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Good morning, Cronos.

I’m not blaming anyone for anything. On June 24, 2004, during a visit to the Vatican by His All-Holiness, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholemew I, Pope John Paul II apologized for the Sacking of Constantinople. This is not in dispute.

If he had nothing to apologize for, then it would seem to have necessarily been an act of disingenuineness for him to do so.

On June 24, 2004, during a visit to the Vatican by His All-Holiness, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholemew I, Pope John Paul II apologized for the Sacking of Constantinople. This is not in dispute.If he had nothing to apologize for, then it would seem to have necessarily been an act of disingenuineness for him to do so

Did you READ the apology?? The Pope's apology had asked forgiveness of God for "sins of action and omission" by Catholics against the Orthodox, including those of the Crusades, including the sacking of Constantinople on April 13, 1204, when Crusaders sacked and looted the city for three days.

The pope apologised on BEHALF of the Catholics who had done that heinous deed. Those people were NOT sanctioned, they were NOT told, they were NOT commanded, ordered, allowed to or in any way made to sack Constantinople by the Pope, the clergy or The Western Church. the Church was not the instigator of the sacking, it meant the Crusades to DEFEND Christendom in the East, not attack it or defile it or destroy it.

READ about the sacking -- the Venetian merchants wants this done to allow Venice supremacy in the eastern mediterranean. Didn't the pope excommunicate all who participated in the attack when he heard about it?

Sheesh -- our Patriarch apologises to your Patriarch for the actions conducted 800 years agao by some excommunicated Catholics acting on THEIR own accord NOT sanctioned by The Church and you twist that to say that the Patriarch of the West and The Church in the West was the instigator of the attack on Constantinople?

Shame on you for not understanding that but twisting it around.

If the Georgian Orthodox Patriarch next apologised for the actions of the lapsed Orthodox Stalin, would that mean that the Georgian Church had anything to do with Stalin's purges? NO, of course not. It's the same thing here. The apology was meant to show to the East that we are serious about ending the political and historical angst between us before we start on the discussions of dogma.

Why? Because we need to talk about serious things like why the Spanish priests put the filioque and to remove it (I've repeated in other articles that this filioque was meant to combat Arianism that was promoted by the visigothis kings in Spain and this was targetted at THEM, no offense meant to the orthodox, but the wording changes between Latin and Greek -- the filioque is NOT meant to signify that the Holy Spirit proceeds from TWO sources but that Jesus is not a "lesser God" as the Arians proposed. I've also said that the Orthodox are correct that this should have only been amended, if at all, in an ecumenical council. anyway I digress)

So, we have to clear out all the historical angst before we can discuss the REAL important things (they're no point discussing the nature of the Theotokos if someone from the orthodox benches pops up and says "Says you, you guys attacked us in 1204!!! Why should we trust you 800 years later??".

Reciting the apology as stated by the Pope

Eight hundred years after the Fourth Crusade, Pope John Paul II twice expressed sorrow for the events of the Fourth Crusade. In 2001, he wrote to Christodoulos, Archbishop of Athens, saying, "It is tragic that the assailants, who set out to secure free access for Christians to the Holy Land, turned against their brothers in the faith. The fact that they were Latin Christians fills Catholics with deep regret."[8] In 2004, while Bartholomew I, Patriarch of Constantinople, was visiting the Vatican, John Paul II asked, "How can we not share, at a distance of eight centuries, the pain and disgust."

We're apologizing for Latin Christians who shouldn't have done what they did.