A Letter of Regret from Archbishop Seraphim of Chicago (+1987) to Archbishop Auxentios of Athens (+1994)

Following the correction of Matthewite orders by the Russian Church Abroad

 

 

Diocese of Chicago and Detroit, Inc.
Head Office: Vladimirovo Lost Lake
Rock City, Ill 61070

Subsidiary: 2135 North Sawyer St.

Chicago, Ill 60647 ph: 312-384-1973

26 October 1972
Memory of St. Demetrios the Myrrh-gusher

Archbishop Auxentios [Pastras],

Dear Brother and Concelebrant in Christ,

Christ is in our midst.

Because recently, discussions are again arising concerning the ordination of the late Akakios Pappas [the elder], and as there is mention of my name, I would like to make the following points.

Bishop Akakios was ordained bishop by my unworthiness and the Romanian Bishop Theofil [Ionescu]. I did not ordain Bishop Akakios alone. The ordination took place in Detroit, Michigan, and in the Cathedral Church of Bishop Theofil. There are eyewitnesses who are still alive, who were present during the ordination, that is, the then archimandrites now bishops Akakios [Pappas, the younger] and Petros [Astyfides]. Therefore, the ordination certificate which bears my signature is accurate, as far as it mentions that my unworthiness and another bishop performed the ordination. The second bishop is not mentioned, and did not sign the ordination certificate because both Bishop Theofil and Bishop Akakios, for personal reasons, did not publicly make known the incident.

As far as my participation is concerned: I explained to the then candidate Archimandrite Akakios that owing to the prohibition of his being ordained by my Synod, Bishop Theofil would assist, so that there be a second bishop present for the ordination. I explained to all who were interested that Bishop Theofil followed the New Calendar, even though there existed a few communities adhering to the Old Calendar under his jurisdiction. The cathedral church in Detroit celebrates with the New Calendar. I did not hide this fact from Bishop Akakios. His reply was that there was an extremely urgent need for a bishop for Greece, and that he had to return as bishop, thus consenting to Bishop Theofil’s participation in the ordination, and he would overlook the fact that he celebrated with the New Calendar.

If Bishop Theofil now denies his participation in the ordination, he himself bears the responsibility. I cannot place his signature in the Ordination Certificate. Bishop Akakios accepted the ordination knowing well, back then, that Bishop Theofil was not going to sign any certificate whatsoever. The responsibility therefore for the present confusion rests with the late Bishop Akakios and those with him.

Now, with the written denial of Bishop Theofil that he did not take part in the ordination, the situation becomes complicated and a canonical issue concerning the ordination is created. I'm truly sorry for this, but who would have foreseen or imagined the present development of the whole matter?

Dear brother, is it possible that God in His Righteousness has allowed this temptation because your jurisdiction has repeatedly and excessively used the incident of the ordination of a bishop by a single bishop as argumentation against the jurisdiction of Archbishop Matthew [Karpathakis]? If humility and compassion had been shown towards those that were ordained by a single bishop, and if the decision of our Synod concerning them had received acceptance, then probably this temptation would not have come upon yourselves.

Our Metropolitan Philaret [Voznesensky] from the outset, and even prior to last year’s appearance before our Synod the bishops from the jurisdiction of [Archbishop] Matthew, wrote repeatedly towards your Reverence, saying that we are convinced that the so-much desired union between the two jurisdictions would be achieved if you could confront the above-mentioned bishops with brotherly humility, and if you addressed them as bishops.

The motivations of our Synod, dear brother, for the ties with our Greek brethren, were always sincere and [aimed] towards the strengthening of Orthodoxy during this turbulent age. That is why we are always hopeful that a way would be found so that the two jurisdictions of the Genuine Orthodox Christians in Greece could unite. Towards this blessed aim, we do not spare toils or time, always encouraging and advising the two jurisdictions to unite.

In your correspondence with our Holy Synod, we observe that you repeatedly throw the responsibility of no union on the other jurisdictions. However, allow me to make a few observations. Re-examining the documents from the Synod files concerning the matters in Greece, we have the encyclical of your Reverence that was issued in Athens on the twenty- seventh of August, 1971 O.C., Protocol No. 532, which, amongst other things, mentions the following: we declare with responsibility and categorically towards everyone, that this issue (i.e., the union with the Matthewites) is considered by many as closed for many and different reasons. Note that this Encyclical was written while the Bishops Kallistos [Makris] and Epiphanios [Panayiotou] of the Matthewite jurisdiction were still to be found in the United States of America, giving a report on their situation before the Synod. The same sorrowful expression: that a union with the Matthewites is considered a closed case is to be found printed in your official journal, even after the return of the above-mentioned bishops to Greece, and even after the publication of our Synod's decision concerning them.

Our Fr. Basil Sakkas from Geneva had commented on the issue and justly asked: from whom and when was the issue closed? Doesn't this indicate a manifest unwillingness and prejudice on your part not even to merely accept the notion of the possibility to come to discussions with the Matthewites? And again, is it not a sign of unwillingness to unite with the other jurisdiction on your behalf, your ordination of the Bishop of Thessaloniki, where there already presides a bishop of the Matthewite jurisdiction for more than twenty years, in fact now, during a period of hopes for union? Does not this deed complicate the situation even more, and does it not reveal the unwillingness to unite on your part?

But even more, it saddens us that you discard the verdict and resolution of our Synod concerning the Matthewite bishops, by writing in your official mouthpiece that they can rightfully be compared with those of the Meletian Schism of Alexandria. When our decisions are to your liking, then you take great joy and accept them; when they are disagreeable, then you discard them. But such behavior does not suit serious and maturely minded men, how much less for bishops.

You call those of the Matthewite jurisdiction schismatics. But examining the event which led to the separation, we note that initially the Metropolitan of Florina, Chrysostomos [Kavourides] and those with him, declared the innovating church of the New Calendarists as schismatic; as follows, the canons concerning schismatics were placed in effect. After a while he changed views and declared that the danger of the Calendar constitutes an irregularity of sorts, and not the cause of schism. Following this, Bishop Matthew and those with him departed. In time, Bishop Matthew ordained, alone, bishops for bishoprics of Greece, always considering the Official Church as schismatic. A few months after the repose of Bishop Matthew, Bishop Chrysostomos issued another official declaration, where he considers the innovating church of the New Calendarists of Greece as schismatic, and as a consequence, her Mysteries being invalid.

Thus, he who studies the aforementioned facts with objectivity concludes that: at least the Matthewite jurisdiction is ultimately justified, as she never changed the view that she had initially formulated. On the contrary, the jurisdiction of Bishop Chrysostomos is the one that changed her initial stance, and after a thirty-year period, returned to that position which the Matthewite jurisdiction had preserved from the outset. How then can the Matthewites be declared schismatics? But again, irrespective of what has been said and what has occurred during the past, are not both of you [now] in agreement with regards to the official Church of Greece? With the lapse of twenty years and more since the time when Bishop Matthew ordained bishops for the Greek bishoprics, have you not recently stopped ordaining titular bishops and rather ordained bishops for the Greek bishoprics? Which points divide you today?

Your jurisdiction has not shown seriousness nor stability in her expositions and resolutions. Even more so as if the divisions, accusations, and confusions that were provoked by your ordinations in Greece last year weren't enough, we observe that you have also transferred the same situation to this hemisphere, through the ordination of Bishop Akakios [Ntouskos] the younger in Montreal. Concerning this anti-canonical deed, both the Archbishop of Montreal, Vitaly [Ustinov], and our Synod have written to you, but unfortunately in vain. You realize, dear brother, that a single anti-canonical deed against one of our bishops is considered as such against all of our bishops, because it is a sin against the Church, and it cannot be considered a simple local issue. The present situation of events saddens all of us.

Initially, when I took part in the ordination of the late Bishop Akakios, I did it in good faith, sincerely thinking that I was helping my Greek brethren. The same can be said about the motivations of our blessed Archbishop Leonty [Filippovich]. The confusion, the divisions, the actions, the accusations that have since arisen, I had never even suspected back then. Now I have come to appreciate and comprehend the fact that your Bishop Chrysostomos reposed without leaving successors. The outcome of events indicates that he was a deep conversant of individuals and events, thus not desiring to be responsible for the present sorrowful predicament. I made a mistake in ordaining Bishop Akakios the elder, as regards the fact that I did not know the individuals well, nor the real situation of events in the Greek Church.

