By Mr. Nicolò Ghigi,
Doctoral candidate, Sciences
of Antiquity, Ca Foscari University, Venice
July 5, 2026
Reverend Fathers, beloved
brethren,
The present conference, in which
I have the honor to participate, highlights the dark interconnections between
the efforts to undermine Orthodoxy from within, through the pan-heresy of
Ecumenism, and the strategic interests of certain global powers for the
obliteration of that which they themselves regard as a mere geopolitical space,
namely the Orthodox space.
The relationship between
Ecumenism and political interest, to speak honestly, has accompanied this
heresy from its birth; even before the birth of Ecumenism properly so called,
we can observe that political authority was often ready to renounce the Orthodox
Faith in the name of strategic interest.
In order to understand the few
examples which I intend to present to you, it is necessary to make a
preliminary distinction. We must indeed distinguish at least three kinds of
Ecumenism, which—although they cooperate and often are confused—are the fruit of
different ideologies and pursue different aims.
The first is so-called historical
Ecumenism, that is, that which was practiced before the beginning of Ecumenism
as an ideology and theology in the twentieth century. It concerns the dialogue
between Christian confessions, which aimed at the search for agreements,
chiefly useful for confronting common enemies.
We can mention several cases
which directly concerned the Orthodox Church, such as the attempts at dialogue
with the Calvinists under Patriarch Cyril Lucaris for an anti-Latin purpose;
those with the Anglican Non-jurors, which were conducted by the Patriarchate of
Jerusalem and the Russian Church at the end of the 17th century; and the
attempts at union of the Russian Church with the Old Catholics in 1875, always
with the aim of opposition to Papism.
None of these dialogues in
reality had any result, and indeed the manner in which they were conducted was
radically different from contemporary Ecumenism, since it included strict
theological discussions and permitted no ambiguity. In general, the heretics
were also required to sign an Orthodox confession of faith, as in the case of
the Proposals of the Remnants of the British Church which were sent to
Jerusalem. For this reason, contemporary Ecumenists, although they regard these
conversations as forerunners of their practice and ideology, and in this, in my
opinion, they are not entirely right, nevertheless often condemn the narrowness
and spiritual obtuseness of the participants, who had a mentality so different
from their own.
The second is Ecumenism of
Protestant origin, which was devised in circles connected with the Masonry of
progressive American Methodism at the beginning of the last century. This
Ecumenism begins from the so-called branch theory, according to which no Christian
community already constitutes the fullness of the Church of Christ, but rather
this is like a tree of which each branch—that is, each church or
heresy—constitutes an integral part. The basic premise of this heresy is that
the Church of Christ today does not exist in an organized and visible form, but
in an invisible form, which must become visible through cooperation among the
various Christian confessions, until unity is achieved.
This form of Ecumenism is
absolutely relativistic and takes its principle specifically from the
ecclesiology of the radical reformers; nevertheless, it constitutes the basis
of the WCC (World Council of Churches) and of the greater part of the worldwide
ecumenical organizations and initiatives. To this Ecumenism, the local Orthodox
Churches have unfortunately all yielded in part, since they have enrolled in
the aforementioned organizations, although in words they deny the branch theory
and claim that they participate in these bodies only in order “to present the
Orthodox position”; in practice, however, they join as full members bodies
which openly deny the evangelical teaching and Orthodox ecclesiology.
The third, finally, is Ecumenism
of Roman Catholic origin, which was born after the Second Vatican Council. This
begins from premises very different from the Protestant one, which even today
is rejected by the Latin church, although it has come into close cooperation
with it. The Latin church regards itself as the true visible church, but
recognizes a certain form of ecclesiality in the bodies which have been cut off
from it. The Pope of Rome, in this sense, is not only the head of the Catholic
church, but of all the Christians of the world, even of those who do not
recognize his authority.
This teaching has formed part of
the Latin understanding of primacy for many centuries, and we see its practical
applications already from the Council of Ferrara-Florence, where the seats
inside the cathedral church, where the discussions took place, had been
arranged in such a way that the pope would sit in the center, between the Roman
and the Latin delegation, as “father and head” of both, and not as head only of
the Latin delegation; a thing which naturally provoked the protests of the
Orthodox. The same also happens at the ecumenical meetings which take place
today in the Vatican, where the pope sits in a separate and elevated position,
far from the representatives of the other Christian confessions present.
