Even though there was a split between the four Eastern Patriarchates and Rome  after 1054, the worse was to follow in 1204 when Constantinople was sacked  during the Fourth Crusade. The Crusaders were originally bound for Egypt. Alexius, the son of the disposed Emperor Isaac Angelus, invited the Crusaders to come to Constantinople and restore him and his father to the throne. This intervention in Byzantine politics by the Crusaders, who were called together by the Bishop of Rome, did not go happily and eventually the Crusaders, disgusted by what they regarded as Greek duplicity, lost patience and sacked the city. Eastern Christendom has never forgotten those three appalling days of pillage. “Even the Saracens are merciful and kind,” protested Nicetas Choniates, “compared with these men who bear the Cross of Christ on their shoulders.” In the words of Sir Steven Runciman, “The Crusaders brought not peace but a sword; and the sword was to sever Christendom. The long-standing doctrinal disagreements were then reinforced on the Greek side by an  intense national hatred, by a feeling of  resentment and indignation against western aggression and sacrilege.

After 1204 there can be no doubt that Christian East and West were divided into two. Each side selected a name by which they characterized their position. The East used the name Orthodox and the West the name Catholic. Each, to this day, believes itself to have been right and its opponent wrong upon the points of doctrine that arose between them. So Catholicism and Orthodoxy still each claim to be the true Church. Yet each, while believing in the rightness of its own cause, must look back at the past with sorrow and repentance. Both sides must in honesty acknowledge that they could and should have done more to prevent the schism.

Both sides were guilty of mistakes on the human level. Orthodox, for example, must blame themselves for the pride and contempt with which they regarded the west during the Byzantine period. They must blame themselves for incidents such as the riot of 1182, when many Latin residents at Constantinople were killed. No action on the Byzantine side, however, can be compared to the sack of 1204. Each side, while claiming to be the one true Church, must admit that on the human level it has been grievously impoverished by the separation. The Greek east and the Latin west needed and still needs one    another. For both parties the great schism has proved a great tragedy. It is only when the Church can openly profess diversity in its approach, can it truly be called Church.