I do not write these things to shame you, dear brother, according to the word of the Apostle Paul towards the Corinthians, but I admonish you and offer the opportunity to reconsider certain opinions, and that you correct those which need correction. With candor, I write to you in such fashion, for I happen to be more responsible than anyone else for your line of ordinations, and thus admonish you not only as a brother, but also as a father. I take joy in the fact that even though many years have passed and I have advanced in age, I'm still alive and able to write to you the above.

Your brother in Christ,

Seraphim [Ivanov], Archbishop of Chicago and Detroit

 

Source: Γνώσεσθε την αλήθειαν: προς τους επιζητούντας την σωτηρίαν της ψυχής των [Know the truth: to those that seek the salvation of their souls], by Hieromonk Amphilochios [Tambouras] (Athens: Missionary Publications of the Herald of the Genuine Orthodox Christians, 1984). Emended. Based on the unattributed translation posted on the Yahoo “Orthodox-Tradition” discussion group, August 27, 2006.

 

Archimandrite Constantinе: Fearless Accuser of Pseudo-Orthodoxy (1887 - November 13/26, 1975)

 

With the passing of Archimandrite Constantine, one may well say that a whole generation has departed. He was perhaps the last of the Russian religious intelligentsia of the first half of the 20th century, and in his faithfulness to Orthodoxy and the profundity of his religious-philosophical thought showed the path the intelligentsia should have taken but, sadly, for the most part did not take. His mature religious philosophy may be considered the Orthodox answer to the heterodoxy of Bulgakov, Berdyaev, and their like; but even more than this, his firm stand in Orthodox truth has given him an influence on and an importance for English-speaking Orthodoxy which as yet has been little appreciated.

Cyril Zaitsev (as he was known in the world) was from a family of converted Jews; and once he became fully aware of the truth of Orthodoxy, he manifested himself as an Israelite indeed (John1:47), mercilessly opposed to all pretense and lying in spiritual and intellectual life, and unbendingly upright in his confession of the chosenness of the "New Israel," the Orthodox Church.

***

Cyril manifested himself as rather a "conservative" even in his student days (he studied economics and law at St. Petersburg and then abroad at Heidelberg), taking no part in the radical student movement inspired by the enemies of the Orthodox monarchy. But it was only after he entered government service just before World War I that he came to realize how terribly wrong were those who wished to "reform" Russia. He found the slanderous tales of government corruption, inefficiency, and cynicism to be quite without foundation in the two departments in which he was privileged to work (the Senate, Agriculture); there he found highly qualified personnel with a profound sense of duty and loyalty, as well as a refreshing freedom and personal initiative. "There was a striking contrast" – he wrote much later – "between the grandeur of our historical order of things... and the light-minded dilettantism of our society which was dreaming-while eating the bread of our still living and mighty 'history' - of new forms of life which doomed to destruction history in its entirety." (Here, of course, he has in mind such philosophies as Marxism, which would destroy the past entirely in order to establish a new "ideal" – whose name is "Gulag.") "Russia was destroyed," he wrote elsewhere, "not because the bureaucracy was bad, not because the Tsar remained autocratic, or because Russia had been 'left behind' in various ways. No, the misfortune was this: that she did not value the values of her past... The chief misfortune was that Russia ceased to value, as the highest value, her own age-old way of life, which had been infused with grace by her standing for many years in church Truth... One may find dark sides in historical Russia in all epochs... but as long as Imperial Russia stood, she not only did not compel one to lie, she rather served truth." (One may compare the state of the USSR today, as described by Solzhenitsyn and others, where lying has become part of daily life for everyone.)

Even before the Revolution, therefore, he had left the "mainstream" of the Russian intelligentsia, which prepared both the Revolution and then when the Revolution went rather beyond the expectations of the "liberals" – the pseudo-Orthodox "renaissance" that later was to give itself the appropriate name of "Parisian Orthodoxy." The unrepentant intelligentsia, even though it seldom mentioned him by name, never forgave him his "betrayal" of their cause (for in the "Parisian" view all intellectuals are supposed to be "liberals"), and the "fanatical" Orthodox views of his mature philosophy became for them something of a symbol of all that they hated in the old Russia and in genuine Orthodoxy.

In the Diaspora after the Revolution Cyril Zaitsev spent the '20's and part of the '30's in Western Europe (Prague and Paris), where he became noted as a conservative publicist, working in close cooperation on the journals Renaissance (Vozrozhdeniye) and Russia and the Slavs (Rossiya i Slavyanstvo) with their editor, Peter Struve – the Russian translator of the works of Karl Marx who came to see his error and worked after the Revolution for the restoration of the old Russia. These organs of the "struggle for national liberation" were conservative journals of political and literary comment and followed the maturing of P. Struve's own thought, whose last project was the "rehabilitation" of the great Orthodox Tsar Nicholas I, who is so little understood even now in the West precisely because of his Orthodoxy. But Struve never matured sufficiently to place Orthodoxy at the center of his thought, and in this Father Constantine was far to surpass him.

In 1935 he went to the Far East, becoming a professor of the Russian Law Faculty in Harbin and giving lectures on literature and music (being himself an excellent pianist). Thoughts of "national liberation" and a return to the old Russia now had little meaning, and his thought became more and more religious and Orthodox; the center of his philosophy, from "historical Russia," now became, much more profoundly, "Holy Russia." He became an instructor in the Harbin seminary, and in general he found himself far more at home in the simpler, more fervent Orthodox world of the Far-Eastern emigration than among the Russian intelligentsia of Western Europe. In Harbin he became a spiritual friend of Blind Ignatius, the clairvoyant elder, with whom he would sit for hours reading the Lives of Saints and being instructed by his holy conversation, seeing at first hand, in the crowds who flocked to this holy elder, the closeness of the true Orthodox spiritual tradition to the heart of the common people. To this period belongs his first real Orthodox book, To Understand Orthodoxy – the testimony of a man who had come to Orthodoxy through the thorny path of the modern intellectual jungle, and now would be content with no diluted or "modernized" Orthodoxy, but only with the true, age-old Orthodoxy by which the whole of Russia had once lived and been great.

When the Communists came to rule in China, Cyril Zaitsev might have been considered to be at the end of his intellectual development and career. Hе was over sixty years old, and might well have been content to live out his days quietly in some corner of the vast Russian Diaspora, content enough if he could escape the fast-expanding worldwide Communist regime. But it was precisely now that he entered his most fruitful years, thanks to the inspiration, encouragement, and help of two far-sighted hierarchs of the Diaspora: Archbishop John Maximovitch and Archbishop Vitaly of Jordanville, both of whom keenly recognized the great contribution he could make to the Russian Church Outside of Russia.

After the death of his wife, he was ordained priest in 1945, and soon he joined the ranks of Archbishop John's clergy in Shanghai, participating in this great hierarch's labors of Orthodox enlightenment by giving lectures in the Shanghai cathedral on historical Orthodox Russia. On being evacuated from China together with Archbishop John, he was invited by Archbishop Vitaly to come to Jordanville to become editor of Orthodox Russia, the chief Russian-language organ of genuine Orthodoxy. Here, in 1949, he received the monastic tonsure. For the next quarter-century, it is no exaggeration to say, he was the most important single editor and publicist of any of the Orthodox Churches, writing in any language, who upheld true and uncompromising Orthodoxy. Let us list here only some of the accomplishments which are owing directly to him, leaving aside the many books printed by Holy Trinity Monastery in these years, most of which would have appeared without him.

1. Orthodox Russia. This twice-monthly Russian-language periodical became, under Archimandrite Constantine, the voice of genuine Orthodoxy in the 20th-century world, far surpassing other Orthodox publications in any language in its outspokenness, the breadth of its intellectual scope, and its upright confession of unchanging, age-old Orthodoxy against the innovations of "Parisian Orthodoxy" and the Russian schismatic groups of the Diaspora in general, against the tragically soul-destroying political path of the Moscow Patriarchate, against the increasingly open apostasy of the Patriarchate of Constantinople and, other ecumenist Orthodox bodies; for those caught in any of these traps set by the devil for 20th-century Orthodoxy, the blunt editorials of Fr. Constantine became identified as the voice of the hated "Jordanville ideology" which, although never powerful numerically, constituted a stumbling-block to the cause of modernist "Orthodoxy," which was eloquently exposed by this literal conscience of Orthodoxy as a preparation for the coming of Antichrist.

