Eastern Schism
The Eastern Schism was a real revolt against the supreme authority of the Roman Church, fomented by the ambition of the patriarchs of Constantinople, favored by the Greek emperors, supported by the Byzantine clergy and people, and lasting nine centuries. From the time of Diotrephes (III John, i, 9-10) there have been continual schisms, of which the greater number were in the East. Arianism produced a huge schism; the Nestorian and Monopnysite schisms still last. However, the Eastern Schism always means that most deplorable quarrel of which the final result is the separation of the vast majority of Eastern Christians from union with the Catholic Church, the schism that produced the separated, so-called "Orthodox" Church.
It is easier to understand how a schism continues than how it began. Schisms are easily made; they are enormously difficult to heal. The religious instinct is always conservative; there is always a strong tendency to continue the existing state of things. At first the schismatics were reckless innovators; then with the lapse of centuries their cause seems to be the old one; it is the Faith of the Fathers. Eastern Christians especially have this conservative instinct strongly. They fear that reunion with Rome would mean a betrayal of the old Faith, of the Orthodox Church, to which they have clung so heroically during all these centuries. One may say that the schism continues mainly through force of inertia.
It is important to distinguish between the schismatical tendency and the actual occasion of its outburst. But the reason of both has gone now. The tendency was mainly jealousy caused by the rise of the See of Constantinople. That progress is over long ago. In the following centuries Constantinople lost nearly all the broad lands she once acquired. There was nothing the modern Orthodox Christian resents more than any assumption of authority by the ecumenical patriarch outside his diminished patriarchate. The Byzantine See has long been the plaything of the Turk, wares that he sold to the highest bidder. Certainly now this pitiful dignity is no longer a reason for the schism of Christians. Still less are the immediate causes of the breach active. The question of the respective rights of Ignatius and Photius leaves even the Orthodox cold after eleven centuries; and Cerularius's ambitions and insolence may well be buried with him. Nothing then remains of the original causes.
There is not really any question of doctrine involved. It is not a heresy, but a schism. The Decree of Florence made every possible concession to their feelings. There is no real reason why they should not sign that Decree now. They deny papal infallibility and the Immaculate Conception, they quarrel over purgatory, consecration by the words of institution, the procession of the Holy Ghost. It is not difficult to show that on all these points their own Fathers are with those of the Latin Church, which asks them only to return to the old teaching of their own Church.
The Orthodox have a horror of being latinized, of betraying the old Faith. One must always insist that there is no idea of latinizing them, that the old Faith is not incompatible with, but rather demands union with the chief see which their Fathers obeyed. In canon law they have nothing to change except such abuses as the sale of bishoprics and the Erastianism that their own better theologians deplore. Celibacy, azyme bread, and so on are Latin customs that no one thinks of forcing on them. They need not add the Filioque to the Creed; they will always keep their venerable rite untouched. Not a bishop need be moved, hardly a feast (except that of St. Photius on 6 Feb.) altered. All that is asked of them is to come back to where their fathers stood, to treat Rome as Athanasius, Basil, Chrysostom treated her.
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