GOC History: The Response of Archbishop Auxentios to the Consecrations of 1979

Greek source: The Voice of Orthodoxy, No. 759, February 1979 (O.S.), pp. 1-3.

 

ENCYCLICAL

Church of the Genuine Orthodox Christians of Greece

The Holy Synod

Protocol No. 1420

Athens, March 2, 1979, Old Calendar

TO

The Sacred Clergy, Holy Monasteries, and Most Pious People of Our Suffering Church.

Beloved and cherished children in the Lord,

Grace and peace to you from God Almighty, and from us prayer and blessing.

With great sorrow we announce to you that in recent days a coup has been attempted within the ranks of the Sacred Clergy of our Holy Church, with the aim of seizing its leadership. Metropolitans Kallistos of Corinth and Antonios of Megara secretly proceeded to ordain eight bishops (Archimandrites Germanos Athanasiou, Kallist. Giannakoulopoulos, Kallinikos Sarantopoulos, Kyprianos Koutsoumbas, Maximos Tsitsimbakos, Kallinikos Karafyllakis, Matthaios Langis, and Merkourios Kaloskamis) and subsequently proclaimed themselves a Synod, with Kallistos as archbishop, repudiating our established, canonical, and recognized Holy Synod, under whose authority they stood, in violation of the Sacred Canons.

They communicated their foul decision to the Holy Synod after first attempting to contact His Beatitude our Archbishop Auxentios to obtain his recognition, only to be turned away by him.

To justify their most audacious act—their, in truth, Luciferian undertaking—they turn against His Beatitude our Archbishop and His Eminence Metropolitan Gerontios of Piraeus and Salamis, accusing them of supposedly governing our Church dictatorially and allegedly tolerating clergy who are discredited—in their own estimation—with whom, nevertheless, the accusers have repeatedly concelebrated and prayed; thus they judge others by themselves.

They further accuse His Beatitude and His Eminence of supposedly undermining our sacred struggle and dissolving the Holy Synod, although they know perfectly well that during their energetic administration the struggle attained its greatest and most decisive achievements, which glorified and exalted our suffering Church and established it in the consciousness of the faithful as the true Church of God, so much so that these very men boast in the Lord that they are members of it (constitutional protection of our freedom to fulfil our duties of worship, judicial recognition of the canonical standing of our hierarchs and clergy generally, an increase in the number of churches serving the struggle, judicial recognition of the holy monasteries, hermitages, etc.).

The instigators of the coup also recalled the defamatory writings issued by the hierarchs Akakios, Chrysostomos, and Gabriel, forgetting that they themselves had condemned them at the time and had unreservedly endorsed, at the most recent assembly of the clergy, the decisions taken concerning them, also signing the relevant minutes. Kallistos, one of their number, had even accepted his appointment as secretary of the inquiry ordered against Chrysostomos.

These men act with shameless hypocrisy, thus justifying the unjustifiable and making excuses for their sins. For their self-serving purpose has now been fully exposed. Germanos, Kallistos, Kallinikos, and Matthaios, having been unable to obtain episcopal ordination in the Matthewite ecclesiastical faction, to which they belonged in soul and spirit, repudiated their spiritual nurse and sought refuge in our Church, professing repentance. Our Holy Synod received them magnanimously, believing in their repentance. Yet their sole motive was to become bishops. And when, as time passed, they despaired of satisfying their lust for glory as intruders in our Church, they entered into a conspiratorial alliance with Kallistos, who had been nourished at the same breast, to elevate him to archbishop and themselves to bishops.

They also won over to their unlawful assembly Antonios, who rushes into everything and fails, and those seeking an opportunity to become bishops: Merkourios, together with Kyprianos, his disciple Kallinikos, and Maximos, who advocate continual reception of Holy Communion without preparation, in accordance with the teaching of [Apostolos] Makrakis. They hoped that by forming a Synod they would assume the leadership of our Church and remove its established Holy Synod, taking revenge on His Beatitude and His Eminence Gerontios for refusing to consent to their ordination, since they did not inspire confidence, and elevating Kallistos to archbishop as another Arsakios against Saint John Chrysostom.

But the Lord lives, the All-Holy Almighty God in Trinity! “Human beings devise one thing, but He ordains another.” And “He makes foolish those whom He wills to destroy”! Their schismatic scheme failed spectacularly. It was immediately seen through by our right-believing Sacred Clergy and the faithful people of the Lord, who indignantly rejected them and condemned them as enemies of our Church, as men who dishonor her, cause scandals, stir up trouble, and disrupt the unity in spirit and soul of the arduous struggle she has waged for fifty whole years. And they were left alone!

Raging over their misfortune, they have lost control of their words and actions and issue proclamations to the Greek people in the manner of political leaders. In these, they—the members of an unlawful assembly and schismatics, the false saviors of our Holy Church, who have trampled upon both their own confession and the Divine and Sacred Canons to satisfy their lust for glory—dare to speak of imposing penalties of suspension and deposition and conducting inquiries. They descend into insults, slanders, and threats, their ridiculous nonsense provoking amusement and ironic and derisive comments from their readers. Yet nothing remains for them but the road to the Holy Mountain, as they declared they would take in the event of their failure, to weep there in spiritual recollection and contrition of soul over the great sin they have committed (schism), which cannot be expiated even by the blood of martyrdom, according to the words of Saint John Chrysostom.

Following these events, our Holy Synod, enlarged through the ordination to the episcopate of the pious hieromonks, fervent zealots and strugglers, Paisios Philokalotakis (of Aegina), Gerasimos Vrakas (of Talantion), Theophilos Tsimbas (of Christianoupolis), Stephanos Tzinoras (of Kardamyla), Athanasios Charalambidis (of Grevena), Athanasios Postalas (of Platamon), Maximos Vallanatos (of the Ionian Islands), Ioustinos Kolotouros (of Marathon), Euthymios Orphanos (of Stavroupolis), and Paisios Loulourgas (of Gardikion), for America, proceeded to annul the ordinations that had taken place as uncanonical, because: 1) They were performed in another diocese without the permission of its bishop. 2) Those ordained had not been elected by at least three bishops and with the indispensable consent of the first in rank. 3) They were performed without the consent of the bishop under whose authority those ordained stood. It also proceeded to depose both those ordained and those who ordained them, as conspirators, factionalists, members of an unlawful assembly, and schismatics. Disregarding these men, the Holy Synod, supported by the clergy and the Christ-bearing fullness of our sorely tried Church, which has manifested in every way its obedience and devotion to her, proceeds unwaveringly with our sacred struggle for Most Holy Orthodoxy and her eternal festal calendar, with heightened determination and greater sacred enthusiasm until final victory, always following the course charted by our ever-memorable, venerable, and wise first leader, blessed Chrysostomos, former Metropolitan of Florina, to the glory of Christ the Chief Shepherd, the God-bearing Fathers, and our most beloved homeland.

Your attention is drawn to the cessation of all communion with them, in order to avoid the ecclesiastical penalties prescribed by the Sacred Canons.

On behalf of the Holy Synod

The Archbishop

AUXENTIOS