V.
THE ZENITH OF ECUMENISM
1964-1990
Remove not the ancient landmarks which your
fathers have set.
Proverbs 22.28.
Come out from her, My people, lest you share
in her sins,
And lest you receive of her plagues.
Revelation 18.4.
On May 14/27, 1964, Metropolitan Anastasy retired (he died in 1965). His
period as first hierarch represents a “holding operation”, a preservation of
the status quo in a very difficult period interrupted by the chaos of
the Second World War. It left certain important questions unanswered –
questions which would have to be answered unambiguously sooner or later. But it
at any rate kept the voice of opposition to the MP alive in the West.
There was such animosity between the supporters of the two candidates
for the vacant post, Archbishops Nicon and John Maximovich, that to avoid a
schism Archbishop John withdrew his own candidature and put forward in his
place the youngest bishop, Philaret (Voznesensky) of
The new metropolitan’ endurance of torture
for Christ at the hands of the Japanese pagans in
Archimandrite Philaret left
“And when, finally, with the help of God I
managed to extract myself from red
Soon Fr. Philaret flew to
“Holy Hierarchs of God! I have thought and
felt much in these last days, I have reviewed and examined the whole of my life
– and… I see, on the one hand, a chain of innumerable benefactions from God,
and on the other – the countless number of my sins… And so raise your
hierarchical prayers for my wretchedness in this truly terrible hour of my
ordination, that the Lord, the First of Pastors, Who through your holiness is
calling me to the height of this service, may not deprive me, the sinful and
wretched one, of a place and lot among His chosen ones…
“One hierarch-elder, on placing
the hierarchical staff in the hands of a newly appointed bishop, said to him:
‘Do not be like a milestone on the way, that points out for others the road
ahead, but itself remains in its place…’
Pray also for this, Fathers and Archpastors, that in preaching to
others, I myself may not turn out to be an idle slave.”
The new metropolitan faced a daunting
task. For he had, on the one hand, to lead his Church in decisively denouncing
the apostasy of World Orthodoxy, communion with which could no longer be
tolerated. And on the other, he had to preserve unity among the members of his
own Synod, some of whom were in spirit closer to “World Orthodoxy” than True
Orthodoxy…
The first Official Epistle of a
Hierarchical Council of ROCOR under her new metropolitan was dated June 4/17,
1964, and appeared to continue the line adopted by Metropolitan Anastasy in
relation to the MP: "They [the God-opposing Communists] have contrived a
new, truly diabolical plan in their war against the faithful: it is now
forbidden by the godless government of the USSR for children and young men and
women from the ages of 3 to 18 to be allowed into God's churches and to be
communed with the Body and Blood of Christ. And in order to mock the Church
even more, this directive by the authorities has to be enforced by the
clergymen themselves – they are the ones who must prohibit youth from
approaching the Chalice of Christ
and demand the removal of children and youth from the churches"….
"But the true situation is this: not
many clergymen are left in the USSR, not many open churches are left, the
faithful rarely can attend services And now even at these rare services, which
Christians, if they are not extremely old men and women, attend at the risk of
being tagged by the active Soviet "watchers" and thus lose their
jobs--parents cannot bring their young children, who, in their tender childhood
and youth, so need graceful communion to the Fountain of life--to Christ the
Savior, just as young little saplings need the light and the warmth of the
sun."
This Epistle appeared to accept the MP as
a grace-bearing institution – nearly thirty years after the leading hierarchs
of the
In July, 1964, Metropolitan Philaret and
four other bishops, including Archbishops John (Maximovich) and Averky
(Taushev), consecrated Archimandrite Cyril (Ionchev) for the newcalendarists
Bulgarian parishes abroad that did not want to submit to the unfree Bulgarian
patriarchate. However, in 1976 Bishop Cyril joined the American Metropolitan
with his parishes.[1]
Again, on
These first acts of the new metropolitan
appeared to continue the “liberal” line in relation to the MP and World Orthodoxy
of his predecessor, Metropolitan Anastasy. However, in his 1965
Epistle “to Orthodox Bishops and all who hold dear the Fate of the
“In
recent days the Soviet Government in
“We, on the other hand, call to mind
in these days the beginning of the way of the cross for the Russian Orthodox
Church, upon which from that time, as it were, all the powers of hell have
fallen.
“Meeting resistance on the part of
Archpastors, pastors, and laymen strong in spirit, the Communist power, in its
fight with religion, began from the very first days the attempt to weaken the
Church not only by killing those of her leaders who were strongest in spirit, but
also by means of the artificial creation of schisms.
Thus arose the so-called ''
“The second attempt, after the death
of Patriarch Tikhon and the rest of the locum tenentes of the
patriarchal throne, Metropolitan Peter, had greater success. The Soviet power
succeeded in 1927 in sundering in part the inner unity of the Church. By
confinement in prison, torture, and special methods it broke the will of the
vicar of the patriarchal locum tenens, Metropolitan Sergius, and secured
from him the proclamation of a declaration of the complete loyalty of the Church
to the Soviet power, even to the point where the joys and successes of the
Soviet Union were declared by the Metropolitan to the joys and successes of the
Church, and its failures to be her
failures. What can be more blasphemous than such an idea, which was justly
appraised by many at that time as an attempt to unite light with darkness, and
Christ with Belial. Both Patriarch Tikhon and Metropolitan Peter, as well as
others who served as locum tenens of the Patriarchal throne, had earlier
refused to sign a similar declaration, for which they were subjected to arrest,
imprisonment, and banishment.
“Protesting against this
declaration—which was proclaimed by Metropolitan Sergius by himself alone,
without the agreement of the suppressed majority of the episcopate of the
Russian Church, violating thus the 34th Apostolic Canon—many bishops who were
then in the death camp at Solovki wrote to the Metropolitan: ‘Any government
can sometimes make decisions that are foolish, unjust, cruel, to which the
Church is forced to submit, but which she cannot rejoice over or approve. One
of the aims of the Soviet Government is the extirpation of religion, but the
Church cannot acknowledge its successes in this direction as her own successes’
(Open Letter from Solovki, September 27, 1927).
“The courageous majority of the sons
of the
“But a schism nonetheless occurred.
The minority, accepting the declaration, formed a central administration, the
so-called ‘Moscow Patriarchate,’ which, while being supposedly officially
recognized by the authorities, in actual fact received no legal rights whatever
from them; for they continued, now without hindrance, a most cruel persecution
of the Church. In the words of Joseph, Metropolitan of Petrograd, Metropolitan
Sergius, having proclaimed the declaration, entered upon the path of ‘monstrous
arbitrariness, flattery, and betrayal of the Church to the interests of atheism
and the destruction of the Church.’
“The majority, renouncing the
declaration, began an illegal ecclesiastical existence. Almost all the bishops
were tortured and killed in death camps, among them the locum tenentes
Metropolitan Peter and Metropolitan Cyril of Kazan, who was respected by all,
and Metropolitan Joseph of Petrograd, who was shot to death at the end of 1938,
as well as many other bishops and thousands of priests, monks, nuns, and
courageous laymen. Those bishops and clergy who miraculously remained alive began
to live illegally and to serve Divine services secretly, hiding themselves from
the authorities and originating in this fashion the
“Little news of this Church has come
to the free world. The Soviet press long kept silent about her, wishing to give
the impression that all believers in the
“But then, after the death of Stalin
and the exposure of his activity, and especially after the fall of Khrushchev,
the Soviet press has begun to write more and more often on the secret Church in
the USSR, calling it the ‘sect’ of True-Orthodox Christians. It was apparently
impossible to keep silence about it any longer; its numbers are too great and
it causes the authorities too much alarm.
“Unexpectedly in the Atheist Dictionary (
“’Striving to fence off’ the
True-Orthodox Christians ‘from the influence of Soviet reality,’ chiefly of
course from atheist propaganda, ‘their leaders... make use of the myth of Antichrist, who has
supposedly been ruling in the world since 1917.’ The anti-Christian nature of
the Soviet power is undoubted for any sound-thinking person, and all the more
for a Christian.
“True Orthodox Christians ‘usually
refuse to participate in elections,’ which in the
“Honour and praise to the
True-Orthodox Christians, heroes of the spirit and confessors, who have not
bowed before the terrible power, which can stand only by terror and force and
has become accustomed to the abject flattery
of its subjects. The Soviet rulers fall into a rage over the fact that there
exist people who fear God more than men. They are powerless before the millions
of True-Orthodox Christians.
“However,
besides the True Orthodox Church in the
“The part of the Russian Church that
is abroad and free is called upon to speak in the free world in the name of the
persecuted Catacomb Church in the Soviet Union; she reveals to all the truly tragic
condition of believers in the USSR, which the atheist power so carefully hushes
up, with the aid of the Moscow Patriarchate, she calls on those who have not
lost shame and conscience to help the persecuted.
“This is why it is our sacred duty
to watch over the existence of the Russian Church Outside of Russia. The Lord,
the searcher of hearts, having permitted His Church to be subjected to
oppression, persecution, and deprivation of all rights in the godless Soviet State,
has given us, Russian exiles, in the free world the talent of freedom, and He
expects from us the increase of this talent and a skilful use of it. And we
have not the right to hide it in the earth. Let no one dare to say to us that
we should do this, let no
one push us to a mortal sin. For the fate of our
this sacred obligation. No one can understand better than we what is happening
in our homeland, of which no one can have any doubt. Many
times foreigners, even Orthodox people and those vested with high ecclesiastical
rank, have made gross errors in connection with the
“We shall not cease to accuse the
godless persecutors of faith and those who evilly cooperate with them under the
exterior of supposed representatives of the Church. In this the Russian Church Outside
of Russia has always seen one of her important tasks. Knowing this, the Soviet
power through its agents wages with her a stubborn battle, not hesitating to
use any means: lies, bribes, gifts, and intimidation. We, however, shall not
suspend our accusation.
“Declaring this before the face of
the whole world, I appeal to all our brothers in Christ—Orthodox bishops—and to
all people who hold dear the fate of the persecuted Russian Church as a part of
the Universal Church of Christ, for understanding, support, and their holy
prayers. As for our spiritual children, we call on them to hold firmly to the
truth of Orthodoxy, witnessing of her both by one's word and especially by a
prayerful, devout Christian life.”
The
Lifting of the Anathemas
We
have seen that since the founding of the World Council of Churches in 1948, the
leader of the ecumenical movement on the Orthodox side had been the Ecumenical
Patriarch Athenagoras.
The new ecumenist course was sealed on January 5 and 6, 1964,
when Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople met in
On January 23 / February 5, 1964 a large
number of Athonite monks, including the abbots of four monasteries, protested
against this ecumenical activity: “the undersigned Fathers of the Holy
Mountain, abbots, priest-monks and monks, learning of the recent machinations
and plots against our blameless Orthodox Faith by the Papal insurrection and of
the pro-uniate actions and statements of the Ecumenical Patriarch and his
co-workers, do proclaim with a stentorian voice that we denounce these uniate
tendencies and leanings, and remains steadfast and unshaken in our Orthodox
Faith…”[4]
Unfortunately, however, this “stentorian
voice” became more and more muted, until only the Monastery of Esphigmenou
remained out of communion of the Ecumenical Patriarchate…
The calendar question again reared its head during this period. Thus
during the Second Pan-Orthodox Conference, the
“Immediately after the
In 1964 several parishes in the
In this year the Turks increased their harassment of the Ecumenical
Patriarchate in
Further intense activity led, on
It should be pointed out, first, that in
saying that the schism of 1054 was based on “reproaches without foundation”,
the Patriarch was in effect saying that the Papacy was not, or never had been,
heretical – although the Papacy had renounced none of its heresies, and Pope
Paul VI had reasserted papal infallibility as recently as Vatican II. Secondly,
while relations with excommunicated individuals or Churches can be restored if
those individuals or Churches repent, anathemas against heresies cannot be
removed insofar as a heresy remains a heresy forever. And yet in December of
1968 Athenagoras announced that he had inserted Pope Paul VI’s name into the
Diptychs, thereby signifying that the Pope was not a heretic and was in
communion with the Orthodox Church.
Archbishop Chrysostom of
Many Athonite monasteries ceased to commemorate the patriarch at this
point…
The Sorrowful Epistles
ROCOR had three observers at the Vatican Council who witnessed the
ceremony of the “lifting of the anathemas”. One of them, Archimandrite Ambrose
(Pogodin), after describing the ceremony with evident sympathy, wrote: “The
Russian Church Abroad did not recognize the actions of Patriarch Athenagoras,
considering that the patriarch was obliged to do this only with the agreement
of all the Orthodox Churches, because the matter of the schism between the
Eastern and Western Churches concerned all the Orthodox Churches – it was not
only the personal relations between the Pope and the Patriarch of
Constantinople. We, observers from the Russian Church Abroad, received by
telephone the order from our ecclesiastical authorities not to be present at
the ceremony of the mutual lifting of the anathemas between the
Constantinopolitan and
At this critical moment, on
Tatiana
(now Nun Cassia) Senina writes: “Metropolitan Philaret sent a similar address
to another leader of the ecumenical movement – the American Archbishop James.
However, the apostate hierarchs paid no attention to his exhortations. The
ecumenical movement continued to gather speed. The holy Hierarch Philaret
looked with sorrow on the falling away from the faith of the once Orthodox
Churches. And he called the epistles which he sent to all the hierarchs of the
Orthodox Church just that – ‘Sorrowful Epistles’. In his first Epistle, written
in 1969, St. Philaret says that he has decided to turn to all the hierarchs,
‘some of whom occupy the oldest and most glorious sees’, because, in the words
of St. Gregory the Theologian, ‘the truth is betrayed by silence’, and it is
impossible to keep silent when you see a deviation from the purity of Orthodoxy
– after all, every bishop at his ordination gives a promise to keep the Faith
and the canons of the holy fathers and defend Orthodoxy from heresies. Vladyka
quotes various ecumenist declarations of the World Council of Churches (WCC)
and clearly shows, on the basis of the patristic teaching and the canons, that
the position of the WCC has nothing in common with Orthodoxy, and consequently
the Orthodox Churches must not participate in the work of this council. The holy
Hierarch Philaret also emphasises that the voice of the MP is not the voice of
the
“Vladyka Philaret wrote his second ‘Sorrowful Epistle’ on the Sunday of
Orthodoxy, 1972. In it he noted that although in the last two years hierarchs
had made declarations about the heterodoxy of the ecumenical movement, not one
Orthodox Church had declared that it was leaving the WCC. Vladyka placed as the
aim of his Second Epistle ‘to show that abyss of heresy against the very
concept of the Church into which all the participants in the ecumenical
movement are being drawn’. He recalled the threatening prophecy of the Apostle
Paul that to those who will not receive ‘the love of the truth for salvation’
the Lord will send ‘strong delusion, that they should believe a lie. That they
all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in
unrighteousness’ (II Thessalonians 2.10-12). St. Philaret’s third
Epistle was devoted to the so-called ‘Thyateira Confession’ of Metropolitan
Athenagoras [of Thyateira and
“Alas, no conversion took place, and the ecumenical impiety continued to
pour out. Vladyka addressed his word not only to bishops, but also to their
flock, untiringly explaining the danger of the new heresy. While telling about
the zeal of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, who slapped the face of Arius when
he blasphemed against the Son of God, Vladyka said: ‘O how often we do not have
enough of such zeal when it is really necessary to speak for the insulted and
trodden-on truth! I want to tell you about one incident that took place not
long ago and which it would have been difficult even to imagine several years
ago – and now we are going further and further downhill all the time. One man
came from
“’But that’s not the main horror. The Jewish people has opposed God for
a long time… - so there’s nothing surprising in this. But the horror was that
when he said this everyone was silent. Later, a man who had heard
this terrible blasphemy asked the ‘Orthodox’ protopriest: ‘How could you keep
silent?’ He replied: ‘I didn’t want to offend this Jew.’ It’s wrong to offend a
Jew, but to insult the All-Pure Virgin Mary is permitted! Look at the state we
have come to! How often does it happen to us all now that we do not have the
zeal to stand up, when necessary, in defence of our holy things! The Orthodox cleric
must zealously stand up against blasphemy, just as the holy Hierarch Nicholas
stopped the mouth of the heretic… But now, unfortunately, we have become, as
the saying goes, ‘shamefully indifferent to both the evil and the good’. And it
is precisely in the soil of this indifference, of a kind of feeling of
self-preservation, that the heresy of ecumenism has established itself – as
also apostasy, that falling away which is becoming more and more evident… Let
us remember, brethren, that Christian love embraces all in itself, is
compassionate to all, wishes that all be saved and is sorry for, and merciful
to, and love every creature of God; but where it sees a conscious assault on
the truth it turns into fiery zeal which cannot bear any such blasphemy… And so
must it always be, because every Orthodox Christian must always be zealous for
God.”[14]
“Patriarch” Athenagoras expressed, perhaps better than any contemporary
church leader, what ecumenism really means for its adherents. As Basil (now
Hieromonk Gregory) Lourié writes: “Athenagoras … did not consider [the
Latins] to be heretics. But his denial of their hereticalness was not the
manifestation of a special love for them: Athenagoras did not recognise the
existence of heresy in general! On hearing of a certain man who saw heresy
everywhere, Athenagoras said: ‘I don’t see them anywhere! I see only truths,
partial truths, reduced truths, truths that are sometimes out of place…’
“The teaching of the Church, of the Holy Fathers, is based on the rock
of the confession of the fullness of the Truth incarnate in Christ, which is
organically incapable of being mixed with lies. The ecumenists consciously
choose the sand of ‘partial truths’ cemented by the lie of the denial of Christ
as the true Son and Word of God.
