4 ms·

They worked together for a thousand years. Ecclesiastically, the only problem is everybody's refusal to share power again.

• zdragnar 2y ago
  It's not like someone had a bad day and the other side isn't over it. The schism of 1054 was centuries in the making, and even at the time it was largely not in any way impacting lives of average Christians. In the centuries that followed, there were brief periods of reconciliation and further rises in tension. The sacking of Constantinople in 1204 and its later fall a few decades later made reconciliation far harder, and the ultimate shift of power to Moscow made it practically impossible. The final separation of the churches was formalized in the 1700s. In all the intervening years, the Roman Catholic Church has doubled down on Papal supremacy and infallibility, something that is anathema to Orthodoxy. Beyond that, centuries of diverging traditions have further entrenched theological differences. There really isn't any separating the ecclesiastical and theological differences at this point. Even the Protestants, who at first largely opposed the Pope rather than the Roman Catholic Church itself, sought to unify with the Orthodox Church in Moscow and found it to be too different to their liking.
  • TheAmazingRace 2y ago
    This is the kind of quality comment I've come to expect from HackerNews! Well done. I'm a cradle-Catholic-turned-Atheist, and I still find all of early church history fascinating.