Ecumenist delusions of “conservative Orthodox”

Ioannis N. Paparrigas | May 21, 2010

 

Because the so-called “conservatives” among the [official] Orthodox are unable to pacify their conscience, they attempt to justify their own attachment to heresy and communion with their ecumenist and heretical bishops.

Deceitfully, they do not say what they ought to do—namely, to cease all communion with the heretical Patriarch Bartholomew and with those who have fallen from the faith yet still commune with him, who, “even if in their mindset they have not completely sunk, nevertheless through their communion with heretics perish together with them,” according to Saint Theodore the Studite. All, of course, the ecumenist hierarchs compete with Mr. Bartholomew and surpass him in his ecumenist openings, his unorthodox declarations, and his unacceptable ecumenical liturgical and worship events with heretics and those of other religions, both in the temples of heretics and of the Orthodox.

They say to the faithful: wait, the patriarch has not yet communed from the cup of the pope, the union has not yet taken place, therefore do not leave the “church” yet.

In other words, it is as if they are telling them: wait first to see the pope place the Host into the mouth of the patriarch, and then we will tell you to cease commemorating him. As if the ecumenists are so naïve as to immediately and so openly reveal what they have truly decided in secret and what they are gradually, so cunningly and deceitfully, serving to the people! As if the patriarch and the other ecumenists will only then become heretics—when they commune from the cup and the unleavened bread of the pope!

The so-called conservatives have not understood it—or rather, they have understood it very well but do not admit it even to themselves, because they are afraid to then proceed coherently and wall themselves off—that the ecumenists, and in general most of the hierarchs, are heretics, because they are ecumenists, because they proclaim in word and deed that the Church is not only the Orthodox Church, but that the entire swarm of Western heretics also belongs to it: Latins and Protestants, Monophysites and Copts of the East, with whom they associate and pray together liturgically at every opportunity.

Those, therefore, who are consistent with the Orthodox ecclesiology of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Orthodox Church cease the commemoration of those who preach heresy, and of course also of all those Bishops and Presbyters who are in communion with them, because, according to Saint Theodore the Studite and Saint John Chrysostom, “enemies of God are not only the heretics but also those who commune with heretics” (P.G. 99, 1049a), and according to Saint Mark of Ephesus, “All the teachers of the Church, all the Councils, all the divine Scriptures without exception urge us to flee from those of different belief and to separate (to be divided) from their communion” (P.G. 160, 105C).

And the conservatives among the Orthodox will lull their spiritual children to deadly sleep, saying to them: the time has not yet come, wait for a while until the union is first officially signed and the patriarch communes from the unleavened bread of the pope, and then you will see what will happen! Yet what has already taken place is more dreadful or at least equal to that anticipated communion from the one cup; in an unorthodox manner, the “conservatives” instruct their spiritual children.

What has taken place up to this day that is more dreadful than communion from the one cup??

The lifting of the anathemas against Papism, the liturgical joint prayers of Rome and Constantinople, the participation of Greece in the World Council of Churches—which signifies a denial of the very existence of the Orthodox Church—the liturgical joint prayers of Phanariots and other Orthodox with Protestants in Geneva, Uppsala, Vancouver, and generally in all regions under the jurisdiction of the heterodox Phanar, the interreligious ceremonies in Assisi, Canberra, and America and throughout the world with the participation of pagans, Native Americans, Buddhists, Muslims, and Jews, “priests” and “priestesses.”

And of course, the ecumenist betrayals of today's so-called “Orthodox” have no end, since the all-dissolving heresy of Syncretism circulates like deadly poison in the veins of humanity and has permeated official “Orthodoxy.”

Here lies the tragedy of today’s “conservative” Orthodox—they want to struggle according to their own models, their own interpretation of events, with the result that they remain in communion with heterodoxy, of which they become defenders through their stance.

But even the argument that supposedly the commemoration of the heterodox bishop should be ceased after the “union” is a novel and unpatristic teaching! What Holy Father and what Sacred Canon proclaims such a thing?

None!

And this is because when heresy is preached, before it defiles the entire Church, Orthodox clergy and laity react unto death and, even before synodal judgment, separate themselves from the heterodox. And as Saint Nikodemos writes, interpreting the relevant canon: “…those who separate themselves, not only are not condemned for the separation, but are worthy of proper honor, because they did not cause schism in the Church through that separation, but rather delivered the Church from the schism and heresy of those false bishops.”

