Anti-Ecumenist Hyperbole

Question: Our Church discussion group has been using many of your Center's books against ecumenism in its consideration of this perplexing problem. We find your commentaries balanced and intelligent. ...[Name deleted] told us that many ecumenists dismiss your writings against ecumenism as too hyperbolic and thus of little intellectual value. Obviously, I do not agree but I would like your reaction. (C.W., PA)

Reply: One might comment that the excesses of contemporary ecumenism can hardly be exaggerated. Nonetheless, the accusation which you bring up is one that has been widely applied to our anti-ecumenical efforts and those of other Orthodox traditionalists. For example, in a recent review of a book on Orthodox-Roman Catholic dialogues, The Quest for Unity, by Professor John Erickson et al., the following reference is made to Orthodox opposition to the "Balamand Statement": "I would not be surprised to learn one day, probably from an American web site, that the Balamand statement was written by Jesuit Freemasons in the pay of international Jewish bankers" ("Sourozh," August 1997, p. 53). The major anti-ecumenical Web site in this country, Mr. Patrick Barnes's "Orthodox Christian Information Center" (www.orthodoxinfo.com), contains a number of our own criticisms of the "Balamand Statement," as well as commentaries on it by other Orthodox scholars and clergymen. One would be hard-pressed, if this site is indeed the object of this slap—as it in all probability is—, to find anything approaching the stupidity attributed to us critics of Balamand by the reviewer in question. It would be equally difficult, in view of his comments, to argue that hyperbole, if it does apply to us anti-ecumenists, is our exclusive intellectual sin.

Your reference to the response of Orthodox ecumenists to our anti-ecumenical writings provides us with an opportunity to comment on another rather unfair and misleading characterization of our views. In the same issue of the periodical Sourozh that we cited above, Peter Bouteneff, in an article entitled, "Orthodox Ecumenism: A Contradiction in Terms?" (pp. 1-7), suggests that we Orthodox anti-ecumenists have failed to make a distinction between the various levels of participation by the national Orthodox Churches in the ecumenical movement, that we reject contact with other Churches as foreign to Orthodoxy, and that we misrepresent the aims and goals of the World Council of Churches, confusing Orthodox ecumenism with the "branch theory" of the Church (which, in its pure form, equates all so-called "historical" churches—Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism, etc.—, seeing each one as an offshoot of the same Christian "trunk," but which also, in its wider application, defines the Church as the domain of almost every Christian confession). In so doing, unfortunately, Dr. Boutenoff is guilty of the very lapse which he attributes to us anti-ecumenists in our ostensible failure at understanding Orthodox ecumenism; that is, he assumes that all Orthodox opposed to ecumenism are somehow likewise opposed to all contact, without exception and beyond individual circumstances, between the Orthodox and heterodox, making specific reference to the anti-ecumenical movement in Russia, which has its own particular historical and political dimensions, as though it represents all of those Orthodox involved in the anti-ecumenical movement.

We will not belabor, here, the point that we constantly make about the hypocrisy of the ecumenical movement, whereby its defenders seek dialogue with the heterodox and yet show utter disdain for us Orthodox opposed to ecumenism. But this point is not unrelated to Dr. Boutenoff's sweeping generalizations about our resistance movements. First, we are not all simple bigots who oppose contacts with the non-Orthodox. Like Father Florovsky, whose article "The Limits of the Church"—written in 1933 and in a heuristic spirit—is constantly quoted by the Orthodox ecumenists (and by Dr. Boutenoff in his article), many of us also believe that the pastoral dimensions of the Church must be understood through the prism of Divine Oikonomia. But like Father Florovsky at an older age, as those who so often quote him conveniently forget, we are also aware that the majority of contemporary ecumenical activities have gone far beyond the context of such pastoral considerations. And precious few of these activities, though we readily acknowledge the exceptions, can be characterized as anything but a betrayal of the Christian primacy of Orthodoxy, as evidenced by none other than the infamous "Balamand Statement."

