THE CURIOUS COUNCIL
Archpriest Andrew Phillips – 14/12/15- Orthodox England
The Inter-Orthodox Council, with a token number of bishops from each of the fourteen Local Churches and supposed to take place in May 2016 to discuss administrative issues, is looking increasingly troubled. First, there is the schism between the Patriarchates of Jerusalem and Antioch. Then there were rumours after contacts with top US officials that the US State Department was trying to set the agenda, specifically regarding homosexuality. Then there was news from the Russian Orthodox Church that delegates from several Local Churches, notably the Russian, the Romanian (the second biggest) and the Georgian, had failed to agree on the contents of several points in the seemingly US-determined agenda.
Hierarchs of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church then expressed popular concern that the Council was taking place at all. After all Constantinople had not long before sent schismatic representatives of the Ukrainian Church in Canada (the fraction under Constantinople) to Kiev for reasons which the Ukrainian Church naturally found sinister. After this came the news that the elderly Patriarch Bartholomew had erected a statue to himself and that he would never recognize the Carpatho-Russian Metr Rostislav as the representative of the Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia. Then came the Patriarch’s visit to Bulgaria when he insulted the Bulgarian people and a diplomatic incident followed and the Bulgarian Prime Minister refused to meet the Patriarch. Some even asked if Patriarch Bartholomew’s behaviour was designed to sabotage his own Council.
After this the Synod in Constantinople sacked the hierarch appointed only two years before for the modernist Paris Jurisdiction, Archbishop Job. Next came the shooting down by Turkey – some say at US instigation – of a Russian aeroplane. The result of this is that the Russian delegation felt unable to attend the next preparatory meeting in Istanbul for the future Council. Indeed, the question was asked if the Council could even take place in Istanbul, as had been proposed. Some have suggested, as we suggested in our booklet, ‘The World Council of Orthodoxy’ in May 2007, that any future Council take place at the New Jerusalem Monastery outside Moscow, where alone a politically free Council could take place.
Next came the Pope’s welcome for the Council – in effect compromising it, making it appear just to be a cheap copy of the Vatican’s disastrously divisive and US-Protestant-style Second Council of 50 years ago. Then came the Pope’s greeting to Patriarch Bartholomew on the Catholic St Andrew’s Day, looking forward to the day when Catholics, without repentance, would be in full communion with Constantinople. Then came the news that a joint commission of the Russian and Bulgarian Churches had agreed that there were no objections to the canonization of the much revered Archbishop Seraphim (Sobolev), the archbishop in Sofia of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia who was the hero of the Moscow Council of 1948, which denounced ecumenism.
Now news has come that Archbishop Jerome of Athens, the head of the Church of Greece, will not attend the next preparatory meeting in Istanbul. There is speculation that this is connected with the imperialistic and meddling claims of Patriarch Bartholomew to Greek territory. And also the news that Rome and Constantinople are celebrating (!) the 50th anniversary of the highly controversial (and some would say meaningless) lifting of the 1054 anathemas between Rome and Constantinople does not help. As Patriarch Alexis I of Moscow pointed out at the time this event has no importance whatsoever for the mass of the Orthodox Church as a whole, since it is an event that concerns only the tiny Local Church of Constantinople and Roman Catholicism. Even so the event was rejected at the time and is still today rejected by the devout and politically free of the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
It can be concluded without hesitation that the Patriarchate of Constantinople is looking increasingly isolated from mainstream of the Orthodox Church and its Council project, at least in its old form, is looking increasingly in doubt. As has been said throughout Christian history: man proposes, but God disposes.
There really is no end to Fr. Andrew Phillips’ vitriolic anti-Ecumenical Patriarchate (EP) propaganda. This article is yet another attempt to dishonour the EP with the standard fear mongering sowing further discord in the churches at a time when the Eastern Orthodox Church desperately needs to address the issues of our times with a show of unity. I don’t believe that Fr. Andrew Phillips’ personal crusade to usher what appears to be a Russo-Messianic age of glory and an orthodox utopia if only the Patriarchate of Moscow was in charge of things (inclusive of, as I recall from in one of his past fables, an imaginary bishop of an imaginary metropolitanate with the abbreviation R.O.M.E, headquartered I believe in the actual city of Rome) helpful to this end.
