St. Seraphim of Platina on Categorically Denying Grace Among New Calendarists and Sergianists

 

But no less on the "right" side is the position of Metr. [St.] Philaret misunderstood and even condemned.  There are those who, in their "zeal not according to knowledge" (Rom. 10:2), wish to make everything absolutely "simple" and "black or white."  They would wish him and his Synod to declare invalid the Mysteries of new calendarists or Communist-dominated Churches, not realizing that it is not the business of the Synod to make decrees on such a sensitive and complex question, and that the church disturbances of our time are far too deep and complicated to be solved solely by breaking communion or applying anathemas, which—save in the few specific instances where they might be applicable—only make the church disturbances worse.  Some few even think to solve the tragic situation of Orthodoxy today with the declaration, "We are the only pure ones left," and then abuse those who take a stand of true Orthodox moderation with a most un-Orthodox mechanistic logic ("If they have grace, why don't you join them or receive communion from them?").  At various times the Russian Church Outside of Russia has avoided or discouraged communion with several other Orthodox bodies, and with one in particular (the Moscow Patriarchate) it has no communion at all, on grounds of principle; and separate hierarchs have warned against contact with the "modernist" bodies; but this is not because of any legalistic definition of the lack of grace-giving Sacraments in such bodies, but because of pastoral considerations which are respected and obeyed by all true sons of the Church without any need for a merely "logical" justification.

- St. Seraphim of Platina, The Orthodox Word, Vol. 12, No. 1 (66), January-February 1976, p. 4.