"Quite another issue is whether the ecumenical movement is wise for the health of the Orthodox Church given the profound cultural crisis rampant in the West. Why on earth would you want altar girls and clown masses?"
Alex, a lot of us are very worried about precisely these things and you and I and Kosta have all seen the depredations committed in the old countries by an embrace of Western culture, almost invariably of the worst the West has to offer. But the flip side is that the sense of the sacred which is so profound in the East may in fact transform the West. Perhaps the "mission civilatrice" has been passed on to Eastern Christendom.