Submission to the Hierarchy Presumes their Fidelity to Orthodoxy

A Brief Response to the Unlearned Fr. Cherubim Tsinoglou

April 26, 2026

 

 

Fr. Cherubim Tsinoglou [an archimandrite in the Official Church’s Metropolis of Thessaloniki], acting without prudence, falls into the very grave delusion of an anti-patristic identification of the Church with her administrative structure and with mechanical submission to the hierarchy.

[See (in Greek): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESm9BluAAQw]

In Orthodox ecclesiology, the bishop does not possess an authority of his own above the Faith, but stands “in the type and place of Christ” strictly and only insofar as he rightly teaches the word of truth. His authority springs from his identification with the Tradition of the Saints; when this identification is severed by heresy, his canonical authority becomes spiritually dead and inactive.

When a bishop is swept away into heresy—whether Ecumenism or some other false belief—he automatically ceases to be a guarantor of unity and is transformed, according to the Fathers, into a “grievous wolf” who threatens the flock of Christ. The unity of the Church is not organizational or bureaucratic, but unity “within the Truth.” Therefore, in such a critical deviation, the blind and undiscerning obedience preached by Fr. Cherubim is not a Christian virtue or humility, but criminal complicity in the betrayal of the Faith and participation in the alteration of the Gospel.

Fr. Cherubim’s insistence on imposing submission even in the face of the pan-heresy of Ecumenism shows a “darkened mind” that has lost the spiritual senses of discernment. This is a grave spiritual illness befitting the “Christian by imagination”; that is, one who rests content in forms and legal structures, while the essence of the Faith is emptied out. Fr. Cherubim’s “obedience” is thus transformed into an idol that sacrifices the Truth on the altar of administrative order, ignoring that the Church survives in history not through compromised administrations, but through the confessors who refused to have communion with error.

Fr. Cherubim’s position nullifies the conciliar and democratic spirit of Orthodoxy, turning the bishop into an “infallible” ruler of the papal type. Truth, however, precedes the bishop. When the bishop betrays the Truth, the faithful people and the clergy have a duty, according to Saint John Chrysostom, not to follow “evil guides” into the precipice of perdition.

Fr. Cherubim errs gravely and canonically when he characterizes walling off as “schism.” The 15th Canon of the First-Second Council (861 AD) remains unshaken: those who cease commemorating a bishop who publicly preaches a condemned heresy not only do not divide the Church, but preserve her from schism. The word “to wall oneself off” means that the faithful person raises a wall against the pseudo-bishop, and not against the Body of Christ. Fr. Cherubim’s attempt to present confession as “rebellion” constitutes a distortion of the Canons for the purpose of protecting a hierarchical pyramid reminiscent of “Orthodox Papism.”

If the logic of the “infallible” administration advanced by Fr. Cherubim were valid, then Saints Maximus the Confessor and Mark of Ephesus would have had to submit to the heretical synods and to the patriarchs of their time. Yet the history of the Church was written by those who “disobeyed” the bureaucracy of administration in order to remain faithful to Tradition. In Orthodoxy, the final guardian of the Faith is the people of God, and the theory that the bishop is above all judgment even when he alters Dogma constitutes an ecclesiological heresy that nullifies the conciliar polity.

Fr. Cherubim’s stance is not merely an erroneous assessment, but a conscious submission to the demands of the times and to worldly interests that want a Church subordinated to diplomacy. When bishops stray from the path of the Fathers and lead the flock to the precipice of Ecumenism—which nullifies the uniqueness of Salvation in Christ—or to the alteration of the sacramental life, walling off ceases to be a simple canonical possibility. It becomes the only path of salvation, because communion with a heresy-professing bishop defiles the faithful, according to the teaching of Saint Theodore the Studite: “communion with heretics leads to common perdition.”

The theology used by Fr. Cherubim proves to be not only shallow, but also extremely dangerous for the salvation of souls. Instead of exercising the prophetic rebuke owed by every priest against “wolf-shepherds” who destroy Dogma, he chooses to attack with fury those who, at great personal cost, wage the battle for the safeguarding of Right Belief. This inversion of values—where the confessor is baptized “schismatic” and the heresy-professing one “canonical”—constitutes the complete distortion of the Orthodox ethos.

Furthermore, Fr. Cherubim’s denial of the right of walling off makes him a theological advocate of error. If we accept, as Saint Justin Popović rightly discerned, that Ecumenism is the “pan-heresy” that gathers together all the errors of the West, then whoever preaches submission to bearers of this heresy becomes a participant in the same impious deed. The history of the Church is inexorable: Truth is neither divided nor negotiated for the sake of a false “unity” under the omophorion of a heretic. Fr. Cherubim’s attempt to impose communion with heresy as a prerequisite for belonging to the Church constitutes the very definition of ecclesiological alteration. Walling off is the “living wall” that the Church raises in order to remain unharmed by the virus of apostasy. Whoever mocks this wall, in reality, desires the conquest of Orthodoxy by the spirit of this world.

Silence in the face of heresy is not an “ecclesiastical mindset,” but spiritual suicide. May God preserve us from teachers who use the cassock to baptize darkness as light and betrayal as obedience.

 

Greek source: https://apotixisi.blogspot.com/2026/04/blog-post_925.html