Far From the Way of the Holy Fathers (2006)

The meeting between Patriarch Bartholomew and Pope Benedict of Rome

by Protopresbyter Theodore Zissis,

Professor at the School of Theology, University of Thessaloniki

Source: Orthodoxos Typos, No. 1670 (December 22, 2006), pp. 1 and 7.

 

 

1. The sorrow and bitterness of the Orthodox

Filled with bitterness and distress, the pious pleroma of the Church of Christ observed everything that took place during the meeting between Patriarch Bartholomew and Pope Benedict in Constantinople.

Among the many telephone calls, expressive of this sorrow, which were received by the author, from many jurisdictions and Dioceses and from the Holy Mountain, two made a special impression on him:

A pious confessor in Thessaloniki, with a vast number of spiritual children, said that he cannot find peace and is sorrowful unto death, because our mother, Orthodoxy, has been violated and dishonored.

A married Priest with many sons and daughters, belonging to the Metropolis of Dimitrias, who has resolved to cease commemorating his Bishop who is in agreement with all of these things, told me, in response to my discreet reminder of the probable persecutions and penalties he would face:

“I prefer to cultivate my field as a simple farmer while preserving my Faith, rather than contribute towards its destruction and go to eternal damnation with the Patriarch and his Bishops.”

I do not know if this simple and unlettered Priest has read the writings of the Holy Fathers; what he said, however, expresses the ageless conscience of the Church concerning the attitude that all of the Faithful—including laypeople—must have towards Bishops and Priests who do not correctly teach the word of the truth, but rather confirm heresy and error.

A multitude of pertinent Patristic citations are now contained in our book, Bad Obedience and Holy Disobedience. We would simply remind all, here, by way of illustration, of the view of St. Athanasios the Great, this great struggler on behalf of Orthodoxy in the face of the heresy of Arianism.

He writes that, in the event that a Bishop or Priest—the eyes of the Church—conducts himself badly and scandalizes the people, he must be expelled, even at the risk of the Faithful being left without a Shepherd. It is preferable that services be held in the Churches without Bishops and Priests, rather than the Faithful being thrown together with the Bishop and Priests into eternal damnation, where the Jews during the time of Christ went, together with the High Priests Annas and Caiaphas:

“For it is profitable that you assemble without them in the Church rather than be thrown together with them into the hell fire, as with Annas and Caiaphas. [1]

This is how the Athonite Hieromonk Gabriel has acted in our own days; with a succinct and bold Declaration and Confession, he ceased commemorating the Oecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew after his joint prayers and Joint Communiqué with the former Pope, which took place over two years ago during the Patronal Feast of Rome, on 29 June 2004, and also during the inauguration ceremony of an Orthodox Church on 1 July of the same year.

Henceforth, he writes, lest my silence be construed as agreement with all that is going on, I will not participate in services that commemorate the name of the Oecumenical Patriarch, but will remain instead in my cell,

“doing my regular and appointed monastic service alone, as a sign of protest, until the Sacred Community of the Holy Mountain takes a clear and definite position on the events that took place on the above-mentioned dates.” [2]

2. The narcotic of ecumenism and syncretism in increased doses

There are many such vigilant and sensitive consciences of Orthodox Christians, whose voices and positions do not reach the hearing and sight of the majority of the Faithful who are, for the most part, indifferent.

On the contrary, attracting notice and being extolled are all those clergymen and theologians who praise and worship the beast of the Apocalypse: the religious syncretism of the Antichrist, the equation of all religions and confessions, the multicultural and multi-faith model of the so-called New Age, which is bringing the world back to the darkness and immorality of the pre-Christian era, which had grown old and corrupt in the passions of vice.

According to the measure that Christ is driven out and the world is de-Christianized—and especially the Western, “civilized” world, with Papism and Protestantism bearing the responsibility—, the resulting void is being filled according to the same measure by the Devil.

The truth of God, the true theognosia of the Gospel, is being exchanged with the lie of the new idolatry of multiculturalism and syncretism, with a consequent slackening of the keeping of the commandments and the people arriving at a “reprobate mind,” “being filled with all unrighteousness,” even to the point of perpetrating the abhorrent impurity of the sin of Sodom, homosexuality, which is commended and practiced even by Priests, exactly as the Apostle Paul portrays the pre-Christian era in the first chapter of his Epistle to the Romans, to which era the syncretistic and inter-faith advocates want us to return, as to a putative New Age.

