Counsels from the Holy Mountain.

[joasia]

Fr. Anastasi,

Your explanation, seems to me, to point out that there was alot happening during those times that can't be considered black and white, but a constant movement of grays, until the dust settled. This has happened throughout the history of the Church since Pentecost, until now. But, when we look back, we can see the final decision made and the issue of the calendar was settled once the hierarchs choose their sides. But, many people focus on the specific events and don't take a step back to look at the whole situation. Your explanation lays out all the events to it's conclusion. It was well written and I think should be posted in a specific place, here, as a sticky point, for anyone that would want to know the difference.

Costa,
Sometimes, we need to question what we follow in order to understand what the truth is.

“It is good for me that Thou hast humbled me, that I may learn Thy statutes” (Ps. 118:71 ).

In Christ,
Joanna

[Silver]

Dear Costas,
.......
The hierarchy of the Church of Greece accepted the New Calendar in 1924, which was a schismatic act because it violated the Pan-Orthodox Synods of the 16th century which anathematized the New Calendar (the "Revised Julian" is just a legalistic attempt to skirt around that issue).

Since you don’t like the expression “Revised Julian” and you prefer: New Calendar, for a moment I will agree with you and I would ask you :
Which is more important: to violate a decision of the Pan-Orthodox Synods of the 16th century or to violate Holy Canon of Ecumenical Synod?
Do you know as a priest giving Holy Communion to a faithful using a spoon your church violates the 101st Canon of the 5th/6th Ecumenical Synod?

The State Church of Greece declared the Old Calendarists schismatics, and by 1935, it was clear that the hierarchy of the State Church of Greece was not going to reverse its decision, and so Metropolitans Chrysostomos of Florina, Germanos of Demetrias, and Chrysostomos of Zakynthos severed communion with the innovators.

From 1924 that the Church of Greece became heretic until the year 1935 the tree hierarchs had communion with the rest heretic hierarchs of the Church of Greece. When they decided to leave the Church which Synod “cleaned” them for having communion eleven years with a heretic church? That’s what the Orthodox Canon are demanding for hierarchs who want to follow the Church’s tradition and Canons.

Other Churches began to adopt the New Calendar, and as this happened, they too fell in to schism.

Schism means skhízō, "to tear, to split"). Could you tell me the Church of Greece from where is been torn, since before 1924 and after, has the same full communion with the rest Orthodox Churches?
Right now we have a schismatic Orthodox Church, the FYROM Orthodox Church, with which the rest of Orthodox Churches stopped having communion.
This is the case when we can say: this Church is a schismatic Church.

Therefore, the gates of hell have never prevailed against Christ’s Holy Orthodox Church, which in Greece is represented by the local Church under His Beatitude Archbishop Chrysostomos II of Athens and all Greece. Other local Churches have Old Calendarist/anti-ecumenist Synods that have maintained Orthodoxy in their respective spheres. The Church continues, without heresy present.

But these: “other local Churches Old Calendarist/anti-ecumenist Synods that have maintained Orthodoxy”, are daily bombarding your church of being neo-ecumenistic, because your church’s original ordination are commencing from the New Calendar heretic Romanian Bishop Ioneskou of the ROCOR’s Chicago Archdiocese!...

In Christ,

Costas.

[Silver]

Costa,
Sometimes, we need to question what we follow in order to understand what the truth is.

Joanna,
I am in a position to affirm you—with the grace of my Lord Jesus Christ—that I know my faith very well.
Because of that I am constantly fighting ecumenism and zealotism the two main heresies in the Orthodox Church today!

In Christ,
Costas (Silver )
Montreal-Canada.

[jgress]

Costas,

Thank you for avoiding an inflammatory tone. God forbid we should raise our anger on the day of the penitential Great Canon. Even so, please be wary of accusing us of hypocrisy or anything like that. If you are confused about our position, or think there is a contradiction, try to frame your concerns as inquiring questions, rather than as accusatory questions or statements. Many of us here are highly sensitive, owing to previous encounters and debates, and during the Fast the demons are always eager to destroy our souls with unrighteous anger. If a fight begins, I will have to shut the thread down.

"Set, O Lord, a watch about my mouth, and a door of enclosure round about my lips."

Please read Fr Anastasios' post carefully. It is not the case the state church was 'heretical' in the view of the True Orthodox from 1924 to 1935. What happened was that in 1924 the state church under Abp Chrysostomos Papadopoulos did defy the anathema, and in hindsight we can say they fell under the anathema at that point. Abp Chrysostomos himself led a theological commission that reported, in 1919, that changing the calendar unilaterally, i.e. apart from the Universal Church, would invoke the anathema and create schism. We pointed this out in our declaration of Faith of 1935.

