Ecumenism in the true sense, is having all of humanity embrace the truth of the gospel, having every person on this planet come to the Truth Himself, The Christ.
However, the type of ecumenism that accepts all Christians confessions as equal
(Branch Theory), that is equally sharing bits and pieces of the truth and
teaches love above truth, ignorance of dogma for the sake of peace, and
disregard of differences which tend to divide, this type of ecumenism is the
latest child of Free Masonry and the great-grandfather of the Antichrist, a
true menace of the Church.
The Church
is in imminent threat of being overcome by a storm of compromise and
capitulation to heterodox doctrine and practice, and no sincere Orthodox
Christian, layman or otherwise, can blamelessly remain idle while his path to
salvation is washed away.
We call you
to follow the Holy Fathers' direction and turn away from that dangerous and
false ecumenism which fills our souls with self-importance and the soul-numbing
and worldly subjectivity unfortunately so prevalent in post-Vatican II Roman
Catholicism.
Let us heed the guidance of the Holy Fathers, who direct us to seek the union
that Christ wishes: far from every worldly purpose and every compromise.
By remaining
rooted and immovable in our Orthodoxy, we also give an opportunity to any of
the heretics to awaken and to be incorporated into the One, Holy, Catholic, and
Apostolic Church, so that they might find salvation.
Ecumenism is
heresy! That is quite clear. Moreover, it is the heresy of heresies.
Of all the errors that so-called "Ecumenism" comprises, the most
fundamental and profound is its error concerning the very nature of the Church
itself. This is an ecclesiological heresy. It is contrary to the
Nicean-Constantinopolitan confession of faith, for it asserts that there is no
"One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. (From the Monastery of Saint
Shio of Mghvime: An Open Letter To The Patriach Of Georgia April 14/27, 1997)
The Orthodox
Church teaches that she has no need to search for a "lost unity",
because her historic consciousness dictates that she is the Una Sancta (=The One
Holy Catholic And Apostolic Church) and that all Christian groups outside of
the Orthodox Church can recover their unity only by entering into the bosom of
that Church which preserved its identity with early Christianity. (Statement of
the Delegates of the Orthodox Church delivered at the N.A. Faith and Order
study conference, Oberlin, Ohio, Sept. 1957).
As a member and Priest of the Orthodox Church, I believe that the Church in which I was baptized and brought up in is in very truth the Church, that is, the true Church and only true Church. I believe this for many reasons: by my personal conviction and by the inner testimony of the Spirit which breathes in the sacraments of the Church and by all that I could learn from Scripture and from the universal tradition of the Church. I am therefore compelled to regard all other Christian churches as deficient, and in many cases I can identify these deficiencies accurately enough. Therefore, for me, Christian reunion is simply universal conversion to Orthodoxy. I have no confessional loyalty, my loyalty belongs to Una Sancta. (Father Georges Florovsky: Ecumenism I: A Doctrinal Approach p. 134)
Contemporary
ecumenism is built on supposition, on a human supposition, that the Church is
not one, but many. The Church cannot be divided. From the Church it is possible
only to fall away. In truth, the Church is an organism of the God-man, His
Body, His Personality, and thus the Church is One, in all worlds. Contemporary
ecumenism offers false christ, false messiahs and false prophets. Contemporary
ecumenism is clearly secular, communistic and papal, because these share with
ecumenism a high regard for the "social", temporal and worldly. For
contemporary ecumenism the God-man does not occupy the center, from where we
must look first of all for the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness. True unity
is not possible through "dialogue", but only by repentance before the
God-man and His Body, the Church. Without the God-man Christ, the so-called
churches are the abode of Satan (Rev.B:9) (Father Justin Popovich:The Hidden
Conscience Of Orthodoxy: An Interview With Father Peter Milosevich).
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