These are the true theologians of the Church today, men of prayer. Listen to what they have to say about the approaching "Pan"-Orthodox Council (which has excluded most Orthodox, bishops and clergy alike): It was related to me that Metropolitan Philaret slept little and prayed much of the night through. When there was a gathering of bishops for the Holy Synod he was known to go through the halls and stand before the doors of the bishops cells and pray the supplication service for each of them. These are the theologians of the Church - not those who sit in their university office buildings speculating and commenting on the texts of the Holy Fathers, innovating and updating their teachings, treating the Faith as if it were an ideology or an ethical system or a philosophy of life as opposed to LIFE itself, Christ Himself, with whom we submit to as Lord and Master, are united to as Life, walk with as the Way and believe in and preach as the Truth. Unless such men are present in Crete, the meeting there is doomed to be a false council, as St. Justin predicted 40 years ago. The texts which they have drafted and the rules which they have laid down for it likewise point to such an outcome. Lord save the pious!
"The strength of Orthodoxy has always lain in Her maintaining the principles of Church Tradition. Despite this, there are those who are attempting to include in the agenda of a future Great Council not a discussion of the best ways to safeguard those principles, but, on the contrary, ways to bring about a radical revision of the entire way of life in the Church, beginning with the abolition of fasts, second marriages of the clergy, etc., so that Her way of life would be closer to that of the heretical communities."
"With such attitudes, is it any surprise that compromise reigns supreme in the relationship between the Orthodox promoters of ecumenism and the Roman Catholics, Protestants and Anti-Chalcedonians?...
Yet, behind these practical manifestations of the so-called ecumenical movement, other broader aims are discernible which lead to the utter abolition of the Orthodox Church. Both the World Council of Churches and the dialogues between various Christian confessions, and even with other religions (such as, for instance, Islam and Judaism) are links in a chain which in the manner of thinking of ecumenists must grow to include all of mankind...
According to ecumenists, all this could be accomplished by a special Council, which in their eye would be truly "ecumenical" since they do not recognize the historical Ecumenical Councils as being truly so."
– Metropolitan Philaret of New York (reposed in 1985, found incorrupt in 1998)
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