The Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople on this feast day
Very nice but the standoff remains: as Rome teaches, sacramentally the two are the same church, but the only real difference – the scope of the Pope (divinely instituted office of the church’s infallibility or a man-made rank among the bishops of that infallible church?) – is an inch wide but miles deep. Union’s a zero-sum game: one side would have to give in. BTW C’ople’s not the Orthodox Pope, just one of many patriarchs in a messy communion of good conservative ethnic churches remarkably alike but little to do with each other, which is fine with them.