Frank Comments on the Supposed Gracelessness of the New Calendarists

I want to be honest with you; I respect your strictness, but my faith is otherwise. I believe that the Mysteries of the New Calendarists are valid. And you know very well that I did not sign the 1974 Encyclical. I did not sign it and, of course, I am aware of the hypocrisy of those who did. They did not believe in it and would never have dared to [originally] introduce it.

- Metropolitan Petros (Astyfides) of Astoria, during a visit to the Holy Synod of the Matthewites in 1986. Quoted by Archimandrite Kyrikos Kontogiannis (later Matthewite Metropolitan of Mesogaia) in A Brief Sketch of the New Calendarist and Florinite Schisms, 1989, pages 24-25 (in Greek).

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“Nevertheless, when the famous encyclical was being issued in 1974, I, in my humility, refused to sign the text of the encyclical, because I considered myself incompetent in regard to so great a matter as my ecclesiological position concerning the Mysteries of 250,000,000 Orthodox Christians.

- Bishop Petros (Astyfides) of Astoria, Open Letter to Metropolitans Akakios of Diavleia, Chrysostomos of Thessaloniki (the future GOC Archbishop of Athens), and Gabriel of the Cyclades, dated July 16, 1985, page 4.

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Most heinous, however, among the “Chrysostomites” is their hypocrisy. Thus, [Archbishop Chrysostomos] Kiousis, in a conversation with one Cyprianite bishop, openly said that “if he were not only to occasionally declare the gracelessness of the new calendarists, but to constantly preach this and adhere to an unequivocal practice toward the new-calendarists, then his entire flock would abandon him and he would be left alone.”

- Brief Outline of Ecclesiological and Jurisdictional Disputes in the Greek Old Calendar Church and their Historical Connection with the Fates of Russian Orthodoxy (1924-2000), by S. V. Kryzhanovsky, 2020, p. 43, footnote 83 (in Russian).