[Concerning the breakaway bishops, Matthew of Vresthene, and Germanos of the Cyclades]
Dated June 1, 1944
To the most reverend Priests, the
most honored Trustees, and the entire pious Orthodox Christian flock of our
Churches, Grace to you and peace from God, and paternal prayers and blessings
from us:
[A]
“Take heed
therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Spirit
hath made you overseers, to feed the Church of God, which He hath purchased
with His own blood.” [1]
At all times, and above all
during these troublesome and critical times, in which falsehood and the
debauchery engendered by the passions are running riot, the shepherd who is
aware of his pastoral duties ought to be attentive both to himself and to his
whole flock, keeping watch and guard over his reason-endowed flock, lest
grievous wolves, [2] in the guise of sheep, invade it and, smiting the
shepherd, scatter and tear apart his sheep. [3]
“See then
that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise,” advises the Divine
Apostle, “redeeming the time, because the days are evil.” [4]
In the unstable and difficult
circumstances in which we live, beloved children in Christ, we need great
prudence and wisdom in both our conversations and our actions, so that we may
protect and keep our lives secure from the sundry temptations, both inward and
outward, into which we are led by the good-hating and man-slaying demon, who
stalks the arrays of the Faithful like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may
snatch and devour. [5] The perils that surround us attack us from every
direction, threatening to destroy not only our bodily, but also our spiritual,
health, when they find us asleep and indolent about watching and guarding our
bodies and souls, these two good gifts which constitute the sacred legacy, of
which the All-good God and Creator appointed us to be unsleeping sentinels and
vigilant guardians.
The watching and guarding of this
precious treasure, that is, our bodily and spiritual health, should not be an
incidental occupation and a fortuitous acquirement for us, but our primary
concern and the most important benefaction that we gained when we were buried
with Christ through Holy Baptism and reborn into a new physical and spiritual
life by renouncing Satan and joining ourselves to Christ. His Resurrection from
the dead and the translation of His immaculate Body from corruption to
incorruption, and from mortality to immortality, serve as a pledge of our
incorruption and immortality, according to the Divine Apostle to the Nations:
For if we
have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in
the likeness of His Resurrection, knowing this, that our old man is crucified
with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should
not serve sin. [6]
We should treat this new
spiritual life in which we are renewed through Holy Baptism as the apple of our
eye, being obligated, according to the promise that we made, to mortify our
passions which are upon the earth, [7] so that, as “joint-heirs with Christ,” [8]
we may enjoy eternal life in Heaven. For in every circumstance of our life, the
most wily and all-wicked Devil plots against us, setting various traps before
our feet, and he contrives and uses everything to ensnare us and cast us down
into the trenches and the abyss of sin and of his demonic tyranny.
Hence, the Divine Augustine has
this to say about the Devil:
O Lord, he is
the Great Scarlet Dragon, the ancient serpent, who is called Satan and the
Devil.... Lo, he has spread countless snares before our feet and filled all our
paths with deception, so as to deceive our souls; and who shall escape his
snares? He has hidden them in wealth and poverty, he has poured forth traps in
luxury, in drink, in pleasure, in sleep, in vigilance, in word, in deed, in
every path of ours, and again, do Thou deliver us from our daily adversary,
who, whether we are asleep or awake, whether we are eating or drinking, or
doing anything else, lies in wait for us in every way, both night and day, with
his deceitful tricks, and shoots poisonous arrows at us, now openly, now in
secret, in order to slay our souls. [9]
With such a dreadful and wily
enemy plotting against our lives and the salvation of our souls, let us keep
unsleeping vigil as sentinels on the battlements of the indestructible tower of
the Church and of the Faith and piety of our Fathers, which alone is capable of
casting down the crooked Dragon, the foe with his many wiles, and of protecting
us as we pass through the midst of snares from the innumerable traps set before
our feet and the infernal tricks of the Devil, concerning which the Divine
Apostle thunders:
“Work out
your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God Which worketh in you
both to will and to do of His good pleasure.” [10]
“Give not
sleep to thine eyes, nor slumber with thine eyelids, that thou mayest be saved
like a gazelle out of the toils and as a bird out of a snare.” [11]
Or in another place:
“Recognize
that thou passest through the midst of snares, and that thou walkest upon the
