Ellopos Blog

Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, referring to people’s reaction against Russia’s participation in WCC gatherings, remarked that if anybody says the Russian Church ‘should withdraw into isolation and stop bearing witness to its position in a loud voice before the whole world, then this man should prove clearly why we should do it’. (Moscow, November 9, Interfax) 

Fair demand, yet it’s not enough for a metropolitan to ask for the reasons; he needs also open ears and heart to feel perhaps unreasoned hopes and fears. If, as Kirill says, Russia is exceptionally hostile to the World Council of Churches, maybe this common feeling expresses a rejection of conditions and prospects undescribed by the official purpose of the participation to WCC, that is, maybe the faithful of Russia sense some real danger, and even if they can’t ‘prove it clearly’, their bishop should be able to understand or at least try to understand.  

Unless Kirill means that the faithful of Russia are demented, which I don’t believe he means, then why should they object to Russia ‘bearing witness to its position in a loud voice before the whole world’? Do they, perhaps, sense something else besides or beyond ‘bearing witness’? 

First of all, what does ‘bearing witness’ means in the WCC? For example, do Catholics of Protestants need these gatherings in order to know Orthodoxy? If they do, they won’t; if they were not able to know Orthodoxy after so many centuries, why will they know it now by some gatherings?  

The people of the Orthodox Churches perhaps fear that in these gatherings there is happening rather a sort of ‘negotiations’ than a witnessing to the truth. It is their task to understand and explain their reaction, as is the task of the shepherds to explain why these gatherings have indeed a real meaning. If this meaning is just ‘being in contact’, showing ‘good intentions’, etc., let them say so, let them assure the people of the Orthodox Churches that no doctrinal union is machinated or wanted, and then let them keep participating as much as they wish.  

All the churches want to give Europe a soul and a face, yet this task does not and should not be preceded by doctrinal union. Even if this is not clear, since the prospect of doctrinal union divides the Orthodox peoples, it can not be maintained. However, denial of doctrinal union is not without reason, on the contrary: after the formation of countless differences in the Christian traditions, a superficial agreement on some doctrines will render relative all the other differences, everything that so many centuries struggled to preserve and give to us. This way the very intention of the ‘unionists’ to help the european peoples will lose its meaning, as Orthodoxy will lose its meaning. 

The Churches need one, two or maybe more centuries of contact, co-opeeration and common life if they are to form naturally, without bias, internally and essentially, the preconditions of a real union. During this period their differences, beyond negotiations, without even thinking of a doctrinal union, will contribute to their common life, they won’t undermine it – if there is indeed a real will for common life. If doctrinal union is a necessary precondition of contact and co-operation, how then are we going to have good relationships and co-operation with non-Christian traditions? 

Doctrines are the peak of the mountain, you can not change them in order to move the mountain, they come from it and they are based on it: if you change them at will in gatherings of today, instead of moving the mountain you will have a cloud instead of a faith, a faith without body, an artificial faith that no one shares. Tradition is not something you can choose: it chooses and creates you. First we will live together and prove in our common life what we feel for each other, and then, in the course of time, we will, hopefully, reach also doctrinal union. 

Besides this. To be united, let’s say, with papacy, we need first to be ourselves united. If the Patriarch of Moscow can not meet the pope due to all that the Russian Church suffered and suffers from papacy, how is it possible for other Churches to meet with the pope? You can not meet with your brother’s enemy, and if your brother is wrong, first you help him understand his error, and as long as you are unable to do it, you don’t meet with his (real or supposed) enemy. This is just elementary solidarity, not even full love – and we lack even this. How then do we imagine unions – with who? If the pope had the love he says he have, why does he cause problems and try to proselytize the Orthodox, while the whole West, immersed in atheism, gives him a great field of work?  

By putting doctrinal union as a priority, a union that needs centuries to be achieved, if it is achieved, by dividing our Churches, making people doubting about their shepherds, by the (called as ‘witnessing’) relativizing the truths of Orthodoxy, we don’t only damage ourselves, but also the Western churches; beyond the dialogues’ conclusions, we strengthen, even not knowing it, the very mentality of the union as a superficial attachment despite the deep and numerous differences of the traditions. As much as we become totalitarians, real union will be vanishing, and Europe will lose even the possibility of forming a soul and a face. 

Read more – in Greek only.  Cf. Papacy : The Plague of Christianity  * The union of the Churches is the best way to eliminate Christianity

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• Christianity and Islam
• Catholic-Orthodox Dialogue: Understanding the Priorities
• What if a Pope became Orthodox?
• The union of the Churches is the best way to eliminate Christianity
• Phanar and Papacy: the Church as a lobby