Kirill on WCC: MP Can't Withdraw May Intensify Participation

[尼古拉前执事]

30 August 2006, 13:56
http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=news&div=1914
Russian Church’s withdrawal from WCC will only undermine position of Orthodoxy in the world and play into the hands of its ill wishers - Metropolitan Kirill

Moscow, August 30, Interfax - The Moscow Patriarchate may intensify its participation in the World Council of Churches (WCC) for the purpose of asserting the interests of Orthodoxy.

‘Today we intend to continue and perhaps intensify it (participation in the WCC - IF) since the World Council is a good platform for both preaching and asserting the values and interests of Orthodoxy throughout the world’, Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, head of the Moscow Patriarchate department for external church relations, said in a interview to the official website of the Russian Orthodox Church.

He pointed out that consultative work has been carried out within the WCC between national Orthodox Churches, and sometimes this organization offers the only platform for meetings of Orthodox participants for them to discuss between themselves the burning problems of today.

‘In pulling out, we will isolate ourselves from the consultation process among national Orthodox Churches. It cannot be ruled out that it will be to some people’s liking. It is a well-known fact that there are forces in Orthodoxy who take the successes of the Russian Orthodox Church badly and are interested in its weakening’, the metropolitan said.

However, if Christendom does not hear the voice of the Russian Church ‘it will hear other voices’, he added. And this, the metropolitan believes, ‘can lead to a breach of the balances within the universal Orthodoxy which have been maintained with great effort thanks to the authority of the Russian Orthodox Church in the world’.

According to the hierarch, a withdrawal from the WCC would imply a considerable weakening of the position of the Russian Church within the Orthodox family and in the world ‘including the Russian society which is very much concerned for inter-confessional and interfaith relations’.

‘The demand that the Russian Orthodox Church should isolated itself can be made either by those who are not aware of the developments in the WCC and the real role of the Russian Church in the entire complex system of inter-Christian and interfaith relations or those who consciously seek to restrict its influence and to weaken its authority’, the metropolitan stated.

He noted at the same time that ‘if the major participants in the WCC continue deviating from basic Christian theology and ethics’, the Moscow Patriarchate will have to review the forms and the very possibility of its further involvement in this organization.

‘The crisis of the ecumenical movement is linked first of all with the crisis that has swept many Protestant communities which are heading rapidly towards extreme liberalism and radical modernization of their religious life rejecting the fundamental norms of the doctrine and Christian morality’, the metropolitan said adding that he meant first of all the new practice of ordination of homosexuals and ‘blessing’ of same-sex marriages.

Commenting on the accusations against the Russian Orthodox Church clergy sharing communion with the non-Orthodox, also at WCC meetings, the metropolitan stressed that the Moscow Patriarchate representatives ‘have never come to communion together with the non-Orthodox and never let believers of other Christian communities come to the Cup’.

[spiridon]

Sad very Sad, it seems that there is some sort of a passion to be the top Religion or something. I say quit the Wcc and send every address in the world a letter saying
"If you seek the Truth in Jesus Christ and His church seek your nearest Orthodox Church"

[jacqueline]

30 August 2006, 13:56
http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=news&div=1914
Russian Church’s withdrawal from WCC will only undermine position of Orthodoxy in the world....

Concerned about it's position in the WORLD?

[Sean]

May the "two parts" of the Sergianist Church and their evil work be undone someday! The ecumenist traitor who baptized me told one of his soon-to-be former parishonners that ROCOR's union with Stalin's parasynagogue is already a "done deal." ROCOR's Synod of bishops is in the very process of making this apostasy formal as we speak.

No one cares about heresy any more. Who cares what the canons say? A bunch of ethno-phyletists and newly-converted "experts" with no Orthodox world view simply need to insert the right sentimentalist catch-phrase to respond to any of the Holy Canons, and all the teachings of the Church go straight down the Orwellian Information Hole!

Ecumenists and all those who commune with them have been anathematized by the Holy Church. The spiritual progeny of Meletios Metaxakis (ie. "World Orthodoxy") are no different than the Arians, Nestorians, Monophysites, Bogomils, etc.... They are outside the Church.