And Saint Athanasius the Great, in complete opposition to the neo-Orthodox theology of the “conservatives,” who pervert the ways of our Lord and the straight teachings of the Holy Fathers, teaches: “If the Bishop or the Presbyter, who are the eyes of the Church, behave improperly and scandalize the people, they must be cast out. For it is better to gather in a house of prayer without them, than to be cast into the Gehenna of fire with them, as with Annas and Caiaphas!” (VEPES 33, 199). And yet the “conservative” Orthodox continue to insist upon their deluded positions concerning walling off, shamelessly saying that they will not create schism in the Church!!!

The Holy Fathers teach precisely the opposite of the “conservative” Orthodox, who, although they indeed acknowledge that Mr. Bartholomew and the other ecumenist bishops are heretical ecumenists, nevertheless according to their teaching, it is not permitted for clergy and laity to separate from them—so that they supposedly may not be found outside the Church!!!

However, it is an ecclesiological axiom that the Orthodox faith and the faith of the bishop must be identical, as must be the faith of the flock and its shepherd.

Therefore, those who hold false doctrines are not of the Church, nor are they shepherds, “but wolves in sheep’s clothing, working the ruin of the sheep,” even if they bear titles such as archpastors, all-holiness, and ecumenical. We have been taught to recognize the genuine Orthodox Faith in truth and precision, according to Saint Gregory Palamas.

All Orthodox, therefore, are called to reject falsehood and distortions by simply ceasing all communion with heresy and with the heterodox shepherds.

What the “conservatives” among the Orthodox recommend to their faithful and to their spiritual children—namely, obedience to their ecumenist shepherds “until the union takes place” (!)—is not Orthodox teaching; it is entirely contrary to the Fathers.

The present leaders of official Orthodoxy are heretics because they are ecumenists, and they will not become heretics only when they unite with the pope. Those who have not yet understood what is happening around them think that the whole matter concerns the union of the Papists with the Orthodox, as in Ferrara-Florence!!!

With which heretics did the Arians, Nestorians, Eutychians, and Iconoclasts concelebrate in order for the Orthodox to renounce them? Did they not renounce them for their heresy alone? In the same way today, the ecumenism and syncretism being preached is the most dreadful heresy. It is a pan-heresy!

The Orthodox, the genuine Orthodox, do not await any official union—they cease the commemoration of their ecumenist heterodox bishops and of those in communion with them, and they pass into the realm of confession and sacrifice.

We must also realize that the “official church,” with its Patriarchates and Synods, with its organization and the state apparatus with which it allied itself during the times of heresies, has always become a weapon of heterodoxy against the Orthodox. We must realize that the Orthodox Church is also defined as being “wherever there are three Orthodox,” according to Saint Gregory Palamas.

When heresy is being preached, all bear responsibility, because according to Saint Theodore the Studite, “Even if someone were to give all the money in the world and is in communion with heresy, it is not possible for him to become a friend of God, but he is an enemy of Him. And what am I saying, if he communes? Even if he merely sits and eats and drinks amicably with heretics, he is held accountable” (P.G. 99, col. 1205).

“And if a priest commemorates the heretic publicly, and when privately invited by an Orthodox to a house of prayer then avoids commemorating the heretic,” the Saint was asked whether it is permitted for the Orthodox to pray there as well, and he answered that “not even in that house of prayer is it permitted for the precise keeper of piety to pray.” (P.G. 99, col. 1240).

And the Saint speaks even more strictly—both concerning presbyters, deacons, readers, monks, and nuns, as well as laypeople who may have had right belief, but communed with heretics until their death—that it is absolutely not permitted to perform a Liturgy, nor a vigil, nor even a prayer for them. (P.G. 99, col. 1660).

If the saints and the countless other venerable ones and confessors, instead of struggling for the Faith, enduring persecution and suffering, had continually “economized” the situation—compromising the irreconcilable, that is, Orthodoxy with heresy—waiting “for a while” or “until the time comes,” as Archimandrite Nikodemos Bilalis writes, today we would not be Orthodox.

 

Greek source: https://entoytwnika.blogspot.com/2010/05/blog-post_21.html