I always find it odd that these pos­i­tive news bites only come from the Catholic side of the discussion.

Deb puts her fin­ger exactly where I was — I keep hear­ing all this “buzz” from the Catholic side. I am sit­ting on the skep­ti­cal bench with you and Deb.

I didn’t want to be the first to say that. I’m sure these are very com­plex dis­cus­sions, but I get the impres­sion that the Catholic atti­tude is “Oh, how cute! You guys are almost as good as Catholics! We’d be happy to let you in.”

Took ‘em a thou­sand years just to talk. Prob­a­bly take another thou­sand to agree on any­thing. Let ‘em talk. No mat­ter how much they talk, I do not see even the most lib­eral of EP’s giv­ing in to the fil­oque or to papal primacy.

Grace, I’d only learn Latin if you want to learn Latin. Though both claim Patrick as a saint, he was more Ortho­dox than RCC in his actions and ruf­fled a lot of feath­ers in Rome when he insisted on con­duct­ing his work in Gaelic, the lan­guage of the peo­ple he was preach­ing to, as opposed to Latin.

I was just kid­ding about the Latin. Although I have been work­ing at Pig Latin for years, and I’m almost fluent!

WOW! I’m amazed! I had no idea that the Roman Catholic Church would EVER give up the dogma of the fil­ioque, doc­trines of papal infal­i­bil­ity, pur­ga­tory (although I have heard that the Pope has done away with Limbo for babies), orig­i­nal sin, indul­gences, the Immac­u­late Con­cep­tion, Mary as Core­demptrix, and her Assumption.

This is indeed news and I am sur­prised that it isn’t on the front page of all the newspapers.

And the Catholic Arch­bishop of Moscow said it will be announced in a few months? I imag­ine the announce­ment will come from Rome. I will be watch­ing and wait­ing for this excit­ing news!

But not with bated breath. I hope to keep con­vert­ing O to CO2 for a while longer.

LOL. Yep, and appar­ently, the papal pri­macy thing was just a guide­line, too. This is going to be so neat!!

After­thought: If I’m going to be a lit­tle less flip­pant, I guess I would begin to take sunny fore­casts like this more seri­ously if a high-ranking Catholic hier­arch said some­thing like, “We seri­ously desire unity, and here are the com­pro­mises we’re pre­pared to make … ” It always seems like that part is left out.

To be less flip­pant myself, I always gather that the RCC posi­tion is, “we look for­ward to you reuni­fy­ing with us and accept­ing these posi­tions” not what you’ve said.

they should say. (I didn’t fin­ish my thought, sorry)

That’s just it. I’m think­ing, what if Greg and I (heaven for­bid), had ter­ri­ble mar­i­tal prob­lems and sep­a­rated. Sup­pose after some absolutely mis­er­able weeks apart, I came to him and said, “I’m feel­ing really pos­i­tive about our future as a mar­ried cou­ple! I truly believe that you will capit­u­late on every­thing and admit that I was right all along. I think we have a sunny future together!” What would he say? (It wouldn’t be printable.)

I don’t think we’ll ever really get any closer together unless the RCC wants it bad enough to lead off with con­ces­sions. And of course, if they did, the laity would be out­raged. The few devout Catholics I’ve known can’t get over being Catholic. As far as they’re con­cerned, there’s only one game in town, if you’re talk­ing Ancient Church.

Anam, don’t *we* teach Mary as core­demptrix (at least at its basest mean­ing)? We pray:

“Since you gave birth to the Giver of Life, O Vir­gin, you deliv­ered Adam from his sin; you gave joy to Eve instead of sadness.”

“O Vir­gin, who in the last times inef­fa­bly con­ceived and gave birth to your own Cre­ator, save those who mag­nify you.”

“Today the blame­less Vir­gin, when she saw you hang­ing on the Cross, with a mother’s love lamented, bit­terly wounded in her heart, groan­ing in lamen­ta­tion from the depth of her soul, she struck her cheeks and tore her hair; and so beat­ing her breast she cried out with grief, ‘Woe is me, my divine child! Woe is me, light of the world! Why have you left my sight, Lamb of God?’ There­fore the armies of the Bod­i­less Pow­ers were seized with ter­ror as they said, ‘Lord, beyond under­stand­ing, glory to you!’” (This hymn in par­tic­u­lar is impor­tant due to its use on Holy Fri­day, which empha­sizes that Mary suf­fers with Christ at the foot of the cross).

Again from Holy Fri­day: “When she saw you, O Christ, the Cre­ator and God of all, hang­ing on the Cross, she who bore you with­out seed, cried bit­terly: My Son, where has the beauty of your form departed? I can­not bear to see you unjustly cru­ci­fied; has­ten then, arise, that I too may see your res­ur­rec­tion from the dead on the third day.”

We cer­tainly don’t teach that she co-propitiates, though I’m not sure Rome does. Per­haps I sim­ply mis-understand Rome’s co-redemptrix the­ol­ogy, but I think we teach roughly the same thing.

It would be a mir­a­cle if Catholic-Orthodox reuni­fi­ca­tion could be achieved “within a few months,” con­sid­er­ing they split and went their sep­a­rate ways since the Great Schism of 1054.

I do believe in miracles.