BULGARIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH: OUTSIDE THE ORTHODOX CHURCH “THERE ARE NO OTHER CHURCHES, ONLY HERESIES AND SCHISMS”

www.pravoslavie.ru – April 2016

The Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church announced on Thursday April 21 policy positions stemming from its recent meeting and pertaining to the upcoming Pan-Orthodox Council to be held on Crete in June, reports The Sofia Globe.

In particular the Synod proclaimed, amending an earlier draft document, that besides the “Holy Orthodox Church there are no other churches, but only heresies and schisms, and to call these ‘churches’ is theologically, dogmatically and canonically completely wrong”.

On the matter of the Orthodox Church’s stance towards the wider Christian world, the Synod took into consideration a letter from Metropolitan Gavriil of Lovech and priests of his diocese, and a letter from Metropolitan Nikolai of Plovdiv that included a petition signed by 240 priests of his diocese

Concerning dialogues with other Christian confessions in a search for “unity” the Bulgarian Church proclaimed that the Orthodox Church understands itself to have never lost and incapable of losing its unity, as those following heresies and schisms simply fall away from the Church, and “through repentance, they may be received into the Church … The Holy Orthodox Church, which is the one and only, never lost unity in the faith and fellowship of the Holy Spirit among Christians and as it will last until the end of the world, the Lord has said that ‘the gates of hell will not prevail against it.’”

The document put forth by the Holy Synod also gave thanks to God that the Bulgarian Orthodox Church had withdrawn from the World Council of Churches, in which it took part from 1961 until 1998, under Soviet coercion. The pastors of the Church proclaimed that they could not take part in any organization that views Orthodoxy simply as “one of many or as a branch of the One church, which seeks a way and struggles for its restoration through this World Council of Churches”.

The Synod quoted the Creed, saying that there was one God and one Church.

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