Excerpts: Orthodoxy and Ecumenism

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:

The change in the festal calendar so that it might coincide with the secular calendar of the West.

The marriage of priests after their ordination.

The abandonment of the clergy's (cassock), heard, and long hair.

The shortening and/or abolishing of fasts and divine services.

Fewer restrictions on divorce, etc.

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,

Father David Belden