Memorandum-Appeal
To the Abbots
and Superiors of the Twenty Sacred Monasteries of the Holy Mountain of Athos
by Hieromonk Maximos
and Monk Basil of the Skete of St. Basil the Great, Mount Athos
Translated from
the Greek original (published on Mt. Athos in 1992 by “Agioreiton Pateron”
Editions) by the Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, Etna, CA, 1993.
I. Introduction-Prologue
II. Persecution for the Faith
III. The Apostasy of the Shepherds
IV. The Patriarchal Encyclical of 1920
V. Ecumenism and the W.C.C.
VI. A Walling-Off
VII. “Conservative” New Calendarists
VIII. Epilogue
I.
INTRODUCTION-PROLOGUE
(The Purpose and Goal
of the Present Document)
Since, by the good will of the
Lord, I am, by rights, a true spiritual member of the Hagiorite Brotherhood, as
one who has lived continuously for an entire span of fifty-five years in the
desert region of the Holy Mountain, at the “Holy Hesychasterion” of St.
Basil—which is a dependency of our Ruling House, the Holy Monastery of the
Great Lavra—, living on on the foundation and by the power of the God-pleasing
spiritual formation accomplished, in all possible “piety and righteousness,” by
my most blessed Elder and spiritual Father, the ever-memorable Hieromonk
Gerasimos of the Skete of St. Basil (†1967), on whose account, being in fact
faithful to his command that I “follow his footsteps,” and being possessed of a
genuine Hagiorite conscience, I cannot permit myself to be ignorant of, or
indifferent and willfully blind or deaf to, the general ecclesiastical
confusion and apostasy that have been developing for years now, up to this day,
and which are becoming successively worse and are now unfolding in a manner
without precedent in the annals of the Church!
On this account, indeed, I must
face this situation, with its concomitant destructive and soul-destroying
consequences, in a God-befitting and God-pleasing manner, that is, without “the
taint of compromise” and servile “protests by capitulation,” since in matters
purely of “faith and piety,” which directly affect the “very being and
essential nature” both of ourselves and the Church, there is no room for
“condescension” and oikonomia.
Hence, impelled by considerable
spiritual duty, together with the Synodeia and Brotherhood under me, we
have in the past made detailed reference to this situation in writing. See (1) Confession-Appeal
(Holy Mountain: “Agioreiton Pateron” Editions, 1979); (2) Apostasy and
Division, (Athens: “Agioreiton Pateron” Editions, 1981); and (3) Memorandum-Statement
to Metropolitan Augustinos (Kantiotis) of Florina, (Athens: “Agioreiton
Pateron” Editions, 1983).
In these written reports of ours,
we set forth, in an apologetic testimony based on canonical and ecclesiological
criteria, the reasons and causes of the deviation and apostasy of today's
ecclesiastical leaders and the Shepherds of our Church, as well as the
consequences thereof, namely: (1) the preaching of heresy, (2) the creation of
schism, and (3) the division of the ecclesiastical body into
"Anti-innovationists," the so-called "Church of the True
Orthodox Christians,” and the “Innovationists,” the New Calendarist Ecumenists!
At this point, and before we
enter into the main subject of our present report, we reckon it necessary to
formulate the following affirmation, which is grievous, but as clear as
daylight and objective: This situation of “Apostasy and Division” has to date
in no way invited, as it should have, the concern of the competent Church
leaders, entrusted as they are with guarding the “Unity of the Church”!
Rather, we notice with
regret—justly, from the perspective of the “Genuine Conscience of the Church,”
which constitutes Her “highest criterion”—that a call for such concern meets
with condemnation and disapproval, since the competent leaders in question, on
account of the “ecumenist heresy” which they established and proclaimed through
the evil “Patriarchal Edict” of 1920 from the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and
despite the fact that this heresy, which is still being proclaimed, not only
destroys every meaning of the Orthodox existence of our Church, but also of
their own Orthodox existence, have displayed and display full and absolute
dedication, with all their interest and eagerness, to the continuation of the
ecumenist “Dialogue of Love” with the heterodox (heretics), and this, not on
the basis of the “eternal landmarks which the Fathers set” (St. John of
Damascus), but to the point of completely selling out their Orthodox
convictions and attitudes through their spiritual and ecclesiastical contact
and association—canonically forbidden—with the heterodox, even though to this
day these heretics have shown no intention of repenting and returning to
Orthodoxy!
Wholly contrary to the concern
which they should show, the aforementioned Church leaders, excessively
sensitive to the heterodox heretics, remain, after almost seventy years, not
only completely unmoved and indifferent, but very hostile, through acts of violence
and compulsion, as we shall see below, against the divided body of their
Orthodox people, to the point of tearing utterly to shreds their Episcopal
prestige and their Orthodox ecclesiastical mission and being!
Consequently, in keeping with the
above and specifically as a result of the anti-monastic tragedy that recently
occurred on the Holy Mountain (something unparalleled in its annals), the
“occupation,” or more accurately “invasion,” of the Holy Skete of the Prophet
Elias and the arbitrary and forcible expulsion and “immediate” deportation from
it of its Monastic Brotherhood, as these are recounted in the informative
“Press Release” of May 31, 1992, publicly circulated by the Brotherhood (which
we add below); but also because of the fact that we happen to be of the same
“spiritual party,” from the perspective of our priestly provenance, as the
Brotherhood in question, we are induced to mention this matter to the
leadership of the “Twenty Holy Monasteries of the Holy Mountain” through our
following report. We consider it an obligation, on the one hand, to offer this
paltry fraternal support to our suffering brothers in Christ, who were deported
for their “confession of faith,” thus responding to our monastic duty,
according to the Apostolic exhortation telling us that, “whether one member
suffer, all the members suffer with it” (1 Corinthians 12:26); and, on the
other hand, and above all, to make people realize fully that it is urgent and
necessary to make every attempt, as dictated by that which pleases God, to
restore to “Canonical and Ecclesiological” health the “condemned”
ecclesiastical line and course of the Holy Mountain today (namely, its
impermissible journey towards ecumenist apostasy), and in this way to promote
an awareness that these attempts constitute an inviolable duty and obligation
of the whole Hagiorite Brotherhood, insofar as the issues at hand are clearly a
“matter of Faith” directly affecting the salvation of the soul!
In Desert of the Holy Mountain
The Skete of Saint Basil the Great
August 1992 (Old Style)
PRESS RELEASE
The Recent,
Unheard-of Persecution of Monks from
the Athonite Skete of the Prophet Elias
One hour from Karyes, the capital
of the Holy Mountain, is the Skete of the Prophet Elias, which is a dependency
of the Monastery of the Pantocrator. Since 1973, the lawful and canonical
Superior of the Skete has been a Hieromonk from America, Father Seraphim
(Babich). Having been on the Holy Mountain since 1970, Father Seraphim and his synodeia
succeeded in rebuilding and beautifying, at great expense and labor, this
enormous skete.
In the year 1957, the Skete
ceased commemorating the Oecumenical Patriarch, since it did not agree with the
Papist line taken by the Patriarchate of Constantinople with regard to the
so-called Ecumenical Movement. This movement is considered by all Orthodox
Christians to be heretical, something, indeed, proclaimed in the past many
times by the Holy Mountain and reaffirmed by His Beatitude, Patriarch Diodoros
of Jerusalem, at the recent “convocation” at the Phanar (15 March 1992 N.S.).
Beginning in 1985, the Skete was
placed under pressure to resume commemorating the Oecumenical Patriarch, but it
did not submit to that pressure.
On May 20 of this year (N.S.), on
Mid-Pentecost Wednesday, the Skete of the Prophet Elias was unexpectedly placed
under siege by a contingent of policemen, Hieromonks, and Monks, headed by the
Patriarchal Exarch, Bishop Athanasios, Metropolitan of Heliopolis.
Father Seraphim and the other
Fathers of the Skete, in the midst of the ensuing turmoil and confusion, were
pressured to accept the commemoration of the Patriarch or to leave the Holy
Mountain immediately. The Fathers refused such commemoration and asked whether
the administrative authorities on Mt. Athos had issued a writ ordering their
expulsion. There was no such writ. The Fathers therefore asked for a delay of
three days, so as to prepare their things. No such delay was granted them.
Surrounded by and under the
strict supervision of police guards, the Fathers of the Skete gathered a few
things at hand from their cells. Afterwards, they were transported by “Jeep” to
Daphne by way of Karyes, where a boat took them to Ouranopolis, where they were
mercilessly abandoned. In the meantime, behind them, the Skete, which was being
pillaged by Monks from the Monastery of the Pantocrator, was placed under the
strong guard of an armed police force.
The Fathers of the Skete, after
this incredible behavior by the ecclesiastical and secular authorities—which
certainly constitutes persecution for the Faith—, continue to be victimized,
since their passports have not been returned to them (they are American
citizens). The civil authorities also refuse to provide them with any official,
written statement regarding the reasons for their expulsion.
The Monks of the Skete of the
Prophet Elias, a dependency of the Monastery of the Pantocrator:
a) protest vigorously their
illegal expulsion from the Garden of the All-Holy Theotokos;
b) denounce the un-Christian,
unbrotherly, and barbaric behavior of the Monks, Hieromonks, and policemen who
banished them;
c) make it known that there has
come to fruition a persecution throughout the Holy Mountain of all those
Fathers who are in opposition to ecumenism and the un-Orthodox policies of the
Ecumenical Patriarch; and, finally,
d) declare that they will strive
by every legal means to return to their Skete.
The Superior (Δικαίος) of the Skete
Archimandrite Seraphim
31 May (N.S.), 1992
Sunday of the Blind Man
Temporary Address:
Holy Monastery of Saints Cyprian and Justina
T. Th. 4606
133 10 Ano Liosia, Greece
Ph. 24-11-380
FAX 24-11-080
II.
PERSECUTION FOR
THE FAITH
of The Exiled Fathers
To the Abbots and
Superiors of the Twenty Sacred
Monasteries of the Holy Mountain of Athos
Very Reverend Fathers:
Concerning the reasons for and
the purpose of the present petition, which we are duly addressing to you and
about which we previously spoke in the Introduction, we are hopeful that
your discerning perception and spiritual experience, which derive from your
singular virtues, will serve you to grasp and fathom their conceptual essence
and significance through the free exercise of your God-pleasing and scrupulous
judgment, a thing which can be achieved, to the extent that it is preceded by a
complete rejection of all bias towards the contrary—whatever it may be—and of
all partiality and expediency—elements, it should be noted, that are able to
occasion only the affectation of judgment by inference.
We considered it a task of
brotherly love in Christ and our bounden monastic duty to unite the voice of
our Orthodox conscience with the spiritual pain and mental agony of our
deported brethren, who are at present suffering as members of the Hagiorite Brotherhood
and Family and as members of the one Body of the Church.
This spiritual obligation and
this necessity, which apply to the entire Hagiorite conscience, are clearly
evident in, are confirmed by, and are inferred from the clear and concrete
evidence and the irrefragable actual circumstances set forth as follows, which,
in our humble judgment, are, we think, sufficient to sway and persuade you,
since the instance of what happened in particular to the Holy Skete of the
Prophet Elias and its Brotherhood—suffering, as a result of this, a
“persecution for the Faith”—above all reflects the untoward situation that
prevails today on the Holy Mountain, that is, a patently clear ecumenical
deviation, ecclesiastically, and apostasy—unacceptable for the true Orthodox
conscience—, created and subsequently perpetuated by the presiding
ecclesiastical authorities of our sacred domain!
Moreover, in the first part of
our present report we had occasion to observe that the events mentioned in the
“Press Release” cited above (of which, it should be noted, there was no
accountable denial on the part of the appropriate Hagiorite Authorities)
testify clearly to the conditions on the basis of which the unholy outrage of
the forcible expulsion and deportation of the Fathers from the Skete of the
Prophet Elias took place, a thing which compels them to invoke the legal
intervention of the authorities, since this assault, emanating as it does from
the Holy Mountain, brings into disrepute the true meaning of democracy and
justice in Greece and utterly sets aside respect for and the protection of,
“human rights” and “freedom of conscience”!
However, the worst sign that
marks and characterizes the “spiritual crime” perpetrated against the Fathers
of the Skete by the spiritual and civil authorities of the Holy Mountain is not
so much the “deprivation of their possessions” or the “armed physical presence”
of those far from their holy repentance and from the Holy Mountain, but the
ill-advised oppression of the most subtle “treasury” of our faith, which is
called “conscience”!
This is precisely what their
persecutors attempted to “achieve,” albeit, unsuccessfully: to compel the
Fathers to suppress the voice of their consciences, by agreeing to commemorate
the Patriarch and to accept ecclesiastical communion with him and those of like
mind with him!
This activity of the enemies in
question constitutes, indeed, a clear “excuse in sins,” which is aimed at
covering up their condemned activity and the actions against them, in that they
know better than anyone else that those who do not commemorate the Œcumenical
Patriarch (who is liable to canonical trial for the perpetuation of the
calendar schism and for the acceptance, since 1920, of the ecumenist heresy
proclaimed by him to all the world) are not only the Fathers of Prophet Elias
Skete, but also almost 150 other Hagiorite Fathers.
