Ecumenism and the End of Christian Virtue

By Archimandrite Dr. Akakios,

Abbot of the St. Gregory Palamas Monastery, Etna, CA

 Source: Orthodox Tradition, Vol. VIII (1991), No. 1, pp. 3, 11.

There was a time when religious people upheld certain Christian virtues, not the least important of which was the idea that a good cause cannot be separated from the goodness of those who espouse it. If a good man teaches and espouses a good cause, Christianity teaches, we can learn from his example. He adorns his cause. The Saints and Martyrs are perfect examples of this. We learn of the highness of Christianity through the virtuous examples of men and women who have lived the Faith in its fullness and who have given their blood for it.

Today, we see Christian exemplars disappearing. We therefore see less and less interest in and imitation of the virtues which Christianity has always taught. For example, it was recently revealed that Martin Luther King, considered a great figure in the fight against the un-Christian phenomenon of racism, plagiarized a good part of his doctoral dissertation. (See, for details, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 37 [12], November 21, 1990, "Discovery of Early Plagiarism by Martin Luther King Raises Troubling Questions for Scholars and Admirers.") These revelations can be added to accusations from his own co-workers that Martin Luther King, an ordained Protestant minister, was also a womanizer.

As in the case of Martin Luther King, one must begin to question the motivations of individuals who preach a "good line" but fail to exhibit the virtues which one would expect from those dedicated to good causes. An end to racial hatred and discrimination is a wonderful thing. But that end is hardly adorned by a man whose personal morality has been subjected to serious scrutiny and who has not emerged from that scrutiny with a clean bill of moral health.

More and more in our society, we are seeing good and worthy causes used by unscrupulous individuals who wish to further their own personal aims and who lack the personal moral commitment to make their aims credible. Whether Martin Luther King lacked the Christian virtues necessary to make a case for the equality and brotherhood of all of God's creation one cannot say with certainty, though a great cloud of doubt hangs over this figure. But in other areas, such as ecumenism, there is no doubt whatsoever that many of those advocating the noble aim of religious toleration are themselves anything but religious or tolerant.

In many ways, the modern ecumenical movement is not a spiritual movement which seeks and praises Christian virtue, but a profoundly hypocritical, political movement which has put an end to Christian virtue in formal interdenominational relations. Not only does it operate in the contemporary spirit of separating virtuous causes from virtuous proponents, but it allows the enemies of Christian virtue to so distort virtuous causes that an upright Christian can no longer recognize them.

The unity of Christians is a desirable thing. No one can argue with that. Tolerance between those who believe different things is also a wonderful and desirable thing. These things are the root of what most virtuous people consider ecumenism. And most people of virtue try to make unity and toleration part of their Christian witness. But ecumenism, again, has today become something quite unvirtuous and quite vulgar. Most virtuous people, when they see what it really is, come to revile it. Thus, for want of good people to advocate a good cause, a good cause will be lost.

True ecumenism would call all of us together in mutual toleration, each of us retaining his own belief, yet coming to understand that of another. In true ecumenism, those who have the truth and those in error can meet face to face. Those who have the truth can confess that truth to those in error. And those in error can either benefit from such a confession or persist in their error—perhaps even sincerely convinced that their error is true.

Political ecumenism, on the other hand, demands that individuals give up all claims to having the truth. And unless this is done, they are shown no toleration. They become the victims of an intolerant relativism which has no boundaries. Those who advocate this system of intolerance show no embarrassment at their hypocrisy. For they do not pretend to have the virtue of toleration, but seek, rather, to use the ecumenical movement for certain political ends. Those who are willing to foster these ends are tolerated and financially rewarded. Those who will not are shown absolute hatred.

Let us take, for example, the Vatican's role in the ecumenical movement. It will accept as brothers Orthodox Christians who, in violation of the Church's Canons and the teachings of the Fathers, accept Latin Sacraments as valid. Those who point out that the Orthodox Church accepts only Her own Mysteries as valid are not allowed to attend ecumenical dialogues with the Latin Church or even to submit their opinions in writing to such gatherings. In fact, the Vatican issued a warning to the New Calendarist Church of Greece, several years ago, that unless it silenced the voice and missions of the tradition-minded Greek Old Calendarists, it would break off dialogue with the Greek Church.

Differences cannot be tolerated in political ecumenism. Similarities alone are the stuff of dialogue. Anyone who dares to have his own view is cast aside.

The ecumenical movement can be even more petty. When Bishop Chrysostomos was invited not long ago as a guest professor at the theological faculty of Sweden's oldest university in Uppsala, some New Calendarist Orthodox immediately flew into a rage. A few of them, converts to the innovationist Church of Finland, even spread rumors about the Bishop, hoping thereby to spoil his reputation. Their major fear, and one which proved to be well-founded, was that Bishop Chrysostomos, well versed in the Fathers and traditional Orthodox thought, would challenge their largely un-Orthodox and innovative teachings on the Church in a country where little is known of Orthodox tradition.

While teaching in Sweden, His Eminence was invited to a conference in the town of Sigtuna, to hear a lecture by a celebrated Orthodox Churchman from France. The ecumenical clergy in Sweden, so quick to embrace this movement of interdenominational love, not only would not speak to Bishop Chrysostomos, but failed to invite him to the symposium lunch and, according to those who accompanied him, actually began to laugh when the speaker very politely introduced His Eminence as an Old Calendarist Bishop. Such crudity is unbelievable but true!