As many meetings as may take place between the Pope and Orthodox Patriarchs, the only way towards the re-evangelization of Christians is the way of return in repentance: the imitation of the Apostle Peter in the tears that he shed for denying Christ; [and the repentance] of the Pope, now, for the denial (rejection) of Orthodoxy of the common Fathers and Saints of the first millennium.

If [the Pope] continues egotistically to insist on the putative supremacy of Peter and on the keys to the Kingdom, as he has these days in Constantinople, and on worldly pretensions and primacy, then the words “shepherd my sheep” [3] do not apply to him, but rather “Get thee behind me, Satan, for thy thoughts are not of the things that be of God, but those that be of men.” [4]

Within this climate, then, of the so-called New Age, which is being molded by Papist and Protestant ecumenism, having the one world religion of the Antichrist as its vision, Christ and His Church are not proclaimed to be the Unique Light, the Sole Way of salvation, and this, unfortunately, with the coöperation and consent of the majority of Orthodox Patriarchs, Archbishops, and Bishops.

We contradict, in practice, what we sing at the end of every Divine Liturgy; namely, that “we have seen the true light, we have received the heavenly glory; we have found the true Faith, in worshipping the indivisible Trinity.”

Unfortunately, the light given by the Patriarchal Divine Liturgy at the Phanar, with the liturgical participation of the Pope, was not the true Light, the true Faith, but the darkness and error of the heresies of the Filioque, the supremacy of the Pope, unleavened bread, Purgatorial fire, created Grace, the degradation of all of the Mysteries, and the worldly Church of the Vatican, which has succumbed to the temptations of the Devil [5] for the acquisition of wealth and power, in order to become a worldly state and, essentially, to cease having any tie to Christ and Christianity, according to Dostoyevsky.

And this darkness has spread all the way to the places where Orthodox missionaries are working, who ask themselves how they can now persuade people to become Orthodox and not Roman Catholic, or how to help many who have become Roman Catholic to come to Orthodoxy—and they are quite numerous in the missionary field—, when the image has spread to the whole world of the joint prayers and the frequent concelebrations of two Primates, the Pope and the Patriarch, who exchange the kiss of peace and bless the people together.

We, too, are asking ourselves, together with the Apostle Paul and the Forty-seventh Apostolic Canon, which prohibits us from recognizing the Baptism and the Divine Liturgy of heretics (things that have, unfortunately, once again been recognized by the Oecumenical Patriarchate and other Orthodox Churches, which are tacitly permitting even the common cup):

“For what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? Or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?” [6]

How will we dare, in a few days, to address the begotten Christ and chant that “Thy Nativity, O Christ our God, hath shined the light of knowledge upon the world,” and that we follow the Magi in worshipping Him “as the Sun of Righteousness,” and find salvation believing in the “One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church” of the Symbol of Faith, i.e., in the Orthodox Church? How many Churches are there, and how many creeds, and how many Baptisms? One or many? If there is not but one, Orthodoxy, then is the Apostle Paul mistaken when he says “One Lord, one Faith, one Baptism”? [7]

These questions, however, are not causing people to stop and think; even the very meaning of heresy is not being made clear. People have ceased to distinguish between right and wrong, truth and error.

The narcotic of ecumenism—this new religion of the Antichrist, this panheresy, according to Elder Justin (Popovitch)—, having been administered for decades in small doses, covered in Orthodox-like wrappings such as the Unia, with misinterpreted passages from the Holy Scriptures and the Fathers of the Church, has drugged the consciences of the majority, and indeed of many clergymen and theologians.

The so-called Dialogue of Love has created an unreal, false atmosphere of peace and unity, in which the masses, unsuspectingly and freely partaking of the pills of ecumenist heroin from the media, are blissfully content.

The doses are increasingly heavier. From simple coöperation in practical and social matters and from declarations by Orthodox representatives, at ecumenical conventions, that the Orthodox Church is the true Church, we have now arrived at the utter demolition of the Sacred Canons, with by-now undisguised and obvious joint prayers before the eyes of Angels and men, and at the parodying of the dread Mystery of the Divine Eucharist, this Mystery of absolute unity in truth, with the liturgical exchanges of the kiss of peace with heretics, the supplications for them by the Deacons, and the Polychronia by the chanters.

