[quote:28jtvgw0]If Ecumenism claims that there is no One True Church, Catholicism does not hold to it. I have never seen that definition for it, and know it is NOT what is meant by ecumenism when the Pope says it. The Catholic Church DEFINITELY claims to be ONE, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic. We msot certainly do NOT admit other churches as true churches.

Now other churches can have varying levels of the truth. For instance, Orthodoxy would be as close to the truth as you could really be without having the WHOLE truth. Episcopalian would have less truth than Orthodox, Lutherans less than Episcopalians, and Fundamentalist Baptists less than Lutherans.

But that is NOT to say they are true Churches, merely that they have SOME of the truth in them.[/quote:28jtvgw0]

I realise that what Orthodox who are opposed to it call ecumenism and what the Pope calls ecumenism are two different things – that’s why I tried to explain the distinction. The dialog with Rome, in my opinion, is not heretical so long as it is seeking to heal the Schism by bringing Rome back into the Church. Our membership of the WCC and dialogs there are perilously close to heresy, though I try to be charitable and put it down to my own heirarchs’ unfamiliarity with Protestant ecclesiology (there are very few Protestants in Romania).

As for the rest of your post, I could say exactly the same thing except for changing everywhere you wrote Catholic for Orthodox and vice versa, except that I would have to say that, now at least, I feel the the Oriental Orthodox are closer to the full Truth of the Holy Orthodox Catholic Church than are Roman Catholics. I do not believe any of their doctrine is heretical (though their Christology is very badly phrased). In contrast, unfortunately, I feel the RCC has developed several new heretical doctrines since the Schism, and doesn’t yet appear to have renounced the heresy of filioquism (though this has been watered down).

Note that I am trying to describe the situation as we see it and I hope that this doesn’t cause offence (your post did not offend me) and that you can see that if I oppose ecumenism but accept legitimate dialog, from your perspective I am saying the very same thing as your Pope does.

James