It is predictable for the author to take the side of the Moscow Patriarchate in its disputes with Constantinople. But to denounce the churches of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Canada as “schismatic representatives of the Ukrainian Church in Canada” (noting how the author deliberately omits the qualifier “Orthodox” to describe these churches) is deeply offensive. Moreover, the anti-EP agenda extended to the forthcoming Council of 2016 is being fuelled by the strength of rumours of a U.S-State Department-backed conspiracy. Really, are these the sort of grounds by which the Council needs to be discredited? Rumours? This is unbecoming of a priest, and points to the extent of a virulent anti-EP agenda that gives credence even to hearsay.
The dishonourable mention of the “modernist” Paris Jurisdiction [sic] is another controversial point. What kind of influences in the developmental path of the Russian Orthodox Church did this church absorb? What do you call a Church that, in the time following the fall of Constantinople, adopted Western theological curricula for its seminaries, infatuate itself with Western scholasticism and Thomism, Western sacred art and music forms, adopt Latin as the language of theology, has/had pietistic leanings, was turned into a state bureaucracy with the Tzar as “Pope”? Answer: the Russian Orthodox Church. Who contributed to its theological liberation and genuine revival of Orthodox theology and the recovery of its Patristic roots over against the static Liturgical and theological dryness of the former eras? Which “modernist-Paris” trained theologian was largely responsible for the 20th century revival of Palamism in the Orthodox Church?
Yet more predictable is the usual anti-Catholic diatribe where we find Pope Francis in the cross hairs. This is a routine manifestation of an intractable fault-finding mentality that is found in some clamorous segments of Fr. Andrew’s jurisdiction, one of selective bias aimed specifically at the Pope which filters out any good deed the Pope undertakes, including the gargantuan task of removing the dead bones within the inner sanctum of the church of Rome. The contrast with some mouthpieces of the Moscow Patriarchate calling for a “holy war” against terrorism couldn’t be more glaring and doesn’t seem to raise any eyebrows in Fr. Andrew’s camp, it appears. Yet it matters a whit if, through the pope’s preaching of the love and mercy of a Christ who mirrors the Christ of the Gospels – humble, simple and lowly – the hearts of a people lost in a sea of confusion are transformed from a yearning for the Christ that was prevented to them due precisely to a neo-Pharisaism of cold, rigorous “discipline”, blind adherence to liturgical rubrics in the name of a pseudo Tradition (of men), ostentatiousness, the letter rather than the spirit, legalism, a Christ who sits on chariots, adorned in priceless gold from head to toe and is placed on a pedestal too high to reach thanks to further rules and regulations, and so on, and so on. There is not one mention of Jesus Christ in this article by Fr. Andrew. Only politics, and politicking. The real question that demands urgent solutions is one that forces us to ask if we, in the Orthodox Church, should be doing more to prevent these very scenarios from multiplying themselves, as I have had the gross misfortune of witnessing personally, if our hierarchs will be brave enough to imitate the pope and purge these tendencies in the Orthodox Church and begging forgiveness of those who have been spiritually damaged by these ills and who God forbid may never set foot into a church again.
There is, finally, another side to the “ecumenist” coin. We should be reminded that co-operation between the Russian and Roman churches are bearing fruit. It is thanks to the Italian Catholic episcopacy in Bari, Italy that Russian Orthodox pilgrims and clergy are invited to celebrate Liturgies in the church of St. Nicholas. Furthermore it is from a service conducted by Catholic clergy at the tomb of St. Nicholas where the miraculous myrrh that Russian pilgrims eagerly flock to obtain is gathered and distributed. It is also the goodwill of the church of Milan that Russian pilgrims are giving hospitality to conduct their own services at Milan’s Cathedral, whose Patron was and will always be with, the church of Milan. Pope John XXIII described the aggiornamento agenda of Vatican II to a curious non-Italian speaking audience by opening a window and describing the letting in of fresh air. It looks like some of that fresh air has reached Moscow!
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