Response to the 1950 Announcement of the Synodal Committee of the Official Church on the Calendar Question, by the President of the Synod of the Old Calendarists

Source: Ἡ Φωνὴ τῆς Ὀρθοδοξίας [The Voice of Orthodoxy], Special Edition, No. 92, December 4, 1950 (O.S.), pp. 5-7. Originally published in Η Βραδυνή [The Evening] newspaper, December 11, 1950 (N.S.). Revised translation, emphasis added.

 

 

In this announcement [of the Official Church], the old Ecclesiastical Calendar is impiously called a “cancerous growth.” The old festal calendar is not a cancerous growth in the Body of the Church, but a vital artery, through which the pure Orthodox blood is channeled into the heart of the Church.

And this is because the arrangement of the festal calendar, constituting the basis of the Paschal canon established by the First Ecumenical Council, safeguarded through the ages the golden chain of all the individual Orthodox Churches and the compass of Orthodox worship. For this reason also, the arbitrary and unilateral replacement of the Julian Calendar by the Gregorian one, without the consent of all the Orthodox Churches, broke the unity of the Churches in the celebration of the feasts and brought about the disruption of the ecclesiastical services and various changes in the days of the fasts and of other purifications of the soul.

For this reason, the Gregorian Calendar was condemned by Pan-Orthodox Synods in 1583, 1587, and 1593, and by all the Orthodox Churches; whenever the question of the Ecclesiastical Calendar was raised, it was condemned as anti-Orthodox and as a means of proselytism. Hence it becomes clear that the old festal calendar is not a cancerous growth, but a sacred institution, which our Fathers established, independently of chronological accuracy, in order to secure through the ages, the unity of the Churches in the celebration of the feasts and in the observance of the fasts, and furthermore to set a perceptible barrier between the Orthodox and the heretics.

The State did not have the initiative in introducing the new calendar, as the announcement of the Synodal Committee wrongly maintains, but rather the Synod of the [Official] Hierarchy did. Proof of this is the legislative decree of the ever-memorable King George II, according to which the new calendar was established for the State, while for the Church, its own calendar for feasts and Ecclesiastical services was also ratified civilly.

And in this respect the State is worthy of praise, because it respected the old Ecclesiastical tradition.

The declaration of the Synodal Committee maintains that the new calendar does not conflict with the dogmas, the divine canons, and the Orthodox institutions of the Church. To prove that this assertion has no truth or correctness, we consider it unnecessary to present arguments of our own, since we have the condemnation of the Gregorian Calendar by Pan-Orthodox Synods, as was said above, and in addition the finding of the special Committee on the Ecclesiastical Calendar, composed of jurists and Professors of Theology, which declared that the introduction of the new calendar in the Greek Church would create cause for schism, would destroy the unity of the Church (which is included in the Symbol of Faith), and would greatly damage the national interest.

Hence it becomes clear that the defenders of the calendar tradition are not impelled by blind fanaticism and by personal motives, as the announcement maintains, but by a deep consciousness of the confession which they gave at their ordination: that they would preserve unharmed and unaltered all that they received from the Holy Ecumenical Councils.

And if we Hierarchs did not immediately come forth into the festal-calendar struggle, we did this so that, on the one hand, we might not become causes of division, and, on the other hand, because we expected that in time the remaining Churches also would accede to the new calendar. But when we saw that a division had been created by the Old Calendarists, who remained steadfast in the patristic traditions, even without us, and that this, for lack of pastoral oversight and guidance, was being diverted into extremes, to the detriment of the authority of the Church and the dignity of the Hierarchy, with the protest of the ancient Churches of the East against the calendar innovation also assisting, then, after we had exhausted all peaceful means in vain, we entered into the struggle, in order to calm our Orthodox conscience and that of the followers of the old festal calendar, and in order to forestall further excesses.  And if the [Matthewite] Monastery in Keratea, after a few years, had not renounced us (in the year 1937) and had remained under our jurisdiction and oversight, the revealed scandals would not have occurred, nor would the leadership of the Monastery have become a spectacle to angels and to men.

And whereas the [Official] Hierarchy, for the sake of the authority of the Church and her dignity, ought to have sought out one Metropolitan to play the part of an Old Calendarist and to be placed at the head of the Old Calendarists, so as to keep the struggle within canonical limits, as soon as ideologically committed Hierarchs came forth into the sacred struggle, in order to direct it and keep it within the framework of the sacred Canons, the innovating Hierarchs promptly fell upon them, proceeding immediately, without any peaceful means prescribed by the Canons, to their deposition and to a five-year confinement in remote monasteries, as though in prisons.

This ill-considered and psychologically misguided penal act of the Hierarchy, imposed upon Hierarchs, pillars and defenders of patristic traditions, contrary to every divine and human institution, is what caused the inflaming of passions and the strengthening of the old-festal-calendar struggle, and not this alleged lawlessness on the part of the State, as the memorandum of the Synodal Committee maintains, deliberately distorting persons and facts.

Unfortunately, the Official Hierarchy did not wish to be persuaded, despite all that was written by us, that in the soul of the Old Calendarists, there had been created a condition of Orthodox conscience, which not only does not admit of violence and pressure for its uprooting, but is rather strengthened and rooted all the more by anti-Christian and inhuman acts of violence.

