The Shepherd, August 2009
V. Concluding Statement
We are acutely aware that many of our intentions and goals, as well as the Patristic language which we employ in formulating and expressing our opposition to ecumenism and Papism, are open to misinterpretation and misunderstanding. This is partly because we are sometimes incautiously identified with those who, departing from the Royal Path of moderation, undertake to oppose the ecumenical movement and the Pope with a spirit of intolerance, disallowing that many ecumenists and the vast majority of those who embrace the Roman Catholic confession are individuals—though misguided—of sincere purpose. These same unwise zealots misuse in a denigrating and insulting way the diagnostic theological nomenclature of the Church Fathers, who, in opposing heresy and decrying the demonic and diabolical nature of that which leads one from Truth to error, speak with analytical purpose and certainly not with ad hominem invective. By way of such mistaken association, the quality of love in which our resistance is undertaken, and at which it inexorably aims, is obfuscated. As we are also painfully aware, we are not infallible, whether in our views or in expressing them, and our Bishops and clergy,
individually, have at times spoken or written injudiciously or imprudently. (I count myself chief among these.) Demanding of us a perfection that none of us claims, some detractors have used these instances further to denigrate us. This is regrettable.
It is also the case that we resisters are at times the victims of ecumenists gone awry and of Papist policies and their designers gone astray, holding forth, as they do, with the rhetoric of religious toleration and openness, while at the same time deliberately distorting our proclamations and positions. Such unsavory assaults against our integrity tend to mask the fact that we, no less than the sincere ecumenist, pine for the unity of all Christians, for tolerance between people of all races and religions, and for peace and harmony, to the extent that these things are possible in a fallen and imperfect world. That our heartfelt quest for such ideals is bound by our commitment to the Truth of the Orthodox Faith and constrained by the observance of our traditions in the pursuit of holiness and perfection in Christ should not be something that excludes us from proper treatment and the freedom to articulate and set forth our views as they are, and not as others would distort them. It is for this reason that I have, with the aid of the Fathers here at the monastery, compiled this personal statement of my understanding of the intentions of the Holy Synod in Resistance and the nature of our opposition to ecumenism and Papism, speaking in peace and in love and with truth and sobriety.
Notes
1. Cf. St. Vincent of Lérins, “First Commonitorium,” §2, Patrologia Latina, Vol. L, col. 640: “In ipsa item Catholica Ecclesia magnopere curandum est ut id teneamus quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est” (Moreover, in the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all).
2. See St. Paul, who calls the Church “the pillar and ground of the truth” (I St. Timothy 3:15); St. John Chrysostomos, who calls the Church “that which ties together the faith and preaching.” (“Homily XI on the First Epistle to St. Timothy,” Patrologia Graeca, Vol. LXII, col. 554); and St. Theophylact of Ochrid, who affirms that the Church is the “mainstay of the truth.” (“Explanation of the First Epistle to St. Timothy, Patrologia Graeca, Vol. CXXV, col. 49B).
3. St. Athanasios the Great, “First Epistle to Serapion,” Patrologia Graeca, Vol. XXVI, cols. 593C-596A.
4. Ecumenists, reacting to such Patristic language, have at times reproached us Old Calendarist resisters with shocking invective. A recent publication of the World Council of Churches, the Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement (Geneva: 2002), for example, portrays us as virtual recidivists, “fundamentalists,” and “uncanonical,” citing one critical assessment of ecumenism out of context and leaving the reader with the clearly unfair impression that we are unbridled religious bigots. I am, much to my chagrin, personally characterized as some sort of fundamentalist hothead.
5. St. Nectarios of Pentapolis, Mathema Poimantikes (Athens: 1972), p. 192. 6. St. John 17:21.
7. St. John Chrysostomos, “Homily 82 on the Gospel of St. John,” §2, Patr. Graeca, Vol. LIX, col. 444.
8. St. Theophylact of Ochrid, “Commentary on the Gospel of St. John,” Patr. Graeca, Vol. 124, co. 237C.
9. St. Augustine, “Tractate CX on the Gospel of St. John,” §2, Patrologia Latina, Vol. XXXV, col. 1920.
10. Father John S. Romanides, “Orthodox and Vatican Agreement: Balamand, Lebanon, June 1993,” Theologia, Vol. VI, No. 4 (1993). 11. Ephesians 4:4-5.
12. Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia (1983 edition), s.v. “Orthodox Church.”
13. Christendom & Christianity Today, Vol 3 in The World’s Great Religions (N.Y.: Time, Inc., ‘63), p. 266.
14. Joseph L. Hromádka, “Eastern Orthodoxy,” in The Great Religions of the Modern World, ed. Edward J. Jurji (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1946), pp. 286-287.
15. Steven Runciman, The Eastern Schism: A Study of the Papacy and the Eastern Churches During the XIth and XIIth Centuries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), p. 149.
16. Fr Justin Popovic, “The Highest Value and the Last Criterion in Orthodoxy,” in Orthodox Faith & Life in Christ, tr. Asterios Gerostergios et al. (Belmont, MA: Institute for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 1994), p. 89.
17. Alexei S. Khomiakov, The Church is One (Seattle, WA: St. Nectarios Press, 1979), p. 21.
18. Cited in Archimandrite Spyridon S. Bilales, Orthodoxia kai Papismos, 2nd ed. (Athens: Ekdoseis Adelphotetos “Evnike,” 1988), Vol. I, p. 148.
19. This image, which has been employed widely by Orthodox and Roman Catholic ecumenists alike, was actually coined by the Russian poet Vyacheslav Ivanov (1866-1949).
20. George A. Maloney, S.J., Encyclopedic Dictionary of Religion (Washington, DC: Corpus Publications, 1979), s.v. “Palaioimerologites.”
21.”Encyclical of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, 1920,” in The Orthodox Church in the Ecumenical Movement: Documents and Statements 1902-1975 (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1978), p. 41.
[Greek Text in Notes omitted by barbarian magazine compiler]
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