battlements of the city.” [12]
If, in normal circumstances and
peaceful periods, our Christian life and the salvation of our souls are
difficult, how much more do these prove to be troublesome and precarious in the
unstable and hostile circumstances that we are going through today, by the
judgments which the Lord alone knows, in which the odious demon of the foul and
base passions is running out of control, and a suffocating and malodorous
stench, which fills the whole atmosphere, is defiling and ravaging all classes
of our Christian society and country. Yes, indeed, to whatever stratum of
society one directs his gaze, he sees nothing but lies, insolence, arrogance,
sarcasm, irony, envy, hypocrisy, betrayal, and every kind of immorality and
wantonness, “because of [which] the wrath of God cometh upon the children of
disobedience.” [13]
Let us stand aright, beloved
children in Christ, and let us lift up our hearts, [14] and “let us be
vigilant, for we know not on what day or at what hour the Son of man cometh.” [15]
[B]
And as if these various trials
were not enough, or the perils that surround us, which threaten to corrupt and
poison our morals and our Christian life and nation, trials of another kind
have, unfortunately, arisen from among those who, departing from the very heart
of the Church, endeavor to corrupt your healthy Orthodox outlook and to
scandalize the souls and consciences of the Faithful with empty words and
foolish arguments. These men pretend to be experts in the Canons and “teachers
of the law,” [16] and yet, through their lack of canonical formation and
theological education, they “understand neither what they say, nor whereof they
affirm.” [17]
And despite all of this, they
contrive to foist their mistaken opinions and their erroneous beliefs not only
on the laity, who are devoid of religious education, but also on the clergy of
our Orthodox faction, and even on the leader and president of this faction, who
is schooled in the Canons and received his theological education at a superb
school of theology, and who gives clear proof, not only in words, but also in
deeds, of his Orthodox mind-set and of his adherence to the Traditions of the
Church.
And do not be surprised at this,
beloved children in Christ, because such pseudo-Apostles and false teachers [18]
appeared even in the Apostolic era, as the confessions of the Apostles bear
witness.
“Also of your
own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples
after them.” [19]
These false teachers
“went out
from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have
continued with us,” as the Evangelist says. [20]
We made them Bishops by the Grace
of the All-holy and consecrating Spirit, so that with us they might serve the
sacred struggle for the Orthodox Festal Calendar.
But when these men became
Bishops, not only did they not comprehend or value their Episcopal office, and
the serious and sacred character of the calendar struggle, but they also fell
into a whole host of uncanonical deviations, not flinching or shrinking—the
wretched ones—, bereft of ecclesiological or canonical reasons, from breaking
their spiritual ties and ecclesiastical communion with us; setting up their own
altars and thereby rending the seamless garment of Christ for reasons of
personal vainglory and ambition, they created an actual schism in the bosom of
our Orthodox faction. [21] When we saw that all of the peaceful means that we
had employed to enlighten them and turn them aside from their indefensible
schism came to nothing, we were compelled, with grief, to accept their
secession and to deprive them and their followers of our blessing. Since that
time, separated from our spiritual jurisdiction and care, these men have
perpetrated acts that are so uncanonical and criminal from an ecclesiastical
standpoint, that they were brought to trial before the Criminal Court of
Chalcis, which dismissed the case, not because they were innocent of the
accusation, but because they were unfit to stand trial due to mental debility
and advanced age. These conventicler Bishops, Matthew (Karpathakis) of
Vresthene and Germanos (Varykopoulos) of the Cyclades, from the moment they
split off from us, who bestowed Episcopal rank on them, remained Bishops, owing
to the indelibility of the Priesthood, but as simple individuals and not as
representatives of a Church from which they could draw the Grace and the authority
validly to perform any ecclesiastical function and to celebrate her Mysteries.
[C]
According to the Orthodox Faith
and understanding, it is the whole Church, as the Treasurer of Grace,
that establishes the Churches and endows them with the Mysteries and the Grace
of the All-holy Spirit, and not a certain number of individual laity and clergy
who, owing to a disagreement on some ecclesiastical issue that is capable of
being resolved, have broken away from a recognized Orthodox Church, one that
has not been stripped of its ecclesiastical validity or of the Grace of the
All-holy Spirit following a trial and sentence pronounced by the entire Church.
