On Confession of Faith:
Is it necessary to confess the grace of the priesthood has been lost to a Church?
Without the true confession of faith, the basis for a God-pleasing and godly resistance withers away.
We wish to reduce so much of our resistance to moderately firm well-manicured statements that are stern, but certainly not "fanatical."
We wish to condemn the excesses of the world, but we also don't want to go "too far" in our fight against heresy and schism.
And this is precisely the problem.
For without a confession of the TRUTH, we will perish.
Consider O various Old Calendar Ecumenists:
You wish to say: "Well, we hold the New Calendarists are certainly fallen in faith." Or more appropriately, but still euphemistically, "The heresy of ecumenism is laying waste the apostolicity of the Church."
There is only one thing that can be said: The New Calendarists are schismato-heretics, even without full-blown ecumenism, and they have no priesthood and the grace of their sacraments as a consequence is gone.
The same is to be said for the Sergianists.
Why? Why this "fanatical" confession of "Zeal not according to knowledge?" Perhaps it is "lacking in erudition"?
Here is why:
Because unless we clearly affirm that those from whom we separate are TRUE heretics and TRUE schismatics, our separation is schismatic. We have ZERO justification to be separating into provisional synods (That's what they are RIGHT???? smile emoticon ) UNLESS bareheaded heresy is being preached or schism is being enacted.
And let me tell you:
*From the moment the State Church of Greece adopted as its own an anathematized position
*From the moment the State Church of Greece despised the traditions of the fathers
*From the moment the state Church of Greece persecuted piety
*From the moment the State Church of Greece rewarded Homicide (Promoting the Metropolitan who killed Fr Theonas for celebrating an Old Calendar Liturgy)
*From the moment the State Church of Greece sought to seduce from amidst our ranks those metropolitans who would hand us over to her
*From the moment the State Church of Greece IGNORED the pleas, the entrateies, the deonstrations of the Orhtodox people and the Holy Hieromonks and Athonite fathers
*From the moment the State Church of Greece falsely accused as schismatic those bishops who had the RIGHT to separate from schismatic hierarchs
She is no longer simply "Mistaken." She is God-fighting, God-reviling, God-mocking and has, as Saul did when overcome by grief and terrified at the number of the enemies surrounding him, taken the sword of the anathema, and run herself through upon it.
In all these things she is a schism, schismatic, and has continued onward from error to error to THIS DAY, when she welcomes the Pope on her own soil!
For such "hierarchs" there is no priesthood.
The same for the Moscow Patriarchate.
The Same for the Ecumenical Patriarchate.
The same for all of those who continuously and without ceasing persecute those anti-ecumenist confessing souls!
EVEN IF some of them are in schism from US, and yet are anti-ecumenist, and are persecuted by the "Official" Church (Such as Esphigmenou) it is proof positive that the New CAlendarists are schismatics in that they despise the traditions of our fathers.
What does saint Basil say?:
"...because the beginning, true enough, of the separation resulted through a schism, but those who seceded from the Church had not the grace of the Holy Spirit upon them; for the impartation thereof ceased with the interruption of the service. For although the ones who were the first to depart had been ordained by the Fathers and with the imposition of their hands they had obtained the gracious gift of the Spirit, yet after breaking away they became laymen, and had no authority either to baptize or to ordain anyone, nor could they impart the grace of the Spirit to others, after they themselves had forfeited it."
http://www.holytrinitymission.org/…/can ... s_rudder.h…
And the Holy St Joseph of petrograd says, regarding schismatics:
"Do not judge me so severely, and clearly understand the following:
...
The refusal to accept sound reproaches and directives is in reality a schism and a trampling on the truth.
In the construction of ecclesiastical life the participants are not only those at the head, but the whole body of the Church, and a schismatic is he who assumes to himself rights which exceed his authority and in the name of the Church presumes to say that which is not shared by his colleagues.
Metropolitan Sergius has shown himself to be such a schismatic, for he has far exceeded his authority and has rejected and scorned the voice o many hierarchs, in whose midst the pure truth has been preserved."
http://orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/cat_joseph.aspx
In the Same way, the Greek New Calendar Hierarchs not only did the above, but also called upon themselves an anathema!
