Rumbles in Bulgarian Patriarchate over Phanar’s 2016 Council
The Bulgarian Orthodox Church’s Holy Synod, the church’s governing body, has adopted hard-line policy positions ahead of the Pan-Orthodox Council to be held in Crete in June 2016 – stating, among other things, that besides the “Holy Orthodox Church there are no other churches, but only heresies and schisms, and to call these ‘churches’ is theologically, dogmatically and canonically completely wrong”.
The Pan-Orthodox Council will bring together all the universally-recognised autocephalous churches of Eastern Orthodox Christianity in the first such gathering in more than 1000 years.
It has been in the planning since 1961 and will cover a range of issues, including the relations between the Orthodox Church and the rest of the Christian world.
Other issues to be covered include the Mission of the Orthodox Church in the Contemporary World; The Orthodox Diaspora; Autonomy and its Manner of Proclamation; The Sacrament of Marriage and its Impediments; the Significance of Fasting and its Application Today.
