Ecumenical

[ChubbyCherub]

Can someone explain to me why this is considered 'heresy' amongst some Orthodox?

I came across this statement on Tik Tok but, as I'm new to Orthodox and the church I am exploring is Ecumenical, am I doing the right thing?

Sorry, I don't know if it's called a church or a parish. Still getting to grips with terminology, God bless, CC

 

[gzt]

Get off tiktok, do not get any religious information from it.

The word is overloaded. For our purposes, we can almost consider "ecumenical" in the phrase "ecumenical patriarch" as wholly unrelated to what they're talking about, and your parish under the ecumenical patriarchate is fine.

Ecumenism, which is likely what they were referring to, refers to everything from engaging in dialogue with other Christians (fine, we can always have a conversation) to thinking all Christians are all the same and it doesn't matter what you believe (not good). And the whole spectrum in between. People who want to denounce other Orthodox and make themselves feel good or drive engagement on social media will call what everybody else does the latter and what they do the former.

 

[ChubbyCherub]

Get off tiktok, do not get any religious information from it.

The word is overloaded. For our purposes, we can almost consider "ecumenical" in the phrase "ecumenical patriarch" as wholly unrelated to what they're talking about, and your parish under the ecumenical patriarchate is fine.

Ecumenism, which is likely what they were referring to, refers to everything from engaging in dialogue with other Christians (fine, we can always have a conversation) to thinking all Christians are all the same and it doesn't matter what you believe (not good). And the whole spectrum in between. People who want to denounce other Orthodox and make themselves feel good or drive engagement on social media will call what everybody else does the latter and what they do the former.

Thank you!

 

[gzt]

I have to reiterate once again: do NOT get religious information off of TikTok! If you're doing anything other than watching amusing cat videos on there, you're melting your mind.

 

[ChubbyCherub]

I have to reiterate once again: do NOT get religious information off of TikTok! If you're doing anything other than watching amusing cat videos on there, you're melting your mind.

Thank you.

I will probably uninstall it.

As you say, there's nothing good that comes from it and I think your comment around my question highlights this perfectly.

 

[ArmyMatt]

I always understood it as ecumenical is good meaning dialogue in good will to show others the Truth of Orthodoxy. Ecumenist is the heresy where truth becomes relative.

certain circles online see anything done with non-Orthodox as ecumenist and heretical, to include things like if one of our bishops has coffee with a Roman Cardinal, that’s somehow a betrayal of the Faith.

 

[rusmeister]

I have a somewhat dissenting note here. I see a very bad ecumenism in my Orthodox circles; a liberal Russian Westernizing one where everything the Russian Church does is bad (and some of it is) and therefore the West is good, The Catholic Church is as good as the Orthodox Church, the canonicity of a priest like Fr Alexey Uminsky (who fled the Russian Church and was received by Constantinople) is unquestionable, Protestantism is fine, women priests and homosexuality are fine, even concelebration with Catholics by Serbian priests here. I’ve seen so much un-Orthodox thinking among Orthodox Christians that nowadays I mostly keep to myself.

I say this as someone who has repeatedly said that non-Orthodox writers have helped keep me in the Orthodox Church, and I enjoy the good things we have in common with heterodox, so I am by no means arguing for the other extreme Fr Matt described. But there is definitely a bad ecumenism floating around and tolerated in the Orthodox Church, and if the word is in a church’s name, I’d bet anything it’s not a canonical church.

 

[Lukaris]

I personally try to use an example like the book: Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis as an inspiration for a positive attitude towards fellow Christians. When C.S. Lewis lived common faith was more consistent even if Christians too often acted like Pharisees.

C.S. Lewis also wrote the book: The Abolition of Man in which he observed there is a basic moral code among humanity ( Romans 13:8-10 etc. shows us this from the Lord per Romans 2:6-16 etc.).Mr. Lewis also warned us that this code was being redefined & modified in his time. Being a former soldier in WW 1 & writing during WW 2, Mr. Lewis obviously knew the moral code was hardly lived out among us but at least basically understood.

Today Christianity is more frayed and natural law more muddled.

Mere Christianity - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The Abolition of Man - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[The Liturgist]

Can someone explain to me why this is considered 'heresy' amongst some Orthodox?

I came across this statement on Tik Tok but, as I'm new to Orthodox and the church I am exploring is Ecumenical, am I doing the right thing?

Sorry, I don't know if it's called a church or a parish. Still getting to grips with terminology, God bless, CC

The main opposition to ecumenical reconciliation comes from Old Calendarists who are schismatic and not a part of the canonical Eastern Orthodox Church.

We also have a few canonical bishops who have said terrible things about other Christians, for example, Metropolitan Seraphim of Piraeus.

Ecumenical dialogue has had some impressive accomplishments, such as the ecumenical agreements that faciliate intermarriage and pastoral care between Coptic Orthodox and Alexandrian Greek Orthodox Christians, a vital agreement considering the shrinking size of the Alexandrian Greek population, who among the 118 million or so Egyptians now number less than 100,000, by facilitating their marriage to Coptic Orthodox Christians, who are probably now around 15 million in number given the increased birthrate.

Likewise, the even more expansive 1991 agreement between the Antiochian Orthodox and Syriac Orthodox, who in Syria are both gravely endangered, was a fruit of such dialogue.

Also through ecumenical dialogue many relics stolen by Roman Catholics have been returned, most importantly, the bodies of the Three Holy Hierachs (St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory the Theologian and St. John Chrysostom) which are now in the Patriarchal Cathedral of St. George in Constantinople.* Also the head of St. Mark, stolen with the rest of his relics, by the Venetian Republic, was returned to the Christians of Egypt (I believe it is with the Copts in Cairo but whatever the arrangement, the Alexandrian Greeks did not complain about it to my knowledge), and likewise other relics have been returned as well. Alas we still do not have the relics of St. Nicholas, but the Romans do at least give Orthodox pilgrims access.

* I am very thankful these are in Orthodox hands, although I wish they had been placed in Thessaloniki in retrospect, given the increased Islamicization of Turkey under Erdogan, although for now at least they are safe.

 

[The Liturgist]

Thank you.

I will probably uninstall it.

As you say, there's nothing good that comes from it and I think your comment around my question highlights this perfectly.

Yeah, Tiktok went from being kind of annoying to aggressively unpleasant; YouTube has better content, for example, Fr. Josiah Trenham and Abbot Tryphon, but even more useful are the many lectures by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, memory eternal and Archpriest John Behr, former dean of St. Vladimir’s Seminary and now serving in the position previously held by Metropolitan Kallistos at Oxford.

Indeed the lectures of His Eminence Metropolitan Kallistos, memory Eternal, and Fr. John Behr were instrumental in my conversion. It was so refreshing seeing a Christianity so traditional, so intellectually robust and so filled with love.