drevyev wrote:
So what should unity look like? Is there any answer besides, "Let them all be like us"?
This depends on who we\'re talking about, of course. The closest parallel I can think of to a possible (legitimate) union with Rome would be the once-hoped-for union with the Anglicans, which never came to be. While the jury seems still to be out on the Western Rite, it does offer a model for how someone from a Western Christian liturgical background might be able to retain the benign externals of their faith when joining the Orthodox Church. Not that I think this will ever happen, but in the event of a union with Rome, I would think they could keep their old Latin Rite mass, their vestments, their music. Of course I mean the more traditional Latin things, not rock masses and clown masses that are around today. There is much that is \"redeemable\" in Roman Catholicism, so one doesn\'t need to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
They would, however, have to shed much of their theological ideas which are founded upon Augustine and Aquinas (and thus Aristotle). In particular, the Roman Catholic understanding of sin and grace is different and incompatible with the Orthodox understanding. The Orthodox can\'t become more Latin in their ideas; the Latins would have to become more Orthodox. Likewise in their ecclesiology. Right now Orthodox ecclesiology is in a state of crisis because of the now-unprecedented situation in which we find ourselves, but certainly the Roman idea of papal supremacy is not acceptable to the Orthodox.
Not all of Roman Catholicism is bad. There is much there that is compatible with Orthodoxy. In other words, a mass Roman Catholic conversion to Orthodoxy would not require a disavowal of their entire religious identity. But it would require a humble acceptance of the Orthodox view on the things that really divide us -- theology and ecclesiology. The Orthodox cannot and should not become more \"Latin\" in this regard; the only way for there to be a real union would be for the Latins to become Orthodox.
(I use Latin, Roman Catholic, Roman, etc. interchangeably. I don\'t mean to sound polemical; I\'m just trying to avoid writing out \"Roman Catholicism\" every time :)
