How long does it take to heal a church spat? In one case it was 911 years. The Great Schism – as it is known – took place in AD 1095 and was the final straw between the church in Rome and the church in Constantinople. Today we would call it the Roman Catholic Church versus the Eastern/Greek Orthodox Church. The Schism erupted in 1095 as the Bishop of Rome and Bishop of Constantinople excommunicated each other over things like priests being able to marry such as the Greek Orthodox do and not wearing beards as the Catholic priests and a host of other issues. On December 7, 1965, Pope Paul VI and the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I decided it was time to end all that squabble and they each lifted the ex-communications and started to play nice in the sandbox.