2. Fr. Constantine added to the list of Jordanville's Russian publications a monthly periodical, Orthodox Life, for Lives of Saints and other material rather out of place in a polemical newspaper, and – his major theological contribution – a yearly theological review, Orthodox Way (or Path), a collection of major articles of theology and religious thought which is also unsurpassed among recent Orthodox theological publications in any language for the purity and sensitivity of the Orthodoxy expressed in it, uncontaminated by modernism and totally independent of the academic fashions which are expressed in the other supposedly Orthodox theological publications of our day. The Orthodox writers represented in this collection are, sadly, still almost unknown save to a small circle of Orthodox Russians; but it is in them that is to be found a good part of the true theological scholarship of Orthodoxy in the 20th century.

3. From the very beginning Fr. Constantine insisted that Holy Trinity Monastery publish a regular English-language Orthodox periodical (Orthodox Life). This was a project far "ahead of the times" and most difficult to carry out. In 1950 English-speaking converts in the Russian Church Abroad were almost unheard of; there was no "demand" whatever for such a publication, there was virtually no one to write for it, and the first translators more often than not had English as their second tongue. But for Father Constantine this was an absolute duty for the Orthodox mission in America, of which he was intensely conscious – despite the unfair accusations made by some against his narrow "Russianness." Despite the early difficulties (which were not helped by Father Constantine's own complicated literary style, difficult enough in his native Russian!), this periodical survived and prospered, giving actually the first real spiritual food and serious Orthodox material in the English language, apart from a few sporadic earlier attempts. This publication has had an incalculable importance for the Orthodox mission in America. Without it the English-language movement of true Orthodoxy – weak and frail as it still is – would not be what it is today, and perhaps would not exist at all.

4. Fr. Constantine wrote also a number of major books. One may mention his Lectures in the History of Russian Literature (Jordanville, 2 volumes, 1967-68), a compilation of his lectures in this course at Holy Trinity Seminary in which he teaches a principle quite unique to "literary criticism": all literature is viewed in its relation to Orthodoxy – a principle, to be sure, which holds valid in modern times for no country but Russia, where Orthodoxy penetrated so deeply the national culture that even the secular writers of the last century could not escape its influence. His articles on Russian composers in the Jordanville periodicals also probed far more deeply than any mere "music criticism," seeking always the very "soul" of the music, where the composer's relation to God is revealed.

A closely related book is his Chefs-d'oeuvres of Russian Literary Criticism (Harbin, 1938), an anthology of essays on Russian writers by other writers, with introductions by Fr. Constantine that place the great figures of Russian literature in the last century in their Orthodox context and perspective. His Ethics (Harbin, 1940) is a survey of both pre-Christian and post-Christian ethical teachings, giving a sound Orthodox evaluation of them. In such works as these he showed that true Orthodoxy, while 'precise and strict, is not narrow in its intellectual outlook, and that a fully developed Orthodox world-view has a sound and balanced approach to all manifestations of human knowledge and culture. His last book, The Miracle of Russian History (Jordanville, 1974), is a collection of his articles on Holy Russia and the state of Orthodoxy in the world today.

One of Fr. Constantine's smaller books has appeared in English: The Spiritual Face of St. John of Kronstadt (Jordanville, 1964). Written at the time of the Saint's canonization in 1964, it is largely a compilation of quotes by those who knew him, forming an excellent spiritual portrait of this great Saint; it is the best introduction to St. John for English-speaking readers.

But Fr. Constantine's major work, the masterpiece of his life, is his Pastoral Theology (Jordanville, 2 volumes, 1960-61), compiled from his seminary lectures. In this work his own rich life-experience, his great intellectual culture, his philosophical mind, his uncompromising stand for Orthodox truth, together with his priesthood and monasticism accepted late in life, flowered in a pastoral work unrivalled in the 20th century in any language. One has only to look at the "Paris" equivalent of this book to begin to realize its greatness. The Orthodox Pastoral Service of Archimandrite Cyprian Kern (Paris, 1957) is a course, based largely on Western sources, on "how to be a successful worldly priest, "always trying to catch up with the latest intellectual fashion, following one's worldly flock while pretending to lead it, keeping up always a proper" exterior and constantly looking at oneself in a spiritual mirror in order to calculate how well one is keeping up one's "image." Such an approach, totally foreign to Orthodoxy, was decisively rejected by Fr. Constantine, whose book, born in the blood and tears of 20th-century history, renounces every kind of fakery and affectation in order to teach Orthodox youth how to be a true Orthodox pastor in an age of apostasy and revolution, how to save one's soul and keep one's flock on the right spiritual path even when all religious values and even civilization itself is falling to pieces around one.

There were those who thought that Fr. Constantine dwelled too much on the subject of the apostasy of our days and the coming reign of Antichrist, for which contemporary mankind is obviously preparing itself. These, indeed – together with his uncompromising stand against what he invariably called "Soviet Church" – were the center of the critical side of his thought, and it was not possible to deceive his keen mind with any of those "new" phenomena of our times which try to pass themselves off as Orthodox; he was quick to spot the lack of Orthodox substance in the "religious" writings of Pasternak, the pseudo-religious Berdyaevism of some later Orthodox writers in the USSR, the ecclesiastical fakery of the American "autocephaly." It was, however, our times – the age of the counterfeit in religion as in everything else – rather than his own basic views that made him seem sometimes a "negative" thinker. But far more fundamentally his outlook, deeply Orthodox, was positive and even optimistic. He encouraged and inspired young priests and religious writers, both Russians and converts; was an active supporter of the canonization of St. John of Kronstadt and, in his last years, of the New Martyrs of Russia headed by the Royal Family; supported and encouraged the veneration of Archbishop John Maximovitch; called for a positive and conscious assimilation of the values of true Orthodoxy and the Orthodox past; was a firm supporter of the much-persecuted and slandered Catacomb Church in Russia; and even hoped for – without false hopes – a stupendous miracle: the restoration of the Orthodox Monarchy in a renewed Holy Russia (albeit only for a short time before the end of the world), without which, he believed, the historical forces now in operation will lead mankind directly to the reign of Antichrist.

But Archimandrite Constantine was above all a Christian realist and ways placed his ultimate hope, not on anything earthly at all, but only in the Church of Christ. All the wealth of his cultural and intellectual attainments were of value precisely because they were placed in the correct Orthodox hierarchy of values, in which the Church and the things of God are the ultimate value, only in subordination to which does anything lesser have any value or meaning at all. "The only treasure," he wrote, "which we, the leftovers of historical Russia, possess is the joy of belonging to the true Church; it is in the power of our conscious membership in the Russian Church Outside of Russia. What are we in the many-colored pluralism of the free world, even of the Christian world? Less than a small minority – a tiny grain of sand, a nothing. But in this nothingness – from the world's point of view – we possess, inasmuch as we belong to the true Church, the path to the blessed eternity which arises for all of saved humanity at the Second Coming of Christ."

A great man has departed from us, leaving a rich intellectual and spiritual heritage for us who remain with the difficult task of being true Orthodox Christians in the darkest days of the apostasy of the last times. In particular. American Orthodoxy has great need of those who can absorb his Orthodox message and pass it on to others. This message is by no means only for some intellectual elite; it is the message of true Orthodoxy at a time when pseudo-Orthodoxy in a hundred forms threatens to engulf us!

Father Constantine to the end remained an "intellectual"; the task of understanding and defending Orthodoxy was his life's work. But Orthodoxy for him was not merely the answer to his intellectual search for truth; it became the whole of life for him, and was reflected in everything he did. In it he found deep peace, which flowered not only in polemical and theological works, but also in his life as priest and monk. He was a spiritual father for many, and for years he was the only English-language confessor at Holy Trinity Monastery. There were perhaps times when he was a little too painfully straightforward and honest; but even this "defect" was a proof of the wholeness of his acceptance of Orthodox truth.

