Two Texts on the 1950 Encyclical and the Scandals of Keratea

Brief background: Much has been written about the persecution of Old Calendarists under the New Calendarist Archbishop Spyridon Vlachos of Athens in the early 1950s by both the Official Church and the Greek government. The pretense for such violence was an international scandal associated with the massive Matthewite Panagia Pefkovounogiatrissa convent in Keratea, East Attica. Without going into the sad details of the scandal (one can find ample information online simply by Googling the name of the abbess, Mother Mariam of Keratea), it brought great embarrassment not only to Greece, but to the Official Church.

The Matthewites were (and are) well known for their fanatical stance toward the calendar innovation, that the adoption of the “Revised Julian Calendar” in, of, and by itself, rendered New Calendarists completely schismatic and heretical.

Their “Archbishop of Athens,” “saint” Matthaios Karpathakis, passed away on May 14, 1950.

On May 26, 1950, mere days later, the Church of the G.O.C. of Greece issued its infamous 1950 Encyclical, which “reiterated” the “proclamation” of 1935 that “the new calendarists are—since they are schismatics—deprived of sanctifying grace.” It was signed by St. Chrysostomos of Florina, along with Germanos of the Cyclades, Christophoros of Christianopolis, and Polykarpos of Diavleia.

This signaled to the Greek government and the Official Church that the “moderate” faction of Metropolitan Chrysostomos Kavourides was now “as fanatical” as the Matthewites, and was trying to foster a merger between the formerly “moderate” and “extremist” factions on extremist ecclesiological terms.

The below two texts – the first complete, the second a substantial excerpt from an already translated article (full text found here: https://orthodoxmiscellany.blogspot.com/2026/06/response-to-1950-announcement-of.html) – explain the repeated rationale behind the 1950 encyclical, and a response to the Official Church claim that the “heathy” Old Calendarists were simply trying to acquire Matthewite monastic property.

- Blog Administrator.

 

 

 

1. Response to the communiqué of the Holy Synod of the Official Church concerning the Calendar Question and the scandals at the Women’s Monastery of Keratea — by Chrysostomos, former Metropolitan of Florina.

Greek source: The Voice of Orthodoxy, No. 148, February 9, 1953 (O.S.), pp. 1-3.

Below we republish, from the newspapers Ἐθνικὸς Κῆρυξ and Ἀλλαγή, the refutation of the Synodal communiqué, with its many inaccuracies and misleading statements.

We read in the daily press the communiqué of the Holy Synod of the Official Church concerning the Calendar Question and the scandals at the women’s [Matthewite] Monastery of Keratea, and, moved by a sense of duty, we proceed to clarify it point by point, so as to prevent any possible misleading of the general public.

[A] First of all, the aforesaid Synodal communiqué calls the Old Ecclesiastical Calendar a “cancerous growth” in the ecclesiastical organism. Such a characterization is hardly becoming in an official document of the Holy Synod, which ought not to depart from the bounds of ecclesiastical decorum and seriousness. And this is because the Old Ecclesiastical Calendar was established by the First Ecumenical Council, confirmed by the subsequent Ecumenical Councils, and established as a tradition through its centuries-long observance by the universal Church; indeed, even those who now characterize it as a “cancerous growth” respected and observed it until 1923.

B) The claim of the Synodal communiqué that the Holy Synod refrained from speaking, while the trial concerning the scandalous events at the women’s Monastery of Keratea was in progress, although, as it states, it had been invited to do so by official organs of the press, so as not to influence the course of justice, corresponds hardly at all with the truth and the facts. For at the very beginning of the disclosure of the Keratea scandals, it severely condemned them, as indeed it ought to have done, in the official bulletin Ekklesia, as well as in the daily press, in which the Archbishop even expressed the thanks of the Holy Synod.

C) Equally devoid of truth is the claim of the Synodal communiqué that the successive governments, allegedly for reasons of vote-seeking, covered up the complaints submitted by the Holy Synod, as it states, to every level of the prosecutorial authorities, and prevented the courts from taking up the proceedings in these cases for the punishment of those responsible. This claim likewise, which indiscriminately condemns all governments from the year 1923 onward, is far removed from the truth, since no government, however deficient it may be in its sense of responsibility, could conceal crimes, especially when they had been reported by the Ecclesiastical Authority, much less prevent the Greek judicial authorities from proceeding with the cases in order to impose the penalties prescribed by the criminal law.