“Why can Athenagoras and people like him, who are characterised by their
own kind of deep faith, asceticism and even capacity for sacrifice, completely
consciously go against, not simply individual Fathers, but even all of them
taken together? Why have they come to the decision that certain decrees of the
Fathers in relation to the Church and the dogmas may supposedly have lost their
force in our time? There can only be one answer: their Orthodox faith was been
mixed with certain tares, which have grown up and suffocated the shoots of
Truth. The tares are faith in something about which the Lord did not announce
to the Church. This is what we read in this connection in Athenagoras himself:
‘
“But this Tradition of the Church has ceased to be of interest to them
because they have accepted another: faith that some special age has dawned
precisely now. If all the people of this age understand its content, they will
turn out to be much more closely united with each other than with their
co-religionists of previous ages. The people of this age are united by certain
‘pan-human’, as they put it, values of their own, values which are much more
important to them than the heritage of the past, which disunites them. This is
that age of which the bearers of the so-called ‘Russian religious philosopy’
(particularly Soloviev, Berdyaev, Florensky and Bulgakov) became the heralds
throughout the world. These people expressed in a pseudo-Christian language the
idea of the coming of a ‘new age’ – the age of some new, post-New Testament
‘revelation of the Holy Spirit’, which would be given in the last times, and
which they borrowed from occult teachings. (See, for example, the letter on the
Holy Spirit in Florensky’s The Pillar and Ground of the Truth.) For
these people there exists some kind of special ‘age of the Fathers’, which is
already completely past. With it have also gone into the past the canons of the
Fathers. In our time, instead of the Fathers there are those who have received
the new revelation of the new age. And so for the Orthodox Church today
ecumenism is not a particular problem which might pass some countries by. But
at the same time it is only a particular case of a more widespread phenomenon –
the placing of the whole of contemporary civilisation on a new principle of
unity. It is on this principle that the universal religion which Hieromonk
Seraphim Rose of blessed memory (+1982) called ‘the religion of the future’,
the religion of the Antichrist, is being created at the present time.
“This principle is much more clearly formulated in various movements of
the ‘New Age’ and Masonry type, while ecumenism is called to carry out only one
particular task: force the entry into this new unity of such people as would
wish to preserve their unity with traditional forms of religion. The Antichrist
will have to satisfy everyone…”[15]
Hieromonk Seraphim wrote with regard to an article written by Archbishop
James entitled “A New Epoch?”: “I suddenly felt that I had found an insight
into the ‘essence of Iakovism’. Is not, indeed, the basic heresy chiliasm?
What else, indeed, could justify such immense changes and monstrous perversions
in Orthodoxy except the concept that we are entering entirely new historical
circumstances, an entirely new kind of time, in which the concepts of
the past are no longer relevant, but we must be guided by the voices of the new
time? Does not Fr. Patrinacos, in past issues of the Orthodox Observer,
justify Patriarch Athenagoras – not as a theologian, not as a traditionalist,
but precisely as a prophet, as one whose heresies cannot be condemned
because he already lives in the ‘new time’, ahead of his own times? Patriarch
Athenagoras himself has been quoted as speaking of the coming of the ‘Third Age
of the Holy Spirit’ – a clearly chiliastic idea which has its chief recent
champion in N. Berdyaev, and can be traced back directly to Joachim of Fiore,
and indirectly to the Montanists. The whole idea of a ‘new age’, of course,
penetrates every fiber of the last two centuries with their preoccupation with
‘progress’, and is the key idea of the very concept of Revolution (from
French to Bolshevik), is the central idea of modern occultism (visible on the
populate level in today’s talk of the ‘age of Aquarius’, the astrological
post-Christian age), and has owed its spread probably chiefly to Freemasonry
(there’s a Scottish Rite publication in America called ‘New Age’). (I regret to
say that the whole philosophy is also present in the American dollar bill with
its masonic heritage, with its novus ordo saeculorum and its unfinished
pyramid, awaiting the thirteenth stone on top!) In Christian terms, it is the
philosophy of Antichrist, the one who will turn the world upside down and
‘change the times and seasons.’… And the whole concept of ecumenism is, of
course, permeated with this heresy and the ‘refounding of the Church’.”[16]
Improved relations with the Catholics did not preclude the ecumenists’
having improved relations with other heretics, too. In September, 1966, two
inter-Orthodox Commissions were established in
“All of his opponents were eliminated beforehand. Bishop Basil, at that
time Bishop of Banja Luka, was arrested in Belgrade and threatened by the UDBA
(the Yugoslav Secret Police) to be returned to Banja Luka and be tried by the
‘People’s Court’ for his alleged ‘counter-revolutionary activities’, if he did
not endorse Bishop Germanus’ candidacy for patriarch. Once he endorsed Germanus’
candidacy he was released, through Bishop Germanus’ ‘gracious’ intervention.
“Father Macarius, abbot of the famed Dechani Monastery, was given
200,000 dinars ($650) as payment for his coerced vote for Germanus. He came
back to his monastery after the election and threw the money at his monks,
telling them that he ‘felt like Judas’.
“Many delegates to the Electorate were given a special pen and paper on
which they were to cast their ballots, in order to show whether they had kept
their promise to the agents of the Secret Police. (Two sworn statements by
witnesses).”[17]
According to witnesses who were in the patriarch’s house, he had a party
card. And when he was once accused of embezzling a very large sum of money and
was threatened with a court trial, the Serbian equivalent of the KGB saved him
and paid the money themselves. Thereafter he was, of course, completely “their
man”.[18]
In 1960 Archimandrite Justin Popovich, who has been called “the
conscience of the
Having secured their own man as patriarch, the ecucommunists proceeded
to use him against their most dangerous opponent outside
Cast out in this way, three dioceses and about forty parishes of the
Free Serbs, as they now called themselves, applied to join ROCOR. Two
archbishops – Averky of Jordanville and John (Maximovich) of
Archbishop Averky returned to the question of the
However, Archbishop Averky’s attitude to the Serbs was not commonly
accepted in ROCOR. Many hierarchs and priests of ROCOR had been brought up in
After being rejected by ROCOR, the Free Serbs then briefly came into
communion first with two Ukrainian bishops of the Polish Orthodox Church and
then with the Patriarchate of Alexandria. Fleeing the Ecumenism of the latter,
they briefly found refuge with the “Florinite” Greek Old Calendarists led by
Archbishop Auxentius, on September 11/24, 1981.[22]
The communists were now in complete control of the Serbian Patriarchate.
The result was predictable: “an alarming tendency on the part of the hierarchy
of the ‘
Archimandrite Justin Popovich wrote on the catastrophic situation of
East European Orthodoxy at this time: “The Church is being gradually destroyed
from within and without, ideologically and organisationally. All means are
being used: known and unknown, open and secret, the most subtle and the most
crude… And all this is skilfully dissolved, but in fact it is the most deadly
of poisons with a sugar coating… The most elementary and rudimentary logic
demonstrates and proves: cooperation with open atheists, the cursed enemies of
Christ and the Orthodox Church of Christ, is illogical and anti-logical. We ask
those who seek such cooperation, or already cooperate, or – terrible thought! –
compel others to cooperate, with the words of Christ: ’What communion can there
be between righteousness and lawlessness? Or what is there in common between
light and darkness? What agreement can there be between Christ and Belial?’ (II
Corinthians 6.14-15). Do you not hear the Christ-bearing Apostle, who
thunders: ‘If we, or an angel from heaven begins to preach to you that which we
have not preached to you, let him be anathema!’ (Galatians 1.8). Or have
you, in the frenzy of the atheist dictatorship, gone completely deaf to the
Divine truth and commandment of Christ: ‘You cannot serve God and Mammon’ (Matthew
6.24)?”[24]
Patriarch Germanus led his Church into the WCC in 1965, and become one
of its presidents in 1968. And in 1967 he said to the Roman Catholic bishop of
Mostar: “The times are such that our sister Churches have to lean on each
other, to turn away from that which divided us and to concentrate on all that
we have in common.”[25] The
next year he recognized Catholic marriages. In 1985, at a nuns’ conference, he
welcomed two Catholic bishops “with special honour” into the sanctuary, and
then all the conference members (Orthodox, Catholics and Protestants) recited
the Creed together in the Liturgy.[26] In 1971
he signed the following WCC statement in
Bishop Artemius of Raska and Prizren, a disciple of Fr. Justin Popovich,
in a memorandum to the Serbian Synod entitled “The Serbian Orthodox Church and
the World Council of Churches” (November, 1994), said that ecumenism was an
ecclesiological heresy, and that the Serbs should withdraw from the WCC.[27] More
recently, he has written: “The result of this participation [of the Serbs in
the WCC] was reflected in certain material aid which the Serbian Orthodox
Church periodically received from the WCC in the form of medicine, medical care
and rehabilitation of some individuals in Switzerland, student scholarships,
and financial donations for certain concrete purposes and needs of the SOC,
such as the construction of a new building by the Theological School. We paid
for these crumbs of material assistance by losing, on the spiritual plane, the
purity of our faith, canonical consistency and faithfulness to the Holy
Tradition of the Orthodox Church.
“The presence of our representatives (and Orthodox representatives in
general) at various and sundry ecumenical gatherings has no canonical
justification. We did not go there in order to boldly, openly and unwaveringly
confess the eternal and unchangeable Truth of the Orthodox Faith and Church,
but in order to make compromises and to agree more or less to all those
decisions and formulations offered to us by the non-Orthodox. That is how we
ultimately arrived at Balamand, Chambésy and
Germanus liked to justify himself by quoting the Serbian proverb: Drvo
se na drvo naslanja; a covek na coveka – “Tree leans on tree and man on
man.” But the Free Serbs had an answer to this. “We can also quote the proverbs
of our people: S’kim si, onaki si. – ‘You are like those with whom you
associate.’ If you find your fellowship with heretics, you begin to share their
erroneous thinking and eventually become a heretic. As an American proverb
goes: ‘Birds of a feather flock together.’”[29]
Commenting on the decision of the Orthodox Churches to become “organic
members” of the WCC, Fr. Justin wrote: “Every true Orthodox Christian, who is
instructed under the guidance of the Holy Fathers, is overcome with shame when
he reads that the Orthodox members of the Fifth Pan-Orthodox Conference in
Geneva [in June, 1968]… on the question of the participation of the Orthodox in
the work of the World Council of Churches, considered it necessary ‘to declare
that the Orthodox Church considers itself to be an organic part of the World
Council of Churches.’
“This assertion is apocalyptically horrifying in its un-orthodoxy and
anti-orthodoxy. Was it necessary for the Orthodox Church, that most holy Body
of the God-Man Christ, to become so debased to such a pitiful degree that its
theological representatives – some of whom were Serbian bishops – have begun to
beg for ‘organic’ participation and membership in the World Council of
Churches, which will supposedly become a new ‘Body’ and a new ‘Church’, which
will stand above all other churches, in which the Orthodox Churches and the
non-orthodox churches will appear only as parts. God forbid! Never before has
there been such a betrayal and abandonment of our holy Faith!
“We are renouncing the Orthodox Faith of the God-Man Christ, and organic
ties with the God-Man and His Most Holy Body: we are repudiating the Orthodox
Church of the holy apostles, the Fathers, and the Ecumenical Councils – and we
wish to become ‘organic members’ of a heretical, humanistic, humanized and
man-worshipping club, which consists of 263 heresies – every one of which is a
spiritual death.
“As Orthodox Christians we are ‘members of Christ.’ ‘Shall I therefore
take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute?’ (I
Corinthians 6.15). We are doing this by our organic union with the World
Council of Churches, which is nothing other than the rebirth of atheistic man,
of pagan idolatry.
“The time has finally come for the patristic Orthodox Church of Saint
Sabbas, the Church of the holy apostles and Fathers, of the holy confessors,
martyrs and new-martyrs, to stop mingling ecclesiastically and hierarchically
with the so-called ‘World Council of Churches’, and to cast off forever any
participation in joint prayer or services, and to renounce general
participation in any ecclesiastical dealings whatsoever, which are not
self-contained and do not express the unique and unchangeable character of the
One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church – the Orthodox Church – the only true
Church that has ever existed.”[30]
In 1971, Archimandrite Justin broke communion with the Serbian
patriarch, while retaining contacts with the other bishops.[31]
In 1968 the
Bishop Photius of Triaditza writes: “For some months before the
introduction of the reform, Tserkoven Vestnik informed the astonished
believing people that the reform was being carried out ‘in accordance with the
ecumenist striving of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church…’ The Bulgarian clergy and
even episcopate were completely unprepared to resist the calendar innovation,
while the people, suspecting something amiss, began to grumble. The calendar
reform was introduced skilfully and with lightning suddenness by Patriarch
Cyril – an ardent modernist and ‘heartfelt’ friend of the Ecumenical Patriarch
Athenagoras! Everyone knew that the patriarch was on good terms with the
communist authorities (for his ‘services’ to it he received the title of
‘academic’ – member of the
In fact, the Bulgarian Church’s change to the new calendar had been
dictated by the Russian communists, who wanted to introduce the innovation into
the Russian Church, too, but wanted to “test the waters” by trying it out on
the Bulgarians first.[34] As the
HOCNA Archimandrite (now Bishop) Sergios writes: “In 1971 Metropolitan Nikodim
of Leningrad visited
However, while deciding not to adopt the new
calendar for the whole Church, the MP already, in 1967, had made the following
resolution: “Bearing in mind the practice of the Ancient Church, when East and
West (Rome and the Asian bishops) celebrated Pascha at different times, while
preserving complete communion in prayer between themselves[36], and
taking into account the experience of the Orthodox Church of Finland and our
parishes in Holland, as also the exceptional position of the parishioners of
the church of the Resurrection of Christ amidst the heterodox world, [it has
been resolved] to allow Orthodox parishioners of the Moscow Patriarchate living
in Switzerland to celebrate the immovable feast and the feasts of the Paschal
cycle according to the new style.”[37]
In the second half of the 1960s opposition to Ecumenism the Local
Orthodox Churches was gradually suppressed. Some conservative hierarchs died,
such as Patriarch Christopher of Alexandria (in 1967); others were more forcibly
removed or replaced, such as Archbishop Chrysostom of Athens and the leaders of
some of the Athonite monasteries. Others were effectively silenced by bribery,
such as the Orthodox Church of America. The
Another clever move on the part of the
There is other evidence that the Pope was attempting to force the pace
in this year. Thus in May the Catholic Ecumenical Directory was published,
which allowed Catholics to take communion in Orthodox churches if they were
isolated or could not receive Catholic sacraments for a long period. And yet in
March Patriarch Athenagoras had said that Orthodox could not (yet) receive
“sacramental grace from a priest who is not himself Orthodox”. Then in July the
Pope travelled to
This exchange of visits was made easier by the fact that on April 21 a
military coup had taken place in
The new archbishop quickly showed his credentials by coming to “full
agreement” with the Ecumenical Patriarchate and issuing the following statement
in his enthronement address: “Our relations with non-Orthodox confessions must
be marked by Christian love and by mutual respect, so as to foster friendship;
but at the same time we must preserve our dignity and our firm adherence to the
Orthodox faith and teaching. As a pre-condition for any closer relations, we
must insist on the condemnation of proselytism.”[40]
The only problem about this seemingly conservative statement was that
“firm adherence to the Orthodox faith” and “the condemnation of proselytism”
are incompatible, in that if we believe that the Orthodox Faith is the True
Faith we are bound to hope and work for the conversion of people of other
faiths. We condemn proselytism among the Orthodox, not because it is “unfair”
and goes against some kind of ecclesiastical non-aggression pact, but because
it takes people away from the saving ark of the
There were other, more political reasons for the coup in the Church.
