On continuing to persecute the G.O.C: “To err twice..."

Greek source: The Voice of Orthodoxy, No. 317, July 20, 1959, pp. 1-2.

 

 

From various pieces of information and from the encyclical of the Official Church (no. 1031, June 3, 1959), it is clearly apparent that it once again has the intention of persecuting the Old Calendarists!

Independently of the justification for the anti-Christian and anti-ecclesiastical decision of the princes of Agia Philothei Street, we ask ourselves: Has an entire past, a historical experience of fully 35 years, not taught the ecclesiastical leaders of Greece? Chrysostomos Papadopoulos persecuted! Spyridon, formerly of Ioannina, shuddered! What did they accomplish? Nothing – like making a hole in the water!

Those struggling did not give in; the movement was not suppressed! On the contrary, it secured international prominence and was clothed with pan-Orthodox credibility!

Prudent men, enlightened minds, belonging to other ecclesiastical jurisdiction outside Greece, but also Hierarchs within Greece, indicated as the solution to the Old Calendar issue either the restoration of the pre-innovation order or the convocation of a Pan-Orthodox Synod.

Thus the Official Church ignores both the voice of the past and the prudence of the present!

With these attempts the Official Church has unimaginably exposed its intelligence, verifying in itself the wise saying: “To err twice is not the mark of a wise man.”

Of course, the agents of the Official Church, acting without psychological discernment, will object: you speak thus because you are evidently ignorant of the present reality of your movement! You have been fragmented, and have thus lost the most militant factor, unity in struggle!

This phenomenon alone the Official Church cannot invoke, because it itself recently presented a pitiable spectacle of division, one which threatened the creation even of a second official Church in the State, while the crisis that had broken out had not yet come to an end!

There is one undeniable reality: the movement! The strugglers!

And this movement is not going to be suppressed, and the phalanx of honorable strugglers is not going to be dissolved.

Nor is it going to happen, because the dominant demand of our age is the return to the realm of Orthodoxy.

When places of our homeland are utterly defiled by Protestant conferences; when brazen flirtations with the West are carried out; when institutions of Orthodoxy are adulterated; when Canons of the Church are impiously rejected; when the morals and customs of our homeland are polluted by foreign-mania; when all these things happen, then the Necessity of Return [to ecclesiastical tradition and order] automatically arises.

And no one can abolish this Necessity, because Necessity itself, in and of itself, is a force that imposes itself and overwhelms

And this necessity of return (not thirteen-dayism) constitutes the all-powerful foundation of our Struggle.

Behold why we are certain beforehand that no persecution can annihilate our movement.

The Official Church wrongly situates our issue in the gross desire to celebrate thirteen days later, and hastens eagerly to secure for us cassocked mouthpieces.

Our desire is return, and for this we struggle.

In persecuting us, the Official Church persecutes this very necessity of Return, and consequently finds itself outside the moral realm!

Let it take heed, then, before it exposes itself for a third time and exceeds the measure of the popular saying, “to err twice is not the mark of a wise man.”