The Old Calendar Struggle: A Yearning for Love Without Compromise

By Archbishop [Metropolitan] Chrysostomos of Etna (+2019)

This article is a slightly revised version of an essay that appeared in Orthodox Tradition in 1984. We have asked His Eminence’s permission to reprint it here, since, though dated, it nonetheless expresses thoughts that we find as germane, edifying, and beneficial to our readers today as when he originally composed it—the Editors.

 

 

In several past issues of Orthodox Tradition, I attempted to present a fair and objective profile of the Old Calendarist movement in Greece: its excesses and its triumphs; its strengths and its weaknesses; and its struggle to remain a firm witness to all of the traditions of the Church at a time when even the most basic of traditions are being cast aside by many of the national Churches, their Exarchates in diaspora, and, alas, some of the ancient Patriarchates. In my attempts, I have tried to follow a path of moderation, certainly acknowledging the faults and flaws which exist in our traditionalist circles and, at the same time, pointing out that the Church is still one and that many so-called “modernist” Orthodox do, indeed, truly strive for sincere spiritual ends.

My attempts at moderation have been variously successful. A moderate stand is a difficult one, since it slices through the very substance of the extremes that lie on both sides of it. Thus, on the one hand, a very distinguished modernist Orthodox scholar, whom I greatly respect, recently told me that some of my writings are wounding in their insensitivity to the spirituality of others. I have taken his comments to heart and I will carefully search for such instances and avoid possibly wounding rhetoric in the future. On the other hand, another very close friend and spiritual advisor has warned me that my comments in Orthodox Tradition on the Old Calendarists are so conciliatory, at times, that an uncareful reader might think that, in explaining why I am an Old Calendarist, I do not really show sufficient dedication to the movement. I believe, therefore, that I should clarify a few basic points.

I am seriously disquieted by those traditionalists who believe that they alone constitute the Orthodox Church and who dismiss all New Calendarists and “modernists” as un-Orthodox. Such attitudes are crudely fundamentalistic and border on divisive thinking, taking, as they do, the apocalyptic signs of our times so literally as to violate the unity of the Church. Such attitudes, it seems to me, ignore some basic realities. There are New Calendar Churches, such as the Church of Greece, which still produce Saints. My own spiritual Father, Metropolitan Cyprian, is the spiritual son of the blessed Archimandrite Philotheos (Zervakos)—himself the spiritual son of St. Nectarios of Aegina—who remained in the State Church of Greece up to his death (though he followed the Church Calendar in his last days [1]), working for the return of that body to the Church’s proper Festal Calendar and Patristic tradition. And while the Prelates of many New Calendar Churches, in their wild ecumenist excesses, have come close to denying the nature of the Church Herself, other Hierarchs—and a great number of the faithful—remain loyal to the Truth passed down to them by the Fathers. Given this, who would possibly want to alienate our "modernist" brothers with strong rhetoric? Who could possibly desire to believe that Orthodoxy has been reduced to a handful of people who have independently decided that they constitute the “only Church under the sun,” to quote one such group?

At the same time, however, I deplore what has been done to Holy Tradition in the name of modernism, thinking that some abstract essence of Orthodoxy transcends Holy Tradition. A fierce and vulgar disdain for the ethnic heritages of Orthodoxy is also growing among converts in some ‘‘modernist” jurisdictions, such that the daily, tangible ways in which the Church's Truth has reached the faithful for decades—traditional Priestly dress, standing in Church, fasting, respect for the vision of Divine Order in the Orthodox monarchies of the past, modesty in dress, certain modes of behavior—are dismissed as "mere externals." Traditionalist Orthodox are characterized as ‘‘simpletons” preoccupied with ‘‘bells and smells,” and all of this by people who have sadly never really immersed themselves in the Orthodox ‘‘way of life”—orthopraxis and the observance of the Faith—which, as they fail to realize, cannot really be separated from the essence of Orthodoxy: the correct ‘‘way of belief” and the ‘‘true way of worshiping God.”

In the name of missionary expedience and apocalyptic necessity, the vast majority of Orthodox in America—the majority of ‘‘modernists,” that is—are failing to build Orthodox cultures in the New World and, more importantly, failing miserably in rearing children, the future of the Church, in a genuine, traditional, and healthy Orthodoxy. At times embarrassed by the Church’s divergence from the ways of a corrupt world, we have begun to accommodate that which transcends the world, that which is not of the world, to the caprice of our modern age! The humble monastic Bishop is being replaced by the worldly ‘‘corporate man,” too often influenced by the powerful and wealthy and too engaged in the "business" of the Church to fast, to follow the monastic restrictions against eating meat, to dress in traditional garb, to eschew personal possessions, or to refrain from courting “world Orthodoxy.” Moreover, the heresy of the “branch theory” of the Church is preached from the most famous Orthodox pulpits, undermining the indispensability and primacy of our traditions. Our faithful, Shepherds, and children are alienated from Orthodoxy in practice, embracing the Faith only in name.

