1895 ENCYCLICAL OF THE ECUMENICAL PATRIARCH
THE LIGHT OF ORTHODOXY
Volume 2 Number 1 July 2008
Raphael Masterjohn RMOrthodox@aol.com
ENCYCLICAL OF THE ECUMENICAL PATRIARCH
AND SYNOD OF CONSTANTINOPLE
(Note: sub-headings have been added to enhance phrases )
“Every pious and Orthodox soul, which has a sincere zeal for the glory of God, is
deeply afflicted and weighed down upon with great pain upon seeing that he, who
detests that which is good and is a murderer from the beginning, impelled by envy of
man’s salvation, never ceases to sow tares in the field of the Lord, in order to sift the
wheat.
From this source indeed, even from the earliest times, there sprang up in the
Church of God, heretical tares, which in many ways have made havoc, and do still
make havoc, of the salvation of mankind by Christ; which moreover, are rightly cut
off from the sound body of the Orthodox Catholic Church of Christ.
THE EVIL ONE STIRRED UP ARROGANCE IN THE PAPACY INSPIRING
BISHOPS OF ROME TO DECLARE THEMSELVES AS GOD’S VICAR, THUS
SOWING THE HERETICAL TARES OF THE PAPACY
But in these last times the evil one has torn from the Orthodox Church of Christ
even whole nations in the West, having puffed up the bishops of Rome with thoughts
of excessive arrogance, which has given birth to various lawless and anti-Gospel
innovations.
And not only so, but furthermore the Popes of Rome from time to time,
pursuing absolutely and without examination modes of union according to their own
fancy, strive by every means to bring down to their own errors the Catholic Church
of Christ, which throughout the world walks unshaken in the orthodoxy of faith
transmitted to her by the Fathers.
POPE DEMANDS THAT ALL KNEEL DOWN TO HIM
AS THE ONE AND ONLY RULER AND INFALLIBLE MAN ON EARTH
The Pope invites our Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church of Christ to unite
with the papal throne, thinking that such union can only be obtained by recognizing
him as supreme pontiff and the highest spiritual and temporal ruler of the universal
Church, as being the only representative of Christ upon the earth and the dispenser
of all grace.
UNION ONLY POSSIBLE IF PAPACY HUMBLES ITSELF,
ABANDONS ITS NUMEROUS INNOVATIONS, AND RETURNS
TO ORTHODOXY THROUGH REPENTANCE AND BAPTISM
No doubt every Christian heart ought to be filled with longing for union of the
Churches especially the whole Orthodox world, being inspired by a true spirit of
piety, according to the divine purpose of the establishment of the Church by the
Godman our Savior Jesus Christ, who ardently longs for the union of the churches in
the one rule of faith, and on the foundation of the apostolic doctrine handed down to
us through the Fathers, “Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone”
(Eph. 2.20).
TALK OF UNION IS EMPTY AND CONTRARY TO HOLY SCRIPTURE SO
LONG AS POPE DEMANDS RECOGNITION AS THE VICAR OF CHRIST.
Both by her writings and encyclical letters, the Orthodox Church has never ceased
to indicate to the Papal church, having clearly set forth that so long as the latter
perseveres in her innovations, and the Orthodox Church adheres to the divine and
apostolic traditions of Christianity, during which period the Western churches were
of the same mind and were united with the churches of the East, so long is it a vain
and empty thing to talk of union.
INSIDIOUS, EVIL PLOT BY DISGUISE AND LIES TO
CONVERT ORTHODOX AWAY FROM CHRIST TO THE POPE
Since, from a certain period the Papal church, having abandoned the method of
persuasion and discussion, began, to our general astonishment and perplexity, to lay
traps, for the conscience of the more simple Orthodox Christians by means of
deceitful workers transformed into apostles of Christ, sending into the East clerics
with the garments and head-covering of Orthodox Priests, inventing also various and
other means to obtain her conversion objects; for this reason, as in sacred duty bound,
we issue this patriarchal and synodical encyclical, for a safeguard of the Orthodox
Faith and piety, knowing that the observance of the true canons is a duty for every
good man, and even more for those who have been thought worthy by Providence to
direct the affairs of others.