Athenagoras was favoured by the Americans as being the man best able, on the
one hand, to effect a rapprochement between
But the majority of the monks on
In 1968 the Fourth General Assembly of the WCC took place in
Now only ROCOR, the
This definition came in a report that Archbishop Vitaly (Ustinov) of
Canada gave to the Synod of ROCOR on the Uppsala Assembly of the WCC: “At the
opening of the Assembly an ecumenical prayer was read in the name of all those
assembles: ‘O God our Father, You can create everything anew. We entrust
ourselves to You, help us to live for others, for Your love extends over all
people, and to search for the Truth, which we have not known…’ How could the
Orthodox listen to these last words? It would have been interesting to look at
that moment at the faces of the Orthodox hierarchs who had declared for all to
hear that they, too, did not know the Truth. Every batyushka of ours in the
remotest little village knows the Truth by experience, as he stands before the
throne of God and prays to God in spirit and in truth. Even The Journal of the
Moscow Patriarchate, which is completely subject to the censorship of the
communist party, in citing the words of the prayer in its account of this
conference, did not dare to translate the English ‘truth’ by the word ‘istina’,
but translated it as ‘pravda’ [‘righteousness’]. Of course, everyone
very well understood that in the given case the text of the prayer was speaking
without the slightest ambiguity about the Truth. Perhaps the Orthodox hierarchs
have resorted, in the conference, to the old Jesuit practice of reservatio
mentalis, but in that case if all these delegates do not repent of the sin
of communion in prayer with heretics, then we must consider them to be on the
completely false path of apostasy from the Truth of Orthodoxy… Ecumenism is the
heresy of heresies because until now each heresy in the history of the Church
has striven to take the place of the true Church, but the ecumenical movement,
in uniting all the heresies, invites all of them together to consider
themselves the one true Church.”[43]
On
The MP’s Archbishop Basil of Brussels
recalled: “It fell to me to defend the good name and Orthodoxy of the Russian
Church at the Pan-Orthodox conferences (those like the Pan-Orthodox commission
for dialogue with the Anglicans) with the following argumentation: ‘This
resolution of the Synod was elicited by a completely special situation of
believers, and in particular of Catholics in the Soviet Union. Where there is
not one Catholic church of priest for thousands of kilometres. Such a
resolution was made by the Synod of Constantinople and Patriarch Joachim II in
1878 in relation to the Armenians. Theologically, it is difficult for me to
justify such oekonomia, but I cannot judge the Russian hierarchs who
live in contemporary
Neither side in this argument seemed to understand
that the giving of communion to a heretic in
any circumstances is harmful for that heretic so long as he remains in his
heresy. More Orthodox, therefore, was the robust response of the ROCOR Synod,
which on March 31, 1970 condemned the MP resolution as follows: “The decision
of the Moscow Patriarchate to give access to Roman Catholics to all the
sacraments of the Orthodox Church… both violates the sacred canons and is
contrary to the dogmatic teaching of Orthodoxy. By entering into communion with
the heterodox, the Moscow Patriarchate alienates itself from unity with the
Holy Fathers and Teachers of the Church. By this action it does not sanctify
the heretics to whom it give sacraments, but itself becomes a partaker of their
heresy.”
Archbishop Averky of Jordanville
commented: “Now, even if some entertained some sort of doubts about how we
should regard the contemporary Moscow Patriarchate, and whether we can consider
it Orthodox after its intimate union with the enemies of God, the persecutors
of the Faith and Christ’s Church, these doubts must now be completely
dismissed: by the very fact that it has entered into liturgical communion with
the Papists, it has fallen away from Orthodoxy [emphasis in the
original] and can no longer be considered Orthodox.”[46]
On the very same day that ROCOR condemned
the MP as “partaking in heresy”, Metropolitan Irenaeus of All America and
Canada and Metropolitan Nicodemus (Rotov) of Leningrad signed an Agreement
giving autocephaly to the American Metropolia – a deal which was accepted by no
other Autocephalous Orthodox Church. On April 2, a delegation of the Japanese
Orthodox Church set off for
On June 24 Patriarch Athenagoras in a
letter to Patriarch Alexis touched on two important questions: the authority
competent to grant autocephaly, and the factors and conditions necessary for a
correct proclamation of autocephaly. With regard to the first question he
declared that ‘the granting of it is within the competence of the whole
Church.’ But to a Local Church ‘is proper only the right to receive the first
petitions for independence from those concerned and to express whether the
bases suggested for it are worthy of justification’. With regard to the second
question, Patriarch Athenagoras expressed the opinion that in order to announce
an ecclesiastical autocephaly that aims to satisfy purely ecclesiastical needs,
the opinion of the clergy and laity, the judgement of the Mother Church and the
expressed will of the whole Church is required. Considering that these conditions
had not been fulfilled in the giving of autocephaly to the Orthodox Church in
Of course, the patriarch had a point. But
since his own patriarchate, by creating a whole series of unlawful
autocephalies since the 1920s, was the first sinner in this respect, it is not
surprising that his voice was not heeded…
Hieromonk Seraphim Rose wrote of the union of the Metropolia with
Asserting that it was far worse to capitulate to a nihilist state in
freedom than under compulsion, Fr. Seraphim wrote to a priest of the
Metropolia: “You will find in our midst great sympathy and pity for all but the
leading hierarchs of Moscow – and even for some of them you will find
fellow-feeling owing to the inhuman circumstances under which they have been
forced to betray Orthodoxy… But this fellow-feeling cannot allow us who are
free to… place ourselves in the same trap she [the Moscow Patriarchate] was forced
into! And this the Metropolia has done… With every fiber of our being and
every feeling of our soul we are repulsed by this free act of betrayal…
Do you not grasp the immensity of your spiritual bondage?”
“Is ‘stepping out onto the world Orthodox scene’ really so important to
the Metropolia that it must do it at the expense of the suffering Russian
Orthodox faithful? To give one small example: Metropolitan Nicodemus is the
Metropolia’s great ‘benefactor’, and no one can doubt that his success with the
Metropolia has strengthened his position with the Moscow Patriarchate. On the
other hand, the layman Boris Talantov in the USSR has openly called
Metropolitan Nicodemus a betrayer of the Church, a liar, and an agent of world
anti-Christianity, for which statements (among others) he was imprisoned by the
Soviets; Metropolitan Nicodemus tells the West that he was in prison for
‘anti-governmental activities’. On January 4 of this year Boris Talantov died
in prison, undoubtedly the victim of Metropolitan Nicodemus (among others). Can
the Metropolia feel itself to be on the side of this confessor? I don’t see how
it can.”[49]
In March, 1969, the Great Council of the Metropolia made a last Orthodox
statement on Ecumenism before succumbing to it:- “The basic goal of the
ecumenical movement… is the unity of all Christians in one single body of
grace. And here the Orthodox Church firmly confesses that such a genuine unity
is founded, above all, on the unity of faith, on the unanimous acceptance by
all of the Holy Scriptures and the Holy Traditions as they are wholly and
integrally preserved by the Church. Real love for brothers separated from us [sic
– a misleading description of heretics, who are not our brothers in Christ]
consists therefore not in silencing all that divides us, but in a courageous
witness to the Truth, which alone can unite us all, and also in a common search
for the ways to make that Truth evident to all. Only in this way did the
Orthodox Church always understand her participation in the ecumenical movement…
“However, within the ecumenical movement there has always existed
another understanding of unity. This other understanding seems to become more
popular today. It recognizes virtually no importance at all in agreement in
faith and doctrine, and is based on relativism, i.e., on the affirmation that
the doctrinal or canonical teachings of the Church, being ‘relative’, are not
obligatory for all. Unity is viewed as already existing, and nothing remains to
be done except to express it and strengthen it through ecumenical
manifestations or services. Such an approach is totally incompatible with the
Orthodox concept of the ecumenical movement.
“The differences between these two approaches is best illustrated by the
attitudes towards concelebration and intercommunion among divided Christians.
According to the Orthodox doctrine, the prayers and the sacraments of the
Church, especially the Divine Eucharist, are expressions of full unity – in
faith, in life, in service of God and man – as given by God. This unity with
other Christians we seek, but we have not reached it yet. Therefore in the
Orthodox understanding, no form of concelebration, i.e., no joint participation
in liturgical prayer or the sacraments, with those who do not belong to the
Orthodox Church can be permitted, for it would imply a unity which in reality
does not exist. It would imply deceiving ourselves, deceiving others, and
creating the impression that the Orthodox Church acknowledges that which in
fact she does not acknowledge.”[50]
The
In May-June, 1971 there was a council of the MP attended by 75
hierarchs, 85 clergy and 78 laymen, representatives of many other Orthodox
Churches and the general secretary of the WCC. It confirmed all the previous
decisions made by the MP since 1945. Only one candidate for the patriarchate
(Patriarch Alexis had died in April) was put forward: the weak Metropolitan
Pimen, who was elected unanimously in an open ballot (a secret ballot was not
allowed by the all-powerful Metropolitan Nicodemus). The 1961 statute taking
control of the parishes away from the bishops and clergy was confirmed[51], as was
(unanimously) Nicodemus’ report on the decision to give communion to Catholics,
in which he said that the measure was justified “insofar as we have a common of
faith with them in relation to the sacraments”.[52]
The MP council also resolved: “to entrust to the higher ecclesiastical
authority of the Russian Orthodox Church to continue efforts to reunite with
the Mother Church the so-called Russian Orthodox Church Abroad (the Karlovtsy
schism), the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church Abroad and other scattered
children of hers… In view of the fact that the activity of supporters of the
so-called Russian Orthodox Church Abroad… against the Mother Russian Orthodox
Church and against the Holy Orthodox Church as a whole is harming Holy
Orthodoxy, the higher ecclesiastical authority of the Moscow Patriarchate is
entrusted with realizing in the nearest future the necessary canonical
sanctions in relation to the apostate assembly.., the Karlotsy schism and its
unrepentant followers.”[53]
ROCOR’s Hierarchical Council
reacted to the MP council by passing two resolutions. The first, dated
September 1/14, 1971 declared: “The free part of the Russian Church, which is
beyond the frontiers of the USSR, is heart and soul with the confessors of the
faith who… are called ‘the True Orthodox Christians’, and who often go by the
name of ‘the Catacomb Church’… The Council of Bishops recognizes its spiritual
unity with them…”
The second, of the same date, is called "Resolution of the Russian
Orthodox Church Outside of Russia Concerning the Election of Pimen (Izvekov) as
Patriarch of Moscow": "All of the elections of Patriarchs in Moscow,
beginning in 1943, are invalid on the basis of the 30th Canon of the Holy
Apostles and the 3rd Canon of the 7th Ecumenical Council, according to which,
‘if any bishop, having made use of secular rulers, should receive through them
Episcopal authority in the Church, let him be defrocked and excommunicated
along with all those in communion with him’. The significance that the Fathers
of the 7th Council gave to such an offence is obvious from the very fact of a
double punishment for it, that is, not only deposition but excommunication as
well, something unusual for ecclesiastical law. The famous commentator on Canon
Law, Bishop Nicodemus of Dalmatia, gives the following explanation of the 30th
Canon of the Holy Apostles: ‘If the Church condemned unlawful influence by the
secular authorities in the ordination of bishops at a time when the rulers were
Christians, then it follows that She should condemn such action all the more
when the latter are pagans and place even heavier penalties on the guilty
parties, who were not ashamed of asking for help from pagan rulers and the
authorities subordinated to them, in order to gain the episcopate. This (30th)
Canon has such cases in view’. If in defence of this position examples are
given of the Patriarchs of Constantinople who were placed on the Throne at the
caprice of the Turkish Sultans, one can reply that no anomaly can be regarded
as a norm and that one breach of Canon Law cannot justify another.
"The election of Pimen (Izvekov) as Patriarch of Moscow and All
Russia at the gathering calling itself an All-Russian Church Council in Moscow
the 2nd of June of this year, on the authority of the 3rd Canon of the 7th
Ecumenical Council and other reasons set forth in this decision, is to be
regarded as unlawful and void, and all of his acts and directions as having no
strength."
However, in 1974 ROCOR did confirm one measure adopted by the MP’s 1971
Council: the removal of the curses on the old rites and those who observed
them.[54] This
did not by itself make the Old Ritualists Orthodox; but it removed the main
obstacle to their rejoining the Orthodox Church, taking to its logical
conclusion Tsar Paul’s introduction of the edinoverie in 1801, which
allowed Old Ritualists who joined the Orthodox Church to retain their use of
the Old Rites.
On
On the same day the Council issued an important statement on the
reception of heretics, considerably “tightening up” its practice: “The
“However, when the zeal of any heretics in their struggle against the
Church weakened, and when there was a question of their mass conversion to
Orthodoxy, the Church, to ease their union, accepted them into her bosom by
another rite. [There follows a discussion of St. Basil the Great’s first
canonical epistle.]
“And so
“[There follows a discussion of Timothy of Alexandria’s explanation of
this in The Rudder.]
“In relation to the Roman Catholics and Protestants who claim to
preserve baptism as a sacrament (for example, the Lutherans), the practice was
introduced from the time of Peter the First of receiving them without baptism,
through the renunciation of heresy and chrismation of Protestants and
unconfirmed Catholics. Before Peter Catholics were baptised in
“Bearing in mind this circumstance, and the present growth of the
ecumenical heresy, which tries completely to wipe out the difference between
Orthodoxy and every heresy, so that the Moscow Patriarchate, in spite of the
sacred canons, has issued a resolution allowing Roman Catholics to be communed
in certain cases, the Hierarchical Council has recognized the introduction of a
stricter practice to be necessary, that is, that all heretics coming to the
Church should be baptized, and that only insofar as it is necessary and with
the permission of the bishop, from considerations of oikonomia, should
another practice be allowed in relation to certain people, that is, the
reception into the Church of Roman Catholics and Protestants who have been
baptised in the name of the Holy Trinity through renunciation of heresy and
chrismation.”[55]
This last decision was also undoubtedly
influenced by the happy fact that at the same time ROCOR had achieved union
with the second Greek Old Calendarist Synod, that of the Matthewites. For the
practice of both Greek Old Calendarist Synods, the Florinites and Matthewites,
was stricter in relation to the reception of heretics was stricter than
ROCOR’s. Unfortunately, however, most of
the ROCOR hierarchs paid scant attention to this decision…
On December 18/31, 1969, Metropolitan Philaret and his Synod officially
recognized the Florinite hierarchy led by Archbishop Auxentius[56], and wrote
to him: “The many trials which the Orthodox Church has endured from the
beginning of its history are especially great in our evil times, and
consequently, this especially requires unity among those who are truly devoted
to the Faith of the Fathers. With these sentiments we wish to inform you that
the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad recognizes the
validity of the episcopal consecrations of your predecessor of blessed memory,
the reposed Archbishop Acacius, and the consequent ordinations of your
The members of the Florinite Synod now
were: Archbishop Auxentius and Metropolitans Gerontius of Piraeus, Acacius of
Diauleia and Chrysostom (Naslimis) of Magnesia. In July, 1971 Auxentius and
Gerontius consecrated Metropolitans Paisius (Euthymiadis) of Euripus and
The Matthewites continued to denounce the Florinites as schismatics, but
for the rest of the Orthodox world this act by the ROCOR Synod dispelled any
lingering doubts about their canonicity. So on September 1/14, 1971, the
Matthewites sent an exarchate, consisting of Metropolitans Callistus of Corinth
and Epiphanius of Kition (
But the Matthewites, according to their own account, did not immediately
seek communion in prayer with the Russians. First they asked what the Russians’
attitude to the new calendarists was. The Russians replied that the
introduction of the new calendar was a mistake, and promised, in the person of
Archbishop Philotheus of
Having examined the Matthewite case, on September 15/28, the Russians
presented, in writing, a dogmatic-canonical examination of the case of
consecrations by one bishop only. The Matthewites claimed that this report
vindicated Matthew’s actions, but this is a misrepresentation of the text. In
fact, although the language they used was conciliatory, the Russians concluded
that the Matthewites had sinned, “not against the dogmas of Orthodoxy, but
since, in their zeal to preserve it they transgressed against the hierarchical
order when Bishop Matthew consecrated a bishop on his own. A simple recognition
of their consecrations could become a cause of scandal as being in disregard of
fixed canons: the First of the Apostles, the Fourth of the First Ecumenical
Council, and the Third of the Seventh Ecumenical Council. At the same time it
is clear from other canons and examples that economy can be applied on the
basis of the Eighth of the First Ecumenical Council and the Sixty-Sixth of the
Council of
The laying on of hands duly took place. On the same day (October 1)
Metropolitan Philaret wrote to Archbishop Auxentius: “They [Metropolitans
Callistus and Epiphanius] laid before us the question of their hierarchy, and
declared that they relied completely on the decision of our Council, which they
were obliged to accept whatever it might be.
