Unto the Churches of Christ Everywhere
Unto the Churches of Christ Everywhere is the title of an ecumenist[1] encyclical published by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1920. It marks the first official endorsement of the heresy of ecumenism within the Orthodox Church and also proclaimed the intent of the Patriarchate to switch over to a common calendar with the Western heretics who are on the Gregorian calendar, which proceeded in 1923.
As such, it is one of the two founding documents of World Orthodoxy. (The other being the Declaration of Metropolitan Sergius of Moscow.)
Content
The encyclical called for the practice of converting heretics to be abolished.[2] It claimed that heretics are members of the Church.[3] It announced an intention to join in a common calendar with heretics in order to celebrate feasts together with all heretics.[4] It calls for the Orthodox and heretics to use each other's cemeteries and for mixed marriages[5].
External links
- Text of the encyclical.
References
- ↑ The opening sentence already lays out the intent: “Our own church holds that rapprochement between the various Christian Churches and fellowship between them is not excluded by the doctrinal differences which exist between them.” And then: “Even if in this case, owing to antiquated prejudices, practices or pretensions, the difficulties which have so often jeopardized attempts at reunion in the past may arise or be brought up, nevertheless, in our view, since we are concerned at this initial stage only with contacts and rapprochement, these difficulties are of less importance.” (Emphasis added.) The entire text continues in such fashion.
- ↑ “First, we consider as necessary and indispensable the removal and abolition of all the mutual mistrust and bitterness between the different churches which arise from the tendency of some of them to entice and proselytize adherents of other confessions.” Emphasis in the original.
- ↑ “Secondly, that above all love should be rekindled and strengthened among the churches, so that they should no more consider one another as strangers and foreigners, but as relatives, and as being a part of the household of Christ and "fellow heirs, members of the same body and partakers of the promise of God in Christ" (Eph. 3. 6)”
- ↑ “By the acceptance of a uniform calendar for the celebration of the great Christian feasts at the same time by all the churches.”
- ↑ Absolutely forbidden and invalidated even if unlawfully contracted by—among others—Canon 72 of the Sixth Ecumenical Council.
