I want to be sincere with you; I respect your strictness,
but my faith is different. I believe that the Holy Mysteries of the new
calendarists are grace‑bearing. And you know, it is very good that I did not
sign the 1974 Encyclical. I did not sign, and, of course, I know the hypocrisy
of those who did sign. 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).
+++
Nevertheless, when, in 1974, the
well-known encyclical was issued [declaring New Calendarists schismatic and
sacramentally graceless, dated June 5], I humbly refused to sign the text of
the encyclical, because I considered myself incompetent for so great a matter,
as was my ecclesiological position regarding the Mysteries of 250,000,000
Orthodox.
- 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.
+++
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).
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.