The Official Statement from Mt. Athos on the Pope's Visit to the Phanar (2006)
Karyae, 30 December 2006.
The recent visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the
Ecumenical Patriarchate
on the occasion of the feast-day of Saint Andrew (30th
November 2006)
and thereafter the visit by His Beatitude the
Archbishop of Athens
Christodoulos (14th December 2006) gave rise to a
multitude of
impressions, evaluations and reactions. We shall
bypass those things
that the secular Press had evaluated as positive or
negative, to focus
on those things that pertain to our salvation, for the
sake of which
we abandoned the world to live in the barrenness of
the Holy Mountain.
As Monks of the Holy Mountain, we respect the
Ecumenical Patriarchate,
under whose jurisdiction we fall. We honor and
venerate the Most Holy
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and we rejoice in all
that he has
achieved and so diligently labored for, in his love of
God, for the
Church. We particularly commemorate the stolid and
untiring defence of
the Ecumenical Patriarchate, amid the many unfavorable
conditions that
exist, as well as the impoverished local Orthodox
Churches and the
care that is taken to project the message of the
Orthodox Church
throughout the world. Furthermore, we the Monks of
the Holy Mountain
honor the Most Holy Church of Greece, from which most
of us originate,
and we respect His Beatitude the Primate.
However, the events that took place during the recent
visits of the
Pope to Fanarion and of His Beatitude the Archbishop
to the Vatican
brought immense sorrow to our hearts.
We desire and we struggle all of our life to safeguard
the trust of
the Holy Fathers, which was bequeathed to us by the
holy Founders of
our sacred Monasteries and the blessed reposed fathers
before us. We
strive to the best of our ability to live the
sacrament of the Church
and the unblemished Orthodox Faith, according to what
we are daily
taught by the divine Services, the sacred readings,
and the teachings
in general of the Holy Fathers which are set out in
their writings and
in the decisions of the Ecumenical Synods. We guard
our dogmatic
awareness "like the pupil of our eye", and we
reinforce it, by
applying ourselves to God-pleasing labours and the
meticulous study of
the achievements of the holy Confessor Fathers when
they confronted
the miscellaneous heresies, and especially of our
father among the
saints, Gregory of Palamas, the Holy Martyrs of the
Holy Mountain and
the Holy Martyr Kosmas the First, whose sacred relics
we venerate with
every honor and whose sacred memory we incessantly
celebrate. We are
afraid to remain silent, whenever issues arise that
pertain to the
trust that our Fathers left us. Our responsibility,
towards the most
venerable fathers and brothers of the overall
brotherhood of the Holy
Mountain and towards the pious faithful of the Church
who regard
Athonite Monasticism as their non-negotiable guardian
of sacred Tradition, weighs heavily upon our conscience.
The visits of the Pope at Fanarion and the
Archbishop's visit at the
Vatican may have secured certain benefits of a secular
nature,
however, during those visits, various other events
took place which
were not according to the customs of Orthodox
Ecclesiology, or
commitments were made that would neither benefit the
Orthodox Church,
nor any other heterodox Christians.
First of all, the Pope was received as though he were
a canonical
(proper) bishop of Rome. During the service, the Pope
wore an
omophoron; he was addressed by the Ecumenical
Patriarch with the
greeting "blessed is the one who comes in the name of
the Lord" as
though it were Christ the Lord; he blessed the
congregation and he was
commemorated as "most holy" and "His Beatitude the
Bishop of Rome".
Furthermore, all of the Pope's officiating clergy wore
an omophoron
during the Orthodox Divine Liturgy; also, the reciting
of the Lord's
Prayer, his liturgical embrace with the Patriarch,
were displays of
something more than common prayer. And all of this,
when the papist
institution has not budged at all from its heretical
teachings and its
policy; on the contrary, the Pope is in fact visibly
promoting and
trying to reinforce Unia along with the Papist dogmas
on primacy and
infallibility, and is going even further, with
inter-faith common
prayers and the pan-religious hegemony of the Pope of
Rome that is
discerned therein.
As for the reception of the Pope in Fanarion, we are
especially
grieved by the fact that all of the Media kept
repeating the same,
incorrect information, that the psalms that were
(unduly) sung at the
time had been composed by Monks of the Holy Mountain.
