Liturgical Ecumenism

In what follows, however, they state that there is something which disquiets
them yet more than the destruction of Orthodoxy that has been effected
and promoted for decades by their spiritual Father and Bishop, the
ecumenist Patriarch of Constantinople:
We make no secret of the fact that we are especially grieved and unsettled
by the possibility of a revival of the events that occurred here
fifty years ago, which we hope will not recur, since we are still coping
with their distressing aftermath. 18
In truth, the questions that this mildly curious unease on the part of the
Athonites poses for the conscience of every Orthodox Christian are most
deeply distressing: What, in the end, is the problem, and what is it that bothers
us? The apostasy of the Œcumenical Throne? or the proper reaction,
anti-heretical in nature, namely, the act of breaking communion, envisioned
and dictated by Patristic and Synodal Tradition; that is, walling off?
The attitude of the contemporary spiritual leaders of the Holy Mountain
toward the confessional walling-off of their Fathers from the heretical Patriarch
Athenagoras is clear and is expressed in a variety of ways.
In May of 1964 it was stated in print:“...at least ninety-five percent of
the Athonite Fathers disapprove of the pro-Papal policy of the Œcumenical
Patriarch, whom they have ceased to commemorate.” 19
Today, the Athonite Abbots do completely the opposite: they “do not aspire”
to walk in the footsteps of their Fathers, desiring “that the ecclesiastical
unity of the Orthodox everywhere and of this body of Hagiorites
remain unshaken.” 20 * * *
It would not be superfluous for us to emphasize, by way of reminder,
that for Patristic Orthodoxy the sine qua non is not just any kind of unity,
but the unity that is based, in the words of St. Maximos the Confessor, on
“the correct and saving confession of the Faith.” 21
18
Ὀρθόδοξος Tύπος, No. 2057 (February 13, 2015), p. 7.
19
Tύπος Ἑλληνικὸς - Ὀρθόδοξος, No. 40 (May 1964), pp. 1, 3.
20
See note 17.
21
On the Life and Contest of Our Holy Father Maximos the Confessor, §24, Patrologia
Græca, Vol. XC, col. 93D; St. Maximos the Confessor, “Epistle XII, ‘To John the Cham-
18