Likewise, these persecutors are
well aware that, on the basis of ecclesiological necessity, the commemoration
of the presiding Bishop (in this case, on Mt. Athos, the Patriarch), as well as
ecclesiastical communion with him, can—and indeed ought—to take place only when
there is a likeness of (correct) understanding in the faith between the one who
commemorates and the one who is being commemorated; that is, when the Bishop
who is commemorated does not err “in piety and righteousness” and is not worthy
of being “fenced off” or “walled off” by the pleroma “in resistance to
innovation,” according to the Canon Law of the Church and the general practice
of the Church, “before a clear Synodal verdict has been pronounced and he has
been completely condemned” (First-and-Second Synod, Canon 15)—something a complete
odds, today, with the presiding ecclesiastical authority of the Patriarchate of
Constantinople!
This pretext of “commemoration,”
then, cannot “cover” as a prop the basic goal of the present action, because in
accordance with the data we mentioned above, it is devoid of any legal
substance, and for another main reason, that no written letter or decision on
the matter has been either published by the authorities of the Holy Community
or been shown by them, as it should have been, to the persecuted Fathers!
So, in the name of what verdict,
let us ask, did the police authorities of the Holy Mountain perpetrate the
forcible expulsion and deportation in question from the aforementioned Holy
Skete and from the Holy Mountain? This verdict (if such it was) should have
been passed previously by the civil authorities of the Holy Mountain, in
accordance with the statute in force on the Holy Mountain (Article 78 of the Constitutional
Charter), as “executable,” since it is, above all, the duty of the Civil
Governor of the Holy Mountain to “draw the attention of the Holy Community to
transgressions of any kind of monastic authority on the Mountain” (Articles 3,
4 and 8 of the Legislative Order of September 10, 1926, ratifying the Constitutional
Charter of the Holy Mountain), on the basis of which he “supervises the
preservation of the status quo....”
If, on the other hand, as it is
rumored, the Holy Community of the Holy Mountain played no part in the above
assault, and what happened in their absence and in an overstepping of the
jurisdiction of the Patriarchal Delegation on the Holy Mountain or by the
initiative or personal intervention of one of its members, what, then, is the
duty of the Holy Community with regard to its administrative authority at
present, in view of the abolition in this manner of the power of the laws and
privileges of the Holy Mountain? Is it ever possible for any authority, being
obliged to put into practice its legal rights and obligations, to sell these
out so naively and indifferently, without legal consequences and the unpleasant
confirmatory results that are thereby entailed, given that every transgression
brings with it a corresponding punishment? We think that the proper government
representatives of the Greek justice system, and in particular the “Department
of Churches” of the Foreign Ministry, under which, as we know, the Holy
Mountain comes directly and administratively, should voluntarily comment on
this subject.
At any rate, in the final
analysis, the reason why we cannot commemorate the name of the Œcumenical
Patriarch on the Holy Mountain (as things stand today, on account of the
ongoing ecclesiastical apostasy of the so-called “Ecumenical Movement and
Theory”) is that we are obliged, ecclesiologically, to be at one with our
Orthodox way of thinking, that is, our Orthodox convictions, which are based on
Church Canons, and to apply these Canons to the policies and course of the
Patriarchate’s Ecumenist and anti-Orthodox attitude!
Since, we repeat, the meaning and
significance of commemoration indicates a likeness of Faith between the
commemorator and the commemorated, we should in general terms accept the
panheresy of Ecumenism proclaimed to all the world by the “Patriarchal Encyclical”
of 1920, which through the “Branch Theory” blasphemes against the uniqueness of
our Holy Orthodox Church of Christ! By an inescapable consequence, and on the
basis of the above “Patriarchal Encyclical,” we ought to believe that
heterodox, heretical “Christian” confessions, that is, the Pope and the
Protestants in general, are “sister-Churches” of Christ, “partakers of
redemptive Grace,” etc., with Priesthood, Mysteries, and Apostolic Succession,
so that we can pray and liturgize with them, a thing which the Ecumenists in
Constantinople perpetrate and practice today, in complete opposition to their
episcopal mission—from the notorious Athenagoras forward, and both the
Hierarchs of the Œcumenical Patriarchate as well as various other Ecumenist,
New Calendarist Hierarchs!
Likewise, for “agreement and
unanimity” in the likeness of Faith with our presiding ecclesiastical authority
and the consequent canonical commemoration of the name of its presiding Bishop,
we would have to disavow also the established Orthodox Calendar handed down in
the Church by the Fathers, and accept the “Gregorian” or Papal Calendar that
was repeatedly condemned by Synods in their Proceedings, on account of which
there exists even today the accursed “Calendar schism” of 1924, which split the
(liturgical and worshipping) “unity of the Church,” and even today keeps the pleroma
of the Church faithful in division!
We should then, first believe
precisely and unhesitatingly in all the destructive attitudes towards the
Orthodox Faith which the presiding ecclesiastical authority of the Holy
Mountain “publicly” proclaims and actually demonstrates in practice and theory,
through the aforementioned actions, that it believes; and since in this way our
Orthodox conscience would have been completely perverted, we should then be in
a position to consider it our bounden duty to commemorate the Patriarch on the
Holy Mountain.
However, since by the Grace of
God it is not possible for us, even unto death, to deny the Orthodox phronema
of our Church, and to agree and journey with our established ecclesiastical
authority, which, as we said before, is “on trial” before the Synods and,
through our “walling off” is “potentially out of communion” with us, for this
reason not only are we not obligated to commemorate such an authority, but by
Divine right it becomes a “sin and condemnation” for everyone with an Orthodox
frame of mind—in particular, for the Hagiorite Fathers who do commemorate the
Patriarch and who, according to the clearest Patristic teaching on the matter,
“even if they have not been sunk by their thoughts, nonetheless [through
commemoration] are being destroyed by their communion with heresy” (St.
Theodore the Studite)!
In such a case, the obligatory
breaking-off of commemoration of the Patriarch is a consequence of the
canonically enjoined ecclesiastical action of “walling oneself off” from a
Bishop who is erring “in piety and righteousness,” and who for this reason is
“condemned.” The fact that this action is obligatory, before a “Synodal
condemnation” has taken place, manifestly proves, on the one hand, that the one
who walls himself off, according to the clearest Synodal judgment on the
matter, “has the right and at the same time the duty” to put this into
practice “at once” (and not that, if he wishes, he “may” wall himself off,
according to the mistaken understanding of those who are wise in their own
conceit and according to the interpretation put forward by “spiritual guides”
who wear the Great Schema and are thus “deceivers and deceived” [2 Timothy
3:13]); and, on the other hand, that he who walls himself off “will incur no
canonical penalty,” but “will be praised still more” as “rescuing the Church
from divisions and schisms.”
In spite of these proofs and
testimonies, more radiant than the Sun, the force and validity of which ought
to constitute a “clear course” and to prevail in the consciences of every
faithful man of good conscience, but in particular in the intentions of the
leading figures of the Hagiorite Brotherhood—in spite of these, we repeat, the
Athonite authorities, reckoning as nothing these wise commandments of the
Fathers of the Synods, inspired by the Holy Spirit, completely contrary to
every legal and canonical norm, carried out the expulsion and deportation of
the Fathers of the Skete of the Prophet Elias, as we noted before, not
hesitating in any way to show themselves persecutors and adversaries of
“Orthodox consistency” and reminding us in this way that “all that will live
godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution” (2 Timothy 3:12).
Through the actual circumstances
mentioned above it is demonstrated that the indispensable elements that are
canonically prerequisite for the obligatory commemoration of the Patriarch are
completely absent from the case before us, a fact which precludes any
justification for the reproach and accusation deliberately, malevolently or
even deludedly imputed against us of “disobedience” to our presiding
ecclesiastical authority, since that authority is on trial before the Synods as
being canonically judged “to be erring in piety and righteousness,” and is
worthy of being “fenced off” and “walled off” by the anti-innovationist pleroma
of the Church, that is, on account of the condemned position and situation in
which, according to what we said above, this self-same authority voluntarily
and wrongly finds itself.
The Orthodox, “God-pleasing
resistance” (St. Theodore the Studite) exhibited, by Divine Grace, on our part,
and the confidence “which hath great recompense of reward” (Hebrews 10:35),
make us worthy to save and preserve the Orthodox essence and quality, as much
of our Holy Church as of ourselves, given that only in this way, that is, as an
anti-innovationist pleroma, is it possible for us to stand canonically
WITHIN THE CHURCH.
On this basis, we can say that
our position today constitutes a sign of hope for every faithful Orthodox of
good conscience, because our God-pleasing resistance testifies and demonstrates
that the struggle of real Orthodox confessors is still being preserved on the
Holy Mountain—even if by a minority—, in imitation of the Holy Hagiorite
Fathers, especially those who were martyred under the Latin-minded Patriarch
Bekkos on account of their refusal (precisely, that is, as it is with us) to
commemorate his name as Patriarch.
Why, however, should an event
take place which is so completely unacceptable for the Holy Mountain and which
damages it irreparably? That is: Why should we—and those who think like us—,
who make up the minority of the Holy Mountain, the pleroma of the Church
which in Orthodox manner opposes innovation and undertakes “God-pleasing
resistance,” preserve hereby the Orthodox essence and the God-pleasing
perpetuation of the general mission of the Holy Mountain, while its majority
conducts itself in a negative fashion, as an “innovating” pleroma of the
Church, causing scandal and division to the harmony and unity of the Hagiorite
Brotherhood and spiritual corruption and damage to the people of the Church,
who suffer such problems in obeying “their leaders”—through commemoration and
communion—so indiscriminately, aimlessly and superficially as to “imitate their
faith,” apart from and in spite of the Apostolic commandment and injunction,
according to which we must first consider “the end of their conversation” and
afterwards imitate their faith, insofar, that is, as it is proven that they
(the spiritual shepherds and leaders) really and truly “watch for [our] souls”
(Hebrews 13:7, 17)?
For this reason, all of the
Hagiorite Brotherhood, we think, should be unbreakably bound together and
united in the unity of the Faith, so that “with one mouth and one heart” and
far from all innovation, false belief, schism and heresy, it may save and preserve
intact—all being still in one body—the Orthodox essence, nature, and lofty
mission of the Holy Mountain, and show through actual confession that the Holy
Mountain is really a “bastion of the Faith,” a “citadel of Orthodoxy” and a
sure “Haven of Salvation,” a thing which the entire Orthodox Church and the
faithful people await in agony and heartily desire and wish, so that in this
way they may be able to face in a God-pleasing manner today’s Antichristian,
Ecumenist apostasy, for the assurance of the salvation of their souls!
But apart from the demanding
legal and moral consequence of the actions taken against the Skete of the
Prophet Elias, the direct interest provoked over these actions is manifestly
obligatory in terms of duty, insofar as the Holy Monasteries of the Holy Mountain
compose and constitute the Monastic Government of our Holy Domain in their own
right; this government is exercised through representatives of the Monasteries,
in accordance with its privileged status quo, in effect from the
beginning (Article 1 of the Constitutional Charter).
On the basis of this, we believe
that the information and assurances we have provided, to the best of our
ability, will certainly provoke your immediate interest in a further
investigation into the subject at hand.
As for the administrative agency,
its interest is contained in the obligation, on the basis of the law, to
condemn the action of expulsion and provide for a complete restoration of the
Fathers who were wronged, since: “nobody is to be judged without a hearing, no
penalty is to be imposed except on the basis of a Law or a Sacred Canon, and
nobody is to be deprived against his will or his natural Judge” (Article 7 of
the Legislative Order of September 10, 1926), but also since the explicit legal
arrangements concerning the “imposition of penalties” and the “execution of
decisions” that are presupposed and have force on the Holy Mountain were not
applied in the present case by the proper Athonite authorities! Consequently,
these actual circumstances, needless to say, make the action of expulsion that
was undertaken, in this matter, and carried out entirely high-handedly, devoid
of legal validity, and for this reason this is considered invalid and as never
having happened.
If, however, in spite of this,
the proper Athonite authorities, for whatever reason, are not disposed and do
not hasten, as they are duly obliged, to restore the Fathers who were
high-handedly expelled from the former place of their Holy Repentance, the Holy
Skete of the Prophet Elias—which we wish with all our heart does not happen—,
but wish to continue such persecution against other Hagiorite Fathers engaging
in “Orthodox resistance,” they should know that by acting in such a way they
become “morally culpable perpetrators” and co-workers in the decisive abolition
of the force of the spiritual and administrative institutions and privileges of
the Holy Mountain. Every indifference and negligence that they should happen to
display will have, as an immediate bad consequence, the gradual abolition—from
ourselves, the very Hagiorites—of the “self-governing,” privileged Athonite
regime, which constitutes a respected repository of ancient and traditional
authority, acquired with so many struggles and toils and handed down to us
today to guard and continue, precisely for the good of our Holy Domain and its
witness and lofty mission in general.