The idea that individuals, be
they clergy or laity, are justified in establishing their own Church without
the permission and recognition of the entire Church reeks of Protestantism,
which does not regard the judgment and the mind of the whole Church as the
precise rule and yardstick of Divine truth, but the judgment and the opinion of
individuals who, according to the Protestant interpretation of the issue, represent
the Grace and power of the Holy Spirit. For this reason, a whole host of
heresies has sprung up in the bosom of the Protestant Church, corresponding in
number to the plethora of individual judgments and opinions, which are not
guided or illumined by the Church. The entire Church not only legitimates a
particular Church as Orthodox, and recognizes it through the Grace of the
All-holy Spirit, Whose Divine power, sanctifying nature, and will are expressed
and manifested, according to the Orthodox Faith and understanding, through an
Œcumenical Synod or a major local Synod, but also imparts an Orthodox character
and canonical validity to the leaders of local Churches and ratifies this
character and validity. This is why, as soon as the leader of a local Church is
elected, he is obligated to communicate his election and appointment to the
other Orthodox Churches, exchanging what are called letters of commendation
with them, through which the new leader of the Church receives the anointing of
canonicity and authority to head his Church. This is the order that prevails in
the Orthodox Church and this is her age-old practice in matters of Orthodox
character and the validity of Churches and their leaders.
This being the case, we ask the
conventicler Bishops and the clergy and laity who follow them from where and
from what Church they derive the canonical validity of their ecclesiastical
acts, since they have broken away from us without ecclesiastical reasons and,
without fear of God, have lashed out at those who Ordained them and Consecrated
them Bishops by invoking the Grace of the All-holy Spirit? Perhaps they will
object that they have not broken away from us without ecclesiastical reasons,
citing the fact that, as a particular Church and one independent of the
Autocephalous Church of Greece, we refused to proclaim the innovating Hierarchs
who accepted the Papal Calendar schismatics. But we ask them: Is it justifiable,
according to Canon Law, the Divine and Sacred Canons, and the age-old practice
of the Orthodox Church, for a faction of clergy and laity to proclaim Hierarchs
schismatics, when they disagree with the latter over an ecclesiastical issue
that is capable of being resolved, as Saint Basil the Great, the revealer of
heavenly things, puts it, given that this right was bestowed by the Seven Holy
Œcumenical Synods, these unerring tablets of Divine truth and the precise
yardstick of Orthodoxy, on the whole Church, when she assembles at an
Œcumenical or a major local Synod, which, after it has exhausted all peaceful
means of enlightening those in error and, pointing out the spiritual ruin and
the fearful abyss to which these erroneous religious ideas are driving them,
proceeds with sorrow to excise them from the Divinely-established and age-old
body of Orthodoxy, depriving them of their right, as Hierarchs, validly to
celebrate the Mysteries or to discharge any ecclesiastical function?
We have a recent example of this
prerogative being exercised in the major local Synod that convened in
Constantinople in 1872, at which all of the Eastern Patriarchates were
represented, on account of the accursed heresy of phyletism, which the
Hierarchs of Bulgarian nationality wanted to introduce into the Œcumenical
Patriarchate. [22] This Synod summoned the apostate Bulgarian Hierarchs to
trial, and when they were unwilling to come to their senses, after a lengthy clarification,
it deposed them and declared them schismatics. In issuing the decree concerning
their deposition and excision, it ordered that this decree be read in Churches,
so as to protect the Bulgarian people from the corruption of schism.
Never have any of the ancient or
modern heretics and heresiarchs been declared schismatics and deposed by
Hierarchs who disagreed with them acting in isolation, without a trial and a
defense, but by Synods and canonically established ecclesiastical tribunals,
before which such people are summoned to defend themselves, and are only
deprived of their rights as Hierarchs and of their authority to govern a Church
and to celebrate the Mysteries of the Church validly, when, after the issues
have been sufficiently clarified by the Synodal tribunal, they refuse to
renounce their error, persisting unyieldingly and obstinately in their
heretical ideas and erroneous beliefs.
According to the spirit of the
relevant Canons, when the Primate or the majority of the Hierarchs of a
recognized Orthodox Church introduce into the Church an innovation that is
contrary to the Canons and to Orthodox Divine worship, the right-believing Hierarchs
of this Church are justified in breaking ecclesiastical communion with the
innovators, even before a Synodal judgment, lest they, too, be responsible
before the whole Church for the innovation that has been evilly and
uncanonically introduced; but they cannot declare the innovating Hierarchs
schismatics or subject them to deposition, for that is the exclusive
prerogative of the entire Church when it comes together in a Synod, states its
opinions with the aid of the Holy Spirit, and issues its verdict, after a
thorough clarification and a detailed defense by the innovating Hierarchs under
judgment.
