Answers To Objections on TLIG

“Notification”. Such statements are wrong in that the Notification issued is one of caution, not a

prohibition!

 The Orthodox Churches (they are Catholic, also) do not have a unified ecclesiastical hierarchy. With

respect to TLIG most of them prefer to maintain a “wait & see” attitude.

The Editor of one of the journals of the Orthodox Church of Greece states that Vassula has by her

own accord “excommunicated herself in form, if not in substance”. Nothing could be farther from

the truth. Not only Vassula has not excommunicated herself (an even that is not possible in the

Orthodox Canon, as excommunication is an act of “anathema” rendered by a Bishop, not a lay

person) but she maintains her standing in the Orthodox Church by having an Orthodox Priest as her

confessor.

Again, misinformation that circulates against TLIG includes a statement that Vassula receives Holy

Communion from the Roman Catholic Church, an event that would render an Orthodox in violation

of the Orthodox Canon that prohibits Orthodox from receiving the Eucharist from a Church that the

Orthodox have excommunicated (as for example the Roman Catholic Church). This statement (or

perception) is simply wrong, because in 1965 both the Pope Paul VI and the Patriarch of

Constantinople, Athenagoras HAVE LIFTED the excommunication 7 toward one another, and as a

consequence, the Roman Catholic Church now permits the Orthodox to receive the Eucharist (Canon

844 § 3). The decision of Patriarch Athenagoras to lift the Excommunication of the Roman Church

was reaffirmed by his successor, Patriarch Dimitrios who directed 8 that “an Orthodox could receive

Holy Communion from a Roman Catholic Priest”.

Yet, it appears that Church politics interfere with God’s desires that we may all be one 9 . The

Orthodox Bishops have been too slow to accept the lifting of the excommunication, and they have

been pressuring 10 Bartholomew I, the current Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople, to distance his

Church from the Roman Church.

Nevertheless, the former excommunication remains lifted! Therefore, officially, the Orthodox do not

consider the Roman Catholic as excommunicated, in spite of what certain Orthodox Bishops choose

to do! Why would then be wrong for any Orthodox to receive Holy Communion from a Roman

Catholic Priest?

See http://www.brainyhistory.com/events/1965/december_7_1965_130728.html

Reported in the Journal Episkepsis , Dec. 15, 1977, pp. 34; and Nos. 139, 159, 161, 214).

John 17:11; John 17:21-22

Newsweek Magazine, November 3, 1997: “But Bartholomew's blunt language may have less to do with Christian ecumenism than with

Orthodox Church politics. These fellows aren't called Byzantine for nothing. There are many bishops in the Orthodox churches of Greece, Russia

and elsewhere who believe that he is already too friendly with Rome.”