Father Constantine had suggested to some of his students the compilation of a book on death – specifically, on how various people have met death, thus revealing their spiritual state. In his last years especially, he was concerned with this question, and with his own preparation for death; for here, indeed, is the proof of the depth and fullness of one's conversion to the truth. Suffice it to say that Fr. Constantine himself died a peaceful and Christian death, after receiving communion of the Holy Mysteries on that very day, on the feast of the great Father, St. John Chrysostom – just as the monastery was beginning the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the dedication of its cathedral the next day.

One of Fr. Constantine's spiritual children, A. P., supplies an epilogue to his earthly life: "I dreamed of Father Constantine the night that he died. He looked so good – 30 pounds heavier, fresh, with a bright face, although he was stooped. He asked why he hadn't seen me for so long, gave me blessings and said that he was very well. When I awoke, only then did I get the phone call that he had died, and I hadn't even known of his final illness."

One may have bold hope that Father Constantine, having carried through to the end his search for and discovery of Christ's truth, has indeed entered into that new life which is the answer to the feverish unrest of our unsettled times. Grant him, O Lord, eternal rest with the saints!

 

Source: The Orthodox Word, Vol. 12, No. 1 (66), January-February 1976, pp. 20-27.

St. Seraphim of Platina on St. Philaret of New York

Introduction (originally entitled “Metropolitan Philaret of New York”) by the Editors of The Orthodox Word to St. Philaret’s Epistle, "The Thyateira Confession"

Source: The Orthodox Word, Vol. 12, No. 1 (66), January-February 1976, pp. 3-5.

 

 

Among the Primates of the Orthodox Churches today, there is only one from whom is always expected—and not only by members of his own Church, but by very many in a number of other Orthodox Churches as well—the clear voice of Orthodox righteousness and truth and conscience, untainted by political considerations or calculations of any kind.  The voice of Metropolitan Philaret of New York, Chief Hierarch of the Russian Church Outside of Russia, is the only fully Orthodox voice among all the Orthodox primates.  In this he is like to the Holy Fathers of ancient times, who placed purity of Orthodoxy above all else, and he stands in the midst of today's confused religious world as a solitary champion of Orthodoxy in the spirit of the Ecumenical Councils.

The chief heresy of our age, ecumenism, against which the voice of Metr. Philaret has been directed, is by no means an easy one to define or combat.  In its "pure" form—the declaration that the Church of Christ does not exist in fact but is only now being formed—it is preached by very few among those who call themselves Orthodox.  Most often it is manifested by anti-canonical acts, especially of communion in prayer with heretics, which reveal the absence of an awareness of what the Church of Christ is and what it means to belong to her.  But no one anti-canonical act in itself is sufficient to define a heresy; and therefore it is the greatness of Metr. Philaret at this critical hour of the Church's history that, without insisting pharisaically on any one letter of the Church's law, and without twisting to the slightest degree the words of any ecumenist hierarch in order to "prove" he's a heretic, he has grasped the heretical, anti-Orthodox spirit behind all the ecumenist acts and pronouncements of our day and boldly warned the Orthodox hierarchs and flock about the present danger of them and their future ruinous outcome.  It is most unfortunate that too few Orthodox Christians today have as yet grasped the full import of his message to the Orthodox Churches—a lack of understanding that has come both from the "left" side and from the "right."

On the "left" side Metr. Philaret is senselessly regarded as a "fanatic" and is accused of a number of extreme views which he has never expressed or held.  His voice of true Orthodox moderation and sobriety is reviled and slandered by those—one must strongly suspect—whose conscience, weakened by compromise and openness to modernist renovationism, is not clean.  To such ones the bold voice of Metr. Philaret ruins the harmony and accord; by which most of the other Orthodox Churches are proceeding to their dreamed-of "Eighth Ecumenical Council," at which renovationism will become the "canonical" norm and the Unia with Rome and the other Western heresies will become the official "Orthodox" position.

But no less on the "right" side is the position of Metr. Philaret misunderstood and even condemned.  There are those who, in their "zeal not according to knowledge" (Rom. 10:2), wish to make everything absolutely "simple" and "black or white."  They would wish him and his Synod to declare invalid the Mysteries of new calendarists or Communist-dominated Churches, not realizing that it is not the business of the Synod to make decrees on such a sensitive and complex question, and that the church disturbances of our time are far too deep and complicated to be solved solely by breaking communion or applying anathemas, which—save in the few specific instances where they might be applicable—only make the church disturbances worse.  Some few even think to solve the tragic situation of Orthodoxy today with the declaration, "We are the only pure ones left," and then abuse those who take a stand of true Orthodox moderation with a most un-Orthodox mechanistic logic ("If they have grace, why don't you join them or receive communion from them?").  At various times the Russian Church Outside of Russia has avoided or discouraged communion with several other Orthodox bodies, and with one in particular (the Moscow Patriarchate) it has no communion at all, on grounds of principle; and separate hierarchs have warned against contact with the "modernist" bodies; but this is not because of any legalistic definition of the lack of grace-giving Sacraments in such bodies, but because of pastoral considerations which are respected and obeyed by all true sons of the Church without any need for a merely "logical" justification.

The Orthodox stand of Metropolitan Philaret is rooted in his experience from childhood of the age-old Orthodox way of life.  His family was devout; his father (Archbishop Dimitry) knew St. John of Kronstadt and in the Diaspora was a hierarch in the Far East.  In his formative years in the Far East, Metr. Philaret was in contact with holy men: Bishop Jonah, a wonderworker and disciple of Optina Elder Barsanuphius; the clairvoyant elders of the Kazan Monastery in Harbin, Michael and Ignatius (the latter of whom he buried); Abbess Rufina, whose convent was transformed by its numerous miraculously-renewed icons; and he had clearly before him the example of a number of holy hierarchs, including Metropolitan Innocent of Peking, champion of the Old Calendar, the wonderworking bishops of Shanghai, Simon and John (Maximovitch), and Metropolitan Meletius of Harbin.  His love for holy men and champions of Orthodoxy in the past is evident in the fact that he took a leading part in the publication of the Lives of "Standers for Orthodox Faith" such as Elders Ambrose and Macarius of Optina, writing in addition an excellent introduction to the Life of Elder Ambrose.  In all this, and in his uncompromising stand for true Orthodoxy, he is very like his namesake in 19th-century Russia, Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, the champion of Patristic Orthodoxy against the anti-Orthodox influences coming from the West, and the protector of Optina Monastery and its elders.

For over ten years now the voice of Metropolitan Philaret has resounded unwearyingly in a succession of letters of protest and warning to Orthodox hierarchs, particularly of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and in two "Sorrowful Epistles" addressed to the world-wide Orthodox episcopate.  The present letter ["The Thyateira Confession"] is a kind of third sorrowful epistle to all the Orthodox bishops, occasioned by the first Orthodox-ecumenist "confession," which makes much more definite the errors which had been perhaps only "tendencies" up to now.  It should be noted that, despite the shocking lack of response by Orthodox hierarchs to his earlier "Sorrowful Epistles," the present epistle is still addressed to "the Orthodox hierarchs," "the hierarchs of God," letting them know that it is the least of their brothers who is addressing them, not in order to call them names or make a public spectacle of them, but in order to call them back to Orthodoxy before they have departed from it entirely, without any hope of return.  It should also be noted that there is no trace whatever of the lightmindedness and mockery which mar some of the otherwise welcome anti-ecumenist writings of our day, especially in the English language.  This is a document of the utmost seriousness, a humble yet firm entreaty to abandon a ruinous path of error, a document whose solemn tone exactly matches the gravity of its content, proceeding from the age-old wisdom and experience of Patristic Orthodoxy in standing in the truth and opposing error. May it be read and its message heeded!

 

Russian translation:

http://internetsobor.org/arkhiv-rptsz/istoriya/rptsz/arkhiv-rptsz/ieromonakh-serafim-rouz-mitropolit-filaret-nyu-iorkskij

Prophetic Letters of Fr. Seraphim (Rose) about the Boston Schism

Sergei Kondakov | October 11, 2023

Texts translated from Письма отца Серафима (Роуза) [Letters of Fr. Seraphim (Rose)], Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville, NY, 2005.

 

 

“St. Tikhon of Zadonsk has a good expression, which I used in my Jordanville speech: ‘We must have Orthodoxy of the heart, and not only of the mind’” (p. 237).

“Our American Orthodoxy so greatly needs more heart and less mind! I do not know how one can help here. The only thing that comes to mind is that one must pray more and study Orthodox sources” (p. 201).