We take this
opportunity to responsibly inform all pious Christians
that their
composer was not, and could never be, a monk of the
Holy Mountain.
Then there is the matter of the attempt by His
Beatitude the
Archbishop of Athens to commence relations with the
Vatican on social,
cultural and bio-ethical issues, as well as the
objective to mutually
defend the Christian roots of Europe (positions which
are also found
in the Common Declaration of the Pope and the
Patriarch in Fanarion),
both of which may seem innocuous or even positive,
given that their
aim is to cultivate peaceful human relations.
Nevertheless, it is
important that all these do not give the impression
that the West and
Orthodoxy continue to have the same bases, or lead one
into forgetting
the distance that separates the Orthodox Tradition
from that which is
usually presented as the "European spirit". (Western)
Europe is
burdened with a series of anti-Christian institutions
and acts, such
as the Crusades, the "Holy" Inquisition, slave trading
and
colonization. It is burdened with the tragic division
which took on
the form of the schism of Protestantism; the
devastating world wars,
also the man-centered humanism and its atheist view.
All of these are
the consequence of Rome's theological deviations from
Orthodoxy. One
after the other, the Papist and the Protestant
heresies gradually
removed the humble Christ of Orthodoxy and in His
place, they
enthroned haughty Man. The holy bishop Nicholas of
Ochrid and Zitsa
wrote the following from Dahau: «What, then, is
Europe? The Pope and
Luther.... This is what Europe is, at its core,
ontologically and
historically». The blessed Elder Justin Popovitch
supplements the
above: «The 2nd Vatican Synod comprises the rebirth of
every kind of
European humanism.... because the Synod persistently
adhered to the
dogma on the Pope's infallibility» and he surmises:
«Undoubtedly, the
authorities and the powers of (western) European
culture and
civilization are Christ-expellers». This is why it is
so important to
project the humble morality of Orthodoxy and to
support the truly
Christian roots of the united Europe; the roots that
Europe had during
the first Christian centuries, during the time of the
catacombs and of
the seven holy Ecumenical Synods. It is advisable for
Orthodoxy to
not tax itself with foreign sins, and furthermore, the
impression
should not be given to those who became
de-Christianized in reaction
to the sidetracking of Western-style Christianity,
that Orthodoxy is
related to it, thus ceasing to testify that it is the
only authentic
Faith in Christ, and the only hope of the peoples of
Europe.
The Roman Catholics' inability to disentangle
themselves from the
decisions of their pursuant (and according to them,
Ecumenical)
Synods, which had legitimized the Filioque, the
Primacy, the
Infallibility, the secular authority of the Roman
Pontiff, 'created
Grace', the immaculate conception of the Holy Mother,
Unia. Despite
all these, we Orthodox continue the so-called
traditional exchanges of
visits, bestowing honors befitting an Orthodox Bishop
on the Pope and
totally disregarding a series of Sacred Canons which
forbid common
prayers, while the theological dialogue repeatedly
flounders, and,
after being dredged from the depths, it again sinks
down.
All indications lead to the conclusion that the
Vatican is not
orienting itself to discard its heretical teachings,
but only to
"re-interpret" them - in other words, to veil them.
Roman Catholic ecclesiology varies, from one circular
to the other;
from the so-called "open" ecclesiology of the
Encyclical «Ut Unum
Sint», to the ecclesiological exclusivity of the
Encyclical «Dominus
Jesus». It should be noted that both of the
aforementioned views are
contrary to Orthodox Ecclesiology. The self-awareness
of the holy
Orthodox Church as the only One, Holy, Catholic
(=overall) and
Apostolic Church does not allow for the recognition of
other,
heterodox churches and confessions as "sister
churches". "Sister
Churches" are only the local Orthodox Churches of the
same faith. No
other homonymous reference to "sister churches" other
than the
Orthodox one is theologically permissible.
The "Filioque" is promoted by the roman catholic side
as yet another
legal expression of the teaching regarding the
procession of the Holy
Spirit, and theologically equivalent to the Orthodox
teaching that
procession is "only from the Father" - a view that is
unfortunately
supported by some of our own theologians.
