After reading through this thread, all I can say is thank God that the unity of His Church doesn't depend on Freepers!!
We're all a load of schizobleepingphrenic nutjobs who can find more reasons to frustrate Christ's will for unity than we can to obey it.
I vote that we let the Holy Spirit sort out the mess for once - it might be quite a novel experience for all of us and He might be a tad better at it. The best we can do is simply to pray "Thy will be done, Lord.", and then pray that all the respective hierarchs and laity will be obedient to Him when He acts.
With God all things are possible, without Him we can do nothing.
You are probably right, but I have been enjoying the back and forth, as I am learning a lot about history and Orthodox theology along the way!
It is when we look outside FR at the state of the Catholic Church that we realize how ill-timed the calls for unity are on our part. I don't think the Catholics in the West are in a position to contemplate unity before our own liturgical house is in order. This means that the Traditional Latin Mass should be the mainstream, the Novus Ordo should be, in my humble opinion, branched into a new rite, where it should be purified of the abuses that threaten to become a norm, so that its strength as a rite accessible to non-Catholics can be realized.
I think that greater unity that the East recognizes exists theologically. In theory, it should be possible to iron out some misconceptions regarding, the Original Sin or the Immaculate Conception, possibly even on the Filioque. Assuming the Holy Father lives up to his promise, I am sure, the East will recognize the desperate need for a strong and autocratic shepherd in the West, even if they cherish the autocephaly principle in the East. However, the West tends to expect too much from such theological agreement. We think that as soon as the differences in theology are reduced to tolerable differences of non-doctrinal opinion, we get unity. The East does not operate that way: the unity must reach the level of liturgical practice to be meaningful, and the liturgical practice fuses centuries of tradition with a disposition of the heart. On that level we are close to disunity even among ourselves.
Of course, some steps are possible, particularly on the mutual opening of the sacraments, as some have suggested on this thread. Another area is political unity in the face of dictatorial secularism.
I reiterate, the best step for unity a Catholic can make in our lifetime is to be a better Catholic. I suspect the same can be said for the Orthodox.
Kosta, Agrarian,
I am still working on the summary for the Filioque, but this is where my leanings are.
Askel,
Souls in Purgatory bump.