Moronikos,
So are you saying all non-Christians will burn in Hell?
I'm saying that there is no salvation apart from Christ, and His Church. Do you know of any other way of salvation, any other Name under heaven by which men must be saved?
Are you saying all non-Orthodox Christians will burn in Hell?
By their confession and decision, are they members of the Orthodox Church?
Are you saying Orthodox on the non-Julian calendar will burn in Hell? (You believe, don't you, that the new calendar is a heresy?)
Read the Patriarchal and Synodical Encyclical (1920) of the EP on this for yourself. Particularly note zingers like the following...
Our own church holds that rapprochement between the various Christian Churches and fellowship between them is not excluded by the doctrinal differences which exist between them.
or
Secondly, that above all love should be rekindled and strengthened among the churches, so that they should no more consider one another as strangers and foreigners, but as relatives, and as being a part of the household of Christ and "fellow heirs, members of the same body and partakers of the promise of God in Christ" (Eph. 3. 6).
This document is thoroughly imbued with ecclessiological errors, the very "branch theorism" which ROCOR would eventually anathematize, after much labouring (ultimatly, in vain) to bring back the budding ecumenists to their senses.
Besides the ecclessiological errors themselves (a blanket recognition of heresies and schisms as constituting parts of the Church of Christ), there is a list of propositions for furthering this "ecumenism" (an abuse of a perfectly good term, borrowed from similar Protestant efforts earlier in the 20th century - strictly speaking, "ecumenical" refers to those with the same faith in the same Church, not heresies). The first is the following...
a. By the acceptance of a uniform calendar for the celebration of the great Christian feasts at the same time by all the churches.
This was put into effect by the EP shortly thereafter. Clearly then, the new calendar is a means to facilitating the agenda outlined by the Patriarchal Encyclical I've put forward for your inspection.
However, this is not the whole of the story. Beside the heretical motive behind this change, there are existing canonical problems with this change. Besides the manner in which it was carried out (at first, the EP, Greek State Church, and Romanians adopting the new calendar, thus rending assunder the liturgical/festal unity of the Orthodox Church, which is in contravention of the Council of Nicea - three local Churches, taking it upon themselves to change the universal, ecumenical calendar of the Church, which had been formulated by the consent and authority of the entire Orthodox Church), there is a further, even less ambiguous problem - the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar by Orthodox Churches has been anathematized/forbidden on many occassions.
The Sigillion of the Council in Constantinople in 1583
Anathematizing false beliefs about the Dogma of the Procession of the Holy Spirit, Holy Communion, unleavened bread, the judgment, Purgatory, the heretical Pope, the Paschalia, and the New Calendar Innovation.
To all the genuine Christian children of the Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church of Christ of the East in Trigovyst and in all places, be grace and peace and mercy from Almighty God.
Not a little distress took possession of that Ark of old, when, storm-tossed, it was borne upon the waters; and if the Lord God, remembering Noe, had not in His good will calmed the water, there would have been no hope of salvation in it. In a like manner with the new Ark of our Church, the heretics have raised up a relentless war against us, and we have deemed it well to leave behind the present tome against them so that with the things written in it you may be able more surely to defend your Orthodoxy. But in order that the document may not be burdensome to simpler people, we have decided to set forth the entire subject to you in simple speech as follows:
From old Rome have come certain persons who learned there to think like Latins; and the bad thing is that from being Byzantines (that is, Greeks) born and bred in our own parts, they not only have changed their faith, but they also battle the Orthodox and true dogmas of the Eastern church which Christ Himself delivered to us. Whereupon, having cut them off as rotten members, we order:
1) Whosoever does not confess with heart and mouth that he is a child of the Eastern Church baptized in an Orthodox manner, and that the Holy Spirit proceeds only from the father, essentially and hypostatically, as Christ says in the Gospel, although He proceeds from Father and Son in time, let such a one be out of our Church and let him be anathematized.
II) Whosoever does not confess that in the Mystery of Holy communion laymen should commune from two kinds, both of the precious Body and Blood, but says that it is enough to receive only the Body, for the Blood is also there, even though Christ has spoken and has given each one separately, and they do not keep it, let such be anathematized.
III) Whosoever says that our Lord Jesus Christ at the Mystical Last Supper used unleavened bread as do the Hebrews and not leavened bread, that is, raised bread, let him be far from us and under the anathema as one who thinks like a Jew and as one who introduces the doctrines of Appolinarios and of the Armenians into our Church, on which account let him be anathematized a second time.
IV) Whosoever says that when our Christ and God comes to judge He does not come to judge the souls together with the bodies, but comes in order to decide only for the body, anathema to him.