FALSE DOCTRINES --PURGATORY, ENRICHED THE VATICAN BY SALE OF
INDULGENCES – CONTRIBUTED TO PROTESTANT REBELLION
The one holy, catholic and apostolic Church of the Seven Ecumenical Synods,
walking according to the divinely inspired teaching of the Holy Scripture and the
ancient apostolic tradition, prays and invokes the mercy of God for the forgiveness
and rest of those ‘which have fallen sleep in the Lord’.
But the Papal church from the
ninth century has invented and heaped together in the person of the Pope, as one
who is singularly privileged, a multitude of innovations concerning the purgatorial
fire, a superabundance of the virtues of saints, and the distribution of them to those
who need them, and the like, setting forth also a full reward for the just before the
universal resurrection and judgment.
PAPAL PRIMACY AND INFALLIBILITY – THE FRAUD IS EXPOSED
CHRIST IS THE HEAD AND CHIEF CORNERSTONE OF THE CHURCH
The Pope in his encyclical represents the question of the primacy of the Roman
Pontiff as the principal and, so to speak, only cause of dissension, and sends us to the
sources, that we may make diligent search as to what our forefathers believed and
what the first age of Christianity delivered to us.
But having recourse to the fathers
and the Ecumenical Synods of the Church of the first nine centuries, we are fully
persuaded that the Bishop of Rome was never considered as the supreme authority
and infallible head of the Church, and that every Bishop is head and president of his
own particular Church, subject only to the synodical ordinances and decisions of the
Church universal as being alone infallible, the Bishop of Rome being in no wise
excepted from this rule, as Church history shows.
Our Lord Jesus Christ alone is the
eternal Prince and immortal Head of the Church, for ‘He is the Head of the body, the
Church’ (Col.
1:18), who said also to His disciples and apostles at His Ascension
into heaven, ‘Lo, I am with you always, even unto the close of the age’(Matt. 28:20).
In the Holy Scripture the Apostle Peter, whom the Papists, relying on apocryphal
books of the second century, the pseudo-Clementines, imagine with a purpose to be
the founder of the Roman church and their first bishop, discusses the matter as an
equal among equals in the apostolic synod in Jerusalem, and at another time is sharply
rebuked by the Apostle Paul, as is evident from the Epistle to the Galatians (Gal.
2:11).
Moreover the Papists themselves know well that the very passage of the
Gospel to which the Pontiffs refer, ‘Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my
church’ (Matt. 16:18).
In the first centuries this is interpreted quite differently, in a
spirit of orthodoxy, both by tradition and by all the divine and sacred Fathers without
exception; the fundamental and unshaken rock upon which the Lord has built His
own Church, against which the gates of Hades shall not prevail, being understood
metaphorically of Peter’s true confession concerning the Lord, that ‘He is the Christ,
the Son of the living God’ (Matt. 16:16).
CHURCH HAS ONE PERMANENT FOUNDATION STONE
Upon this confession and faith the saving preaching of the Gospel by all the
Apostles and their successors rests unshaken.
Whence also the Apostle Paul, who
had been caught up into heaven, evidently interpreting this divine passage, declares
the divine inspiration, saying: ‘According to the grace of God which is given to me,
as a wise master-builder, I have laid the foundation, and another builds thereon.
For
other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ’
(1Cor. 3:10,11).
But it is in another sense that Paul calls all the Apostles and prophets together the
foundation of the building up in Christ of the faithful; that is to say, the members of
the body of Christ, which is the Church; when he writes to the Ephesians: ‘Now
therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the
saints and of the household of God: and are built upon the foundation of the apostles
and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone’
(Eph. 2:19,20. 1Peter 2:4; Rev.
21:14)
WITHOUT ABANDONING HERESY, UNITY OF FAITH, TRUE DOGMAS
UNITY CAN NEVER BE CONSIDERED, BEING IMPOSSIBLE
The union of the separated churches with herself in one rule of faith, as has been
spoken of before, a sacred inward desire of the holy catholic and orthodox apostolic
Church of Christ; but without such unity in the faith, the desired unity of the churches
becomes impossible.
