While there is some truth to that, that's a "we'll solve it when we get there" kind of problem.
The most charitable reading of the Metropolitan is that he speaks as though he is forgetting that these Eastern Catholic Churches (so-called "Uniate" Churches) exist as much more than a theoretical construct -- we are talking about an assembly of individual people with identity and conscience.
The Christians in these Churches are both Eastern AND Catholic. If we were to do as the Metropolitan desires and somehow remove the "stumbling block", would we choose to rob these people of their identity by forcing them to become Latin or rob them of their conscience by forcing them to become Orthodox? Neither is acceptable.
Ukrainian orthodox and Ukrainian Catholic have always been close.
Russian Orthodox is an arm of the Russian government. Nobody in the east trusts them.
The stumbling block is not between Orthodox and Catholic, but between Russia and everyone else. Ukrainian churches want nothing to do with Russia.
It didn't work.
While there is some truth to that, that's a "we'll solve it when we get there" kind of problem.
The most charitable reading of the Metropolitan is that he speaks as though he is forgetting that these Eastern Catholic Churches (so-called "Uniate" Churches) exist as much more than a theoretical construct -- we are talking about an assembly of individual people with identity and conscience.
The Christians in these Churches are both Eastern AND Catholic. If we were to do as the Metropolitan desires and somehow remove the "stumbling block", would we choose to rob these people of their identity by forcing them to become Latin or rob them of their conscience by forcing them to become Orthodox? Neither is acceptable.
I agree completely. I think the Roman Catholic church has more experience, and is less suspicious of alternative kinds of structures that might be used to address the issue, such as personal prelatures (Opus Dei, and possibly the SSPX), military ordinariates, and even things like the personal ordinariates for Anglicans who have converted to Catholicism. These types of structures may be very helpful in this kind of situation, but I suspect the Orthodox patriarchs may balk at them.