The ROCOR and our Matthewite brothers [and the Theory of the Automatic Loss of Grace]

Protopresbyter Nikolaos Dimaras, Th.D.

November 6, 2013

 

The theory concerning the automatic and immediate loss of Grace in the Church, due to the abominable introduction of the New Calendar, [1] which certain of our Orthodox brothers support, is devoid of any theological and dogmatic basis.

As is known, the two Metropolitans, Germanos of Demetrias and Chrysostomos of Florina, [2] for 11 years, that is from 1924 until 1935, accepted the calendar change, which they also co-signed, and celebrated the feasts in their Metropolises according to the "revised Julian" calendar. Moreover, as presidents of the ecclesiastical courts (First and Second Instance), they judged and imposed penalties against clergy of the Old Calendar for factionalism, disorder, and disobedience toward the decisions of the Church of the New [Calendar] regarding the Calendar [Innovation].

Together with [Metropolitan] Chrysostomos of Zakynthos, they undertook the Holy Struggle of the Orthodox in 1935 and consecrated four new Metropolitans: Germanos Varykopoulos of the Cyclades (June 5, 1935), Christophoros Chatzis of Megara (June 6, 1935), Matthaios Karpathakis of Vresthena (June 7, 1935), and Polykarpos Liosis of Diavleia (June 7, 1935), and they formed a seven-member Holy Synod.

If the loss of Grace occurred automatically with the introduction of the New Calendar, [3] then not even the later bishop Matthaios, who led our Orthodox Matthewite brothers, would have had Divine Grace, because it would have been lost due to the entire 11-year communion with the New Calendarists who conecrated him as a Hierarch, they themselves having been previously New Calendarists.

The two Hierarchs, Christophoros Chatzis and Polykarpos Liosis, later returned to the Innovation and were received without consecrations into the New Calendarist church, after the Innovating schismatics promised and gave them metropolises! [4]

Kyr Matthaios, as is known, alone and uncanonically—though not without reason from a spiritual point of view—consecrated Spyridon of Trimythous in 1948, and thereafter performed other consecrations together with the Bishop of Trimythous. [5]

Being aware of this uncanonicity, our Matthewite brothers later, in September–October of 1971, and specifically [Metropolitans] Kallistos of Corinth together with Epiphanios of Kition, accompanied by [Protopresbyter] Eugenios Tombros, went to the USA and were consecrated in two different liturgies (or were received via cheirothesia as schismatics) by the Hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, which was under the spiritual jurisdiction of Saint Philaret, whose relic was found incorrupt at the time of its uncovering.

Our Matthewite brothers, who present themselves as the most unyielding and pure Orthodox, who had condemned as actually schismatic all the churches that followed the New Calendar, did not hesitate to commune with and become canonically dependent upon a Synod which concelebrated with clergy from Jerusalem and Serbia who, although they followed the Patristic Calendar, recognized as canonical all the Orthodox Churches that followed the New Calendar.

In 1973, our Matthewite brothers elevated seven new bishops: Matthaios Makris of Attica and Megara, Nikolaos Messiarakis of Piraeus and the Islands, Lazaros Athanasiou of Vresthena, Pachomios Argyropoulos of Argolis, Theodosios Tsalagkas of Phthiotis, Eumenios Sifakis of Heraklion, and Titos Vlachos of Servia and Kozani. [6]

Our Matthewite brothers were even compelled to defend their consecrations by the Russian Church Abroad before the Greek courts![7]

They too, therefore, derive apostolic succession from the ROCOR. The dialogue with our Church, which was interrupted in 1992 and aimed at union with them, was to take place on the basis of the common confession regarding Apostolic Succession from the Russian Church Abroad, that is, through the cheirothesia in 1971 over the Matthewite bishops as schismatics. [8]

The Russian Church Abroad, until 1983 when they synodally anathematized Ecumenism under Saint Philaret, did indeed follow the Patristic Calendar and maintained a strict confessional stance against Ecumenism; however, they had indirect communion, through the Churches of Jerusalem and the Serbian Patriarchate, with the New Calendarist churches.

They ignore or deliberately overlook -- or many of our Orthodox brothers are deluded -- the indirect communion of the Russian Church Abroad with the New Calendarists through the Patriarchate of Serbia, [9] with which they never broke full communion. All our bishops in the past received Apostolic Succession through the Russian Church Abroad. [10]

Therefore, according to their mistaken logic, neither do they themselves have the priesthood -- those among them who were ordained as hierarchs and priests -- because they communed with the ROCOR, who had indirect communion with the New Calendarists through the Patriarchates (of Serbia and Jerusalem), which indeed maintained the Patristic Calendar but always had and, unfortunately, still have to this day full communion with the New Calendarists.

Erroneously or out of ignorance, these our brothers claim that the ROCOR did not have communion with the New Calendarists when they received the succession, in order to justify their positions.

According to the anti-traditional and anti-patristic logic which they develop, communion even with a single priest of the ROCOR would suffice for the priesthood to be lost, because, according to the Holy Fathers, he who communes with the excommunicated is himself excommunicated.

And through the successively transmitted communion, [11] the priesthood would retroactively be lost from the entire Church, as Saint Theodore the Studite emphasizes!... Which is absurd.

We, of course, are not shaken by the fact that the ROCOR had indirect communion with the New Calendarists, because we have studied the history of the Church and the teaching of Saint Theodore the Studite.

What then does the great Confessor Saint Theodore the Studite write, authentically interpreting the decisions of the Seventh Ecumenical Council?

Because many times heretics prevailed in the Church, and indeed for long periods of time, those who derive their orders from them, and those who concelebrated with them, according to the unorthodox opinion of the aforementioned writers, must be considered deposed, if deposition occurs automatically.