Yet another time, I was invited to speak about the Old Calendar movement in the Church of Greece at a theological conference. One of the New Calendarist Greek representatives protested that Old Calendarists were not Orthodox and that my presence would impede other Orthodox from attending the meeting. The sponsors, who were indeed sincere ecumenists—and admittedly there are some active ecumenists who are still unaware of the sinister nature of this political movement—, were outraged at this. The New Calendarist clergy were, in fact, afraid that I would show up in the proper garb of a clergyman, speak of the true beliefs of the Orthodox Faith, and thus compromise their uncanonical betrayal of the Church by their joint prayer and even joint communion with the heterodox.

Political ecumenists also show their lack of Christian virtue and personal honesty when they use the bizarre views of a few fringe members of the traditionalist Orthodox movement to condemn us moderate traditionalists—the majority of traditionalists worldwide. Scholars write that we Old Calendarists hate other Christians, or that we consider their sacraments and beliefs demonic, or that we worship the thirteen days of the Julian Calendar. And when we try to clarify ourselves, these same individuals refuse to let us publish in their periodicals—notwithstanding the fact that our educational backgrounds and publishing records are often superior to theirs.

In Sweden, the representative of the Patriarchal Throne, Metropolitan Pavlos, a modernist and ecumenist par excellence, persuaded the smaller Eastern Churches (including Copts and non-Chalcedonian Syrians) to exclude our Old Calendarist Church from the union of smaller Eastern Churches through which the Swedish State gives funds to religious groups. He, this representative of ecumenical toleration, has thus succeeded in denying funds to our Old Calendarists in that country. He recognizes as Orthodox those whom the Church has traditionally considered heretics separated from the beliefs of Chalcedon, yet has taken Gargantuan measures to see that Greek Old Calendarists are not included among the Faithful.

In Jerusalem, Patriarch Diodoros has been subjected to threats because of his stand against ecumenism and because of his decision to withdraw his representatives from the ecumenical movement. Political ecumenists have tried to claim that the Patriarch made no such move, have enlisted some of his clergy to intimidate him, and have forced him to be exceedingly cautious about his support of Greek Old Calendarists.

Last year, His Beatitude visited the Holy Monastery of Sts. Cyprian and Justina in Fill, Greece, where the Holy Synod was meeting on the occasion of the monastery's Feast Day. To a large crowd of the Faithful he delivered a sermon praising Metropolitan Cyprian and the work of the Synod, emphasizing his own opposition to ecumenism. In private, he told us that he had found the ecumenical activities of the Vatican to be nothing more than a clandestine effort to cloud the differences between Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism and, thereby, to convert the simple Faithful to Rome. He praised our Synod for providing a refuge of True Orthodox and encouraged us to endure the slander of the New Calendarist ecumenists.

This year, after repeated warnings from New Calendarists and ecumenists that his movements were being monitored, His Beatitude went to the feast of the monastery in Fill only under the cover of night, asking that we not widely advertise his visit. For an entire year, he has been assaulted for following his conscience. Indeed, he told the Fathers in Fill about a New Calendarist Hierarch who had chastised him for daring to address an Old Calendarist Bishop, Metropolitan Cyprian, as "Your Eminence." The Patriarch replied brilliantly to his detractor: "You can call the Pope, who is not Orthodox and who is a heretic, 'Your Holiness,' yet I cannot address an Orthodox brother as 'Your Eminence.' " Even in reporting here His Beatitude's most recent trip to Fill, we are probably compromising him. Such is the power of political ecumenism. But we feel it our responsibility to report the truth.

Not only does the ecumenical movement produce hypocrites and virtual agents of terrorism, but it has of late demanded that Orthodox condemn their own Saints. The National Council of Churches—whose leader at this time, unbelievably enough, is a Priest in the O.C.A.!—has issued a condemnation of Columbus Day, claiming that colonial activities in America brought "genocide, slavery, ecocide, and exploitation" to the New World. It claims that the Orthodox Church "accompanied and legitimized this conquest and exploitation," calling it, too, to repentance. In other words, the Russian Saints who worked in Alaska are now to be considered murderers and their activities are to be condemned.

It is one thing to argue that Christian missions in the New World, including those of the Russian Orthodox Church, were marked by human imperfection. It is quite another thing to question the very motivations of these missions and to accuse our missionaries, many of whom lost their lives in preaching the Gospel, of genocide. Political ecumenists become true enemies of Christianity when they ask us to condemn virtuous men who represent the highest calling of the Orthodox Faith—that of missionary service! How dare, indeed, the enemies of our Faith, these hypocrites who drip with humanistic love and who would redden their swords with the blood of those of us who are faithful to our Church and its traditions, ask us to condemn the Saints whom we daily venerate?

Now, as I have noted, there are certainly individuals who are drawn to the good cause of true ecumenism. Many of them have not yet awakened to the wolf that hides under the mask of political ecumenism. These people we cannot condemn. But no small number of the leaders of the ecumenical movement are not only individuals who lack Christian virtues, but are enemies of those virtues and enemies of the Orthodox Faith. They preach hatred in the name of toleration and foster division in the name of Church unity. They have bought and polluted some of our Church's leaders, too. To this we must stand up in defiant resistance.

If ecumenism has put an end to Christian virtue, it has not yet wholly silenced Christians of good conscience. We are all able to speak, and we must speak. We must demand that men and women of Christian virtue guide and control interdenominational relationships. We must take the ecumenical movement out of the hands of wine-drinking, cigar-smoking religious executives who stand by as our Faith is blasphemed and ridiculed. Each of us must stand up and demand an end to this hypocrisy.

At a time when even the larger monasteries on Mt. Athos are being lured by the sticky money and worldly power of ecumenism, we can see how profoundly this disease has taken root in our Church. Let us cure it with a return to personal virtues!