Reports: Pope to lift excommunications

This is huge. Is B XVI the Pope to end 1000 years of schism with the East? Is he laying the groundwork for us to take our church back from the spirit of Vatican II crowd?

Lifting the schism does is step one. They are still not in communion with the Church.

Is B XVI the Pope to end 1000 years of schism with the East?

Perhaps you are confusing the sspx with the Orthodox Churches. The Orthodox are not in schism - just separated.

An excerpt from Wiki regarding the Schism:

“The East-West Schism, or the Great Schism, divided medieval Mediterranean Christendom into Eastern (Greek) and Western (Latin) branches, which later became known as the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church, respectively. Relations between East and West had long been embittered by political and ecclesiastical differences and theological disputes.[1] Pope Leo IX and Patriarch of Constantinople Michael Cerularius heightened the conflict by suppressing Greek and Latin in their respective domains. In 1054, Roman legates traveled to Cerularius to deny him the title Ecumenical Patriarch and to insist that he recognize the Church of Rome’s claim to be the head and mother of the churches.[1] Cerularius refused. The leader of the Latin contingent, Cardinal Humbert excommunicated Cerularius, while Cerularius in return excommunicated Cardinal Humbert and other legates.[1]

The Western legate’s acts are of doubtful validity because Leo had died, while Cerularius’s excommunication applied only to the legates personally.[1] Still, the Church split along doctrinal, theological, linguistic, political, and geographical lines, and the fundamental breach has never been healed. Western cruelty during the Crusades, the capture and sack of Constantinople in 1204, and the imposition of Latin Patriarchs made reconciliation more difficult.[1] This included the taking of many precious religious artifacts and the destruction of the Library of Constantinople. On paper, the two churches actually reunited in 1274 (by the Second Council of Lyon) and in 1439 (by the Council of Florence), but in each case the councils were repudiated by the Orthodox as a whole, on the grounds that the hierarchs had overstepped their authority in consenting to reunification. In 1484, 31 years after the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks, a Synod of Constantinople repudiated the Union of Florence, making the breach between the Patriarchate of the West and the Patriarchate of Constantinople final.[1] In 1965, the Pope and the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, nullified the anathemas of 1054.[1] Further attempts to reconcile the two bodies are ongoing.

A schism is a break in the Church’s authority structure and communion and is different from a heresy, which means false doctrine. Church authorities have long recognized that even if their minister is in schism, the sacraments are valid. There have been many other schisms, from the 2nd century until today.”

The only relevant poll on Catholic voting that I have seen so far was this one: 79% of Catholics who attend Mass (ie “actual Catholics”) voted for McCain-Palin.