Also, historically the Latin
church always regarded as the first element of reunion for the groups that had
been cut off from her the recognition of papal authority, and consequently of
the correctness of the pope’s teaching, without, however, the adoption of
customs, rites, or even of the Latin Symbol of Faith being necessary, but
allowing them to preserve their own, according to the Jesuit saying: unité
de la foi, diversité des rites. This is the famous phenomenon of Uniatism.
In this sense, the new Roman
Catholic Ecumenism is nothing other than the continuation of Uniatism by other
means and in other tones, clearly more conciliatory and peaceful in comparison
with the past. It is perhaps not accidental that the clerics and organs of
Catholic propaganda which, during the decades before the council, had been
devoted to the return of the other Christians to Rome, themselves became organs
for the dissemination of Ecumenism, in fact pursuing the same goal by different
methods.
The local Churches have
unfortunately been fully exposed to this kind of Ecumenism, since all of them
maintain close ecumenical contacts with the Pope of Rome, much stronger than
the formal relations with the WCC and the Protestant communities; indeed, in
certain cases, as in Russia because of the influence of Metropolitan Nikodim
(Rotov), they went so far even as to permit sacramental communion (intercommunio),
which fortunately was later withdrawn as soon as this became possible.
It is precisely from this last
case that I would like to begin the analysis of the relations between Ecumenism
and politics. The reason why Nikodim, the so-called “red metropolitan” because
of his absolute loyalty to the communist authorities, opened the new
ecumenistic course of the Moscow Patriarchate in the Khrushchev era is no
secret: it was a clear directive of the Central Committee of the CPSU, which
wished to use the Church, subordinated to it, as an instrument of foreign
propaganda, in its attempt at an opening toward the world through the so-called
de-Stalinization. Ecumenism with Rome, entry into the WCC, even the common cup
and many other alterations of the Faith, were thus introduced into the
Patriarchate as the consequence of a specific desire of the political
authority, upon which it was fully dependent after the persecutions of the
previous decades and the reconstitution of the Moscow Patriarchate in 1943. But
the same thing also happened with the Patriarchate of Constantinople,
subordinated to the West, whose ecumenistic activities began in 1920 with the
dialogues with the Anglicans; we must remember that already from the Crimean
War the British embassy constituted the legal protector of the Church of
Constantinople, and especially in the years of the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
And thus, the Patriarchate continued to participate ever more actively in this
framework, and to work in the front line for the alteration of Orthodox
theology and ecclesiology, obeying the religious regulations of the
American-dominated Western geopolitical space, and it continues to do so until
today with the well-known issues.
But if we look at earlier
periods, when Ecumenism was still called Uniatism, we find that in all cases
the concession of the Uniates toward Rome had purely political motives, whether
it was the desire of the western Ruthenian nobles to become independent from
Muscovy, or the desire of Emperor John VIII to receive military assistance
against the Turkish siege, or that of Michael VIII to pacify the situation of
the divided Empire after the Frankish rule.
In all cases, these are desires
for political success which were placed above the purity of the Faith,
concessions to an unacceptable compromise in dogmatic matters for the purpose
of obtaining some worldly benefit.
Those, however, who opposed these
unions were certainly not enemies of the political authority, nor did they hate
their fatherland or not wish to help it. From the writings of Saint Mark Eugenikos
of Ephesus, for example, the anguish which he cherished for the fate of the
City is plainly evident; nevertheless, from the first moment he makes clear
that if a union can help the City, it must be a union founded on the Truth, and
not on the middle ground and falsehood.
The path of resistance against
the Uniate-ecumenistic efforts has historically been a path by no means easy, a martyric and confessional path,
which led to countless sufferings, to exiles, to mutilations (let us think of
the cases of the confessor monks Meletius and Galaktion, who proclaimed the
Uniate emperor Michael a heretic and deposed), even to the supreme martyrdom of
the Athonite monks of the Protaton and of the Monastery of Zographou, who did
not wish to yield to the pressures of the Latin-minded.
Nevertheless, this is the royal
path for the restoration of the fundamental evangelical principle of “seek
first the kingdom of God” and “render the things of God to God,” that is, of
the right and undefiled confession of the Faith, and in order that no one may
renounce the streams of the Faith on account of worldly delusions.
Greek
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