I am not sure what you are saying OOD. That no one in the MP suffered martyrdom for confessing Orthodoxy? Intersting because I thought your synod was in communion with ROCOR at the time they glorifed the new martyrs...so I would assume you accept their glorification (i.e ROCOR's).
Russian Orthodox churches may unite soon
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Nektarios14
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then why didn't Saint Basil do schisms or state Anathemas against the Semi-Arians or Arians after he became Bishop/Metropolitan of Caesaria,Cappadocia?
St. Basil made it his policy to try to unite the semi-Arians with the Nicene Orthodox against the outright Arians.
"Schisms are caused by ecclesiastical disputes, and for causes that are not incurable, and for differences concerning penance."
From:
Canon I of The First Canonical Epistle of Our Holy Father Basil, Archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia to Amphilochius, Bishop of Iconium
http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/NPNF2-14/N ... 98_2155541
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OrthodoxyOrDeath
Nektarios,
I am not saying anything, I am asking a question. Unfortunateley, I don't know the life of all the new martyrs, and since someone is claiming that there were martyrs who confessed sergianism, I asked a simple question - because I do not believe any martyr would be recognized a martyr who did not have a sound confession of faith.
Waldemar, I completley agree. In fact, heresy is not at all incurable.
As I wrote before regarding Serianists... and I guess I'm copy/pasting it again from another thread...
In those desperate times when mere survival is not just a daily issue but an hourly one, priests/bishops followed Sergi. I'm sure after they were arrested, they repented, knowing that they had followed a false doctrine. How could they not? And how do we personally know what they were saying at the hour of their death? The laypeople of those days who went to Sergianist priests wanted contact with God, no matter what, and they had to be very brave to admit that they were Christian in the first place. Them going to Church, possibly to a Sergianist priest, is what probably got them killed. It doesn't change that they died for God.
My great-grandfather was a priest... if he became a Sergianist I do not know. What did happen was that he was inprisoned for a very long time, he was taken from his home for several years, without anyone knowing where he was taken, or if he was still alive. The last 6 months of that inprisonment they marched him out ever day to stand in line for exectution. At the end of the day, they would march him back. When the released him under house-arrest, he died 2 months later a broken man. If they had executed him, I would consider him a New Martyr either way, if had he been Sergianist or not.
I have heard, time and again, from people who survived the purges, that Sergianism came down to, for the most part, cowardliness.
And OOD... chew on this... I do think you have a some bad ideas about church politics but are true in your faith. If you were martyred (God forbid) for whatever reason, I'd still consider you a martyr.
Waldemar, I completley agree. In fact, heresy is not at all incurable.
Then there's hope! Hope for all of us!
The Holy Fathers of the Church teach that:
"Grace also acts through the unworthy, so we are indeed sanctified even through unworthy priests." Blessed Theophylact of Bulgaria
"Grace always belongs to God. God’s also is the Mystery. Man (celebrating the Mystery) is merely the one who serves. If he be good, then he is in agreement with God, acting in harmony. If he is bad, then God celebrates a visible Mystery through him, conveying an invisible grace Himself…Do not think that the Divine Mysteries depend on the morals of people and their actions: they are made holy by He to Whom they belong." Blessed Augustine
"God acted through the very cattle near the Ark when he wanted to save his people (1st Kings 6). Could either the life of a priest or his virtue accomplish something like this? Divine Gifts do not depend on a priest’s virtues. All comes about by Grace—the priest opens his lips, and God does the rest; the priest performs only the outward actions." St. John Chrysostom
quoted by: Fr. Victor Potapov in this beautiful pastoral letter:
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OrthodoxyOrDeath
Ania,
I certainly appreciate your personal connections to these issues, I have none. Nor have I ever been under any persecutions, and if I was living at that time and in that place, what wold I have done? I pray I would have had the strength to be a martyr, even now, because I somehow feel that unless one aquires that kind of spiritual strength, whether he or she is actually persecuted, would that not be the only state which will enter the kingdom of God? I don't know.
In those desperate times when mere survival is not just a daily issue but an hourly one, priests/bishops followed Sergi. I'm sure after they were arrested, they repented, knowing that they had followed a false doctrine. How could they not? And how do we personally know what they were saying at the hour of their death? The laypeople of those days who went to Sergianist priests wanted contact with God, no matter what, and they had to be very brave to admit that they were Christian in the first place. Them going to Church, possibly to a Sergianist priest, is what probably got them killed. It doesn't change that they died for God.
The Church and the episcopacy are not individual and private matters, but Mysteries given by the Church and in the Church. God will judge the denier as a person, but he cannot be a priest or martyr of the Church when he denies the Church which gave him everything, and officially and openly deserts to the camp of the deniers. Those who publicly denied Christ in order to avoid punishment at the hands of temporal rulers and did not repent have always been considered by the Church as estranged from her, even though it was known by all that, within their hearts, they had never denied Christ or His Church.
This is true for the entire history of the Church.
During the Roman persecutions, those who denied Christ by so much as bribing an official to provide a fake certificate saying the individual offered to the “gods” (a way at the time to find out who was a Christian), these people have always been considered as fallen from the Church like Judas. And if they so chose to repent, it always involved a public confession that almost always brought death!
So how then can she not consider as estranged from her those who did the same in Russia? And especially those who did worse without the threat of martyrdom, publicly denied the Faith and betrayed Christ?
The ideas you are forwarding and which I quoted above are foreign to the conscience of the Orthodox Church, and will provide a good basis for receiving a "mark" on your right hand.
Last edited by OrthodoxyOrDeath on Fri 28 May 2004 12:12 pm, edited 2 times in total.