Therefore, all would then be deposed, the priesthood would be found nowhere, and the priesthood would have long since vanished from the earth, as well as saving Divine Grace and even the Orthodox Church itself.

The heresy which is mainly supported by our Matthewite brothers erases Grace and the Church from the earth. For, as the Holy Great Confessor Theodore notes, “many such offenses have happened and do happen in the Church.” For this reason, there has not been found, nor is there found, any Saint who has investigated these matters in such an unorthodox manner, nor has any handed down to us to preserve such a tradition: “None of the Saints has been found to have investigated these things in this way, for neither is it even possible, nor indeed has any delivered it to us to preserve.”

 

1. Because any change of the Calendar had been pre-condemned by the Pan-Orthodox decisions of 1582–3, 1587, and 1592.

2. Chrysostomos of Zakynthos [the third bishop who joined the Old Calendarists in 1935] was consecrated within the Innovation, that is, in 1927.

3. Because the introduction had been pre-condemned.

4. Encyclical of the Innovationist church 753/16.02.1954, Synodical Encyclicals, vol. B, p. 703.

5. Efstratiadou, The True Reality Concerning the Change of the Calendar, p. 164.

6. After they re-laid hands upon those who had been consecrated by one!

7. See the Ruling of the Court of Appeals of Piraeus 54/76 in Orthodox Breath, 2005, p. 258. In 1971, “both in America and in Greece all the Hierarchs with rejoicing foot and gracious eye received the laying-on-of-hands,” notes Bishop Kyrikos Kontogiannis.

8. Orthodox Breath, 2005, p. 375. In recent years, Bishop Kyrikos Kontogiannis continuously published material concerning the recognition of the consecrations of our Matthewite brothers by the ROCOR. That a laying-on-of-hands—cheirothesia—was performed by the Russian Church Abroad is now indisputable after the ruling 54/76 according to the testimonies of the former "Archbishop of the Matthewites, Kyr Andreas, Kyr Nikolaos Messiakaris of Argolida and Peristeri, and formerly of Piraeus." One therefore understands that what our late bishop, Kyr Kalliopios, had stated concerning the cheirothesia—laying-on-of-hands—of the also late Kyr Kallistos and Kyr Epiphanios was entirely true, since he was present at their consecration in America.

9. Both at the time of the first consecrations of our bishops, of the ever-memorable Akakios and the rest of our Hierarchs and before them, and subsequently at the time of the consecrations of ever-memorable Kallistos and the ever-memorable Archbishop of Cyprus, Kyr Epiphanios, and when our Church was in full communion with the Russians.

10. That the ROCOR were always in communion and never broke communion with the Patriarchate of Serbia and the corresponding one of Jerusalem, we have pointed out many times in the past. See recently, Holy Kollyvades issue of October–December 2003, p. 3, Der Bote, 1/1998, 38 (Official Organ of the Russian Orthodox Diocese of the Orthodox Bishop of Berlin and Germany). Der Bote, 4/2000, 19, 20, 23. See also related references in Monk Theodoretos [Mavros] (now Hieromonk), op. cit., pp. 13 and 14. See Russian Life, Feb. 1966, Orthodox Word, Jan.–Feb. 1966, Orthodox Russia, 1969, No. 5, The Orthodox Word, March 1969. See recently Orthodox Breath, issue of September 2004, pp. 152, 398 and the earlier issue of September 2003, pp. 375–379. See also in volume 11 of Ta Patria, p. 40, by the ever-memorable bishop of our Synod, Kalliopios. See Vladimir Moss, The Tragedy of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, Moscow, 2001, p. 6. Also Vladimir Moss, The Fall of the ROCA, p. 364 ff. By the same author, Vladimir Moss, The Holy Struggle of the Orthodox Christians of Greece 1919–1992, pp. 71, 72, and 73. See also his letter of January 8/21 1995 attached to that work. Not only did they commune with New Calendarists and Ecumenist Orthodox, but also the more “liberal” among them, such as Leonty of Chile and Anthony of Geneva, attended ceremonies of Latin heretics! Even the great ascetic and Saint John Maximovitch had New Calendarist parishes under his jurisdiction, which remained on the New [Calendar] for 24 years. In his speech at the Third All-Diaspora Council of the Russian Church Abroad in 1974, [Archbishop] Anthony of Geneva, representative of the “liberal” wing of the Church, presented the view that “the Russian Church has never formally severed ties with Ecumenical Orthodoxy.” “Two letters of our Synod to the Greek Old Calendarists,” he said, “are interesting, copies of which were sent at the time to the Greek Archdiocese of America and to the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The first on September 27, 1961: Our Church keeps the old calendar and considers the introduction of the new calendar a great mistake. Nonetheless, its practice has always been to maintain spiritual communion with the Orthodox Churches that accepted the new calendar, as long as they celebrate Pascha according to the decision of the First Ecumenical Council. Our Church has never declared the Ecumenical Patriarchate or the Greek Archdiocese of America to be schismatic, nor has it ever ceased to have spiritual communion with them.” The second letter, dated October 3, 1961, reads as follows: “Our Church keeps the old calendar and considers the introduction of the new calendar a great mistake. Nonetheless, in accordance with the policy of Patriarch Tikhon, we have never broken spiritual communion with the canonical Churches which introduced the new calendar.” Vladimir Moss, The Holy Struggle of the Orthodox Christians of Greece 1919–1992, pp. 72 and 73.

11. Of concelebration, according to Saint Theodore the Studite.

 

Greek source: https://entoytwnika1.blogspot.com/2013/11/blog-post_3558.html