I see no difference in Father Luthor nailing his theses to the church door to the act Pope Leo IX's legate, Cardinal Humbert, delivering a Bull of Excommunication to the Orthodox Patriarch Michael Cerularius on the altar of the Church of the Holy Wisdom at Constantinople while the patriarch prepared to celebrate the Divine Liturgy, condemning him and his court. Without waiting for a response, Humbert exited the church and declared, "Let God look and judge."
"The Catholics are protestant since they protested the Orthodox not accepting the Frankish innovation of the Filioque clause to the Creed.
I see no difference in Father Luthor nailing his theses to the church door to the act Pope Leo IX's legate, Cardinal Humbert, delivering a Bull of Excommunication to the Orthodox Patriarch Michael Cerularius on the altar of the Church of the Holy Wisdom at Constantinople while the patriarch prepared to celebrate the Divine Liturgy, condemning him and his court. Without waiting for a response, Humbert exited the church and declared, 'Let God look and judge.'"
Interesting that you see no difference, because the difference is rather obvious. Martin Luther was a priest. He actually did have some valid points, but he went over the top in expressing them. He was just a priest who did not even colorably have the authority to do as he did.
By contrast, Pope Leo IX was the Pope, the leader of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, which at the time included both the East and the West. The Orthodox Church to this day recognizes that in a reunited Church, the Pope is primus inter pares, the first among equal, the leader who should call Church Councils, etc.
Where agreement breaks down, and broke down then, was over the EXTENT of the Pope's power. Nobody pretended then that the Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople were exactly equal. The Pope was primus inter pares - first among equals. The question was "How much first?" Did the Seat of Peter, with its "Power of the Keys" have as much power as Leo IX rashly asserted in excommunicating the Patriarch of Constantinople?
The Catholics thought then, and think now: Yes.
The Orthodox thought then, and think now: No.
But that is not a Catholic "protest" of anything. It was an assertion of Papal power that was, and remains, in dispute. Certainly one can go all the way back into Eusebius, writing in the 300s about the earlier Pope Victor's threat to excommunicate from the entire Church the adherents to a certain heresy. He was prevailed upon by cooler heads not to do that, but Eusebius does not himself indicate any doubt but that the Pope COULD have done such a thing (unwise though it may be), and the reaction of the other clergymen trying to talk the Pope out of doing that also indicates that they, at least, understood that the Pope COULD do such a thing even back then before the Constantine conversion.
I am not trying to argue here that Leo was RIGHT in doing as he did. Personally, I think that it was a hotheaded, rash and terribly destructive move, and the world would be better off today if he had restrained himself. Nor am I even really interested in arguing that the Pope had, or didn't have, the power he asserted when he excommunicated the Patriarch of Constantinople.
I note that this was not the moment of permanent separation from of East and West. East and West came to temporary union again from time to time all the way until the Council of Florence, in the mid-1400s. These temporary reunifications were almost completely political, and fell apart again as soon as a fresh insult came, but in 1054 the Catholic and Orthodox Churches did not definitively split. And they still danced around reconciliation and reunification until the 1400s and the fall of Constantinople to the Turks.
That's why the Protestant/Catholic split is not comparable to the Catholic/Orthodox split. In the former case, there was no pretence of authority to do what Luther did. Rather, he asserted what amounted to natural law rights to leave what he saw as a corrupt Church. But in the case of the Catholic and Orthodox, there was a real doctrinal dispute over the extent of real authority which both sides acknowledged could be legitimate in certain cases.
To make it clear, NO mere priest of EITHER the Catholic or Orthodox Church could go nail up a bunch of new doctrines on any Church door in either Church and start proclaiming himself the head of a new Church. That would be obvious heresy and "protestant" separation.
By contrast, suppose the problem between the Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople was not over a doctrinal point but something more fundamental. Suppose the Patriarch had gone made, proclaimed the Emperor a God and commanded Hagia Sophia into an altar for sacrifices of children to Molech. In that case, nobody in Eastern Christendom would have objected...indeed they would have applauded...had the Pope exercised his inchoate primus inter pares authority to excommunicate the mad patriarch and remove him from his seat. Of course had the Pope then gone further and asserted the right to handpick and place the patriarch's successor, that would have been the sort of issue of power over local church governance that might well have provoked the Schism.
My point is simple enough: the problem was not that the Pope had absolutely no basis at all in asserting the power to excommunicate a Patriarch over a fine point of doctrine. It was, rather, that the extent of the Pope's powers, and limits thereon...the parameters of how far "primus inter pares" extended and where it stopped...were NOT completely clear. Pope and Patriarch each asserted conflicting positions and ran the issue to the point that it exploded. Each was convinced he was in the right on theories within the Church. Luther, by contrast, knew he had no basis at all in canon law to do as he was doing, and instead of arguing one, he said that canon law itself was flawed and that he would stand to found a church that would produce a whole new set of rules, change the sacraments, etc.
When Rome and Constantinople clashed, and clash, each is asserting a legal position within an established traditional system which BOTH want to preserve intact. They just have differing views about the parameters of what the tradition really was.
I think it is hurtful for modern Catholics to call the Eastern Orthodox either schismatics or heretics. They are neither. And I think it is hurtful for Eastern Orthodox to pretend that Catholics are Protestants with no basis of argument for anything that they have done. It's not fair, and it is not helpful, and it isn't even true. We are not that different. Christ prayed for our unity. It is incumbent on us, therefore, to avoid repeating another iteration of hotheaded old Pope Leo and his Patriarchal counterpart, and insteading of trying to excommunicate each other all over again, to remember what Jesus wants of us and seek, rather, ways that can reconcile us. Calling each other names that aren't even really descriptive of the real history is not going to help reconcile us.
"The Catholics are protestant since they protested the Orthodox not accepting the Frankish innovation of the Filioque clause to the Creed."
There is a great deal more to it than that, but in any event, the priest in the article said "Protestant", not "protestant". In either event coming from an Orthodox priest and directed toward Catholics, it is an unwarranted slap and bespeaks a mind clouded by baggage from a former faith.