Do we need to remind one another of the Sigillion of the Pan-Orthodox Encyclical of 1583?
"7 ) That whoever does not follow the customs of the Church as the Seven Holy Ecumenical Councils decreed, and Holy Pascha, and the Menologion with which they did well in making it a law that we should follow it, and wishes to follow the newly-invented Paschalion and the New Menologion of the atheist astronomers of the Pope, and opposes all those things and wishes to overthrow and destroy the dogmas and customs of the Church which have been handed down by our fathers, let him suffer anathema and be put out of the Church of Christ and out of the Congregation of the Faithful.
8 ) That ye pious and Orthodox Christians remain faithful in what ye have been taught and have been born and brought up in, and when the time calls for it and there be need, that your very blood be shed in order to safeguard the Faith handed down by our Fathers and your confession: and that ye beware of such persons as have been described or referred to in the foregoing paragraphs, in order that our Lord Jesus Christ may help you and at the same time may the prayer of our mediocrity be ‘with all of you: amen."
Have the New Calendarists remained faithful to the shedding of their blood in opposing the New menologion? Has Finland and Estonia been faithful in accepting the NEW Paschalion?
Are these not all the acts of the GOC? Has it not embodied this from the beginning?!
And yet, we are fanatics.
Well hear the words of a Holy Fanatic, Ignatius Brianchaninov:
"The word anathema means severance, rejection. When the Church anathematizes a teaching, it means that that teaching contains blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, and for the sake of salvation it should be rejected and removed, as poison is removed from food. When a person is anathematized, it means that he has irreversibly adopted a blasphemous teaching, and through them deprives himself and those near him, to whom he has imparted his line of thought, of salvation. When a person has made the commitment to abandon the blasphemous teaching and to receive the teachings upheld in the Orthodox Church, he is obligated, according to the rules of the Orthodox Church, to anathematize the false teaching that he formerly upheld, which was destroying him, alienating him from God, keeping him locked in enmity against God, in blasphemy against the Holy Spirit and communion with satan."
What are we to say then?
Wait, I know what a Cyprianite will say: "But a council needs to impose this upon an individual for him to lose his priesthood."
Clever, O wise ecumenist, very clever, but false. You confuse two different things: The canonical penalties of an act, and the spiritual consequences of an act that are performed by Christ himself independent of the convening of a council.
Suffice it to hear again the words of the Holy Theophan the Recluse:
"By the very fact that you have conceived a different view of things than that which is maintained in the Church, you have already separated yourself from the Church. It is not inscription in the baptismal records which makes one a member of the Church, but the spirit and content of one's opinions.
Whether your teaching and your name are pronounced as being under anathema or not, you already fall under it when your opinions are opposed to those of the Church, and when you persist in them.
Fearful is the anathema. Leave off your evil opinions. Amen."
Behold, the schismatics have fallen under the anathema, behold the death of the New Calendarists, the Sergianists, the Ecumenists. Behold the cessation of priesthood, behold communion with Satan, behold enslavement to evil. Behold the judgment of God BEFORE any synod.
ALL of the above is precisely WHY we must break with schismatic hierarchs! But that is what they must BE! And as a consequence, they must BE all of the above.
For if you say, O Cyprianite, that the grace is here AND there, then you mock the One and ONly bride of Christ, you hold her up as an adulteress, and you destroy the basis of your resistance and make YOURSELF a schismatic: For Grace is only in the Church, but if you have LEFT the abode of grace, then you have left the Church!
The Church is one. And as such we MUST OF NECESSITY confess that those who are outside of her, those who have fallen into schism and are perishing, along with the heretics, precisely the New Calendarists, the Sergianists and the Ecumenists...
Are not Churches and have no priests and consequently no sacraments.
This is the faith of our fathers, this is the faith of the Orthodox, this is the faith which has established the universe.
So if you think there is Grace in the new calendarist Churches, go confess your schism to the local hierarch, take your discipline, and live a life of penance...OR...
Confess!