Along these lines, the whole
Hagiorite Brotherhood should seriously take into consideration that the
circumstance of this illegal and invalid action of expulsion—artless, aimless
and lacking psychological insight—constitutes, in an absolutely objective scrupulosity,
an incident with unforeseen consequences, if it is continued, directly
proceeding from today’s ecclesiastical situation, as we shall see below
(unheard-of in the annals of the Church), untoward, and unacceptable for the
entire Orthodox Christian conscience, resulting from the Ecumenist heresy and
the schism deriving from it, from deviation and apostasy.
The imperative investigation of
the essential, spiritual side of the present topic and, to be precise,
concerning pressure placed on us to commemorate the name of the Patriarch of
Constantinople and to enter into ecclesiastical communion with him—a thing
which is the sole and fundamental cause of the whole subject—, constitutes a
special spiritual obligation and issue for direct attention and analysis, both
from the standpoint of “Canonical and Ecclesiological exactness” and from the
standpoint of an “Orthodox Patristic understanding,” for the entire Hagiorite
Brotherhood, without exception.
On precisely this point, we have
already formulated the fundamental causes and reasons, by virtue of which it is
proved that the truly ecclesiastical obligation of commemoration happens—in
this case—to be canonically incapable of application, but must be rejected as
unacceptable, in that our presiding ecclesiastical authority is that which
created and continues to perpetuate, irrevocably, a reprehensible
ecclesiastical situation, within which it willfully chooses to be involved.
Since, however, from this
situation there inevitably arises the “subject of Faith”—a Faith “at risk,”
indeed—, which is more important than anything else and which directly impinges
on the sure salvation of the souls of all of us, the faithful members of the
Church, we consider it a worthy enterprise to make reference to the following
issues—here where the essential goal of our present witness is chiefly focused.
III.
THE APOSTASY OF
THE SHEPHERDS
Since today’s prevailing
situation of confusion and apostasy, “by the judgments which the Lord knows,”
is getting unrestrainedly worse within our Holy Church—though such should not
be—, on account of the manifest and intolerable goals and plans and the generally
anti-Orthodox policy and course of Her contemporary spiritual leaders, it is,
for this reason, the inviolable duty and obligation of every faithful Orthodox
Christian, and especially of every Athonite, in this situation to “come out
from the midst” of these shepherds “and be separated” for the redemption of
their souls and their sure salvation (cf. 2 Corinthians 6:17).
We would not be wholly removed
from reality if we stressed that this situation constitutes an event which has
not occurred in the entire life of the Church until today, because our Church
has never been so systematically beset by her own shepherds, who, being
politicians full of anti-Orthodox, ecumenist deviation, cause harm to the
substance of Orthodoxy and to her mission and pleroma! The Apostle
might, indeed, have had them in mind (Acts 20:28-30), when he said that...there
shall enter into the Church “grievous wolves...not sparing the flock...,”
speaking perverse things...”
The spiritual confusion,
deviation and apostasy from the faith that are being brought to pass in the
Church today are visible and are attested through the following actual and
undeniable evidence and proofs.
Since, however, we are Orthodox
and, indeed, as Hagiorites, “guardians of our faith”—specifically on account of
our monastic and Priestly attributes—by Divine Grace, we must first and
foremost be precisely acquainted with the context of our spiritual and
ecclesiastical rights and obligations, within which our Holy Mother Church
allows and requires us to be properly moved in each successive circumstance and
in which we are obliged dutifully to respond to our lofty and sacred mission,
that of protecting our Orthodox existence and that of the Church.
In accordance with this data, and
for reasons of precise orientation, we must always take into our consideration
that:
“Beyond the operative level and
the highest administrative authority of the Orthodox Church, which is the
Œcumenical Synod, the genuine ecclesiastical conscience has the capacity to
decide definitely on the œcumenical validity of a Synod, without it constituting
some operative authority higher than the Œcumenical Synod. This conscience,
being a diffused and indefinite authority and one which acts as a sort of focus
for the validity of the entire Church, and being constituted by the expression
of a unanimous mind of the whole pleroma of the Church, that is, the
clergy and the people, ratifies or nullifies the decisions of Œcumenical Synods
and seals their œcumenical validity.”
Likewise, “action ‘by oikonomia,’
like all of the actions of a Patriarch and the Synod, are subject, according to
an Orthodox understanding, to the decision of the criterion which is the
conscience of the whole body of the Church.... Over and above the competency
provided by the laws and the Sacred Canons, there is the moral competency of
the whole pleroma of the Church, which is incorruptible” (See John
Karmiris, Orthodox Ecclesiology [in Greek; Athens, 1973], p. 349, n. 2).
From the practice of the Church,
in keeping with what we have observed, there is evidence that: incorrect
Synodal decisions, like actions “by oikonomia” of a Patriarch or a Synod
which are not undertaken according to “Orthodox understanding,” cannot be
considered the “true voice of the Church,” because on this account, they cannot
become “unanimously accepted” by the entire pleroma of the Church—the
clergy, that is, and the people, which make up the “incorruptible moral
standard” and the Church’s “genuine conscience.”
As we know, “five great
apostasies are enumerated in Scripture. (1) That of Adam, (2) that at the time
of the flood, (3) that (subsequent) one of...the Gentiles, (4) that of the
disobedient Jews, and (5) that of the coming Antichrist.... The fifth is at work
as the ‘mystery of iniquity’ in the age of Christianity and will come to an end
at the time of the consummation ‘of this world’.... Through the apostasy of
Antichrist the salvation of man in Christ through the Church is impeded, and
the satanic annihilation of this salvation from the face of the earth will be
undertaken” (See A.D. Delembasis, The Lord’s Pascha [in Greek; Athens,
1985], p. 213).
On account of these apocalyptic
days which we are going through, utterly deplorable is the fact that, while the
Œcumenical Patriarchate ought, on the basis of its highest mission and calling,
to be truly a Pinnacle of Orthodoxy and a far-shining beacon of our Holy Faith,
despite this and completely to the contrary, it turns out to confirm absolutely
that it is the creator of the initial phase and cause of today’s ecclesiastical
confusion and apostasy, since it played a leading part itself in the creation
of the Ecumenical Movement through the notorious Patriarchal Encyclical of
1920, with which we shall deal in the following chapter.
IV.
THE PATRIARCHAL
ENCYCLICAL OF 1920
At the outset, we had occasion to
observe that it should not be considered fortuitous or a mere coincidence how
and why this Patriarchal Encyclical of four pages and roughly seven hundred
words not only makes no reference whatsoever to the Orthodox Church, as it
should have done throughout the text, but completely fails to mention the word
“Orthodoxy,” even in a general way, using, rather, a phrase suited to ecumenist
expediency: “the Christian Churches”!
This fact is made evident if we
turn to the open testimony of the same Encyclical (which, it should be noted,
deliberately avoids showing that such reference is proper to an Orthodox
understanding and purpose), by the admission of which this meaning and definition
of the “uniqueness” of the Orthodox phronema constitute the
“pretensions” of ancient superstitions and habits,” which create “difficulties
so great as formerly to thwart the work of unification”!
As it should be known, this
“Encyclical,” addressed to the “Churches of Christ everywhere,” intends and
recognizes as such the entire “mish-mash” of the heterodox and heretics!
Consequently, it believes, confesses, and proclaims that “rapprochement and communion”
with them is not excluded by the dogmatic differences existing between them”!
Likewise, it considers and acknowledges these “Churches” as “sisters and worthy
of reverence,” and for this reason “fellow-heirs and of the same body [sharing
in] the promise of God in Christ” (cf. Ephesians 3:6)! In other words, there is
a full recognition, admission, and acceptance by the authentic representatives
of Orthodoxy, and this in a fully official manner, that the heterodox and
heretics possess: Priesthood, Mysteries, and Apostolic Succession! For this
reason, moreover, joint prayer, joint commemoration, joint observance of Feast
Days, joint blessings, and liturgical concelebration are allowed to be
conducted with them!
“The acceptance of a unified
calendar for the simultaneous celebration of the great Christian feasts by all
the Churches” is considered by the Encyclical to be indispensable for the goal
of this union ecumenistically intended and pursued.
About this matter, although it
may be reckoned superfluous to write so, it easily follows that, for the sake
of pushing forward this imagined union, those who accepted the “Calendar
Reform” of the Churches thought it wholly advantageous and preferable to create
a “Schism” among the pleroma of the Orthodox Church (which schism is
preserved and continued unconsciously and irreparably even today among those
who created this New Calendarist Ecumenism), seeing that “difficulties” and the
“thwarting” of the ecumenist goals and plans would thereby be avoided!
So where, on this issue, is “the
good shepherd,” who “giveth his life for the sheep” and not for “the other
sheep” which “are not of this fold” (See St. John 10:11, 16)? Indeed, those who
created the “Schism” in question should take note that “not even through a
martyr’s blood is [their betrayal] forgiven.” He who “follows a schism” shall
not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven” (St. Ignatios, Epistle to the
Philadelphians 3:3)!
On the basis of the evidence set
forth above, it can be easily inferred that the Patriarchal “Encyclical” of
1920 not only completely fails to echo the “true voice of the Church,” but, on
the contrary, intentionally overlooks its own Orthodox “foundation.” Judged
from an Orthodox canonical standpoint, it deserves the greatest condemnation,
insofar as this “fall in the faith” on the part of the presiding leaders of the
Œcumenical Patriarchate, from whom this document derives, reaches back to such
a degree of “apostasy” that it was put forth by “public” proclamation and by an
undisguised, unfeigned unanimous written decision by them!
The most serious form of apostasy
provoked by this “Proclamation” rests on the fact that it denies the
pan-orthodox “super-dogma,” as it were, by virtue of which our Holy Mother
Church, “according to the unified mind (and confession) of the Fathers and the
Synods,” is considered, as we said before, “One” and unique, just as Christ,
Her Head, Who cannot have many bodies and whose “substance” is the “unity of
faith,” is also one and unique.
Likewise, according to the saying
of the Lord, the ever-living “Vine” (St. John 15:5), that is, the Church, is
never divided, but only the unfruitful branches fall from it and become
parched, that is, those who are cut off from Her, the heterodox heretics whom the
Œcumenical Patriarchate, “fallen in faith,” as well as all the “Orthodox”
members of the World Council of Churches, in no way acknowledge and treat as
heretics!
Hence, because of this most
fundamental “canonical rationale” the whole “ecclesiastical leadership” of the
Œcumenical Patriarchate, which published the above “Proclamation,” is judged
from an Orthodox point of view “to have fallen in faith,” going in this way on
trial before the Synods, according to ecclesiastical law. This is so, not only
on account of the anti-Orthodox phrases and positions of the “Proclamation” as
indicated above, which are directly opposed to the “Mind of the Church,” but
also on account of the anti-Orthodox direction and the anti-ecclesiastical
policy and course of the leadership, which policy and course are based on these
phrases and positions and which are clearly put forth “publicly,” as we said
before, “in theory,” “in practice,” and “in actuality,” in the furtherance of
the leadership’s ecumenist goals and aims.
Finally, consistent with this
heretical proclamation, all of the local Orthodox Churches and Patriarchates
(which until now have received the “Proclamation” in question without
reservation and protest), as well as every conscientious and faithful Christian,
in order to preserve and guard their Orthodox being, must reckon it their
sacred obligation and indispensable duty to disavow this “Proclamation” in both
practice and actuality, that is, by thus “walling themselves off,” as the
Canons dictate, from the presiding ecclesiastical authority of the Œcumenical
Patriarchate, which is “on trial”; in particular, this holds for the Athonite
ecclesiastical pleroma, which is directly subject to the Patriarchate,
since no “ecclesiastical communion” and “commemoration” with it must be
permitted, for the reason that if this commemoration and communion are
continued, they will bring this pleroma into “destruction by heresy.”
V.
ECUMENISM AND THE
W.C.C.
The “Ecumenical Movement” and the
idea of ecumenism, “patronizingly” supported by the foregoing Patriarchal
“Encyclical,” which is based on the heresies as much of Papism, by way of the
Vatican, as of Protestantism, by way of the “World Council of Churches”
(W.C.C.), aim, by means of the heretical “branch theory,” at the non-dogmatic
union of all “separated Christian branches,” that is, heterodox and heretics,
with which the Orthodox Church is equated!
It should be soberly pointed out
that this Ecumenical Movement constitutes nothing other than a heresy, indeed
the worst of the heresies. This heretical quality makes it absolutely a
fundamental element of the most basic “harbinger” of the plans of the Antichrist,
given that its objective aim is the syncretistic adaptation and amalgamation of
the Orthodox Christian Faith (and Church) through the W.C.C. (in which it has
its headquarters) into an Ecumenist “Universal Religion”! The manifestation of
this attempt and activity that are being vigorously pursued for the attainment
of the above goal, perpetuated in the form of “Dialogues of Love,” appear on
the level of International Congresses (like those in Vancouver, Lima, Assisi,
and Canberra, etc.), with the grievous and extremely disheartening approval of
“Delegations of the Orthodox Churches,” who take part in these congresses
without protest and, for this reason, make their participation treacherous and
negative!
