I understand this. And in precisely the same spirit I refuse to ignore Jesus when he asks sharply "What good does it do you to say that you follow me if you do not keep my commandments."
"Keeping Jesus' commandments", my mind, absolutely and without a doubt means physically doing, in the carnal world, what he said to do. What one believes in the mind does not cut it. It is what you DO that matters. So I read Jesus as saying explicitly that works are the central focal point of following him, and that following him is what gets a man through the gate. In other words, works are the very essence of salvation, and that what is in a man's head is meaningless. It's not what a man believes, or thinks, it's what he DOES that determines whether he passes or fails final judgment. That's what I read Jesus saying, it is very explicit and obvious to me, and I see all efforts to convert what Jesus said into "faith alone" as being the explicit rejection of Jesus Christ in favor of something else. I won't do it. At best I will smile and not politely, to not have a fight about it, but in the end I reject utterly any religion that teaches anything other than works-based salvation, because that's what Jesus commanded, and he's God.
The Catholic Church, my Church, in its desire for ecumenism, speaks in very diplomatic language and does not focus on this - and among certain more sophisticated minds than mine I guess even squares the circle, just as somehow the question of whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, or just the Father, that has divided the Eastern Orthodox and the Catholics for 1000 years, today is said by the intellectual elite to simply be a "misunderstanding". Well, I see Jesus BREATHING the Holy Spirit into the Apostles - and spirit - "pneuma" - is breath, so it's obvious to me that right there the Holy Spirit was literally physically proceeding out of the very mouth of Jesus into the Apostles. Which means that the Catholic version of the creed is just exactly literally right, obviously.
And I willing to follow the leaders and say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father THROUGH the Son. Sure. Why not. If that is how it needs to be put for Orthodox and Catholics to get alone, fine. But to say that the Holy Spirit does NOT proceed from the Son is obviously not true, just as to say that being acceptable to God does not primarily repose on the acts that one does during one's life is obviously not true.
How, then, could the Orthodox and I, or you and I, be "ecumenical"? We can eat together at picnics, do social work together, pray together, be kind and good to each other. That's ecumenism. For me to actually give up key aspects that are obviously true in order to get along with you is really quite impossible. And I'm sure that you would say no different.
So, that's what ecumenism is necessarily limited to, I think: the agreement to get along in amity despite the fact we believe really different things. More than that isn't possible unless God coverts one or both of us.