St. Chrysostomos the New on Resistance to the Calendar Innovation

A Letter of Metropolitan Chrysostomos (Kavourides), formerly of Florina, to the Administrative Council of the Panhellenic Religious National Orthodox Society (P.T.E.O.K.) on the newly formed Matthewite schism. 

Mr. President,

We have received your letter dated the 14th of this month [October 1937] just now. In response, we declare the following to you:

We are perplexed as to why you did not receive the responses from the Office to your correspondence. The Office has been instructed to respond to all your letters, and we wonder why you have not received the replies.

You should ignore the encyclicals of the bishops of Bresthena [Matthew] and the Cyclades [Germanos] who have fallen away, insofar as they have condemned us for reasons of avarice, since they cannot abide our criticism of their unlawful ordinations and other crimes and have taken the side of the old [Greek Religious] Community [of Genuine Orthodox Christians] of Manesis and Gounaris, whom until yesterday they were calling profiteers and usurpers. As an excuse for condemning us they have found the reason that we have refused to allow a repeat chrismation of children baptized by new-calendarist priests, following the ban by the divine and sacred canons, and that we have refused to declare the new-calendarist Church heretical and schismatic, and their Mysteries invalid. But the main reason for their condemnation for the holy one of Bresthena is the fact that we have hindered him from using our Holy Struggle for his own enrichment, while for the holy one of the Cyclades it is the fact that we have forbidden him from carrying out unlawful ordinations of priests and deacons, not for the sake of serving our Holy Struggle, but for the sake of creating his own party and seizing the leadership of our struggle. Both of them, casting off every restraint of conscience and fear of God, have proceeded to publish an encyclical to the Genuine Orthodox Christians and are trying by means of lies and disgusting slanders to present us as deserters and traitors to the struggle because we did not want to despise the divine and sacred canons and proclaim the Greek Church to be schismatic and its Mysteries invalid, and to condemn to spiritual death five million Greek brothers who in purity of heart follow the new calendar, and to enter into contradiction with the remaining Orthodox Churches of Jerusalem, Antioch, Russia, Serbia, etc., which not only have not broken communion with the new-calendarist churches, but even serve together with their clergy. And this because the new-calendarist Churches have not been proclaimed to be schismatic by a Pan-Orthodox Synod, which alone has the right according to the sacred canons to condemn and declare them schismatic if they do not depart from the error of the new calendar. The divine and God-bearing Fathers of the Ecumenical Synods gave the right to proclaim individual people and churches schismatic neither to individual people nor to local churches, but [only] to an Ecumenical Synod, which represents the entire Orthodox Church and whose decisions are made through the inspiration of the All-Holy Spirit. For this reason, we, honoring the canons and decisions of the Ecumenical Synods, have refused to proclaim the Greek Church schismatic, and have confined ourselves only to breaking ecclesiastical communion with the Archbishop of Athens and the hierarchs who think like him, so as not to be participants in the calendar innovation. And we have done this in accordance with the 15th canon of the First-and-Second Ecumenical Synod, which gives the right only to break ecclesiastical communion with him who violates tradition until a synodal decision, by which alone individual people and churches are [definitively] declared schismatic and their Mysteries invalid.

The above-mentioned bishops have taken this refusal of ours, based on the canons and apostolic decrees, as an excuse, and unfortunately, they have fallen morally to such a degree that they place the authority of the Community of the Genuine Orthodox Christians under the presidency of Manesis and Gounaris above our authority – we who in the course of 35 years have done nothing other than declare the dogmas of Orthodoxy and rightly divide the word of divine truth. But the main motive inciting them to condemn us is a striving to be free from any control on our part, and freely and ignorantly to use our Holy Struggle on the excuse of feigned piety. A proof of the fact that they are employing demagogy and fishing for glory and honors at the expense of the struggle is the fact that they have both accepted the titles of metropolitans, although we at their consecration gave them the title of bishops, which only adventurers and intellectually and morally unstable people could do without shame. It is also a shameless lie that, as they say, the protosyncellus beat up the bishop of the Cyclades at one session of the Synod, which has not assembled already for two months because of the obstruction of the bishops.

The matter of the priest of Naoussa will be settled in accordance with justice, taking into account your recommendations and the information from the local administrative council. Finally, we encourage you and the Society to have full confidence in us, who have sacrificed everything for our Holy Struggle.

Nevertheless, may all members and Christians accept our greetings and blessings.

Athens, Kypseli Terminal, Krissis 24.

October 17, 1937

+ Chrysostomos, formerly of Florina