Resolution of the 1958 Second Pan-Hellenic Congress of the Genuine Orthodox Christians of Greece

Greek source: The Voice of Orthodoxy, Nos. 298-299, November 10, 1958 (O.S.), p. 2.

 

The Second Pan-Hellenic Congress, convened in Athens in the hall of the Archaeological Society, having met continuously from November 9 until and including the 10th of the same month, in the presence of our Ecclesiastical Committee, the Sacred Clergy, the Administrative Council of the P.T.E.O.K., and the Provincial Centers and Branches, after hearing the various speakers, unanimously decides the following:

1. It remains steadfastly and immovably within what was established by the Holy Fathers in Ecumenical and Local Councils, professing what those all-golden tongues of the Word taught and condemning what they condemned.

2. It regards the introduction or correction of the Calendar as uncanonical, insofar as the majority of the Orthodox Churches did not accept it, and characterizes the calendar question as pending before a Pan-Orthodox Synod.

3. It condemns every modernization of the institutions of Orthodoxy, even if this refers to customs, traditions, and forms of the Orthodox faith.

4. It likewise condemns every deviation from the sphere of the Divine and Holy Canons and from the ecclesiastical order prevailing upon them, such as uncanonical ordinations by one bishop of persons to the episcopacy.

5. It declares to the [Official] Hierarchy now in session, with all due respect, that it expects from it the correction of the disorder that has occurred, through the restoration of the festal-calendar order prior to the calendar innovation of 1924, for the definitive pacification of the Christian pleroma.

6. For the sake of love, and in the event that restoration is not possible, it proposes the establishment of a mixed Committee for the search for a temporary solution, until a Pan-Orthodox Synod is convoked, which alone is competent to take up a question such as the calendar question, concerning Universal Orthodoxy.

7. It addresses the respects of the delegates and of the like-minded brethren throughout Greece to the Patriarchates and the Autocephalous Churches of the Orthodox Eastern Church, and also entreats them to take the necessary actions for the convocation of a Pan-Orthodox Synod for the definitive settlement of pending questions, among which is also the calendar question.

8. It asks the Government to safeguard legally the imprescriptible right of the freedom of our religious conscience, for the definitive exclusion and avoidance of the repetition of oppressive and anti-Christian persecutions.

9. It proclaims filial devotion toward our Sacred Clergy and the spiritual Administration of the Ecclesiastical Committee.

10. It authorizes the Central Body (the Ecclesiastical Committee and the Administrative Council of the P.T.E.O.K.) to employ every lawful means domestically and abroad for the safeguarding of our rights as free citizens, and to deliver the present resolution to the Hierarchy now in session, the Parliament, the Government, the Patriarchates, and the Autocephalous Churches, publishing it in full, as it stands, in the Press.

In Athens, on October 28 / November 11, 1958

THE DELEGATES

There follow the signatures of all the Delegates and of the Sacred Clergy.