The Pope, though he himself acknowledges this truth, falls into
a plain self-contradiction, declaring on one hand, that true unity lies in the unity of
faith, and, on the other hand, that every church, even after the union, can hold her
own dogmatic and canonical definitions, even if they differ from those of the Papal
church.
For there is an evident contradiction when in one and the same church, when
one believes that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, and another that He
proceeds from the Father and the Son’ when one sprinkles, and another baptizes by
immersion three times in water; one uses leavened bread in the sacrament and the
other leavened bread.
The Papal church from the twelfth century downwards has
invented and heaped together in the person of the Pope, as one singularly privileged,
a multitude of innovations concerning purgatorial fire, super-abundances of the
virtues of saints, and the distribution to those who need them, and the like, setting
forth also a full reward for the just before the universal resurrection and judgment.
PROOF THAT POPE OF ROME NEVER HAD SUPREME AUTHORITY OVER
THE CHURCH IN THE FIRST MILLENNIUM
Regarding the question of Roman primacy, as the principal and, so to speak, only
cause of dissension, and sends us to the sources, that we may make diligent search as
to what our forefathers believed and what the first age of Christianity delivered to us.
But having recourse to the Fathers and the Ecumenical Synods of the Church of the
first nine centuries we are fully persuaded that the bishop of Rome was never
considered as the supreme authority and infallible head of the Church, and that every
bishop is head and president of his own particular church, subject only to the
synodical ordinances and decisions of the Church universal, as being alone infallible,
the bishop of Rome being no wise excepted from this rule, as Church history
demonstrates.
Our Lord Jesus Christ alone is the eternal Prince and immortal Head of the
Church, for ‘He is the Head of the whole Body, the Church.
DURING THE FIRST THOUSAND YEARS OF THE CHURCH
NO SUPER BISHOP OR INFALLIBLE POPE EXISTED
FOR THE HOLY SPIRIT GUIDES THE TRUE CHURCH
Each particular self-governing Church, both in the East and West, was totally
independent and self-administered in the time of the Seven Ecumenical Synods.
And
just as the bishops of the self-governing churches of the East, so also those in Africa,
Spain and Gaul, Germany and Britain managed the affairs of their own churches, each
by local synods, the Bishop of Rome having no right to interfere, and he himself also
was equally subject and obedient to the decree of synods.
But on important questions
which needed the sanction of the universal Church an appeal was made to an
Ecumenical Synod, which alone was the ancient tribunal in the universal Church;
Such was the ancient constitution of the Church; but the bishops were independent
of each other, and each entirely free within his own bounds, obeying only the synodal
decrees, and they sat as equals one to another in synods.
Moreover, none of them ever
laid claim to monarchical rights over the universal Church; and if sometimes certain
ambitious bishops of Rome raised excessive claims to absolutism unknown to the
Church, such were duly reproved and rebuked
EVIL SEEDS OF A SUPER BISHOP (POPE) WERE NOT FROM HEAVEN,
FOR THE POPE USURPS AUTHORITY THAT BELONGS ONLY TO GOD
During the nine centuries of the Ecumenical Synods, the Eastern Orthodox Church
never recognized the excessive claims of primacy on the part of the bishops of Rome,
nor consequently did she ever submit herself to them, as Church history plainly bears
witness.
The first seeds of these claims of a papal absolutism were scattered abroad
and were cultivated, exactly at the epoch of Pope Nicholas I, in the so-called pseudo
Isidorian decrees, which are a confused mixture of spurious and forged royal decrees
and letters of ancient bishops of Rome, by which contrary to the truth of history, and
the established constitution of the Church, it was purposely promulgated that, as they
said, Christian antiquity assigned to the bishops of Rome unbounded authority over
the whole universal Church.
The Papal Church though she now acknowledges the
spuriousness and forged character of those decrees on which her excessive claims are
grounded, not only stubbornly refuses to come back to the canons and decrees of the
Ecumenical Synods, but even in the expiring years of the nineteenth century has
widened the gulf by officially proclaiming, to the astonishment of the Christian
world, that the Bishop of Rome is even infallible The Orthodox Eastern and Catholic
Church of Christ, with the exception of the Son and Logos of God, who ineffably
became man, knows no infallible one upon earth.
