But what if a person should find himself unable to pray in the manner sanctioned and approved of by the denomination to which he belongs? Then he is in deep trouble. For, as Vladimir Lossky, one of the finest Orthodox theologians of modern times, was always at pains to stress in his writings and lectures, there can be no dichotomy between a person's spiritual life and the beliefs of the religious communion to which he belongs. Dogma is the public affirmation by the whole body of believers, that is to say, the Church, of what is lived in the spiritual awareness of each individual member of that body. If individual piety be divorced from the official teaching of the Church, as is unfortunately the case in virtually all forms of Western Christendom, then that piety will become the refuge and solace of devout, but emotionally unbalanced, souls (witness what occurs in ìPentecostalismî and revivalist movements). Whereas for its part, theology will be the pursuit of leisured academics of every nuance of belief - and of none. There must be reciprocity, interdependence between the publicly professed Creed and the individual believer's response, in his life of prayer, to the articles formulated in the Creed. But as I could not pray as the Roman Church would have its members pray, I felt morally obliged to secede from that Church, and to seek admission to a Church which has never lost a sense of transcendence and mystery.

Ecclesiological considerations also played an important part in my conversion to Orthodoxy. To put it in a nutshell: whereas the Orthodox Churches are Christocentric (i.e. built on Christ, the Church's Cornerstone), the Roman Church is anthropocentric, that is to say, founded on a man, the Pope of Rome who, as I have already said, is called the infallible Vicar of Christ. Thus is Christ removed from the day to day running and guidance of his Church. For what need can there be for him to intervene in the Church's polity and government if he has a vicar, an ambassador, a minister plenitpotentiary, a viceroy (call him what you will) to do his work for him? This apotheosis of the Pope of Rome - an apotheosis attributable to an erroneous exegesis of the text of Saint Matthew's Gospel, chapter 16 verse 17 - reached its apogee in the dogma of the infallibility and extraordinary jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome as Supreme Pontiff, a dogma defined and proclaimed by the First Council of the Vatican (1869-70). The Pope of Rome's ex cathedra pronouncements, so that council declared in its defining Dogmatic Bull (instrument) are, independently of ecclesiastical consensus, infallible and irreformable of their very nature. Thus the Bishop of Rome, and only he, is authorised to define what must and what must not be believed, on pain of excommunication and eternal damnation, by all the members of his Church; and he is, by virtue of his position as Pope, entitled to intervene in the affairs of dioceses other than his own (Rome), the bishops of which are merely the Pope's vassals who must comply to the letter with his every dictate.

But history has shown quite clearly just how fallible, both in matters of doctrine and in their own personal lives, many popes have been. Undoubtedly that is why Archbishop Edward Manning of Westminster ( England 's primatial Roman Catholic See), told his clergy and flock, on returning from the First Vatican Council, that the definition of the infallibility of the pope was ìa triumph of dogma over historyî. And that sums it up very acurately!

But that is not all: the very manner in which the dogma of papal infallibility was promulgated was, and remains, inconsistent with the essence of the dogma. For if the Pope of Rome is, as the dogma declares, infallible with an infallibility which does not derive from, but is quite independent of, a consensus of ecclesiastical opinion, what need was there to convene a council simply so that the pope might be told by those taking part in it that he was what he already knew himself to be? Why should he set such store by what the members of that council thought, since he is above conciliar proclamations? He could have dispensed with the council, and, paraphrasing Louis XV's dictum, stood up and said: L'eglise, c'est MOI! In all the years that I was a member of the Roman Church I could never accept papal infallibity as it was defined by the First Council of the Vatican ; I did, however, acquiesce in it as, for a time, I regarded it as a safeguard against protestant theological and doctrinal anarchy.

Another consequence of the dogma of papal infallibility is that the Roman Church is divided into two main sections: 1. the teaching church (ecclesia docens), which is comprised of the pope and his episcopal minions, whose responsibility it is to pass on, whole and intact, the teaching and instructions that they have received from the Vatican; 2. the church that is taught (ecclesia docta), which is to say, all lesser mortals upon whom it is incumbent to accept unhesitatingly and unquestioningly whatever, through their bishops, the pope may see fit to enjoin upon them. All this is in stark contrast to Orthodox ecclesiology, according to which no one bishop, no one patriarch, may impose his will on his brother bishops, nor interfere in the internal affairs of any diocese other than his own. Any kind of coercion is unthinkable. A patriarch or a metropolitan may proffer his solicited or unsolicited advice; but he can never coerce his brothers in the episcopacy. And by virtue of baptism, it is the bound duty of every Orthodox Christian, be he patriarch or simple, illiterate peasant, to preserve inviolate and to transmit the teachings of the Orthodox Faith. There have been councils (notably the so-called ìRobber Council of Ephesusî, and the reunion councils of Lyons and of Ferrara-Florence) which at first were regarded by those taking part in them to be ecumenical councils, but which were repudiated, and their determinations rejected by the body the faithful.

One final observation concerning the divergent ecclesiologies. There is a common and widespread misconception that the only matter that seperates the Orthodox Churches and the Roman Church from each other is the question of the double procession of the Holy Spirit (from the Father and the Son), the infamous filioque issue. If that matter could be resolved, it is said, then the two Churches would immediately reunite. Nothing could be further from the truth. Not only is the doctrine of the double procession of the Holy Spirit heretical in itself, in that it postulates two sources of divinity within the Godhead, thereby giving rise to ditheism (two Godheads); it is also indicative of the Pope of Rome's desire to impose unilaterally his will on the whole Church. For, as I have already taken pains to emphasise, no bishop - not even a pope or any other patriarch, for that matter - may act ìoff his own batî, without consulting his episcopal brethren in matters pertaining to the whole Church. And no one bishop may introduce any alteration, no matter how seemingly trivial, into the Symbol of Faith (Creed), that being something only an ecumenical council is competent to do. The Calvinists also recite the Creed without the heretical filioque interpolation. So does that make the Moderator of the Church of Scotland some kind of Orthodox patriarch in Geneva gown and preaching-bands? Does the fact that Mr Ian Paisley sports a Roman (dog) collar when the fit takes him signify that he is a crypto-Jesuit? It would be interesting to hear how he would react to such a surmise!

Sometimes people ask me what, as an Orthodox Christian, my views on ecumenism are. I invariably reply that I sincerely regard ecumenism as a heresy as baneful for the Church of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as were the Christological heresies (Arianism, Nestorianism, et al) for the Church of the third and fourth centuries of our era. By impugning or denying Christ's Natures (divine and human) and his Person, those heresies introduced factions and divisions into the Body of Christ, the Church. The devil's policy then was one of ìdivide and ruleî. Nowadays he seeks to ruin the Church by means of dogmatic syncretism, moral relativism, and doctrinal indifferentism. But he remains intent on effecting the destruction of Christ's ìOne, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church î, attempting to gather Christians of all persuasions under some kind of New Age dome where

SUAVE POLITENESS, temp'ring BIGOT ZEAL,
Changeth I BELIEVE to ONE DOTH FEEL.

Father David is a monk at the Dervent Monastery, near Calarasi.