“We rejoiced at the humility and firm Orthodox faith with which they
came to us. Therefore we treated them with brotherly love and the hope that
their good feelings would serve the affair of a general union. We based our
decision also on the fact that the indicated hierarchs agreed to do all they
could to unite with your Church. That is, what seemed to you and us
unrealizable, with the help of the grace of God turned out to be possible. We
hope that your Beatitude, being led by the Holy Spirit, will treat them with
brotherly love and that through your and our joint efforts all will be united
by you…”
However, almost immediately there was much controversy over the precise
meaning of what the Russian bishops had done to the Matthewite bishops. Some
claimed that these were real ordinations (kheirotoniai), adducing the
following facts: (a) that the Russians in their text of September 15/28
explicitly stated that they were not simply going to recognize the Matthewite
orders, (b) that the Russians in the same text explained that in the history of
the Church the clergy of certain graceless schismatics, such as the Catharoi,
were received into the clergy of the Orthodox by kheirothesia, simple
laying-on of hands, and not by reordination, which was an exercise of economy
but by no means a recognition of the schismatics’ ordinations, and (c) that, as
Bishop Laurus, the secretary of the Russian Synod pointed out on a trip to
Greece, the kheirothesias on Metropolitans Callistos and Epiphanius were
carried out, not on the same, but on successive days, which clearly implied that
they were equivalent to consecrations.[62]
Against this view, however, are the following facts: (a) the words of
the Act, in which the word kheirothesia and its Russian equivalent and
not kheirotonia and its Russian equivalent are used,[63] (b) the
English text of a letter sent by Metropolitan Philaret to Metropolitan
Epiphanius, in which the sacrament was described as no more than “a prayer of
absolution”[64]
– presumably the removal of the stain attaching to the Matthewite orders
because of their derivation from one bishop only, (c) the text of an Encyclical
of the Florinites, which said that the Florinites had been informed that “the
Synod of the all-sacred Philaret has decided to recognize as canonical the
pseudo-bishops of the reposed Mr. Matthew”[65], and
(d) the text of a letter by Metropolitan Philaret, and signed also by Bishop
Laurus, to Archbishop Andreas: “We make it known to all that, after the
laying-on of hands, which has been fulfilled as a blessing to your Beatitude’s
Sacred Hierarchy, our Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside
of Russia enters into full ecclesiastical and sacramental communion with the
Orthodox Church of the True Orthodox Christians of Greece, of which your
Beatitude is a bishop.”[66] Also in
favour of this interpretation (e) is the statement of George Lardas: “This was
a simple cheirothesia and not the full rite of consecration”[67], and
(f) a letter of Protopriest George Grabbe, secretary of the ROCOR Synod:
“Bishops Callistus and Epiphanius were not ordained by our Synod. They were
accepted into communion as bishops with only the laying of hands on them,
already in bishops’ vestments, according to the 8th canon of the
First Ecumenical Council. That was to rectify the irregularity caused by the
founding of their hierarchy through the consecration originally performed by
one bishop”.[68]
“Unfortunately,” writes Holy Transfiguration Monastery,
For a very short period the two Greek Synods called each other “brothers
in Christ”, and in the opinion of the present writer this is what they in fact
were (and are). For it makes no ecclesiological sense to claim that two
Churches which derive their orders or correction of their orders from the same
source, are in communion with each through that source, and have the same
confession of faith, can be of a different status ecclesiologically.
Soon, however, the two sides were again hurling insults at each other,
and it must be concluded that there was little will for unity between the two
Greek Synods. Moreover, in 1976 the Matthewites broke communion with the
Russians. They claimed that the Russians had broken their promise to give them
a written confession that the new calendarists were without grace, and were
continuing, in the person of Archbishop Anthony of
This was true; and Archbishop Anthony’s ecumenical actions caused
several priests and parishes to leave him for the Matthewites.
Metropolitan Philaret expressed disapproval of these acts, but he was
not in sufficient control of his Synod to obtain Archbishop Anthony’s
repentance.[71]
He was also hampered by the fact that the official position of the ROCOR Synod
towards the new calendarists remained relatively weak and did not satisfy the
Matthewites: “Concerning the question of the presence or absence of grace among
the new calendarists the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad does not consider
herself or any other Local Church to have the right to make a conclusive
decision, since a categorical evaluation in this question can be undertaken
only by a properly convened, competent Ecumenical Council, with the obligatory
participation of the free Church of Russia.”[72]
Although this was the official ROCOR line,
there is evidence that Metropolitan Philaret’s personal views were stricter and
closer to those of the Greeks.
Thus on September 20, 1975, he wrote to Metropolitan Epiphanius of Kition, the
leader of the Old Calendarist Church of Cyprus, with whom he continued to have
friendly relations even after the Matthewite Synod to which Epiphanios belonged
had broken communion with ROCOR: “From the beginning our Russian Church has
known that the calendar innovation was unacceptable, and has not dared to move
this boundary set by patristic tradition, for the Ecclesiastical Calendar is a
support of the life of the Church and as such is fortified by decrees of Holy
Tradition.
“However, it is obvious to all that the calendar innovation caused a
schism in the Greek Church in 1924, and the responsibility for the schism
weighs exclusively on the innovators. This is the conclusion that will be
reached by anyone studying the Patriarchal Tomoi (as that of 1583) and
taking into account the wretched and self-evident fact of the schism and the
frightful punishments, persecutions and blasphemies which those who have
cleaved to the patristic piety of Holy Tradition have undergone.
“Thinking in this way, our Holy Synod has decreed that we ‘flee’
concelebrations with the new calendarist modernists. We do not concelebrate
with them, nor do we give permission or a blessing to our clergy for such a
concelebration. In order to assure you of the truth of what we say, we inform
you that whenever a community in the diaspora is received into our Church, they
are required to follow the patristic Calendar of the Orthodox Church…”
Meanwhile, on June 5, 1974, in an encyclical to its
clergy, the Auxentiite Synod reaffirmed that the new calendarists were
schismatics with no grace of sacraments and should be received into the True
Church by chrismation: “The ministration of the Holy Gifts to the new
calendarists has been forbidden since the beginning of the schism of the
official Church; and you must observe this line of conduct unswervingly in a
spirit of discipline towards our ecclesiastical traditions. If someone joins
our ranks from the new calendar, an indispensable condition of his acceptance
is the confession of faith and the condemnation of every heresy and innovation,
including the new calendar, by the acceptance of which the Greek Church became
schismatic from 1924, as the reformer Archbishop Chrysostom Papadopoulos
himself averred, and in consequence of which its sacraments are deprived of
sanctifying grace. If people who have been baptised in that Church convert to
the Faith, they must again be chrismated with holy chrism of canonical origin,
in accordance with the First Canon of St. Basil the Great.”[73]
This confession of the faith was to be
welcomed in that it removed the main obstacle to union with the Matthewites –
the suspicion the latter had that the Auxentiites really recognised the new
calendarists. However, it had no effect on the Matthewites, who went even
further to the right by rejecting the 1971 kheirothesia, declaring: “1. We accepted
spiritual communion with the Russian Synod after an oral declaration-assurance
with regard to agreement and unity in the faith, i.e. the
confession-ecclesiology of the True Orthodox Church. 2. We accepted the kheirothesia
as an external act – and wholly formal, in order to efface the pretext of
anticanonicity which the followers of the former [Bishop] of Florina, i.e. the
Acacians, had put forward in opposition to unity, and not as something that
affected the Hierarchy, which was dogmatically complete and perfect. 3. We
accept that there were canonical breaches (irregularities), but what moved us
was the fact that the Russians, in accordance with the declarations of the
Exarchate, had confessed the True Confession. However, when the opposite
started to reveal itself, after desperate attempts which lasted for
approximately four years, we were compelled to break off spiritual communion,
being indifferent to the issue of the kheirothesia, because neither had
anything been added to us, nor subtracted from us. … 4. Yes, as has been
revealed, the act of 1971 was a robber act, which had been previously
constructed by the enemies of the Church.”[74]
Greek Zealots and Ecumenists
“By 1973, the Auxentian Synod had ten bishops, 123 churches in
In 1975, according to a new calendarist estimate, “of the two Old
Calendarist groups, the followers of the later Metropolitan Chrysostom of
Florina have about 120 parishes, perhaps 70-80 monks and more than 600 nuns;
the followers of the late Archbishop Matthew of Keratea have about 50 parishes,
150 monks and 500 nuns. But these figures may well be too low.”[76] Other
sources indicate that in the later 1970s there were about 50,000 Old
Calendarists, with about a third of the 1200 monks on the
By comparison, the Romanian Old Calendarists were much more numerous at
this time: about one million faithful led by three bishops, Glicherie (87 years
old), Evlogie (65 years old) and Silivestre (54 years old). There were 10
hieromonks in the large monastery and two in the convents. There were about 45
married priests (a few parishes had two) and 5 deacons (4 in the monastery and
one married). There were also two monasteries, Slatioara, with 80 monks, and
another with 25. There were two convents with 100 and 50 nuns each, and a
skete, Dobru with 35 nuns, besides some 100 or so nuns living in the parish
churches.”[78]
Meanwhile, the new calendarist Greeks were going still further than the
Soviet Russians by extending their “eucharistic hospitality” even to the
Protestants. Thus in 1971 Patriarch Athenagoras told a group of thirty American
and five Greek priests: “And what is taking place today? A great spirit of love
is spreading abroad over the Christians of the East and the West. Already we
love one another… already in
Now the lifting of the anathemas in 1965 had caused the majority of
monasteries, sketes and dependencies of
In 1972 Esphigmenou raised the flag “Orthodoxy or Death” over the
monastery in protest against the joint prayer service held by Patriarch
Athenagoras and the Pope, and ceased participating in joint prayer services
with representatives of the other monasteries. However, in July Athenagoras
died, and hopes were raised that his successor, Demetrius, would abandon his
predecessor’s uniatism and return to Orthodoxy. But these hopes were dashed
when, at his enthronement speech on July 5/18, the new patriarch affirmed his
commitment to Ecumenism and the WCC, and spoke about “the pressing need to
initiate dialogues first of all with Islam, and then with the other great
monotheistic religions.”[81] And
later that year Demetrius addressed the Mohammedans on one of their feasts:
“The great God whose children we all are, all of us who believe in and worship
him, wishes us to be saved and to be brothers. He wishes this to be so even
though we belong to different religions. In these religions, however, we have
learned both to recognize the holy God as the beginning and end of all, to love
each other and to think only good things – which things let us practise towards
each other.”[82]
This did not prevent the Sacred Community of the
Nevertheless, even after this statement and the visit to the
“On
“On the arrival of the Patriarch’s letter, the police cut the telephone
line to Esphigmenou and installed a guard outside the monastery. Meanwhile the
monks kept the gates closed and hung from the walls a large black banner
inscribed ‘Orthodoxy or Death’. They warned the civil governor that they would
resist any attempt to effect a forcible entry. In a declaration smuggled to the
outside world, they stated that they continued to regard themselves as
canonically subject to the Ecumenical Patriarchate, but did not recognize the
present occupant of the Patriarchal throne, since ‘he is an enemy of
Orthodoxy’.”[84]
The monks of Esphigmenou were encouraged in their stand by a great
miracle worked by the Holy Martyr Agathangelus, a monk of Esphigmenou. At the
most critical moment in the struggle, the monks on entering the sanctuary were
met with a great fragrant cloud. On examination, they found that the cloud was
coming from the relics of St. Agathangelus; and they took this to mean that the
saint was approving of their struggle against the greatest heresy of the age…
In May, 1975 the WCC published an agreed statement of the Faith and
Order Commission entitled One Baptism, One Eucharist and a Mutually
Recognised Ministry, proclaiming a thoroughly Protestant doctrine of
ecclesial and sacramental unity. As the title suggests, this document was aimed
at the mutual recognition by the churches of each other’s sacraments. For
example: “Our baptismal unity in Jesus Christ constitutes a call to the
churches to overcome their divisions and achieve full visible union” (p. 10).
And “the full recognition by churches of each other’s baptisms as the one
baptism into Christ should be possible for all when Jesus Christ has been
confessed as Lord by the candidate… and when baptism has been performed with
water ‘in the name of the Father , the Son and the Holy Spirit’” (p. 16). It
should be remembered that the WCC included sects which deny the Divinity of
Christ, and that none of the member-churches except the Orthodox (and not even
all of them) baptised in the apostolic manner with full threefold immersion.
The document also included a theologically incoherent doctrine of the
transformation of the bread and the wine in the Eucharist, and the
extraordinary statement that “the churches should test their liturgies in the
light of the eucharistic agreement recently obtained” (p. 27) – as if the
Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom needed revision in the light of Protestant
theology!
The Orthodox could hardly claim not to be committed to this document’s
doctrines, for one of its chief architects was the Russian Protopresbyter
Vitaly Borovoy, and none of the Churches disowned him. Moreover, it was a
revision of previous statements “in the light of responses received from the
churches” – including, presumably, from the Orthodox churches.
In the same year of 1975, Archbishop Athenagoras of Thyateira and
Again, at the WCC’s General Assembly at Nairobi in 1975, the Orthodox
delegates, having signed an agreement to recognize the sacraments of the
non-Orthodox delegates, had declared that “the Orthodox do not expect the other
Christians to be converted to Orthodoxy in its historic and cultural reality of
the past and the present and to become members of the Orthodox Church” – which
gave the lie to their excuse that they were participating in the ecumenical
movement “to witness to the non-Orthodox”.[86]
Some residual opposition to ecumenism remained in some of the Local
Churches – especially in
“Orthodox elsewhere are thinking along the same lines as Archbishop
Seraphim. Speaking to the Clergy Conference of the Greek Archdiocese on
Again, in April, 1980 another warning about the dangers of ecumenism was
delivered in an epistle by the Fathers of Mount Athos, who since the return of
Vatopedi in 1975 were now all solidly Old Calendar, though most remained in
communion with the Ecumenical Patriarch. And yet high-level negotiations
between Orthodox and Catholics went ahead on the islands of
In 1974
the Third All-Emigration Council of ROCOR took place in the monastery of the
Holy Trinity in
There
was much to discuss. In the last decade the apostatic influence of the
ecumenical movement had broadened and deepened, and Metropolitan Philaret, had
assumed a leading role in the struggle against it through his “Sorrowful
Epistles”. Under the influence of this leadership, many non-Russians, such as
the Greek American Monastery of the Holy Transfiguration in
However, such a vision of ROCOR was not shared by all her hierarchs.
Some saw the isolation of ROCOR from other local Churches as necessitated, not
so much by the struggle against ecumenism, as by the need to preserve Russianness
among the Russian émigrés. It was not that the preservation
of Russianness as such was not an undoubted good: the problem arose when it
hindered the missionary witness of the Church to non-Russian believers. Such
phyletistic tendencies inevitably led to a loss of Church consciousness in
relation to ecumenism, and to a feeling that ROCOR was closer to Russians of
the MP, ecumenist though they might be, than to True Orthodox Christians of
Greek or French or American origin.[90]
Another cause of division was the stricter attitude that ROCOR was now
being forced to adopt towards “World Orthodoxy”, the Local Orthodox Churches
that participated in the ecumenical movement. Most of the hierarchs had
passively acquiesced in Metropolitan Philaret’s “Sorrowful Epistles”, and in
the union with the Greek Old Calendarists. But they began to stir when the
consequences of this were spelled out by the “zealots” in ROCOR: no further
communion with the new calendarists, the Serbs and
In his address to the Council, entitled “Our Church in the Modern
World”, Anthony of Geneva declared: “By the example of our First Hierarchs
[Anthony and Anastasy] we must carefully preserve those fine threads which bind
us with the Orthodox world. Under no circumstances must we isolate ourselves,
seeing around us, often imagined, heretics and schismatics. Through gradual
self-isolation we will fall into the extremism which our metropolitans wisely
avoided, we will reject that middle, royal path which until now our Church has
travelled… By isolating ourselves, we will embark upon the path of
sectarianism, fearing everyone and everything, we will become possessed with
paranois.”
This somewhat hysterical appeal not to separate from the World Orthodox
at just the point when they were embarking upon “super-ecumenism” was
criticised by Protopresbyter George Grabbe: “The report does not mention to the
degree necessary, maybe, that life goes on, and the sickness of ecumenism
deepens and widens more and more. Condescension, oikonomia, must under
different circumstances be applied differently, and to different degrees. In
does too great it can betray the Truth.” Then Archbishop Anthony of
Also
discussed at the Council was
the phenomenon known as “the dissident movement”. This arose in the second half
of the 1960s, as détente developed between the Communist and Capitalist
superpowers. It affected both the political sphere (the works of such figures
as Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn) and the religious sphere (Solzhenitsyn again,
Bishop Hermogen of
Unknown at the time was the adoption of a
new long-range global strategy by the Soviet leadership, in which the dissident
movement was planned to play an important role. Thus in a memo to the CIA dated
1978 Anatoliy Golitsyn wrote: “At the time of the adoption of the long-range
strategy in the period 1958 to 1960, there was strong internal opposition to
the Soviet régime from dissatisfied workers, collective farmers,
intellectuals, clergy, Ukrainian, Latvian, Lithuanian and Jewish nationalists,
etc. These oppositionists did not call themselves ‘dissidents’ and nor did the
KGB call them ‘dissidents’.
