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At the same time, this leaves seriously open whether reunion is possible at all, because if "the West would recognize the Church of the East as orthodox in the form she has always had," then the West would be saying that active, persistent, and stubborn denial of the dogma of Papal infallibility over a century, and of other Catholic dogmas for centuries, has no consequences and requires no renunciation. In other words, it means they're not dogmas!
When dogmas are defined, they're not "suggestions." They're not even "firm teachings," or "infallible teachings." They are solemn declarations that someone who denies this is anathema, accursed, cut off, removed from communion with the Church. The classical ecumenical dogmatic language, "Let them be anathema," comes from St. Paul's declaration that opens Galatians:
So to say that something is a dogma is, in Biblical and ecclesiastical idiom, to say that all who dissent are "deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ," and "turning to a different gospel!" It is a solemn declaration of unmistakable error, and it cannot be relativized -- only affirmed or denied.
Ratzinger seems to be wanting to do a very Ratzinger thing here: to assert the possibility of reform without reform, even to the point of saying dogma can be held -- or not -- so long as you say someone else can believe it's dogma. It's a functional denial of dogma that doesn't actually want to admit that it is.
Conservative Catholics love talking about Pope Benedict as a "defender of dogma," but the man was, abundantly, a modernist. Just a rather conservative one. And I don't say that as an insult -- I love Pope Benedict, and I prefer his vision of modernist-conservative Catholicism to traditional, pre-conciliar Catholicism -- but because everyone has to be clear what's at stake.
Like much of the post-conciliar Church, Ratzinger's views reflect, essentially, institutional intertia in the guise of teaching authority: we cannot say we were mistaken about our dogmas, because that would scandalize the faithful and call into question our entire history, and so we say, with one side of our mouth the Immaculate Conception is dogma! and with the other the Orthodox East, which steadfastly denies that this is a dogma, is perfectly and entirely prepared for communion with us! But both of these things cannot be true. You can't have your bread and eat it too.
My view is that Catholicism has gone halfway -- opened the door to unity on the basis of the first millennium -- without committing, as did Pope Paul VI, when he called the Catholic ecumenical councils of the second millennium "general councils of the West" -- which seems to demote them to the status of the Councils of Toledo, rather than infallible councils. Yet Christ asks that we give him everything, like he himself gave up everything so that: "those who believe in me... may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee," in the priestly words of Jesus in John 17.
I think the real obstacle to unity isn't so much the two Marian dogmas, provided that the Assumption is considered to be a doctrine of the Dormition as well -- and the Orthodox, not that I speak for them, would probably say that the Immaculate Conception can be accepted as a pious belief, so long as it is asserted as a plausible explanation for the moral perfection and grace-full-ness of the Mother of God rather than a fixed, infallible doctrine, and thus open to critique made in the spirit of charity (as even Thomas Aquinas did).
In other words, the pre-1850s landscape could have been a much more fruitful place for ecumenical dialogue. If Vatican II had happened early, in place of Vatican I, we would live in a very different world. But I believe the Vatican Councils destroy each other, like matter and dark matter, and in so doing they also bring to heel the legitimate power of the Vatican -- which should be great indeed, but always in line with tradition, and with the charism of persuasion in the spirit of truth and not "ordinary and universal magisterial teaching" requiring "religious submission of will and intellect."
Great comment, very informative.
I did have the thought recently that some of the conservative trends people observe in the Catholic Church could make reunion more difficult. If the Spirit of Vatican II wanes, East and West would become more aligned in worship and practice, but at the same time a confidently traditional Catholic Church might assert its dogmatic claims more vigorously.
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