Conflicting Visions of the Church of the G.O.C. of Greece

 

“In 1935, three Bishops of the Greek Church decided to sever ecclesiastical communion [with the Official Church], who thereafter assumed the leadership of the holy struggle of the G.O.C. They proceeded to consecrate bishops and establish the Holy Synod of the Church of the G.O.C., with Germanos of Demetrias as its president. This event brings new dynamics to the G.O.C., which is no longer a Religious Community, but the continuation of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church in Greece.”

- Metropolitan Photios of Demetrias, Secretary of the Holy Synod of the G.O.C. of Greece, from Η Συμβολή των Ζηλωτών Αγιορειτών εις τον Ιερόν Αγώνα των Γ.Ο.Χ. [The Contribution of the Zealots of Mount Athos to the Holy Struggle of the G.O.C.], published September 3, 2009.

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Bearing in mind the Canons and the Constitution, we were led, from the [subsequent] proclamation of our depositions without due process, to the conclusion that the Ruling Synod had acknowledged the document in which we declared our severance of communion, in which case it was incumbent upon us, as the provisional ecclesiastical authority of the Old Calendarists, to provide for their religious needs, chief of them being the appointment of Bishops for the specific provinces in which there were concentrated groups of Old Calendarists. This is why we proceeded to consecrate four Bishops [in 1935], as we had the right to do [kat’ oikonomia; see below] on the basis of the divine and sacred Canons. We performed these Episcopal Consecrations to fill the religious needs of the eight hundred or more communities of Old Calendarists in the various provinces, and also in order to enable the Ruling Church and the Government to grasp and evaluate appropriately the sobriety of our enterprise, which aimed at the removal of scandal and the union of Christians through the restoration of the age-old Orthodox Festal Calendar bequeathed by Tradition...

It must be affirmed that we were led to this decision not because we were pursuing personal aspirations and ambitions, as the Archbishop of Athens put about right from the outset, but because we were hoping in this way to compel him to summon the Hierarchy and to submit to its judgment the document whereby we severed communion with the State Church and, as well, the entire calendar question in general. We never imagined that the Ruling Synod would expel us from our thrones without due canonical process, as appointed by the Canons and the Constitution, and declare us, heretofore Metropolitans, as subject to trial before a Synodal tribunal. 

- St. Chrysostomos of Florina, Tὸ Ἡμερολόγιον ἐν Σχέσει πρὸς τὴν Ὀρθόδοξον Ἀνατολικὴν Ἐκκλησίαν [The Calendar in Relation to the Orthodox Eastern Church], March 31, 1938.

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We admit that this step [the consecration of bishops] was hasty and, from a canonical standpoint, fraught with the risk of putting the cart before the horse, but we undertook it, ever hopeful that our Hierarchical Council, cleaving steadfastly to the venerable institutions and traditions of Orthodoxy, would be recognized, albeit according to ecclesiastical oikonomia, by the other Orthodox Churches until a valid resolution by a Pan-Orthodox Synod of the calendar issue, the matter under dispute.

- St. Chrysostomos of Florina, Ὑπόμνημα Ἀπολογητικὸν ὑπὲρ Ἀναστηλώσεως τοῦ Πατρίου Ἐκκλησιαστικοῦ Ἡμερολογίου [Memorandum in Defense of the Restoration of the Traditional Church Calendar], 1945.