Chances of reunion are pretty dim if you ask me, considering the vast differences in ecclesiology and theology, such as divorce and remarriage, the papacy, phyletism on the Orthodox side, etc.
"Chances of reunion are pretty dim if you ask me, considering the vast differences in ecclesiology and theology, such as divorce and remarriage, the papacy, phyletism on the Orthodox side, etc.
What a mindset! Differing ways of dealing with divorce and remarriage will prevent a reunion of the Churches! That speaks volumes about where you are coming from, JDeM, unless of course you are speaking of a fundamental difference bewteen East and West about what the Holy Mysteries of The Church really are. And phyletism? Boy, that's rich!
I suspect we could add rather more to your list, JDeM, like the Orthodox don't want to end up like the American Catholic Church, the Irish Catholic Church, the French Catholic Church, the Canadian Catholic Church, the Croatian Catholic Church....
Are you a young fellow, Joe? If you've some years on you, you'll remember the days when an Irish Catholic would no more go to the French or Italian Catholic parish than he would to the local Baptist Church. And if you don't and you're in an area where parishes are being "twined", have you heard any of the people saying they wouldn't attend Mass with those (fill in the blank with your favorite ethnicity) people?
There are theological issues, like the problem of grace being created or uncreated which has serious implications for understanding the sacraments, which may well be insurmountable. There are elements of post schism Catholic dogma which may be heretical from an Orthodox pov, though I personally doubt it. Clearly there are no Orthodox dogmas which are heretical since every one we have comes from the 7 Ecumenical Councils. But a council can work those issues out. The only ecclesiological issue revolves around the proper exercise of papal primacy. My bet is that that gets worked out relatively soon, and on terms acceptable to the East. But there still won't be a reunion with anything like the Latin Church today. The leftist national Catholic bishops' conferences won't go along; the leftist, liberated 1st world Catholics won't go along. The national Churches of Western Europe are hardly worth the name anymore. They'll go along but they don't have many people. And the knuckle dragging, Dictatus Papae rightists will rage and go into schism because the East not only won't "submit, submit, submit", the East won't even be asked to! And we wouldn't have anything to do with those groups, save perhaps the remains of the Western European churches, anyway.
At some point there'll be a reunion, but a good chunk of the Latin Church won't like it one bit.