“The canons were written for man, and not man for the canons. ... Too many disputes about the canons are now taking place, and if we wish in these difficult times to remain within the bosom of the Church, then we must be faithful to the Spirit of the Church, and not to the letter of the canons. ... It is simply a fact of spiritual and ecclesial life that for the sake of love for Christ the canons are sometimes formally violated and formal ‘disobedience’ to spiritual authorities is shown, for which there are examples in the lives of the saints. If each of these laws becomes absolute and inviolable, then Orthodoxy will turn into Pharisaism” (pp. 90–91).

“...Everything depends on the interpretation ... of the rules: either broadly and with heart, or narrowly, coldly, and with calculation” (p. 125).

“(Orthodoxy) is something that belongs above all to the heart, and not to the mind, something living and warm, and not abstract and cold. ... A person who takes Orthodoxy seriously and begins seriously to work so as to realize Orthodoxy with his whole heart and to change himself possesses, at least to a small degree, that quality which we may call the fragrance of true Christianity. ... Such Orthodoxy cannot be acquired in a day; it requires suffering, experience, and trials. But above all it requires resolve” (p. 287).

“We admire the lofty patristic teaching ... while not having Christ’s simplicity in our hearts? Then we have a ‘comfortable spirituality,’ and we shall not bear spiritual fruit...” (p. 298).

Beginning of the 1970s: “Our ‘Greeks’ in the Church Abroad, whom we dearly love, have lately been troubling us by trying to impose their opinion on everyone and everything in secondary matters. Some converts have asked us whether they are responsible for the missionary work in our Church and whether we must believe exactly as they do. Because of this, some of them are close to despair” (p. 29).

1972: “...In order to be in the Church, it is absolutely not necessary to agree with everything that Fr. Panteleimon teaches. On the other hand, regarding Fr. Panteleimon’s ‘influence’ in the Church Abroad, it cannot be denied that it is rather great. ... Fr. Panteleimon is now ‘in fashion,’ and therefore he attracts not only sincere people, but also a dubious, random element” (pp. 85–86).

“If ... there exists some kind of ‘Greek party’ in the Church Abroad, then peace to them, while we should care for our own salvation and work it out with fear and trembling, and not enter into any struggle until a real danger appears, against which it will be necessary to fight” (pp. 89–90).

1973: “Fr. Panteleimon is a very strong personality, and he holds definite views on certain things of secondary importance..., which can quite well cause friction and disputes. But it would be a crime if any of us were to allow these secondary questions to destroy our unity of mind in fundamental matters, especially in view of the great army of false and anti-Orthodoxy that surrounds us, and also in view of the heavy burden of inactivity and ignorance that exists even within our Church Abroad” (p. 104).

“Let those who wish accept any opinion of Fr. Panteleimon; that is their right, and we do not dispute it. But to take these personal opinions ... and hit someone over the head with them simply because he does not agree with them is entirely unacceptable” (pp. 112–113).

“Judging from Fr. Neketas’ abnormal reaction, it is obvious that something more than simply the question of the Shroud or of evolution is involved here, and we think that we know what the matter is—what is involved here is the question of authority. Evidently, for Fr. Neketas, Fr. Panteleimon is an unquestionable authority, and now it is clear to all of us that he thinks everyone must agree with this” (p. 114).

“Fr. Neketas is, of course, right in some things..., but ... his disposition toward you is clouded by disappointment that you do not bow before the authority of Fr. Panteleimon. In this, evidently, lies the essence of the matter” (p. 116).

“The ‘anti-Latinism’ of our ‘Greeks’ falls into an extreme. It turns out that almost everyone except them alone is under ‘Latin influence,’ that almost all Russian and Greek theology and piety of the last several centuries are rotting—this is already too much. ... Fr. Panteleimon is not, like certain others, a theological authority in our Church, and still less can he be put forward as a universal rule of faith” (p. 115).

“If the ‘Greeks’ are indeed trying to seize power and are attempting to impose their ideology on us, then they have fallen into the greatest trap for converts, and then they present a danger to us all. If this is so, then their recklessness will become evident sooner or later; but in the meantime, let us remain uninvolved in all this, as far as possible” (p. 117).

“In the past we regarded the ‘Greeks,’ and we may continue to regard them, as fellow-laborers in the work of true Orthodox missionary service. A fellow-laborer is one who does not trust his own opinion, who does not think that he ‘knows everything’ better than others, who does not set himself up as a supreme authority, does not form various factions, and does not try to crush all those who do not belong to them. But if they are not fellow-laborers, but only ‘experts,’ then all the fruits of their good labors will in the end perish. Our Church Abroad has much experience in this, much patience, and it has successfully endured all the schisms that have arisen in its midst” (p. 119).

[NB: This was written 13 years (!) before the Boston Monastery broke with ROCOR]

1974: “Regarding Fr. Theodoretos [Mavros]’ attack on Fr. Panteleimon, all these disputes among the Greek Old Calendarists are very distressing. Besides everything else, personalities are mixed into this, and that already creates confusion. But the real questions, many of which are very subtle and delicate, require great tact, patience, and love, and not theological and canonical tirades” (p. 134).

“The Athonite monk Fr. Theodoretos sent us his appeal in defense of the monks of Esphigmenou Monastery... We also received an English translation of his letter to Fr. Panteleimon. His arguments sound quite reasonable, but of course his sarcastic tone only increases the gulf that exists between them. Both sides quote the canons without ceasing, whereas what is needed is only love and understanding—and this statement, I know, could come straight from the mouth of some ecumenist, which only proves how difficult the true path of Orthodoxy has become in our days” (p. 138).

1975: “As for Fr. Panteleimon of Boston—alas, alas, alas, the trouble we feared seems to be drawing near. Vladyka Averky wrote us a desperate letter about ‘this impudent young archimandrite’ and his latest deeds. ... Fr. Panteleimon is apparently tightening his grip on the neck of Orthodox youth, making use of the charisma of his personality, from which only a few are capable of turning away” (pp. 155–156).

“JK wrote to us that Fr. Neketas said: ‘The Russians are backing down’ [?]. We have not yet heard anything about this, but the very idea that the ‘Greeks’ are at war with the ‘Russians’ sounds like the antics of mad neophytes” (p. 157).

“All these squabbles [of Fr. Panteleimon and his followers against the leadership of ROCOR—compiler’s note], which seem to have subsided, are of course ninety percent the squabbles of Fr. Panteleimon himself and are far from having died down; they foreshadow trouble in the future. In time, we shall inevitably have to confront this, but it must be remembered that Fr. Panteleimon is not an authority in our Church, and his next ‘dramatic act’ should be received with great suspicion. There is a very strong smell of politics around him, and one day he will make a fatal political mistake. Let us be watchful and ready for this” (pp. 157–158).

“We also feel betrayed by our ‘Greeks.’ All these years we thought that they were of one mind and one spirit with us, that they were giving everything they had to the work of the English-language mission. But in reality, it has turned out that throughout all this time they were laboring for their own glory, cruelly abusing the trust of our simple Russian bishops, priests, and laymen, in order finally to seize power and proclaim themselves the only experts and authorities in Orthodoxy.

We still hope that we are mistaken in this, but let them prove it to us by their deeds and words, and not by their ornate self-justifications. For years we forgave them their excesses and errors and, moreover, more than once defended Fr. Panteleimon and Fr. Neketas... But now, for the sake of preserving our spiritual health and for the sake of continuing the fruitful work of the Orthodox mission, we must courageously look the truth in the face: these are simply university boys playing at Orthodoxy!” (p. 160).

“...LM will not find peace until he either finally breaks with Fr. Panteleimon’s sect, or joins it. As for his sect: judging by the way they are now behaving, our ‘Greeks’ will not remain with us for long. It is also difficult to imagine that they will be able to remain long with the Matthewites, unless, of course, there is a great deal of money and politics behind all this” (pp. 161–162).

“...The Old Believers are charming, but they are far from the spirit of Orthodoxy—perhaps like the Matthewites” (p. 157).

“It seems that the end of the ‘Greek epic’ is not far off! We only grieve over the scandals and divisions arising as a result of the vanity of our ‘Greeks.’ Poor our American mission!” (p. 162).

