What Vicomte suggests may be very close to what the Pope suggests -- two fully autonomous "lungs" in the same body. There is a political element of resistance by those who see this as "concession" to the East and a diminishing if not outright insulting the primacy of the Pope. There is probably an equally adamant element among the Orthodox who cringe at the though of "becoming" Catholic.
I also think that all of you who participated correctly identified the very cause of continued split: the papacy. It is not that the Orthodox do not recognize the Pope as the first in honor, it is that they refuse to recongize him as their sovereign lord to whom they submit, not out of reverence, but out of juridical authority. I think the example of the Supreme Court is an excellent parallel to understanding how the Primitive Church was organized and how the orthodox Church is still organized or disorganized, whichever you prefer.
Kolokotronis made an excellent point when he mentioned that the Orthodox Church is truly the gathering of all believers (ekklesia) and that the laity have a duty to co-govern the Church instead of being passive and obedient spectators. Incidentally, Saint Cyprian proposed that the faithful should have the right to "depose" a bishop -- a view that earned him rejection and scorn by the Roman Pontiff, along with the charge of heresy. Cyrpian was a great proponent of princely popes, but he also had a profoundly 'eastern' view of the limits of that princely office.
My two cents' worth is a basic understanding of the word communion. Churches that profess the same faith are theologically in communion with each other. A Church is where the bishop is and any two bishops whose ekklesia profess the same faith are in spiritual communion.
What Vicomte purposes, in good faith and with a good heart, is a political communion of churches that, despite their proximity in many things and common roots and Apostolic tradition and valid clergy, are neither spiritually nor administratively identical or even close enough to be able to simply state that what Rome teaches and what Constantinople or Moscow teach is one and the same theology, or one and the same concept of the church.
I agree with Kolekotronis that a Vatican III should place all issues on the table and let the clergy and the laity decide if we can come to a common faith and a common vision of the Church. I share Kolokotronis's skepticism that we can for all the reasons mentioned above and in the endless debates that have taken place since the Vatican II and even before that.
The Church can be one if, for the start, the Church of the West were to return completely to the Church of the Seven Ecumenical Councils and re-open for discussion all the additions and innovations to the faith (which would of course hold for the Church of the East equally). That would mean (perhaps temorarily) disengaging one thousand years of Roman Catholicism (which leads in such inniovations) and everything the RCC taught since the Great Schism. Frankly, no matter how much we all may wish that, it will never happen. No church will ever have to admit that it was wrong.
ping