Our Churches, in the agnostic atmosphere of the New World, have given up the mystical, quiet, and dark atmosphere of Holy Tradition, so conducive to prayer, for the brightly-lit din of the secular theatre. Personal taste, rather than obedience to Holy Tradition, has entered into the Church. Indeed, our holy task as Orthodox Christians—to lift ourselves up, and in this life, to participation in the Divine, to become “sons of God” within the Son of God, has been replaced by the boisterous claims of the “born again,” the “saved,” and the “elect,” many of our Churches being filled with the hyperbole of “televangelical” religion at the cost of the subtle, quiet, and pious holiness which has transformed our forefathers for ages. Soothing “evangelical” Protestant piety, spiced with some Roman Catholic features—a package that admittedly sells well—has replaced the strong wine and the caustic salt of curative Orthodoxy, which demands much of the body and soul.

If I am distressed by fanatic traditionalists, this is not on the basis of personalities; it is simply because I fear both for the souls of those who fall to extremism and for the souls of those who are misled or, as is often the case, put off by their unwise overzealousness. I am concerned with the misrepresentation of the Church to which unwise zeal ineluctably leads. By the same token, if I regret the vagaries of the “modernists,” it is not because of the actions of any single individual, but on account of my dismay at the way in which, little by little, modernist renovationists are removing pieces of the composite mosaic which is the Church. One may argue that the abandonment of one tradition may not mar the face of the Church. I reject this argument, since there is certainly no doubt that every new innovation—every abandonment of traditions dating, in many instances, to Apostolic times—represents a move toward the greater disfigurement of the image of salvation. While certain people and personalities may be tied to certain processes, and thus must be mentioned and cited, it is the process, which has actually made them its victim, which I ultimately deplore and fear.

Keeping firmly in mind all that I have said, any fair person will realize why I am an Old Calendarist and why I am staunch in that stand. I do not concelebrate with New Calendarists or participate in those activities wherein they err by departing from Orthodox traditions. I do not encourage them in their errant views of Holy Tradition; nor am I so spiritually remiss as to fail to point out their mistakes and wrong beliefs. I candidly remind them of the evil consequences of their infractions, as evidenced by the fact that many Old Calendarist zealots in Greece, Romania, and elsewhere have suffered persecution—and even death—at the hands of their brother Orthodox. This must not be forgotten. I remind them that not a few self-serving “modernists,” fearing our true witness to the Faith, have been less than honest and upstanding in speaking of legitimate and moderate Old Calendarists. They have, by virtue of their self-proclaimed “officialdom,” at times stated that we Old Calendarists are self-ordained, have no Bishops, and are illiterate fanatics. This travesty must of necessity be addressed.

But all of these reminders I offer with Christian love. If I truly believe that the destructive forces of modernism, ecumenism, and compromise lead to a disfigurement of the image of the Church, and that strong attempts to preserve Tradition in the most minute detail constitute a means by which I can keep the image of the Church pure, then I must speak, and again out of love, in an uncompromising and uncompromised way to my brothers. I must wall myself off and detach myself from their error, doing all that is necessary not to be touched myself by what assails and ails them. It was in this spirit, fearing the deviant course of the State Church of Greece, that Archimandrite Philotheos (vide supra) blessed Metropolitan Cyprian, then a much-respected clergyman and spiritual Father in the New Calendar Church, to seek refuge from its innovationist and ecumenist excesses by joining the Old Calendar Orthodox Church of Greece, then, save for the ultra-conservative Matthewite faction, united in one jurisdiction. [2] In that same spirit, seeking to protect ourselves from error, we are not judging our brothers in our actions, but are consciously essaying to preserve a standard to which they might return— an action with ample parallels in Church history.

Let me reiterate my earlier words. If I seem to speak harshly about modernist deviations from the Faith, thus somehow giving the impression that my chastisement is one of individuals, rather than of processes and movements, I apologize. If I have perhaps sounded too compromising in speaking against modernist deviations, for fear of hurting individuals, for this, too, I apologize. I would simply ask my readers to understand these faults, understand them as unintentional transgressions, and realize that they do not represent my true goal: i.e., the goal of standing apart from error and, while condemning the error, neither condemning those who fall prey to it nor judging their place within the Church, which is not mine to do. Let me also affirm that, if I am at times seemingly intractable in upholding a standard to which all will eventually be called, when the wicked are separated from the righteous, I have no doubt that the errant who ultimately return to Orthodoxy in its fullness will enjoy greater honor than those of us who have been merely called to preserve it. Theirs is the greater virtue, not ours.

 

1. See Constantine Cavarnos, Blessed Elder Philotheos Zervakos (Belmont, MA: Institute for Byzantine and Modem Greek Studies, 1993), pp. 69-75.

2. See: http://hsir.org/p/wd6

 

Source: Orthodox Tradition, Vol. XXIX (2012), Vol. 2, pp. 3-6.