In her letter decrying what she misnamed the Roman Catholic “dogma” of priestly celibacy, Vicki Toppses, wife of this community’s only Greek Orthodox priest, maintained what Orthodoxy has always passionately maintained: The responsibility for the momentous split between eastern and western Christianity lies at the door of Catholicism (Sept. 12).

Catholicism, of course, has always firmly maintained just the opposite. This is a dispute 10 centuries old already, and there are few certainties more certain than this: It’ll never be settled.

This irresolvable conflict between Orthodoxy and Catholicism is only the tip of the iceberg, however. Fact is, in Christianity, which has billed itself for two millennia as the one true religion, we find the very thing we should expect not to find, i.e., universal, deep-seated disunity.

Disunity is certainly found to some extent in other organized religions, but it’s practically come to be a hallmark of Christianity; and in no branch of it do we find more disunity than in Protestantism.

Nearly 500 years ago, Martin Luther, the father of Protestantism, abominated the fact that one Christian “rejects baptism; another the Eucharist; one says this, the other that; there are as many sects as heads; everybody wishes to be a prophet.”

But Luther hadn’t seen diddly. According to the World Christian Encyclopedia (2000), there are well over 30,000 denominations and sects of Christianity spanning the globe in our time – some of them Orthodox and some quasi-Catholic, but the overwhelming majority of them Protestant.

William LaRochelle, Lewiston