“Our Church initiated its publishing as it is needed to get wide reaction of Orthodox believers of all local Churches. So we welcome discussions and reasonable critics of the documents,” head of the Synodal Department for Church, Society and Media Relations Vladimir Legoyda told Interfax-Religion in his interview.
The Pan-Orthodox Council will take place on Crete in June. It has not been convened over thousand years and has been prepared for fifty years. Drafts of six Council’s documents were adopted at the meeting of the primates of Orthodox Churches held in Switzerland in January. They were posted in the Internet for consideration. Some of the documents were criticized by Orthodox believers.
He pointed out that the coming Council is not Ecumenical as unlike ancient Ecumenical Councils it would not settle the questions of dogmatic character, or introduce novelties in canonical order or Liturgical life.
According to him, there is no grounds for such fears that the Council will allow “second marriages for clerics, adopt new calendar, abolish fasts and so on.”
Legoyda said that the Russian Orthodox Church suggested that all Orthodox hierarchs, there are about 700 of them in the world, should participate in the Council, and was ready to settle organizational questions and hold it in St.Petersburg or Moscow, but “unfortunately, this idea was not backed up.”
