Ecumenism resorts to a wide variety of means, so that it can promote its plans. Its basic means is through dialogues.

            Nobody can deny that the Orthodox Church is by nature open to dialogue.  God always converses with man, and the Saints of the Church never declined any dialectic communication with the people.

            The Saints, who were fully conscious of their communion with God, strove through dialogue to relay the instances of Truth that they themselves had experienced. To them, the Truth was not an object of research.  They did not seek it; they did not negotiate it; they merely offered it. If their dialogues did not succeed in leading the heterodox to the rejection of their fallacious beliefs and the acceptance of the orthodox faith, they would simply discontinue their dialogue.

            Saint Mark of Ephesus conversed with the Papists for two whole years, during the Synod of Ferrara, Florence (1438-1439). After seeing their arrogance, their uncompromising stance and their persistence in their fallacious beliefs, he ceased every kind of association with them, in fact he urged the orthodox faithful: “Avoid the Papists, just like one avoids a snake”.

            The Ecumenical Patriarch Jeremiah II the Renowned, along with the Protestant theologians of Tybing (1579), had also commenced a theological dialogue.  However, when the Patriarch realized that the dialogue did not bear any fruits, he discontinued it. “We beg you” he wrote to them, “not to tire us any longer…Walk your own path. If you so desire, you may write to us, but not longer on dogmas of the faith”.