But the condemnation of the state church by the True Church did not happen right away, since we had no bishops with the authority to do that. As Fr Anastasios explains it, this was a time at which the division could still be seen as internal to the Church, not a complete schism. Met Chrysostomos of Florina, who deplored the calendar change and later came over to us, for those ten years was awaiting a reversal of the decision by the State church; there was still time to do that. And, as it happens, many other bishops who did not come over to us were still unwilling to condemn us, e.g. they refused to sign the synodal declaration that excommunicated the True Orthodox. You can find this reference in "The Struggle Against Ecumenism", by Holy Transfiguration Monastery. Even later, many New Calendarists, such as Elder Philotheos Zervakos, sympathized with us. As Fr Anastasios will tell you, even now Elder Ephraim of Arizona counsels Old Calendarists to remain with the TOC (although we don't approve of his position).

The 101st canon of the Quinisext council forbids communicants from bringing their own vessels to receive communion. It says nothing about whether the priest is permitted to administer communion with a spoon or not.

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214 ... i.cii.html

The Matthewites (and some World Orthodox) do in fact accuse my church of hypocrisy over the fact that our first bishop after the repose of Met Chrysostomos was consecrated by a bishop who followed the new calendar. But Bp Teofil Ionescu was not in communion with the new calendar church of Romania (by this time controlled by the communists), but was under the ROCA. By extreme economy, the ROCA Synod permitted Bp Teofil and his flock to continue on the new calendar, since that is what they were used to. But this was an exceptional case: the ROCA as a whole, of course, still followed the patristic calendar. And Bp Teofil was certainly not a heretic. In fact, that was precisely why he broke communion with the Romanian church, after they accepted sergianism, i.e. subjugation of Christ's Church to the atheist authorities.

In any case, whatever irregularities there existed in Abp Akakios' ordination (and the fact he was ordained in secret was more serious than the fact one of his ordainers followed the new calendar), these were removed by the ROCA Synod in 1969, when they recognized our episcopacy and entered into communion with us, having severed communion with the new calendarists.

Each Local Church has to come to its own decision about whether another Local Church is in schism or not. This takes time, and you can't accuse them of inconsistency because they don't make the decision right away. The True Church of Greece took ten years to decide. The ROCA took 45 years to decide about the New Calendar Church, but they took less time to decide about the Sergianist church in Russia, given that they broke communion with Met Sergius right away when they learned of his Declaration of subjection to Soviet power.

We all applaud your opposition to ecumenism, but question your opposition to zealotism. We believe "zealotism", if by that you mean refusal to have communion with open heretics and schismatics, to be the only right way to resist ecumenism and other heresies. You may not accept this, but in that case let us agree to disagree.

In Christ,

Jonathan

[Anastasios]

Dear Costas,

Thanks for a thought-provoking response. I always enjoy it when two people of good will can discuss serious matters openly, without recourse to aggressiveness or mutual personal accusations.

Since you don’t like the expression “Revised Julian” and you prefer: New Calendar, for a moment I will agree with you and I would ask you : Which is more important: to violate a decision of the Pan-Orthodox Synods of the 16th century or to violate Holy Canon of Ecumenical Synod? Do you know as a priest giving Holy Communion to a faithful using a spoon your church violates the 101st Canon of the 5th/6th Ecumenical Synod?

That's a clever argument, but I don't think it really gets to the heart of the matter. The Canonical Tradition of the Church is a complex, deeply spiritual tradition aimed at restoring the sinner to full health (c.f. Trullo Canon 102, the exact next one after the one you cited). As such, there are both dogmatic canons, and disciplinary canons. Both intend to protect the flock against the corruption of demons. The dogmatic canons naturally can never be changed; the disciplinary ones can be re-expressed temporally in different ways over time, while the underlying "canon" (the rule of faith) never changes, even in the disciplinary ones. So for instance, there were married bishops in the Church before, and now there are not; monks originally did not have long hair but a tonsure; now they have long hair, etc. But the underlying canon can be discerned: in the case of bishops, marriage is lawful even for clergy, but the bishops agreed to limit to their ranks eventually only those coming from a monastic background, which does not despise marriage nor the right of married people to enter the clergy; and in the case of the hair, the underlying eternal canon/rule is a concern with vanity and proper ordering. A monk is not to have long hair like a woman, and originally there was a specific tonsure involved; the style of tonsure changed, and monks have long hair now, but it is tied away neatly and not worn in the style of women, which was the original concern. So we see through a careful examination that there are no contradictions.

