The
blending of world religions has been high on the Roman Catholic Pope’s agenda
for years now, and continues to be:
This year [2016] marks the 30th anniversary of the
First World Day of Prayer for Peace that St. John Paul convened back in 1986,
an historic event which saw world leaders of different religions come together
for the very first time to pray for peace.
The Pope travelled to Assisi
by helicopter and after his landing near the Basilica of St Mary of the
Angels where Bishop Domenico Sorrentino of Assisi and the local authorities greeted him,
the Pope travelled by car to the Holy Convent of Assisi. Here he was welcomed
by Father Mauro Gambetti, Custodian of the Holy Convent, the Ecumenical
Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, a Muslim reprepresentative, Dr
Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, the Syro-Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch,
Efrem II, a Jewish representative and the Supreme Head of Tendai Buddhism (Japan). They
then moved to the Cloister of Sixtus IV where the representatives of Christian
denominations and World Religions were waiting.
The
aforementioned Patriarch Bartholomew seems also to be playing the game of
syncretism pretty well. A recent speech
of his focused quite a lot on an abstract, philosophic pan-religion that all
world religions, including Orthodoxy, were measured against. Notice also the focus on man rather than God
and on the insistence of a ‘common future/journey’:
On Wednesday, April 26, His All-Holiness Ecumenical
Patriarch Bartholomew left Geneva, where he had addressed
the World Council of Churches the day before, for Cairo,
where he attended and addressed an interreligious conference at Al-Azhar University on Thursday. His address,
“Religions and Peace,” focused on the importance of religions and
interreligious dialogue in today’s world, and his view of the equally peaceful
nature of all religions.
The international peace conference was attended by
representatives of the religious, political, and academic spheres from various
states, Romfea reports. Conscious of his inter-religious audience,
His Holiness speaks throughout of “religion” in general, rather than the
particularities of Orthodox Christianity and union with Jesus Christ.
The patriarch opened by noting the increase in terrorist
attacks over the past two decades, which have left countless dead and injured,
“and which are becoming the greatest threat and source of fear for contemporary
societies,” and which are typically blamed on religion. He also highlighted the
simultaneous willingness for peace-promoting dialogue among political,
religious, and secular leaders.
“How, then,” Patriarch Bartholomew wonders, “after
so many conferences, declarations and initiatives for peace, could we witness
an increase of violence, instead of noticing a progress in peace making?”
To understand our modern world, he pinpointed four
areas in which, not simply Orthodoxy in particular, but religion in general
plays a critical role: Religion is connected with the deep concerns of the
human being, providing answers to existential questions and opening eternity to
man; Religion is related to the identity of peoples and civilizations; Religion
has created and preserved man’s greatest cultural achievements, moral values,
compassion, and respect for all of creation; and Religion is a vital factor in
the peace process.
His All-Holiness did note that religion can cause
divisive intolerance and violence, but, speaking of all religions equally,
added, “this is rather [religion’s] failure, not its essence, which is the
protection of human dignity.”
In his explanation, the extremes of relativism and
fundamentalism distort and prevent these essential roles of religion in the
modern world, noting that fundamentalism provides skeptics with arguments against
faith. Relativism “denies the existence of truth,” while in his presentation,
fundamentalism is that which “considers that its own truth is unique, and must
therefore be imposed over the others.”
The patriarch recalls the recent terrorist attacks
in Paris, Brussels,
Istanbul, Saint Petersburg
or Stockholm, and the most recent against Coptic
churches in Tanta and Alexandria. Of course, all of these attacks
were carried out by Muslims and in the name of Islam, although this point does
not appear in the patriarch’s speech. Describing all religions as having the
same ideals, he states, “The truth is that violence is the negation of the
fundamental religious beliefs and doctrine.”
Romfea notes that His All-Holiness received a round
of applause from the audience gathered in heavily-Islamic Egypt when he
affirmed, “We would like to oppose at least one prejudice: Islam does not
equal terrorism, because terrorism is a stranger to any religion.” He also
noted that the encyclical of last year’s Cretan Council also emphasizes that
fundamentalism does not “belong to the essence of the phenomenon of religion.”