“On the contrary, the KGB and the Party referred to them as ‘enemies of
the régime’… The KGB was instructed to adopt new methods to deal with
this opposition, based on the experience of the GPU (the Soviet political
police) under Dzerzhinsky in the 1920s…
“This entailed the creation of a false opposition in the
“The main objectives which the Soviet rulers are trying to achieve
through the ‘dissident movement’ are as follows:
“(a) To confuse, neutralise and dissolve the true internal
political opposition in the
“(b) To prevent the West from reaching the
genuine internal opposition in the
“(c) To influence the foreign policy of the United States through the
‘dissidents’ in the interests of the Communist long-term strategy and exploit
this issue in the strategy’s final phase.”[93]
Golitsyn was talking mainly about political dissidents. Nevertheless, it
may be that some of the church dissidents, too, were, if not signed-up agents,
at any rate naïve and unwitting tools in the hands of the enemies of the
faith, who permitted all their contacts with the ROCOR because they foresaw the
corrosive effect such contacts would have.
Two main streams were discernible in the movement, which may be called,
recalling the debates of the nineteenth-century intelligentsia, the
Westernisers and the Slavophiles.[94] The
Westernisers were mainly concerned to correct abuses within the Church, to
re-establish freedom of conscience and freedom of expression. They sought and
received much support in the West, and were in turn much influenced by modern
western modes of thought, especially – and in this they departed from
traditionally Orthodox modes of thought – Ecumenism. The Slavophiles were less
well received and understood in the West. Their main emphasis was on the
restoration of traditional Russianness – Russian religion, Russian art and
architecture, Russian culture in all its forms, which Soviet culture had so
damaged and distorted.
The two streams were not always sharply differentiated and could fuse
together in the thought and activity of a single man. Thus Alexander
Solzhenitsyn, though usually considered to be a Slavophile, nevertheless shared
many of the characteristics of the westernizing dissidents, not only in his
human rights activity, but also in his Ecumenism. And, purified of their heterodox
elements, both streams could be said to tend (unconsciously as yet) towards the
True Orthodox Church, which remained more radical and still more courageous in
Her confession than the dissidents and more truly representative of the best of
Old Russia than the Slavophiles.
The dissident movement within the Church began, among the clergy, with
the 1965 open letter of the Priests Nicholas Yeshliman and Gleb Yakunin to
President Podgorny, in which they protested against the subservience of the
Church to the State, particularly in not resisting the Khrushchev persecution,
in giving control of the parishes to the State-controlled dvadsatsky, in
the handing over of lists of those baptized to the local authorities, in not
letting children and adolescents under 18 participate in church life, and in
ordaining only those candidates to the episcopate and priesthood who were
pleasing to the Council for Religious Affairs. This letter was ignored by the
patriarchate, and in 1966 both priests were forbidden from serving.
Among the laity, the most significant dissident, as we have seen, was
the philosopher Boris Talantov, who was imprisoned for exposing the activities
of the Kirov Bishop John in the closing of churches and suppression of
believers. He was slandered publicly on the BBC by Metropolitan Nicodemus of
Leningrad, and was eventually sent to prison in
In 1972, Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote an open “Lenten Letter” to
Patriarch Pimen, describing the patriarchate as being “ruled dictatorially by
atheists – a sight never before seen in two millenia!” “The
Solzhenitsyn’s appeal “not to live by the lie” was seen by some to lead
logically to the adoption of a catacomb existence for the Church. Thus Fr.
Sergius Zheludkov replied: “What are we to do in such a situation? Should we
say: all or nothing? Should we try to go underground, which in the present
system is unthinkable? Or should we try somehow to accept the system and for
the present use those opportunities that are permitted?”[97]
However, Solzhenitsyn himself neither belonged to the
Then Anthony himself read a report calling on ROCOR to support the
dissidents, in spite of the fact that they were ecumenists and in the MP. He
was countered by Archbishop Anthony of
Another important dissident was the
Such sentiments were close to the truth, and naturally elicited sympathy
from members of ROCOR. Less well known – because edited out of his books as
published in the West[100] - was
Fr. Demetrius’ ecumenism. The right attitude to him would have been to applaud
his courage and the correct opinions he expressed, while gently seeking to
correct his liberalism and ecumenism. In no way was it right to treat him as if
he were a true priest in the True Church, and an example to be followed that
was no less praiseworthy than those of the true confessors in the catacombs.
But that is precisely what many in ROCOR now began to do. And even the
1974 Council was tempted, declaring: “The boundary between preservation of the
Church and seductive self-preservation was drawn by his Holiness Patriarch Tikhon,
his lawful locum tenens Metropolitan Peter, Metropolitan Cyril of Kazan,
Metropolitan Joseph of Petrograd and the Solovki confessors headed by
Archbishop Hilarion (Troitsky).
“In recent years, this boundary has again been clearly drawn by Archbishop
Hermogenes [of the MP], several priests, among them Nicholas Gainov and
Demetrius Dudko, the laypeople of Vyatka led by Boris Talantov, the defenders
of the Pochaev Lavra such as Theodosia Kuzminichna Varavva, and many others.
This boundary has also been drawn by Solzhenitsyn in his appeal ‘Do not live by
the lie!’ Not to live by the lie and to honour the memory of the holy martyrs
and confessors of our Church – this is the boundary separating the true
Tikhonites from ‘the sergianist leaven of Herod’, as wrote Boris Talantov, the
rebukers of the present leaders of the patriarchate who died in prison.
“In our unceasing prayers for each other, in our love for the Lord
Jesus, in our faithfulness to the ideal of the past and future Orthodox Russia,
the faithful archpastors, pastors, monks and laymen on both sides of the iron
curtain are united. Together they constitute the Holy Church of Russia, which
is indivisible just as the seamless robe of Christ is indivisible.”[101]
This was a serious distortion: to place the confessors of the Catacomb
Church on the same level as “dissident” sergianists. A case could be made for
considering that Boris Talantov was a true martyr, since he denounced the MP in
terms identical to those employed by the
Voices were heard at the 1974 Council arguing
for union not only between ROCOR and the MP dissidents, but also between ROCOR
and the schismatic
The divisions that were beginning to emerge between Metropolitan
Philaret and the majority of other hierarchs was expressed by him in a letter
to one of his few allies, Protopresbyter George Grabbe, the Secretary of the
Synod. Describing a meeting with the hierarchs, he wrote: “I saw how truly
alone I am among our hierarchs with my views on matters of principle (although
on a personal level I am on good terms with everyone). And I am in earnest when
I say that I am considering retiring. Of course, I won’t leave all of a sudden,
unexpectedly. But at the next Sobor I intend to point out that too many things
that are taking place in our church life do not sit well with me. And if the
majority of the episcopacy agree with me than I will not raise the matter of
retiring. But if I see that I am alone or see myself in the minority then I
will announce that I am retiring. For I cannot head, nor, therefore bear the
responsibility for that with which I am not in agreement in principle. In
particular, I do not agree with our practice of halfway relations with the
American and Parisian schismatics. The Holy Fathers insistently state that long
and obdurately continuing schism is close to being heresy, and that it is
necessary to relate to stubborn schismatices as to heretics, not allowing any
communion with them whatsoever (how Vladyka Anthony’s hair would stand on end
at such a pronouncement! But I remain unyielding)… There are very many other
matters, too, in particular about Solzhenitsyn, concerning whom I continue to
remain more than just cautious…”[104]
The
Fall of Dissent
In 1976 the ROCOR Synod issued an Epistle to the Russian people which,
after declaring unity with the Catacomb Church, went on to say to dissident
members of the MP: “We also kiss the cross that you have taken upon yourselves,
O pastors who have found in yourselves the courage and strength of spirit to be
open reproachers of the weakness of spirit of your hierarchs, who have
surrendered before the atheists… We know of your exploit, we pray for you and
ask your prayers for our flock that is in the diaspora. Christ is in our midst!
He is and shall be!”[105]
“Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!” are words that Orthodox
priests exchange in the altar after the consecration of the Holy Gifts. Their
use here implies the recognition of the dissidents as co-celebrants with ROCOR,
members of the same Church. Clearly the influence of the dissidents was having
a corrosive effect on the ecclesiology of ROCOR.
The liberals were emboldened to go further, and Archbishop Anthony of
A
few months later, Archbishop Anthony again concelebrated with several heretics
(a senior MP priest was singing in the choir!) at the funeral of Archbishop
Nicodemus of
In the same critical year of 1976 the well-known Brotherhood of St.
Herman of
Another important issue was relations with the
“There is no denying that a certain honour is due the
“How can there be any talk here of a special gratitude to her? Oh, if
the
“How dangerous are compromises in matters of principle! They render
people powerless in defence of the Truth. Why is it that the Serbian
Patriarchate cannot resolve to sever communion with the Soviet hierarchy?
Because she herself is travelling along the same dark and dangerous path of
compromise with the God-hating communists. True, she has not progressed along
that path to the extent that the Soviet hierarchy has, and she attempts to
preach and defend the faith, but if the shades and nuances here are quite
different, yet, in principle, the matter stands on one and the same level”.[108]
In 1979, in response to a series of protests by Fr. Demetrius against
what he saw as excessive strictness on the part of ROCOR towards the MP,
Archbishop Anthony of Geneva, breaking the rule imposed by Metropolitan
Anastasy (and reasserted by Metropolitan Philaret) that ROCOR members should
have no contact, “even of an everyday nature”, with Soviet church clergy, wrote
to Dudko: “I hasten to console you that the part of the Russian Church which
lives in freedom beyond the bounds of the homeland, has never officially
considered the Moscow Patriarchate, which is recognised in the USSR, as
graceless…. We have never dared to deny the grace-filled nature of the official
church, for we believe that the sacraments carried out by her clergy are
sacraments. Therefore out bishops received your clergy into the Church Abroad
in their existing rank… On the other hand, the representatives of the
However, in 1980, Fr. Demetrius was arrested, which was closely followed
by the arrest of his disciples Victor Kapitanchuk and Lev Regelson. Then Dudko
issued a recantation on Soviet television in which he confessed that his
“so-called struggle with godlessness” was in fact “a struggle with Soviet
power”. Regelson confessed to having “criminal ties” with foreign
correspondents and of mixing religious activity with politics, while
Kapitanchuk also confessed to links with Western correspondents, saying that he
had “inflicted damage on the Soviet state for which I am very sorry”. Both men
implicated others in their “crimes”.
Metropolitan Philaret had been proved right – although many continued to
justify Dudko and denounced the zealots for “judging” him. But it was not a
question of “judging”, and nobody rejoiced in the fall of the dissident. It was
a question of the correct discerning of the boundaries of the Church and the
correct attitude to those struggling outside it.
The metropolitan wrote that the tragedy had overtaken Dudko because his
activity had taken place from within the Moscow Patriarchate – that is,
“outside the
Looking at this tragedy from a psychological point of view, we can see
that Dudko’s vulnerability may have consisted, not so much in the fear of physical
torture, as in the KGB’s ability (perhaps with the aid of certain State Church
bishops) to induce in him a feeling of false guilt, guilt that he had
objectively harmed the Soviet State, which, supposedly, he was bound to support
and pray for. This tragedy exposed an inescapable dilemma facing all the
dissidents: that action aimed to restore the freedom and dignity of the Church
was necessarily antisoviet, insofar as the
The
The
As Zviad
Gamsakhurdia, the future president of independent
“All this aroused a great deal of concern in government circles. As is
well known, the Soviet government tries by all means to deflect young people
from religion. This happened in
“The authorities began by blackmailing and pressurizing Ephraim II.
“The
pressure from the authorities alarmed Ephraim II. He was not like those strong
and high principled Patriarchs, Ambrosy Kalaya or Kalistrat Lintsadze. All this
slowly affected the style and content of his preaching and his relationship
with us, the young flock of the
“Ephraim made no secret of the fact that it was the KGB who forbade him
to lend books to the young believers. Once he even joked about it: ‘You know
that when
One of the senior bishops in the
On
“…the most likely candidate for the
patriarchal throne seemed to be Metropolitan Gaioz (Kepatishvili) of Tsilkani,
on whose side were the majority of the bishops and clergy. Another contender
was Metropolitan Ilia of Sukhumi and Abkhazia, who also had a sizable
following. Metropolitan Gaioz and his supporters forcibly occupied the
Patriarchal headquarters, having ejected the watchman and lone nun, supporters
of Ilia, who had been guarding it. Thereupon telegrams were sent to all the
heads of the Local Orthodox Churches, announcing that Metropolitan Gaioz had
been ‘elected’ Locum Tenens of the Patriarchal throne. Oddly enough,
these telegrams got no further than the local post office. It seems that the
appropriate ‘competent organs’ of state had by this time already reached a
decision. (More on this below.) Then the militia burst into the headquarters of
the Patriarchate, in turn forcibly expelled the followers of Metropolitan
Gaioz, and ushered in those of Metropolitan Ilia, who was then declared locum
tenens. And, of course, this time his telegrams reached their
destination. The new locum tenens hastily consecrated several bishops
from among his supporters in the clergy, thus ‘packing the court’.
“Metropolitan Gaioz was forced, for
appearance sake, to participate in the election and enthronement of
Catholicos-Patriarch Ilia II. He was made to place the Patriarchal panagias and
cross around the neck of the new Primate -- a bitter pill to swallow indeed!
Soon thereafter Metropolitan Gaioz was arrested and charged with various
crimes, including theft of church property, speculation in foreign currency,
and moral depravity. The public prosecutor asked for the maximum sentence
permitted by the law code then in force, which was fifteen years imprisonment.
However, the plaintiff on behalf of the Church, Archimandrite Nicholas
Makharadze, demanded the death penalty! Metropolitan Gaioz was eventually
sentenced to fifteen years in prison and
“… In 1979 Patriarch Ilia II was… elected one of the six presidents of the
World Council of Churches… He then inserted the new title into the text of his
official commemoration during the church services: ‘For our Great Lord and
Father, Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia, Archbishop of Mtskheta and
“Nikodimovschina”
From the 1970s we see the ascendancy in the MP of a school of thought
devoted both to the interests of the Soviet State and of the ecumenical
movement which has been called “Nikodimovschina” from its first leader and
originator, Metropolitan Nicodemus, KGB Agent “Sviatoslav”.
The fruits of Nicodemus’ activity was soon evident. “The Great Soviet Encyclopaedia recorded that
by 1972 the WCC had been converted from a ‘pro-Western’ to a ‘progressive’
orientation in its policies on peace, disarmament and related matters.
Assiduous advocacy by the Christian Peace Conference and othrs of the view that
Christianity and communism were natural allies in support of the national
liberation movement induced the WCC to provide funds for African guerilla
movements, including the Rhodesian Patriotic Front, believed to be responsible
for a massacre of British missionaries in 1978.”[117]
Ever since writing his master’s thesis on Pope John XXIII, the man who
led the Catholic Church onto the ecumenical scene, Metropolitan Nicodemus had
been trying to do the same for the Moscow Patriarchate. Hierodeacon (now
Hieromonk) Theophanes (Areskin) writes: “Metropolitan Nicodemus begins his
exposition of his ecumenist faith with an Orthodox thesis on the unity of the
whole human race in Adam: ‘Mankind, the whole Adam (in the expression of St.
Macarius the Great) is united by means of the Incarnation, Cross and
Resurrection of the last Adam (I Corinthians 14.45), the second Man, the
Lord Who “for us men” came down from the heavens (I Corinthians 15.47),
and, having tasted “death for us all by the grace of God” (Hebrews 2.9),
“is the Saviour of all men” (I Timothy 4.10)… We all, in accordance with
the ineffable wisdom of God, have been bound from the beginning with the bonds
of unity and brotherhood’. But further on Metropolitan Nicodemus reveals his
understanding of this unity: ‘Christ died for all men, and, as the new Adam, he
laid the beginning for a new humanity… The fullness of the grace-filled gifts
is communicated to people by the Holy Spirit in the
“And so, according to Metropolitan Nicodemus, all people are
‘Christians’, it is true that the Church of Christ, the Body of Christ, the New
Adam, is one, but it is not yet united into one ecclesiastical organization
under one leader. The aim of the ecumenists is to create this mediation,
that is, one single visible ecclesiastical organization for all. In this way
the ecumenical Church and the world become indistinguishable from each other.
It is not difficult to find the primary source of this faith. It is sergianism
– a heretical teaching that the Church, the Body of Christ, is a simple
ecclesiastical organization, just like ordinary secular organizations,
political parties, communities, commercial structures, etc.”[118]
The death of Nicodemus in 1978 in
Alexis, an Estonian by birth (he was bishop in Tallin before his
transfer to
In the 1974 Furov report to the Central Committee of the USSR Alexis
(together with his predecessor Patriarch Pimen) was placed in the category of
those bishops who “affirm both in words and deeds not only loyalty but also
patriotism towards the socialist society; strictly observe the laws on cults,
and educate the parish clergy and believers in the same spirit; realistically
understand that our state is not interested in proclaiming the role of religion
and the church in society; and, realizing this, do not display any particular
activeness in extending the influence of Orthodoxy among the population.”[121]
According to a KGB document of 1988, “An order was drafted by the USSR
KGB chairman to award an honorary citation to agent DROZDOV” [i.e. Alexis] for
unspecified services to state security.[122]
“Already in 1966,” writes Hierodeacon Theophanes, “in his speech before
the delegation of the German Evangelical church at a conference in Moscow, the
future head of the MP in the name of Christ Himself declared that ‘Jesus Christ
considers His own, that is, as Christians, all those who believe in Him and
obey Him, and this is more than the Orthodox Church.’ If we remember that,
according to Orthodox teaching, Christ adopted people to Himself only in His
Hypostasis, that is, in His Body which is the Orthodox Church, then it is
obvious that the metropolitan is here confessing a christological heresy,
considering as Christians those who are outside the Church – calling them
‘God’s’, that is, the Church’s.
