Constantinopolis wrote:Tarsonis Survivors wrote:Limitations deriving from practical necessity. With advent of mass communication we're under no such limitations anymore.
You're assuming that the organization of the Church in ancient times was bad, and we can do better.
We assume that the organization of the Church in ancient times - actually pretty much everything about the ancient Church - is the model that we should aim to imitate as much as possible.
That's why we're called Orthodox. As far as we're concerned, in all Church-related matters, the Old Ways are the Best Ways.
And I'd say you cling into the age of a church governance that saw Byzantine Supremacy, under the guise of maintaining "Orthdoxy". If you truly wanted to be the like the "Ancient Church" you'd still worship in basements and back rooms hiding from secular authorities.
The "old ways" were a result of practical necessity, not divine credence. Christians worshiped in secret because they were being persecuted. A decentralized, cell like structure was necessary because a unified body could more easily be targeted. After the edict of Milan, the church changed.
Patriarchates operated msotly independently, though much more unified than before, because it was simply more practical. Let's looks at the Schism. Leo excommunicated Cerularius and died before his legate could deliver the message.
Today that could be delivered in an email. I jest but the point is there. Mass communication, and mass travel have shrunk the world. It used to take weeks to travel from Italy to Greece. Today, I can be in Moscow from New York in less than a day. The church should be unified, and it can.
You claim your way is better, but again from the outside it looks otherwise. You're factionalized, and those factions just happen to break largely along ethnic lines. You're not a unified Church, you're a loose affiliation of tribes squablingn for supremacy, forgive me for being blunt.