D) Equally untrue is the claim of the Synodal communiqué that the State secured for the Old Calendarists privileged treatment and complete freedom of action in the performance of their religious duties according to the Old Calendar, for it is known to all how harshly they were initially persecuted by the gendarmerie authorities in the performance of those religious duties. Only in recent times, when the State became convinced that they respected and observed the Old Calendar for reasons of religious conscience, and not in order to serve sinister and anti-national aims—as the Hierarchs of the Official Church had the naïveté, to say no more, to accuse them of—did it begin to show them tolerance.

E) Groundless and Pharisaical, too, is the fear expressed in the Synodal communiqué that the “cancerous growth” of the Old Calendar, through its harmful development, aided also by the scandals of Keratea that have come to light, may in time become a gangrene in the ecclesiastical organism, to the very great moral detriment of the Church. Have no fear, Fathers of the Holy Synod, for the Old Calendar, as a sacred institution of the First Ecumenical Council, is neither a cancerous growth nor does it threaten the ecclesiastical organism with gangrene; rather, it constitutes a vital artery through which there is transfused into the heart of the Church the life-giving spiritual sap of the Sacred Traditions of the Church and the moral oxygen of the venerable institutions of Orthodoxy.

That which constitutes a cancerous growth and threatens to infect the ecclesiastical organism with gangrene is the tendency toward innovations observed on the part of the Spiritual Leadership and certain Hierarchs, innovations which betray a lack of respect for the divine and sacred Canons of the Ecumenical and Local Councils. And lest we be accused of speaking in generalities, we shall mention some of these innovations, such as the recent issuance by the Archdiocese of a marriage license permitting two brothers to marry two sisters, in flagrant violation of Canon 54 of the Sixth Ecumenical Council in Trullo; the union and cohabitation of the Archbishop with two rich and well-dowered spiritual brides, that is, dioceses, something expressly forbidden by Canon 25 of the Fourth Ecumenical Council, which commands that a vacant diocese be filled within three months; and the forcible stripping of Old Calendarist priests of their clerical garb within the episcopal residence, amid the jeers and mockery of the personnel of the Archdiocese, which was even used as a barbershop for the shaving of priestly beards—something that provoked horror and just indignation even among New Calendarists and unbelievers.

F) Taking occasion from the scandals at the Monastery of Keratea, the Synodal communiqué indiscriminately characterizes all the sacred monasteries of the Old Calendarists as establishments trafficking in religion, and their monks and nuns as workers and exploiters thereof. In answer to this empty insult, these spiritual fortresses constitute moral havens for the moral shipwrecks of Greek society, who enter these monasteries seeking refuge.

G) The Synodal communiqué did not spare even the persons of the Hierarchs of the healthy and Orthodox-minded faction of the Old Calendarists, namely Chrysostomos, former Metropolitan of Florina, Christophoros of Christianoupolis, and Polykarpos of Diavleia, alleging that they too were motivated by the same considerations that impelled the exploiters of the Monastery of Keratea. And in confirmation of this, it cites our Encyclical No. 13, dated May 26, in which we call the Official Hierarchy schismatic and its Mysteries devoid of sanctifying Grace. But when, through that Encyclical, we called the Official Hierarchy schismatic and its ecclesiastical acts devoid of sanctifying Grace, we did so in self-defense against that Hierarchy, which had first proclaimed us schismatics and devoid of Divine Grace, of which we had supposedly been stripped by the deposition imposed upon us in absentia by an ecclesiastical court illegally constituted by the Holy Synod. It is well known that the deposition imposed upon us, having been inflicted not for moral or personal reasons, but because of ecclesiastical disagreement with the Official Hierarchy on a matter of faith and worship, has the character of a severance and not of a stripping away of the priestly office and Divine Grace. Consequently, from a dogmatic standpoint, we are entitled, in our own churches and among our own flock, to exercise our episcopal duties and rights. For if depositions of this kind, imposed because of ecclesiastical disagreements among the Christian Churches, stripped those deposed of Divine Grace and the episcopal office, then all Orthodox Bishops who were deposed by the Papal Church for reasons of Orthodoxy ought not thereafter to have exercised the episcopal office in the Orthodox Church. For our part, despite having declared the Official Church schismatic in the aforementioned Encyclical, we have never repeated any ecclesiastical Mystery performed by the Official Church, out of respect for the Canons, according to which Mysteries performed in accordance with the forms of the Orthodox Church are not repeated; whereas the Official Church, by Synodal decision, ordered the repetition of baptisms and marriages performed by Old Calendarist priests. Indeed, some New Calendarist Hierarchs, such as Metropolitan Panteleimon of Chios, even proceeded to reordain Old Calendarist priests, thereby bringing the authority of the Mysteries and the divine and sacred Canons into disrepute, according to which, in cases of reordination, both the one who reordains and the one who is reordained are justly deposed.

