*Symbolic unity is nice, but actual unity (full communion) is tons better. Liturgically conservative Catholics are not crypto-Orthodox. We don't go around secretly longing to join schismatic Churches. At all.
Much more annoying to me than the assumption that the Eastern ideal "must be" the Western ideal (I realize now it was naivete that led to this assumption, but I still think it's a rather superior-minded naivete to think that we want to be like you)
, was this: "I'd almost forgotten y'all's dependence on documents and official paperwork to determine what the ideal is."
Over the centuries there have been certain tropes, certain memes, that the East has flung at the West. That's one of them.
If we have a discussion of rites, which could be very fruitful, I think it should be free of charged characterizations like the above. Personally I'd like to ban the word y'all, too, but whatever.
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