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Tuesday, March 28, 2006

"the necessity of forming a strategic alliance between the Orthodox and Catholics for the defence of traditional Christianity"

See the article Orthodox Participation in the Ninth Assembly of the World Council of Churches. I've long wondered why the Orthodox would want to be members of the WCC, which long has seemed to be just a mouthpiece of secular socialism. The Orthodox are wondering, too.
On the whole, the Orthodox delegates highly praised the efforts of the WCC to overcome the estrangement that arose between the Orthodox and the non-Orthodox member churches of the Council in the 1990s. However, the positive measures taken could not stop the process that has already been in motion for several decades and which has acquired, in my opinion, an irreversible character. I am speaking of the gradual and ever more obvious division between the "Churches of Tradition", i.e. Churches in which Tradition plays a central role (mainly the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches), and churches in which the adherence to Tradition is not considered obligatory and in which a liberalization of dogmatic and moral doctrine can be observed over the past decades. In particular, fundamental Christian moral norms based not only on Holy Tradition, but also on Holy Scripture, have undergone re-examination. One of the most visible results of this process has been the recognition of "homosexual unions" in some of the Protestant churches of Europe and North America.

All of this has caused me time and time again to return to the thought of the necessity of forming a strategic alliance between the Orthodox and Catholics for the defence of traditional Christianity. No ecumenical organization, including the WCC, can turn back the process of continual liberalization of the Protestant churches of the North and their further estrangement from the "Churches of Tradition". In defending traditional values the main ally of the Orthodox Church is the Roman Catholic Church. But the latter is hardly represented in the World Council of Churches.

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