When those who are
right-believing sever ecclesiastical communion with a ruling Synod and cease to
commemorate it, not only are they not condemned, but they are indeed extolled
for not having created a schism, but rather having saved the Church from schism,
in accordance with the Fifteenth Canon of the First-Second Œcumenical Synod,
which declares the following:
For those
who, on account of some heresy condemned by the Holy Synods or Fathers, have
separated themselves from communion with the Primate..., such ones are not
liable to canonical censure before a Synodal verdict, since they have walled
themselves off from communion with the so-called Bishop; but they shall even be
deemed worthy of the honor befitting those of right belief.... They have not
sundered the union of the Church with any schism, but have been sedulous to
rescue the Church from schisms and divisions.
See also the Third Canon of the
Third Œcumenical Synod, which enjoins the following:
“And in
general, we forbid all the clergy who adhere to the Orthodox and Œcumenical
Synod in any way to submit to the Bishops who have already apostatized or shall
hereafter apostatize.”
These Canons, as any fair and
sincere inquirer can understand, afford right-believing clergy, who reject an
innovation on the part of the presiding Church authorities, the right solely to
break ecclesiastical communion with the governing body and not to obey or
submit to it in any way, the right to pronounce it heretical and to cut it off
from the universal body of Orthodoxy being reserved for a canonical Synod.
[D]
However, the conventicler
Bishops, Matthew (Karpathakis) of Vresthene and Germanos (Varykopoulos) of the
Cyclades, despite their knowledge of these Canons, and not being content to
break ecclesiastical communion with the innovating Hierarchy of Greece,
declared not only the innovating Hierarchs—without any trial or defense—, but
also the entire Church of Greece, to be in schism, arrogating to themselves,
the wretches, nothing less than a right that belongs to an Œcumenical or a
local Synod. In our refusal to follow them on this slippery and hazardous
downward slope, which overturns age-old and fundamental canonical norms, and in
our vain attempts to turn them aside from this abysmal and soul-destroying
precipice, they proceeded to declare us schismatics, without first coming to
any understanding with us, rejecting every invitation of ours to clarify matters.
And as evidence of their incredible perversity, we cite verbatim their reply to
our invitation for a colloquy:
The True
Orthodox Church of Greece
Athens, January 27, 1942
To His
Eminence, Archbishop Chrysostomos of Florina.
Your
Eminence:
Several days
ago, when we received your invitation for us to come on January 15/28, 1942, to
discuss certain serious questions concerning our sacred struggle in your
offices at No. 7, Chalcondyle, we sent you a letter by way of Mr. Stavrianos,
in which we made it known to you that in order for us to come into contact with
you and the Metropolitan of Demetrias, it would first be necessary to remove
the spiritual reasons for our disagreement, which compelled us to denounce you.
Since, as we are informed, you desire union—as, at any rate, you state orally
before the people—, for this reason, we state very clearly, through this letter
of ours, that meetings and discussions will be superfluous until you accept the
points of faith set out below, which provoked our disagreement, and that, from
such a moment, we will then be united and can then come together and meet with
each other.
1. That the
Church of Greece, by accepting the Papal Calendar, has become schismatic.
2. That her
Mysteries are invalid.
3. That her
Chrism does not have any sanctifying Grace.
4. That the
children of those in the Orthodox Church who are wrong-believing should be
re-Chrismated.
When you have
communicated these points to the wrong-believing Church [23] through a court
notary, whose certification you show us; and when, in the same way, you also
revoke the document that you sent to the Ministry of Religion; and when you
proclaim all of this in the Churches—then, we say, our union will come about
automatically, without meetings and disputations. We will await your written
response to these questions of ours for a period of eight days from today.
With
fraternal greetings,
† Bishop
Germanos of the Cyclades † Bishop Matthew of Vresthene
From this document, it is
blatantly obvious that its authors not only incur the charge of total ignorance
regarding Canon Law and the spirit of the Divine and Sacred Canons, which
clearly determine and safeguard the rights of the Church, of the Hierarchs who
govern her, and of the entire body of Orthodox Christians, but also blaspheme
against Divine Grace itself, which is inherent in the meaning of the Divine
Mysteries, whereby the Faithful are sanctified, together with the Priests
serving, not as creative means of sanctifying Grace, but as a means of
imparting this Grace to the Faithful.
Hence, because the Divine Grace
which is imparted to the Faithful through the Holy Mysteries is not bestowed by
a faction of clergy or laity, but by the Divine nature and character of the
Church, it is self-evident that those individuals who deprive the Church of her
Divine and inalienable right and authority, and the Mysteries of their
sanctifying power and soul-saving Grace, by a shameless stroke of the pen
commit blasphemy and sacrilege, not only against the Divine nature of the
Church, but also against the sacredness of her Mysteries. Proof that these
conventicler Bishops know “neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm” [24]
is that they do not apply all that they teach even to themselves, not daring,
the hapless ones, to repeat the Mysteries for those coming over from the Papal
Calendar to the Orthodox Calendar, hereby accepting into their bosom those who
are un-Baptized, unmarried, and in general, according to their opinion and
understanding, unhallowed and un-Chrismated.