We can positively state that the
“Delegations” of the Orthodox Churches which are in the W.C.C., indeed, to be
specific, the majority of them as “founding members,” reap the treacherous
fruits of denial and apostasy, since, on the basis of the “branch theory”
(which has its foundation in this very Patriarchal “Encyclical” of 1920), they
engage in dialogues with heterodox “on equal terms.” They are deluded in a
confessional capacity, since they have been substantially deprived of the
right, as Orthodox, to recommend, put forward, and confess their Orthodox
convictions and attitudes, and indeed that which is binding on them, the
“Uniqueness” in faith and truth of our Holy Orthodox Church, which constitutes
Her Dogmatic “substance,” and which the “branch theory” absolutely destroys and
completely overlooks!!
Consequently, “Ecumenism is a
common name for the pseudo-Christianities, the pseudo-churches of Western
Europe, with Papism at its head. All of these pseudo-Christians, all of the
pseudo-churches, are nothing other than one heresy side by side with another
heresy.... As history proceeded, the different heresies denied or distorted
certain characteristics of the God-man, the Lord Jesus, and these European
heresies wholly removed the God-man and in His place substituted European man.
Here there is no essential difference between Papism, Protestantism, Ecumenism
and other heresies, whose name is Legion” (Archimandrite Justin [Popovich], The
Orthodox Church and Ecumenism [Thessaloniki: “Orthodoxos Kypseli”
Publications, 1974], p. 224).
But how is it possible for the
“World Religion” or “Church”—which is everything other than Orthodox—, which
the “Ecumenical Movement” of the W.C.C. has as its aim and which the Œcumenical
Patriarchate envisions with its characterization of the “Union of the
Churches,” to be the “Will of the Lord,” given that the W.C.C. has totally
rejected every element necessary to the adoption of the dogmatic definition of
the “Uniqueness” of the Orthodox Apostolic Church?
These different attitudes,
unheard-of in the Orthodox domain of our Church, are not “simple phrases” or
“polite courtesies,” which have been successively set forth for almost seventy
years by the W.C.C. since its inception and that of its precursors, but
constitute a systematic program of rejecting the Orthodox viewpoint and
replacing it, as we have said, with the obligatory acceptance, on the part of
all of its members, of the super-dogma of the “branch theory”!
These proclamations and
activities of the New Calendarist Ecumenists, which have been perpetrated by
them “in public” and are condemned canonically by the Church, make them
“potential” schismatics and heretics (until, that is, “Synodal judgment”
officially proclaims them such), a condition which no faithful can accept or in
any way endure, while remaining pious and Orthodox, by communing with such
“erring” shepherds!
Formally, then, there is evidence
that:
“Following the holy Apostles, the
Fathers and Teachers of the Church with the same zeal confess, proclaim, and
defend the unity and uniqueness of the Orthodox Church. Their zeal for the
preservation of the unity of the Church was displayed chiefly in instances when
certain men and groups seceded from the Church, that is, in cases of heresies
and schisms. On the subject of unity, the Œcumenical and Local Synods of the
Church had and have special significance and importance. In the unified
attitude of the Fathers and the Synods, the Church is not only one, but also
unique, because the one and unique God-man, her Head, cannot have many bodies.
The Church is one and unique, because she is the body of the one and unique
Christ. The division of the Church is ontologically impossible, and for this
reason there was never a division of the Church, but only separation from the
Church. According to the word of the Lord, the Vine is not divided, but only
the branches that are willingly unfruitful fall off the ever-living Vine and
become withered (cf. St. John 15:1-6). The heretics and schismatics seceded and
were cut from the one undivided Church of Christ at different times, and
consequently cease to be members of the Church and fellow-members of her
Theanthropic body. Such at first were the Gnostics, and after them the Arians
and the Pneumatomachoi [those who denied the divinity of the Holy
Spirit, a heresy condemned by the Second Œcumenical Synod in 381—Tr.], and then
the Monophysites, the Iconoclasts, and finally the Roman Catholics, the
Protestants, the Uniates and all the rest of the heretical and schismatic
Legion” (Archimandrite Justin, op. cit., pp. 81-82).
Now, “the Orthodox dogma, rather
the pan-dogma, concerning the Church was rejected and replaced by the heretical
Latin pan-dogma of the primacy and infallibility of the Pope, that is, of a
man. Out of this panheresy other heresies were and are continually born...;
each Protestant is an independent Pope in all questions of faith. This forever
leads from one spiritual death to another....
“Since this is how things stand,
for Papist-Protestant Ecumenism, then, with its pseudo-church and its
pseudo-Christianity, there is no way out of its impasse except wholehearted
repentance before the God-man Christ and His Orthodox Catholic Church. Repentance
is the remedy for every sin....
“Without repentance and reception
into the true Church of Christ, it is unnatural and inconceivable for anyone to
speak about the union of the ‘Churches,’ about a dialogue of love, about... intercommunion.
Most important of all is that one should become a ‘fellow-member’ of the
Theanthropic body of the Church of Christ....
“The contemporary ‘dialogue of
love,’ which is carried on under the form of naked sentimentality, is in
reality an unbelieving denial of the saving sanctification of the Spirit and
belief of the Truth (2 Thessalonians 2:13), that is, of the unique saving ‘love
of the truth’ (2 Thessalonians 2:10). The essence of love is the truth; love
lives and exists when it is truthful. The truth is the hearth of each
Theanthropic virtue, and consequently also of love.... In Christ we men live
‘speaking the truth in love...’ (Ephesians 4:15).
“Let us not be deceived. There
exists also a ‘dialogue of falsehood,’ when those engaging in dialogue
consciously or unconsciously lie one to another. Such a dialogue is familiar to
the ‘father of lies,’ the Devil, ‘for he is a liar and the father of it’ (St.
John 8:44). It is familiar also to all his willing or unwilling collaborators,
when they design to accomplish good by means of evil, to attain to truth with
the aid of falsehood. There is no ‘dialogue of love’ without the dialogue of
truth. Otherwise, such a dialogue is unnatural and false. Hence the injunction
of the Apostle asks that love be ‘without dissimulation’ (Romans 12:9).
“There is no doubt that the
Patristic measure of love towards men and of their relation to heretics,
inherited from the Apostles, has an entirely Theanthropic character. The
following words of St. Maximos the Confessor express this truth of faith
perfectly:
“‘For faith is the basis of those
things come before it, I mean hope and love, assuredly underlying the truth’ (Patrologia
Graeca 90:1189A).
“‘I do not wish to distress the
heretics, nor do I write these things rejoicing in their hardship—God forbid—,
but rather rejoicing and taking delight in their return. For what is more
pleasing for the faithful than to behold the scattered children of God being
gathered together into one? Nor do I write exhorting you to prefer harshness to
humanity—may I not be so insane—, but beseeching you both to do and practice
good to all men, becoming all things to all men, with attention and scrutiny,
as each has need of you. I wish and beg you to be completely severe and
implacable only when it comes to joining in any way whatsoever with heretics in
confirming their deranged opinions. For I reckon it to be misanthropy and a
departure from Divine love to attempt to strengthen error so that those already
seized by it undergo still more corruption’ (Epistle 12; Patrologia Graeca
91:465C).
“The teaching of the Orthodox
Church of the God-man Christ with regard to heretics, formulated by the holy
Apostles, the holy Fathers, and the holy Synods, is the following: The heresies
are not the Church, nor can they be the Church. This is why they cannot have
holy Mysteries, and in particular the Mystery of the Eucharist, this Mystery of
Mysteries. For the divine Eucharist is precisely everything and all things in
the Church....
“...Intercommunion with the
heretics in the holy Mysteries, particularly in the divine Eucharist, is the
most shameless betrayal of the Lord Jesus Christ, the betrayal of Judas. It is
a matter, above all, of betraying the whole Church of Christ.... The concept of
intercommunion is in itself contradictory and inconceivable for the Orthodox
catholic conscience” (Archimandrite Justin, ibid., pp. 224-229).
***
The heights of ecumenist
intoxication have reached such an unimaginable point that blasphemous phrases,
previously unheard-of, are exclaimed to the detriment of our Holy Church.
Ecumenist clergy call her “narcissistic,” precisely because of her Orthodox “essence”
and “character”? [1] Now, the question arises: In what else should our Holy
Church boast and what else should she think, teach, preach and assert—in both
theory and practice—than the Truth of our Christian Faith contained in
Orthodoxy?
Orthodoxy owes her “redemptive”
Grace, as a “Divine Institution,” being what she is with her faithful-Orthodox Pleroma,
to this “essence” and “character” of hers. If, as this unheard-of blasphemy
would have it, one who boasts or who dutifully struggles for the divine Gift of
the true faith and sure salvation, which Orthodoxy alone bestows..., “is
narcissistic,” does the one who offers such a characterization perhaps know
something else, other than that of which we have boasted, which he could
recommend to Orthodoxy, so that she could become free from what he supposes to
be the vice of Narcissism? (!!!) But such blasphemies, remaining unrebuked by
the proper presiding ecclesiastical authority, are considered suitable and
acceptable!
It is on the account of this
damnable spiritual captivity of the Orthodox “Delegations” that they accomplish
no God-pleasing purpose or mission, being corroded ideologically by the
ecumenical movement and its ideology and suffering and struggling completely in
vain, much to their condemnation, for seventy years and more, so that “the
vision of Christian unity should not be lost” (according to a recent statement
of the Patriarchate), always on the basis, assuredly, of the ecumenical
movement and its ideology, of which, it should be noted, the Œcumenical
Patriarchate is the “leading light” and creator! (See the newspaper Kathemerine,
March 15, 1992).
If one wishes to form an image of
the harm being treacherously done to our Holy Orthodox Church by means of the
W.C.C., as much on the part of its “Orthodox” members as that of the heterodox
heretics and those of other religions, he can read the “Brief Orthodox Critical
Attestation” about the recent seventh General Assembly of the W.C.C. in
Canberra, Australia (February 7-20, 1991), which was published in the
periodical Orthodoxos Enstasis kai Martyria, vol. 2, nos. 22-23
(January-June 1991), pp. 226-276, Part 1 (to be continued).
Consequently, the plans being
systematically put into effect for the intolerable continuation and eventual
realization of the ecumenist “vision” on the part of the Œcumenical
Patriarchate are of particular importance and meaning with regard to the apostasy
that is being accomplished, as are the constrictive and indispensable
declarations that have already become commonplace and are unfailingly uttered
by the Patriarchs who have succeeded the notorious Athenagoras. These
statements constitute an explicit ecumenist commitment and confession and are,
moreover, prerequisites for their election and recognition as Patriarch: they
promise “faithfully to follow the line of their predecessors”!
It is evident, we imagine, that
the foregoing promise is wholly superfluous, to the extent that the meaning and
importance of the above “Proclamation” [the Encyclical of 1920] speaks for
itself eloquently and affirmatively....
I have reckoned that the
demonstrative evidence set out above, which includes the aforementioned
Patriarchal “Encyclical” by virtue of which the “Ecumenist Heresy” within the
W.C.C. laid the foundations for its provenance, was full and sufficient to prove
and testify that a program of ecumenist deviation and apostasy are being
undertaken. For this reason I also thought it expedient to omit a great many
other such things, out of consideration for space and in order to keep my
account concise (namely, well known, anti-Orthodox, heretical and blasphemous
declarations, actions, and activities, such as those of Athenagoras and
Demetrios of Constantinople, Athenagoras of Thyateira and Great Britain,
Iakovos of America, and Stylianos of Australia, and the other fervent
ecumenists, as well as their various other acts of ecclesiastical
communion—strictly condemned—with heterodox heretics), since all these have as
their source and point of departure the ecumenist heresy mentioned briefly
above, which a great many serious writings deal with at length.
***
Finally, with regard to the
need—trumpeted by various people in recent times—for unity, agreement, and
rallying of Orthodox forces, action which aims at concealing protest, as in the
recently convened “Panorthodox” Assembly of the Phanar, with its typical format
and its ecumenist understanding and agreement, I consider the following
clarification expedient:
Nobody would disagree that the
need for “unity and agreement” in the entire body that represents Orthodoxy,
that is, the absolute “rallying” of the whole pleroma of the Orthodox
Church of Christ, which is “One,” is an indispensable, imperative duty and
obligation of every faithful Orthodox.
The sole presupposition, however,
for the attainment of this indisputably necessary unity and rallying is the
“unity of faith” that is a “dogmatic definition” and fundamental mark of Church,
and which constitutes Her “essence and character.”
Accordingly, only in the wake of
absolute unity in the Orthodox faith can this need be absolutely fulfilled,
which admittedly is reckoned to be and is most necessary, above all for contact
between the Churches of world Orthodoxy, but also because of the religious and
social conditions that prevail throughout today’s world.
