Excellent reminders for all of us enlivened by Bp Stefan's personal recollections :
" The ROCOR Church , соборно , never accepted the concept of an ailing church; never considered the MP as having grace, but called it a false church. Saint Metropolitan Philaret (Voznesensky) repeatedly stressed that we must avoid having even any informal contact with the Moscow Patriarchate - He not only called the MP a false church, but a ‘disease’. On Orthodoxy Sunday, February 27, 1972, he gave a sermon in which he said the following: “It is sad that people’s reaction towards the red autocephaly – is far from what it should be. We would think that parishes and Оrthodox Russian people would have walked away en masse from this disease. So far we have not seen this.” Would St. Philaret call a church with Grace a disease??
" Metrop. Vitaly (Ustinov) repeatedly denounced the MP as being outside the True Church . Archbishop Averky, Archimandrite Konstantine (Zaitsev) as well as other theologians of Jordanville, all concur that the MP is a false church without grace. I grew up in the Jordanville monastery, and in all the years (?) I never heard anyone question this fact."
http://www.rocor-trenton.com/index_EN.htm
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It's all the more powerful that Metropolitan St Philaret spoke these tart words against the Moscow Patriarchate on the Sunday of Orthodoxy of 1972 -- which was also the Feast of the Apostles to the Slavs Kyrill and Mefody. A doubly significant day therefore that Rocor's valiant Metropolitan made such a direct denunciation of 'the red autocephaly'. It gives us much to think about today, 44 years later, regarding the inescapably dark character of the MP.
Bishop Stefan has many other valuable observations.
It is GOOD to see him writing again on a somewhat frequent basis !