The perversity and insanity of
such an opinion and doctrine as theirs become more plain and obvious, if one
takes into account the fact that these conventiclers restrict themselves to
re-Chrismating infants, who are completely innocent of the innovation of the
New Calendar, making their parents exempt from such a penalty when they come
over, without re-Chrismation, to their brand of Orthodoxy. And when, as we
steadfastly believe and hope, after this terrible and most pernicious conflict
has come to an end, the innovating Churches, having been suitably enlightened
by a pan-Orthodox and legitimate Synod, are compelled to return to the Old
Calendar, the calendar of the Holy Fathers, will thousands and millions of
Christians who were born in the bosom of the innovating Churches, following the
opinion and dogmatic decree of the conventicler Bishops, be re-Baptized,
remarried, and re-Chrismated, so that they may receive the anointing of
Orthodoxy?
It is not only individual Bishops
acting in isolation who are not justified in holding or stating such an opinion
regarding the invalidation of Mysteries and the repetition thereof, since they
have no competence or authority in this regard, but not even a local Orthodox
Church has the right to annul the validity of Mysteries without the judgment of
the whole Church, whose exclusive right it is to deprive clergy who fall into
heresy, and neither repent nor reject it, of the right to celebrate valid and
efficacious Mysteries; for, whoever does not have the ability to confer a
Divine gift is, consequently, not entitled to withdraw it.
For this reason, the Canons class
those who take away this sacred right with people who commit sacrilege:
“It is
sacrilege to demote a Bishop to the rank of a Presbyter.” [25]
And if the Canons regard a
demotion of the Mystery of the Priesthood as sacrilege, how much more are we to
consider sacrilegious those who dare, without any competence or ecclesiastical
authority, to pronounce the Mysteries of a recognized Church invalid, even if
that Church is liable to trial before the whole Church for its arbitrary
introduction of an innovation.
This, you see, is why we refrain
from making statements about the validity of Mysteries, confessing that we have
no competence or right in this regard, on the basis of the Divine and Sacred
Canons, and being aware of our unworthiness and sinfulness in relation to the sacredness
and the sanctifying Grace and power of the Divine and sacred Mysteries. We
leave this to the mind and the judgment of the entire Church, which has the
exclusive and Divine right, as we have just said, to endow a Church with the
mysteriological Grace that is imparted through her ministers, and to withhold
this Grace when she, for her part, cuts off the clergy of such a Church—both
her Hierarchs and her Priests—for canonical reasons and after a trial and
defense.
[E]
Now, it is true that in our
publications, in defending ourselves against the sentence of deposition passed
against us by the Synodal Tribunal which the innovating Hierarchy convened, we
called the innovating Hierarchs schismatics for having created grounds
for a schism in the Orthodox Church of Greece, by introducing the innovation of
the Western Calendar, and for having cut themselves off from the other Orthodox
Churches, which held fast to the Orthodox Calendar in their celebration of the
Feasts, and that we have imputed to them the blame and the fearful consequences
entailed by the nascent schism in the peaceful and right-believing life of the
Church; but we have called them schismatics—and we do not hesitate to
this day to call them such—, however, not actually but only potentially.
For the former, that is, the proclamation of an innovating clergyman or layman who
departs from the enclosure of the Orthodox and Divine Canons as actually
schismatic, is a right that belongs only to a Synod when it assembles and
states its opinions with the aid of the Holy Spirit, as I have said; whereas
the second, that is, calling such a clergyman or layman potentially schismatic,
is the right of any Orthodox clergyman, who is justified not only in severing
ecclesiastical communion, but also in denouncing him to a competent Synod,
which is precisely what we did in denouncing the innovating Hierarchs to the
Orthodox Churches.
In our view of this matter, we
are in harmony with the Pedalion of the universal Orthodox Church,
which, in the first footnote on page 18, [26] makes a clear distinction between
a potential and an actual schismatic and calls those who equate these two terms
foolish and their language sacrilegious, since they do not understand that
unless it is actually implemented by a Synod, the imperative force of the
Canons remains unexecuted and does not act of itself, either immediately or
before a decision.
