On the Occasion of His Nameday: An Address of His Beatitude, Archbishop Kallinikos of Athens

At the Inter-Orthodox Consultation of the Genuine Orthodox Christians in View of the So-Called Great Synod of the Ecumenists, Acharnai, Attica, May 13, 2016 (Old Style)

 

 

Your Eminence, Metropolitan Agafangel;

Your Eminences, Your Graces;

Holy Brothers and Fathers, dear children in the Lord;

Representatives of our Sister Orthodox Churches, as well as Their Respective Bishops, from Russia, Romania, Europe, America, Africa, Asia, and Australia,

I embrace all of you together and each individually with the salvific salutation of joy for the world: Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen!

With ineffable Evangelic joy and emotion, I welcome you, on behalf of our Holy Synod, to the land of Greece, trodden by the Apostles, and the progenitor of Saints.

I thank you for responding to our fraternal invitation to come and to participate in two truly historic events of our Genuine Orthodox Church.

Τhe first is the Inter-Orthodox Conference, for which we are gathered here today.

Τhe second is the Proclamation of the Sanctity of the ever-memorable former Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Florina, which—in God’s pleasure—will take place this coming Satur­day.

We find ourselves at a critical turning-point in history, since after almost a century of martyric struggles in confessing the Faith, the Genuine Orthodox Church has shown Herself justi­fied for its tenacious resistance to the whirlwind of anti-eccle­siastical Ecumenism and its kindred reprehensible calendar in­novation.

Worthy of honor, praise, and encomia are our holy forefathers in Greece, Romania, Russia, and elsewhere, who with inerrant foresight perceived, having been informed by our Lord, where the so-called effort to unite Christians was leading and where it would end up; an effort known as the Ecumenical Movement and which, from the very beginning, was without salubrious ecclesiastical foundations.

Τhe rotten bedrock of the so-called Ecumenical Movement was a clear and explicit proclamation by the Patriarchate in Constan­tinople, which has been, unfortunately, endorsed by all of the “official” Orthodox Churches over the years.

What was this proclamation?

That all of the heterodox Christian communities, Eastern and Western, were “venerable Christian Churches”; that they were “constituent Churches of the entire body of Christians,” “of the whole body of the Church”; and that these “Churches” were henceforth no longer to consider “one another as foreign and alien, but as kith and kin in Christ and ‘as fellow heirs and fel­low members of the body, [and partakers of] the promise of God in Christ’” (“Patriarchal Encyclical of 1920”).

Since then, all of the fallen ecumenists have had a common goal: that the supposed existence of this invisible unity among the heterodox communities should be made visible in various ways: by way of a common calendar, common worship, a com­mon ministry to the world, diverse joint activities, the recogni­tion of each other’s Baptism and Priestly orders, and many other such things, and, indeed, specifically in the framework of the wholly Protestant “World Council of Churches.”

Thus, the so-called Ecumenical Movement took root, was cul­tivated, and became entrenched, such that it has, today, eaten away at all of the would-be “official” local Orthodox Churches, which, in approximately three weeks, will convene in Crete, with the purpose of ratifying, institutionalizing, and formalizing this most novel “ecclesiastical” identity of theirs, their anti-Or­thodox ecumenical consciousness, that is, their total departure and falling-away from the sole and singular Truth of the Holy Apostles, the Holy Fathers, and the Holy Synods of Orthodoxy.

Regardless of the decisions of the so-called Great Synod of the ecumenists, it should be understood solely from the fact that firstly, no issue of heresy will be submitted for examination; sec­ondly, the Bishops who will be participating in it are knowing and active ecumenists, that is, false teachers and false bishops; thirdly, issues for discussion have been set forth from the outset “in conformity with the demands of the contemporary era”; and finally, that it has a patently ecumenist orientation, based on the cacodox Encyclical of 1920—solely from these given points, I reiterate, the Synod of the ecumenists will in any event be a pseudo-synod, not an Orthodox Synod, a synod in favor of ecu­menism and at odds with the Genuine Orthodox Church, a veri­table anti-synod.

The authentic Patristic Tradition concerning Orthodox Syn­ods, as expressed, for example, by St. Athanasios the Great of Alexandria, envisions the following pellucid criteria:

a. It is not possible for those who are impious with regard to the Faith to take part in an Orthodox Synod: “For it is not pos­sible to count in a Synod those who are of impious belief.”

b. The examination of extraneous business must not be giv­en precedence; salient issues of Faith are to be examined first, and then other issues: “Nor is it proper that the scrutiny of any matter take precedence over the examination of matters of the Faith.”

c. Any disagreement concerning the Faith must be removed from consideration first, and then the remaining matters are to be investigated: “All disagreement concerning the Faith ought first to be removed from consideration, and only then may in­quiry be made into other matters.” (Patrologia Græca, Vol. XXV, col. 736B)

The so-called Great Synod of the ecumenists is unaccept­able a priori, because—as it has emerged from the prepara­tory process—it remains incognizant that the Orthodox flock everywhere is threatened by the major heresies of Papism, of Protestantism, by the ecumenism that encompasses them, by Sergianism, and by other anti-Christian currents, ideologies, and pseudo-theologies, which are syncretistic in nature and possessed of a “wisdom that is demonic” (cf. St. James 3:15).

These things notwithstanding, we have gathered today to con­fer, not as a full and canonical Orthodox Synod, but in order to confer and prepare the ground for such a Synod, one that will condemn ecumenism.

For the present, and keeping in mind the pseudo-synod of the ecumenists, we can proclaim collectively our Orthodox Faith, which is in every way genuine, by way of two fundamental doc­uments, with which you are already familiar, and which will be the object of our consultation, in a spirit of love, mutual respect, and prayer.

I conclude these humble introductory thoughts, ideas, and clarifications with the heartfelt prayer that the Most Holy The­otokos and the Holy Fathers may protect and guide us, both today and at all times, to teach aright the word of truth and sal­vation, unto the glory of the Holy Trinity.

I thank you!