Protocol no. 2303

In Athens January 12/25, 2016

Informative and Admonitory Encyclical
To the all the members of our Church

The new “Cohabitation Agreement” regardless of gender, which was adopted by the Greek Parliament on December 10/23, 2015

Beloved Brethren and Concelebrants in Christ,

Beloved Children in the Lord,

With our soul and heart heavily sorrowful and in anguish we wish to convey to you a word of comfort, a word of support, a word of hope, a word of repentance.

We all know the descending and atheistic path of the Greek Parliament during recent years, which has already arrived at a point of complete rupture with the law of the Gospel, with the blessed morals of our Greek Orthodox tradition, with the hope-bearing vision of man’s divinization (theosis),  with human nature itself, with the image and likeness of God based upon which man was created as male and female, and with our legal culture which from the beginning characterized homosexuality as a crime and a depreciation of natural interpersonal relationships. (Criminal Code: Article 347)

All this had already been cheapened and vulgarized by law No.3719 of 26.11.2008 which permits “the agreement of two heterosexual adults through which they organize their cohabitation (cohabitation agreement),” and which is “drawn up in person and ratified in an authenticated notary’s document .” (Article 1, recommendation)

This “cohabitation agreement” contributes to the secularization, undermines the foundation, anddespises the sanctity of Divinely instituted marriage, which is based on the threefold construction of society: Man-Woman-Child. Moreover the “cohabitation agreement” of heterosexual couples, whose union has not been sanctified by the Mystery of Marriage, is now extended by the “new cohabitation agreement” also to all “adults regardless of their gender”; this is seen as an extension of the previous agreement (of 2008) but not as its completion, because it is certain that the legalization of homosexual “marriage” will follow, as well as the possibility of “adoption” or “fostering children”, the euphemism they use to describe this wretched mockery.

In any case, most of the provisions of the Law on "cohabitation" of heterosexuals and homosexuals equate such an “Agreement” with conventional marriage, and, what is more, the State itself is made to look absurd by the fact that it now records these "agreements" in the Government Registries in special books.

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Fathers and Brethren,

Free cohabitation has already deformed the normal and natural image of interpersonal relationships. And now, through its ratification by a God-fighting Parliament, in contravention of the Constitution of Greece, according to which our country is governed “in the Name of the Holy Trinity”, for the sake of party politics and existential ideologies, or rather "ideological and political dogmatism in relation to the social structure," these relationships are downgraded, overturned, and transformed into impersonal relations between two physical bodies.

The unnatural relations supported by such atheistic “agreements” lead man to become a mutant being far from his true nature, without the vision and the sacrificial struggle of the union of persons in the communion of love, within which – far from selfishness and self-centeredness – children are born as healthy fruit, and the relationship is perfected in the image of the Holy Trinity, having a true eschatological and metahistorical perspective.

The Greek Parliament was not obligated, nor did it have the authority from the Greek people to legislate against Divine and Natural Law, nor to legalize alternative forms of families supposedly in the name of Human Rights, because in our Greek Orthodox Tradition there do not exist rights to that which is opposed to nature, but only personal freedom to choose that which is against nature, according to nature, or above nature.

Rights and Freedoms are not identical in this context, nor are they defined by secular laws which equate Man with animals, Light with darkness, Truth with falsehood, the genuine with the illegitimate, the Sacred with the profane, the Holy with the unholy and profane.

***

Beloved children in the Lord,

This God-fighting legislation of the Greek Parliament, which was sealed with the despicable declaration that it “marks for the Greek State the end of an era of shame and backwardness” and which, what is more, was discussed just before the Feast of the Nativity of our Saviour Christ as being an urgent issue, apart from constituting an open and violent provocation to our Christian and National identity, demonstrates the deep spiritual and social crisis through which our Fatherland is now going, and which has already reached the level of apostasy.

The anti-evangelical and clearly inhuman “Cohabitation Agreements”, the infamous laws 3719/2008 and 4356/2015 (though not only these, but mainly these), assail human dignity, legitimize irresponsibility, and deny the sanctity of life; they are a time-bomb in the foundation of our Fatherland and our Nation, and ultimately they alter our land which bore Saints and Heroes, and is soaked with their blood, from a land of Ideals, not only into a land of borrowed values, but now into a land of Sodomites.