“Alexis still more clearly confesses that all the non-Orthodox
Christians are the Church of Christ in his report to the 8th General Assembly
of the World Council of Churches, published in the Journal of the Moscow
Patriarchate in 1980 (¹¹
1-3). Here, blasphemously mixing up and identifying the concepts of the
presence of God in the world and His energies and presence in the Church, the
metropolitan very distinctly reveals his heretical teaching on the
“all-embracing and unconditional” Incarnation of Christ, which automatically
turns the whole of humanity, all Christians, Muslims, pagans, and in general all
‘men of good will’ into members of the Body of Christ, that is, the Church!
Metropolitan Alexis openly teaches that the same grace of the Holy Spirit acts
in the non-Orthodox churches – the participants in the WCC – as in the Orthodox
Church: ‘We (the CEC) have learned to pray together, to understand the spirit
and depth of prayer for each other, to feel the breath of the grace of the Holy
Spirit in joint prayer to the Lord … we must thank God for the joy of our
communion in Christ, for the joy of the ever-increasing experience of
brotherhood and sisterhood in Christ in our work.’ Thus it was precisely in
joint prayers with heretics that the archpastor felt the breath of ‘the grace
of the Holy Spirit’! We should note that ‘ecumenical prayer’ is a very important
moment in the ecumenical dialogue, it not only witnesses to the presence among
the ecumenists of some common ‘god’ to whom this prayer is raised, but it is
also a practical recognition of the action of the Holy Spirit in heterodoxy,
thereby aiding the aggiornamento of the churches. This is what the
future head of the MP says on this subject: ‘The aggiornamento of the
churches is attained in the first place by prayer and brotherly love; joint
prayers create a special atmosphere, a spiritual mood; (he goes on to cite A.S.
Khomiakov) prayer is the life of the Church and the voice of her love, the
eternal breathing of the Spirit of God. We believe that through joint prayers
the breathing of the Spirit of God jointly enriches us all.’
“According to Orthodox teaching, it is precisely the Holy Spirit that
makes a man a member of the
“The source of this teaching of Metropolitan Alexis on the Holy Spirit
is a heretical Christology, whose essence consists in the assertion that ‘we
all have been received into the nature of Jesus Christ the God-man as an
integral nature. And this truth forces us to believe that every person striving
towards goodness and righteousness does the work of Christ on earth, even if he
intellectually has not known Christ or has even rejected Him. From the
Godmanhood of Christ it follows that the path into the
“However, according to the Orthodox teaching, ‘God the Word, on becoming
incarnate, did not take on the nature viewed as an abstraction in pure
thought,… nor the nature contemplated in species (that is, viewed in all the
hypostases of the human race – H. Th.), for He did not take on all the
hypostases, but He took on that which received its existence in His
Hypostasis’. That is, it is impossible to say that since God the Word became
Man, all people are saved by virtue of being men. But Metropolitan Alexis
affirms that in the humanity of Christ is contained all men’s hypostases. Such
a teaching was confessed in the 11th century by the Monk Nilus of
Calabria, who taught that all human hypostases are present or are contained in
the humanity taken on by the Lord and are ‘co-deified’ together with Him. The
Orthodox Church anathematized Nilus and his heresy: ‘If anyone dogmatises that
all human hypostases are in the flesh taken on by the Lord and are co-deified
with it, let him be anathema, for this is empty chatter, or, rather, manifest
impiety.’ And although the metropolitan makes the qualification that humanity
for him is only ‘the potential church’, nevertheless he later on unambiguously
speaks of the whole of humanity as of the Church – the Body of Christ, the
Temple of the Holy Spirit: ‘Christ redeemed, cleansed and recreated a common
human nature for all, while the Holy Spirit morally transfigures each human
personality, gives the Christian the fullness of grace, makes him a temple of
God and dwells in him, raises the growth of spirituality in the mind and the
heart, leads him to every truth and gives him spiritual gifts to his benefit:
to one – the word of wisdom, to another – the word of knowledge, by the same
Spirit… and other gifts (I Corinthians 12.7-11), so that human talents
should be revealed more fully.’ In this way, insofar as God the Word has been
incarnate in a common human nature, His Body is the divided Christian Church in
the combination of all its separate parts. However, the saving action of the
Holy Spirit is poured out even beyond the bounds of the Body of Christ,
penetrating into and deifying the body of the whole of humanity: ‘The
all-embracing and most powerful force of the Holy Spirit is spread out onto the
whole life of our world, transforming it in the course of the historical
process of the struggle between good and evil.’
“And so, thanks to a clever substitution of concepts, the real
difference between the grace of the Holy Spirit, by which God providentially
preserves the world in existence and leads people to the Church, and the
deifying mystical presence of the Holy Spirit in the Body of Christ, the
Church, is destroyed, which completely abolishes the difference between the
Church and the world: now ‘the cultural efflorescence of European and world
Christianity’ is declared to be an action of the Holy Spirit, and even the
Salt-2 treaty between Brezhnev and Carter concerning the limiting of strategic
offensive weapons is also ‘a manifestation of the invisible power of the Holy
Spirit acting in the world for the good of the whole of humanity.’
“The consequences of this ‘pan-human Pentecost’ are expressed by the
metropolitan mainly in the terms of humanism and peace-making: ‘Christian
concern for questions of social justice’, ‘the elements of the movement for
peace’, Christians’ service to people and their ‘involvement in all the
complexity of the real life of the world’. In this way the life of grace in the
Body of Christ is substituted by a humanistic ‘serving the affairs of the
world’.
“It is understandable that this ‘theology of peace’ should be very
convenient for the dialogue not only with any heretical Christian communities,
but also with any religions, even with utopian teachings like communism.
“But how is such a faith compatible with the Orthodox teaching on the
uniqueness and singleness of the One, Holy, Catholic and
The
influence of the KGB on Church life extended well beyond the borders of the
“In 1979 the future Archbishop Mark [of
“At that time Mark Arndt was an activist of NTS, the People’s Labour
Union, which had once been a warlike anti-Soviet organisation but was then
properly crammed with KGB agents.
“Some Russian émigrés today say: ‘What if the KGB simply
frightened Mark and then let him go with God’s blessing?’
“I
assure you as a retired lieutenant-colonel of the KGB: this could not have
happened. Because the import of anti-Soviet literature came under article 70 of
the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, “Anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda”. It was
considered an especially dangerous state crime and promised a considerable jail
sentence.
“And how then, after arresting Mark, would the chekists have given an
account of their work? Explained that they had let him go? And where would the
concrete result so valued by the KGB be? Or, as they say there, ‘the dry
remains’?
“But nobody would have allowed him to be released!
“After all, every foreigner who fell for righteousness’ or
unrighteousness’ sake into the hands of the KGB was considered to be a fat,
tasty chicken. He could have been exchanged for a Soviet spy who had fallen
into captivity, or used for communist propaganda.
“All this would have been considered to be a great success and promised
rewards for the chekists. But if they released him, there would have been no
bonus. After all, the KGB is a military system. Every step there has to be
agreed with tens of bosses.
“The chekists could have released him only in exchange for a still
greater bonus. And they give that for the recruitment of a foreigner. It
is considered the greatest achievement in the work of a chekist. His career
would have been on the up.
“They teach how to recruit foreigners who are arrested by them in the
Minsk KGB school…
“They worked on Mark. He would even have had to spend the night in the
KGB…
“Sergius Grigoryants [the founder of Glasnost] told me the
following: ‘… The fact that the KGB let Mark go in such a “humane” fashion
shows that a love match may have been set up between them.’…
“There are agents of influence, who act on the politics of their
country in a spirit that is useful for
“If Archbishop Mark is truly an agent of the KGB, then he belongs to
this category. Does his activity correspond to the external political aims of
the Putin administration? Undoubtedly yes. It helps submit the Church Abroad to
Archbishop Mark immediately responded to Preobrazhensky’s accusations:
“I have never and nowhere been arrested, and I will not comment on every
absurdity”. However, while it cannot be considered proven that Archbishop Mark
is a KGB agent, it is impossible to ignore the very strong possibility that
those hours with the KGB influenced his position as the prime mover behind
ROCOR’s proposed unification with the MP…
The origins of Pentecostalism, as of
ecumenism, go back many decades, but came to fruition in the later part of the
twentieth century. At precisely
“For some time before that moment,” wrote
Hieromonk Seraphim Rose, “a Methodist minister in
“For half a century the Pentecostal
Movement remained sectarian and everywhere it was received with hostility by
the established denominations. Then, however, speaking in tongues began
gradually to appear in the denominations themselves, although at first it was
kept rather quiet, until in 1960 an Episcopalian priest near Los Angeles gave
wide publicity to this fact by publicly declaring that he had received the
‘Baptism of the Holy Spirit’ and spoke in tongues. After some initial hostility,
the ‘charismatic renewal’ gained the official or unofficial approval of all the
major denominations and has spread rapidly both in
Although Pentecostalism was slower to
penetrate Orthodoxy, we have already seen its influence in the words of
Metropolitan Alexis (Ridiger), when speaking about a “pan-human Pentecost”.
Pentecostalism gave a tremendous boost to
Ecumenism; it became the “heart”, as the ecumenical movement was the “mind” of
the new religion of the future. No close attention was given to the question
whether the spirit behind the tongues was the Holy Spirit or not. To those who
endeavoured to obey the command: “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try
the spirits whether they are of God” (I John 4.1), it seemed clear that
it was not, and that the Apostles’ words to the Corinthians applied also to the
Pentecostalists: “If ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received
[i.e. a different spirit from the Holy Spirit],… ye might well bear with him” (II
Corinthians 11.4).
Although Pentecostalists assert that their gift of tongues is the same
as that which was given to the early Church, they forget that even in the early
Church this gift had its counterfeits. Thus Archbishop Averky of
“Inspired” by Pentecostalism, the ecumenists now plunged into the much
broader sphere of inter-religious relations – that is, into “Super-Ecumenism”.
For the so-called “age of the Spirit”, ignoring the voice of the Spirit: “Be ye
not unequally yoked with unbelievers, for… what concord hath Christ with
Belial?” (II Corinthians 6.14-15), invited to reunion not only
Christians of all denominations but also members of all the other religions.
Thus in 1970 the Pentecostal Pope Paul VI spoke of “the Hebrew and Islamic
peoples, and Christians… these three expressions of an identical [my
italics – V.M.] monotheism”, and confessed that “we are all sons of the same
Father, and,… therefore, all brothers”.[128]
Evidently he did not know the words of the Apostle John: “Whosoever denieth the
Son [and both Jews and Mohammedans deny the Son], the same hath not the Father”
(I John 2.23). Nor those of the Lord Himself: “No man cometh unto the
Father but by Me” (John 14.6).
Catholic Super-Ecumenism was set in motion by the Second Vatican
Council’s decree, Nostra Aetate (Declaration
on the Relations of the Church to Non Christian Religions, October 28, 1965):
"Even though the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead
pressed for the death of Christ, neither all Jews indiscriminately at that
time, nor Jews today, can be charged with the crimes committed during his passion."
And yet the Jewish religion to this day justifies the killing of Christ, saying
that He was a magician and His Mother a prostitute!
The Orthodox were not far behind the Catholics, especially in relation
to the Mohammedans. Thus in 1970, “the WCC sponsored a conference in Ajaltoun,
Lebanon, between Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and Moslems, and a follow-up
conference of 23 WCC ‘theologians’ in Zurich in June declared the need for
‘dialogue’ with the non-Christian religions. At the meeting of the Central
Committee of the WCC at Addis Ababa in January of this year, Metropolitan
Georges Khodre of Beirut (Orthodox Church of Antioch) shocked even many
Protestant delegates when he not merely called for ‘dialogue’ with these
religions, but left the Church of Christ far behind and trampled on 19
centuries of Christian tradition when he called on Christians to ‘investigate
the authentically spiritual life of the unbaptized’ and enrich their own
experience with the ‘riches of a universal religious community’ (Religious
New Service), for ‘it is Christ alone who is received as light when grace
visits a Brahmin, a Buddhist, or a Moslem reading his own scriptures’ (Christian
Century, February 10, 1971).”[129]
Evidently the Metropolitan had forgotten that “all the gods of the heathen are
demons” (Psalm 95.5).
As the 1970s and 1980s progressed talk of unity was succeeded by action,
and communal services not only between Christians of different denominations,
but also between Christians and non-Christians, became common. Thus on
On
Also clear by this time was the politicisation of the WCC along
the lines of the Moscow-inspired “movement for peace”, as we can see from a
cursory reading of the titles of the public statements of the 33rd
and 34th sessions of the Central Committee of the WCC in 1981 and
1982: “The Churches and the Refugee Crisis”, “Statement on Namibia”, “Increased
Threats to Peace and the Task of the Churches”, “Statement on South African
Government Raids on Squatter Camps”, “On Northern Ireland”, “Statement on the
Second Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly on Disarmament”,
“Statement on Lebanon”, “Statement on Extrajudicial Executions”.[131]
In 1982 the MP convened a conference entitled “Religious workers for
saving the sacred gift of life from nuclear catastrophe” in
Again, Fr. Lev Gillet highlighted the so-called “ecumenism of the
concentration camps”. “For it was in such places as
But if Orthodox, Catholics and Protestants who suffered at the hands of
the Nazis were all martyrs, what about the victims of the Jewish holocaust?
Soon the industry of the holocaust would be compelling Christian leaders to pay
homage also to these “martyrs”, whose religion of the Talmud breathes the most
extreme hatred of Christ and Christians! In fact, the concept of martyrdom
exposes ecumenism for the lie that it is. For if all religions are holy and
equal, then so are their martyrs. But this is impossible. For then Jews who are
killed by Muslims are as “holy” as Muslim suicide bombers. And Jews who suffer
at the hands of Christians are as holy as Christians who suffer at the hands of
Jews (for example, Archimandrite Philumenos of the
The Anathema against Ecumenism
Two ecumenical events combined to elicit a powerful response from the
True Orthodox Church. The first took place in 1982, when an
inter-denominational eucharistic service was composed at a conference in
First, the Greek Old Calendarist Metropolitan Gabriel of the
The Synod of ROCOR, also meeting in
Canada, condemned this latest and most extreme manifestation of ecumenism as
follows: “In its decision of 28 July / 10 August, our Council explained that
the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia does not participate in the World
Council of Churches insofar as the latter attempts to represent those assembled
in it, representatives of religions differing in their opinions, as though they
had some sort of unity in faith. In reality, though, this very position is a
lie, inasmuch as they, members of various confessions and sects, have not given
up their points of disagreement with each other, much less with the Orthodox
Church, in dogmas and in fundamental attitudes. In the name of unifying
formulas, these differences of opinion are not destroyed, but are just set
aside. Instead of the unshakable truths of the faith, they try to see only
opinions, not obligatory for anyone. In reply to the confession of the one
Orthodox Faith, they say together with Pilate: ‘What is truth?’ And the
nominally Orthodox members of the Ecumenical Movement more and more deserve the
reproach of the Angel of the Church of Laodicea: ‘I know your works: you are
neither hot nor cold: O if only you were hot or cold’ (Revelation 3.15).
A clear manifestation of such false union was the serving of the so-called
Then the Synod anathematised ecumenism, declaring: “To those who attack
the Church of Christ by teaching that Christ’s Church is divided into so-called
‘branches’ which differ in doctrine and way of life, or that the Church does
not exist visibly, but will be formed in the future when all ‘branches’ or
sects or denominations, and even religions will be united in one body; and who
do not distinguish the priesthood and mysteries of the Church from those of the
heretics, but say that the baptism and eucharist of heretics is effectual for
salvation; therefore to those who knowingly have communion with these
aforementioned heretics or advocate, disseminate , or defend their new heresy
of Ecumenism under the pretext of brotherly love or the supposed unification of
separated Christians, Anathema.”[137]
The
Anathema against Ecumenism was seized upon with delight by the True Orthodox
not only in ROCOR, but also in
Nevertheless, the implication of this anathema was clear: all Orthodox
Churches that were fully participating members of the WCC fell under it. As I.M.
writes: “There is no heresy without heretics and their practical activity. The
WCC in its declarations says: The Church confesses, the Church teaches, the
Church does this, the Church does that. In this way the WCC witnesses that it
does not recognize itself to be simply a council of churches, but the one
church. And all who are members of the WCC are members of this one false
church, this synagogue of satan. And by this participation in the WCC all the
local Orthodox churches fall under the ROCOR anathema of 1983 and fall away
from the
The attack on the validity of the anathema
against ecumenism has continued in recent decades. Thus the ROCOR priest
Alexander Lebedev called the idea that the anathema strikes down all ecumenists
“the heresy of universal jurisdiction”. The present writer replied to Fr.