Hence, it is not enough for the
responsible leaders of the Church to address only the need for this unity and
rallying; rather, they are obliged to remove completely the causes of the
existing division and discord, which they themselves alone created through the
“New Calendarist Schism” and the “ecumenist heresy” and the things entailed by
them, on account of which the Orthodox pleroma of the Church, which
undertakes “God-pleasing resistance” on this issue, can never be united and
agree with their presiding ecclesiastical authority, which is proceeding in
“deviation” and “apostasy,” and is thus “publicly erring in piety and
righteousness”!
Aside from this indispensable and
dogmatically imperative presupposition of the “unity of faith,” which dictates
the removal of the foregoing factors, which caused the split, every other
effort and activity of the ecclesiastical leadership through measures of
compulsion and violence, like “expulsions” or other “administrative sanctions”
and reprisals, as well as the written Patriarchal injunction to the Holy
Monasteries of the Holy Mountain not to register and recognize in the monachologia
[lists of monks] the novices and monks in independent communities (those, that
is, who for the canonical reasons set out above, are unable to continue
commemorating their presiding ecclesiastical authority), not only do not bring
about “unity of faith,” but constitute a manifest “persecution of the Orthodox
Faith” and piety, to the detriment of the “unity” and “rallying” of the whole
Orthodoxy that is thus shattered!
Through what we have said on this
matter, it is proved that the “unity and rallying” of the Orthodox forces that
is so pompously recommended by the ecclesiastical leaders constitutes only a
“formal” and “nominal” projection of Orthodoxy, not at all one in essence and
practice, according to an “Orthodox understanding” and meaning, and is in no
way capable of bringing about an “identity of faith” in the Orthodox phronema.
Consequently, these impressive
displays of the ecumenists, when judged from reality, testify of themselves
that they are put on “to be seen of men” (St. Matthew 23:5), in order to
conceal their own ecclesiastical responsibility for the “division,” “apostasy”
and seduction, clearly, of naïve public opinion.
VI.
A WALLING-OFF
This situation, created—though it
should not have been—by our presiding ecclesiastical authority and intolerably
perpetuated to the detriment of all, brought about, as expected, the division
of the ecclesiastical pleroma into “Anti-innovationists,” abiding
steadfastly by the “ecclesiastical exactness [ἀκρίβεια]” and tradition of the
Fathers, and the “Innovationists,” following the ecumenist heresy and apostasy,
both in knowledge and in ignorance, and the “New Calendar schism,” totally
unconsciously, perhaps, but not without being thus condemned!
On this extremely pressing
subject and on the basis of the Church Canons, we affirm that:
Every single one of the so-called
“shepherds” of the Church, anyone who, to wit, undertakes the practice of his
priestly mission in an anti-Orthodox manner, that is, contrary to the “eternal
boundaries which our Fathers have set,” the Church condemns as one who errs “in
piety and righteousness” and reckons as one who is “a false bishop and a false
teacher,” “a wolf on the attack, wreaking the destruction of the sheep,” in
breach of the promise he made to God at his episcopal consecration, and living
thus in unforgivable deviation and apostasy, “potentially out of Communion” and
therefore canonically “under trial” before a proper, right-teaching Church
Synod.
In precisely such an instance,
the Church makes known to her faithful pleroma the position it must
preserve in dealing with its “erring” shepherds, instructing them therein,
always foreseeing and having in mind the preservation and maintenance of her
Orthodox nature and character—indeed, as much hers as her flock’s.
Hence, acting canonically in such
an instance, she enjoins that “for her deliverance from divisions and schisms”
every one of her faithful pleroma “has the right and at the same time
the duty, before a Synodal verdict” (and a complete, “actual” condemnation of
the erring Bishop) “to set itself apart,” that is, to “wall itself off” from
him “at once,” breaking off all ecclesiastical Communion with and
dependence on him, considering one who does this not only “subject to no
punishment” but “worthy of honor and praise” and “truly Orthodox,” on account
of his obedience to and reverence for this judgment and commandment of the
Church (15th canon of the First-Second Synod).
For this reason, this
“anti-innovationist” pleroma, on the basis of the canonical commandments
of the Church and the related Patristic teaching and practice in the matter, in
full knowledge of its spiritual rights and duties, has “walled itself off” from
its presiding ecclesiastical authority, which “was erring in piety and
righteousness,” setting itself apart from this authority by fully ceasing the
commemoration of his name and, in general, communion with him, setting forth in
this way a “God-pleasing Orthodox Resistance,” which is a Patristic notion (Patrologia
Graeca 99:1045, 1101) and teaching, commended in particular by St. Theodore
the Studite, with regard to “erring” shepherds of the Church.
Such a manifest “fall in faith”
(on the part of the aforesaid leaders and Shepherds) as we face today,
canonically condemned by the Church, can never be accepted by the
“anti-innovationist” pleroma of the Church (clergy and laity), because
to journey and commune with these fallen leaders would preclude the pleroma
from preserving and maintaining its Orthodox essence and nature, by which
maintenance it intends not to perish with them.
From this, it is proved and
attested once more that the people are truly “the guardians of their faith,” a
people which is truly composed of “the unbending few,” the “small flock,” the
“house church,” the “few elect,” and indeed of “groups and individuals in
huts,” to which the Church will eventually be confined on account of apostasy
and persecution, as today, in the intelligent judgment of one distinguished
Russian theologian, and not in the “deluded multitude,” “perishing with heresy
and in error,” of those who “call themselves godly,” but who constitute “the
multitude beneath the surface” and the “crowd of the people” (St. Basil the
Great, Epistle 257)!
***
Very Reverend Elders:
The Fathers of the Prophet Elias
Skete dutifully did precisely this very thing, and for the above canonical
reasons, by breaking off commemoration of and communion with their presiding
ecclesiastical authority (which was “erring in faith,” as we said above), by
virtue of the “right, and at the same time obligation” ecclesiologically
provided to them (see Bishop Nikodim [Milash], Ecclesiastical Law
[Athens: P. Sakellarios, 1906], p. 400, n. 1). Despite this, however, these
Fathers, in the fulfilment of this sacred duty of theirs, and for precisely
this reason, were expelled by force, “like animals in transport,” from the Holy
Monastery of their repentance, the Holy Skete of the Prophet Elias, and from
the Holy Mountain in general, completely illegally and forcibly—as in the age
of Caligula—, at the initiative of the Patriarchal representatives and with the
intervention of the appropriate police and civil authorities of the Holy
Mountain, who carried this out, it should be noted, without any proper legal,
authoritative, or executive decision on the matter, as we indicated previously!
To wit, one might justly inquire:
If this appalling event of the
expulsion or, if you will, “deportation” (appalling since, according to the
legal system in force on Mt. Athos, penalties of such a kind are not applied to
Orthodox Hagiorites, but are applicable only in the exceptional case of the
prohibition of heterodox living there), which took place after an
“overstepping” of the Patriarchal “competency,” does not constitute, in
essence, a destruction, if not an annulment, of the laws and privileges of the
Holy Mountain, and especially of its “autonomy” and “self-government,” which
must abide forever intact, then we ask: What else should the Hagiorite
Brotherhood await, in order for them to realize and perceive fully the peril
that hangs over their heads for the total destruction of the Hagiorite
privileges? Are they perhaps awaiting a future wholesale “occupation” of the
Holy Mountain by the Patriarchate in order to be assured of this and to believe
it? In that case, however, they will be too late, because they will not be in a
position to defend themselves—for, as a result of the above, they have
surrendered already—, when their turn comes to be expelled and deported!
Surely, though, it will not be too late for them to hear the Patriarchal
command: “...You do not agree to pray and to liturgize with...Cardinals and
Pastors of our ‘sister Churches’ and to obey and agree with whatever we decide?
Get off the Holy Mountain at once!”
And though as assuredly as we do
not want such a thing to happen, we nonetheless do not hesitate to believe it,
in view of—if nothing else—the evident Athonite inaction in the matter, but
chiefly because of the intolerable persistence, even today, of the leadership
of the Œcumenical Patriarchate in the heretical Ecumenical Movement and its
ideology, to say nothing of the strong influence arising from its absolute
captivity, in which this leadership completely, unforgivably lies, to the
point, indeed, not only of believing and thinking, but also preaching “in
public” (see the interview with the Œcumenical Patriarch in Kathemerine,
March 15, 1992)—always, I note, on the basis of the foregoing heretical,
ecumenist ideology—that “the vision of Christian unity” is an obligation of us
all, because this is “the will of the Lord”!
Likewise the following
clarification is considered indispensable for the attainment of a complete and
unerring understanding of and opinion on this pressing subject:
Those who think that, on the
basis of the application to that in question of the standard of “ecclesiastical
oikonomia,” they can overlook and even refuse to respond to the “right
and obligation,” canonically provided for them, of “walling themselves off,”
and can continue communing with their ecclesiastical shepherds who “err in
piety and righteousness,” should seriously take into consideration the
following inescapable results—to their detriment and that of the Church—that
is:
This ill-conceived oikonomia
essentially and practically constitutes a clear “transgression,” to the extent
that, when applied in the present case, it breaks the canonically-enjoined
commandment of the Church concerning “separation” and “walling off,” which in
this case is considered indispensably binding for the “rescue of the Church”
and the preservation of our Orthodox existence, which is why there is no right
provided by canons for the pleroma of the faithful to act differently,
that is, according to their own judgment and will (15th canon of the
First-Second Synod, second part; cf. the interpretation by Bishop Nikodim
[Milash], The Canons of the Orthodox Church with an Interpretation, vol.
2 [Novi Sad, n.d.], pp. 290-291, in Orthodoxos Enstasis kai Martyria,
vol. 1, no. 3 [April-June 1986], pp. 73-74).
The inviolable ecclesiastical
principle that “oikonomia should be practiced where there is no
transgression involved,” and likewise that “there is no room for compromise in
matters of faith,” precludes the right to invoke alleged “oikonomia” in
the present case, one regarding the continuation of commemoration and communion
with the erring Bishops.
The refusal on the part of any
knowledgeable clerical or lay theologian to take such salvific and decisive
action, that is, a lawful and canonical “walling-off,” by virtue of the
previously demonstrated canonical and ecclesiological truth, cannot be excused
on the grounds that this refusal springs from reasons of mistaken
understanding, or because of ignorance, a lack of true and objective
information on the saving knowledge and course at issue—aside from cases of willful
perversity, which would, at any rate, indicate a total stifling of the voice of
their good conscience!
Such an instance of refusal,
rather, brings sin and condemnation on these clerics and laymen, to the
detriment of the salvation of their own souls and that of the flock that
follows them, because they ignore the canonical commandments and Patristic
injunctions concerning “Orthodox resistance” and an “anti-innovationist”
course.
This oversight has the canonical
consequence that such individuals are deprived of a sure basis for salvation,
that is, of the substance of the Faith that is here at stake (in that there is
no room for “oikonomia” or “compromise”), because they have rejected the
God-pleasing and practical “candor” and “confession,” without which any kind of
moral or spiritual virtue or pious content is of no help, insofar as “faith is
the thing imperiled” by the evil ecumenist heresy! Because of their communion
with it, albeit unwillingly or indirectly undertaken, they reap soul-destroying
consequences, on account of this negative course, which makes them totally
“perish with heresy” and brings them before the “Gehenna of fire”!
At this point, now, and in view
of the foregoing, we would do well to recall the ever-memorable and blessed
Hesychast Kallinikos of Katounakia, who, at the time the New Calendarist schism
of 1924 was created by the Patriarchal “shepherds,” and after breaking off—even
at that early time—commemoration of the Patriarch, made this characteristic
remark: “Kemal [the ‘Father’ of modern Turkey] is at the head of the Greek
Army. Consider the results!” If this blessed Elder, who lived for thirty years
as a cloistered Hesychast in the Hagiorite desert of Katounakia, were alive
today, he would certainly recommend “prudent judgment,” and not a “perversion”
of the exactness of the Church canons, so that everyone—but in particular those
who desire the “...harmony of the garden of Kerasia” (see Hieromonk Th., “The
Garden of the Orchard of the Panagia. Kerasia, September 1991,” in Protaton,
vol. 2, no. 32 [November-December 1991], pp. 163-166)—might understand that the
actual “thorns and weeds” in any garden are comprised of those who do not
intend to display an “identity of faith” with the Orthodox phronema and
course, by reason of their voluntary cooperation with the Antichristian,
ecumenist apostasy demonstrated above; but also that “the union of all” does
not presuppose “humility and love” as a basic element of its attainment
(because it is precisely these things, when turned upside down and deprived of
true faith, that then bind together the entire heterodox, heretical mélange of
ecumenism), but the indispensable factor of “identity of faith” with the
Orthodox phronema, which the ecumenists want to overlook, in envisioning
their new-style, “non-dogmatic” union!
Besides, the “love of many,”
which lacks the content of “true faith” and “canonical exactness,” is not
acceptable to God, if it is not cultivated within the “boundaries which our
Fathers set,” lacking therein not “a single iota” or even a single dash.