“You are learning humility and distrust of your own fallen mind. In the case of our ‘Greeks’ we are observing a classic instance of prelest, into which they have fallen through vanity and self-conceit. The result of all this will be tragic, and many will fall into this pit, because they believe Fr. Panteleimon more than God.

Two years ago in Seattle, Fr. Panteleimon told me that for the good of the Church everything is permitted—to lie, to steal, anything, because the end justifies the means. At the time I did not attach special significance to his words, because I knew that sometimes, in order to avoid a greater evil, one has to commit a lesser one, for example, to lie. But this can be allowed only in a case of extreme necessity and with self-condemnation and repentance before God for the falsehoods one has committed. But with Fr. Panteleimon this Jesuit principle becomes the basic principle of church life, which clever church politicians can use with impunity. ...

Pray for Fr. Panteleimon, who is in serious spiritual danger, but distance yourself from him. There is sickness there, petty politicking, and devilish intrigues. In the depth of our heart, we look quite peacefully upon all this, for we know that the Church is stronger than all those who, having yielded to delusion, have imagined themselves to be the Church; in any case they always fall away, helping those who remain to become more sober-minded” (pp. 164–165).

“LM forwarded to us several letters from the Boston monastery. They are written in an entirely false spiritual tone, and moreover, under the cover of piety there are judgments and gossip hidden there. ... Only the bishops and the ‘elite,’ but not the faithful, are allowed to know what Fr. Panteleimon is doing... Fr. Panteleimon and his followers know everything better than anyone else. This is a mortally dangerous syndrome of neophytes” (pp. 165–166).

“A kind of cloud apparently hangs around Fr. Panteleimon, which prevents even prudent people from thinking clearly...” (p. 169).

1976: “I wrote and spoke with L. about this hothouse approach to Orthodoxy—full of gossip, knowledge of ‘what is happening where,’ where there is a ‘correct answer’ for everything, in agreement with the opinion of the ‘experts’” (p. 173).

“...There is being created ... as it were, a Church within the Church, a clique which, unlike the majority of priests and bishops, is ‘always right.’ ... It is very difficult to fight this, because they offer a ‘clear and simple’ answer to every question, and our neophytes suffering from feelings of inadequacy find in this an answer to their needs. ... This is the formation of ‘Orthodox sectarianism’ at the expense of our simple believers” (p. 174).

“...Fr. Panteleimon is now directing his ecclesiastical career toward a ‘seizure of power,’ in one form or another. ... He has a very strong influence on many seminarians and young monks from Jordanville, thanks to the fact that he is an ‘expert in theology,’ and also because he is successfully undermining the authority of the older generation of Russians in the eyes of the youth” (p. 184).

“At present they [the Bostonians—ed.] are so self-assured that it seems to be only a matter of time how quickly they will grow weary of the ‘incorrectness’ and ‘inconsistency’ of our bishops, who do not wish to break formal Eucharistic communion with all the Local Orthodox Churches. ...

At present the spirit of zealotry is in the air; it has even become fashionable in the English-speaking wing of our Church, and the more moderate position of our bishops will now seem unacceptable to those who reason ‘logically.’ ...

We cannot follow the line of ‘Boston Orthodoxy’—which in reality is a variant of ‘reformed’ Orthodoxy, distinguished by the fact that, although outwardly it appears ‘correct,’ in reality it lies outside the Orthodox tradition and has been created by the human mind.

This is a terrible temptation of our time, and probably most converts will fall into it. We fear that all our articles about the zealots, written in former years, helped to create this monster. In the future we will need to devote more attention to the fragrance of Orthodoxy, without which zealotry is meaningless and even harmful” (p. 186).

“...We see the need to define a sensible moderate position... This will be difficult for us to do, especially because of the presence among us of a politically influential fanatic” (pp. 188–189).

“So long as Fr. Panteleimon has his own ‘psychological diocese’ in our Church, there will also exist a source of constant discord and misunderstanding. I think that the zealots need to acquire a deep humility of mind, so as to accept other opinions and ways of looking at things and begin to regard them as just as Orthodox as their own. And if they succeed in developing such a quality, then the tension between us will simply cease to exist” (p. 191).

“Interest in genuine Orthodoxy continues to grow, and perhaps American Orthodoxy will survive even its syndrome of ‘dependence on Boston,’ which, it seems, is above all a sign of immaturity” (p. 192).

1979: “M. ... thinks and feels everything so ‘correctly,’ including a correct assessment of the ‘disease of correctness’ among converts, that I fear lest he himself fall ill with the ‘disease of excessive correctness’! It seems that something is in the air nowadays because of which almost all who try to set out on the path of spiritual struggle begin to sink into the mire. May the Lord preserve him and teach him simplicity. ...

My God! What is happening to people? How easily they are led astray from the path of serving the Lord onto the path of parties, jealousy, and attempts at revenge. I wrote to K. and urged him to begin thinking about the spiritual life and to stop engaging in church politics” (p. 228).

“...The Boston tone, which unfortunately is now so widespread—Orthodoxy of calculation, not of the heart. ...

...Fr. Panteleimon has poisoned the air with a destructive and poisonous spirit; but sadder still is to see that in those whom he has harmed he provokes only a negative reaction, which in fact does not rise above mere attacks. This shows that ‘Panteleimonism’ (that is, Orthodoxy of calculation) is a disease, the microbe of which all of us today carry, and that the answer should be not attacks on some particular carrier of the microbe, but on the microbe itself...” (p. 232).

“Some are concerned about the tone and content of Fr. Neketas’ journal [Orthodox Christian] Witness, but most simply do not know that a conflict is ripening between two tendencies in the Church. We need somehow to make use of this situation in order to preserve as many people as possible from extremism. It is necessary to fight the extremists without showing that we are fighting, to give teaching deeper and higher than merely ‘correct Orthodoxy,’ and thereby to set the tone for others.” ...

“It seems that almost all the young priests and monks are of one spirit with us. Only a few Americans and Greeks close to Boston are infected with the ‘disease of correctness.’ Tomorrow I shall meet with Fr. D. We shall see what awaits me. I suspect that to some degree this ‘microbe’ is present in him, but his closeness to the Russians and his respect for such people as Vladyka Averky will save him from extremism” (pp. 237–238).

1981: “...It is very sad that the spirit of our ‘Greeks’ is simply not right, and they now consider me a ‘theosophist,’ a heretic, and I do not know what else. Undoubtedly, they will soon leave our Church when they see that our bishops are of the same spirit as our Brotherhood” (p. 34).

“Elena Yuryevna Kontzevich told Fr. Herman that she fears that in the future a terrible catastrophe awaits our Church, and I think this is connected with this ‘overly correct’ cast of mind, which has also affected some Russians (though not in so unpleasant a form as our Greeks display it). I think this is in some way akin to papism—the desire to define concepts in order to be ‘at peace’ about them, even if the spirit has been lost” (p. 249).

“I am enclosing a copy of Fr. R.S.’s statement on leaving our Church. Now, it seems, the sad fruits of ‘over-correctness’ are beginning to come to the surface. It is interesting how long Fr. Panteleimon will continue pushing people toward such actions, while himself remaining in our Church.

In any case, it is sad, but it makes our task even clearer: we must preach true apostolic, missionary Orthodoxy even more zealously, and help retain as many of our zealous zealots as possible—young recently converted priests. Orthodox America began its existence at the most necessary moment, and now all the more it must become the unifying mouthpiece for the true zealots of Orthodoxy in our Church” (p. 251).

“...The ‘Boston mentality’—cold, ‘correct’...” (p. 269).

 

Russian source: http://kondakov.ws/blog/Prorocheskie-pisma-oSerafima-(Rouza

Metropolitan Agafangel: On the "New Style" Liturgical Calendar

May 19 / June 1, 2023

The Church of Christ derives its existence from Christ and His disciples. All Church Tradition is handed down in sequence from generation to generation; we receive it from our fathers in order to pass it on to our descendants—as our fathers believed, so we also believe; what our fathers received, that we also receive; what they rejected, we also reject. “Hold fast what thou hast” is said in the Revelation of John the Theologian (3:11), and these same words were left as his testament by our hierarch St. Philaret, the third First Hierarch of ROCOR. Tradition is sequential and monolithic in its development; cardinal, “revolutionary” innovations are wholly excluded from it, and it is precisely toward such innovations that ecclesiastical modernism and the accompanying “new style” are directed.

