[A plea to end the persecution against the Old Calendarists, restore the Patristic Calendar, or alternatively, legally recognize the GOC as part of the Church of Greece until the calendar reform can be judged by a Pan-Orthodox Council. Clearly, even after the death of St. Chrysostomos the New Confessor, the GOC did not truly consider the Official Church to be schismatic or heretical. – Blog Admin.]
Greek source: Η
Φωνή της Ορθοδοξίας, Issue 231, April 2, 1956, pp. 1-2.
To the Most Blessed
Archbishop of Athens and all Greece
Your Beatitude,
We render unto you the respect
that is due, expressing at the same time our sincere congratulations on your
ascent to the glorious throne of Dionysius the Areopagite, of Hierotheos, and
of the other glorious and holy Hierarchs who, at various times, adorned the
sacred See of the Capital of Greece. Thereafter we beseech Your Beatitude that,
as a Christian duty, you would graciously deign to go through these poor lines,
inspired by an infinite pain for the Church and traced not with common ink, but
with tears and bitterness.
Your Beatitude,
Many problems await their
solution at your hands. Your solicitude is called to conduct many struggles, in
order to raise the Church of Christ, which He purchased for Himself with His
All-Immaculate and All-Pure Blood, to a lofty level, so that from that height
it may shine forth and guide the storm-tossed pleroma to the saving pastures of
the Christian faith. This need is also hinted at by the daily press, through
leading articles, columns, and comments, which you have surely and carefully
read.
Among the fundamental problems
which you will certainly face is also the Old Calendar question.
No one can underestimate its
seriousness, even if he is so progressive as to proclaim that the calendar
preoccupies only ignorant old crones, empty of knowledge and devoid of
education.
The seriousness of the problem is
chiefly brought out by the following reasons:
A) The canonical impediment of
the Pan-Orthodox Synods under Jeremias II, by which the Gregorian Calendar was
condemned.
B) Its uncanonical introduction,
effected not by a Pan-Orthodox Synod, but by a simple administrative act of the
individual Autocephalous Churches.
C) The sorrowful division of the
Orthodox Eastern Church into Churches following the old calendar and Churches
following the new calendar.
D) The tragic division of the
Greek people into Old Calendarists and New Calendarists.
E) The multitude of unlawful acts
that have taken place and are taking place on the part of the Governing
Hierarchy: re-ordination of clergy, sealing of churches, stripping clergy of
their clerical garb and publicly humiliating them, etc.).
F) The opportunity afforded for
every kind of exploitation of the sacred zeal and piety of the Old
Calendarists, beginning with shameful pre-election vote-seeking and ending in
the deviation from the right line of certain few persons seeking their own glory.
G) The tarnishing of the Church’s
reputation through the transgressions of the competent authorities.
H) The violation of sacred
customs and canons, due to the coexistence of two time-reckoning systems,
Julian and Gregorian. A characteristic example is the disappearance of the Fast
of the Holy Apostles in 1956.
For all these reasons, and for
others of secondary importance, the significance of the Old Calendar question
is fundamental.
Your Beatitude,
Permit us to think that, for an
ecclesiastical man of your education, the significance of the problem remains
intact and is not superficially and prejudicially underestimated.
For precisely this reason, its
handling also will not be carried out hastily, as is handled, at least, the
appointment of a doorkeeper of the Archiepiscopal Palace.
You will meet with the honorable
Mr. Prime Minister; the most excellent Minister of Education will meet with
you; priests and synodal officials will whisper into your ears. It is possible
that you may hasten to use the sword of the powerful as the easiest and most
effective weapon. But before you sharpen it, summon your predecessors into the
holy sanctuary of your conscience. Ask them one by one, beginning with
Chrysostomos Papadopoulos and ending with Spyridon Vlachos, what they achieved
through persecutions. They indeed have died and been buried! But the living
pang of their consciences survived and still survives.
Ideas are not overthrown by physical
force. The use of violence against religious conscience is fuel upon the fire.
Perhaps even Christianity itself would not have existed, had its benefactors
been absent: Nero, Diocletian, Trajan, etc.!
Cast away, therefore, the sword
of persecution, which, even from the time of Golgotha, cuts the hands and heads
of the persecutors and secures crowns of Glory and Victory for the martyrs.
And proceed! Two roads remain to
lead you to the solution. The first is the correction of the error with courage
and boldness. The restoration of the patristic festal calendar in the worship
of the Orthodox Church. The restoration of normality will not simply honor Your
Beatitude, but will also place you near the great Hierarchs of Orthodoxy, who
secured the peace of consciences and of the Church.
Are there reasons, known to Your
Beatitude, which do not favor this solution? Behold also a second solution.
Since, in one way or another, the
Old Calendar question will be discussed before the Pan-Orthodox Synod which
will in any case be convened, rise to the height of the circumstances and show
a spirit of understanding of the critical nature of the moments, recognizing de
jure the de facto existing Church (in the broader sense of the word)
of the Old Calendarists. When this is set as the basis, the form of the Church
of the Old Calendarists and the shape of its relations with the official Church
of the country remain, henceforth, a merely formal detail.
You are a jurist and a
theologian; a multitude of diligent and very learned advisers moves about Your
Beatitude; there are also Old Calendarist jurists and theologians. Therefore,
in a brotherly discussion according to Christ, what is sought will be found.
Your Beatitude,
The solution of a contentious
question rests with you, a question which was not solved precisely because the
powerful viewed it through the prism of their power and not through the prism
of love for the Church. Many dangers surround the Church; innumerable arrows
are being hurled against her Body. Therefore, do not expend your activity in
the thankless struggle of exterminating Orthodox Greeks, who differ from the
other Greeks in this respect: in the degree and intensity of their
conservatism.
In such a struggle the wear and
tear will be crushing and the result nonexistent. And above all, when Your
Beatitude too is called by the Lord to the heavenly commonwealth of the Saints,
if indeed you have solved the question in the indicated ways, blessing and
praise will accompany you; otherwise curses and anathemas, making problematic
the passage through the narrow gate of eternity, will reach even to the throne
of the Majesty of the God of Love and Freedom.
And then...
Your Beatitude,
In the hope that your zeal for
the Church and your brilliant education will free you from the monastic
stubbornness of certain of your predecessors, and that you will solve the
contentious question according to Christ and according to conscience, we remain
with due respect.
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