For further proof of what we are
saying, we cite verbatim the relevant footnote of the sacred Pedalion,
so as to silence those who think and speak to the contrary:
We must know
that the penalties which the Canons prescribe, that is, ‘let him be deposed,’
‘let him be anathema,’ and ‘let him be excommunicated,’ are issued, according
to grammatical usage, in the third person, there being no one present to impose
them. In such a case, of necessity, the presence of a second person is required
if this injunction is to be enforced. I will explain this better. The Canons
enjoin a Synod of living Bishops to depose Priests or to excommunicate or
anathematize laymen who transgress the Canons. But if the Synod does not
actually effect the deposition of the Priests, or the excommunication or
anathematization of the laymen, these Priests and laymen are neither actually
deposed nor actually excommunicated nor anathematized. However, here on earth,
they are liable to stand trial, with regard to deposition and excommunication
or anathematization, while in the hereafter they are subject to Divine
retribution.... Hence, those foolish people greatly err who say that in the
present times all clergy who have been Ordained contrary to the Canons are
actually deposed. Sacrilegious is the language of those who witlessly babble
such words, not understanding that, unless it is actually put into effect by a
second person, that is, by a Synod, the imperative force of Canons remains
unexecuted and does not act of itself, either immediately or before a decision.
Later on, the same Divine Apostles clearly explain themselves in their
Forty-sixth Canon, since they do not say that any Bishop or Presbyter who has
received Baptism from heretics is immediately and actually deposed, but ‘we
enjoin that he be deposed,’ that is, ‘we enjoin that he stand trial and that,
if it be proved that he did this, then let him be stripped of the Priesthood by
your own decision.’ [27]
From this it follows that no
clergyman who deviates from the boundaries of Orthodoxy is reckoned to be actually
deposed. If he does not appear before a valid ecclesiastical tribunal, he
can nonetheless be considered such potentially, and prior to a Synodal
verdict and a final decision about him.
Thus, from a canonical
standpoint, the following basic legal principle and dictum holds good: “No
one is to be condemned without a defense.” Hence, in order for us to
declare the innovating Hierarchs schismatics in actuality, as the
conventicler Bishops have arbitrarily and uncanonically done, we would have to
have all the requisite ecclesiastical and canonical wherewithal for setting up
an ecclesiastical tribunal. This cannot be done, except by a Church that is
recognized by all the local Orthodox Churches as autocephalous and endowed
with the right validly to condemn those of her clergy who sin, whether in faith
or in morals.
We Old Calendarists, however, do
not constitute a particular, independent Orthodox Church in Greece, because no
Church has recognized us as such; rather, we exist within the recognized
Autocephalous Greek Church as a sentinel that guards the institution of
the Orthodox Festal Calendar, which was violated—as it should not have been—by
the majority of the Hierarchy; and we, who are the resplendent and unsullied
part of the Autocephalous Church of Greece, are continuing her history in the
spirit of Orthodoxy.
his erroneous and uncanonical
idea, that we constitute a special Church, was thrown into the ring and
introduced into political life by the late Archbishop Chrysostomos
(Papadopoulos) of Athens, deliberately and maliciously, in order to portray us,
in the eyes of the government and Greek society, as rebels who have lifted up
our heels [28] against the Autocephalous Church of Greece, and in this way to
expose us to the ire of the government and the general disdain of society.
Indeed, in connection with this,
he did not shrink, although he had expert knowledge of the Divine and Sacred
Canons and was a professor of Church history, from proclaiming that the Old
Calendarist Hierarchs, having broken spiritual communion with the ruling
ecclesiastical authority and established their own Churches, allegedly without
ecclesiastical or canonical reasons, constituted their own Church, and a
schismatic one, at that, as the Synodal Tribunal, which condemned and deposed
the Bishops of Megara, Diavleia, the Cyclades, and Vresthene, was pleased to
call it. [29]
Here is the relevant excerpt from
the sentence of this tribunal, which reads verbatim as follows:
For this
reason, condemning the accused in absentia, [the Tribunal] declares
Christopher Hatzis, Germanos Varykopoulos, Matthew Karpathakis, and Polycarp
Liosis guilty of illegal and uncanonical Consecration to the Episcopacy, and
of joining themselves to the schism created by the former Metropolitans
Germanos of Demetrias, Chrysostomos of Florina, and Chrysostomos of Zakynthos,
et al.
But this opinion is erroneous and
uncanonical, given that, according to the Orthodox Faith and understanding, it
is not a single faction of Christian clergy and laity, who are at variance on
some ecclesiastical issue with the ruling Hierarchy and are not in ecclesiastical
communion with them, that establishes and cuts off Churches, but the entire
Orthodox Church, when she comes together and states her opinions with the aid
of the Holy Spirit.
