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VoL 5, No 1 |
Orthodox Christianity and the Spirit of Contemporary Ecumenism by Father Daniel Degyansky, Orthodox Church in America, for the Centre for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, Etna, California, 1996 |
In an extraordinary series of meetings from May 10 to June 8, 1923, the
Ecumenical Patriarch, Meletios Metaxakis, an active Freemason, set out
the program by which change and modernization in the Church were to be
implemented. Though these meetings were styled a "Pan-Orthodox"
Council,
only five bishops were in attendance! Among those absent from the
Council
were representatives of the Patriarchates of Jerusalem and Alexandria,
and from the Church of Cyprus. Since he was a political appointee and
not
duly elected, many of Metaxakis' own metropolitans did not recognize
him
as a canonical Patriarch and therefore did not attend the meetings.
During the assemblies which Metaxakis convened, the following proposals for changes in the Orthodox Church were made:
Of all the innovations proposed by the Ecumenical Patriarch, only the change of the Ecclesiastical Calendar to the Gregorian (papal) calendar was instituted. (1) In 1952, the "Metropolia," precursor of the O.C.A. (Orthodox Church in America), joined the World Council of Churches. Among the official delegates of the Metropolia was Protopresbyter Georges Florovsky who later left the jurisdiction of the Orthodox Church in America.
At the Third Assembly of the World Council of Churches held in New
Delhi,
India in 1961, the representatives of the Moscow Patriarchate and the
American
Metropolia (O.C.A.), the latter having become increasingly beset by a
spirit
of modernization and apostasy, unofficially -- and with the tacit
approval
and encouragement of the KGB and its dupes among the Russian
representatives
to the World Council of Churches -- reestablished contacts and
communications.
Another result of the Third Assembly in New Delhi, where Roman Catholic
observers were active in many deliberations, was the establishment of
contacts
between the representatives of the Roman Catholic Church and the
Orthodox
Church -- greatly facilitated by the participation of the Metropolia
(O.C.A.),
a church comprised of many church leaders from families that a
generation
earlier had been part of the unia (union of former Orthodox Christians
with Rome).
At the Fourth General
Assembly of the World Council of Churches held in
Uppsala, Sweden in 1968, the delegation representing the Russian
Orthodox
Church under the leadership of Metropolitan Nikodem of Leningrad (now
known
to be a KGB agent) met with representatives of the Metropolia. These
unofficial
meetings produced a platform and procedure for negotiating the eventual
granting of autocephaly by the Russian Orthodox Church to the newly
formed
O.C.A. (2)
The Seventh Assembly of the World Council of Churches met in February
1991
in Australia. Among those in attendance were Archbishop Peter of the
O.C.A.
and Archpriest Leonid Kihkovskv of the O.C.A., president of the
National
Council of Churches, USA. This assembly was virtually an assault on
Christianity
itself. Delegates openly equated paganism with Christianity; took part
in services conducted by pagan witch doctors; and declared that
Christianity
was but one of many paths to God. The representatives of the O.C.A. and
other modernist groups have been relatively quiet about the blasphemous
acts of the assembly, which clearly demonstrated the depravity of the
modem
ecumenical movement. (3)
The late Archpriest John Meyendorff, a well known spokesman for
Orthodoxy
in America, dismisses the Canons which forbid joint prayer with
heretics
as archaic and no longer applicable to the Church. Thus individual
responsibility
for wrong belief becomes an inessential part of Christian confession a
novel idea indeed!
One wonders how the author of the above is able to remain in the Orthodox Church in America!
Sincerely,
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