Alexander: “Thinking about your "heresy of universal jurisdiction",
it seems to me that you confuse two things: the Church as an external organisation,
and the Church as a mystical organism, to use the terminology of Hieromartyr
Catacomb Bishop Mark (Novoselov) (+1938). It seems to me that you are right as
regards the Church as an external organisation, but wrong as regards the Church
as a mystical organism. Let me explain.
“An anathema excludes the person
anathematised from the holy mysteries, from membership of the
“It is a different matter when we consider
an anathema sub specie aeternitatis, in its mystical, super-terrestrial
significance. From that point of view, the anathematization of a heretic begins
in the heavens. Thus even before Arius had been "locally" anathematized
by St. Alexander of Alexandria, the Lord appeared to his predecessor, St.
Peter, with a torn cloak, and in answer to St. Peter's question: "O
Creator, who has torn Thy tunic?", replied: "The mindless Arius; he
has separated from Me people whom I had obtained with My Blood" (St.
Demetrius of Rostov, Lives of the Saints, November 25). So not only
Arius, but all those who followed him, had been separated from the Church by
the anathema of Her First Bishop, the Lord Jesus Christ, years (or rather,
aeons) before even the first "local" anathema had been uttered. All
heresies and heretics are anathematized "from all eternity" by the
eternal Lord, for just as every truth is approved by the Truth Himself from all
eternity, so is every lie condemned by Him from all eternity, being condemned
with "the father of lies" to the gehenna of fire (Revelation
22.15).
“The task of hierarchs on earth is to
discern the decisions of the heavenly Church, and then apply these heavenly
decisions on earth, in space and time. As St. Bede the Venerable (+735) writes:
"The keys of the Kingdom designate the actual knowledge and power of
discerning who are worthy to be received into the Kingdom, and who should be
excluded from it as being unworthy" (Sermon on the Feast of Saints Peter
and Paul, P.L. 94, col. 219).[140]
From this point of view, it matters not a jot whether a heretic is
anathematized locally or universally, since he has already been anathematized
by the heavenly Church. Or rather, it matters in this sense: that if the heretic
has been anathematized locally, but this anathema is not accepted by the rest
of the Church, then the rest of the Church is under the grave danger of falling
under this same anathema. For the local anathema, if it is just, is the
reflection of a heavenly anathema; and the anathema of the heavenly Church is
universal….
“This explains why, when local Churches
anathematized a heresy, they never qualified the anathema (as you, Fr.
Alexander, would like to qualify ROCOR's anathema against ecumenism) by saying:
"but of course, this applies only to the heretics in our local
Church". On the contrary: history shows that local Churches freely
anathematized heretics, not only in their own Churches, but also in others.
Thus Nestorius, a heretic of the
“Consider what St. Maximus said of the
Monothelites: "In addition to having excommunicated themselves from the
Church, they have been deposed and deprived of the priesthood at the local
council which took place recently in
“Administrative matters and moral falls
are the business of local Churches and councils. However, heresies of their
very nature are of universal significance, having the potential to infect the
whole Church. That is why the appearance of a heresy in one local Church is not
the business only of that local Church, but of all the local Churches - and
every local Church can and must anathematize it.
“Even the anathema of single bishopric has
universal power and validity if it is uttered in the Holy Spirit, in accordance
with the eternal Truth. Thus in 1069 the bishops of the metropolitanate of York,
in the north of England, solemnly anathematized both the Pope of Rome and his
stooge, William the conqueror, the first papist king of England. All the
evidence is that they did not know that the
“In the same way, in 1983 the Sobor of Bishops of the Russian Church
Abroad, using the power to bind and to loose given them by the Bishop of
bishops, the Lord Jesus Christ, translated onto earth, into space and time, the
completely binding and universally applicable decision already arrived at from
all eternity by the Council of the Holy Trinity, the Father, the Son and the
Holy Spirit. Ecumenism is, was and always will be a heresy, indeed "the
heresy of heresies", and the ecumenist heretics are, were and always will
be outside the Church, the mystical Body of Christ. The decision of the ROCOR
Sobor in 1983, confirmed with no change to its universal wording in 1998,
expelled these already self-condemned and Divinely condemned heretics also from
the external organization of the Church - and woe to any man, of whatever
Church, who despises that decision, for he will then surely fall under the same
anathema…”[141]
Archbishop Anthony of
One ROCOR hierarch, unfortunately,
appeared to despise the decision – Archbishop Anthony of
After the
“…. Alas, critics have also appeared in
our diocese… They have demanded from us a reply to the question: do the clergy
of the ‘Synodal’ Church concelebrate… with new calendarists and ecumenists? The
aim of this question is to accuse us
of the ‘sin’ of concelebration.
“…They were given the clear and definite
reply that our Church has always had relations with, and continues to
have relations with, the canonical Churches that have accepted the new calendar
in the practice of the Divine services.
“Already in 1925, soon after the
acceptance of the new calendar into ecclesiastical practice by five Orthodox
Churches at the congress of 1925, the
“…. On
“Our Hierarchical Councils and individual
hierarchs have often repeated: the new calendar is not a heresy, but a
great and crude mistake. On this basis, Metropolitan Philaret, on his frequent
visits to
“Metropolitan Vitaly, faithful to his
predecessors, writes in this year’s Christmas epistle [1986/87]: ‘At the given
time the majority of local Churches have been shaken… by a double blow: the new
calendar and ecumenism. However, even in their present wretched state, we do
not dare, and God forbid that we should do this, to say that they have lost the
Grace of God.’
“We
permit to serve with us clerics of
the
“… Archimandrite Justin [Popovich] often
said with great firmness and wrote against ecumenism without separating from
his patriarch [this is not true - Fr. Justin broke with the Serbian patriarch
because of his ecumenism]. He had a huge influence on his flock, creating a
whole movement of young monks who, in continuing his work, bring up young
people in the spirit of Orthodoxy. It has been our lot to concelebrate with clergy of the
The Disintegration of the Florinite Synod
In the early 1970s the Florinite Synod under Archbishop Auxentius,
appeared to be in a strong position as a result of its union with ROCOR. At
this point, however, Auxentius began ordaining unworthy men and receiving
priests from the new calendarists whose reputation was already besmirched.[143] As a
result, in 1974, following the commandment: “Be not partakers of other men’s
sins” (I Timothy 5.2)), Metropolitans Acacius of Diauleia, Gabriel of
the
Sadly, the process of disintegration did not stop there. In June, 1977, Metropolitan Callistus of Corinth,
being unhappy with the Matthewites’ break with the Russians and the
Matthewites’ rejection of the kheirothesia of 1971 (he was one of the
two bishops who had secured the union with the Russians in 1971), broke
communion with the Matthewites and joined the Holy Synod.[146]
However, he was soon to rue his association with Auxentius. In 1978, a
Portuguese priest of ROCOR, Joao Rocha, unhappy with Archbishop Anthony of
Profoundly disillusioned with Auxentius, from February 20 to 23, 1979,
Metropolitan Callistus, together with Metropolitan Anthony of Megara,
consecrated eight archimandrites to the episcopate, who were, in order of
consecration: Cyprian (Koutsoubas) of Fili and Orope, Maximus (Tsitsibakos) of
Magnesia, Callinicus (Sarantopoulos) of Achaia, Matthew (Langis) of Oinoe,
Germanus (Athanasiou) of Aiolia, Calliopius (Giannakoulopoulos) of Pentapolis,
Mercurius (Kaloskamis) of
However, on
At 6 p.m. on February 27[151], the
same day on which he was informed of the Callistite consecrations, Archbishop
Auxentius met with Metropolitans Gerontius and Callinicus “in order to
formulate a position on the sedition brought about by its members, Callistus of
Corinth and Anthony of Megara, who illegally severed themselves from the body
[of the Holy Synod] and high-handedly undertook to consecrate bishops. Upon
discussing this matter at length, on the basis of the holy canons of the One,
Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church of Christ, [the Holy Synod] unanimously
decreed and imposed upon the two seditious Metropolitans the punishment of
deposition, as the holy canons themselves enjoin. [The Holy Synod decrees] that
this decision be released and published straightway in the Athenian press. Since
there was no time to convoke the assembly of the clergy, upon deliberation,
because of the gravity of the event, it decided this very day to consecrate new
bishops for [the Holy Synod’s] restoration and replenishment. Various points of
view were exchanged and proposed by all the holy hierarchs…” Then, according to
the minutes of the meeting, no less than ten new bishops were elected
and consecrated in the following order: Euthymius (Orphanos) of
Stavropolis (later Thessalonica), Paisius (Loulourgas) of Gardikion (later of
America), Theophilus (Tsirbas) of Christianoupolis (later Patras), Athanasius
(Postalas) of Platamon (later Larissa), Maximus (Vallianatos) of the Seven
Islands, Stephen (Tsikouras) of Kardamila (later Chios), Paisius
(Phinikaliotis) of Aegina, Gerasimus (Vrakas) of Talantion (later Thebes),
Athanasius (Haralambidis) of Grevena (later Acharnae) and Justin (Kouloutouros)
of Marathon (later Euripus).
Some days later, the newly augmented Auxentiite Synod met in order to
confirm the invalidity of the Callistite consecrations and the deposition of
the Callistites as “conspirators, factionalists, establishers of unlawful
assemblies and schismatics”. Strangely, according to the minutes, while 13
bishops were present, only 8 signed the conciliar encyclical.[152] The
bishops who were present but apparently did not sign were Gerontius,
Callinicus, Stephen, Paisius of Gardikion and Paisius of Aegina.[153]
But the strangest aspect of this Auxentiite “counter-coup” was
the extraordinary speed with which it was accomplished. According to the
Auxentiites’ own statements, their three senior bishops on one and the same
day (February 14 or 27 – the Auxentiite sources differ here): (1) heard of
the Callistite consecrations, (2) met in order to condemn them and depose the
Callistites, (3) drew up a list of 10 candidates for the episcopate, (4)
assembled the 10 candidates (were they all waiting in the next room?), (5)
obtained the permission of the two other members of the Synod, Paisius of
Euripus and Acacius of Canada (this is not mentioned in the minutes, but Bishop
Macarius assures us it happened), and (6) consecrated them. Another source says
that two of the new bishops (Athanasius of Larissa and Stephen of Chios) were
consecrated on one and the same day in different churches by different bishops.[154] Even
the extremely pro-Auxentiite Bishop Macarius admits, with almost British
under-statement, “that Archbishop Auxentius did act in a rather hurried
manner…”[155]
Thus the size (8 bishops), unexpectedness and uncanonicity of the
Callistite coup was exceeded, if that were possible, by the still
greater size (10 bishops), unexpectedness, uncanonicity – and extraordinary
speed - of the Auxentiite counter-coup! The only explanation Bishop
Macarius can give for this extraordinary speed - “things were in such a wild
and unexpected state” – is weak, to say the least. A much more likely explanation is that the
Auxentiite coup was not a wild reaction to a totally unexpected event,
but a carefully planned reaction to an already foreseen event: the Auxentiites
knew of the Callistite coup well in advance, and were therefore able to
plan their own counter-coup well in advance, and put it into effect
immediately they heard about the Callistite consecrations. In fact, there are
some indications that Auxentius was not totally opposed to the Callistite coup,
in that it “freed his hands”[156] to
consecrate those whom he wanted as bishops – and of whom he knew that
several of his bishops, the future Callistites, would not approve.
On the other hand, one of those newly
consecrated by Callistus, Callinicus of the
However, when all the bishops were in the sanctuary taking off their
vestments, Cyprian said to one of them, "Now, how are we going to explain
all this to Archbishop Auxentios?" Callinicus overheard this and realised
that his spiritual father had lied to him. He believed that the whole venture
was planned by Cyprian, and that he had deceived Callistus and Anthony into
believing that Auxentius had given his permission.[158]
However, the Cyprianite Bishop Ambrose of Methone disagrees: “Having
followed personally all the events in question, I can assure you that
Metropolitan Cyprian had absolutely nothing to do with the planning of the
consecrations; indeed, though he had very friendly relations with Metropolitan
Callistus, he had up to that time never met Metropolitan Anthony. He consulted
the brotherhood, and his confessor, Archimandrite Ambroise Frontier, before
accepting the proposition of the two metropolitans. He was in fact opposed to
some of the candidates proposed, but was not in a position to veto them.”[159]
While it seems very unlikely that Auxentius gave his permission (here we
agree with Bishop Macarius), it is equally unlikely, for the reasons given
above, that Auxentius did not know what was going to happen. Probably both
sides knew already, before their split, that the candidates to the episcopate
of the one side would not be acceptable to the other; so both sides
prepared coups.
From a tactical point of view, Callistus and Anthony made a serious
mistake when they “jumped the gun” and carried out their consecrations first.
For their admittedly uncanonical act, however good the motivation (the
cleansing of the Church from the tares sown by Auxentius), was made to appear
as black as night, and the storm it raised covered the still more daring and
uncanonical counter-coup of the Auxentiites…
The Callistite Synod also tried to approach ROCOR, but was rebuffed. The
ROCOR resolution of
“Archbishop Callistus finds preservation of relations with the Russian
Orthodox Outside of Russia absolutely essential. In view of this, he and Bishop
Anthony of
“Archbishop Auxentius, on his part, has addressed the Synod of Bishops
in a letter dated April 12, accusing Archbishop Callistus and Bishop Anthony of
“RESOLVED. Lovingly honouring the podvig
of our brethren who have suffered considerably in
“However, there is no doubt that several consecrations which have been
performed by Archbishop Auxentius, especially in the recent past, and which
have caused a change in our mutual relations, have entailed serious violations
of the canons of the Church and could serve as a basis of an ecclesiastical
trial against those who performed them. The consecration of bishops performed
by him without need and without such bishops having diocesan territory
especially give rise to doubts and suspicions.
“The Synod of Bishops understands the anxiety of Metropolitan Callistus
and values his concern for the preservation of communion with the Russian
Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, as well as his desire to establish genuine
ecclesiastical peace and canonical order in
“Only after the removal of all bishops suspected of canonical crimes can
a beginning be made for a correct canonical organization of the True Orthodox
Church in
“Be that as it may, having no authority for the Council to resolve
problems which arise in Church life in Greece, the Synod of Bishops will watch
all that goes on there attentively, offering up prayers that the Lord will help
our Greek brethren to set aright the correct canonical order of life which
would make possible the restoration of normal relations with them…”
Metropolitans Acacius and Chrysostom disapproved of both the coup
and the counter-coup, but were especially scathing about Auxentius’ new
consecrations. As they wrote: “The ‘three hierarchs’ (the archbishop and the
metropolitans of
Notwithstanding this fierce rebuke, the Auxentiite Synod made several
approaches to Metropolitans Acacius and Chrysostom. But the latter resisted
these blandishments, believing that their concerns for the cleansing of the
Church had not been addressed.
However, on
It is a pity that neither of these suggestions was acted upon. Instead,
on September 16, the Auxentiite Synod removed Metropolitan Chrysostom from his
see in Thessalonica and on October 23 raised Bishop Euthymius to the rank of
metropolitan to take his place. However, the majority of the flock in
In 1981 the Auxentiite Synod decided to remove the penalties it had
imposed on Metropolitans Acacius and Chrysostom. Then, in the next year, it
reimposed them. Then the Synod itself split, with one part remaining with
Auxentius and the other following the leadership of Metropolitan Gerontius of
Piraeus. Bishop Macarius, who likes to dwell in detail on all the other divisions,
passed this one over very hastily: “In the meantime a division broke out, the
Lord alone knows for what reason He allowed it, in the canonical [according to
Macarius: Auxentiite] Holy Synod. I don’t think it is necessary to spend any
more time on this short division…”[162]
However, this “short division” related to an issue that was to become
increasingly important – that of the legal corporations. Now the issue
of corporations was important because Churches as such are not registered in
Bishop Photius writes: “In the beginning, there existed the corporation
‘The General Fund of the Church of the True Orthodox Christians of Greece’,
which had control of about 25 churches. It was under the control of the
Auxentiite-Gerontians, who in the period 1971-1976 had removed from the board
the four hierarchs – Acacius, Auxentius, Peter and Gabriel – who disagreed with
them. In 1979, with the coup, the Auxentiite-Gerontians removed from the
‘General Fund’ all those who had taken part in the coup. Thus Callistus
of Corinth, Anthony of Megara, Cyprian of Orope, Maximus of Magnesia,
Callinicus of Achaia, Matthew of Oinoe, Germanus of Aiolia, Calliopius of
Pentapolis, Mercurius of Knossus and Callinicus of the
“In June, 1983, the hierarchs Maximus of Magnesia (from now on ‘of
Demetrias’) and Callinicus of the
“In the same year a struggle broke out between the Auxentiites and
Gerontius for the control of the ‘General Fund’. Gerontius emerged as the
winner from the struggle…”[166]
The Callistites also began to split up, dividing over the old
ecclesiological question whether the new calendarists had valid sacraments or
not. As we have seen, in 1983 three metropolitans – Maximus, Germanus and
Callinicus of the
The Italian and
In June, 1984, Auxentius consecrated a second Portuguese bishop, James,
without the knowledge of part of his Synod. “Auxentius had promised his clergy
that he would call them and listen to their opinions before any episcopal
consecration. Therefore, in order to bring about this consecration, he summoned
a few of them (those whom he wanted) and decided, in spite of the reasonable
objections of two or three clerics, that Hieromonk James should be elected as
assistant bishop to Bishop Gabriel of
Not content with this uncanonicity, Auxentius proceeded to another.
