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Synodal Gathering of the Church of the Genuine Orthodox Christians of Greece at the Port Authority of Piræus

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Synodal Gathering of the Church of the Genuine Orthodox Christians of Greece at the Port Authority of Piræus The Orthodox Informer “For it is a commandment of the Lord not to be si- lent at a time when the Faith is in jeopardy. Speak, Scrip- ture says, and hold not thy peace.... For this reason, I, the wretched one, fearing the Tribunal, also speak.” (St. Theodore the Studite, Patrologia Græca, Vol. XCIX, col. 1321) Sunday of Orthodoxy February 16/March 1, 2015 A Synodal Gathering of the Church of the Genuine Orthodox Christians of Greece at the Port Authority of Piræus Keynote Presentation Ecumenism in the Homestretch and the Orthodox Witness of a Contemporary Saint and Confessor † Bishop Klemes of Gardikion Secretary of the Holy Synod Your Beatitude; Most Reverend and Right Reverend holy Brethren; Venerable Fathers and Mothers; Beloved Brothers and Sisters in Christ: I The Genesis and Development of Ecumenism t the behest of the Holy Synod, and invoking your prayers, atten- Ation, and patience, with God’s help I will expound, at this great Synodal Gathering and on the radiant day of the Triumph of Orthodoxy over heresies, on a matter of grave importance. You are familiar with the endeavor, about a century ago, to create a “League of Churches,” modelled on the “League of Nations,” an inter- Christian confederation between different confessions, notwithstanding 1 their doctrinal differences, for the purpose of coöperating in common service and with the ultimate goal of their union. Such was the genesis of ecumenism. That vision was Protestant, but, as we know, the Church of Con- stantinople took the unprecedented step of proposing, in its “Patriar- chal Declaration of 1920,” the establishment of a “League of Church- es” for the benefit, supposedly, of the “whole body of the Church,”1 that is, of the Orthodox and the heterodox. This initiative was based, not on Orthodoxy, but on cacodoxy: the heterodox were regarded as members of the Church of Christ without qualification, by reason of their alleged baptism in the Name of the Triune God, and, in an atmosphere of dog- matic syncretism, despite the unbridgeable differences, there was poten- tial for inter-Christian coöperation, a common witness of faith and com- mon service of the world, and also for a common struggle to eradicate social ills. The other local Orthodox Churches individually accepted the Decla- ration of 1920, which was officially endorsed at the “First Pan-Orthodox Consultation” in Rhodes, in 1961.2 In this way, ecumenism was proclaimed and entrenched among the Orthodox Churches, and it eroded them from within. * * * On the basis of the 1920 Declaration, the calendar reform of 1924 was recklessly implemented, in order that through concelebration with the heterodox “the rapprochement of the two Christian worlds of the East and the West”3 might be accomplished. 1 Gennadios Limouris (ed.), Orthodox Visions of Ecumenism: Statements, Messages and Reports on the Ecumenical Movement, 1902-1992 (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1994), p. 10. 2 Ibid., p. 33. 3 Dionysios M. Batistatos (ed.), Πρακτικὰ καὶ Ἀποφάσεις τοῦ ἐν Kωνσταντινουπόλει Πα- νορθοδόξου Συνεδρίου (10 Mαΐου-8 Ἰουνίου 1923) (Proceedings and decisions of the Pan-Or- thodox Congress in Constantinople [10 May-8 June 1923]) (Athens: 1982), pp. 57, 72. See also Vasilike Stathokosta, Ὀρθόδοξη Θεολογία καὶ Οἰκουμένη (Μελέτες-Ἄρθρα) (Or- thodox theology and the Oikoumene [studies and articles]) (Athens: Ekdoseis Parre- sia, 2011), p. 44. 2 The result was tragic: the sundering of the unity of the Orthodox in the Festal Calendar for the sake of achieving “contact” with the hetero- dox outside the Church! Those who rejected the innovation of the New Calendar, our forefa- thers, did so under the inspiration of the Spirit of Truth, in order to safe- guard the Church from pollution by the ecclesiological heresy of ecu- menism. It is, of course, well known from our Patristic Tradition that “a mi- nor deviation from the truth affords access to impiety,”4 as St. Gregory of Nyssa emphasizes. St. Photios the Great affirms: “Even a slight violation of traditions is wont to permit complete contempt for dogma.”5 And as we in fact observe, by means of ecumenism the dogma of the Church has been, and is being, deplorably contemned, while a seeming- ly small violation (the calendar issue) has opened the door to blatant and unheard-of impiety, such as has never before appeared in the two-thou- sand-year history of the Church of Christ! * * * In 1948, in Amsterdam, Holland, the so-called World Council of Churches, that is, the very “League of Churches” envisioned in the 1920 Declaration, was founded. Dozens or even hundreds of Protestant her- esies constituted, at the outset along with the Churches of Constantin- ople, Greece, and Cyprus, a kind of monstrous “Ecumenical Church.” The ecumenists did not make the right Faith a unifying and cohesive fac- tor, since they took, and take, for granted the existence, despite dogmatic differences, of a putative “invisible unity” of the “Churches,” which, by means of “spiritual relationships,” “common prayer and a common jour- ney,” and “common witness and service,” is unfolding “visibly,” through “admitted and acknowledged diversity.”6 4 “Homily V on the Beatitudes,” Patrologia Græca, Vol. XLIV, col. 1249D. 5 “Epistle XIII,” §5, Patrologia Græca, Vol. CII, col. 724D. 6 Morris West, “Toronto Statement,” in the Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement, ed. Nicolas Lossky, José Míguez Bonino, John S. Pobee, Tom F. Stransky, Geoffrey Wain- wright, and Pauline Webb (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1991), pp. 1008, 1009, and T.K. 3 By 1965, all of the local Orthodox Churches, without exception, had joined this ecumenical organization, which is headquartered in Geneva, and as “organic” members at that,7 in coöperation, in joint prayer, and in joint proclamation—with a medley of heresies—of the views of the Church or of the Churches. But it was thereafter that the World Council of Churches became ever more estranged from Evangelical truth and morality, secularized, broadened through interfaith dialogue, and de-Christianized. And in spite of its diverse this-worldly activities, it supposedly advances the “Unity of the Church” with a purely Protestant mentality, in complete contradiction to the principles of Orthodox ecclesiology, as has become very evident in the pertinent documents and resolutions of its two recent General Assemblies, in Porto Alegre, Brazil in 2006 and in Busan, South Korea in 2013. * * * Now, what has become of Rome? Roman Catholicism was originally negative toward the ecumenical movement, that is, until the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). It was then that a spectacular change occurred: by virtue of that council’s “De- cree on Ecumenism,” which decree is founded upon the myth of Papal Primacy and Infallibility, Papism, representing itself as the One and only Church, inaugurated its own inter-Christian relations through dialogue and joint prayer, and also through partial mysteriological (sacramental) communion with heterodox communities. In order to help their “separated brethren” to unite under its pro- tection and, in essence, to embrace an acceptable form of Papal Prima- cy (for herein resides the entire essence of Papism), the Vatican devised a “Roman,” “Rome-centered,” or “Papocentric” ecumenism, based on Lat- in ecclesiology.8 Thomas, “WCC, Basis of,” ibid., p. 1096. 7 Limouris, Orthodox Visions of Ecumenism, p. 38. 8 Archimandrite Spyridon S. Bilales, Ὀρθοδοξία καὶ Παπισμός (Orthodoxy and Papism) (Athens: Ekdoseis “Orthodoxou Typou,” 1969), Vol. I, pp. 339-358. 4 Vatican II affirmed that “Catholics” and “non-Catholics” are “united by a common baptism and a common faith in Jesus Christ and his gos- pel,” and that insofar as there already exists a “real but imperfect com- munion...between the churches,” they can work together and offer a “common witness” to the world in order to express in a vivid way their bond of unity.9 Papism now accepts that there is a “Communion of Churches,” to which all “Christian Churches” somehow belong, and relations between them are defined as relations between “Sister Churches.” And although Papism supposedly does not accept the idea of annexing the other “Churches,” according to the model of the Uniate “Churches,” nonethe- less its proposal for the attainment of “visible unity” is nothing other than the acceptance on the part of the others of the Primacy and Infal- libility of the Pope, since the Church of Rome regards this as a “convic- tion of faith,” an institution of Divine law, and a revealed dogma, which cannot for any reason be relinquished.10 And yet, that which constitutes precisely “the greatest heresy, one which has distorted the dogma of the Church”11 does not appear to in- timidate the Orthodox ecumenists. Even though the Papists essentially laid out, at Vatican II, a “new ecumenist Unia”12 for the purpose of their Uniatization, the Orthodox ecumenists responded positively, spearhead- ed by Constantinople in a wholly arbitrary manner, with three “Pan-Or- thodox Consultations” in Rhodes, in 1961, 1963, and 1964.13 9 Richard P. McBrien, “Roman Catholic Church,” in the Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement, p. 860, and Tom Stransky, “Common Witness,” ibid., p. 198. 10 Giannes Spiteres (Yannis Spiteris), “Ἡ Καθολικὴ Ἐκκλησία καὶ οἱ ἄλλες Χριστιανικὲς Ἐκκλησίες,” (The Catholic Church and the other Christian Churches), in Ὁ Καθολικι- σμός (Catholicism), ed. Theodoros Kontides (Athens: Ekdoseis Hellenika Grammata, 2000), pp. 245-247, 251. 11 Bilales, Ὀρθοδοξία καὶ Παπισμός, Vol. I, p. 147. 12 Ibid., p. 357. 13 See Archimandrite Cyprian and Hieromonk Klemes Hagiokyprianitai, Οἰκουμενικὴ Κίνησις καὶ Ὀρθόδοξος Ἀντι-οικουμενισμὸς – Ἡ κρίσιμος ἀντιπαράθεσις ἑνὸς αἰῶνος (The ecu- menical movement and Orthodox anti-ecumenism: a century of critical confrontation) (Σειρὰ Β´: Συμβολὴ στὴν Ἀντι-οικουμενιστικὴ Θεολογία, Vol. VII; Athens: Hiera Synodos 5 * * * The ecumenist Patriarch Athenagoras—Patriarch by Divine suffer- ance—unrestrainedly aided and abetted the Papists in the promotion of their objectives.
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