H) Considerable pharisaical hypocrisy is also contained in the statement of the Synodal communiqué that Chrysostomos, former Metropolitan of Florina, issued the above-mentioned Encyclical after the death of the late Spiritual Father of the Monastery of Keratea, Matthew Karpathakis, with the sole and ulterior purpose of appropriating his rights and property interests in the Monastery of Keratea. I say that this point of the Synodal communiqué contains a large measure of pharisaical hypocrisy and malice, because the noble and principled motives which impelled me to enter upon the Sacred Struggle for the Ecclesiastical Calendar are known not only to everyone, but also to the very authors of the Synodal communiqué. I did so without taking into account the great material losses, estimated at 500,000,000 present-day drachmas, resulting from the unjust reduction of my pension for an entire eighteen years, despite my many years of service to the Church and the Nation.

In conclusion, the Synodal communiqué expresses the hope that, this time, the present government will uproot from the ecclesiastical organism the “cancerous growth” of the Old Ecclesiastical Calendar, which, it says, arose out of nothing and threatened to divide the Nation.

And, in order to enlighten public opinion and intimidate the government, it also launched a Don Quixotic threat: that the Church of Greece would not cease striving, by every means at its disposal, to preserve inviolate the Sacred Deposit entrusted to it.

And now we ask the intelligent and impartial public:

Who are preserving inviolate the Sacred Deposit of Faith and Worship: those who, through the unilateral and arbitrary introduction of the New Calendar into Orthodox and divine worship, thereby divided the Churches and Christians in the celebration of the feasts, the observance of the fasts, and the other means of purification of the soul; or we Old Calendarists, who remain steadfast in the faith and worship handed down by our Fathers, adding nothing to it and taking nothing away from it?

We are absolutely certain that the Greek People, that most ardent devotee of Ecclesiastical and National Traditions, will render its verdict in our favor, as the struggling guardians upon the honored ramparts of these Ecclesiastical and National Traditions.

- Chrysostomos, former Metropolitan of Florina

 

 

2. Response to the 1950 Announcement of the Synodal Committee of the Official Church on the Calendar Question, by the President of the Synod of the Old Calendarists

Greek source: “The Voice of Orthodoxy,” Special Edition, No. 92, December 4, 1950 O.S.

(…)

The declaration of the [Official Church] Synodal Committee [on the Ecclesiastical Calendar] maintains that the new calendar does not conflict with the dogmas, the divine canons, and the Orthodox institutions of the Church. To prove that this assertion has no truth or correctness, we consider it unnecessary to present arguments of our own, since we have the condemnation of the Gregorian Calendar by Pan-Orthodox Synods, as was said above, and in addition the finding of the special Committee on the Ecclesiastical Calendar, composed of jurists and Professors of Theology, which declared that the introduction of the new calendar in the Greek Church would create cause for schism, would destroy the unity of the Church (which is included in the Symbol of Faith), and would greatly damage the national interest.

Hence it becomes clear that the defenders of the calendar tradition are not impelled by blind fanaticism and by personal motives, as the announcement maintains, but by a deep consciousness of the confession which they gave at their ordination: that they would preserve unharmed and unaltered all that they received from the Holy Ecumenical Councils.

And if we Hierarchs did not immediately come forth into the festal-calendar struggle, we did this so that, on the one hand, we might not become causes of division, and, on the other hand, because we expected that in time the remaining Churches also would accede to the new calendar. But when we saw that a division had been created by the Old Calendarists, who remained steadfast in the patristic traditions, even without us, and that this, for lack of pastoral oversight and guidance, was being diverted into extremes, to the detriment of the authority of the Church and the dignity of the Hierarchy, with the protest of the ancient Churches of the East against the calendar innovation also assisting, then, after we had exhausted all peaceful means in vain, we entered into the struggle, in order to calm our Orthodox conscience and that of the followers of the old festal calendar, and in order to forestall further excesses.  And if the [Matthewite] Monastery in Keratea, after a few years, had not renounced us (in the year 1937) and had remained under our jurisdiction and oversight, the revealed scandals would not have occurred, nor would the leadership of the Monastery have become a spectacle to angels and to men.

