Good article by St. John Maximovitch
http://www.sisqtel.net/~williams/archives/decline-constantinople.html
Translator's Introduction
The anti-Orthodox career and statements of the late Patriarch Athenagoras of sorry memory have been so striking that they have perhaps tended to obscure the fact that the apostasy of this one man was merely the culmination of a long and thorough process of the departure from the Orthodox Faith of an entire Local Orthodox Church. The promise of the new Patriarch Demetrios to "follow upon the footsteps of our great Predecessor in pursuing Christian unity" and to institute "dialogues" with Islam and other non-Christian religions, while recognizing "the holy blessed Pope of Rome Paul VI, the first among equals within the universal Church of Christ" (Enthronement Address) only confirms this observation and reveals the depths to which the Church of Constantinople has fallen in our own day.
It should be noted that the title "Ecumenical" was bestowed on the Patriarch of Constantinople as a result of the transfer of the capital of the Roman Empire to this city in the 4th century; the Patriarch then became the bishop of the city which was the center of the ecumene or civilized world. Lamentably, in the 20th century the once-glorious See of Constantinople, having long since lost its earthly glory, has cheaply tried to regain prestige by entering on two new "ecumenical" paths: it has joined the "ecumenical movement," which is based on an anti-Christian universalism; and, in imitation of apostate Rome, it has striven to subject the other Orthodox Churches to itself and make of its Patriarch a kind of Pope of Orthodoxy.
The following article, which is part of a report on all the Autocephalous Churches made by Archbishop John to the Second All-Diaspora Sobor of the Russian Church Abroad held in Yugoslavia in 1938, gives the historical background of the present state of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. It could well have been written today, nearly 35 years later, apart from a few small points which have changed since then, not to mention the more spectacular "ecumenical" acts and statements of the Patriarchate in recent years, which have served to change it from the "pitiful spectacle" here described into one of the leading world centers of anti-Orthodoxy.
[...]
In sum, the Ecumenical Patriarchate, in theory embracing almost the whole universe and in fact extending its authority only over several dioceses, and in other places having only a higher superficial supervision and receiving certain revenues for this; persecuted by the government at home, and not supported by any governmental authority abroad; having lost its significance as a pillar of truth and having itself become a source of division, and at the same time being possessed by an exorbitant love of powerrepresents a pitiful spectacle which recalls the worst periods in the history of the See of Constantinople.
http://www.sisqtel.net/~williams/archives/decline-constantinople.html
Translator's Introduction
The anti-Orthodox career and statements of the late Patriarch Athenagoras of sorry memory have been so striking that they have perhaps tended to obscure the fact that the apostasy of this one man was merely the culmination of a long and thorough process of the departure from the Orthodox Faith of an entire Local Orthodox Church. The promise of the new Patriarch Demetrios to "follow upon the footsteps of our great Predecessor in pursuing Christian unity" and to institute "dialogues" with Islam and other non-Christian religions, while recognizing "the holy blessed Pope of Rome Paul VI, the first among equals within the universal Church of Christ" (Enthronement Address) only confirms this observation and reveals the depths to which the Church of Constantinople has fallen in our own day.
It should be noted that the title "Ecumenical" was bestowed on the Patriarch of Constantinople as a result of the transfer of the capital of the Roman Empire to this city in the 4th century; the Patriarch then became the bishop of the city which was the center of the ecumene or civilized world. Lamentably, in the 20th century the once-glorious See of Constantinople, having long since lost its earthly glory, has cheaply tried to regain prestige by entering on two new "ecumenical" paths: it has joined the "ecumenical movement," which is based on an anti-Christian universalism; and, in imitation of apostate Rome, it has striven to subject the other Orthodox Churches to itself and make of its Patriarch a kind of Pope of Orthodoxy.
The following article, which is part of a report on all the Autocephalous Churches made by Archbishop John to the Second All-Diaspora Sobor of the Russian Church Abroad held in Yugoslavia in 1938, gives the historical background of the present state of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. It could well have been written today, nearly 35 years later, apart from a few small points which have changed since then, not to mention the more spectacular "ecumenical" acts and statements of the Patriarchate in recent years, which have served to change it from the "pitiful spectacle" here described into one of the leading world centers of anti-Orthodoxy.
[...]
In sum, the Ecumenical Patriarchate, in theory embracing almost the whole universe and in fact extending its authority only over several dioceses, and in other places having only a higher superficial supervision and receiving certain revenues for this; persecuted by the government at home, and not supported by any governmental authority abroad; having lost its significance as a pillar of truth and having itself become a source of division, and at the same time being possessed by an exorbitant love of powerrepresents a pitiful spectacle which recalls the worst periods in the history of the See of Constantinople.