3. The steps of Athenagoras are not the steps of the Apostles and the Fathers

Can anyone imagine St. Athanasios the Great having Arios sit on a throne opposite him, as they pray together and exchange the kiss of peace at the exclamation “let us love one another,” and the choir of chanters praying for the “length of days” of Arios, that he might continue his heretical and ruinous work?

Is there any relation between the Icon, which presents St. Nicholas slapping the Arian, and the image of the Patriarch exchanging the kiss of peace with the multifariously heretical Pope and considering his presence a blessing?

Who is right: St. Kosmas of Aitolia, who cursed the Pope, or the Patriarch, who praises him and embraces him as a brother?

[Who is right,] the monks of the Palestinian desert, with St. Sabbas…as their leader, who kept the Church undefiled from the heresy of Monothelitism, or the wretched and unfortunate monk of Mount Athos who composed hymns and Troparia in honor of the visit of the heretical Pope to the Phanar? Do these Athonites have anything in common with the Holy Athonites who were martyred for their opposition to the pro-Papism of Patriarch John Bekkos?

It is certain that St. Euphemia, whose Relics lie in the Patriarchal Church of St. George, and who “greatly gladdened the Orthodox and covered with shame the heretical” Monophysites, is not gladdened, but grieved by all of these things, and is retracting her Grace.

The same is true for Sts. Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostomos, whose Relics the Patriarch and the Pope venerated; they were not gladdened, but grieved.

Apostolic succession is not a mere temporal succession to the throne, but it is also a succession in terms of manners and teaching: “as a sharer of the ways [of the Apostles] and a successor to the throne.” It is broken when the continuity of the Truth, the Orthodox Faith, is broken.

The only truth in the Patriarch’s addresses and speeches is that he is following in the footsteps of his predecessors, Athenagoras and Demetrios. The history of the Church, however, does not begin with Athenagoras, but has behind it a two-thousand-year struggle against non-Christians and non-Orthodox, and a nearly 1,200-year history of Patriarchs, Confessors, Bishops, Priests, monastics, and laypeople, who struggled against Papism, from St. Photios the Great to our day.

And we Orthodox unerringly follow the Saints and Fathers who have been recognized by the eternal conscience of the Church, and not the contemporary Latin-minded Patriarchs, Archbishops, and Bishops, who are leaning towards heresy.

The steps of Athenagoras and Demetrios are not the steps of the Apostles and Fathers.

4. The barrier of Orthodoxy is being torn down. We must have no communion with, nor commemorate, the Bishops

These things are written in full awareness of the truly historic nature of the times in which we are living, with regard to the negative activities and ceremonies so destructive to Orthodoxy, and in full awareness of the responsibilities and consequences of our position.

We prefer to be persecuted and defamed rather than to remain silent and more mute than fish before the manifest degradation of the Orthodox Faith. We prefer to be with the Saints, rather than to enjoy the friendship and sympathy of the pro-Papists and Latin-minded.

We are awaiting and praying that the array of Orthodox be consolidated with Bishops, as also with Priest and monastics who are still quailing and vacillating.

The truth, in any case, is not related to numbers and amounts. Large numbers have often given strength to falsehood and error.

We would stress that the televised images of the meetings between the Patriarch and the Pope, with their exchanges of the kiss of peace and the chanting of the Polychronion during Liturgies, have awakened the consciences of many, who are discovering that the integrity of the Faith is now in jeopardy and that the Bishops commemorated at Divine Liturgies, as guarantors of unity in the Faith, are not teaching aright the word of the Truth, are not in fellowship with the Saints who came before them, but that, in essence, we must have no communion with them, as they are in communion with the excommunicate.

All of those who keep silent when the Faith is in jeopardy bear great responsibility.

St. Gregory Palamas, when criticized by his fellow monastics for leaving his Athonite hesychasterion, prayer, and nepsis, and going to Thessaloniki to undertake the struggle against the Papist Barlaam and those of like mind with him, characterized it as “impious piety” to forbear from presenting the dogmatic teaching of the Church and checking heresy and error, as the Holy Fathers did for even the slightest of cacodoxies.

Genuine piety is to follow not those who are tearing down the barriers, so that the heretics may enter in, but rather the God-bearing Fathers.

If one neglects and undervalues the teaching of even one Father, he weakens the barrier at that point, and the whole multitude of wrongly-believing heretics enters therein.