The Constantinopolitan prelate offered the
counter-example of the Mediterranean region, which he characterized as a place
of peaceful cohabitation of Jews, Christians, and Muslims over the past several
centuries, where people of various religions living together find “the most
fundamental message for humanity which unites.”
Drawing to a close, he called upon all nations,
states, and religions to work together to overcome the violence that we see so
often in our world today, as with the various Islamic attacks he had previously
referenced. “We need one another; we need common mobilization, common efforts,
common goals, common spirit… Our future is common, and the way toward this
future is a common journey,” he stated.
In conclusion, the patriarch addressed the
inter-religious gathering, with the same words of the Psalmist with which he
had opened his presentation to the World Council of Churches: Behold now, what is so good or so pleasant as for
brothers to dwell together in unity? (Psalm 133:1).
Then
there is Hillary Clinton’s praise of the Patriarch, which has a like theme:
Today,
on the 25th anniversary of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew’s election to the
head of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Hillary Clinton issued the following
statement:
“For
the last quarter century, the world has been blessed to have the spiritual
leadership of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, who has taken unprecedented
steps to deepen cooperation within the Orthodox sects and to establish
inter-religious dialogues with other Christian churches as well as with Muslim
and Jewish communities. His All Holiness has worked tirelessly to move the
Orthodox Church forward and repair bonds that have frayed over the centuries,
including by being the first spiritual head of the Eastern Orthodox Christians
to attend a papal inauguration since the Great Schism, and convening the first
Great and Holy Council of the Orthodox Christian Church in over 1,200 years. I
have had the great honor of seeing Patriarch Bartholomew’s spiritual leadership
for myself, and am inspired by his work on human rights, religious tolerance,
and environmental protection. I send my best wishes to His All Holiness on this
momentous milestone.
With
Archbishop Demetrios also being used lately as a stage prop to show the ‘strong
bond’ between Greece
and the [u.] S.,
one
could at least hope that the Patriarch’s words and actions are simply a bending
to pressure and threats applied by the globalists, and not his real beliefs,
that he really believes that his See is ‘this martyric Phanar’ (https://www.patriarchate.org/paschal-proclamations/-/asset_publisher/QnqPBbQ42NED/content/patriarchal-encyclical-for-holy-pascha-2017,
2 May 2017), rather than an outpost of the New World Order in Asia Minor, an
American vassal state, etc. One can hope
that he is trying to protect his flock as best he can from evil men by playing
along, etc., but it seems a stretch. It
is sad to see anyone fall away from the True Faith, especially a bishop. May God help him.
But
we must return where we began, with the Roman Catholic Pope, for with him a
deeper danger lies. Blessed Fr Seraphim
Rose said,
In this process of
evolution, the “Body of Christ” is being formed in the world. Not the Christ of
Orthodoxy, but the “universal” Christ or “Super-Christ,” as he says.
The Super-Christ is
defined by Teilhard as the synthesis of Christ and the universe. This
“evolving” Christ will bring about the unity of all religions. As he says,
quote, “A general convergence of religions upon a universal Christ Who fundamentally
satisfies them all: this seems to me the only possible conversion of the world,
and the only form in which a religion of the future can be conceived.”cclxv
Thus, for Teilhard de Chardin, Christianity is not unique truth, but it is
rather, as he says, “an emerging phylum of evolution,”cclxvi subject to change
and transformation like everything else in the evolving world.
Even like recent
popes, he does not wish to convert the world, but only to offer the papacy as
the kind of mystical center of man’s religious quest, a superdenominational Delphic
Oracle.
As one of his
admirers summarizes his view, “If Christianity...is indeed to be the religion
of tomorrow, there is only one way in which it can hope to come up to the
measure of today’s great humanitarian trends and assimilate them; and that is
through the axis, living and organic, of its Catholicism centered on
Rome.”cclxvii
Is
this not what we are seeing with the World Day of Prayer for Peace, etc.? Is this not what we are seeing with Pope
Francis’s embracing of Martin Luther, Anglicans, and others?
The
new syncretism, the religion of Antichrist, is coming, and people like Pope
Francis are helping to usher it in.
--
Holy
Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the
Souð!
Anathema
to the Union!
