The Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church have been in a state of official schism from one another since the events of 1054—the East–West Schism. The causes of this breach were centuries in the making and stemmed to a considerable extent from cultural and political factors derived from the increasing isolation of the Latin scholarly culture of the West and the Greek scholarly culture of the Byzantine Empire. Historically, it has been argued that there are substantive theological differences between the Western and Eastern churches that have proven enduring points of contention.
