Can the Catholic Church ever breathe with two lungs

Occidentalis posts an Orthodox priest that hopes and prays She can, but wonders if she ever will.

The tragedy of a divided Christiandome predates Martin Luther by at least four centuries. War between brothers can be the worst kind. Name a nation that cherished a civil war, for example. Christians and Jews certainly testify as to the destructiveness of sibling rivalry across centuries of cruelty. So to, then, does this scandal of Christians divided plague Catholics worldwide.

Unfortunately, there are no easy answers. According the the good Father, the principle obstacle today between Orthodox and Roman Catholics remains the place of the Pope:

The current Roman teaching that all doctrinal questions can be definitively answered and settled by an appeal to Rome is not, the Orthodox insist, the ancient and traditional teaching and practice of the apostolic and patristic church. If the ancient Catholic Church really did believe in any doctrine even faintly resembling the current doctrine of papal infallibility, there would never have been any need for those early ecumenical councils, all of them held in the East, which laboriously hammered out the creedal formulations, canons, and policies of the church.

The current papal claims, standard doctrine in the Roman Catholic Church since the defining of papal infallibility in 1870 and repeated most recently by Cardinal Ratzinger’s official Vatican declaration “Dominus Iesus” (released on September 5, 2000), represent an ecclesiastical development radically at odds with the Orthodox understanding of the very nature of the Christian Church as manifest in her ancient life.

Fr. Reardon understands how much his bretheren would love to see the Pope take a back seat to his claims of primacy as Catholicism currently constructs them. They long for the Pope to return to his traditional place as "First among Equals" and a teacher of his brother bishops, not the heir of Peter and Christ's Vicar on Earth. In spite of such enthusiasm, he understands that this is something Roman Catholics simply can't do:

To Orthodox Christians, such a “solution” to the problem would seem very attractive. In fact, however, one fears that it would be no solution at all. Such a weakening of the papacy would be an utter disaster for the Roman Catholic Church as it is currently constituted. To many of us outside that institution, it appears that the single entity holding the Roman Catholic Church together right now is probably the strong and centralized office of the pope.

The Roman Catholic Church for nearly a thousand years has moved toward ever greater centralized authority, and it is no longer clear that she would thrive, or even survive intact, without that authority maintained at full strength. If Rome did not occasionally censure the heretics in that church, just who in the world would do it? Can anyone really remember the last time a Roman Catholic bishop in the United States called to account a pro-gay activist priest, or a pro-abortion nun, or a professor in a Catholic college who denied the resurrection? No, take away the centralized doctrinal authority of Rome, and the Roman Catholic Church today would be without rudder or sail in a raging sea.

The good Father's predictions fit the facts. Look at how Catholicism in America has raged on in sometimes insane directions even with the Pope as the final authority on what the Deposit of Faith is. St. Joan of Arc parish in Minnasota alone could prove the disasters that would follow should the Holy Father renounce his primacy. Undiscussed as well would be the disasterous theological consequences. The continuation of Tradition--developments and all--would irreparably be broken by such an about-face. The Magisterium itself could no longer then be trusted. Who then decides final questions of Faith and Morals? As Pontifications points out, ecumenical councils serve such a purpose among the Orthodox. When have they last called one to settle such questions in their own Tradition? When would a united Catholic and Orthodox Church call one?

Both Eastern and Western Catholics face two opposing and deadly manifestations of the Enemy. Both embody a ruthless, dehumanizing Nihilism that covers itself in extremes. Jihadistic fundamentalist islamo-facism marches toward civilization on one front. The "Dictatorship of Relativism"--already too long at home in the West--marches from the other. How will Christianity here and now survive if all Christians do not unite in their witness of the Gospel? Roman or Orthodox Catholics can't afford division or unrealistic reunion. We must reunite in a way that honors our Tradition while affirming the authentic Faith we have received from our Savior. May God in his infinite mercy grant us the wisdom to pursue such a reunion. May we bury the scandalous civil war that for too long has divided brother against brother. Then together we might bring the light of Christ to the gathering darkness, and so together stand victorious at the struggle's end.