Of course if any Pope were to ever overreach his authority again, the option of schism always remains again. The true problem in today's Western Church is not papal authority anyway. It is the wholesale disregard of standards by the clergy in the parishes and the dioceses.
The only objective really needed to be sought is to bring the Churches back into full communion one with the other, so that Catholic and Orthodox are all "catholic", and presumably each "orthodox" in the practice of his particular rite. There is no good reason anymore to bind a practitioner of the Greek rite to the Roman rite. All of the rites are Holy and one of the lessons of the Schism ought to be an end to the insistence on one holy liturgy at the exclusion of others.
A Vatican III is certainly needed, to correct the excesses of Vatican II, and to make possible full communion between the two halves of the Church. One can only expect that the clear, traditional lines of the Orthodox bishops and metropolitans in such a grand Council would act as a lifeline for the beleaguered traditionalists of the West today.
The two halves of the Church need each other.
The price of unity in communion would be to leave each others' rites alone. All admit that Latin, Greek, and Russian rite are Holy. No one need be bound to abandon what is holy simply because of a demand for genuflection to a principle of obedience. Indeed, the principle of obedience that needs to be asserted by the Pope is that these holy rites shall be respected and retained, and that the Pope, as primus inter pares, will not permit the more politically minded of the various churches from stirring up these tired and destructive old sources of dissension. Scoring points against each other over matters that are within the scope of authority of the leaders of each rite is to lose points with God.
Example: filioque. This was a CHOICE. That choice need not be reversed in the West. And it need not be imposed in the East.
Huge BUMP for an excellent, expansive, Catholic post!!!
What you speak of is earnestly to be prayed for, but in all honesty, what do you do with the different phronemas of the East and the West? Our relationship with our priests and hierarchs, even our Patriarchs, is at base, conciliar. The Church belongs to and is operated by all of us. Because of our mindset with regard to the Faith, this has not been a source of trouble theologically but does mean that, for example, an Archbishop perceived by the Laos tou Theou, the People of God, to be oppressive and intent upon reducing them and their national hierarchs to the position and role of vassals to the Patriarch of Constantinople was driven from his position and replaced by one more acceptable to the people, the clergy and the national hierarchs. This very recently happened right here in America, friend. Would Rome countenance such a thing? Would Roman hierarchs in America rise up against the Pope and demand the removal of the senior national prelate? I actually participated in the first Diocesan Council in America in which, in the presence of our Metropolitan and the offending Archbishop himself, we, clergy and laity together, stood on the floor, denounced the man and called upon the Patriarch to remove him. The Council voted almost unanimously for this. This is just one, albeit rather dramatic, example of how different the Churches are in function and mindset. Your formulation, "...need not be imposed in the East." It speaks to the very phronema problem about which I have written. If a Council of the whole Church chose to accept the fillioque, it would not be "imposed" on the Church, it would be the will of God as expressed by the Church in Council. Without a Council, no one or group should feel it is being generous, or concessionary by agreeing not to "impose" it on the Church. Getting into the fllioque argument here is pointless. We've beaten that dead horse to a pulp. Suffice it to say that the Nicene Creed of the Council does not contain fillioque. If at a Great Council, the whole Church (and that means including you and me, not just hierarchs and priests, chose to insert those words, fine.