ORTHODOX MISCELLANY- History, Ecclesiology, Spirituality, and the Struggle Against Ecumenism: A Brief Comment on a Divisive and False Assertion of Fr. Steven Allen

In “Our Struggle, Class 6” of Fr. Steven Allen’s discussion [1] of an article on the history of relations between the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia and the Church of the Genuine Orthodox Christians of Greece, [2] Fr. Steven contends that the unification of ROCOR with the Moscow Patriarchate in 2007 was enabled (“intentionally or unintentionally”) when ROCOR entered into official communion with the Holy Synod in Resistance in 1994, because it introduced the concept of recognizing the validity of the Mysteries of the Moscow Patriarchate into ROCOR.

This argument is valid only if it can be shown that ROCOR, prior to 1994, had a policy of denying the validity of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Mysteries.

The issue of ROCOR’s recognition or denial of the MP’s Mysteries has been extensively researched in English and Russian. A denial of their validity, at an official level, has been proven [3] to only exist in the self-justifying ideologies of separatists such as V. Moss, the Panteleimonites, and Gregory of Colorado.

ROCOR has consistently stated that they did not deny the existence of sanctifying grace in the MP’s Mysteries, as only a Pan-Orthodox body could issue such a categorical statement on an entire Autocephalous Church. The issue was discussed at the 1971 Council of Bishops in Montreal, [4] as well as the 1974 Third All-Diaspora Council, where this official stance was determined and publicly stated under the chairmanship of Metropolitan Philaret, in the context of the old calendarist/new calendarist division. [5]

This stance was communicated to the factions of the GOC in Greece at the time, and ultimately led to the “Matthewite” faction severing relations with ROCOR in 1975. [6] It likewise was the cause of the dismissal of Bishop Petros of Astoria from the Holy Synod of the GOC, on account of his fidelity to ROCOR’s understanding. [7]

This position was also reaffirmed by Metropolitan Vitaly multiple times: in his testimony as Archbishop of Montreal at the 1976 Council of Bishops [8] and his published article on the 1983 anathema, [9] as well as his Nativity Encyclical of 1986/1987. [10]

It is true that some bishops – most notably Metropolitans Philaret and Vitaly themselves – personally believed the MP lacked sacramental grace, and advocated for such a stance. [11] However, they also correctly recognized these were opinions that were not (and could not) be binding canonical determinations in the absence of a competent conciliar ruling on the matter.

Other bishops – including St. John of San Francisco – disagreed with this assessment, [12] as did many ROCOR bishops, judging from the minutes of the 1974 Council and its final decision. [13] But as it was a matter of theologoumenon and not dogma, it produced no division.

Such an understanding was also shared by the first bishop of the Free Russian Orthodox Church, Lazarus of Tambov, [14] and was held by his successor in the “True Russian Orthodox Church” up until 2007. [15]

A far more plausible (and logical) theory on what enabled the merger of the ROCOR and the MP, intentionally or unintentionally: the mass migration of over 2 dozen ROCOR parishes in 1986-1987 to a faction of Greek old calendar bishops, in defense of Fr. Panteleimon Metropoulos of ill-repute, and in support of his red herring accusation of ROCOR being Ecumenist at the time. With this course of action, the ROCOR was deprived of the majority of its English-speaking congregations in the United States, and some of the most eloquent spokesmen struggling against the innovations of Sergianism and Ecumenism.

And by these parishes (led by Holy Transfiguration Monastery) aggressively pursuing an anti-ROCOR line for the next couple decades, they weakened and discredited - as previously said, intentionally or unintentionally - the witness of the remaining anti-Sergianist and anti-Ecumenist forces left in ROCOR.

REFERENCES

1. https://stevenallen.substack.com/p/our-struggle-class-6?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2, dated August 31, 2023.

2.https://www.orthodoxtraditionalist.com/post/the-russian-orthodox-church-abroad-the-genuine-orthodox-christians-of-greece-a-history

3. See, for example, https://periodical.pstgu.ru/ru/pdf/article/7418 and https://www.rocorstudies.org/2011/10/28/looking-toward-unity-how-the-russian-church-abroad-viewed-the-patriarchate-of-moscow-1927-2007-andrei-psarev/

4. https://sinod.ruschurchabroad.org/Arh%20Sobor%201971%20Prot.htm

5. https://sinod.ruschurchabroad.org/Arh%20Sobor%201974%20Rezol.htm

6. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y8WKncg7kc53Tf6HSVtl9IOrHkPLpl4-/view?usp=sharing

7. https://web.archive.org/web/20230314054913/https://www.theorthodoxarchive.org/post/letter-of-metropolitan-petros-of-astoria-concerning-his-loyalty-to-russian-church-abroad

8. https://sinod.ruschurchabroad.org/Arh%20Sobor%201976-Prot.htm, Protocol #7.

9. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1j8fmWaW_kV6dF1SR8R-3rHna5ZSYRBAT/view?usp=sharing

10. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_b-p1W1po27Do9yKBuHg-lAqx0sRJrHB/view?usp=sharing

11. See https://goctoronto.org/letter-to-a-priest-of-the-church-abroad-concerning-fr-dimitry-dudko-and-the-moscow-patriarchate-1980/ and http://www.monasterypress.com/priest.html