And whereas the [Official] Hierarchy, for the sake of the authority of the Church and her dignity, ought to have sought out one Metropolitan to take on the role of an Old Calendarist and to be placed at the head of the Old Calendarists, so as to keep the struggle within canonical limits, as soon as ideologically committed Hierarchs came forth into the sacred struggle, in order to direct it and keep it within the framework of the sacred Canons, the innovating Hierarchs promptly fell upon them, proceeding immediately, without any peaceful means prescribed by the Canons, to their deposition and to a five-year confinement in remote monasteries, as though in prisons.

This ill-considered and psychologically misguided penal act of the Hierarchy, imposed upon Hierarchs, pillars and defenders of patristic traditions, contrary to every divine and human institution, is what caused the inflaming of passions and the strengthening of the old-festal-calendar struggle, and not this alleged lawlessness on the part of the State, as the memorandum of the Synodal Committee maintains, deliberately distorting persons and facts.

Unfortunately, the Official Hierarchy did not wish to be persuaded, despite all that was written by us, that in the soul of the Old Calendarists, there had been created a condition of Orthodox conscience, which not only does not admit of violence and pressure for its uprooting, but is rather strengthened and rooted all the more by anti-Christian and inhuman acts of violence.

The idea of the [Official] Hierarchy is very mistaken, namely that this issue would have been resolved if the government had carried out the violent and anachronistic measures indicated by the Church against those who remained steadfast in the Old Festal Calendar for reasons of pure Orthodox conscience.

Moreover, the government made use of these measures for the sake of the Official Church, and indeed to the detriment of governmental authority and contrary to the provisions of the Constitution, which protects traditions and the religious freedom of conscience, although these measures, instead of calming the Old Calendarists, punished them and inflamed them.  It is indeed most grievous, the comparison and association made by the Synodal Committee between our own conscientious body and the unconscionable faction of the departed Matthaios [Karpathakis], portraying both factions as competing, as the announcement says, in an excess of detestable fanaticism and deceitful demagogy, so that, on the pretext of the abominable and indecent scenes at the Monastery in Keratea, even our healthy and sober-minded body of idealists might be cast into common contempt. For it has been shown, more clearly than the sun, through the deeds of each of the two groups, that the faction of the departed Matthaios and his corrupt circle regarded the sacred struggle as an enterprise and amassed great wealth, whereas our faction regarded it as an ideal, and not only reaped no benefit from it, but was in many ways materially harmed for the love of Christ.

Likewise, the Synodal Committee deliberately maintains in its announcement that we also, formerly conservative and moderate, thereafter outstripped the party of Matthew in fanaticism, declaring the Official Hierarchy schismatic, and its mysteries as deprived of grace, solely and only in order that we might substitute ourselves, as it says, for it, in the enormous property which the opposing party acquired by unlawful means, making piety a means of gain.

Nothing is more false and more inaccurate than this assertion. And it is indeed true that we, despite the lawless persecution which the innovating Hierarchy set in motion against us, at first avoided, out of respect for the reality of the Church, declaring it schismatic by an Ecclesiastical encyclical, whereas it declared us schismatics in court when trying our Bishops of Megara and Diavleia, in order to justify the decision deposing them. But when we saw that the Official Synod had taken a decision to regard, contrary to every sacred canon and to the age-old practice of the Church, our mysteries, those of the pure Orthodox, as invalid, and without fear of God to repeat them, to the utter degradation of the authority of the mysteries, then we too, finding ourselves in a position of self-defense, issued the corresponding encyclical in order to calm the agitated conscience of our flock, and not in order to acquire the property of the Monastery of Keratea. Perhaps the Synodal Committee is itself tormented by this pious desire, in recommending the dissolution of this wealthy Monastery, so that it might confiscate its property. Likewise, the Official Synod deliberately shifts the blame for the scandals revealed concerning the Monastery in Keratea not only onto us—who have no relation or ecclesiastical communion with its superiors, who are themselves accountable before the Greek justice system—but also onto the ideology of the Old Calendarists, flattering itself with the hope that, from the occasion of the Keratea affair, it might succeed in abolishing everyone and everything. Finally, as regards the assertion of the announcement that the Official Church, acting magnanimously, offered to the Old Calendarists both churches of their own and canonical priests for the performance of their religious needs according to the Old Calendar, this too is untrue.

(…)

- Chrysostomos, former Metropolitan of Florina