meat market" or the "barbershop", a change to include the filioque would probably, after awhile, give rise to some fairly broad based objection. Now, whether the objectors would have a clue about what they were arguing would be a totally different matter!

Other theological differences? That would take some thought, but the obvious ones are original sin, transubstantiation, purgatory, indulgences, Papal Infallibility, and the Immaculate Conception, all matters which we have batted about here before to no useful end that I can see. There are undoubtedly others.

One final point. You refer continually to the miracles at Lourdes as some sort of proof that God indeed shows His favor on the Roman Church. Well of course He does. The Roman fascination with miracles and visions has always puzzled me, though. In the East, these things happen all the time and while we think of them as a wonderful blessing, the fact that God, through the intercession of Panagia or a saint would heal a Christian doesn't surprise us particularly. A loving Father would do that for His children. As for visions, our old people have them regularly. My great grandmother's best friend was Panagia. She was a woman with a simple Faith, and a very powerful best friend. She was sharp as a tack to the day she died. We think this is likewise wonderful, but not remarkable particularly. I think maybe in the West we think to much about religion, trying to rationalize, or perhaps a better word is intellectualize the Faith. This can cloud our souls so that when the love of God bursts through at a place like Lourdes, we don't recognize it for what it is and see it as something from beyond us in every sense of the word. In the East, the connection between us here and Panagia and the saints in heaven is intimate, close. There is no great gulf between the Church Militant and the Church Triumphant. I'm sure I'm not explaining this well, but its like there is a constant heavenly presence with us here, with saints and Panagia moving back and forth, like on a visit and then going home. In the 6th century, a monk named John Moschos wrote a book called the Spiritual Meadow about his travels around the Middle East fro Greece down to the Great Oasis in Egypt visiting monasteries. His stories of visions and miracles are told in a very matter of fact manner which reflected not only his beliefs, but those of his readers. We still read the book to this day. Get a copy; it will tell you a lot about the way the Orthodox still view the world.

[Vicomte13]

Kolokotronis wrote: "The Roman fascination with miracles and visions has always puzzled me, though. In the East, these things happen all the time and while we think of them as a wonderful blessing, the fact that God, through the intercession of Panagia or a saint would heal a Christian doesn't surprise us particularly"

The West is extremely scientific and rationalistic in its belief system and thinking. The struggle in the West is not between various flavors of Christianity, or between Christianity and Islam. That goes on, but only in the subset of religious holdouts. Outside of America, the West is secular and scientific. And even in America, there is neat distinction between the hard-core committed religious, and the bulk of the population who are scientifically minded but still believe in God.
The main issue in the West is not the flavor of religion, but whether religious belief is itself anything other than a comforting traditional fairy tale held over from a superstitious age.

The West is the land of Newton and Descartes, of Kepler and Galileo, Faraday and Franklin, Heinsenberg, Einstein and Darwin and Pasteur. Indeed, the Western Church had a distinctly rationalist bent long before Galileo peered through a telescope: back in the Middle Ages Thomas Acquinas reposed the whole natural and spiritual world on a chain of causes and necessary effects going back to the uncaused first cause, which is God. His was a Christian Aristotelianism, and it reflects the very pragmatic, rationalistic, mercilessly mathematical quantity of the Western mind.

Faced with a cause and effect world that has been proven, as far as the popular imagination goes, to scientifically apply to everything except subatomic particles...which themselves in their utter randomness also show no indications of any intelligent control, the Western mind tends not towards religious rationalism, but scientific atheism.

Jesus used miracles done by himself and the apostles - practical miracles: healings, resurrections, casting out of demons (this latter part is hard for the modern Western mind to swallow: epilepsy is a demon?) The Western mind is particularly attuned to miracles, to reports of near-death experiences and the like, because they are impossible. Scientific minds use the noncontradiction principle. If something impossible happens, then the theory that said it was impossible is wrong. To most Westerners, the problem is not the flavor of faith, it is that scientific rationalism blocks the capacity for faith by a thick, heavy incrustation of skepticism. Miracles violate the established order, and open individuals to the possibility that there is God after all. Again: for most Westerners the debate is not HOW to worship God (which we've been discussing here in the Orthodox/Catholic thread, where even nuances in language can result in hard-minded positions being taken), but whether there IS a God at all.
Lourdes as a fountain of medical miracles, with its own International Scientific Committee that collects hard data and analyzes it, is a challenge and an affront to godless secular scientific skepticism. The International Scientific Committee is a product of that skepticism. But their reports, which find many things "not medically explicable" end up using science to prove that what happened is truly miraculous. This is the sort of thing that forces open the Western mind. Some earnest guy with relatively low education banging on my door and wanting to read to me out of a book of ancient Jewish fables that says the world is 6000 years old and there really was a Flood does not advance the faith among most Westerners, but retards it. It is a reminder of the superstitious darkness of our past. But real medical miracles at Lourdes, and real scientific studies that indicate life after death...this is what forces open the mind of Western man a crack to consider that maybe there is, after all, something to this God stuff.

But not everyone. Anatole France, on visiting Lourdes and seeing the stacks and stacks of crutches from the healed there, famously commented: "What?!, No wooden legs?!" That is the Western mind par excellence. Rational, skeptical, scientific and cynical. It takes miracles to jar this mind, because miracles become part of the database of facts, and if they cannot be explained away (that's the purpose of the International Scientific Committee at Lourdes), then the theories must expand to make room for the facts.

That's why the West focuses on miracles. Miracles are facts. Western belief is based on facts. If Jesus didn't really walk out of the tomb alive on the resurrection, then he was a charlatan and his religion is worse than useless: it is a cloud of superstition that makes people stupid. If the Red Sea didn't really part for Moses and the Jews, then the Old Testament is a lie, and the religion is worse than useless - it is ethnocentric, superstitious claptrap that will turn the mind away from the truth: the world is 4 billion years old, there was never Noah's Ark, etc.
We cannot go back in time to verify those things.
But in the here and now, we can look at what is done in the name of religion, and this too can be pretty damning, from the perspective of the hard, rational, skeptical Western mind. After all, we have all of these raped little boys. If there was no Church at all, there would not be so many boys trusting in figures who are spiritual counsellors who then turn and rape them. The only excuse for Christianity to exist is if it is actually TRUE. We do not need belief in a God who doesn't really exist. Indeed, such a belief is a waste of human intelligence and tends to make people behave stupidly and meanly. Christianity is only worth anything if there really was Christ, he really walked out of the tomb, there really is God in heaven watching us all, and there really is an afterlife. Otherwise, it is a complete waste of time, effort and money, and we would be better off ending it. The best proof that all of that is ultimately true is when God reaches down to earth and breaks all the laws of physics. Miracles tend to prove God, who is otherwise rendered moot by science in the minds of most Westerners. That is why miracles are so important to the Western mind.