What will be the effect of the “Holy and Great Council” to be held in Crete on the Orthodox Christians everywhere (if the Council approves the preliminary texts adopted by the Synaxis of the Primates of the Orthodox Autocephalous Churches at Chambésy in January 2016)?

First of all, the effect will be the distortion of the Church teaching in the mind of the Orthodox Christians, or better said the sealing of this already existing distortion. The Orthodox Christians are influenced today by a variety of relativist ideas; for the most part they ignore their own faith. Orthodoxy is not a relativist faith, but confesses that there are no truths other than Christ, Who said: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life”, and that no one can acquire the eternal Life without uniting with Christ in the One Church, His Body.
In spite of this, today many believe that the Roman Catholics are also a Church (Sister Churches, “the two lungs of the Church”), even more believe that those who are not Orthodox will be saved too, and many more of them see nothing wrong in praying and worshipping together with the non-Orthodox or in appropriating various Protestant and pagan ideas. Some of these ideas will be sealed by this Council, showing a state of fact. By trampling the teaching of the Church, the Orthodox identity will be lost and in the Holy Sanctuaries the Orthodox teaching will no longer be asserted by the priests who preach the new relativist faith.

This is precisely the beginning of any fall out of the Church of Christ, the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic, that is the Orthodox Church. Every reference point for holiness will be abolished, so that the whole battle of the saints for keeping the purity of the Orthodox faith will be made useless. The new type of “Orthodox” will be created, who has as supreme values Freedom, Fraternity and Equality, as the preliminary texts for the Council in Crete assert.

This will be an alienation of the people from Orthodoxy, with the main consequence of losing the salvation of their soul!

This is why we attach so much importance to the knowledge of the Orthodox teaching in contrast with the novel teachings of this so-called “Council”.

In history there have been many robber councils, that is, councils which tried to change the teaching of the Church and to endorse other ideas. It is not unlikely that we will have another one soon. But whoever will accept it in his consciousness and confession, and will not wall himself off from those who accept it, will be apart from Christ God the Truth and His Gospel.

Protopresbyter Matei Vulcănescu