Along these lines, we Old
Calendarists, for all that we present the appearance, in our outward expression
of faith, of having our own houses of prayer and our own ministers,
nevertheless, although we are not in spiritual communion with the innovating
Hierarchy, since we adhere steadfastly to the Divine Canons and the Holy
Traditions, do not, in terms of canonicity, constitute a Church distinct from
that with which we have temporarily broken ecclesiastical communion for canonical
reasons, but we are the unsleeping sentinel, as I have already said, which
vigilantly keeps the beacons alight on the adamantine battlements of the one
Autocephalous Greek Church, in whose name we are continuing her history in the
spirit of her original and unsullied Orthodoxy.
he conventicler Bishops, who have
a different opinion on this matter, fall into the heresy of Protestantism, and
in celebrating the Mysteries in the name of a non-existent Church, or, to put
the point better, of their personal Church, they are deprived of all Grace, of
which the Treasurer is the entire recognized Orthodox Church. Let these men
tell us: to which Church do they belong, when, like Popes of the East, they
have quite shamelessly appropriated the power of a Synod and have declared the
Autocephalous Church of Greece, in whose name they received from us the rank of
Bishop by the visitation of the All-holy and consecrating Spirit, to be
actually schismatic?
Since it is well known that none
of the local Orthodox Churches that adheres to the Orthodox Calendar of the
Fathers has recognized them as constituting an Autocephalous and independent
Church, it is self-evident that they do not belong to a recognized Orthodox
Church, but to the Church of their followers; and, consequently, they cannot
have an Orthodox, but only a Protestant, character, because they derive the
authority and the Grace of their ecclesiastical acts, not from the notion of
the Church as the Treasurer of Grace, but from their persons and those of their
followers, as the Protestants think and believe, who substitute their personal
and individual character and authority for the Divine character and nature of
the Church.
his, you see, is why the
conventicler Bishops of Vresthene and the Cyclades cannot have the Grace of
Orthodoxy or the right to impart this Grace to those who follow them on this
ecclesiastical downward slope of theirs, because they do not belong to the canonical
Church, the sole Treasurer of Grace in an Orthodox sense.
[F]
For this weighty reason, from an
Orthodox standpoint, we, being familiar with the Divine Canons and the holy
Dogmas and Traditions of the Orthodox Church, refuse to consider the Hierarchy
of the Greek Church actually schismatic, but only potentially,
until a valid Synod convenes in order to try the innovating Hierarchs and, if
they refuse, after a sufficient clarification, to return to the Tradition of
the Orthodox Festal Calendar, to depose them, cut them off, and declare them
schismatics in actuality, in which case it will recognize the few
right-believing Hierarchs as the sole representatives of the Orthodox Church of
Greece.
However, until this happens, and
they put both their persons and their affairs in order, if the conventicler
Bishops behave as they have been behaving, it is obvious that, according to a
precise understanding of the Canons, they are not right-believing but
Protestantizers and that, under the pretext of a supposedly pure Orthodoxy and
without fear of God, they are dashing themselves and their followers down into
the soul-destroying abyss of wrong belief and spiritual perdition.
Let them not say that, such being
the case, it is not worth the bother for one to be an Old Calendarist, subject
as he is to persecutions, mockery, and so many other difficulties, which are
entailed by withdrawing from the innovating Hierarchy and joining the side of
the right-believing Hierarchy, because he who knowingly follows a Hierarch who
is merely potentially liable to deposition and excision, and embraces his
innovation, becomes himself liable to the curses and anathemas which the Divine
and Sacred Canons unleash against those who violate written or unwritten
Tradition.
“Let anyone
who violates written or unwritten Tradition be anathema,”
decrees the Seventh Œcumenical
Synod. [30]
* * *
This being so, we exhort the
like-minded and faithful followers of our Orthodox faction to avoid and to pay
no attention to the babblings and foolish arguments of the conventicler Bishops
of Vresthene and the Cyclades, whereby they attempt, under the pretext of a
supposedly pure Orthodoxy, to ensnare them in the corruption of wrong belief
and to lure them into the abyss of spiritual perdition, while we recommend
those who follow them in good faith and with a clear conscience to denounce
them and their unholy prattle and soul-destroying teachings, which are contrary
to the pure and healthy spirit of Orthodoxy, if they desire to obtain the
salvation of their souls, which is found only within the saving Ark of a
canonical and recognized Church.
