I think that during the domination of the Arian heresy, when the Orthodox were pushed into the obscurity of home-churches (as St. Athanasios in Alexandria writes), St. Basil was part of one of three divided Orthodox groups in Antioch. St. Basil wrote long letters trying to unite them into one group but was unsuccessful because they did not trust eachothers Apostolic Succession. So St. Basil wrote to the synod in Rome to send some bishops to lay hands on all the bishops in Antioch to put an end to the divisions. Then guess what? The Roman bishops came but they did not lay hands on any of them, instead they started a fourth group and so there was only more division! And all the while, St. Athanasios did not recognize St. Basil or any of them because of all the confusion.
Yet these people all had one thing in common: 1) They knew what the Orthodox faith was when few people in the world did (or cared), and 2) confidently held this faith as the highest rule, and would not unite just for the sake of unity, but only as a natural consequence as to the Orthodoxy of others.
Knowing this about the Church Militant, and also confident in the Church Triumphant, I don't recon the great majestic domes of the Ecumenist Church have much of a future.
"Here we cannot boast in great numbers, neither of renown, nor of wealth, nor of learning - all that is valued in this world. We are strong here only in one thing - in possessing the Orthodox Faith, "and that not of ourselves; it is a gift of God" (Ephesians 2:8); and we should ask the Lord for the increase of this gift. Let them stand fast in Thy Holy Church in the Orthodox Faith." [St. Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow from 1917-1925]
