The following is my personal contribution in defence of the Orthodox Catholic Church.

During the unrelenting overheated divorce controversy much uncharitable and virulent diatribe was hurled from side to side.

The most horrid pronouncement was made during a local phone-in programme by an anonymous man who said “those who are in favour of divorce are not Christian, they are atheist”.

This ‘doctrine’ is blatant heresy which, as far as I can understand, is worse than the one propounded circa AD 318 by Arius, the wicked Alexandrian presbyter, on the relationship of the Son to the Father. His doctrine, completely unorthodox and heretical, was condemned in AD 325 by the first Ecumenical Council in Nicea.

Like all heresies, the one in question is potentially harmful to the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church constituted by the twin Churches – the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Catholic Church. It militates against the efforts of popes and patriarchs to restore the pre-1054 unity of the Church.

Consider the following hypothetical fallacious and perverse syllogism, fruit of a reprobate mind:

Premise 1: Those who are in favour of divorce are not Christian; they are atheist.

Premise 2: But the Orthodox Church permits divorce and remarriage, willing to allow exceptions in view of a marriage breakdown because of human weakness and sin and desiring the help suffering humans with love and mercy when marriage ceases to be a reality.

Conclusion: Therefore, the Orthodox Church is not a Christian church; it is atheist.

In 1979 the recently beatified Pope John Paul II visited Patriarch Dimitrios I when they launched the Joint Commission for Theological Dialogue. After his return to Rome, the Pope said he had “gone in order to show before God and before the whole people of God my impatience for unity.

“We felt painfully how regrettable it was that we could not concelebrate. Everything must be done to hasten the day of concelebration.”