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Concerning How the Church's Organization is Superior to Ethnic Considerations
I believe and I confess that the Church makes no distinction in the race of Her believers or their nationality or their language. The sister and autocephalous Orthodox Churches have been historically delimited by national, geographic, and jurisdictional boundaries, but not as if these had any scriptural or messianic significance. Thus, according to Canon Law, there can not be two bishops named for the same area. The Church's brotherhood and unity is enacted by God and permeates the very essence and nature of God. This unity is not subject to racial, familial, national, political, economic, cultural or social considerations, which are of this world ("The things which are Caesar's," Matt. 22:21). The brotherhood of the Church is one of "the things which are of God," and the "world has no part in it." (In 1872, the Ecumenical Patriarchate condemned as heresy the concept of "phyletism" which places a particular nationality and its interest, goals and aspirations above the Church.)
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