August 10, 2023

Resisting False Union - Fr. Alexey Young

13 minutes

Fr. Alexey Young, also known as Hieroschemamonk Ambrose, is a close spiritual son of Fr. Seraphim Rose. In the same spirit of Fr. Seraphim, Fr. Alexey calls all Orthodox Christians to a greater awareness and conscious resistance to the error of Roman Catholicism and the grave temptation, very present in our own day, of false union with Rome.

0:00 Intro

0:10 The first way to resist false union is to pray and repent, then appeal to our hierarchs

0:30 What any patriarch and bishop does matters to all of us, from layman to hierarch

1:33 We must teach the faithful the truth and the true nature of Roman Catholicism

2:12 “This is not a time for half measures.”

2:51 Met. Philaret’s teaching on the boundaries and uniqueness of Orthodoxy

4:06 The meaning of “ecumenical” and how it means something different today

5:07 St. Mark of Ephesus: a great example for us today

6:15 Statement by Representatives of the Greek Orthodox Church in 1957

8:02 Elder Philetheos: “Let there be union… but in the way Christ wishes it: far from every worldly purpose and every compromise…”

8:40 Orthodoxy in America has fiddled with secondary matters while secularism has crept in to our Church

9:45 This worldliness is a new kind of Orthodoxy being preached today and it sets us up for false union with Rome

11:02 “Too many of us lack a sufficiently developed Orthodox conscientiousness to be aware of the present ecumenist threat to our Faith.”

11:58 Many have become numb to true repentance, accustomed to comforts, and it is this that makes many Orthodox Christians attracted to Roman Catholicism

-from "The Rush to Embrace" by Fr. Alexey Young, pp. 80-86.

More from Fr. Alexey:

--The Rush to Embrace: https://churchsupplies.jordanville.org/9781879066090/

--Many of Fr. Alexey's other writings can be read here: https://orthochristian.com/83940.html

--Letter From Father Seraphim: The twelve-year correspondence between Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose) and Father Alexey Young: https://hvcbookstore.com/Letters-From-Father-Seraphim

--A Man Is His Faith, the life of Ivan Kireyevsky, a lay theologian and disciple of Optina Elders.https://sjkp.org/products/a-man-is-his-faith

Other recordings from Orthodox Wisdom:

--A Desperate Appeal (Against False Union with Rome) - Elder Philotheos Zervakos:

https://youtu.be/X19FQxiLlhA

--On False Union With Rome & Fighting From Within - St. Paisios the Athonite:

https://youtu.be/sAK7BMuUkic

_______

Fr. Alexey writes:

This is not a time for half measures. Orthodox priests who tell their flocks that they may attend Roman Catholic (or Episcopal) churches if there is no Orthodox parish nearby, must be corrected, and disciplined if they persist in this grievous error. Priests must be again reminded that they may not, under any circumstances, give Holy Communion to non-Orthodox. Also, those who tell Roman Catholic and Protestant inquirers that they should stay in their own Churches and not convert to Orthodoxy, must be reprimanded. Immortal souls are at stake!

Too many of us lack a sufficiently developed Orthodox consciousness to be aware of the present ecumenist threat to our Faith. Not only is the development of such a consciousness greatly hindered by the relativism and materialism (the opposite of asceticism) that saturate our society, but our natural human longing for peace and harmony, for love and brotherhood, has made us vulnerable to ecumenical "sweet talk." An inadequate knowledge of Church history and a weak understanding of Orthodox ecclesiology is now putting us even further at risk. Brothers and sisters: our holy Orthodox Faith is at stake here! We cannot afford to be naive, and ignorance is not bliss—it is suicide. And it is this very ignorance that has made possible the growing "union fever" we see around us today.

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