Besides, the Pontiff is maintaining the Primacy as an
inalienable
privilege, as one can tell from the recent erasure of
the title
"Patriarch of the West" by the current Pope Benedict
XVI; also from
his reference to the worldwide mission of the Apostle
Peter and his
successors during his homily in the Patriarchal
Temple, as well as
from his also recent speech, which included the
following: «...within
the society, with the Successors of the Apostles,
whose visible unity
is guaranteed by the Successor of the Apostle Peter,
the Ukrainian
Catholic Community managed to preserve the Sacred
Tradition alive, in
its integrity» (Catholic Newspaper,
No.3046/18-4-2006).
Unia is being reinforced and reassured in many and
various ways,
despite the proclamations by the Pope to the contrary.
This dishonest
stance is witnessed, apart from other instances, by
the provocative
intervention of the previous Pope, John-Paul II, which
led the
Orthodox-roman catholic dialogue in Baltimore into a
disaster, as well
as by the letter sent by the current Pope to the
Cardinal Ljubomir
Husar, the Uniate Archbishop of Ukraine. In this
letter dated
22/2/2006, the following is emphatically stressed: «It
is imperative
to secure the presence of the two great carriers of
the only Tradition
(the Latin and the Eastern).... The mission that the
Greek Catholic
Church has undertaken, being in full communion with
the Successor of
the Apostle Peter, is two-fold: on one side, it must
visibly preserve
the eastern Tradition inside the Catholic Church; on
the other, it
must favour the merging of the two traditions,
testifying that they
not only can coordinate between themselves, but that
they also
constitute a profound union amid their variety».
Seen in this light, polite exchanges such as the
visits of the Pope to
Fanarion and the Archbishop of Athens to the Vatican,
without the
prerequisite of a unity in the Faith, may on the one
hand create false
impressions of unity and thus turn away the heterodox
who could have
looked towards Orthodoxy as being the true Church, and
on the other
hand, blunt the dogmatic sensor of many Orthodox.
Even more, they may
push some of the faithful and pious Orthodox, who are
deeply concerned
over what is taking place inopportunely and against
the Sacred Canons,
to detach themselves from the corpus of the Church and
create new
schisms.
Thus, out of love for our Orthodoxy, but with pain as
regards the
unity of the Church, and with a view to preserve the
Orthodox Faith
free of all innovations, we proclaim in every
direction that which was
proclaimed by the Extraordinary, Double, Holy Assembly
of our Sacred
Community of the Holy Mountain on the 9th / 22nd of
April 1980:
«We believe that our Holy Orthodox Church is the One,
Holy, Catholic
and Apostolic Church of Christ, having the fullness of
Grace and the
Truth, and for this reason, an uninterrupted Apostolic
Succession. On
the contrary, the "churches" and the "confessions" of
the West, having
distorted the faith of the Gospel, the Apostles and
the Fathers on
many points, are deprived of the hallowing Grace, the
true Sacraments
and the Apostolic Succession...
Dialogues with the heterodox - if they are intended to
inform them
about the Orthodox Faith so that when they become
receptive of divine
enlightenment and their eyes are opened they might
return to the
Orthodox Faith - are not condemned.
In no way should a theological dialogue be accompanied
by common
prayers, participation in liturgical assemblies and
worship by either
side and any other activities that might give the
impression that our
Orthodox Church acknowledges the Roman Catholics as a
complete Church
and the Pope as a canonical (proper) Bishop of Rome.
Such acts
mislead the Orthodox as well as the Roman Catholic
faithful, who are
given a false impression of what Orthodoxy thinks of
them....
With the Grace of God, the Holy Mountain remains
faithful - as do the
Orthodox people of the Lord - to the Faith of the Holy
Apostles and
the Holy Fathers, and also out of love for the
heterodox, who are
essentially helped, when the Orthodox with their
steadfast Orthodox
stance point out the extent of their spiritual ailment
and the way
they can be cured.
The failed attempts for union during the past teach us
that for a
permanent union, according to the will of God, within
the Truth of the
Church, the prerequisite is a different kind of
preparation and
course, than those which were followed in the past and
appear to be
followed to this day.».
By all of the Representatives and Superiors of the
common Assembly of
the twenty Sacred Monasteries of the Holy Mountain
Athos.
Promulgated by Monk Prodromos Gregoriates - Secretariat of the Sacred Community. The Greek text can be found at www.agioros.com. Translation by: A. N.
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