Interestingly, the catholic church had HUGE problems with the orthodox church during its inception for just that. If you get the chance, you should give "Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire" (http://www.amazon.ca/Byzantium-Surprising-Life-Medieval-Empi...) a read. Its a fascinating glimpse into not only the early church, but the rise, and fall, of an empire.
It started with the Bogomils, I believe it was on some doctrine about whehter we were born in sin, or not. I haven't check wikipedia, trying to type what I remmember from school, but the orthodox church believes that you are born in sin, while the catholic does not. Off course there are other differences.
Atheist myself, I got married in a orthodox church to make my family happy (grandmothers especially). I carry my wedding ring on the right hand (orthodox rules).
But, I wonder what's the point? Such simple differences, and off course others were the cause of wars (real, and cold) between the sects (to be objective, they are all sects) of the christian church.
Ok, so some fights might've been okay - for example our Bulgarian church (orthodox) "fought" against the Greek (also orthodox) to have the sermons told in bulgarian, not greek, because... people did not understood greek. Or to have the bible written in bulgarian.
But now the bulgarian church is fighting within itself, for stupid things like - whether the black monks (I think those are strict monastic monks), can get married vs. the one carrying white. Again, not going to bother checkin the wikipedia on this one. It's just stupid :) Allow them to get married, and continue...