Wishing to protect his disciple
Timothy from similar false teachers, the Apostle to the Nations offers him the
following advice:
“O Timothy,
keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings,
and oppositions of science falsely so called, which some professing have erred
concerning the Faith”; [31]
and elsewhere:
“But evil men
and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived; but
continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of,
knowing of whom thou hast learned them.” [32]
Directing, out of pastoral duty,
these paternal counsels and exhortations of ours to you, to the spiritual
children of our right-believing faction, and to those who in good faith follow
the opposing faction of the conventicler Bishops, our hope is that this advice,
which flows from Orthodox faith and paternal love, will make the appropriate
impression on the hearts of our followers and, above all, of those belonging to
the opposing and erring faction of the conventiclers, all the more so because
failure to comply with this advice excludes the conventiclers from the
precincts of the Greek Church, alienates them from Divine Grace, and is
fraught with the danger of their spiritual perdition.
With this good hope, we call down
upon us all the power from on high and the illumination of our Lord Jesus
Christ, Whose Grace and infinite mercy, together with our paternal prayer and
blessing, be with you all. Amen.
Athens, June 1, 1944
† Metropolitan Chrysostomos
(formerly) of Florina
NOTES
1. Acts 20:28.
2. Ibid., v. 29.
3. Cf. St. Matthew 26:31.
4. Ephesians 5:15-16.
5. Cf. I St. Peter 5:8.
6. Romans 6:5-6.
7. Cf. Colossians 3:5.
8. Romans 8:17.
9. A prayer of Saint Augustine in Ἐρωτικά XV.
10. Philippians 2:12-13.
11. Proverbs 6:4-5.
12. Ecclesiasticus 9:13.
13. Ephesians 5:6.
14. From the Anaphora of the Divine Liturgy.
15. Cf. St. Matthew 25:13.
16. I St. Timothy 1:7.
17. Ibid.
18. II St. Peter 2:1.
19, Acts 20:30.
20. I St. John 2:19
21. Metropolitan Chrysostomos does not say, in so many words,
that Bishops Matthew and Germanos are schismatics, and, although in the next
sentence he uses the word “schism” to describe the division created by Bishop
Matthew, for the most part he prefers to call them “conventiclers.”
22. In all fairness to the Bulgarians, it must be said that
they had some legitimate grievances against the Patriarchate of Constantinople,
to whose jurisdiction they had been returned by the Ottomans. According to
Father John Meyendorff, the Greek Bishops in Bulgaria suppressed the liturgical
use of Church Slavonic and attempted, in general, to Hellenize the Bulgarian
Church. In view of this policy, and also under the influence of the
nationalistic fervor that was sweeping the Balkans in the mid-nineteenth
century, the Bulgarians wanted an autonomous national Church of their own, as
well as equality with Constantinople in administering the Bulgarian
ecclesiastical territories. In 1872, Œcumenical Patriarch Anthimos vi reacted
to the Sultan’s grant of a firman, authorizing the establishment of an
independent Bulgarian Church, by convening a Synod, in which the Patriarchs of
Alexandria and Antioch also took part. This Synod condemned phyletism
(nationalism) as a heresy and placed the Bulgarian Church under an interdict
that was only lifted in 1945. Noting that there were wrongs on both sides,
Father Meyendorff admits that Constantinople was canonically in the right (The
Orthodox Church: Its Past and Its Role in the World Today, 3rd ed.
[Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1981], pp. 168-169).
23. The Greek word for “wrong-believing” is κακόδοξος, which
is the exact opposite of ὀρθόδοξος, i.e., “right-believing.” The word
“cacodox” is listed in standard dictionaries of the English language, but it is
very rarely used today.
24. I St. Timothy 1:7.
25. Twenty-ninth Canon of the Fourth Œcumenical Synod.
26. Concerning the Third Canon of the Holy Apostles.
27. Pedalion, pp. 4-5, n. 2.
28. Cf. Psalm 40:9; St. John 13:18.
29. These were the four Bishops Consecrated by the
aforementioned three Metropolitans in 1935, namely Christopher (Hatzis) of
Megara, Polycarp (Liosis) of Diavleia, Germanos (Varykopoulos) of the Cyclades,
and Matthew (Karpathakis) of Vresthene.
30. Eighth Session: Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum Nova et
Amplissima Collectio, Vol. III, p. 416.
31. I St. Timothy 6:20-21.
32. II St. Timothy 3:13-14.
Source: Resistance or Exclusion?: The Alternative
Ecclesiological Approaches of Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Florina and Bishop
Matthew of Vresthene (Etna, CA: C.T.O.S., 2000), pp. 63-82.
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