Maybe +Francis' heresies will heal the Great Schism?    God does have a sense of humor and only He can bring evil plans to naught.

He does! In fact I often refer to God as The Great Comedian.😁 He even used a comedian to help me discover the Catholic Faith!

He does! In fact I often refer to God as The Great Comedian.😁 He even used a comedian to help me discover the Catholic Faith!

Though I deplore his irreverence, I've got to say that George Carlin brought certain aspects of traditional Catholicism to an audience that might not have heard them otherwise.  He actually did a fairly adequate job of explaining the three conditions for mortal sin.  Who under the age of 50 knows that anymore?

Not a good influence, disrespectful as hell, but in some wild, roundabout way, he got a few things kinda-sorta right.  And his non-offensive comedy routines were very funny.

You know what's funny?
I didn't even name George Carlin.😊

But as a 14 year old whose friend gave her Carlin's CLASS CLOWN record when I asked him about Catholicism, Carlin was my first catechist! The movie THE EXORCIST helped too, as did my grandmother's calendar from the drugstore with the red fishes on Fridays, which I asked her about.

I knew nothing of the crisis in the Church yet...I was not raised a Christian of any kind...and it was truly the Providence of God that it was a very trad priest who despised the changes of V2 that I first encountered when seeking instruction in 1977.

I watched a few videos from an Orthodox priest, who seemed very knowledgeable, very orthodox and very holy.  It made me understand the orthodox view of the schism much more and I see their issues.  But, their idea that the Church (or any organization) can thrive "by committee" without 1 head, is simply ridiculous (even from a human standpoint).  
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On the other hand, those from "the east" would say "the west" is too legalistic, too structured and too authoritative.  When this priest explained how the Church worked in the early centuries, when at ecuмenical councils, he said that everyone debated until they agreed on how to define doctrine, etc.  This approach fits into the mindset of "the east" much more than the west.  
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I think such a committee approach worked early on, because God gave the Church many saints and giant pillars of the Faith, because of persecutions and also because of distance.  But as the world grew more connected and smaller, and as God allowed more heresy to creep in, such a committee approach just isn't feasible, long term.

Issue is, a group of bishops just agreeing on something and declaring it means nothing. There were plenty of times bishops did that and it was not considered an ecuмenical council. The results of any meeting like that has to be approved by some figure or else you never know which council is ecuмenical and which is false. That someone for us is obviously the pope.

The Orthodox on the other hand cannot explain that. They say an ecuмenical council is when the Church as a whole agrees on something, but then they'll say anyone who doesn't accept the council is outside the Church. See the issue there? Circular reasoning. They can never provide any legitimate reason for why x council is infallible and y isn't, and so they actually have no real way to justify their own dogma.

You know what's funny?
I didn't even name George Carlin.😊

But as a 14 year old whose friend gave her Carlin's CLASS CLOWN record when I asked him about Catholicism, Carlin was my first catechist! The movie THE EXORCIST helped too, as did my grandmother's calendar from the drugstore with the red fishes on Fridays, which I asked her about.

I knew nothing of the crisis in the Church yet...I was not raised a Christian of any kind...and it was truly the Providence of God that it was a very trad priest who despised the changes of V2 that I first encountered when seeking instruction in 1977.

I had much the same experience.  Keep in mind, that outside of the large Catholic cities of the Northeast and Midwest, as well as places like Louisiana and the more Hispanic areas of the Southwest, prior to the 1970s and 1980s, Catholicism was largely unknown to the non-Catholic world.  You could go deep enough in the South or Appalachia, and people would generally have only the vaguest idea of what Catholicism even was.  You might have had the idea in the back of your mind that Bing Crosby or Danny Thomas were Catholic, or that some family member somewhere married a Catholic, but that would have been about it.  (As far as Eastern Orthodox, "what's that"?  If anything, people might have conflated it with Judaism.  My own mother was probably in her fifties, before she realized that Jєωs don't worship Christ, she thought that all religious people were Christians.)  Having grown up in such a time and area, my first exposures to Catholicism were found in TV shows such as Bridget Loves Bernie, George Carlin, and, yes, MAD Magazine.  I remember being puzzled by why Catholics would object to abortion, as depicted in the TV show Maude.  (Incidentally, while not condoning it, the Maude "abortion episodes" were more nuanced and ambiguous than you might think, if you never saw them.  At the end, it was never absolutely clear that Maude had decided to go through with it --- due to the continuity of the show, you know she did, but it was never mentioned in future episodes, and it would have been to some extent redeeming, if she and Walter could have woken up at the beginning of the next episode, and she had turned to Walter and said "Walter, I just had the most disturbing dream...".  Think of the finale of Newhart, or the way they wrapped up the "death" of Bobby Ewing in Dallas.)

But anyway.  There are still people in this country who simply don't know anything about Catholicism, they've grown up in Protestant monocultures where it just isn't on their radar screen, you might be the first Catholic they've ever known well enough for the subject to come up.  Once I had a young coworker, had grown up in the kind of Southern monocultural bubble where "diversity" meant that you had people working there who had gone to East County High School as well as West County High School, and she was asking me about "those women y'all have... you know, those women..." --- she was grasping at the concept of Catholic nuns.  I'm quite sure she'd never met one.

At least you included the roll-eyes emoji.

Might as well ask the sodomites to chime in, or perhaps the population of your closest brothel?

Who cares about the opinion of those willfully living in mortal sin? Specifically, those without the Faith.

The Eastern Orthodox are schismatic -- and for those without a calculator, I'll help you out: that's a mortal sin. But not just any mortal sin; they lack the virtue of Faith, they are not part of the Mystical Body of Christ.

Remember, you deny ONE DOGMA, you don't have the Faith. The Faith hangs together and each dogma reinforces all the others. So denying just one dogma denies the whole thing.

Getting the opinion of all the other kinds of conservatives, Traditionalists -- that's one thing. At least they have the Faith; at least they are Catholic.
Even the most starry-eyed, pollyanna, foolish ones. They are still part of the Mystical Body of Christ, which gives them the right to an opinion.