Orthodox Ecclesiology Today

Clearly, from the time when the former Metropolitan of Florina fell asleep [1955] until today, the degree of the fall of the New Calendarist hierarchy and others is growing. Now, the heresy of Ecumenism is clearly proclaimed and, at the same time, other heresies have arisen.

However, Orthodox ecclesiology, as developed by the late Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Florina, remains the same. In particular, it consists of the following points:

1. The True Orthodox are excluded from the New Calendarist hierarchy in Greece (and on a global scale, by the Orthodox Ecumenists) for reasons of faith and justice (Canons 31 of the Holy Apostles and 15 of the First-Second Synod).

2. The Church of Greece, and the likewise-innovated Patriarchates and other Churches, and those who commune together and indiscriminately with them, have been accused of schism and heresy because of the change of the calendar and Ecumenism, respectively, and the walled-off True Orthodox constitute the incorruptible pleroma of the Church, and not a separate Church.

3. The purpose of the walling-off is to zealously defend the Church from schisms and divisions (cf. Canon 15 of the First-Second Synod). We await the convening of a Major General Synod, which will rule in an Orthodox manner, officially anathematizing the novelty of the new calendar and the modern pan-heresy of Ecumenism, identifying and anathematizing the unrepentant heretics, imposing, strictly or economically, penalties, and accepting or rejecting the Mysteries of the Innovators and those who commune with them, among other matters.

4. Any deviation from the Patristic understanding of walling off (e.g., the creation of a separate Church) distracts from its purpose, which is, as has been said, to rescue the Church from division and schisms, and to not become complicit (as commemorators and communicants) with the Innovators and Ecumenists through the unilateral innovation of the new calendar and the heresy of Ecumenism.

Source: Epilogue from The Ecclesiology of the Former Metropolitan of Florina, Chrysostomos, by Nikolaos Mannis (Athens: 2012), p. 29. Draft translation from the original Greek.