Apostasy Today

 Bishop Photii of Triaditsa

The Ecclesiological Aspect: Spiritual Authenticity as a Source of Canonicity

Sofia, August 9 (July 27, old style), 2000

Dear in the Lord N.

May the mercy of God be with you!

Thank you for your letter and for the information regarding the interfaith seminar in the city of Shumen on May 23 (new style) of this year. Your observations are yet another confirmation, though not as strong and vivid, of the fact that it is impossible to preserve the truth of Orthodoxy externally, formally, declaratively, or "politically." The cessation of membership in the World Council of Churches [by the official Bulgarian Orthodox Church, editor’s note] remains an extremely limited, opportunistic, faceless church-administrative act if it is not followed by a truly conciliar condemnation of the heresy of ecumenism based on serious theological analysis and a conciliar church assessment of its essence. Orthodoxy does not tolerate the category of "external correctness," detached from the fullness of Truth, from spirit, from faith, from life, from the conciliar conscience of the Church. Here, perhaps, lies the dark essence of contemporary apostasy: under the mighty pressure of modern anti-Christian civilization — with all its possible dimensions, levels, and driving forces — among the Orthodox themselves, the sense of holy Orthodoxy is being lost or severely distorted, and in the souls of bishops and priests, the cancerous metastases of coldness, insensitivity, indifference, and neglect towards holy Orthodoxy spread hideously, or they are filled with intellectual pride, driven by impulses to "rethink," "actualize," or "modernize" it; as a result, a varying degree of alienation from the spirit of Orthodoxy is growing among a vast number of bishops, most of the clergy, and the theological cadre of the so-called official Local Churches. The result of this process dynamically spreads across the entire spectrum: from a folkloristic and everyday caricature of Orthodoxy, through the diverse revisionist pathos of its "modernization," to the fully conscious undermining and destruction of it at the highest church-administrative and theological levels, sometimes concealed under the guise of church-political "traditionalism." From this perspective, ecumenism is the predominant, globally encompassing, but by no means the only expression of apostasy today. Therefore, our goal is not just to "restore the old calendar" or "withdraw from the WCC," but to preserve ourselves in this spiritual authenticity, in this sacred fullness of Orthodoxy, which generates, nourishes, and fulfills all church doctrine, traditions, customs, and impregnates and gives meaning to the entire visible structure of the Church with its canonicity and officialdom. Among the apologists of "official" Orthodoxy, we observe the opposite tendency: they refer to canonicity and officialdom as sufficient per se and as an unconditional guarantee of authentic Orthodoxy and as the supreme criterion of its unity. However, it is impossible for the conscientious among them not to notice that under the cover of canonicity and officialdom, today, on a global scale, Orthodoxy is being intensely destroyed, and simultaneously, it is being replaced by a certain ugly counterfeit, a certain new, formal, "institutional" or "earthly" "Orthodoxy," reshaped "according to the elements of the world and not according to Christ" (cf. Col. 2:8). And the hierarchs of the "official" local churches do not oppose this process purposefully and systematically. Indeed, this "Orthodoxy" sometimes uses the forceful sacred language of true Orthodoxy, as if a certain exalted but existentially non-binding theological metaphor for the spirit, mind, and conscience. This is how the category of "correctness" unnaturally disintegrates, loses internal credibility, and becomes a metaphorical veil for content incompatible with it. I will try to explain what has been said with a specific example. A high-ranking Orthodox hierarch [in one city] not only does not spread ecumenical or modernist ideas, but even organizes public burnings of books containing such ideas. At the same time, this hierarch has scandalized the public of the said city for years with his homosexual acts. You may say, this is not a matter of confession, this is personal sin, for which he should in no case be condemned. Yes, it is true — we should indeed not condemn him for this. But if an Orthodox archbishop commits this sin and continues undisturbed to perform and administer the holy Sacraments to himself and to Christians, then this is no longer just his "personal sin"; such brazen and blasphemous behavior inevitably calls into deep question the Orthodoxy of such a hierarch's beliefs about faith and salvation. This is how, beyond a certain limit, doctrinal beliefs are difficult to "distill" in pure form, independently of the spiritual and moral state of a person. I emphasize this with the important reservation that these two categories — the confession of faith and the spiritual-moral state — must be handled with utmost responsibility, having a worldview, spiritual, ecclesiological, and pastoral sense of boundaries. Under no circumstances should one be unscrupulously substituted for the other, with the unclean intent of dishonoring and slandering an opponent. However, in the case under consideration, there arises a strong confusion and doubt in the Orthodox beliefs and actions of the governing body of the respective local church, which has long remained silent, conceals the truth, and resorted to conciliar falsehood and lies to "preserve" the authority of canonical church power. Is it possible to act uncanonically in the name of canonicity? Can a lie be a conciliar-approved means by which the authority of church truth is preserved?

We must not forget that it is precisely the spiritual authenticity of Holy Tradition, teachings, and customs that is the source of canonicity and officialdom in the Church, and not the other way around—canonicity and officialdom in themselves are not the source of this spiritual authenticity. However, these categories should not be in mutual contradiction. Yet, it is precisely their corrupt inversion, the breach and contradiction between them, that characterizes the main course of apostasy among the Orthodox in our days. The spirit-bearing church fathers, the Orthodox hierarchy, and the faithful, to whom the hierarchy ministers and who entrust them with administrative authority in the Church, constitute this fundamental ecclesial structural unit, which is the bearer of the mysterious unity of the heavenly-earthly Church, i.e., the unity of Christ with His Body—the Church, the unity of the faithful with their pastors, the unity of the local with the universal, and the eternal with the temporal. It is in this sense that our effort to remain in the fullness of Orthodoxy, the effort to remain in the Conciliar Church, which, in the words of St. Maximus the Confessor, in the correct and salvific confession of faith in God, aims to preserve this integrity; united by the bonds of Grace and love, this integrity forms the heart of Orthodoxy, the true Body of Christ.

Your humble intercessor in Christ,

Bishop Photii

Original Bulgarian source: 

https://bulgarian-orthodox-church.org/pravoslavie/rus/ef/otstuplenie_segodnja.html