The Holy Community of the Holy
Mountain Athos
Karyes, May 8, 1991
To His Beatitude, the Ecumenical Patriarch,
His All-Holiness Demetrios, our most honorable Father and
Master of the Phanar.
Most Holy Father and Master,
Grieved and horrified, our Holy
Community has now officially become aware of the entrance of the former abbot
of the holy monastery of Philotheou, Archimandrite Ephraim, into the schismatic
and para-ecclesial “group” called the Russians Outside of Russia, which no
local Orthodox Church recognizes. And we rightly ask ourselves how the former
abbot’s conscience permitted him—he who, over the years, with the approval and
permission of the sacred Archbishop of America, worked as a spiritual father
within the flock of the local Church of His Eminence Archbishop Iakovos,
dependent upon and under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Throne, thus
bringing a multitude of spiritual sons into the parishes and churches
canonically dependent upon Archbishop Iakovos, with whom he was in spiritual
communion for more than ten years—how does he now advise the same sons whom he
then counseled to submit to the Church, and who received the Holy Mysteries
from her, to separate themselves, like rebels, from the Archdiocese, in order
to join this para-ecclesiastical parasynagogue?
Your Beatitude certainly knows
that these people of the Russian Diaspora, safe on foreign soil, were, until
yesterday, playing at being spiritual fathers, and today they continue to
accuse the sister Russian Church of having compromised herself with the atheist
regime, while she was striving to strengthen the faithful in Russia and to keep
the holy churches open, even at the price of the lives of her members, tens of
thousands of whom faced martyrdom, while they fled by emigrating abroad. Today,
when the breeze of freedom is blowing in Russia, they are entering the
territory of the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Moscow, “ordaining
priests” and threatening the Russian Church with a new schism. And,
unfortunately, the former abbot Ephraim has joined them.
Our Holy Community, scrupulously
following the decisions of the holy extraordinary Double Synaxis of last April,
openly and unanimously condemns the adherence of the former abbot Archimandrite
Ephraim to the aforesaid para-ecclesiastical parasynagogue.
Likewise, it invites all the
spiritual sons of His Eminence the Archbishop of America to remain faithful to
this Archdiocese and to the Ecumenical Patriarchate, given that the Church of
Constantinople, together with all the local Orthodox Churches in communion with
her or depending administratively and spiritually upon her, is identified with
the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church of the Creed. Outside her, there
are only schisms and heresies. Outside her, there are no valid Mysteries, nor
the grace of God, according to Orthodox teaching. “Outside the catholic Church,
that is, Orthodoxy, there is neither Baptism, nor Eucharist, nor bishops, nor
thrones, nor true teaching…” according to Saint Cyprian of Carthage.
It remains, therefore, Most Holy
Master, for Your Holiness and the Holy Synod to take all the measures that are
required in order to defend the unity of the flock of the Archdiocese in
America and to shelter it from the mortal fall of the aforesaid abbot, who has
simply placed himself outside the Church in order to carry out his erroneous
aims in complete freedom, without the yoke of obedience to the Church that
tonsured him a monk and ordained him a priest, and to which he promised
obedience unto death at the taking of the monastic vows made on the Holy
Mountain, which he abandoned.
Who entrusted him with the
salvation of the Nations? Is the Church in America perhaps deprived of
canonical shepherds, of bishops and priests? From whom did he receive a
blessing? Let him give the names of the prominent Athonites from whom he sought
counsel. We asked them all, and all condemned his behavior with harsh words and
considered him as one “gone astray.”
Why his fall and the abandonment
of his spiritual sons from the Holy Mountain, whom he had brought as far as the
dread altar of the Great Church of Christ, where the Ecumenical Patriarch is
bishop? Who will be able to affirm to us that his “inner conviction” was not a
“delusion” of the devils, for Satan transforms himself into an angel of light?
Together with all the holy
fathers who have not gone astray and who live in a manner pleasing to God on
the Holy Mountain, we repeat the condemnation of his acts and ask for your
paternal and patriarchal prayers; with profound respect and filial reverence,
we kiss your honorable right hand, a fountain full of grace.
All the delegates and abbots of
the common Synaxis of the twenty holy monasteries of the Holy Mountain Athos.
(Published in Ecclesia,
no. 11, 391, July 1/14, 1991.)
* * *
Letter of Protest to the Holy
Community of the Holy Mountain for everything that it wrote against Father
Ephraim
Most Honored Fathers,
The reason that compels me to
address the present letter to you is the publication in the journal Ekklesiastiki
Aletheia of 1/7/1991 of the letter of the Holy Community concerning the
transfer of the former abbot of the holy monastery of Philotheou, Father
Ephraim, into the Russian Church Outside of Russia.
I became aware of its publication
with a little delay, and I ask your Reverences to forgive me for everything
that I am about to write to you.
Honestly, I was horrified by the
content of the letter of the Holy Community. The expressions used by the author
are harsh; the characterizations concerning Father Ephraim are inadmissible.