Even the Apostle Peter himself,
whose successor the Pope thinks himself to be, thrice denied the Lord, and was twice
rebuked by Apostle Paul, as not walking upright according to the truth of the Gospel.
BEHOLD! THE FRAUD AND MYTH OF PAPAL SUPERIORITY!
CONDEMNED POPES EXPOSES THEIR EMPTINESS
Afterwards the Pope Liberius subscribed an Arian (denial that Christ is truly God
and man) confession, and likewise Pope Zosimus, in the fifth century, approved a
heretical confession denying original sin.
Pope Vigilus, in the sixth century, was
condemned for wrong opinions by the fifth Synod.
Pope Honorius, having fallen into
the Monothelite heresy, was condemned in the seventh century by the Sixth
Ecumenical Synod, and the Popes who succeeded him acknowledged and accepted
his condemnation.
TRUTH PRESERVED ONLY IN ORTHODOXY – THE BODY OF CHRIST.
In vain, therefore, does the Bishop of Rome send us to the sources that we may
seek diligently for what our forefathers believed and what the first period of
Christianity delivered to us.
In these sources we, the Orthodox find the old and
divinely transmitted doctrines, to which we carefully hold firmly up to the present
time, and nowhere do we find the innovations which later times of empty mindedness
brought forth in the West, and which the Papacy having adopted retains till this very
day.
The Orthodox Church then justly glories in Christ as being the Church
of the Seven Ecumenical Synods and of the first nine centuries of
Christianity, and therefore the One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church
of Christ, ‘the pillar and foundation of truth’ ! (1 Tim. 3:15).
”
Signed:
In the Patriarchal Palace of Constantinople in the month of August of the year of
grace MDCCCXCV.
(1895 AD)
ANTHIMUS (Patriarch) of Constantinople, beloved brother and intercessor in Christ
our God.
NICODEMUS of Cyzicus, beloved brother and intercessor in Christ our God
PHILOTHEUS of Nicomedia, beloved brother and intercessor in Christ our God
JEROME of Nicaea, beloved brother and intercessor in Christ our God
NATHANIEL of Prusa, beloved brother and intercessor in Christ our God
BASIL of Smyrna, beloved brother and intercessor in Christ our God
STEPHEN of Philadelphia, beloved brother and intercessor in Christ our God
ATHANASIUS of Lemnos, beloved brother and intercessor in Christ our God
BESSARION of Dyrrachium, beloved brother and intercessor in Christ our God
DOROTHEOS of Belgrade beloved brother and intercessor in Christ our God
NICODEMOS of Elasson, beloved brother and intercessor in Christ our God
SOPHRONIUS of Carpathus and Cassus, beloved brother and intercessor in Christ
our God
DIONYSIUS of Eleutheropolis, beloved brother and intercessor in Christ our God
Source of all text except headings:
The entire source of the preceding text is taken from the official encyclical of the
Patriarch and Patriarchal Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.
The original document was published in Greek in 1895, republished in English in
1950 and in 1958 by the Orthodox Christian Movement of St.
John the Baptist, at the
Greek Orthodox Archdiocese 10 East 79th Street in New York City.
It is the official
response or Reply of the Great Church of Constantinople to the Pope’s attempts to
subjugate the Orthodox under his supreme , universal and infallible authority.
Let us stand well! Let us stand with fear , and procl..
“Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and for ever.
Be not carried away with
various and strange doctrines.” (Heb.
13:8), paraphrased: The Holy Orthodox
Church of Jesus Christ, is the same One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, “
yesterday, today and for ever.
Be not carried away with various and strange
doctrines”.
Full text:
THE REPLY OF THE ORTHODOX CHURCH TO
ROMAN CATHOLIC OVERTURES ON REUNION
The Answer of the Great Church of Constantinople
to a Papal Encyclical on Reunion.
Translated out of original Greek
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