Metropolitan Seraphim of Piraeus is convinced that dialogues between Orthodox and heretics have yielded no results, except for the erosion of Orthodox consciousness.
On March 19, 2021, Metropolitan Seraphim of Piraeus of the Greek Orthodox Church announced that the ecumenists are preparing the world religion of Satan, according to the Vima Orthodoxias website.
The Metropolitan recalled that the duty of Christians is “to guard the treasure of the Orthodox faith like the apple of an eye, pure and not distorted by any heretical teachings and delusions.”
He emphasizes that “this task is more necessary and urgent today than ever before, because today our Church is exposed to attack and harassment from many modern sects, of which the most dangerous is ecumenism.”
“This terrible heresy, the product of modern attempts of religious unification of mankind, has sprung off various heretical theories such as ‘branch theory’, ‘dogmatic minimalism’, ‘baptismal unity’, ‘sister churches’, ‘extended ecclesiology’, etc. that are incompatible with the dogmatic teaching of our Church and with its timeless belief that it alone is the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, as we profess in the Symbol of Faith,” the Metropolitan noted.
According to him, “because of these heretical theories, the accuracy of the dogmatic truths of the faith, for the sake of which our holy fathers made a lot of efforts and sacrifices, is decreasing, relativizing and degrading,” and “the return of heterodox heretics to the Orthodox faith and Apostolic Tradition is no longer considered a necessary condition for unification of Churches .”
He noted that the writings of St. Gregory Palamas, Patriarch Photius and St. Mark of Ephesus, “who fought against papism, have been canceled and condemned in practice.”
“Their anti-Latin writings, in which they demonstrated its delusions, are rejected and a new view is adopted that our dogmatic differences in relation to heretics are ‘different traditions’ so that they cease to be an obstacle to the attempt of establishing a ‘union’,” emphasized the Metropolitan.
According to him, all this “contributes to a superficial type of unity that does not pay attention to the huge dogmatic discrepancies that divide us”, and “is not limited only to the inter-Christian level but expands to the inter-confessional level.”
“Multilateral interfaith meetings, dialogues and conferences are one of the most important goals of interreligious ecumenism,” Vladyka says, and reminds that all “dialogues that have taken place so far not only failed to give results, but, on the contrary, inevitably led to the decline and erosion of the Orthodox mind, to compromises and unacceptable concessions to our dogma and church identity. ”
“Orthodox representatives in these dialogues, having no spiritual experience, superficially build bridges unable to overcome huge gaps and eliminate distances and differences between religions, and at the same time they lose sight of the fact that truth and heresy do not have a quantitative difference,” says Metropolitan Seraphim.
“Heresy is not just less true, so with some corrections it will turn into Orthodoxy. Heresy, no matter how insignificant it may seem, is a delusion, it is darkness, sin and death,” the bishop believes.
Thus, he is convinced, “we have come to the tragic phenomenon of Orthodox representatives making non-Orthodox statements and signing texts to be adopted together with heretics, alien to the tradition and dogmatic teaching of our Church.”
Considering all of this, Metropolitan Seraphim called on Orthodox Christians to an anti-heretical struggle against “the modern multi-headed beast – the pan-heresy of ecumenism, promoting the world religion of Satan.”
Earlier, the UOJ wrote that according to Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, those who call ecumenism as heresy violate the unity of the Church, while interreligious dialogue is one of the priorities for Phanar.
