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Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew

“The ecumenical movement is not ‘inter-confessional compromise,’ but adherence to our obligation and mandate to Christian unity ‘without diverging from the true faith of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.’”

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew

“Dialogue and conversation, which is necessary for its being carried out, is a necessary precondition of mutual understanding, and mutual understanding is a precondition of mutual trust as well as of the ability to cooperate and to coexist.”

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew

“Dialogue is the only path pleasing to God. This is because God always and in many ways dialogues with us, seeking the free offering of our heart and not our forced presentation before Him. Let us offer our hearts to Him and not the hearts of others. Amen.”

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew

“Although the time we have been on the planet is insignificant in the context of the life of the planet itself, we have reached a defining moment in our history. We have expanded our dominion over Nature to the point where absolute limits to our survival are being reached. We have lost half of the great forests of the world to the demand for timber and for conversion to agriculture, without thinking that these giant wet sponges are responsible for the delivery of much of the fresh water…. Instead of living on income, or the available surplus of the earth, we are consuming environmental capital and destroying its sources as if there is no tomorrow.”

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew

“We, however, the people of the so-called Western Civilization, have been convinced that pure religious faith in itself does not find any pleasure in engaging its followers in warfare and conflicts with the faithful of other religions, for the truth does not walk along either with militant power, or with numerical, or any other superiority for that matter.”

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew

“Dialogue is not necessary first and foremost because of all the benefits and advantages that can possibly derive from it, but because of the fact that it is inherent in the nature of the human person. The truth of this is such, that the person, who denies participating in a dialogue, denies indirectly this very human quality. Indeed, not only does one deny this human quality to those whom he or she does not accept in dialogue, but one also abolishes self-evidently one’s very own human quality, for by not showing any respect to the person and the dignity of the other, one acts as if he or she lacks the most principal human trait, which is the respect of a human person, both in one’s self, as well as in any other being.”

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew

“War and violence are never means used by God in order to achieve a [just] result.”

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew

“Theology is not to be regarded as a ‘science’ like, say, geology or astronomy. It is, of course, true that God has conferred on us a reasoning brain with the capacity for logical argumentation, and we must use this gift of reason to the utmost. In our theological inquiries, we are indeed called to pursue the truth with vigorous discipline and a scrupulous respect for the truth. But logical argumentation and critical accuracy are by themselves never sufficient. What is required in theology is personal commitment to the Christian faith. We should theologize not only with the reason, but also with the heart.”

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew

“The understanding of the aims and methods of theology is significantly different in the Orthodox Church from what is commonly accepted by Western Christians. In the words of one of the early Desert Fathers, Evagrius of Pontus, ‘The theologian is the one who prays; and if you pray truly, you are a theologian.’ This indicates at once that, in the Orthodox tradition, there is an essential connection between theology and prayer. There should never be any separation between doctrine and worship, between dogma and spirituality. All true theology is liturgical and mystical. We are to theologize, as St. Gregory the Theologian insisted, ‘in the manner of the Fishermen, not in the manner of Aristotle.’”

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew

“We conduct these dialogues in order for it to become more widely understood that it is not religious differences which create conflicts among humanity. If indeed the cause of human conflict was due to the differences between religions, then there should not be any conflict among the faithful of the same religion. However, there are plenty of conflicts and wars even among faithful of the same religion.”

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew