Solidarity with fellow humans is a given, sir, I was talking about spirituality. I can stand next to a heathen and defend his mortal life. That doesn't make him my spiritual brother. When it comes to that side of things, it seems you want everyone to get along at the expense of the message. And there is no doubt that the message is the matter of import because it determines our spiritual end - something we will live with long after physical demise. If you lose perspective on that, then all is for naught to begin with.
Compromising to get along with one's neighbors is great, so long as it isn't compromise of the message. Like I said, the message is unpopular. The truth divides and enrages. And compromising the truth is apostacy - no matter what "noble" purpose you put to it.
I suppose what you have written is true at one level, about message being of greatest importance.
However, it is important to remember that the message itself, at least as Jesus and the Apostles, and Moses and the Prophets before that, handed to us is not dramatically detailed and not very specific, especially once the Mosaic Law is lifted from us.
Jesus left us two commandments and seven sacraments. One can become very detailed and devoted to all sorts of different aspects of the religion, and not be interested in other aspects of it, and still not have abandoned the message.
Example: Sts. John Chrysostom, Francis of Assisi, and Dominick were all indisputably God-driven men, blessed, holy, sainted. But the one was deeply devoted to the liturgy, and the other was deeply devoted to the poor and the sufferings of animals, while the third was deeply intellectual, scientific, and devoted to correcting error.
These three men of God would not have had a great deal to talk about were they to sit at table. Plunk down Joan of Arc, the bellicose Gideon of the French who was also indisputably touched by God at the same table, and it is likely that the four would not have gotten along! St. Francis would have been appalled at St. Joan's resort to the sword. St. Dominick would have been appalled at the woman in armor. St. John Chrysostom would have wanted everyone to shut up and pray correctly.
Even the apostles did not get along all that well. They were bickering when Christ was around.
And they were bickering afterwards. Paul and Peter's disputes are in the Bible. That Paul thought Luke was worthless for awhile is also right there.
They didn't get along. They disagreed not on the core of the message, but on the method of promulgating it. And that is a different thing.
How much difference is there, really, between the core of the message between Christians?
Do ALL Christians accept the two commandments?
That's an awful long way to fellowship.
Do they ALL accept Jesus as God?
Nearly. And those who do, and who are Trinitarians, are also an awfully long way together on the message.
What is the DIFFERENCE between the Romans and the Orthodox, really?
Filioque...but is this REALLY a different in message, or is it a PERCEIVED difference in message magnified by a difference in language and then accentuated by more politics than was good for anybody?
The authority of the Pope?
Yes, that is a real difference, at some level.
But is THAT difference enough for Catholics to say that the Orthodox are all damned, or the Orthodox to say that the Catholics are all damned, because one (or maybe both) are in a degree of error concerning church governance?
Ummmmm. No.
How is that even RELEVANT to yours or my walking according to the commandments of Christ? If we were ordained clergy, we might have more to worry about. But even then, maybe not.
As mere laymen, it's an issue, and a difference in message, and it is not something on which my or Kolokotronis' salvation depends. He's an ouzo-sipping baklava-eating three-times through-the-liturgy stander. I'm a whiskey-swilling tarte-tatin-eating short-version-service-in-English please Mackerel Snapper. And neither of us is going to fail to get to heaven because we disagree on the message concerning the precise boundaries of authority of the Roman Patriarch.
Is it important?
Yeah.
But not important enough that anybody is going to go to Hell over it.
Which means, in my scale of the Real Message, it's not all that important. It gives us men something to strive for, to untangle what we have tangled. That we eventually succeed in this life is not required for either of us to make it to heaven, where Kolokotronis will discover that I was right all along...well...if I make it out of Purgatory while he still remembers who I am...