Protopresbyter George Grabbe on the Calendar Innovation and Grace (1975)

23. To Archbishop Anthony of Geneva and Western Europe

July 23 / August 5, 1975

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I think that the expression that I "complained" about you to Vladyka Pavel is not entirely accurate. It would be more accurate to say that I lamented that there has been a certain change in your attitude.

Of course, Vladyka John was very close to Metropolitan Anthony. However, I believe that I was also close to him since 1922, especially since I lived in Sremski Karlovci in 1928-29, and even more so when I worked with him, starting in 1931. I would be a hopeless fool if, during this time, I had not learned anything from the Metropolitan.

In the matter of the calendar, Vladyka was rather lenient, but not in the matter of the Paschalion. He did not want to have any communion with the Finnish Church precisely because of the Paschalion. However, I think that none of us at that time, before the development of ecumenism, fully grasped the depth of the calendar issue as an introduction to the current deviations. It was the first step toward the present modernism. Taken separately, outside of this context, it appeared as something undesirable, a violation of tradition and unity, disrupting the liturgical yearly cycle, but nothing more.

I have never asserted the gracelessness of the Moscow Patriarchate. I believe that any illness in the Church spreads gradually and that until the final moment, when, as with the Arian heresy, for example, the evil fully poisons the organism of some part of the Church, one must be cautious in declaring someone graceless. Regarding the Patriarchate, I cannot help but have doubts about hierarchs who are agents of the KGB, but how can we accurately name them? That is why I always avoid answering the question of gracelessness. Refusing communion with someone is not at all equivalent to declaring them graceless. Only the Lord God knows this definitively. In such an approach to the issue, I believe I am expressing the "Antonian" thought. But Vladyka was very definite in his denial of the sacraments of clergy banned by him (the Evlogians). He called their communion the food of demons because he saw in the disregard of a lawful ban blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

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Russian source: https://vishegorod.ru/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=740&Itemid=151