The idea of the [Official] Hierarchy is very mistaken, namely that this issue would have been resolved if the Government had carried out the violent and anachronistic measures indicated by the Church against those who remained steadfast in the Old Festal Calendar for reasons of pure Orthodox conscience.

Moreover, the Government made use of these measures for the sake of the Official Church, and indeed to the detriment of governmental authority and contrary to the provisions of the Constitution, which protects traditions and the religious freedom of conscience, although these measures, instead of calming the Old Calendarists, punished them and inflamed them.  It is indeed most grievous, the comparison and association made by the Synodal Committee between our own conscientious body and the unconscionable faction of the departed [Bishop] Matthaios [of Vresthena], portraying both factions as competing, as the announcement says, in an excess of detestable fanaticism and deceitful demagogy, so that, on the pretext of the abominable and indecent scenes at the Monastery in Keratea, even our healthy and sober-minded body of idealists might be cast into common contempt. For it has been shown, more clearly than the sun, through the deeds of each of the two groups, that the faction of the departed Matthaios and his corrupt circle regarded the sacred struggle as an enterprise and amassed great wealth, whereas our faction regarded it as an ideal, and not only reaped no benefit from it, but was in many ways materially harmed for the love of Christ.

Likewise, the Synodal Committee deliberately maintains in its announcement that we also, formerly conservative and moderate, thereafter outstripped the party of Matthew in fanaticism, declaring the Official Hierarchy schismatic, and its mysteries as deprived of grace, solely and only in order that we might substitute ourselves, as it says, for it, in the enormous property which the opposing party acquired by unlawful means, making piety a means of gain.

Nothing is more false and more inaccurate than this assertion. And it is indeed true that we, despite the lawless persecution which the innovating Hierarchy set in motion against us, at first avoided, out of respect for the realty of the Church, declaring it schismatic by an Ecclesiastical encyclical, whereas it declared us schismatics in court when trying our Bishops of Megara and Diavleia, in order to justify the decision deposing them. But when we saw that the Official Synod had taken a decision to regard, contrary to every sacred canon and to the age-old practice of the Church, our mysteries, those of the pure Orthodox, as invalid, and without fear of God to repeat them, to the utter degradation of the authority of the mysteries, then we too, finding ourselves in a position of self-defense, issued the corresponding encyclical in order to calm the agitated conscience of our flock, and not in order to acquire the property of the Monastery of Keratea. Perhaps the Synodal Committee is itself tormented by this pious desire, in recommending the dissolution of this wealthy Monastery, so that it might confiscate its property. Likewise, the Official Synod deliberately shifts the blame for the scandals revealed concerning the Monastery in Keratea not only onto us—who have no relation or ecclesiastical communion with its superiors, who are themselves accountable before the Greek justice system—but also onto the ideology of the Old Calendarists, flattering itself with the hope that, from the occasion of the Keratea affair, it might succeed in abolishing everyone and everything. Finally, as regards the assertion of the announcement that the Official Church, acting magnanimously, offered to the Old Calendarists both churches of their own and canonical priests for the performance of their religious needs according to the Old Calendar, this too is untrue.

For this measure, which was proposed by the then Government, was not only vehemently rejected by the Old Calendarists, who do not receive grace and sanctification from New Calendarists, but it was also disapproved by the Synod of the [Official] Hierarchy, on the grounds that it reduced the ministers of the Most High to mere phonographs echoing religious services, without the ministers participating spiritually in them. Equally inaccurate is the assertion that clergy punished for canonical violations by the Official Hierarchy are accepted by us without examination—except, of course, those punished solely for reasons relating to the Old Calendar. As for the claim that the Most Reverend Bishops of Christianoupolis, Christophoros, and of Diavleia, Polykarpos, accepted the decision of the court of second instance, by which they were demoted from the rank of bishop to that of presbyter—something which, according to the 29th Canon of the Fourth Ecumenical Council, is characterized as sacrilegious—we consider any refutation of this unnecessary, since a written protest on their part is preserved in the offices of the Synod, wherein they express their view of this sacrilegious demotion.

As regards the question of the procurement of Holy Chrism from the Holy Mountain, on the grounds that no such chrism exists in monasteries where baptisms are not performed, the Official Church knows better than anyone else that Holy Chrism is used by the Church not only in baptisms, but also for the consecration of churches, which of course exist on the Holy Mountain.

As a conclusion to this response may it be permitted me to address reverently to the Official Synod and the honorable Government—who constitute these two authorities and powers—our humble entreaty: that they, being illumined by God, may rise to the height of the Apostolic standard and to the critical nature of the times, which the Lord of each household alone judges, so that the Church and the Nation may be preserved. And in their assured prudence and discernment, may they see fit not to disturb the religious conscience of thousands of devout citizens and steadfast Orthodox, especially now that the rights of man concerning religious conscience have been enshrined by the United Nations organization. Therefore, may they be entreated to show the due respect toward the laborers and pillars of the ecclesiastical and national traditions—and this until a Pan-Orthodox Great Local Council may convene, the only body competent to resolve validly and definitively this serious issue, now simmering for twenty-five years. May the Lord God grant both the Church and the Nation the peace and reconciliation so ardently desired by all, so that both these sacred institutions may ever flourish in greatness and self-sacrifice for the good of the Nation and to the Glory of the Church.

† The former Metropolitan of Florina, CHRYSOSTOMOS