Ecumenism and Bigotry

"In the hands of scoundrels..."

by Hieromonk Auxentios

[Now Bishop of Etna and Portland]

Source: Orthodox Tradition, Vol. VI (1989), No. 1, p. 8.

 

 

I have long hesitated to write this essay, since a monastic must live above the past and become passive to those things which may hurt us as humans. He must strive to live the angelic life in practice as well as thought. At the same time, however, in days such as ours a monastic must at all times reach out and touch others at a personal level, sharing his human troubles with them in order to comfort them in their own. With this latter "oikonomia" in mind, I agreed to write a personal essay, some years ago, for Bishop Chrysostomos' book on the Old Calendar Orthodox Church of Greece. At His Grace's request, I now offer a few humble words on ecumenism from my personal observations as a convert to Orthodoxy. I hope that they will prove useful to our readers.

I converted to Orthodoxy under the influence and guidance of one of my professors at Princeton, the late Father Georges Florovsky, and Bishop Chrysostomos, then a layman and preceptor in the psychology department. Having studied Buddhism and after a short affiliation with a campus evangelical ministry, I became convinced that the Orthodox Church had preserved Christianity as it was taught and preached by the Apostles. I embraced it as the fullness of Christianity and, without condemning or judging any other Christians, I decided to be Baptized. Believing it to have preserved the traditional piety and practices of the Orthodox Faith, and at the advice of both Father Georges and Bishop Chrysostomos, I was Baptized into the Greek Old Calendar movement.

At the time that I converted, I knew little of religious politics. I came from a very wealthy family and was formally a member of an affluent parish of the Community Church. I believed then —as I do now— that tolerance for the religion of others was essential and I was not at all threatened by those who, though in disagreement with my views, in good conscience believed that their religion was true and correct. In that sense I was an ecumenist. And I thought that such thinking was behind the ecumenical movement, which had come into popularity at the time.

No sooner had I converted than I heard Father Florovsky —a Harvard emeritus professor and prestigious member of the faculty at Princeton— referred to as a "nut" and "know-nothing" by a junior professor who objected to Father George's belief that the Orthodox Church reached in an unbroken chain of tradition back to the Apostles. Indeed, when I wrote to the pastor of my former Church (an ecumenist in a very ecumenical Church, I might add) to tell him of my decision to become Orthodox and my belief that the Orthodox Church was the true Church, I received a bitter letter claiming that I was "in the hands of scoundrels" —a characterization of individuals whom this man had never even met.

Later, after I converted, one of my own brothers, now a married Episcopal Priest and ecumenical in his outlook, wrote me with a detailed condemnation of the Orthodox Church and its inane heresies, replete with condemnatory characterizations of my adopted Faith that would have impressed even the most avid religious polemicists of the "unlightened, pre-ecumenical centuries" past. Though the minister in question, still an active ecumenist, never offered an apology or word of regret for his attack, my brother has fortunately come to treat me with greater Christian charity —a demonstration of the healthy family values with which I was reared and their importance in overcoming the bigotry that political ecumenism can breed.

When I was tonsured a monk, one of my "enlightened" schoolmates told a friend that he suspected me of "abnormality." What a strange thing in an age beset and preoccupied with religion and ecumenism. I began to wonder how my commitment to my Faith, my confession of the oldest Church in Christianity, and my dedication to a life of purity and self-sacrifice had brought about constant condemnation both of me and of those around me by my family and friends. I attributed the fault to myself and asked God to enlighten me and to guide me. Not yet, however, had I determined that any of these things had anything to do with ecumenism.

My enlightenment about the ecumenical movement —that it is not a movement toward tolerance, but toward an enforced unity in belief and thought— came to me while attending a lecture at the Harvard Divinity School with Bishop Chrysostomos, then a visiting scholar at this well-known center for theological studies. I heard a famous Roman Catholic theologian suddenly pronounce with fury, fists hitting the podium in front of him, that he could "not tolerate anyone who claims to have the truth." His Grace turned to me and whispered: "So much for Christ. He claimed to be the truth." Though the speaker well may have been speaking in another context and with different intent, I suddenly realized that I had met with such intolerance in my decision to enter the traditionalist Orthodox movement precisely because the ecumenical movement had sensitized people to any who claimed to have an exclusive truth, making such a claim an impediment to union. And, of course, I learned from this formula that union, not toleration, was the aim of the ecumenists.

