We know that the criterion of Orthodoxy continues to be the faithful and the pious.  Nobody – not even Patriarchs or Synods – can deviate them or silence their conscience. That is also why «no dialogue should take place, and no decision should be reached, if it is not condoned by the ever-vigilant conscience of the Church (meaning the charismatic clergy, laity, monks)» (Metropolitan of Nafpaktos, Hierotheos).

           Ecumenist dialogues, the way they are being conducted, are chiefly favored by circles of academic theology and by other ecclesiastic or other institutional entities that aspire to specific political, economic, public relations and projection benefits. They do not represent a demand of the ecclesiastic body, but are imposed “from outside” and “from higher up”.  This fact reveals a morbid phenomenon:  the autonomizing of the Orthodox Church’s administrational institutions of today. The ecclesiastic administration in other words has deviated from theological thought, but also from the views, the concerns and the experience of the ecclesiastic body.

            Thus, the people of God have no active participation in - nor are they responsibly and objectively informed about – these dialogues.  As it is, their decisions do not always bear the seal of authentic “synodicity”; they are usually made by specialized “professionals” of Ecumenism.  As characteristically testified by an Orthodox hierarch: «The Orthodox people know nothing about the Ecumenist Movement… but, then again, perhaps the Ecumenist Movement is also fortunate, inasmuch as the orthodox population is unaware of what is going on in Geneva»![i]