***

The decree of the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council (see also Apostolic Canon 7 and Canon 1 of the Council of Antioch) prescribes that all Christians celebrate Pascha on one and the same day; naturally, this also applies to other significant feasts. Later, Canon 7 of the Second Ecumenical Council and Canon 95 of the Council in Trullo explicitly called those who do not observe this rule—namely the Quartodecimans, who celebrate Pascha with the Jews on the 14th of Nisan—heretics. That is, those who reject the calendar accepted by the Church are, according to the decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, heretics.

***

The Catholics fell away from the Church of Christ in 1054, and from that time to our own day they have accepted, and continue to accept, many innovations which remove them ever farther from the Church of the Holy Fathers. One such heretical innovation was the “correction” of the church calendar in 1582 at the initiative of Pope Gregory XIII. Thanks to this “reform,” the heretics celebrated Pascha together with the Jews on the 14th of Nisan (and even earlier than they did) many times.

The new calendar adopted by the papists was rejected in the very year of its appearance (1582) by Ecumenical Patriarch Jeremiah II, and was then condemned by three Pan-Orthodox Councils (in 1583, 1587, and 1593) “as a pernicious papal innovation.” These conciliar decrees remain in force to this day and directly excommunicate from the Church all “new-calendarists.”

The very introduction of the “new calendar” from the outset served to deepen the division between the Orthodox and the papists.

***

To our great regret, after the fall of the Orthodox Russian Empire, the Eastern Local Churches, having been deprived of material support from the Empire, sought other financial sources to maintain the accustomed comfort of their existence. At first, some of them, hoping for continued funding, even supported the Soviet authorities and the renovationist church created by it. But, realizing that they would receive no money from there, they turned to the Masons and to the various associations created by them, similar to the present-day World Council of Churches. These agreed to help, but demanded certain concessions. It is evident that one of these concessions, aimed at bringing about a schism in the Church of Christ, was the transition of the Local Orthodox Churches under their control to the “new style.”

Despite its obvious harmfulness, the reform of the church calendar was carried out in 1924 in the Churches of Constantinople, Greece, and Romania, and then in certain other Local Churches as well. This departure occurred after nineteen centuries of the entire Orthodox Church’s life according to the one Julian calendar common to all. The very fact that the “new style” was accepted by some group, and not by the whole Church, contradicts the dogma of the conciliarity of the Orthodox Church, as well as the dogma of the Unity of the Church, the visible form of which has always been a common calendar.

It is evident that the new calendar was adopted within the framework of the pan-heresy of ecumenism, with the aim of destroying the Church of Christ and creating in its place a worldwide global mega-church. Thus, those who accepted the “new calendar” for the sake of unity with heretics and those of other faiths fell away from Sacred Tradition and the Holy Fathers and went after the papist heretics.

The Church has its own boundaries, and the destruction of those boundaries signifies falling away from the Church—truth, once mixed with falsehood, ceases to be truth.

***

The transition to the new style means the loss of connection with one’s past—beginning with one’s believing parents and forefathers, and further, with all one’s Christian ancestors, and thus with Sacred Tradition and with the Church founded by Christ.

Of course, to unbelieving people, who are accustomed to celebrating two Nativities of Christ as they do the New and Old New Year, this is a matter of indifference. But believing people will find themselves faced with a dangerous temptation, with a choice between two paths: to remain in unity with their pious forebears and with the Church in which they abode, or to go the way of a world free from faith in God.

***

It must be acknowledged that the Moscow Patriarchate is not only its leaders, but also millions of ordinary believing people who, unfortunately, in their blindness follow a corrupt caste of false shepherds selected and appointed by the Soviet special services. Ordinary people have been misled by Soviet propaganda, which for many years instilled in them the idea that the leadership of the MP is the true and lawful hierarchy. But this is not so at all—the present leadership of the MP is analogous to the Pharisees of the Gospel, whom Christ rebuked and who became the initiators of His crucifixion. Today the Orthodox Church must decisively depart from the Pharisees and follow Christ, just as it once did two thousand years ago.

In Ukraine the Orthodox Church has need not of reform, but of a return to the conciliarity established by the Ecumenical Councils and the Holy Fathers, from the loss of which the Church, unfortunately, proceeded from the reforms of Peter I to the formation by Stalin in 1943 of the Soviet Moscow Patriarchate, when conciliarity was finally destroyed by the God-fighting authorities together with traitors from among the pure hierarchy of the MP. After that, ALL bishops and abbots of the largest churches and monasteries of the MP were appointed not by the Church itself, but by her enemies, from among the faithful supporters of the satanic power. This, unfortunately, continues in the Russian Federation to this day.

***

A reform is now planned in Ukraine, aimed at the destruction of Orthodoxy already in our own country. To our great regret, it has so come about on our land in the last century that the questions of the Church are decided by people far removed from her and hostile toward her—and to the question of with whom one should be, with Christ, His Church, and our pious forefathers, or with the world which lieth in evil, they give a perfectly definite answer: one must keep step with the world that has rejected Christ.

Of course, this new reform will cut off from the presently emerging “official” Ukrainian church the majority of believing people. Will there be those who replace them? I think not.

It only remains to hope that those carrying out these reforms in Ukraine do so out of ignorance and truly strive, as they suppose, to bring benefit to our fatherland. May God grant that their eyes be opened to the fact that the path to Christ and Eternal Life is one, and every other path is a road leading to Hell. True Christians will not go by such a road, nor will they wish it for others.

 

Russian source:

http://internetsobor.org/index.php/stati/avtorskaya-kolonka/mitropolit-agafangel-o-perekhode-na-novyj-stil

 

Blessed Archbishop Averky of Jordanville: A Sign of the Times

“Hypocrites! You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times” (Matt. 16:3).

 

 

Every time, every era in the life of mankind has its own distinguishing feature, which is especially characteristic of it, predominantly before all other eras.

Observing the events taking place in the present century, we cannot but come to the conviction that the most characteristic feature of the time we are living through is the loss of the fear of God, and in close connection with this, the loss by the majority of modern people of God’s voice in the human soul, that is, the conscience.

The modern era, more than any in the past—we mean, of course, chiefly the Christian period of the history of mankind—may be called godless and conscienceless. And an entirely natural consequence of this is the now so widespread lack of principle, indifference to good and evil, immorality, opportunism, the pursuit of material goods with complete disregard for spiritual goods, shameless, almost open debauchery, and ever-increasing crime, against which the authorities find it ever more difficult to struggle.

And all this is completely contrary to the rosy forecasts and enthusiastic “predictions” which we so often heard at the beginning of this century, that the twentieth century would be an age of extraordinary flowering and all-round progress for mankind, when there would be neither wars nor civil strife, but a universal life happy and joyful for all would set in, universal well-being and prosperity, almost a paradise on earth.

Now we see well what all those rosy “predictions” were worth, and to what kind of “progress” and “paradise on earth” we have lived to see!

There has, of course, been progress in technology and in various scientific discoveries and inventions, but all these airplanes, radio, television, and along with them atomic and hydrogen bombs, etc.—the “delights” and “achievements” of our century—are these really what can give people unprecedented “prosperity,” “well-being,” and “happiness”?

And instead of the promised “peace of the whole world” and the end of wars and civil strife, there have in fact been two terrible world wars, unprecedented in the history of mankind, bloody revolutionary civil conflicts that have swallowed up millions of victims, and now the looming threat of an even more terrible third world war, already being called in advance an “atomic” one!

All this is the consequence of sin progressing more and more.

Usually people object to us: people, they say, have always sinned and do sin, and there is supposedly nothing especially new in what is happening now.

Yes, sin has always, to some extent, been and remains characteristic of men who inherited from our first parents a nature corrupted by sin, and therefore “there is no man who lives and does not sin,” and only God alone is without sin.

But sin is not always the same. Formerly, for the most part, people sinned in secret—so that no one would know—for every sin brought upon itself universal condemnation; and having sinned, they very often afterwards repented sincerely, with all their soul, and amended themselves, radically changing their life and disposition for the better. Repentance, of course, when sincere and deep, is capable of blotting out all sins and healing their destructive consequences, regenerating a man to a new life. We have many examples when great sinners became great righteous ones, saints.