Over the years, my insight that evening at Harvard has been proved true. The one intolerant tyrant that, above all other forces, has beset me and the movement that I represent is ecumenism. I do not seek the religion of others. I do not worship with others. I do not attribute to other religions the truth that I attribute to Orthodoxy. Yet I do not condemn others and I respect those who do not attribute to my Orthodoxy the truth that they find in their own religions. Yet, these principles more than any others have brought me condemnation. They fly in the face of modern religious politics, which demands that I find truth only in the union of my religion with others, in doubts about my religion, and in a religious syncretism that stands in opposition to the claims of the Orthodox Church to be the true Church!

Recently, at the cost of a half million-dollar endowment, the Patriarch Athenagoras Institute was established at the Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley, where I am working on my doctorate. But, thanks to the ecumenism championed by Patriarch Athenagoras, I could not even qualify for a fellowship at this Institute, since I do not belong to a pro-unionist Orthodox jurisdiction. We Orthodox who resist union with Rome by political deals worked out by Patriarchs who, in violation of our Church's ecclesiology, think of themselves as "popes" are no longer considered "official" Orthodox. We who oppose the adoption of the Roman Catholic church calendar by the Patriarch of Constantinople in 1924 as a step toward union with the West are no longer within the Church. We have become bigots and impediments to union before these "open-minded" ecumenists who refuse to listen to our claims that union with the West must by nature involve a resolution of theological problems first.

Three of our clergy studying at a member school of G.T.U., the San Francisco Theological Seminary, have been told that their traditional hermeneutical approach is "tautological" and "closed" and that their good academic work does not counterbalance their resistance to adopting the views and theologies of others. Two liberal Roman Catholic nuns teaching on the faculty have found these clergymen to be outside the spirit of that school and, in fact, we have been told in no uncertain terms that other clergy need not apply for future study at the school. Such is the open-minded path of ecumenism! Not a word about the humiliating ridicule to which one of these clergy, a nun, was exposed by other students —ministers—, who confessed in front of her of being put-off by her "weird" appearance. And can one imagine the havoc, were one of our clergy —all polite and respectful with regard to the beliefs of other students —to demand that others adopt Orthodox views?

Let us turn, too, to the tactics of the Vatican. In its great "ecumenical" efforts, it gave secret directions in 1984 that a struggle be initiated against "those following the Old Calendar, both within and outside Greece," because of Old Calendarist resistance to union with Rome and the movement's refusal to acknowledge the papacy. This came to light in a book by D.C. Yermak, Kai Palin to Terma (Athens, 1984) [p. 284], that caused no small stir in Greece. More recently, the prestigious Athens daily, "Vradyni" (March 11, 1988), reported a secret meeting of Vatican leaders who, among other subjects, discussed tactics for silencing anti-unionist Orthodox voices in Greece, Bulgaria, and Serbia. Indeed, this is ecumenism? Not only are we Old Calendarist Orthodox required to abandon our traditions, but we are told to accept the Papacy, even though we believe in no such thing. Those who believe in the papal formula have every right to do so. And if they do so sincerely and with faith, we admire them. But must we not be free in our resistance to this? Would this freedom not be closer to what ecumenism claims to be?

In 1987 I accompanied Bishop Chrysostomos to Sweden. While he was teaching at one of that country's best theological faculties, I was completing an independent study project for my doctoral program. Much to my shock, as I have related to readers in past issues of Orthodox Tradition, I met several Orthodox converts who told me that Bishop Chrysostomos was a fraud, that one could not be Orthodox without being in communion with the Pope of the East, the Patriarch of Constantinople , and that, whatever his academic credentials, he had no business teaching at a major university because he was an "illiterate Old Calendarist." In other words, modern political ecumenism has now produced its own "Orthodox Church," has elevated the "first among equals" in the Orthodox Church to the rank of Pope, and apparently has the power to make literate professors illiterate! Quite amazing, indeed. It is also amazing that, by one element in this formula, some of our great Saints were not Orthodox, by virtue of the fact that they stood in resistance to the errors of the Patriarch of Constantinople!

Indeed, the cynical aims of political ecumenism are easily understood by those of us who resist union with Rome, union with other non-Orthodox Churches, and a world-wide religion based on the belief that no Church is the true Church, but that the true Church will surface when all Churches join together —under the Pope, according to his self- serving scenario, or under some other unifying person or body of persons. We can see that ecumenism is based on intolerant bigotry and that it appeals to those who are not mature enough to realize that each person has a right to his claim to exclusive truth, whether this claim be justified or not, and that true ecumenism honors his right to this claim and asks only that he make it without condemning others.

Ecumenism turned people close to me to bigotry. It now acts to join all believers, whether they wish union or not. It stands as a judge of all who do not bow to its relativism. It violates laws and perpetuates, in the academic setting, a single syncretic philosophy. It brings pain to us who are weak, who cannot move in its wealthy corridors. Can it, then, be a dangerous movement of bigotry and intolerance? A point to ponder.