“We Orthodox have a history of two thousand years. If during these two thousand years, the Orthodox Church did not have an Ecumenical Patriarchate, it should have created it. Because she would not have been able to proceed otherwise. I can not imagine the Orthodox Church without the Ecumenical Patriarchate. She cannot exist! Despite what is said and heard; despite the voices, the cold and icy voices from the north; the strange voices; the voices of secularisation, there can be no Orthodox Church without the first of Orthodoxy, who is the Ecumenical Patriarch.”
Read the rest here.
Honestly, he should just go off and join the Roman Catholics. He is clearly 3/4 of the way there already.
Hmm. We did exist for 300 years without it. Despota, time to dust off your old history texts.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, this is the same circular logic for which we rightly criticize the Roman Catholics.
ReplyDeleteThe Oriental Orthodox have survived for almost 1,600 years without an ecumenical patriarch...
ReplyDeleteNote well the complete lack of enthusiasm among clerics of the Phanar for union with Oriental Orthodox, along with their pretense of utter disdain for ‘the Slavs’ which translates to implacable hatred of the Moscow Patriarchate and desire to subordinate all Eastern European autocephalous churches to the Phanar.
ReplyDeleteIt’s funny to read of a bishop in Australia complaining about ‘cold, icy voices from the north’ when even Istanbul is far north of him. At this point, every exarchate of the Ecumenical Patriarchate is being reduced to a satrapy run specifically for the propping up of the Phanar which has no local tenability. Note well also that Abp. Elpidophoros of the American exarchate in his Christmas tree address refers to himself as ‘Vicar of the Ecumenical Throne’ denoting his utter dependency on the Phanar. As goes the head, so goes the Exarchate. The organic life of all Greek-run churches will never be allowed to run toward independence in any matter. As the Phanar becomes more irrelevant in real terms to church life, its fictive importance will be inflated from the lungs and lips of sycophantic hierarchs who are elected mostly on the basis of reliably orienting their churches’ energies to propping up a failing’ Phanar.
A prediction from 1895:
ReplyDelete"It is obvious that there are questions on which the Russian Church could and ought to negotiate with the Mother See, and if these questions are carefully avoided it is because it is a foregone conclusion that a clear formulation of them would only end in a formal schism. The jealous hatred of the Greeks for the Russians, to which the latter reply with a hostility mingled with contempt — that is the fact which governs the real relations of these two national Churches, in spite of their being officially in communion with one another. But even this official unity hangs upon a single hair, and all the diplomacy of the clergy of St. Petersburg and Constantinople is needed to prevent the snapping of this slender thread. The will to maintain this counterfeit unity is decidedly not inspired by Christian charity, but by the dread of a fatal disclosure; for on the day on which the Russian and Greek Churches formally break with one another the whole world will see that the Ecumenical Eastern Church is a mere fiction and that there exists in the East nothing but isolated national Churches. That is the real motive which impels our hierarchy to (p. 69) adopt an attitude of caution and moderation towards the Greeks, in other words, to avoid any kind of dealings with them. As for the Church of Constantinople, which in its arrogant provincialism assumes the title of “the Great Church” and 'the Œcumenical Church,' it would probably be glad to be rid of these Northern barbarians who are only a hindrance to its Pan-Hellenic aims. In recent times, the patriarchate of Constantinople has been twice on the point of anathematizing the Russian Church; only purely material considerations have prevented a split." (p. 70)
Vladimir Solovyev, *Russia and the Universal Church,* trans. Herbert Rees (London, 1948: Geoffrey Bles), pp. 69-70.
There's a good reason we refer to our bishops as Despota. Each Orthodox bishop is a pope/tyrant in his own diocese.
ReplyDelete