Ecumenism and syncretism have weakened the faith

[Maria]

When I asked a few members in World Orthodoxy if they were willing to die for their faith, they said that if Islamic terrorists were to threaten their young children or their elderly sick parents with death, then they would renounce Christianity in favor of Islam in order to save their young or elderly relatives.

What can I say? I would not want my relatives to renounce the Holy Faith so that I might live. They would be dead in Christ.

Can the term "courageous" be given to these "Christians" who are willing to deny their faith?

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/relig ... ts?page=23

• At least five Christian families who were not healthy enough to flee Mosul, Iraq after the militant group Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) ordered them to convert to Islam or be executed, have renounced their faith for Islam, according to a local government minister.

  "There are five Christian families who converted to Islam because they were threatened with death," Younadim Kanna, a Christian and a member of Iraq's Parliament told The New York Times. "They did so just to stay alive."

[Maria]

This reminds me what Met. Cyprian of the GOC-K recently wrote in his latest encyclical issued on the Feast of Sts Peter and Paul:

http://www.hotca.org/news/miscellaneous ... the-church

• “By the ‘Mystery of Iniquity’ [St. Paul] means the teachings of heresies
  and their false doctrines. For they go before it [the Mystery], paving the
  way for it and providing occasion for deception; and heresies had already
  emerged in Apostolic times.”

In English: http://www.hsir.org/pdfs/2014/07/13/E20 ... 9-6-14.pdf

And this quote too from the same document:

• The Divine Chrysostomos tellingly remarks: “For just as he who pares away
  small part of the image on a royal coin renders the whole coin counterfeit, so
  he who deviates even to the smallest extent from soundness of Faith becomes
  entirely corrupted, proceeding from this beginning to graver errors.”

Yes, staying in communion with Hierarchs of the New Calendar weakens and destroys the faith.
It is like putting a frog in a cold pan of cold water, and then placing that pan on the stove on low heat
The frog does not know that he is being slowly cooked to death.
Those in the Ecumenist Church do not realize that they have lost the faith and grace,
until they are faced with martyrdom. By that time, they are rendered too weak and cowardly to resist evil.

Lord have mercy.

Let us pray for each other that we may have the grace to persevere in the Holy Faith and even to accept martyrdom.