“Both Auxentius and Gabriel had promised before God, the hierarchs and the
priests present at that time that James would remain as Gabriel’s assistant, so
that he would not be able to take part in the consecration of another bishop
with Gabriel. However, in October, 1984, we were informed to our astonishment
that the two Portuguese ‘bishops’ had consecrated yet another Portuguese bishop
and two Italians, with the blessings and prayers of Auxentius,”[170] and
the participation of Metropolitans Gerasimus, Maximus, Germanus and Athanasius
of Larissa. One of the new bishops, the Italian Gabriel of Aquileia, turned out
to be a fervent supporter, if not worshipper, of the fascist dictator
Mussolini![171]
Moreover, Auxentius – acting completely on his own this time, now
gave this new group a “Tome of Autonomy”![172]
In 1987 this newly “autonomous” Church split up, with the Metropolitan
Eulogius of Milan being received into the Polish Orthodox Church.[173]
In 1990 Metropolitan Gabriel followed, claiming that he had not known
that Auxentius confessed that the new calendarists had no grace, which, he
said, was a “heretical opinion”. He took with him two bishops, 60 parishes and
about 80,000 laity. Soon this Portuguese church was practising a particularly
strange form of ecumenism.[174]
After Gabriel’s death, Bishop Joao was elected metropolitan and
confirmed by the Polish Synod. Subsequently, the
In 1993 the “Synod of Milan” joined the “Patriarchate of Kiev” led by
the KGB agent Philaret Denisenko, and was given yet another “Tome of Autonomy”
by them…[176]
The
By this time the Church was disintegrating so fast, and with such
evidently terrible consequences for all the faithful, that the Auxentiite and
Gerontian Synods (which now included most of the defunct Callistite Synod)
decided to cast aside their differences and unite. And so on January 4/17,
1985, they came together and agreed: (1) to recognise the consecrations of 1979
on both sides, (2) to remove the penalties they had placed on each other, and
(3) remove the accusations they had cast against each other.
The reunited Synod of 17 bishops comprised: Archbishop Auxentius and
Metropolitans Gerontius of Piraeus, Callinicus of Phthiotis, Anthony of Megara,
Maximus of Demetrias, Callinicus of Corinth, Matthew of Oinoe, Germanus of
Aitolia, Calliopius of Pentapolis, Callinicus of the Dodecanese, Euthymius of
Thessalonica, Athanasius of Larissa, Stephen of Chios, Maximus of Cephalonia,
Athanasius of Acharnae, Gerasimus of Thebes and Justin of Euripus.[177]
It should be noted that the original “rebels” against the Auxentiite
Synod, Metropolitans Acacius, Chrysostom, Gabriel and Peter, still refrained
from joining this union, fearing that it simply covered up crimes, and would
soon disintegrate. They were soon to be proved right…
More surprising, even Bishop Macarius criticises the union, saying:
“Immeasurable grief takes hold of my heart”. Why? Because the recognition of
the consecrations on both sides meant that the small group of formerly
Callistite bishops whom he blames for subsequent events – especially Callinicus
of Achaia and Calliopius of Pentapolis – and who had not, unlike the other
penitent Callistite bishops, received cheirothesia from Auxentius, were
not forced to repent of having been schismatics and receive cheirothesia.
But Bishop Macarius fails to see that if, as he believes, Auxentius was
essentially blameless and all those who broke communion from him thereby became
schismatics, then the group of Gerontian bishops to which he belonged (and
belongs) – Callinicus of Phthiotis and Euthymius of Thessalonica – also
became schismatics when they broke away from Auxentius in 1983, and
should also have received cheirothesia. In fact, it could be argued
that insofar as the Gerontians broke away from Auxentius over the question of
who controlled certain church buildings – in other words, over “filthy lucre” (I
Peter 5.2), their motivation was worse than that of the Callistites, and
they deserved a more severe penalty. So, as the English proverb goes: “Those
who live in glass houses should not throw stones…”
In the opinion of the present writer, however, all sides -
Callistites, Auxentiites and Gerontians – were guilty in different ways and to
different degrees, and so union between them was possible without hypocrisy
only on the basis of mutual forgiveness of sins, recognition of orders and
removal of all bans. Or if, as Bishop Macarius asserts, this was impossible on
canonical grounds, then the only solution was for all 17 bishops to retire…
In any case, the union collapsed when it emerged that Auxentius had
secretly consecrated Dorotheus Tsakos, a former new calendarist priest who had
been defrocked by the new calendarists in 1968 for homosexuality. Tsakos had
then twice been consecrated “metropolitan” by Old Calendarist episcopi
vagantes. In July, 1985 he began to show priests an ordination certificate
purporting to prove that he had been consecrated “Metropolitan of Sparta and
all the
On July 6/19, 1985, the Holy Synod met to
discuss the matter. The three metropolitans involved denied that the
consecration had taken place. Auxentius admitted that his signature might be
genuine because he did sometimes sign blank ordination certificates to be
filled in later (a revealing confession in itself!). But he denied – and always
continued to deny – that he knew anything at all about the consecration of
Tsakos. However, immediately after this meeting of the Synod, Gerasimus of
Thebes confessed that the consecration had taken place as Tsakos had stated,
and signed a written affidavit to that effect in the presence of eight other
bishops.
Fr. Basil of Holy Transfiguration Monastery,
Holy Transfiguration Monastery asks: “What is the validity of such
depositions, made by witnesses who contradict and refute themselves?”[179] But is
it not usual for a criminal caught red-handed in a criminal act to lie and then
to change his testimony when his lie is exposed? In any case, why should Gerasimus
have admitted to the crime even once if he was innocent? Moreover, there were
other eyewitness testimonies confirming Gerasimus’ guilt. One of these was the
Reader Pericles Tsakiris, whom the translator of Fr. Basil’s letter rather
furtively and obliquely seeks to blacken in a footnote.
As a result of their inquiries the committee came to the following
conclusions, which any unprejudiced observer must agree with: (a) the
consecration of Dorotheus Tsakos did take place, at the hands of Metropolitans
Maximus and Gerasimus, and on the orders of Archbishop Auxentius; (b) the date
was probably after Pascha, 1985 (which conclusion was confirmed by Gerasimus’
last written deposition); and (c) the participants in the event, having been
sworn to secrecy by Auxentius, lied to the Holy Synod and for fairly obvious
reasons tried to obscure the date of the event.
Fr. Basil goes on to claim that before the investigative committee could
complete its work, the seventeen bishops who eventually defrocked Auxentius had
created a schism. Therefore, he says, even if the consecration did take place,
it is not Auxentius but his accusers who are the guilty ones!
This is the exact opposite of the truth! The fact of the matter
is that in September, while the investigating committee was still carrying out
its work and interrogating witnesses (as far as they could, for Auxentius and
Maximus refused to cooperate in any way), a group of Auxentiite bishops decided
to declare the affair of Dorotheus Tsakos “closed”, regarding “every attempt to
revive it as anticanonical and an attack on the Church”. They also declared
that the invitation to the metropolitans to give evidence to the investigating
committee the next day was “anticanonical”, “parasynagogical” and “counter to
the will of the Holy Synod” - although the Holy Synod had appointed the
investigating committee only two months before!
It is interesting to note which bishops signed this astonishing attempt
to silence the work of the investigating committee: the oath-breaking and
Mussolini-loving Portuguese and Italians Gabriel, James, Eulogius, Theodore and
Gregory, who were not even members of the Holy Synod; Auxentius,
Athanasius, Maximus and Germanus, who had participated in the uncanonical
consecrations of the Portuguese and Italians and (in the case of Auxentius
and Maximus) Tsakos; and the Americans Paisius and Vincent, who had been
closely associated with Auxentius in the early 1980s (for example, in the
Auxentiite union with the Free Serbs in 1982) and later joined the new
calendarists.
In other words, these bishops who were now trying to stop the work of
the investigating committee were in essence the same group of bishops who had
been associates of Auxentius before the union of January, 1985, and had caused
such damage to the Church before that date.
In spite of this provocation, the investigating bishops patiently
continued their work. They invited Auxentius to appear before the Synod three
times, but he refused. Then Auxentius, anticipating the announcement of his
deposition, formed an “anti-Synod” and called on the president of the
Even Bishop Macarius admits that Auxentius’s actions in this period were
indefensible, but characteristically chooses not to go into detail on a matter
that clearly embarrasses him, writing that Auxentius and the bishops that still
remained loyal to him “undertook a series of hurried and uncanonical
defrockings of many of our hierarchs.”[181]
The reason he is so reticent is that one of the hierarchs defrocked by
Auxentius was Macarius’ fellow-worker, Metropolitan Euthymius of Thessalonica,
whom Auxentius accused of initiating his trial and deposition in order to avoid
investigation of moral charges against himself: “while an order was given that
a judicial examination should be put into operation in order to elucidate the accusations
against the moral situation of Metropolitan Euthymius Orphanos, they turned
round and incompetently initiated an examination against us to see whether we
had indeed proceeded to nominate and consecrate Archimandrite Dorotheus Tsakos
as Metropolitan of Patras…” Auxentius defrocked Euthymius on
And yet in spite of this Bishop Macarius vehemently rejects the validity
of Auxentius’ defrocking by – among others – his own party of Gerontius,
Callinicus and Euthymius!
And some years later, in 1997, his Synod (headed at that time by
Callinicus of Phthiotis and now, in 2005, by Macarius himself) declared that
“the altercations during the year 1985 between the blessedly reposed hierarchs
Auxentius and Gerontius arose from the plots of third parties and… the verdicts
of both are uncanonical and invalid… It is understood that we recognize and
also bless all the priestly services and other sacred ecclesiastical actions of
the aforementioned Archbishop and Metropolitans, except the ordinations which
they performed after 1985 to the present, which we reserve the right to examine
upon the petition of the ordinands.”[183]
However, this makes no sense. If, as Bishop Macarius asserts time and
time again, Auxentius was the last true archbishop of the True Orthodox
Christians (before himself), and he remained true throughout the stormy period
1979-1985, and his defrocking in 1985 was uncanonical, then he (Macarius)
condemns himself and his own party on at least three counts: (1) for breaking
with Auxentius over the issue of the legal corporation in 1983, (2) for
unjustly defrocking Auxentius for the consecration of Tsakos, and (3) for
remaining in communion with Euthymius after Auxentius defrocked him and his
elder. But Macarius wishes to exonerate both Auxentius (although he
admits that his actions in 1985 were wrong) and himself and his party –
while laying all the blame on mysterious “plots of third parties”.
Returning now to Fr. Basil’s defence of Auxentius, he seeks to
demonstrate, from the writings of the Holy Fathers and the history of the
Church, that Orthodox Christians are not allowed to break communion with their
lawful ecclesiastical authority unless that authority has proclaimed heresy,
and even if that authority has committed flagrant crimes. This is true – so
long as the possibility of bringing the sinning archbishop to trial exists. But
Fr. Basil appears to reject the possibility that metropolitans can bring their
archbishop to trial for any other charge than heresy. In this opinion he is
mistaken. There have been many occasions in Church history when archbishops
have been defrocked by their fellow bishops in accordance with the Holy Canons
for transgressions other than heresy. If such were not the case, then as long
as the archbishop did not proclaim heresy he could commit murder and adultery
and remain first-hierarch of the Church – which is halfway to Papism…
A New Florinite Archbishop
In November, 1985, Metropolitan Gerontius approached Metropolitan
Chrysostom and invited him to the join the Synod that had been purged of
Auxentius and his supporters. Chrysostom replied in a conciliatory manner,
thanked Gerontius “for your recognition of the righteousness of our (four
bishops’) break of relations with the Synod”, but insisted on the fulfilment of
two conditions before he could join: “the removal of Bishop Euthymius from my
diocese” and the seeking of the written opinion of theologians on the degree to
which “economy” (condescension) could be employed with regard to the earlier
canonical questions that had not yet been resolved. This was necessary “in view
of the extremely detailed deadlock in which our Holy Struggle has come…”
The opinions of six theologians (three priests and three laymen) were
sought. They said that the four bishops – Acacius, Chrysostom, Gabriel and
Peter – could join the Synod led by Gerontius only if certain conditions were
fulfilled. One these was that the new president of the Synod should not be any
bishop who had been involved in the Callistite coup or Auxentiite
counter-coup of 1979. This was an eminently reasonable condition, since
all of the participants in the coup and counter-coup of 1979, not
to mention the Gerontian schism of 1983, had besmirched their reputations, and
would not have had the authority to unite the Church for long. The new
archbishop could only come from one of the four bishops – Acacius, Chrysostom,
Gabriel and Peter - who had taken no part in these events, but who had pointed
out the need for a cleansing of the Church from the tares sown by Auxentius.
This need was now, belatedly, recognised by all.
Of these four bishops, Metropolitan Peter, as living in
Finally, in January, 1986, Metropolitan Chrysostom joined, and was
elected archbishop by ten votes to six. It will be remembered that Chrysostom
had been elected as second candidate for the episcopate (after Acacius Pappas)
as far back as the pan-clerical congress in April, 1957.[185]
So there was a certain historical justice in his being elected archbishop now,
some thirty years later.
However, Bishop Macarius writes: “My conscience forces me to condemn the
election of Chrysostom as archbishop as totally uncanonical because, first and
foremost, it was made as a result of the uncanonical defrocking of the
canonical Archbishop Auxentius, whose throne Chrysostom seized while the archbishop
still alive, making him an adulterous free-rider…”
Macarius here fails to mention the rather important fact that Chrysostom
took no part in the defrocking of Auxentius. That was done by Gerontius and his
faction – that is, Bishop Macarius’ own faction! As for “seizing” the throne,
what kind of “seizure” are we talking about when Chrysostom in no way imposed
himself, but was first invited by Gerontius to join the Synod, and was then
elected in a perfectly canonical election?! So if Chrysostom was an “adulterous
free-rider”, the Gerontian bishops were those who prepared the bedchamber and
even invited the lovers into it!
“Secondly,” continues Bishop Macarius, “during the proceedings of the
election, there were present two Metropolitans of Thessalonica, Chrysostom and
Euthymius, and both of them voted as such, something that is totally contrary
to the Holy Canons.”[186]
This is a more just accusation. Nevertheless, it may well be asked:
whose fault was it that there were two metropolitans of Thessalonica?
Chrysostom had been made metropolitan of the city much earlier than Euthymius,
and the Gerontians, as Chrysostom noted, had recognised the justice of his
struggle against corruption in the Church. Clearly, therefore, if one of the
two metropolitans was an adulterer bishop, it was Euthymius!
The issue was the more serious in that the flock in Thessalonica was
divided, with one part refusing to accept Euthymius because of his reputation –
throughout
Clearly, the only solution to the problem was a canonical ecclesiastical
trial of Euthymius.…
Almost immediately the problem of the legal corporations raised its head
again. 8 hierarchs – Gerontius of Piraeus, Callinicus of Phthiotis, Euthymius
of Thessalonica, Stephen of Chios, Athanasius of Acharnae, Justin of Euripus,
Paisius of America and Vincent of Aulona (the last two joined a little later) –
belonged to the board of the corporation “General Fund of the Church of the
True Orthodox Christians of Greece”. 4 hierarchs – Anthony of Megara,
Callinicus of Achaia, Matthew of Oinoe and Calliopius of Pentapolis – belonged
to the board of the corporation “Greek Church of the True Orthodox Christians”.
The remaining 4 hierarchs – Archbishop Chrysostom, Peter of Astoria, Maximus of
Magnesia and Callinicus of the
Overtures towards a union of the two corporations were made by the board
of the “Greek Church of the True Orthodox Christians” to the board of the
“General Fund” – but these overtures were rejected.[187]
The outlines of the schism of 1995 can already be discerned in these
figures. Clearly, the faction headed by Metropolitan Gerontius, and including
the notorious Euthymius, could control the Synod if it wanted, for it had half
the votes in the Synod and control of many more churches than the others
through the “General Fund”.
Much would depend on how Metropolitan Gerontius used his power. And much
would depend on how the other members of his faction would act when he died and
they ceased to have the majority in the Synod. Metropolitan Gerontius died in
1994, on the eve of the schism…
The Ecclesiology of Metropolitan Cyprian