What point would there be, then,
even in our attempting to ascend all the rungs of the ladder of the virtues,
since the teacher of The Ladder advises us that the duty of “obedience”
is always in force, “except,” however, “in matters of faith,” when this dictate
does not apply?
The fact that the Church enjoins
and recommends a “walling off” as an imperative and indispensable element of
her “rescue” from shepherds in error, confirming, in addition to this, that the
believer who obeys and complies with this commandment not only is “not liable
to any punishment” on the basis of this, but is properly praised, being
considered by Her as “truly Orthodox”—of this there is no doubt.
But wholly contrary is the
situation of those who demur and resist this positive and objective stand, willfully
refusing to pay respect and obedience to the canonical injunction of walling
oneself off, such individuals, whether by reason of their mistaken
interpretation and erroneous conviction (as with the inventors and followers of
a “conditional” interpretation of this injunction, a theory which has been
sufficiently refuted), or because of self-serving interests, or because they
are trying to conceal their own spiritual and canonical lukewarmness or
responsibility and guilt in the matter, or because of their clear opposition,
for whatever reason, to the canonical phronema of the Church, aside from
the fact that they are accomplices in “schisms and divisions,” because through
their communion with them they strengthen and continue them—such individuals
willy-nilly come to the point, through this damnable opposition of theirs, of
censuring the practice of the Church as deficient, thinking and preaching in
this way, finally, to compound their sin, that their obedience to and
compliance with this Synodal injunction of a walling-off will place
them—listen! listen!—“outside the Church”!!!
Truly, therefore, “Shudder, O
Sun, Groan, O Earth” at such obtuseness and perversity, for all who know the
truth of the Holy Gospel and believe in it hear from it that “those who walk in
darkness know not whither they go” (cf. St. John 12:35), while those who
journey in the light and truth of the Church “shall have the light of life”
(cf. St. John 8:12)!
These are the inevitable
consequences for those who dare in this way to judge and imagine that the
practice of the Church is deficient, and that their obedience to and compliance
with it will cause them damage and harm! Indeed, to such people the Lord addresses
these words: “If ye were blind, ye should have no sin; but now ye say, We see;
therefore your sin remaineth” (St. John 9:41)!
VII.
“CONSERVATIVE” NEW
CALENDARISTS
Because of the appalling
ecclesiastical situation that prevails today, I judge it useful to set out here
the objective commentary below, which pertains to the position and the course
which must be followed by those “theoretical” spiritual guides who belong to
the party of so-called Church “conservatives,” but who only idly protest
against this prevailing situation “with words” and “in writing,” as well as by
those who belong to the ranks of the majority party in the leadership of the
Hagiorite Brotherhood, the “Commemorators.”
COMMENTARY
With regard to the “canonically
imperative” application of the matter of “walling off” the faithful from their
“erring” ecclesiastical shepherds (Canon 15 of the First-Second Synod) and the
high-handed and erroneous attempt undertaken by the late New Calendarist
Archimandrite Epiphanios (Theodoropoulos) to interpret this imperative
“conditionally,” and concerning the line and course that has to be followed by
all of the so-called “conservative” elements, and in particular the
“commemorating” cadres of the leadership of the Hagiorite Brotherhood:
In a reference in his Ecclesiastical
Law of the Orthodox Eastern Church, the author of this book, that wise
expositor of the Sacred Canons, the Right Reverend Professor Nikodim (Milash)
of blessed memory, Bishop of Zara in Dalmatia, interpreting, on the basis of
the Synodical canonical texts, the commandment of the second part of the 15th
Canon of the Holy First-Second Synod, which has to do with the “walling off” of
the faithful from their ecclesiastical shepherds “who err in piety and
righteousness,” considers and demonstrates this injunction to be binding, since
it constitutes a “right and at the same time an obligation” of the faithful
(see: [1] Ecclesiastical Law, op. cit., p. 400, n. 21; [2] Memorandum-Statement
to Metropolitan Augustinos (Kantiotis) of Florina [Athens: “Agioreiton
Pateron” Editions, 1983], pp. 10-12; and [3] Apostasy and Division
[Athens: Agioreiton Pateron” Editions, 1981], pp. 36-38).
Other authoritative interpreters
of the Church Canons, along with St. Nicodemos the Hagiorite, offer similar
opinions on the matter.
Contrary to this, however,
Archimandrite Epiphanios (since reposed, defending himself “beyond the grave,”
without an actual confession and “Orthodox resistance” in candor, because of
the damnable responsibility which weighs him down as a result of his cooperation
and communion, until his death, with the ecumenist heresy and the “Calendar
schism”), through his face-saving and misleading catchwords and sophistries,
and in order to conceal this culpable and damnable position of his, did not
hesitate to proclaim that the meaning and force of the above canon is
“conditional” and not binding and obligatory, that is, that this canon can be
put into practice according to the wish, judgment, or the disposition of each
person!!!
This high-handed and erroneous
interpretation, which is short even on logic, was rejected and refuted
canonically, as one might expect, through relevant publications and on the
basis of the official and authentic interpretation of the Church as set out above.
However, the distressing side of
this damnable activity is that the aforesaid reposed Clergyman was not
disposed, either in practice, or much less in his writings and publications, to
reaffirm the canonical truth of the Church so fiercely butchered by him, as he
ought to have done, out of duty, after the refutation of his erroneous
teaching.
The situation of the above
clergyman (who in other respects, it should be noted, was honest and blameless,
as we know from personal experience), which we have set out objectively—though
it is appalling from a confessional point of view and from an anti-innovationist
standpoint—, should contribute, we think, to the cessation of the eulogies
published about him, which are spiritually harmful for him; instead of
eulogies, those who care for his soul would do well to have recourse to
invisible, spiritual means of entreating for its forgiveness.
The relevant conclusion in this
matter is this: there is not a worse form of folly and a greater stupidity—to
the end of captivity by Satan—for a man within the Church, enjoying full
freedom of will from God and knowing his mission on earth, nonetheless,
convinced about the rightness of his own judgment, to delay in taking the
opportunity, when he can, like the “wise virgins,” use the “remaining time of
his life” for the sure attainment of his soul’s salvation, to do this—failing
to take into consideration that he has no control over even one moment of his
life, since “ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man
cometh” (St. Matthew 25:13), with the result that he endangers for sure the
salvation of his most precious soul!
This is especially so when it
happens in instances where clergy or ministers of the Divine Word who lack the
resolve actually to confess “before men” the Orthodox creed consonant with the
Church are not disposed—on the basis of their canonical “right and obligation”
of “walling off” from them—to “depart from and excommunicate from their midst”
their ecclesiastical shepherds “who err in piety and righteousness” “before a
Synodal verdict,” but, on the contrary, until the end of their lives cooperate
and commune with these errant shepherds.
These clergy, whatever their
degree and rank, whether they are called “fair-weather conservatives” or
“traditionalist Orthodox for form’s sake,” whether these same happen to be in
the leading cadres of the Hagiorite Brotherhood, in every way thought to be and
being spiritual guides of the ecclesiastical pleroma under them, it
follows from this position and stance of theirs that they come under “greater
condemnation” (cf. St. James 3:1) than that which weighs down the New
Calendarist shepherds of the Church, who by nature and position are conscious
and manifest “champions and supporters” of the heresy of ecumenism!
This inference is easily drawn
from an objective analysis and comparison of both parties, to the end that: the
first group, the “conservatives,” through their displays against ecumenism
(homilies, articles, writings, extended books, etc.), disavowing and condemning
ecumenism as “the worst heresy of the age” and as “frightful syncretism,”
through this written and oral renunciation alone—without actual “Orthodox
resistance”—do nothing more than produce, if not their unforgivable
condemnation, an official and if unwilling, public proclamation that they
follow this very ecumenist heresy that they disavow and with which they in
practice commune!
It is natural that the second
group (ecumenists), having lost every trace of Orthodox orientation and
foundation concerning the “One, Holy...Church” and being in error by way of the
“branch theory,” should believe in and be imprisoned by the heresy and apostasy
of ecumenism, forming their unorthodox convictions and a corresponding
ecumenist consciousness through their participation in the W.C.C. and their
ecclesiastical contact with heterodox heretics. Hence, this situation of theirs
allows them “unhesitatingly” to accept, follow, and praise the ecumenist
apostasy in the Church as a product of “love,” even without Orthodox truth!
This assuredly, however, does not mean that these ecumenists, the so-called
shepherds of the Church (as the Synodical decrees still call them), are
released from their unforgivable culpability and condemnation!
This “greater condemnation,”
however, is justly and reasonably imputed to the former “conservatives,”
because in full knowledge of the prevailing ecclesiastical apostasy, they
follow and apply “in practice” that which they do not believe, but punitively condemn,
stifling in this way the Orthodox voice of their priestly consciences!!
Furthermore, they are weighed down by canonical responsibility and culpability
because their inconsistent and damnable line and course bring about
immeasurable ecclesiastical confusion, spiritual decay, and damage to the souls
of the pleroma of the faithful, to the extent that they, as much as the
ecumenists, cooperating and communing with heresy, but not “walling themselves
off” from it, as they should, become deprived of Orthodox substance, insofar as
they place themselves “within” the “Innovationist” pleroma of the
Church, being “potentially” outside of Her (not yet having been judged “in
actuality” by Synodical verdict,” as the Patristic assurance in question bears
witness: “even if they have not been submerged by their thoughts, nonetheless
they are being destroyed by their communion with heresy”)!!!
Perhaps, however, after reading
the above “Commentary,” this question will be posed by those to whom the
commentary is addressed: What is the purpose of these things you have written
about us? Can it be that we who struggle so much (even for form’s sake alone)
on behalf of our Holy Orthodox Church are spiritually blind, needing
enlightenment and admonition or advice, in order that “our eyes may be opened”?
The truth of the matter and the
objective reality respond:
If the position which you have
taken in the face of this ecclesiastical situation and the course which you
continue to follow—with the extremely destructive results up to our day, as we
said—proceeded from your ignorance, you would have no sin on account of it; or
if you had some culpability, you would have it because you had no excuse for
ignorance on your part.
Since, however, you write and
maintain (and it is unclear whether you believe this) that you are journeying
in full knowledge and that your struggle is pleasing to God (independently of
whether you accept the canonical path suggested by the Church and the Fathers,
as we set it out above), rejecting this other suggestion as relevant to this,
then “your sin remaineth” (St. John 9:41) and is not forgiven, unless you are
willing to remove it through the well-known “canonical path,” a thing which we
whole-heartedly desire and for which we sincerely pray.
Besides, in this regard, it is
well known that: Christ’s coming into the world “for judgment” is in order
“that they which see not might see, and they which see might be made blind”
(St. John 9:39). That is to say: Those who are considered by the educated
people, “which see” (for example, Hierarchs, Professors, theologians, etc.), to
be blind in ignorance and plunged in error, these will see the light of the
truth; while those who reckon and present themselves as knowing the truth and
the Divine will, and haughtily think that they see, these will be reduced to
spiritual blindness! This is why the Saint of the Apocalypse, the Evangelist
John, advises: “anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see”
(Revelation 3:18). The “eyesalve” in question is nothing other than “obedience”
and practical “compliance” with the “canonical path” of the Church and the
Fathers, which alone of itself offers God-pleasing “confession before men” and
the saving testimony of our true Holy Faith, for the spiritual salvation of
every “traditionalist” struggler.
What should not remain unrebuked,
and this has direct relevance to the subject of the stance of the
“conservatives” that is being touched on here, is the serious issue of the
result brought about by this stance up to now!
The unbiased scrutiny of every
caring and struggling believer, not to mention the bitter fruits and the
hitherto negative results of this conservative policy, attest of themselves
that the spiritual harm caused to the Church and Her pleroma is great
and incalculable, since it is not possible to “gather grapes from thorns” and
“figs from thistles” (St. Matthew 7:16)!
It is precisely because this
stance of theirs is deprived, through shadowy, sketchy protest and culpable
compromise, of canonical and Patristic blessings and Grace, that it is
correspondingly deprived not only of a God-pleasing result, but also of good
conscience! And in fact: How is it possible for one to cultivate a good
conscience of confessional frankness and Patristic struggle, when with disdain
for the aforementioned commandments of the Church, he co-operates with the
“erring shepherds banished” by Her and when he declines to “hasten”—as “they
hastened to rescue the Church”—to deliver the Church from “divisions and
schisms,” since through his cooperation, instead of “deliverance” from schisms,
he strengthens their continuation and is in no way concerned, because of this
communion of his, for the security of his “Orthodox being” and that of the
Church, seeing that he should in any case know that it is not a trifling
matter, but a matter of a most basic “issue of faith” on which depends the
spiritual salvation of all the faithful members of the Church of Christ, and to
which the lofty mission of the clergymen in question (the “conservatives”) and
of other competent persons aspires? For if the guardians of the Church betray
their great mission and thus “the light be darkness” and “the salt lose its
savour,” then, “how great is that darkness?” and “wherewith shall it be
salted?” (St. Matthew 6:23; 5:13).
