The Last Letter of Metropolitan Vitaly to Bishop Gregory (Grabbe)

The Last Letter of Metropolitan Vitaly to Bishop Gregory (Grabbe)

 

September 17/4, 1995

Your Grace, Most Reverend Vladyka,

At the recent session of the Synod of Bishops (September 5–7, according to the new style), your name was on the agenda. Based on all the information we have received (for a bishop, even in retirement, is a visible figure observed from all sides), it has been reported that you were in Suzdal in full prayerful communion with the suspended Archbishop Valentin. The Synod of Bishops cannot in any way accept such a situation. The initial proposal was to suspend you from serving. However, given that you are already unable to serve due to extreme infirmity, the Synod decided, in consideration of all your visible and invisible weaknesses, to ask me to write you this letter.

Recognizing all your past merits, I wish for you to receive my letter as a stern rebuke for such an absurd action, entirely unworthy of your overall stature. I have also decided to offer you some admonition, as someone who has known you for over 30 years as a person of exceptional intellect in defending our Church. However, I am deeply convinced that you belong to the category of individuals with deductive reasoning. It was precisely this ability that always enabled you to defend our Church sharply and precisely against all attacks. But in matters where intuition is required—which, in the modern world, is regarded among nearly all remarkable thinkers as a genuine source of knowledge and understanding—you have, on two occasions, made tragic errors for yourself. Your most recent mistake is the gathering around Valentin, which you created. [The first was being supportive of the Panteleimonites.]

I write all this with a sincere desire to help you acquire the gift of heartfelt prayer, which will enable you to see everything through different eyes—those of truth and righteousness.

Your sincere well-wisher,
+Metropolitan Vitaly

P.S. Dostoevsky is considered, on a global scale, the father of intuitive reasoning, and one cannot deny his spirituality.

Source: Appendix to "Бостонский вопрос ‒ нравственный или экклезиологический?" [The Boston Question: Moral or Ecclesiological?], by Subdeacon Vladimir Kirillov (ROCOR-A).