You say that “he placed himself outside the Church, joining the Russian Church
Outside of Russia simply so that he might, in complete freedom, fulfill his
personal deluded aims, outside the yoke of obedience to the Church; that he is
one gone astray; that this fall of his, manifested through this action, is
mortal,” etc. …
Why, my fathers, why so much
hatred for Father Ephraim? What evil has he done? This man sought ecclesiastical
approval and nothing else, in order to create monasteries in America according
to the Athonite model, something which neither the Ecumenical Patriarch nor
Iakovos of America would have permitted him.
For this you call him a heretic!
Can you tell me wherein the delusion consists and what its signs are?
How can you judge in this way a
man who was the reformer of contemporary Athonite monasticism, when Mount Athos
was in danger because of a lack of men, and who, by his spiritual radiance and
by his holiness, repopulated the monasteries of monks on the Holy Mountain and
a large number of monasteries of nuns on Greek soil?
Why, my fathers, why do you lie
when you say that Father Ephraim’s action “was unanimously condemned by all the
holy fathers who have not gone astray and who live in a manner pleasing to
God”? We know that the abbot of the monastery of Konstamonitou left the Holy
Double Synaxis in order to protest against all the accusations brought against
Father Ephraim.
The representative of the
monastery of Philotheou, Father Ephraim (not to be confused with the Father
Ephraim mentioned above), protested forcefully against the horrifying and
fearful accusations brought against his Elder. The holy monasteries of Xeropotamou
and Karakallou did not agree for many reasons. The holy monastery of
Esphigmenou did not participate. How, then, can you affirm that there was
unanimity? Were the sketes asked? Were they represented by anyone? Were the
simple monks of the cenobitic monasteries asked? Why so much venom, my Fathers?
How is it that on that very day,
while the meeting of the Holy Double Synaxis was taking place, the political
newspapers were already publishing in advance the decision condemning Father
Ephraim, and that the Athens News Agency had already been informed by its
correspondent in Constantinople?
Even supposing that Father
Ephraim had gone astray, where, then, is love for your brother who has gone
astray? Where are your tears? Where are your prayers to God for his return?
Alas, it seems that all these are
nothing for you but burst soap bubbles. Through your behavior you have shown
yourselves to have a face very different from the one you displayed to us in
the showcase. In spite of your calumnies, the sun will continue to shine, to
scatter rays, to warm pure and sincere hearts, and to burn up completely all
the other hearts full of passions.
Why, my fathers, did you not show
the same zeal against all the deeds and attitudes taken in the Church?
I shall cite a few examples to
refresh your memory, in case you have forgotten.
On October 12, 1987, the late
Patriarch Demetrios, going to Geneva, declared that his visit to the World
Council of Churches was the summit of his pilgrimage, that the W.C.C. is our
home! Do you agree with all this?
Are you in agreement with the
visit that the late Patriarch made to Rome in December 1987? With the common
prayers with Pope John Paul and with the memorial service that he performed at
the tombs of Popes John XXIII and Paul VI, and especially with all the
declarations of the Pope, against which he did not protest, namely that the
Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church had received the grace to meet one
another again as sister churches and to move toward full communion?
Are you in agreement with the
refusal of the Orthodox to confess, in the common communiqué of the plenary
assembly of the Joint Theological Commission of the Dialogues between the
Orthodox Churches and the Roman Catholic ones, at Freising near Munich, in June
1990, to confess, I say, the exclusivity of the Orthodox Church—her confession,
her soteriology, her ecclesiology? This communiqué declares that our churches
meet on the ecclesiological basis of communion between sister churches.
Are you in agreement with the
communiqué of the Coordinating Committee of the Theological Dialogue between
the Catholic and Orthodox churches, where there is talk of a new
ecclesiological vision, since the stage in which each church said of itself
that it was the sole possessor of salvation had supposedly been surpassed,
toward the conviction that the two churches, Catholic and Orthodox, are sister
churches?
Are you in agreement with all the
blasphemies uttered and practiced at Canberra, in Australia, in February 1991?
Are you in agreement with
Stylianos of Australia, this new Kazantzakis, and with all the blasphemies that
he cried out against the Theandric Person of the Lord?
Are you in agreement with the
Doxology served by Iakovos of America with three representatives of the
Ecumenical Patriarchate at the visit of Patriarch Demetrios to America, at
which the Imam, a papist delegate, a rabbi, Anglicans, and many other heterodox
participated?
Are you in agreement with the
common pan-religious prayer at Assisi in Italy, in October 1986?
Are you in agreement with the
pilgrimage to the heretical Brotherhood of Taizé by three bishops of the
Ecumenical Throne, for the purpose of addressing a special message of
congratulations on behalf of the Patriarch?
The renowned theologian M.
Nikolaos Sotiropoulos, in an article published by Orthodoxos Typos,
writes that neither Stylianos of Australia nor his heretical opinions any
longer shocked the monasteries of the Holy Mountain, which took a stand against
Patriarch Diodoros of Jerusalem and supported Stylianos and the Patriarch of
Constantinople, his accomplice.
N.Y. from Thessaloniki
(Source: Orthodoxos Typos,
no. 152, November 15, 1991.)
Translated
from the Romanian edition:
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