Reference
Canons against ecumenism
The sacred canons that govern prayer and communion with those outside the Orthodox faith, gathered by category from the primary sources. The canons themselves are plain and binding; what is contested is their application to the modern ecumenical movement, and that dispute is marked here, not hidden.
How to read this page
Two things must be held apart, and most of the heat on this subject comes of confusing them. The first is what the canons say, which is not in serious dispute: the Church has, from the Apostolic canons onward, forbidden her clergy and faithful to pray liturgically with heretics, to receive their rites and blessings as her own, and to keep communion with those who are themselves cut off. These are real canons of the Church's own law, and they are summarised below by category, in this library's own words, with references to the standard collections. The second is whether, and how, they apply to the acts of the modern ecumenical movement, the joint prayers, the shared declarations, the membership in the ecumenical bodies. That is the contested question. This library reads the canons as applying, and the reading is argued on the pages linked below; the official Churches read them as not engaged, or as suspended by economy. The canons are documented; the application is disputed, and both are labelled as such.
1. Against common prayer and worship with the heterodox
The oldest and firmest stratum: to pray liturgically with heretics is itself forbidden, before any question of the Chalice arises.
- Apostolic Canon 45Holy Apostles
A bishop, presbyter or deacon who merely prays together with heretics is to be suspended; if he permits them to function as clergy, he is to be deposed.
- Apostolic Canon 65Holy Apostles
Any clergyman or layman who enters the assembly of Jews or of heretics to pray is to be deposed or excommunicated.
- Canon 33 of LaodiceaCouncil of Laodicea
One must not join in prayer with heretics or with schismatics.
- Canon 6 of LaodiceaCouncil of Laodicea
Heretics persisting in their heresy are not permitted to enter the house of God.
2. Against communion with the excommunicated and deposed
The principle that communion passes along its own chain: to commune with one who is himself cut off is to be cut off with him.
- Apostolic Canon 10Holy Apostles
Whoever prays together with an excommunicated person, even privately, is himself to be excommunicated.
- Apostolic Canon 11Holy Apostles
A clergyman who joins in prayer with a deposed clergyman, treating him as still a cleric, is himself to be deposed.
3. Against receiving the rites and blessings of heretics
The mysteries and blessings of the heterodox are not to be received as the Church's own.
- Apostolic Canon 46Holy Apostles
A bishop or presbyter who accepts the baptism or the offering of heretics is to be deposed: what concord has Christ with Belial?
- Canon 32 of LaodiceaCouncil of Laodicea
The blessings of heretics are not blessings but follies, and are not to be received.
4. Against shared feasts and honoring the heterodox as holy
The subtler forms of communion, by festivity and by veneration, are refused along with the overt ones.
- Canon 37 of LaodiceaCouncil of Laodicea
One must not keep the feasts of Jews or of heretics, nor accept their festal gifts.
- Canon 34 of LaodiceaCouncil of Laodicea
No Christian is to forsake the martyrs of Christ for the false martyrs of the heretics.
5. The reception of the heterodox, and the charter of separation
How those who return are received, and the one canon that protects withdrawal from a hierarch preaching condemned heresy.
- St Basil, Letter 188, canon 1St Basil the Great
The classic distinction of heresy, schism and parasynagogue, and the terms on which each is received back, heretics by baptism, others by economy.
- Canon 15, First and Second CouncilConstantinople (861)
Those who cease commemorating a hierarch who publicly preaches an already condemned heresy, before any synodical verdict, are not condemned but worthy of honour, having not torn the Church but sought to deliver her from schism.
The joint prayer question in particular
Among all these, the canons against common prayer bear most directly on the modern debate, because it is joint prayer and concelebration with the heterodox that the ecumenical era has most visibly revived. The canons make no distinction between a joint prayer meant sincerely and one meant diplomatically; they forbid the act. The permissive answer is that these canons addressed formal liturgical concelebration, not the gatherings of the modern movement, and that pastoral economy may cover what strict application would forbid. The stricter answer, which this library holds, is that the canons forbid precisely the blurring of the line between the Church and those outside her, and that this is exactly what such gatherings enact, whatever the intention. The Canon 15 research centre sets out the fuller argument and its scaffolding; the question on condemned heresy treats the hardest link in it.
Sources
- The Apostolic Canons; the canons of the Council of Laodicea, full texts in St Nikodemos, Pēdalion (the Rudder), and in Rhalles and Potles, Σύνταγμα.
- St Basil the Great, First Canonical Epistle (Letter 188, canon 1).
- Canon 15 of the First and Second Council of Constantinople (861).
- For the disputed application: the catalogued study (Trikamenas, 2012); the opposing position of Epiphanios Theodoropoulos, Τὰ δύο ἄκρα.
- See also the glossary and the First and Second Council record.