Sorry if I was not clear; I will try to rectify that, if belatedly:

Jurisdictional disputes between Rome and Constantinople existed long before iconoclasm, and continued long after it. The formal Great Schism occurred well after iconoclasm ended; I can subtract 842 from 1054 and get 212 (a fair number of years short of 300, incidentally.) HOWEVER, the permanent Schism due to jurisdictional disputes (in addition to secular politics and language,) was only the formal declaration of a practical schism reaching back to iconoclasm as surely as it reaches back further. Iconoclasms exacerbation of that split endured long after iconoclasm itself ceased; it is not "tangential," but illustrative. Again, just because the Pope, Patriarch and Emperors all ultimately came to agreement against iconoclasm does not undo the effect of a previous Byzantine emperor telling a previous pope he would come to Rome to destroy icons and imprison the Bishop of Rome, or a previous Roman emperor condemning the Second Council of Nicaea as heretical.


I already conceded my statements on WHY Rome defended icons was only speculation, which I thought indicated as such at the time. Those consist of two sentences, hardly the "rant" you condemned them as. Catholic absorption of paganism may not have been official policy, but was official PRACTICE reflected in adoption of customs, worship sites and yes, even deities and heroes preserved as saints, in some cases to this very day. That and iconoclasms contributions to pre-existing jurisdictional disputes culminating in the Great Schism are both attested by the Roman Catholic Church itself, as I demonstrated with links to the Catholic Encylopedia.


Correct me if I am wrong (or am not; you never need to be asked in either case) but I believe that series of passages is traditionally cited as NEGATIVE evidence with regard to the bible as random oracle. Deuteronomy 13:18 (or any of the bible) is hardly consistent with telling someone to commit suicide. That latest and most extreme ad hominem eliminates whatever faint hope remained of constructive discussion. I get that you dislike me and the way I write; you need not restate that each time I post, nor does doing so constitute a rebuttal of my posts. Rip into me again if you like, but do not mistake my silence for assent.