Source: ROCOR's Department of Public and Foreign Relations Newsletter #40, June-July 1982.
The chancery of the Synod of
Bishops has received from the U.S.S.R. a photographic card constituting a
reproduction of a proclamation which has been circulated among pilgrims to the
Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra by someone, apparently as an antidote to the ecumenism
of the Patriarchate of Moscow.
At the top of the card are icons
of the Savior, the Mother of God, St. John the Baptist, and two archangels. Its
content is as follows:
Against the
Introduction of Novelties in the Orthodox Faith
A Canon of the Sixth Ecumenical
Council: "By divine grace we decree that the Faith which has been handed
down to us shall be and remain exempt from any and every innovation and
mutilation just as it has been delivered to us by those who have been both
eye-witnesses and servants of the Word, the God-bearing apostles, and further
by the holy and blessed fathers in Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and
elsewhere". He that overturns the dogmas and canons of the holy pastors
and teachers, overthrows the Church itself; without them it cannot exist (Works
of the Venerable Macarius, Vol. I, p. 34). From innovations are wont to
arise divers heresies and schisms, from which may Christ preserve all the
Orthodoxy (the Elder Paisy Velichkovsky). Let us preserve not anything that is
an innovation, but the Church's traditions which have been established for us
either by Scripture or outside of the Scriptures (Seventh Ecumenical Council).
From all of the above one can see that it is not permissible to introduce
anything new (or to change anything). Does this not also concern the New Calendar,
or the fasts, or anything else new which is opposed to the holy Orthodox Faith?
Can the hierarchs or anyone else change or introduce anything new into the
Orthodox Faith? As we see in other Orthodox Churches, as for example the
Bulgarian Church, the Patriarch issued an epistle implementing the New
Calendar, in accordance with which they began to celebrate the feasts thirteen
days earlier and to violate (through this) the fasts. The Elder Paisy [writes]:
"The hierarchs have not received from the Holy Spirit the authority to
violate the traditions of the Apostles and the canons of the Church. It seems
to me that one ought not to submit not only to bishops, but even to an angel in
the case of an incorrect understanding and decree concerning the holy Orthodoxy
Church " (This Elder was writing in regard to the violation of the holy
fasts).
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