We True Orthodox must control our indignation...

We True Orthodox must, however, resist the natural impulse to revile what is inauthentic and fake. For many of the modernists to whom all that I have written aptly applies have nonetheless simply been misled into a form of modernist cultism by leaders interested in money and growth—and this at a time that the Church approaches the age of the remnant. Many of these people have been taught hatred instead of love; judgmentalism instead of circumspection; arrogance instead of steadfastness; and a false Orthodoxy in the place of True Orthodoxy. Undoubtedly a great number of these misled modernists seek Orthodoxy and its traditional truths. Certainly, they are capable of being enlightened by the truth. And just as surely, their corrupt leaders, who have blinded them to what they seek, will come to justice.

Given this, we traditionalist Orthodox must check our outrage, control our righteous indignation, and overlook the silliness of those who know nothing, but nonetheless stand in judgment of us caretakers of the Church's wisdom. We must go among these people and teach them with love—though with an uncompromising love—of the lie which they have been told, of the stone which they have been given instead of bread. For their condemnation, we must return the true facts. For their ridicule, we must show them compassion. For their arrogance, we must give back humility. And to their concocted Orthodoxy, we must answer with True Orthodoxy. Only then will we truly teach them that canonicity is not a matter of the law, or something to be used by unscrupulous Churchmen to expand their domain in the name of human "officialdom;" but that canonicity is a matter of spiritual primacy, is based on living links with the past, and encompasses an honest, sober, and ultimately apocalyptic view of the future.

- Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Etna (+2019)

 

Source: Orthodox Tradition, Vol. IX (1992), No. 1, p. 26.