An Open Letter, 2

You know, Reverend Fathers, better than we do, of all the anti- Orthodox and blasphemous actions, statements, and decisions of the OEcumenical Patriarch and other heads of institutions, Abbots and Bishops who loudly and overtly advise – bareheadedly – the acceptance and teaching of the panheresy of Ecumenism.

It is the greatest ecclesiological heresy of all ages.

It rejects the uniqueness of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church and, equates it to the heresies, by accepting their Mysteries as having and communicating, sanctifying and saving grace.

Besides recognition of the baptism of Papists and Lutherans, we also have participation in the common chalice with Monophysites and in many instances with the Papists in the Cyclades [islands in Aegean Sea, Greece - Ed. note] and in the Diaspora.

We have now realised with greater sadness, that the spiritual leadership of the Holy Mountain of the last years has not confronted with fortitude and confessional courage, these manifest appearances of apostasy, as the Athonite Fathers of bygone times did.

The Patriarch has gauged our responses and because they have been half-hearted, and many times non-existent, he proceeds without any obstacles into union with the Pope, who is unrepentant and remains in heresies.

He gauged us and was exceedingly glad also at his last visit to the Holy Mountain to make it appear that he came to receive the consent and blessing of the Athonites for all the things that he had already planned to do with the Pope a few days later.

We, the humble priestmonks and monks, in the form of confession disclose to you that we have been scandalised by the silence and inaction of our spiritual authorities on Mount Athos, and together with us, all the people of Greece and all Orthodox around the globe, as well as those who are sympathetic to monastics.

They all are waiting to hear the voice of Mount Athos.

From you, the wisest and most sage, we have learned that when the faith is endangered, we are all accountable if we are silent and shrink back, as St. Theodore the Studite says. Particularly, a monk must not allow the slightest innovation in matters of the faith, according to the same holy Father and great monastic leader and organiser of monastic life and the Elder of us all. He did not fear the threats and the persecutions of the iconoclastic Emperors and Patriarchs, but even within the environs of Constantinople, within the enclosure of the Great Sacred Monastery of Studion, he organised a procession with a thousand torch bearing monks, who held the forbidden holy icons in their hands.

Ten thousand monks in Palestine, under leadership of Saints Sabbas the Sanctified and Theodosios the Coenobite, these great monastic leaders, assembled together long before in Jerusalem, and saved Orthodoxy from the heresy of Monothelitism.

Who is going to save the Church today from the panheresy of Ecumenism and the deceit of Papism?

The letters of protest, which the Sacred Community has sent from time to time to the OEcumenical Patriarch did not bring about any results.

There is no more time for words. It is time for action.