Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew states a reunion between the East and West is inevitable.

More than that, he essentially said there are no barriers to it.

This is unlikely to be front page news in the United States, but it is in fact a major development.  Patriarch Bartholomew is the Archbishop of Constantinople and the Ecumenical Patriarch.  In that position, he's regarded as the first among equals in Eastern Orthodoxy, although its also noted that the Pope as the Bishop of Rome is generally regarded as the First Among Equals in the church as a whole.

All this may leave Americans in particular a bit lost, as the United States, even with Catholicism being the single largest Christian denomination, is a Protestant nation and even American Catholics frequently have a poor understanding of Eastern Orthodoxy (or even of their own faith).  But this is a huge event.

The Catholic and Orthodox churches were separated in the Great Schism, which occurred in the 1054, was briefly repaired in 1453, and which has existed since then.  Efforts to put an end to the schism have occurred since the onset and in recent decades its been noted that serious progress was made in ending the schism permanently.  Mutual excommunications were lifted some time ago and a meeting within the past decade made a significant amount of progress before breaking down, which seems to have been over objections from members of the largest Orthodox Church, the Russian Orthodox Church.

Part of the process of healing the rift has been the realization that what seemed to be significant theological differences between the two churches often didn't really exist.  Now the Patriarch has stated that they don't exist.

Patriarch Bartholomew made the comments while taking part in the evening service at a the Catholic Abbey of Our Lady of St. Rémy in Rochefort, Belgium this past week.  He attended Vespers with Abbot Alexis of Xenophontos Monstary and Hieromonk Theophilos of Pantocrator Monastery on Mt. Athos in Greece.  While in attendance, Partholome sat upon the Bishop's Throne at the monastery.

The Patriarch, while at the monastery, reportedly held an unofficial talk with a collection of Orthodox monastics in attendance and told him, in his opinion, there was no longer any theological differences between the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church.  None of the Orthodox audience raised any objections to the statement but some took it emotionally and weeped upon hearing it.  He further indicated that the rift today reflects history, rather than theology.

The reaction of the other Orthodox clerics is significant as for some time the real opposition to a reunion has seemingly been centered in the rank and file level of the Orthodox clergy and the conservative wing of the laity.  Without going into it in depth, it is clear that nearly all of the supposed differences between the Orthodox and the Catholic churches has in fact been addressed to the point where the differences are hardly there.  There do remain some stumbling blocks, however, the principal one being the role of the Pope.  The Catholic churches uniformly regard the Pope as the monarch of the faith and above all other clergy.  The Orthodox accord him the position of the first among equals, but do not agree that he has a superior authority in that role to the heads of the various Orthodox churches.  Somewhat ironically, Patriarch Bartholomew has been involved, in his role as the Ecumenical Patriarch, in a controversy over the Orthodox church in Ukraine with his having recognized the autocephalus status of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church there, which the Russian Orthodox Church has declared to be in schism.

That isn't the only reaming difference, there are some significant ones.  But many of the ones that have been cited as differences over the years are now gone.  A very strong protective instinct in the Orthodox community combined with Orthodox churches having traditionally been strongly identified with ethnicity has operated as a bar to reunion in recent years and it's my guess that this will slow it now, although its also my guess that a reunion is closer than people might think and in fact inevitable, as Patriarch Bartholomew has stated.  The Eastern Orthodox themselves have been fairly rapidly moving away from being ethnic churches in recent years and have benefited in that in the west from the conversion of disaffected Protestants who have been discouraged by the direction of their own churches.  With this evolution going on, the likely question will be how long it will take in order for the Easter Orthodox to come back into full communion with the Catholic Church.

My additional guess, at least right now, is that if that's in the short term, say ten to twenty years, which is quite possible, it will see some further schisms as some small branches of the Eastern Orthodox balk at the move and, more significantly, the Russian Orthodox Church, the largest Orthodox Church, might.  Long term the Russian Orthodox will return as well, but it has been the most resistant to date.  Perhaps ironically a large portion of it had previously returned before reversing directions, although that occurred centuries ago.

All in all, however, Patriarch Bartholomew is no doubt largely correct in his comments and his statements are encouraging.  Orthodoxy is the second largest single branch of the Christian world, making up 300,000,000 of the world's 2.4 Billion Christians.  Catholicism makes up 1.15 Billion, with Protestant churches combined making up the remaining 900,000,000 Christians.  Contrary to what is commonly reported, globally all branches of Christianity is growing and Catholicism is rapidly expanding in the third world and in areas of northern Europe which had been lost to it during the Reformation.  The number of Orthodox has doubled over the last century but, unlike Catholicism or the various Protestant faiths it has not seen an expansion outside of its traditional territories and in some of those territories in the Middle East there are serious threats to Christians which are resulting in their emigration out of them.  Countering that, however, as noted the Orthodox have seen a rise in membership in North American as disaffected Protestants have entered Eastern Orthodoxy.

If the Orthodox and Catholic churches were to reunite it would give a massive, and many would argue necessary, boost to the Eastern Rite in the Church. The Church has always retained the Eastern Rite and in recent years the Eastern Rite has been growing in North America as well, for reasons which are related to what is noted above.  But if the Orthodox were to reunite with the Catholic Church it would mean that overnight 1/5th of all Catholic would be members of the Eastern Rite, a much higher number than to today, and for the first time since the 15th Century the Church would have a large number of Eastern Bishops, whose absence has been sorely felt.  Likewise, a infusion of Eastern Rite cardinals would occur.