Is this talking about Rosie Q's comment on Chalcedon? I wasn't upset or insulted by it (nor by Andrewn's comment, or anyone's really; I'm a guest here...what business do I have being insulted by anyone's opinion on a board that is not meant to represent my communion in the first place?). It's a common enough belief about Chalcedon, and one that I've encountered even among some in my communion (well, less that it was all political, but along the same lines of "it doesn't matter that much/we should just get over it for the sake of unity"), and that's why I felt that I should add my voice on that topic here, because it's entirely possible that others more generally (I don't know this specific poster) may have heard some similar from someone OO somewhere. So I just wanted to say that, no, Chalcedon was not primarily about politics, and it is possible to agree with the statement that Fr. Matt wrote as he wrote it and still be entirely faithful to your own communion's position on the subject.
None of this is meant as an insult to anyone who thinks it is primarily political, just a corrective to a common and well-meaning but ultimately untrue sentiment. After all, you'd think that if I as a non-Chalcedonian could make that argument in good conscience then I would, right? It would probably 'look better' to the inquisitive person who doesn't want to pass judgment on anyone, in the sense of seeming to take a higher road than those who are still stuck on Chalcedon and insisting that there is substance behind the disagreement, all this many years later. But in reality, as you can tell by the fact that we OO have not 'just gotten over it' as a group (certain individuals, sure, but you're always going to get that in any group), there's more to it than is commonly assumed by those who are not involved in it directly. That is why I had the reaction that I did to Andrewn's suggestion about getting an outside mediator. It's understandable that maybe getting a pair of fresh eyes on the subject would be advantageous, but not only is it literally not possible to find such a person (read: with the technical exception of the Nestorians, since they left communion with the other churches before it was held, everyone of a preexisting church of any kind is, by their association with their particular church and not necessarily by their personal feelings towards or level of knowledge about the council, either a Chalcedonian or a non-Chalcedonian, as Chalcedon is a fact of history and we are all born into the world as it is, not as we would've liked it to have been over fifteen centuries before we were born), but in this case by being qualified to at least appear neutral, you'd be virtually guaranteed to be dealing with a person who is predisposed to the view that there's less to it than either side says that there is. (Read: they're either going to be an out-and-out Chalcedonian without realizing it, like most Protestants, and hence not neutral at all to begin with, or they're going to look at all of the stuff surrounding it and discount whatever does not seem to be relevant to them because they don't know what they're actually looking at and what it means in the context of the wider points made by both sides regarding why they accepted/rejected the council in the first place. This is very much unlike an impartial judge in either case, which I would assume kind of defeats the purpose of trying to get an outsider to look at it.)