V) Whosoever says that when they die the souls of the Christians who repented in this life but did not do their penance go to Purgatory - which is a Greek myth - where fire and torment purify them, and they think that there is no eternal torment, as did Origen, and give cause by this to sin freely, let such a one have the anathema.
VI) Whosoever says that the Pope is head of the Church and not Christ, and that he has authority to admit into Paradise with his letters, and can forgive as many sins as will be committed by one who with money received an indulgence from him, let such a one have the anathema.
VII) Whosoever does not follow the customs of the Church which the seven Holy Ecumenical Councils have decreed, and the Holy Pascha and calendar which they enacted well for us to follow, but wants to follow the newly-invented Paschalion [method of fixing the date of Pascha] and the new calendar of the atheist astronomers of the Pope; and opposing them, wishes to overthrow and destroy the doctrines and customs of the Church which we have inherited from our Fathers, let any such have the anathema and let him be outside of the Church and the Assembly of the Faithful.
VIII) We exhort all pious and Orthodox Christians: remain in those things which you learned and in which you were born and bred, and when the times and circumstances call for it, shed your very blood in order both to keep the Faith given us by our Fathers and to keep your confession. Beware of such people and take care, that our Lord Jesus Christ help you. May the blessing of our humility be with you all. Amen.
The 1583rd year from the birth of the God-man, Indiction 12, November 20th.
Jeremias, of Constantinople Sylvester, of Alexandria Sophronios, of Jerusalem (and the rest of the Bishops of the Synod who were present)
(the above is particularly interesting, for it also anathematizes all sorts of things which have now been conceeded by the ecumenists in their varying "conferences" and "agreed statements")
and
The Second Sigillion (1756) against the Papal Calendar
Kirill, by the Grace of God Archbishop of Constantinople - New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch
Due to new abominations, created by papists in regard to the question of changing our Pascha and Calendar.
Removal from the Church
The most honorable clerics of our Great Church of Christ, other most God-fearing Hierarchs and most saintly hieromonks, singers in churches of our city, followers of Paul, who says: "If someone would annunciate contrary to what we annunciated to you, even that be an angel from heavens, anathema on him"; if he is a hierarch or a faithful one, to be removed from God, dammed, and after death not to rot but to dwell in eternal torment. Let stone and iron scatter and decay - they never and by no means. Let them inherit Giza's leprosy and Judas's hanging; let them dwell on earth like Cain, moaning and shivering; and let the wrath of God be on their heads and their share be with the traitor Judas and god-fighting Judeans; let the earth open and swallow them, like once Dathan and Abiron; let the Angel of God chase them with a sward in all the days of their lives, and let them succumb to all the damnations of the Patriarch and the Synod under the eternal removal and in torment of eternal fire.
Amen.
At the very least (since all of these documents were endorsed by the EP), the EP's own anathema fell upon it's own head - though the truth of the matter is, these anathemas (and there are more similar condemnations and prohibitions than these two - see a list here for further details) were accepted at a "Pan-Orthodox"/ecumenical level.
It was on this basis that many in the Greek and Romanian Churches withdrew from fellowship with the new calendarists and condemned them as schismatics (which was their right to do, considering they represented the canonical "part" of the Greek and Romanian Churches.)
It took much longer for the calendar question (and it's consequence) to be evaluated outside of the lands where this was a more immediate question. For example, it would be the substance of ecumenism itself (with the calendar question and the canonical issues involved there being viewed as a secondary, if still important, matter) which would come to cause grief with those in local Churches which never adopted the calendar change (such as the ROCOR.)
I believe, by the judgement of the continuing Greek and Romanian Orthodox Churches ("Old Calendarists"), and by the later Russian Orthodox Church's appraisal of the ecumenist phenomenon as a heresy, the so called "official" local Churches have in fact defected from the canonical Orthodox Church, on the grounds both of schism and heresy. This is an understanding which has only continued to bear itself out in fact (1965 being a pivotal year for the Russians when Patriarch Athenagoras "lifted" the anathemas against Papism and said/did all sorts of anti-canonical/heretical things, but also 1991 when the Antiochians announced their de-facto communion with the Monophysites.)
Not recognized then, as parts of the Orthodox Church, their "fate" is that of other schismatics/heretics.
If the non-Julian calendar is not heretical, then what justifies a schism? If one group walls itself off from another over a non-heretical issue, who is the schismatic?
As previously illustrated, there is both a real canonical question (both the previous anathemas against the adoption of the Gregorian calendar, and the anti-canonical way the EP, Greece, and Romania instituted their "reform"), and the doctrinal question of why this change was suggested/instituted in the first place (which clearly is a question of heresy.)
In light of all of this, it is the EP and associated bodies who are "schismatics"; they have sundered the unity of historically Orthodox peoples, and no one else.
Seraphim