Second, while it may be true that the World Council of Churches had no ecclesiological agenda when it was established and that the so-called "Toronto Statement" of 1950, among other such foundational documents, contains safeguards against such an agenda—points open to different interpretations—, the fact is, once more, that ecumenism has changed and developed over the years. Very conveniently, then, assuming that we anti-ecumenical Orthodox are either unable to read and study, or quit reading and doing research in 1950, Dr. Boutenoff fails to cite more recent proclamations by the WCC, which have an obvious and decided ecclesiological content. In 1991, for example, Dr. Emilio Castro, former General Secretary of the WCC, stated that: "We believe that the WCC has a mission to embrace all the churches, members or not." (Let us note that this embrace apparently does not extend to us anti-ecumenists!) In 1993, the eight-member Board of Presidents of the WCC issued a Pentecost "Message" to its member churches, stating that, "We can, as the Church, affirm...." (This message, incidentally, was signed by the late Patriarch Parthenios of Alexandria.) In 1994, again in a pronouncement issued for Pentecost, the WCC Presidents, citing "the Church's" obligation to provide examples of spiritual leadership in a world searching for values, spoke as "members of the body of Christ." Cretins though we anti-ecumenists may be, we have no difficulty seeing the roots of a "super-church" in the ecclesiological posturing of the WCC. If the creation of such a body was not that of this organization at its inception, there is more than a little evidence to aver that its aim has become far more expansive today.

Third, there is no question whatsoever that the Orthodox ecumenists have for a number of years, in their various ecumenical pronouncements, preached what is essentially a "branch theory" of the Church-and this in its most expansive form. In 1987, speaking in Geneva during the "Week of Prayer for Christian Unity," Patriarch Ignatios of Antioch stated of the Orthodox and heterodox: "We are all members of Christ, a single and unique body...." In 1995, in affirmation of the Balamand agreements, the Œcumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, in a "Joint Communiqué" with the Pope, characterized the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church as "Sister Churches, responsible together for the preservation of the one Church of God." Metropolitan Damaskinos of Switzerland, a veteran ecumenist, has repeatedly insisted, as in his address in 1995 to the "Syndesmos" Congress in Geneva, that we must envision the Orthodox Church "outside our own canonical boundaries." In an article published in 1995, we find a statement from this same Hierarch, telling us that the Orthodox and heterodox "belong to the same family, which is the Church, the Body of the living Christ." We could go on endlessly with such citations, in response to Dr. Boutenoff's clearly unfounded accusation that we Orthodox anti-ecumenists wrongly find in Orthodox ecumenism clear evidence of the ecclesiological relativism of the "branch theory" of the Church.

Lashing out with the political power of the WCC, denying us even the dignity of being numbered among the Orthodox Faithful, and hurling the most vile epithets at us ("self-proclaimed churches in resistance," "outside the Church," "ecclesiastical peasants," a "wretched minority"), the Orthodox ecumenists do little to further their cause by also suggesting that, when criticizing them, we are unable even to define our terms. Citing statements out of context, at times using materials from the more extreme voices among us, and disallowing any public debate over issues in Orthodox journals and periodicals (we would remind our ecumenist friends, once more, that our own Archbishop Chrysostomos is no longer allowed to publish, on account of his anti-ecumenist views, with the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, after many years of contributions to its presses), the Orthodox ecumenists have done little to engage us in honest dialogue. Rather, they have attributed to us motivations, beliefs, and positions that are misleading, unfair, and inaccurate, so as to obfuscate the source, in the ecumenical movement itself, of our serious concerns about a betrayal of Orthodox primacy in the name of an outreach to other Christians. Dr. Boutenoff's article, unfortunately, does nothing to change this sad circumstance. For those who would like to read a clear statement of our views on ecumenism, as well as further documentation of the present ecclesiological pretensions of the World Council of Churches, we recommend two superb books: The World Council of Churches and the Interfaith Movement, by Metropolitan Cyprian of Oropos and Fili, and Orthodoxy and the Ecumenical Movement, by Archimandrite Cyprian Agiokyprianites, both volumes in the series, "Contributions to a Theology of Anti-Ecumenism" (Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 1997, in press).