There have been God-fighting and very provocative “pride” parades of those who follow or support these kinds of deviations, with the blatant support of local leaders and politicians, and the direct moral and economic involvement of the Western Powers, with the intention that our people be transformed into a “herd of swine” in the name of a so-called open society in which everything is not only acceptable, but everything is legally and morally equal, and all who disagree must be persecuted as cultivating racist hatred and somehow denying  the rights of those who are different.

A recent poll shows the degree of apostasy, especially on issues relating to the God-fighting "Cohabitation Agreement:” while 50.5% were against homosexual marriage, 65.6% are of the opinion that "homosexuality is a lifestyle, which should be accepted by society,” and 82.3% are in favor of so-called civil marriages.

Certainly, the homosexuals’ blatant and blasphemous  demonstration in front of the Cathedral of Athens following the approval of the “Agreement” is a sign of the times, and provokes within us the deepest sorrow. The participants who support this legislation behaved in a manner which was deeply disrespectful, anti-ecclesiastical, and anticlerical.

A study of the National School of Public Health published a few days before the legislation, on December 14, 2015, shows that “half of Greeks suffer from depression.” This explains the climate of apostasy, because, quite apart from the prolonged economic crisis, the Observatory for Sociopolitical Developments finds that “the Greeks are not optimistic,” and consider that “the crisis is at its beginning.”

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Fathers, Shepherds and Children in the Lord,

The progressive de-Christianization of our blessed Fatherland is finally not only visible but also painfully tangible and, alas, proclaimed at the highest levels of the Greek Parliament, and it is only to be expected from a Political Authority which refuses to take an oath on the Gospel held sacred by our Nation, that this sacrilegious process will continue and will culminate..

This should not provoke panic, depression, or extreme anti-social manifestations among the live and active members of our Orthodox Church, since we are the truly open society which experiences the Great Mystery of Love, through which in awe and true Joy, within the Light and Grace of the Holy Trinity, the Uncreated is united with creation, the Divine is united with the human so that man is transformed and transmuted, and the purpose of his existence is realized.

The commandment of our Lord “Go forth…” is now very timely, and enormous is our responsibility to give a living witness of Faith and life, in word and deed, far from laziness, irresponsibility, compromise, complacency and indifference before a secularized and merely formal version of Christianity.

Our parish centers should become and remain centers of life, hope and spiritual resistance to all kinds of decay, but also places where people may receive love and sanctification, which are the only spiritual remedies for the plague of materialism, hedonism, vulgarization and hopeless worldliness.

Let our personal and communal repentance be our lasting care, reflecting on our responsibility and our conscious, unconscious, or passive participation in the process of apostasy, examining ourselves, criticizing ourselves, and making courageous decisions for radical changes on a personal, family and ecclesiastical level.

We have the responsibility to return to the world our Lord’s great gift to us: the ecclesiastical ethos of the Cross and the Resurrection “in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.” (1 Tim. 4:12)

***

With these thoughts and feelings, in glory and thanksgiving, let us worship our Saviour Christ, Who joined together the heavenly with the earthly through His incarnation, and Who destroyed all the idols of the most hateful passions which pervert man from being His highest creation into being a demonic self-worshipper,

With paternal prayers and blessings
THE HOLY SYNOD

The Archbishop

† KALLINIKOS of Athens

The Members

† AKAKIOS of Attica and Diauleia
† ATHANASIOS of Larisa and Platamon
† JUSTIN of Euripus and Euboea
† GERONTIOS of Piraeus and Salamis
† CHRYSOSTOMOS of Attica and Boeotia
† GREGORY of Thessalonica
† PHOTIOS of Demetrias
† MOSES of Toronto
† DEMETRIUS of America
† CYPRIAN of Oropos and Phyle
† AMBROSE of Philippi
† AMBROSE of Methone
† MICHAEL of Nora
† SILVANO of Luni
† CLEMENT of Gardikion
† AUXENTIOS of Etna and Portland
† THEODOSIOS of Bresthena
† CHRISTODOULOS of Theoupolis