In the case of the canon you mentioned, it would only be one who is "proof-texting" the canons who could come to the conclusion that the canon in question is dealing with the communion spoon, which developed some centuries later. In reality, the concern is that a person should receive communion on his hands, and not think that it is more pious to bring a plate or box in which to put communion before receiving it. The hands of a man are sanctified by the chrism he receives. Reading the commentary of St. Nikodemos the Haghiorite in the Rudder, one can clearly discern that had the intent of that canon been to forbid the use of the communion spoon, and given the ubiquitous and centuries-old nature of the practice by the time of St. Nikodemos, we would have expected that either a) St Nikodemos would have offered an alternative explanation of the canon or b) he would have attacked the practice as an innovation, as he was wont to do with so many other "pious customs" which were really injurious to the faith (such as infrequent communion). Instead, we see in his commentary basically a restating of the canon with no attempt to justify the practice, which demonstrates a lack of contradiction in his own mind:

In that time there prevailed a custom of laymen communing, just like priests, by taking the holy bread in their hands, in the manner in which they nowadays receive the antidoron. But since some men, on the pretense of reverence, and of paying greater honor to the divine gifts, used to make gold vessels, or vessels of some other precious material, and were wont to partake of the interneratc body of the Lord by receiving it in such vessels; therefore, and on this account, the present Canon will not admit this procedure, even though it be employed for the sake of reverence. Because, in view of the fact that a man is one who has been made in the image of God, and who eats the body and dnnks the blood of Christ, and thereby becomes sanctified, and since he is in fact a body and temple of Christ, according to the Apostle, he transcends all sensible things and inanimate creatures, and consequently his hands are far more precious than any vessel. Hence anyone that wishes to partake of the Lord's body, let him form his two hands into the shape of a cross, ' and let him receive it therein. As for any layman that may receive the body of the Lord in a vessel, and any priest who may impart it in any such thing, let both of them be excornmitnicated, because they prefer an inanimate (i.e., soulless) vessel to the human being molded in the image of God.

If it was not a contradiction for the Saint, why would it be a contradiction for us? Besides, the practice is referring to the layman bringing his own vessel, and not to an instrument used by a priest. The translator offers the additional commentary that it was probably due to the reduction of the ranks of deacons that led to the elements being mingled so a single priest could give communion safely.

From 1924 that the Church of Greece became heretic until the year 1935 the tree hierarchs had communion with the rest heretic hierarchs of the Church of Greece. When they decided to leave the Church which Synod “cleaned” them for having communion eleven years with a heretic church? That’s what the Orthodox Canon are demanding for hierarchs who want to follow the Church’s tradition and Canons.

That was not the argument that I made, though. I employ my terms carefully: parasynagogue, schism, and heresy. These three terms have distinct meaning and application in theology and the canonical tradition. I also do not believe in a light-switch theory of heresy, where one bishop "goes out" with the flip of a switch and anyone that continues with him automatically falls. I think I outlined rather clearly that such things take time to spread, like a disease. Our Lord is very slow to "anger" and we also have to take in to account the difficulties of the time, lack of communication, and difficulty of discerning the facts. From the introduction of the New Calendar, the innovating hierarchs in Greece were a parasynagogue; as time went on they developed in to a full-blown schism.

As far as the necesity of being "cleaned": even if those three bishops were heretics (which they were not) we see in the aftermath of the Meletian schism that the bishop ordained by the heretics who later confessed Orthodoxy was accepted "as is" as a bishop. There are cases when a simple profession of faith is all that is necessary, especially when the division is so fresh. But again, I did not make the argument that the State Church was in heresy from 1924.

Schism means skhízō, "to tear, to split"). Could you tell me the Church of Greece from where is been torn, since before 1924 and after, has the same full communion with the rest Orthodox Churches? Right now we have a schismatic Orthodox Church, the FYROM Orthodox Church, with which the rest of Orthodox Churches stopped having communion. This is the case when we can say: this Church is a schismatic Church.