One grieves and is profoundly cut to the heart when reflecting on the utterance of the Patriarch, who considers the Holy Fathers who struggled against the Pope as being victims of the Devil and deserving the forgiveness and mercy of God. [8]

But if St. Photios the Great, St. Gregory Palamas, St. Mark of Ephesus, St. Kosmas of Aitolia, St. Nicodemos the Hagiorite, and so many other fighters against the heresy of Papism were instruments and victims of the Devil, we must strike them off the lists of Saints, dispense with their Feast Days and services, and instead of calling upon their intercessions and help, we must perform memorial services for them, that God might forgive them.

St. Gregory Palamas, at any rate, says:

“Thus, such is genuine piety: not to call into question the God-bearing Fathers. For the theologies of the aforementioned Saints are expressions and yardsticks of true piety, as each of these makes up, in a manner, the barrier and enclosure of piety; and if one removes one of them, the malevolence of the heretics will greatly swarm in.” [9]

He is, to be sure, characterizing all of those who keep silent and do not struggle against heresies as belonging to a third type of atheism, while in the first two types he classifies unbelievers and heretics. [10]

This assessment is justifiable when one considers the axiomatic saying, that silence signifies consent.

5. Contempt for the Sacred Canons. “He who is guilty may not declare another to be guilty”

We will not expand on this further at this point.

We had decided that, in view of the Nativity, we would suspend our struggles and wait; but things are rushing forward: piety is being demolished, the meaning of the Divine Incarnation is being negated, and the work of salvation is being obstructed.

The Nativity without the true Christ, without true Faith, is meaningless. It has degenerated into a worldly celebration of a material banquet and bodily pleasures.

In a few days, the scene will be repeated in Rome with the visit of Archbishop Christodoulos.

In the next issue of Orthodoxos Typos, we will present a moving miracle by the Patron Saint of Corfu, St. Spyridon, whose Feast Day is being celebrated these days, in which he expelled and removed the Pope from the Church dedicated to the Saint and, consequently, from the Orthodox Church. We will also present St. Athanasios of Paros’s commentary on this miracle.

Following that, with God’s help and by the intercessions of those Saints who struggled against the Pope and who were Confessors and Martyrs, we will comment, in a theological and ecclesiological way, on all of the things that took place at the Phanar, as we “follow the Holy Fathers” and not “the footsteps” of [Patriarch] Athenagoras and his predecessor, Meletios Metaxakes.

We will demonstrate that, apart from the already-habitual joint prayers, Liturgies are also being concelebrated and there is participation in the common cup at “ecumenical” Liturgies. [11] This is simply concealed; it is not officially revealed, because the ecumenist heroin has not yet drugged everyone’s conscience: there are still a few “fanatics” who refuse to take part in the drugging and are reacting in opposition.

It is incomprehensible that we should pursue unity with heretics, while breaking away from our Orthodox brethren; that we should embrace the former, while excommunicating and penalizing the latter.

We remain united with the eternal Church of the Saints, with the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, being her nurslings and children. We accept all of her doctrines, all of her Sacred Canons, all of her Oecumenical and Local Synods, and we reject and disavow all heresies, new and old, and among them the numerous ones of Papism and Protestantism.

All those who justify these heresies as [supposedly being mere] theologoumena, all those who recognize [as valid] the Sacraments and Grace of the so-called Sister Churches, all those who have diminished and degraded the Church by counting it among the heresies, the so-called Churches—these people are rending and dividing the Orthodox Faithful and are subject to the pertinent penances laid down by the Sacred Canons, which have not grown old, nor have they been abolished, but are still in force, and will always be in force.

The [true] New Age, the New Creation, began by means of the Incarnation, the Nativity of Christ, and is continued by means of the Apostles and the Fathers. It is not being started now by the [ecumenist] Patriarchs and Archbishops, who make a distinction between the times and divide the Church, in order to avoid the consequences of continuity and identity.

Let all those who dare to use certain [Sacred] Canons at will and in their own interest as cannon against the strugglers and Confessors of Orthodoxy first of all consider the fact that they, themselves, are clearly and obviously guilty, by all that they publicly say and do, of a multitude of transgressions of the Canons; and that, apart from the fact that “he who is guilty may not declare another to be guilty,” they are in danger, in the event that they make unjust decisions, of suffering the same lot either in this life or after death.

