With all due respect, brother Steven, you really need to go hang out with the Orthodox to know what's really going on. Reconciliation with the Catholic Church will only happen when the pope renounces his claims to infallibility, supremacy over the Church, the filioque is dropped from the Creed, etc. If you read the stuff that went on at Florence, wow, hundreds of years ago, it really laid out the differences.
Orthodoxy disagrees with Catholicism a great deal on papal claims, indulgences, purgatory, the atonement, church polity, and their spirituality is so different. I have lived in both worlds, and I can safely tell you they're NOT as similar and fraternal as you think. When I became Orthodox, I had to enter a whole different mindset. I mean WHOLE NEW mindset. Orthodoxy doesn't have one universal catechism with universal precepts on everything. It also doesn't have "obligation" thinking in it. It also doesn't like the mortal vs. venial language in sins. It also sees the organization of the Church much differently. They also object to unleavened bread for the Eucharist for theological reasons. They see the road to salvation through different terms. Orthodoxy feels itself to be more relational and less legalistic.
Bottom line is, if you're waiting to see this reunion in your lifetime, I hope you live to be a few hundred years old at the very least!
T'ain't gonna happen.
There is a reason the East and West split. It wasn't just the filioque, but rather a buildup of frustrations on the part of the East that took a few hundred years to simmer into a volcanic eruption. The stupidity that ensued on BOTH sides between Cardinal Humbert on the West and the Patriarch of Constantinople Michael Cerularius on the East, was the final eruption and end.....But if you really read about it, the Photian Schism was the precursor and the beginning of the end. When the Catholic Church mandated celibacy after centuries, that disturbed the East. But they continued communion. When the West stopped the venerable practice of using leavened bread and switched to wafers, that also deeply concerned the East, but they held on. Linguistically there was a lot of bad communication and isolation of thinking as well. But as the West changed the Creed without a council, and popes claimed to have a universal supremacy, things bubbled to huge levels and eventually blew.
From the perspective of the West, the Orthodox must accept papal domination/supremacy over the worldwide Church. Orthodox cannot and will not accept this. The Orthodox would expect the Catholics to STOP believing the pope is the only Chair of Peter and universal pastor over all churches. They would demand the CC drop their universal polity in favor of Eucharistic polity. That won't happen, ever. And as if things weren't bad already, Vatican II was a real lightning rod that caused more bad feelings.
Sorry to be cynical, but I think most people who say this prediction know very little about what Orthodoxy actually teaches, believes, and how they all feel. Even Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, who is quite an ecumenical type of guy, says that we SHOULD CONTINUE to seek reconciliation and fraternal relations with the CC....BUT he is careful to include that it can only happen when the CC returns to the Orthodox faith and its polity and renounces the last 1,000 of papal claims. Not going to happen.....
Since the EOC and the RCC are working (in "Church time", to be sure), on reconciliation with sincere hearts, and I have faith that this may happen within my life time, may I ask what specific doctrines you are considering leaving Catholicism over? It's just that we've spent 1,000 years so far trying to get back together, (one holy catholic and apostolic Church). It has been my understanding that the doctrines which seperate are not nearly as numerous as the doctrines which bind. I defend the EO all the time to groups which disapprove of catholic orthodoxy. (Most all of the world). I consider the EO our closest brothers and sisters in ecclesial union. Pope John Paul II called the RCC and EOC the right and left lungs of the body of Christ. So I am NOT proselytizing, or trying to show any disrespect or anything. I even agree with a fellow who doesn't seem to care much for me that your discernment should be with a priest. My questions are for my own study, benefit and prayer in understanding what there is which still causes us to be apart.
The primacy of St. Peter as the 1st among equals in the bishopric? The Generation of the Holy Spirit? (I thought it was agreed by both Churches that the later wasn't sufficient grounds for separation, i.e. We could still be one Church, and the rites which would be the EO could still have a different understanding of the filioque.)?
I ask these questions in peace and with a spirit of charity. I will have no loss of respect should you leave us, as I have a deep and abiding respect for the EO in general. I'd just like to learn more about the sticking points which are perceived to still exist, and see if I can find reasonable scriptural and traditional support for unification. At the same time, I'll go back and read the rest of this thread. I arrived pretty late.
In the end, I believe that our Lord did indeed create one Church. I believe that we had that until the schism. I believe we will have it again. This doesn't even mean that anything of great value need be lost to either entity. I am encouraged by the ordinariate established for the Anglican communion, which brings her in as an Anglican "rite" of the Church. They still have the Common Book of Prayer.
May the Holy Spirit guide you in your discernment.