[George Australia]

Just a minute.
Before you all work youselves up into a frenzy as usual, Let me just repost the exact same article and put a different section in bold to skew the emphasis a different way with a different agenda:

30 August 2006, 13:56
http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=news&div=1914
Russian Church’s withdrawal from WCC will only undermine position of Orthodoxy in the world and play into the hands of its ill wishers - Metropolitan Kirill

Moscow, August 30, Interfax - The Moscow Patriarchate may intensify its participation in the World Council of Churches (WCC) for the purpose of asserting the interests of Orthodoxy.

‘Today we intend to continue and perhaps intensify it (participation in the WCC - IF) since the World Council is a good platform for both preaching and asserting the values and interests of Orthodoxy throughout the world’, Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, head of the Moscow Patriarchate department for external church relations, said in a interview to the official website of the Russian Orthodox Church.

He pointed out that consultative work has been carried out within the WCC between national Orthodox Churches, and sometimes this organization offers the only platform for meetings of Orthodox participants for them to discuss between themselves the burning problems of today.

‘In pulling out, we will isolate ourselves from the consultation process among national Orthodox Churches. It cannot be ruled out that it will be to some people’s liking. It is a well-known fact that there are forces in Orthodoxy who take the successes of the Russian Orthodox Church badly and are interested in its weakening’, the metropolitan said.

However, if Christendom does not hear the voice of the Russian Church ‘it will hear other voices’, he added. And this, the metropolitan believes, ‘can lead to a breach of the balances within the universal Orthodoxy which have been maintained with great effort thanks to the authority of the Russian Orthodox Church in the world’.

According to the hierarch, a withdrawal from the WCC would imply a considerable weakening of the position of the Russian Church within the Orthodox family and in the world ‘including the Russian society which is very much concerned for inter-confessional and interfaith relations’.

‘The demand that the Russian Orthodox Church should isolated itself can be made either by those who are not aware of the developments in the WCC and the real role of the Russian Church in the entire complex system of inter-Christian and interfaith relations or those who consciously seek to restrict its influence and to weaken its authority’, the metropolitan stated.

He noted at the same time that ‘if the major participants in the WCC continue deviating from basic Christian theology and ethics’, the Moscow Patriarchate will have to review the forms and the very possibility of its further involvement in this organization.

‘The crisis of the ecumenical movement is linked first of all with the crisis that has swept many Protestant communities which are heading rapidly towards extreme liberalism and radical modernization of their religious life rejecting the fundamental norms of the doctrine and Christian morality’, the metropolitan said adding that he meant first of all the new practice of ordination of homosexuals and ‘blessing’ of same-sex marriages.

Commenting on the accusations against the Russian Orthodox Church clergy sharing communion with the non-Orthodox, also at WCC meetings, the metropolitan stressed that the Moscow Patriarchate representatives ‘have never come to communion together with the non-Orthodox and never let believers of other Christian communities come to the Cup’.

[Sean]

He noted at the same time that ‘if the major participants in the WCC continue deviating from basic Christian theology and ethics’, the Moscow Patriarchate will have to review the forms and the very possibility of its further involvement in this organization.

"Basic" Christian theology? Hmmm...... A watered-down, generic, lowest-common-denominator type of "Christianity," which happens to be morally conservative, is not the fullness of Christian faith, as embodied in the Church. Not since the early 1960's, when the heretic Iakovos silenced Fr. Georges Florovsky, have the Orthodox participants in the WCC asserted Orthodoxy to be the one true Church. The real reason the Ecumenists don't want to withdraw from the WCC is because they get money from this organization, and many "clergymen" are career Ecumenists. Kirill seems to be one of these.

Commenting on the accusations against the Russian Orthodox Church clergy sharing communion with the non-Orthodox, also at WCC meetings, the metropolitan stressed that the Moscow Patriarchate representatives ‘have never come to communion together with the non-Orthodox and never let believers of other Christian communities come to the Cup’.

This is a lie. Anyone who has followed the history of the betrayal of Orthodoxy by the Ecumenists knows that during the 1970's, the Moscow Patriarchate openly gave Communion to Roman Catholics. It has only been since the 1990's that the Ecumenists have been making more Orthodox postures and sounds (precisely because of the Old Calendarists so thoroughly exposing their abuses over the years).