I used to think the papacy was a trivial issue, but then the more I watch Catholics content, the more I realize how central the pope is to their religion and worldview. Totally alien to me... mending the schism of 1054 is utterly impossible as long as the papal structure exists in its current form
The office of the papacy was super important for centuries before the schism.This is one point Orthodox do NOT like consneeding, but it's true.They followed Pope Zachary's directive to ban certain books of scripture, for example that is why there is no known surviving Greek version of the book we in the west call "2 Esdras" when we know for a fact there used to be.If the pope never had the authority to issue these kind of broadly authoritative decrees over the whole church, they'd have a hard time explaining to me why they did exactly what he told them to do a few hundred years before splitting off.
