A Selection from the Written Confession of Faith of the Athonite Fathers to the Latin-minded and Heretical Patriarch John Vekkos (Patriarch from 1275-1283)
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Dedicated to all those who support those “Church” leaders who engage in ecumenism.
If even a simple greeting makes us a partaker of the evil works of the one we greet, how much more so to commemorate him.
And how can the soul of an Orthodox stand such things and not move away immediately from ecclesiastical communion with those who have commemorated him and who could not consider those who did so to be illicit dealers of sacred things?
After all, the Orthodox Church of God from ancient times accepted the pronouncing of the name of the bishop before the Holy Mysteries as perfect communication with that bishop…
If even a simple greeting makes us a partaker of the evil works of the one we greet, how much more so to commemorate him out loud and more so at the moment we come with awe face to face with the divine Mysteries…
God has also in the past castigated similar evil works with the following words, “priests have violated my law, and have profaned mine holy things: they have put no difference between the holy and profane, neither have they shewed difference between the unclean and the clean”. (Ezekiel 22:26). How do they do that? By not discerning between sacrilegious and holy people, but rather by having everything in common with all… And how can we make a dispensation acceptable that is actually sacrilegious to the divine Mysteries, according to the divine teaching that we just mentioned and repels from the Mysteries the Spirit of God and denies the faithful the forgiveness of sins and the Grace of adoption that come from those very Mysteries? What could be more harmful than one such dispensation?
(Kallistos Vlastou, Historical Essay Concerning the Schism…, pp. 105-111)
The Heretical Patriarch John (ruled from 1275-1283)
