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I had hope to proceed in this discussion on the question of authority and the possibility of rash judgment on the part or the Orthodox toward Catholics and not get into the actual theological debate over filioque but since you insist on your mistaken idea that the question of the filioque is cut and dry, the Orthodox position being self-evedently true, I direct your attention to the statement of St. Maximus the Confessor, Patriarch of Constantinople in the 7th cent.:

Those of the Queen of cities (Constantinople) have attacked the synodic letter of the present very holy Pope, not in the case of all the chapters that he has written in it, but only in the case of two of them. One relates to the theology (of the Trinity) and, according to them, says: 'The Holy Spirit also has his ekporeusis (ekporeuesthai) from the Son'. The other deals with the divine incarnation. With regard to the first matter, they (the Romans) have produced unanimous evidence of the Latin Fathers, and also of Cyril of Alexandria, from the study he made of the gospel of St. John. On the basis of these texts, they have shown that they have not made the Son the cause (aitian) of the Spirit - they know in fact that the Father is the only cause of the Son and the Spirit, the one by begetting and the other by ekporeusis (procession) - but that they have manifested the procession through him (to dia autou proienai) and have thus shown the unity and identity of the essence... They (the Romans) have therefore been accused of precisely those things which it would be wrong to accuse them, whereas the former (the Byzantines) have been accused of those things of which it has been quite correct to accuse them (Monothelitism). They have up till now produced no defence, although they have not yet rejected the things that they have themselves so wrongly introduced. In accordance with your request, I have asked the Romans to translate what is peculiar to them [the 'also from the son'] in such a way that any obscurities that may result from it will be avoided. But since the practice of writing and sending [the synodic letter] has been observed, I wonder whether they will possibly agree to do this. It is true, of course, that they cannot reproduce their idea in a language and in words that are foreign to them as they can in their mother-tongue, just as we too cannot. In any case, having been accused, they will certainly take some care about this.

"unanimous evidence of the Latin Fathers, and also of Cyril of Alexandria"

Even without the defense of St. Maximus it is clear that the teaching of the early Church was not unanimous and unambiguous. If we were to take the same hard line that you do, could we not claim that it is the Greeks who have departed from the teaching of the Church?

I also recommend the statement by Metropolitan John of Pergamen. Although he has not completely accept the Vatican clarification of the issue it is clear that he recognizes that a major cause of the dispute is the difference between the Latin and Greek languages. If we admit that we do not completely understand each other because of language problems, is it not then rash judgment to jump to the claim of heresy?

Petrosius, you are making the same mistake many learned Roman Catholics brothers and sisters make on this Forum: they quote various Fathers, whose opinions support the point they try to make. That is great scholasticism, but it misses the point.

The final authority on what the Church teaches are Ecumenical Councils. The EC composed and finalized the Christian Symbol of Faith (the Creed) and prohibited anyone from adding or substracting from it (unless another EC needs to clarify it -- as was the case with the Holy Ghost of the Nicene Creed).

The bottom line is this: the Creed was approved in its finalized form (without the Filioque) in all subsequent councils. If the Latin Church found it necessary to describe the "mechanics" of Trinitarian economy for whatever reason, it had no authority to unilaterally insert the Filioque into the Creed, which was done in the 11th century before the Great Schism as a concession to the semi-heretical (semi-iconoclastic) Frankish kings, who were also the guardians of the Pope.

St. Maximos the Confessor, just as St. Chrysostom, was one of those eastern Bishops very close to Rome and very fond of the Pope. After all, it was a Pope, in whom St. Maximos sought refuge, who saved the Church from iconoclastic heresy in the East, but it was also a Pope who embraced Monothelism which St. Maximos denied, and was proven wrong by the Sixth Ecumenical Council, and subsequent Popes.

The so-called Photian synod, which re-instated St. Photius and agreed with him, was ratified by a Pope and this settled the Filioque controversy, although it was not an ecumnical synod (which would have been the 8th). It also annuled the so-called 8th Ecumenical Synod 10 years prior, which the Roman Catholic Church counts as the "8th" although it was condemned by the Photian Synod, the condemnation having been approved by Pope himself.

The bottom line is this: individual fathers make opinions; Ecumenical Councils decide what is orthodoxy and what is heresy. The ECs are infallible because they represent the entire Church; individual fathers are not.

If any Ftaher says anything that is contrary to the proclamations of Ecumenical Synods, the Ftaher is wrong. Plain and simple.