As other Churches were faced with the decision of whether to support or reject the innovation, and as they chose to innovate, they took on the guilt as well and shared the same fate. The Russian Church Abroad did not accept this innovation and they therefore preserved Orthodoxy. The Church of say, Bulgaria, accepted the innovation and fell. The Church of FYROM is not schismatic just because it was cut off from communion with the other Churches; it was schismatic because it promulgated a false nationalistic ecclesiology. Schism is not just a legalistic concept but is the pronouncement of the reality of an action; if someone is unjustly proclaimed a schismatic, even if it is by the entire rest of the patriarchates (as what happend with St Maximus the Confessor) then the person is not only NOT guilty, but is in fact honored (see for instance Canon 15 of the 1st-2nd Synod). The Church of Greece is the Old Calendar Church of Greece; the New Calendar Synod is the one that entered into schism in 1935 and as other Churches continued to commune with it, they shared its fate. The Church of Greece continued into heresy by accepting ecumenism as well. It continues to get worse, not better.

But these: “other local Churches Old Calendarist/anti-ecumenist Synods that have maintained Orthodoxy”, are daily bombarding your church of being neo-ecumenistic, because your church’s original ordination are commencing from the New Calendar heretic Romanian Bishop Ioneskou of the ROCOR’s Chicago Archdiocese!...

Our Church's second hierarchy (the first being stamped out, bribed off, and divided by the agents of the State of Greece, such that only blessed Chrysostomos of Florina remained, who was alone and with no one to co-consecrate) was established by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, a True Orthodox communion of bishops who opposed Ecumenism and the New Calendar. Bp Theophilus, one of the consecrators of Bp Akakios (the other being Archbishop Leonty of Chile who was on the Old Calendar) was a Romanian Sergianist who repented and was received with his flock into the ROCOR. They were given a period of time to transition over to the Old Calendar. The New Calendar is not in and of itself heretical, but rather, it is the reason it is implemented and its context which is what makes it schismatic and eventually heretical. That context is ecumenism, and we see in the adoption of the New Calendar by the State Church of Greece in 1924 a move away from Orthodoxy. In the case of Bp Theophilus, we see someone breaking communion with the innovators and embracing the True Orthodox Church. Out of pastoral consideration, the New Calendar was allowed temporarily as an economy, which is the exact OPPOSITE of what the State Church of Greece was doing. We see evidence that they meant it was only temporary, because when Bp Kyrill of the Bulgarians switched to the New Calendar, they gave him a certain time frame to swtich back, and when he did not, they severed communion with him (he joined the OCA). Bp Petros of Astoria's ordination was by Seraphim of Caracas and Leonty of Chile, so his ordination was in no way by anyone on the New Calendar anyway.

Regardless of Bp Theophilus's status, in 1969, the ordinations of the GOC bishops were officially recognized in 1969 by the Russian Church Outside Russia, a True Orthodox Church, and so there is no question that our Church is a True Orthodox Church. The other Churches you mention do not refrain from communion with us; we refrain from communion with them for their heresy and schism.

All of these arguments have already been addressed in the article "The Calendar Question" by Fr Basile Sakkas which I linked you to above. I think it would suffice for you to have recourse to that instead of me providing you with summaries of an already-existing article. But it has been my pleasure to engage you to this point on a very important topic.

In Christ,

Fr Anastasios

[mmcxristidis]

A monk is not to have long hair like a woman, and originally there was a specific tonsure involved; the style of tonsure changed, and monks have long hair now, but it is tied away neatly and not worn in the style of women, which was the original concern. So we see through a careful examination that there are no contradictions.

I have seen Bishop Christodulos serving a Divine Liturgy at least twice with his hair untied and hanging down the middle of his back. I have seen pictures of Monks ( Bishops) of the Russian tradition wearing their long hair down untied or tied in a ponytail unlike the Greek tradition of wearing their long hair not only tied but twisted into a bun. I have never seen any priests or monks or bishops wearing their hair untied and hanging down ( that is ones of the Greek tradition ). My question is why does Bishop Christodulos not follow the Greek tradition, does he prefer, as a Greek bishop, the traditions of the Russian ? if so then I would have another question to ask about him. How do you explain this ?

[Anastasios]

I have seen Bishop Christodulos serving a Divine Liturgy at least twice with his hair untied and hanging down the middle of his back. I have seen pictures of Monks ( Bishops) of the Russian tradition wearing their long hair down untied or tied in a ponytail unlike the Greek tradition of wearing their long hair not only tied but twisted into a bun. I have never seen any priests or monks or bishops wearing their hair untied and hanging down. My question is why does Bishop Christodulos not follow the Greek tradition, does he prefer, as a Greek bishop, the traditions of the Russian ? if so then I would have another question to ask about him. How do you explain this ?

Most of the time, he keeps his hair tied tightly and in a bun, but on two occasions I have seen him let it down but still tied up.

How do I explain this? He probably had a migraine and needed to relieve the pressure.