Extremely timely and suitable in
this matter is the suggestion of one conservative monk, and indeed not
concerning a topic of faith, but in this case a matter of anti-traditionalist
ecclesiastical order, who declared thus:
“At times of crisis, after the
third ‘halt!,’ the guard is obliged to open fire, if he does not want to lose
his comrades.”
With this thought, it appears
that the author has grasped the meaning of the “lawful contest” and confession
according to God. Can it be, however, that the same man who recommends this
will turn out not to open fire even after the third “halt!”? How, then, will he
save himself and his comrades? Through a skirmish of continuous “halts!”?
Besides, it is well known that,
in the general thought of the canonical and Patristic judgment and teaching,
every capitulation and cooperation and, above all, communion with false belief
and heresy constitutes a “denial of faith and spiritual perdition,” and that
“he who follows a schism”—and much more a heresy—“shall not inherit the Kingdom
of Heaven”!
This system of superficial
protests and various other skirmishes constitutes self-deception and betrayal,
by reason of guilty consent, which in matters of faith are completely
proscribed. Besides, the Church makes clear declarations on the issue. Everyone
who has the disposition and will to show obedience and reverence for Her
commandments to come to the rescue is saved for sure, while he who is
disobedient to them “knoweth not whither he goeth” and is considered to be “as
the heathen and the publican” (St. Matthew 18:17)!
***
In conclusion, all of us
Hagiorites must seriously take into consideration (in view of the fact that the
Œcumenical Patriarchate happens to be our “presiding ecclesiastical authority”)
that:
The Œcumenical Patriarchate of
Constantinople, for which, as is well known, very holy Fathers of the Church of
Christ lamented—this Patriarchate, because of the unfailing words and causes of
its deviation and apostasy that we previously developed, has today made itself
a center of an anti-Orthodox movement and inspiration, and of manifest
heretical, ecumenist thoughts and aims!
Most Reverend body of Elders, if
you wish to make this situation known, do so not through written protests,
because such protests by the Sacred Community have hitherto proved fruitless
and have “waxed worse and worse” (cf. 2 Timothy 3:13); and by reason of “oikonomia”
and “compromise” your consent up to this point has emboldened our
ecclesiastical leaders. This is why you ought, we think, to proceed without
reservation any longer to the effective and salvific activity and action of
applying the “canonical order” which our Church commands, and about which we
have spoken, with a view to “rescuing” Her and you from the ecclesiastical
apostasy at issue!
Otherwise, the Holy Mountain, all
in all, will cease any longer to fulfill any kind of purpose and mission and,
indeed, as a “Bastion of Orthodoxy,” this will be to the “greater condemnation”
of its unworthy inhabitants!
Would that our Lord might direct
your intentions and dispositions and your final judgment, on the basis of them,
to His Holy Will. Amen!
VIII.
EPILOGUE
As we have explained in the most
concise way possible, the apostasy in the sphere of the Church of Christ
Militant on earth, previously unheard-of throughout Her life, which is today
being accomplished through the “New Calendarist Schism” and the heresy of
ecumenism, has not only been proclaimed “in public” since 1920 through the
“Encyclical,” previously dealt with, of the Church of the Œcumenical
Patriarchate, but was founded and spread “world-wide” at the Patriarchate’s
“initiative,” by means of the so-called “World Council of Churches” (W.C.C.),
with the ultimate objective not of admitting and receiving the heterodox,
heretical members who comprise it into the “One” Orthodox Church of Christ, but
instead of this, replacing the Orthodox Church with the planned “World Religion
and Church,” under the form of the “union of the churches,” and this on the
basis always of the ecumenist dogma of the “branch theory.”
Consequently, it should be noted
that this heretical dogma, as we said before, absolutely ignores and completely
destroys the “uniqueness” of the Orthodox Church, to the extent that it reckons
and counts her as one of the “Christian vines”! On this basis it was determined
that the “Dialogues” that are conducted should take place on “equal terms,”
that is, that the Orthodox should be considered equal to the heterodox,
heretical confessions that have no Priesthood and Mysteries!
Products of the acceptance of
this heretical definition on the part of the “Orthodox” members of the W.C.C.
are the joint prayers and joint celebrations that take place “in good
conscience” between Orthodox and heretics, and vice-versa, and notably on the
“patronal feasts” that are set forth in an ecumenist spirit, through which the
total corrosion and seizure of the Orthodox religious sense and phronema
of the ecclesiastical shepherds in question becomes unfailingly evident, in the
spirit of the ecumenist panheresy, as does their undoubted spiritual captivity!
Assuredly, this consequence is
unavoidable, given that none of those who form the “Orthodox” delegations of
the W.C.C. have had the courage to reject, as they should have, the
establishment of this heretical dogma, quite simply because they accept and
believe it, in practice and theory, in its heretical sense. Acting and thinking
in such a way, however, they in any case betray the Orthodox “essence” and
“character” of our holy Church, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, such
“essence” and “character” as they themselves have.
This predetermined and
irrevocable ecumenist line and course of the apostate ecclesiastical leaders
described above are demonstrated not only in the principles and fundamentals
cited, which this ecumenist policy created and perpetuates, but through recent
statements, about which we have spoken, that support and pursue the realization
of a “union of the churches,” envisioned always according to the spirit of the
“Encyclical of 1920”: the “non-dogmatic” union, that is, of the heterodox
heretics, “communion with whom,” it should be noted, “is not excluded by the
dogmatic differences existing between them,” which is why they are recognized
as “reverend sister Churches,” “fellow-heirs and members of the promise of
God...” —in other words, without any admission of them into the “One... Orthodox
Church,” in view of the fact that, according to the aforementioned Encyclical,
“such a demand by the Orthodox constitutes ‘claims of old superstitions and
habits,” which should not be put forward and certainly should be overlooked,
since they create “difficulties that thwart the work of union”!
This line and course of
ecumenism, however, it should be noted, is the complete antithesis of the “phronema
of the Church,” which it totally adulterates and distorts and which is based on
the Gospel commandment, according to which it is determined that: “The other
sheep,” “which are not of this fold,” that is, those so-called Christians
“outside the Church,” the heterodox heretics, or even those of other
religions—“them also must I bring,” says the Lord; that is, they too should be
led by the “Good Shepherd” and united with the” sheep of this fold,” which
“hear His voice,” in order that thus “there shall be one fold, and one
shepherd” (St. John 10:16).
How, then, is it possible for
these other sheep to be united with the One Church of the “Good Shepherd,”
Christ, when they do not want to hear and obey the “voice of the Church” and do
not intend to “enter through the door” into the “sheepfold” and be numbered
with its faithful pleroma, but completely contrary to this divine
commandment, aim to enter “from elsewhere,” as “thieves and robbers,” refusing,
that is, to renounce their false belief and heretical error?
In mentioning the foregoing, as
much concerning the God-pleasing and canonical return of the heretics to
Orthodoxy as concerning the breaking-off of ecclesiastical communion and
commemoration with the “erring shepherds,” and having in view the previously
mentioned passage of St. Maximos the Confessor, we are writing these things,
not combatting and hating the heretics, but on the basis of the divine and
saving commandment of love, which we are obligated to embrace and offer as much
to our like-believing brothers as to all others, even our enemies.
Our love towards the heretics,
especially, since it is to be pleasing to God, that is, genuine and beneficial,
must aim at their return and liberation from their “deranged opinion,” that is,
their heresy.
As a result, we should not
“rejoice in their hardship,” but “rejoice and take delight in their return,” in
the words of St. Maximos. “For what is more pleasing for the faithful than to
behold the scattered children of God being gathered together into one?”
The same holds also for the
“erring and apostate shepherds.” Towards “their false belief we should be
severe and implacable,” so as to hate and fight this alone as a product of the
Devil, but with a view to their repentance, without hating them personally.
Hence, we should do all things
and act “with care” and “scrutiny,” for the sake of the commandment of love,
always speaking the truth in love, because without truth, love ceases to exist.
Besides, how is it possible for love to be sincere, genuine, beneficial and
wholly pleasing to God under the ecumenist spirit presupposed by the
“dialogues” of the ecumenists?
Consequently, a “non-dogmatic”
union with the heretics (as they wish it and not as the Church determines it),
without their willingly acceptance of the Orthodox truth, is absolutely
destructive, as much for them as it is for us, given that they are deprived of
truth—and therefore of grace—, while we (as many, we mean, as concur with this
anti-Orthodox attitude) are deprived of true and saving love for them and real
brotherly concern for their sure salvation!
Precisely this situation of false
confession, unacceptable for every genuine Orthodox conscience, has been
created by the anti-Orthodox Patriarchal “Encyclical,” which aims at the
“non-dogmatic” union of the so-called “Christian Churches,” which, as we said
before, it considers “reverend sister Churches” and “partakers of redemptive
grace”! But this signifies a destruction “in essence and practice” of every
Orthodox concept, and also testifies that the contemporary ecclesiastical
leaders who proceed on the basis of it have been reduced to aiming at being
called Orthodox only formally. For they proceed not alone on the basis of the heretical
ecumenist conscience, phronema, and way of life already formed in them,
practically and indisputably applying this, but they also proceed by their own
confession, such, for example, that, for them, he who consistently journeys in
Orthodoxy and dutifully boasts for this reason is within the environment
(according to this recently invented blasphemy and satanic characterization) of
“narcissistic Orthodoxy”!
Comment on this point is
certainly quite superfluous, since things speak, here, reasonably well for
themselves.
***
The necessity of making known
this appalling and unacceptable situation leads to the following question, the
meaning of which, moreover, provides useful evidence for the further
enlightenment of today’s Hagiorite Fathers:
Why should the point of departure
for this situation be dated from the first appearance of the New Calendarist
schism—so very evil and of no benefit whatever—roughly seventy years ago, and
why should it continue to our day with this final appearance of ecumenist
apostasy?
The answer to this is extremely
clear, concrete, and objective: This was to be expected to happen, as an
inevitable consequence of the lack of concern on the part of the proper
Hagiorite authorities at that time, or of their spiritual indifference, clearly,
or ignorance, given that in spite of the disagreements, protests, and
dissensions maintained then by certain Fathers, no intention was displayed of
God-pleasing resistance to the situation, at its inception, that it might not
reach today’s sorry state. The lack of such foresight and spiritual
consciousness, obligation, and responsibility had as its result the
contemporary division of the Hagiorite Brotherhood into “Commemorators,” who
thus commune with the ecumenist apostasy, and those who form the minority
faction of “Non-Commemorators,” but who proceed in God-pleasing Orthodox
resistance to innovation and stand outside it (independent of the
ecclesiologically faulty and erroneous opinions of some, who think that the New
Calendarists have been “actually judged” Synodically and that their Mysteries
are invalid, something which is “canonically” untenable).
But allow us to note, in this
parenthesis, that all these ecclesiological deviations, provoked by
disagreements and divisions, are the fruit and offspring of the canonically
inconsistent ecclesiastical line and course of the Hagiorite leadership, which,
if it becomes worthy of its mission and rises to the height of its great
responsibility and obligation and places itself “actually” outside apostasy,
will cause all the divisions automatically to disappear, because there would be
no reason to justify their existence, not only with regard to the resistance
against the ecumenist apostasy, but also with regard to the canonically deviant
line on the pressing subject of “Eucharistic participation,” which the
“prolific” and “very intelligent” Father Th. created years ago and for which he
is responsible and is even now unrepentant, leading the Sacred Community
astray—indeed, to the point of publishing a verdict against us (numbered 31/K:
3.3.1970), which, for reasons of canonical, traditional, and historical necessity,
should not exist in the Archives of the Sacred Community of the Holy Mountain,
since it constitutes a spiritual reproach and censure against its Sacred
mission and against the memory and honor of the “Kollyvades” confessors, which
is another reason why, albeit even for form’s sake, it should be revoked! (See
Monk Theodoritos, Eucharistic Participation on the Holy Mountain
[Athens, 1972], pp. 76-77).
On this point, allow us to
express the following opinion:
It is fitting, we think, that in
such serious cases of matters of “Faith”—and Faith “in peril,” at that—as exist
today, that the minority faction of the Hagiorite Brotherhood of the
“independent Fathers” (non-commemorators) should be represented, so that in
much counsel and understanding and in a spirit of harmony, accord, and love,
the outcome that is in accordance with God may always be produced and thus the
disagreements, separations, schisms and their consequences, which we have
learned always to judge and censure, may be avoided; so that we may feel the
obligation to aim at avoiding and neutralizing divisions in advance, with
spiritual discernment and love, even before they happen, in order to preserve
the God-pleasing unity and peace of the whole Hagiorite Body, which ought out
of duty, in matters of faith, to act in one body and “with one mouth and one
heart” to the fulfilment of the lofty mission of our Holy Domain.
We should believe, likewise, that
the example of us Hagiorites in “unity of faith,” love, and unanimity makes for
the most lively spiritual fruitfulness and a vivid example for imitation and
for the saving direction of the Orthodox pleroma of the Church in
general.