It is not so now. Now almost no one is ashamed of sin and no one condemns it, sometimes even cunningly making use of Christ’s saying: “Judge not, that ye be not judged” (Matt. 7:1), as though sin did not in itself deserve condemnation. And now people sin openly—brazenly and shamelessly—without thinking in the least about repentance, but quite the contrary, justifying themselves in every possible way and cynically arrogating to themselves, as it were, a right to sin.

The very concept of sin among modern people, with few exceptions, has been eradicated from consciousness: sin has become something ordinary and no longer subject to society’s condemnation, nor even to the voice of conscience.

To those who assure us that there is nothing special, nothing new in our days, we shall reply with these questions:

When before, and especially in the era of Christian history, has there existed a vast and powerful state, stretching over a sixth part of the world, whose leaders were guided in their activity by a God-fighting ideology and made one of the chief aims of their work the planting everywhere of atheism, or godlessness?

Where and when have representatives of state authority proclaimed an “anti-divine front” and recruited members into a “League of Militant Atheists”?

Where and in what other century, after the final victory of Christianity over the darkness of paganism, did there arise such a frenzied, fierce persecution of the true faith and the Church of Christ, such a horrifying terror prevailed, and the innocent blood of millions of people was shed?

All this is among the vaunted “achievements” of the “progressive” twentieth century!

Where and when in Christian countries was such shameless, almost open debauchery permitted, such an almost complete nakedness of everything connected with carnal sin, and such moral dissoluteness?

Where and when in the past did state authorities legalize the mass killing of unborn children, solely at the whim of their depraved parents, who do not wish, in accordance with the law of nature, to bear, raise, and bring up the children they have conceived, and thus to bear full lawful responsibility for their conception?

Where and when in Christian mankind were people morally perverted, morally maimed—human degenerates—recognized as having rights to the sin of Sodom, that sin for which God Himself so sternly punished the ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, sending upon them a rain of fire and brimstone, in order to burn out with fire this vile impurity, this loathsome unnatural sin?

Where and when was it ever seen in the past that people not only were not ashamed of these carnal sins, but even brought them literally out into the streets, shamelessly advertising themselves and even agitating among others?

And all this is the “progress” of the vaunted twentieth century!

But the most terrible thing is that this moral decomposition has already entered into the religious life of people. In the religions of the West, which long ago fell away from the true faith and the Church, this is not so surprising, although it cannot but especially attract our attention that this moral decomposition has advanced at an especially rapid pace precisely in our own time. The monolith of Roman Catholicism has been shaken to its foundations by the last two popes and by the Second Vatican Council, while the Protestants have already gone so far as to deny many of the basic dogmas of the Christian faith and are ready to merge completely with this world, which lieth in evil, in which all is “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 John 2:16).

Indeed, dreadful for us, and most terrible of all for all true believers, is the fact that enemies have already entered into the very midst of our Orthodox Church and are attempting, and not altogether without success, to blow it up from within. Of course, we believe that according to the promise of Christ the Savior Himself, “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18), and that it shall remain until the end of the age (Matt. 28:20), but for how many weak souls there threatens the mortal danger of losing the faith and perishing forever! It is not without reason that Christ the Savior called His true followers a “little flock” (Luke 12:32), and said moreover that when He comes again to the earth, He will hardly “find faith on the earth” (Luke 18:8).

In the Orthodox Church, as has become especially clear in recent years, from the beginning of this twentieth century there has been observed a striving for reformation in a purely Protestant spirit, with essentially but one aim: to legalize lawlessness.

Freedom and moral looseness, increasingly coming into fashion under the influence of society’s dechurching, appeared all too seductive.

And so, under the cunning and deceitful pretext of “returning the Church to Apostolic times,” there arose a desire not only to cast aside, as already “outlived” and “not corresponding to the spirit of the times,” the whole of Church discipline, divinely and wisely worked out by the pillars of our Church—the holy fathers—over the course of many centuries, but also to remake much of it in order to indulge laziness and the lowered moral life; they have even gone so far as to speak of the supposed necessity of re-editing the text of Holy Scripture in accordance with their perverted tastes—as a concession to their passions.

These attempts began long ago and finally resulted in the creation of the so-called “Living Church,” and then “Renovationism” among us in Russia during the years of general ruin in the time of the revolution. But at that time the Russian people, still strong in spirit and faith, decisively rejected the “Living-Churchists” and the “Renovationists,” and this whole undertaking, ruinous for souls, collapsed disgracefully, despite the powerful support of the godless Soviet authority interested in the destruction of the Church.

In place of the “Living-Churchists” and the “Renovationists” there appeared “Sergianism,” which at first did not so openly break with true Orthodoxy, but immediately set itself openly in the service of the God-fighting authority. Gradually, however, it too (and it could not have been otherwise with so close an alliance with the God-fighters!) took shape as an apostasy from true Orthodoxy through the merging of its ideology with the ideology of this world, which lieth in evil, and through recognizing atheism as having a right to exist.

This is eloquently testified to by the public statements and declarations of its “leaders,” and by the very fact of their entry into the “World Council of Churches.”

This movement soon spread to other Churches of the Orthodox East as well, beginning with the Patriarchate of Constantinople, which in 1923 officially recognized the “Living Church” in Russia as the lawful Church.

In 1923, the “Pan-Orthodox Congress” was convened by Patriarch Meletios IV of Constantinople, at which the following “reforms” were proposed for the abolition of the existing canonical rules and institutions of the Orthodox Church:

• A married episcopate;

• The remarriage of clergy;

• The new calendar;

• The shortening of the divine services;

• The abolition of the fasts and of monasticism;

• The simplification of clerical dress, that is, permission for the clergy to wear secular clothing and to adopt a secular manner of life.

At that time these “reforms” provoked many protests and objections, including from other Eastern patriarchs, who declared that for the implementation of such “reforms” an Ecumenical Council was necessary, since it alone is the one authoritative supreme authority in the Church.

With the passage of time, such attitudes and tendencies not only did not disappear, but became even more firmly entrenched in various local Orthodox Churches, and now their supporters are vigorously advocating the convocation of an “Eighth Ecumenical Council” in order to implement them.

Knowing the present disposition of many Church “leaders” and their aggressiveness in carrying out their destructive plans, we can clearly imagine what sort of “Ecumenical Council” this will be! Even without waiting for official decrees, many have already put some of these “reforms” into practice, ignoring in their activity very categorical Church canons. But of course, in some cases conscience still speaks, and therefore they would like to “legalize” the lawlessness they are committing on their own authority.

For this is the reason why these cunning men, though bearing an outward form of piety but having denied its power, so press for the convocation of this “Eighth Ecumenical Council.” They are confident that at the “council” those like themselves will be in the “majority,” and therefore that by a “majority of votes” they will carry through everything they desire—that is, they will, quite officially, with every appearance of legality, formally legalize lawlessness.

But will such an “Ecumenical Council” truly be authoritative for all and an indisputable expression of the voice of the Holy Spirit (“It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us”...), as were the former seven Ecumenical Councils recognized by our whole Church?

Of course not!

All the former Ecumenical Councils began their decrees by affirming all that had been decreed at the preceding Councils, whereas this one, as can already now be seen, will set as its chief task the overthrow of the entire former order of the Church, of everything that was decreed before. And therefore, this will not be the “Eighth Ecumenical Council,” but a “Second Robber Council,” after the model of that council of the year 449 in the city of Ephesus, which entered the history of the Church under the name of the “Robber Council.”

Who needs such a “council”?

Of course, only the enemies of the Church, both open and hidden.

All the true children of the Church of Christ will not recognize it as lawful and will not accept its decrees, and there will occur only new schisms and divisions—which is precisely what the enemies of the Church, preparing the triumph of Antichrist, desire.

Their first trial attempt has already been made in the form of the arbitrary and self-willed introduction of the new calendar by certain individual churches, which everywhere brought about only enmity and divisions among the faithful, as for example in Greece, where the people have been split into two groups: the “Old Calendarists” and the “New Calendarists.”

All this is a sign of the times!

And yet we are called “to serve,” as the great father of Orthodoxy, St. Athanasius of Alexandria, taught, “not the times, but God.”

Therefore, fear this deceit and flee from it, all faithful children of the Holy Church!

 

Russian source:

https://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Averkij_Taushev/hristianin-v-sovremennom-mire/#0_5

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