The answers above were excellent. The Pope has over the centuries been trying to gain full control over all of the historic sees of the Church. The original patriarchates were, Antioch, Alexandria, Rome, Constantinople and later Jerusalem. The Eastern Churches were at times miered in theological conroversy, then the Muslim Conquest. Even with these problems the Eastern Church did win the Bulkans and Russia for Orthodoxy. The Crusades destroyed both Byzantine and Orthodox power, the Latins put nearly 100,000 Orthodox to death. After the eighth century, the West and the East started to separate. Latin became the norm in the West Greek in the East. The Byzantine Empire started to fade and lost its control over Southern Iltaly. Severla attempts were made as late as the mid-1400 to reconstruct one church, but it never worked out.

Tensions began to arise between the West and the Eastern Churches in Poland and the Ukraine, the Melikites and Jacobites in the MIddle East, then the Portugese Fatima revelations also brought about tension. This revelation has stated that the Heart of Mary would conquer Russian Orthodoxy and place the entire country under the Roman Church. There have been many Jesuit incursions into the Western Regions of Russia and the old Soviet Union. These actions have caused great strife. The old canons of the united church stated that no Bishop was to come into another bishop's see to take away souls for his own see. If the Roman Church would have follwed that concept, the relation would be much better, the separation not as deep.

At this point, reconcilliation seems slim. The dogmatic theology of the Roman Church has gone far a field from the Ecumenical Counsels 1-7. Papal Infallibility seems to be the greatest stumbling block, it blocks all true discussion of what we Orthodox see as dogmatic imperitives.