Concerning the God-pleasing
fulfilment of this lofty duty and in particular applying the “canonical
commandment” of “Eucharistic participation” against those who are scandalized
at this because of their anti-canonical and damnable persistence in “present-day
(bad) habits” and “human traditions,” St. Nicodemos the Hagiorite addresses the
following advice to us, apart from the countless interpretations and
clarifications relevant to the matter in the Sacred Pedalion:
“Wherefore, O Christians, be on
your guard against accusing others. Above all and especially guard well, my
brethren, against getting scandalized and disturbed, when you see or hear how
some brother keeps the commandments of the Lord and the Sacred Canons of the
holy Apostles, the Œcumenical and local Synods, and the holy Fathers in
different places, but above all be eager to imitate him yourselves, praising
him as a guardian of the ecclesiastical traditions and the commandments of the
Lord, and for the love of God be careful not to accuse such a man with
defamatory names, or to harass and persecute him, as perhaps a transgressor of
today’s habits and human traditions: (1) because in accusing and persecuting
him, you accuse and persecute Christ Himself, His Divine Apostles and His
Saints, since that brother is suffering and struggling on account of his love
for the commandments of Christ and on account of the truth, which was handed
down by the Apostles and the Saints; (2) because in accusing and persecuting such
a man, you number yourselves among those ancient persecutors of the Saints and
the tyrants, but make him to be numbered among those Saints of old who were
persecuted, and become deserving of the beatitude of the Lord Who says:
‘Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say
all manner of evil against you falsely, for My sake’ (St. Matthew 5:11); (3)
because as much as you fight and persecute such a guardian of truth and virtue,
so much does he overcome you and receive crowns, since he has the truth and the
God of truth Himself fighting on his behalf, as it is written, ‘Strive for the
truth unto death, and the Lord God shall fight for thee’ (Wisdom of Sirach
4:28); when the truth is professed by him, although it is warred against, it is
never overcome; it always overcomes those who war against it, as the wise
Zorobabel says: ‘above all things Truth beareth away the victory’ (1 Esdras
3:12), and again: ‘the truth endureth, and is always strong; it liveth and
conquereth for evermore’ (1 Esdras 4:38)” (St. Nicodemos the Hagiorite, Christian
Morality, Part 3, “That One Should not be Scandalized at Those Who Uphold
the Commandments and the Sacred Canons” [Thessaloniki: B. Regopoulos, 1974],
pp. 258-259).
According to the above, then, the
sure salvation of our souls, for one, depends on ourselves, and thereupon
whether the Name of God should be “blasphemed” or “glorified among the
nations”!
***
Very Reverend Elders—Reverend
Fathers:
The demonstrably real
circumstances and the unfailing testimonies set forth here, which we do not
wish to believe will entirely escape your understanding, prove and testify
singly, and to the fullest extent, to the apostasy that “by the judgments which
the Lord knows” is being accomplished today in the Church by her ecclesiastical
leaders and Shepherds.
This situation that was created
by these same people, as we said before, is admittedly wretched and
unacceptable from every point of view, but especially from the viewpoint of
obligatory and God-pleasing opposition on the part of the “highest criterion of
the Church,” her genuine “Conscience.”
To begin with, we must accept
that all of this is not granted without the “Will of Divine Providence,” and
this, according to the Apostolic judgment, in order “that they which are
approved may be made manifest” (1 Corinthians 11:19) and “that the thoughts of
many hearts may be revealed” (St. Luke 2:35), so that the choices and
intentions of shepherds and those whom they shepherd may be made manifest in
general.
About the methods of this
opposition, which pertain purely to a “matter of faith” and of sure spiritual
salvation, the Church provides pertinent data through her canonical
commandments and Patristic teaching, as we have already commented.
In particular this obligation
becomes indispensably binding and inevitable for you Holy Elders, by reason of
your high calling as the spiritual leadership of the Hagiorite world, making
you obligated to, accountable for, and responsible before the Hagiorite
Brotherhood in general, not only regarding the governance of the Holy Mountain,
but chiefly and especially regarding the preservation of the laws and
traditions of our Holy Faith intact and unimpaired, through the “invincible,”
anti-innovationist, traditional Orthodox ecclesiastical line and course, far
from all heresy, innovation, and error, through which alone the spiritual
heritage of our Holy Domain can be preserved, which can shed light in a
Pan-Orthodox manner on the entire ecclesiastical pleroma outside the
Holy Mountain, and show thus in essence and practice that the Holy Mountain is
truly the “Beacon” and “Citadel” of Orthodoxy, the “Ark of the Orthodox Faith,”
and the unique center of God-pleasing life and repentance.
Along these lines, it is needless
to stress that the fulfilment of this spiritual duty of the Athonite spiritual
leadership, as also the lofty mission in general of the Holy Mountain, is
prevented from coming about in the prevailing climate of heretical, ecumenist
apostasy, which should be renounced completely and without reservation through
the canonical measure of “separation and a walling-off,” in a way such that the
Holy Mountain will still be able, without divisions and dissensions (which will
then vanish completely because there will be no reason for them to exist), in
full divine unity of faith according to God, to claim to preserve “an altar
free from innovations” and a “pure sacrifice,” things which are prevented from
being preserved as long as communion and commemoration with the ecumenist
heresy and the New Calendarist schism is continued—in any way whatever and for
whatever reason—, and this according to the very clear commandment which
expressly declares that we should “in no way whatsoever be subject to apostate
shepherds.”
We duly submit the confirmations
mentioned at present in general, and validated by the facts, to your discerning
perception and unbiased spiritual judgment, even if, in the case of this foremost
and extremely pressing (as it has been for some years) “matter of Faith,” it
happens that you have not yet taken the necessary and canonically binding
position and decision; and this, impelled by the hope that, by Divine Grace,
you will want to be led to the God-pleasing and saving conclusion that you must
enroll and number yourselves with the “anti-innovationist” and “God-pleasing
resistance” of the Orthodox pleroma of the Church (resisting through the
canonical measures and means which She provides to her pleroma at a time
of deviation by Her shepherds), so that in this way you may be able to respond
absolutely and surely, as much to the highest duty of saving and preserving
your Orthodox “substance,” as of preserving the particular “character” of the
Hagiorite—and indeed the leading and presiding Athonite Monasteries—to the
glory of our Holy God in Trinity, and the raising of the Hagiorite spiritual
prestige, that has been worn to shreds, and its lofty and sacred Pan-Orthodox
mission.
Such an action, it should be
noted, is urgently required, because contemporary ecclesiastical conditions
demand it, if every believer, in good conscience, is to save and preserve his
Orthodox “being” and “character,” lest he make himself “perish with heresy”!
Finally, the absolutely sure and
positive conclusion to be drawn from the above data, or rather the most
important of them, concerns the ulterior and fundamental motive of the
so-called “World Council of Churches” (W.C.C.).
In our apocalyptic days, as has
already been displayed and proved quite clearly, through the establishment of
its international “Congresses” (such as the infamy recently brought about in
Canberra), the “Council” in question, on the basis of the goals and plans to
which it aspires and of the panheresy of Ecumenism preached through its agency,
has become a Forerunner of the Antichrist in an absolute sense.
Indeed, on the basis of its
actions to date—the obvious ones at least—, but also on the basis of its very
goals, no Orthodox Christian should have a place in it, not even as an
observer!
Hence, everyone who cooperates
with this center of Antichrist, and is in any way involved with the ecumenist
heresy, cooperates directly with the precursory instruments of the Antichrist,
and, before receiving the perceptible “seal,” voluntarily and “consciously”
receives the noetic seal of Antichrist!
It should be noted, as well, that
he who in this way receives the noetic, precursory seal of Antichrist will not
be able to escape, thereby, his perceptible seal at his final appearance in
person.
This holds good not only for all
the members of the W.C.C., founding and otherwise, such as the “delegations of
Orthodox Churches” and, in particular, the Ecumenical Patriarchate, but also
for everyone who cooperates and, especially, who communes ecclesiastically with
them through the ecumenist heresy, becoming thus an initiate of the pan-dogma
of the “branch theory” and denying, in this way, his Orthodox essence and
receiving invisibly the noetic seal of Antichrist!
Along these lines, it is clear
that only through a God-pleasing “resistance” and “frankness” of confession and
struggle, which has “great recompense,” can we avoid participating in the “seal
of Antichrist,” which our ethereal soul receives whenever it “commemorates” and
“communes” with the above members of the W.C.C., the established precursory
instruments of the Antichrist, concerning which threat the voice of the Church
prophesies that into her own body “shall enter grievous wolves, ... not sparing
the flock” (Acts 20:29)!
How, besides, is it possible for
those who commune with and commemorate errant shepherds (in the face, indeed,
of the explicit commandment of the Church about “separation” and a
“walling-off” from them) not to be partakers of the inevitable spiritual guilt
and canonical condemnation attendant to their destruction by heresy? And how is
it possible, likewise, for our Lord thus to hearken to our entreaty and protect
His flock “from ruinous wolves” (11th Eothinon [Gospel Sticheron
from Matins])?
***
Very Reverend Elders—Reverend
Fathers:
“Behold, now is the accepted
time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2). “Let us
therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of
light” (Romans 13:12).
All who are in this “condemned”
condition, if they desire not to repeat, like the “foolish virgins,” the words,
“Lord, Lord, open to us” (St. Matthew 25:11), and not to hear the dread
response of the Bridegroom Christ, “I know you not,” let them reflect seriously
on the foregoing, so that, before the most precious “remaining time of their
life” is used up, they may hasten “at once” through Orthodox “resistance” and
God-pleasing “confession” to number themselves—and every well-intentioned
believer with them—among the “Anti-Innovationist Pleroma” of the Church,
in order to enter with “the wise virgins into the marriage” before “the door is
shut” (cf. St. Matthew 25:1-13).
This truth, however, presupposes
that we are all ever obligated to abandon “the erring multitude,” which “is
rewarded by flattery and gifts..., which hell by cowardice and fear, preferring
the temporal enjoyment of sin to eternal life.” Let us “pay no heed to the
multitude of the so-called God-fearing, but heed those who are genuinely
God-fearing, even if only one be saved from among them.” For, if the multitude,
or “those who define the Church by the multitude...” are not Orthodox in
resistance to innovation, “let the crowd of the people never affect us.”
Especially in difficult circumstances, as in the contemporary atmosphere of
ecclesiastical confusion and apostasy, when the “unbending are few in number”
and when “one [true-believing] man on his own—albeit a man more necessary and
precious than the whole world—is worth ten thousand [errant in belief],” then
“one [true-believing] man and the truth constitute the majority.”
Would that we might be reckoned
“with the few” and the “little flock,” and prefer always “to the multitude
beneath the surface, the saving Ark of Noah.”
In the light of all of the
evidence cited above, we should like to hope that you will duly and eagerly do
honor to yourselves and will desire, in your administrative and spiritual
capacity: first, to neutralize the anti-evangelical and anti-monastic measures
of “persecution for the Faith” (even, perchance, such as are planned for the
future) totally illegally and uncanonically taken against our “resisting”
Orthodox brethren in Christ of the Holy Skete of the Prophet Elias, since these
measures happen to be invalid in “form” and “essence” and are as if they had
never taken place, and dismiss from the Skete those spiritual “adulterers” who
occupied it without any legal right, restoring to it the Prophet Elias Fathers
who are its lawful inhabitants by “divine right;” and secondly, that, through
your God-pleasing and saving decision you will expunge completely the ecclesiastical
division of the Hagiorite Brotherhood that has been maintained for seventy
years by virtue of the “unity of Faith” that was taken from it, so that “with
one mouth and one heart” we may glorify the All-holy Name of our Lord and that
of our Patroness, the Most Holy Theotokos, for the raising of the spiritual
prestige of the Holy Mountain, that is, again, worn to shreds, for the glory of
God and the sure salvation of all our souls,
...and which we remain, appealing
to your saving enlightenment in this matter,
With good
expectations and due honor:
on behalf of the “anti-innovationist” Orthodox
ecclesiastical pleroma “in resistance,”
Hieromonk Maximos
and Monk Basil,
Sacred Hesychasterion
of St. Basil
Holy Mountain of Athos
630 87 Daphne, Greece
August 1992
FOOTNOTE
1. On February 27, 1988, after the Festal Vespers of the
Sunday of Orthodoxy, Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) of Pergamon, representing
the late Œcumenical Patriarch Demetrios, denounced Orthodoxy as “narcissistic,”
opining that “the era of narcissistic Orthodoxy has now passed away”! (Phone
to Pateron 3.2 [Oct.-Dec. 1989], p. 4). The Patriarch and the other members
of the Holy Synod, including no doubt the present Patriarch Bartholomaios,
apparently kept silent as the former Professor Zizioulas uttered his
blasphemies. More recently, Patriarch Bartholomaios has gone so far as to claim
that it is a mockery of Christ to affirm that the Orthodox Church alone is the
True Church of Christ! [Tr.]