We cite just a few examples of [Sacred] Canons that have been torn to shreds by the transgressors:

“Let a Bishop, Presbyter, or Deacon, who has merely prayed with heretics be excommunicated; but if he has permitted them to perform any clerical function, let him be deposed.” [12]

“We enjoin that a Bishop or Presbyter who accepts the Baptism or offering of heretics be deposed. For what concord hath Christ with Belial? Or what part hath he that believeth with an unbeliever?” [13]

“On not allowing heretics to enter the House of God, so long as they remain in heresy.” [14]

“One should not receive blessings from heretics, which are absurdities [ἀλογίαι], and not blessings [εὐλογίαι]” [15]

“That one must not pray with heretics or schismatics.” [16]

“We embrace and espouse the Divine Canons and hold firm to their command, in full and unshaken, as set forth by the all-glorious Apostles, these trumpets of the Spirit, by the six Holy Oecumenical and Local Synods that have convened to pronounce such commands, and by our Holy Fathers. For all having been illumined by one and the same Spirit, prescribe that which is of benefit. And those who they place under anathema, we also anathematize; and those whom them depose, we also depose; and those whom they excommunicate, we also excommunicate; and those whom they give over to punishment, we also do the same.” [17]

 

NOTES

1. See BEΠEƩ 3, 199.

2. For the full text of the Statement and Confession, see the periodicals Agios Agathangelos Esphigmenites, Vol. 204 (July-August 2004), p. 25, and Theo­dromia, No. 8 (2006), pp. 237-388.

3. St. John 21:16.

4. St. Matthew 16:23.

5. St. Matthew 4:1-11.

6. II Corinthians 6:14. Forty-sixth Apostolic Canon: “Let a Bishop, Presbyter, or Deacon, who has merely prayed with heretics be excommunicated; but if he has permitted them to perform any clerical function, let him be deposed.”

7. Ephesians 4:5.

8. See the periodical Ecclesiastike Aletheia, Athens (16 February 1998):

“It is essential that we repent for the past. We should not waste time discussing who is to blame. Our forefathers, who bequeathed the split to us, were hapless victims of the arch-evil snake and are already in the hands of God, the Just Judge. We beseech God’s mercy on their behalf, but we ought, before God, to redress their errors.”

This frightful statement provoked a justifiable written reaction by the Holy Mountain. The Patriarch’s explanations and interpretations are not in the least convincing. He should have recognized his error and and asked forgiveness from the Saints and the Orthodox pleroma.

9. St. Gregory Palamas, “To the most pious among monks, Dionysios,” 5, in P. Chrestos, Gregory Palamas, Works, (Thessaloniki 1966), Vol. II, p. 486.

10. Idem, p. 482. The two other types of atheism are unbelief and heresy, as it is expounded in the work in question.

11. The description, by Professor K. Bei (now a clergyman belonging to the Metropolis of Nikopolis and Preveza), of an “ecumenical” Liturgy in Syros is quite shocking. With joy and pride, he describes this expression of the dissolution of the Sacred Canons and of the Tradition of the Fathers.

See A. Sakarellos, “The New Age,” in Orthodoxos Typos, issue 1667 (1 December 2006), p.3:

“When it came time to recite the Creed, the Catholic Bishop invited all of the faithful, regardless of denomination, to recite it according to the original typikon of the Nicean Synod, without the Filioque. And when it came time for Holy Communion, he dipped the Host into the chalice with the wine, such that, in accordance with the saying of the great Athenagoras, we would all be able to commune from the same chalice. And we communed. Catholics, Or­thodox, and Protestants. From the common cup of the common faith. Without boundaries and without intolerant prejudices.”

We do not doubt the Professor’s legal knowledge, though we would expect greater sensitivity to the Canons of the Church, the violation of which he is proud. His ignorance, at any rate, of basic liturgical terms, which are learnt by first-year students at the School of Theology, as may be gathered from this quotation alone, goes to show that he should not be so confident of the theological positions that he expresses (e.g. the typikon of the Synod in Nicea, and others.)

12. Forty-fifth Apostolic Canon

13. Forty-sixth Apostolic Canon

14. Sixth Canon of the Synod of Laodicæa

15. Thirty-second Canon of the Synod of Laodicæa

16. Thirty-third Canon of the Synod of Laodicæa

17. First Canon of the Seventh Oecumenical Synod in Nicea.

 

Translated by the Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, Etna, CA.