On the "New Resisters"

 

ON THE NEW RESISTERS

~ An Email Excerpt from Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Etna (+2019) ~

Dear ….

May God bless you.

Thank you for the article about Mt. Athos and several well-known clergymen in Greece who have finally spoken out against the ills of “world” Orthodoxy and its religious syncretism.

“Walling off” is fine. But then comes the question of whom one should commemorate, who will ordain clergy, where one will turn for synodal governance, and, to be honest, where one will find security for his property and the organizational and external necessities for practicing the Faith. Simply to become independent is a better definition of schism than defining it by reference to joining Bishops, clergy, and faithful who have correctly and rightly organized in an ecclesiastical fashion in resisting heresy, whether we like that fact—and them—or not.

As a result of this misunderstanding, many of those who have walled themselves off (and non-commemorators on the Holy Mountain are not unusual, incidentally, and they come and go), have, in the fashion of schismatics, in my humble opinion, failed to understand what an ecclesiastical conscience, which gives birth to the act of walling oneself off from heresy, really demands of us. We do not, in such acts, pretend that the Church militant is of no importance or that we can simply continue to commemorate Bishops who do not correct themselves as though, somehow, they constitute the Church and we can affiliate with them from behind a wall! In resistance, one must maintain an ecclesiastical structure. After all, even the prophecies about the Remnant Church call that body a “Church.”

Nor is “walling off” a process by which one creates “another” Church (thus entering into schism), but is an action in which one maintains the synodal structure of the Church under Bishops with Apostolic Succession and who have walled themselves off, in turn, from heretics and those in error. This is precisely what the Old Calendarists did almost a century ago and what the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad (tragically no longer a Church walled off from the ills of world Orthodoxy, after its union with Moscow) did, making it a bastion for many decades of Genuine Orthodoxy. These “small flocks” of resisting Orthodox have nothing to do with schism. They simply courageously preserve the True Faith and continue the correct functioning of the Church. This should be obvious to anyone thinking in a spiritual manner.

While what I have said does not so strictly apply to the zealots on Mt. Athos (whom one must revere and appreciate for their actions), since they do not have the kinds of pastoral concerns that those of us in the world must face, it behooves us to remain quite cautious about those who have rightly walled themselves off from the anti-Orthodox trends in “world Orthodoxy,” but who remain tied to its Bishops. Until they develop a fuller and more mature idea of what resistance to heretics and error often demands, they do damage to the witness of those of us who have paid the price for waging resistance.

Such neophyte resisters often end up being simply “conservative” or “traditional” voices within the rot of an ecclesiastical decline from which they must ultimately remove themselves completely, in order to remain pure in confession. Their statements about “schism” are too easily applied to us veteran resisters, who are not in schism and whom they should support, emulate, and even join. Those among such would-be resisters who not only offer wrong assessments of us that others use, but who, defending themselves in a way that an amateur psychologist could see as transparently self-justificatory, openly call us schismatics (and even heretics) should hang their heads in shame.

God forbid that, in the name of walling off, these neophyte resisters should run from the fire only to rest in lukewarm water. If they fear being slandered and smeared, that is understandable. Acts of conscience, however, cannot be set aside because they bring negative and unwanted consequences. They are, in fact, purified and made fruitful in the flames of false condemnation and unjust persecution. Resisters must realize this and live with it.

In any event, one can but rejoice that Churchmen are waking up to the errant course of “official” Orthodoxy.