How many times did Benny meet with Christodoulos? How long has Benny been in his position?
Benny said he has as a priority healing the 1,000-year-old rift with the Orthodox church. The article didn’t say that Benny had ever met with Christodoulos, so it must not have been THAT urgent to heal that rift.

“Christodoulos followed up with a visit to the Vatican in 2006.”
Benedict has been pope since ’05, so presumably the two met during the Archbishop’s visit.
God bless.

Once again, pagansister’s hatred of the Roman Catholic Church gets in the way of her logic.

So apparently the answer to ps’s question is “once”. As she said, that doesn’t show too high a priority.
And what kind of organizations carry on a snit for 1,300 years. It’s time for some adults there.

To be fair, Popes going to Orthodox lands is not always a very easy thing, since there are many people in Orthodox countries who would just as soon kill a Pope as let him walk on their soil. That’s why JPII’s visit to Greece in ’01 was so “historic.” Orthodox leaders are bound to face extreme criticism for playing to nicely with Catholic leaders, as well.
Additionally, Christodoulos himself was not the most important leader in Orthodoxy; he wasn’t the Ecumenical Patriarch, nor is the Church of Greece the largest or the most important body in Orthodoxy. If a Pope is going to work on ecumenism with the East, there are dozens of leaders to be in dialogue with, not just this one.
I say this all as an Orthodox Christian myself.

mystery poster:
And once again you are wrong…don’t hate the RCC. If I did I wouldn’t have spent 10 years teaching in a RCC school. Just pointed out that there wasn’t a lot of contact between Benny and Christodoulos, to heal that rift. That isn’t hatred, that’s an observation. And what does logic have to do with observation of visits?
On another note, Nate W:
Wouldn’t it be nice if the 2 churches could finally get along. 1000 years is a heck of a long time to dislike each other. Much credit to JPII for trying to start the dialogue. However there are churches in the US who are now spliting over internal disagreements. Seems history does repeat itself.

Pagansister,
Yes, getting along would be nice, but the problem is that no one really knows how to effectively accomplish it. Orthodoxy is fundamentally opposed to Catholic views of church government, so that there’s simply no way to reconcile the churches without major theological overhaul from one or both sides. Then you’ve got to add to that the fact that in many of the Orthodox countries, the believers there faced many centuries of suppression and persecution, and as a means of preserving their identities they’ve become quite hostile to outside ideas–especially ideas from the Latin Church, which launched military invasions of Orthodox lands on more than one occasion. Working out a real solution to the problem with undoubtedly take decades, if not centuries. You just cant expect whole cultures to up and change overnight.

Ah, religion. Isn’t it grand!

One name sums it all up. “Christodoulos” means God’s servant, not servant of the institution, church, or other organization. I hope ben looks long and hard at christodoulos legacy and learns.
1000 years is long enough to know that theological differences mean diddly to the larger world. If we cannot get along as representatives of God, how could we ever hope to moidel good behavior for a rascally world? Theology is fine for discussions over coffee or a pitcher of beer. But Jesus called us to care for people, not for the finer interpretations of metaphysical issues.

NateW:
No, I’m sure they won’t ever share the same agenda about many things, and centuries of distrust doesn’t help. At least one could hope that they could at least be civil to each other and try to respect each other’s ideas, not necessarily with the idea of ever becoming one church.

“But Jesus called us to care for people, not for the finer interpretations of metaphysical issues.”
I’m not sure there’s really a hard and fast distinction between those two for the Orthodox, since part of what they see as being at stake in the Catholic-Orthodox debate is the very definition of human pershood, human relation to God and to earthly authorities, the problems of the human condition, and the solutions to those problems. And I agree. How can we care for people if we don’t even know what a person is, or what their problems are?

Nate,
My remarks are not limited to the Orthodogs only. All of us, or every pale and perplexity, need to remember this. I have had long and pointless discussions (though often amusing and entertaining) on theological & ecclesiastical miscellanea with fellow “liberals” as well. Imagine the conversations Jesus and the Apostles & Disciples must have had as they walked all over Israel and the environs (Ah, the stuff of midrash galore!). But when it came time to do something useful and meaningful, all the other stuff was packed away and people became the center of activity.

That’s all nice and fluffy, but I just have no idea what it actually means.

Nate,
It means that people who are hungry, homeless, and sick or in prison could not care less about theological noodling and ecclesiastical posturing – be it conservative or liberal. Leave the metaphysical musings for coffee breaks and after hours postulating over beer mugs. Care for people first and most.