I had praised on this list the latest ROAC encyclical, which condemns Sergianism,the new calendar, World Orthodoxy(especially the MP), ecumenism, Kyprianism. I had not, alas, yet read the additions the ROAC synod has made to the Synodicon Of Orthodoxy, to be read every Sunday of Orthodoxy. I cannot sign-on to these additions: In good conscience I cannot say Memory Eternal of M Antony Khrapovitsky: he taught falsely about the calendar schism, as if the 16th century Pan-Orthodox Councils had not occurred, and he wrote that horrendously ambiguous DOGMA OF REDEMPTION (of which he embarrassingly said only a person as enlightened as he can understand!).In good conscience I cannot say Memory Eternal of M Chrysostomos of Florina, who praised the very Stalin the ROAC encyclical calls a tyrant, and who persecuted the GOC, especially St Matthaios, even declaring him to be outside the Church,simply because the Blessed Abp would not agree that those who remained on the Church's calendar were suddenly only "a sentinnel" within the state church of Greece. I cannot say Memory Eternal even of M Philaret, who also taught falsely about the calendar(in 1974, after seeming to teach correctly about it in the 1973 introduction to THE CALENDAR QUESTION by then-ROCOR priest Basile Sakkas:this doublemindeness pervades ROCOR's history )and who in 1969 had no canonical right to regularize the secret uncanonical "consecration" of renegade "Matthewite"
Akakios in 1960,since the co-consecrator was a new calendarist, and according to the ecclesiology of the GOC new calendarists are outside the Church and therefore cannot make bishops for the GOC---and no man, not even a confessor, can will someone who is outside the Church to be considered as within the Church. That ROCOR had a bishop on the new calendar demonstrates her lack of good faith in securing a union with the GOC. In good conscience I cannot say Memory Eternal of M Glycherie of Romania, because there is a possibility his ecclesiology was Kyprianite: the Kyprianites claim him as a Saint: a healthy synod cannot on the one hand condemn Kyprianism and on the other other extol someone whom the Kyprianites regard as one of their own. Finally, I cannot say Memory Eternal of Abp Leonty of Chile. The ROAC's own website in America has Bishop Gregory Grabbe's daughter saying that Abp Leonty of Chile believed the Papists have valid mysteries. Memory Eternal? I wrote to the ROAC bishop in America about this, Bishop Andrei, and he reponded breezily, not with a denial but with what struck me as worldly indifference:"Abp Leonty of Chile was not the only ROCOR hierarch who believed the Papists have valid mysteries." I was slackjawed. Not to mention the fact that in 1962 Abp Leonty of Chile, who believed the Papists were the Church, traipsed throughout Greece making "bishops" with Akakios, thereby further mucking up the situation in Greece.
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It is now my opinion that ROCOR was a false-flag operation, essentially a mirage in the desert of apostasy. That the synod of Abp Andreas broke with ROCOR in 1976 saved her the grief many in ROCOR underwent, for the ROAC encyclical also states that M Lavr of sorrowful memory said in an interview shortly before his death that ROCOR had been planning the union with the MP since 1980!
The double and triple-mindedness of ROCOR led to her union with the MP, whose head last year addressed Benedict XVI as "a minister of the Church." Ithank God the true GOC wants nothing to do with the ROCOR-MP,and regards their union with ROCOR as an honest mistake. The unions with the "GOCs" was ROCOR's attempt to govern "the Greeks", even though she never shared the GOC's ecclesiology.
Nicholas Candela
