What is the number of Old Calendar anti-ecumenists?

[Isaakos]

Well I was Just told that in terms of NUMBERS the Romanians have everyone beat. Supposedly 1-2 million True Orthodox.

[Jean-Serge]

For Romania, I would say between 500,000 and 1,000,000.

[Priest Siluan]

RTOC has more parishes in Russia Ukraine and Belorussia than those ones listed on the website. ROAC also has more than 20 (maybe more than 40).

According I heard 20 % of the population in Greece, who called themselves as "Orthodox", are Old Calendarist.

[Suaidan]

This is the letter: http://www.portal-credo.ru/site/?act=ne ... &topic=797

About 11 church buildings were seized by authorities in the recent years, but all of them was in Suzdal or near Suzdal. Most of this buildings had no parishes. Metropolitan Valentime took this buildings in ruins and restored them but there was no parishes there. St.Nicolas church, Uspenski church, Lazarus church, Antipas church, St.John church, all of them in Suzdal - they had no parishes. The parish in Borisovskoe near Suzfal went to Moscow Patriarchate together with their church building. The people from other several churches serve in new buildings.

When I lived there before the seizures and visited the different churches in Suzdal it seemed they were not only restored, but operational, and they did in fact have parishoners in attendance. Further, in 2005 when I made most of my trips, it was a picture-perfect ROAC town. Certainly you can't count the Tsar Constantine Cathedral in your math: there were over 300 people on Sundays during regular weekends when I went!

I find these numbers fishy, as there were a large number of catacomb parishes that of course go unreported.

Bishop Gregory (Grabbe) wrote in 1994 (quoted in Moss): "While we, in the absence of the accused and, contrary to the canons, without his knowledge, were deciding the fate of the Suzdal diocese, Vladyka Valentine received three more parishes. Now he has 63. Taking into account Archimandrite Adrian with his almost 10,000 people, we are talking about approximately twenty thousand souls."- Quoted in Moss, http://www.st-sergius.org/News/FROC.html

Since that time-- to 2007 at least-- ROAC had grown substantially.

At the time the first claims I heard that the numbers were lower came from Fr Gregory Lourie's people (including the claim of 20-30 parishes). Of course, as the catacomb Bishops and their parishes were suspicious, they were disinclined to "let folks in" on the numbers.

My own experience is that before the seizures, those churches were largely full and many were quite large. But as we know, Suzdal has less than 11,000 people. Even if everyone in it was ROAC (and I did get that impression) that's only one part of it. And I could be wrong. Maybe those were all the same people moving from church to church. I didn't think so, and it didn't appear that way, but what do I know?

There are two factors which are also important to remember:

1) In Russia (and Greece-- this is far more true than in True Orthodox populations than heterodox lands) baptized membership is higher, usually much more so, than attendant populations.

BUT more important is:

2) Virtually all True Orthodox Russian communities (ROAC, RTOC, ROCOR-A TOC-R, etc) regard parishes in most of the CIS (such as Belarus, Ukraine, et cetera) as Russian territory, following the pre-revolutionary styling. (Nor are the True Orthodox alone in this; the MP generally counts people outside the RF as well). Thus, if you have 10,000 people in Ukraine, and 5,000 in Belarus-- voila, that's 15,000 more for Russia.

Our own Russian Synod is fairly big in Russia, but just as large in Ukraine. With the ROCOR (A), the Ukrainian presence is even larger, allowing legitimate claims of a far larger presence.

Lastly, statistically, although 70% of Russians identify as Orthodox, only 41% identify with the Patriarchate. "In all, more than 85,000 believers participated in the night liturgies of 2010 in Moscow, which is about 23,000 fewer than in the past. These numbers constitute less than one percent of the population of the Russian capital." (translated from Portal-Credo http://www2.stetson.edu/~psteeves/relnews/1001a.html)

In short, the number of active Russians of all the True Orthodox jurisdictions likely rivals 10% of the active number of the MP Russians. That's not to say it's a lot of people, and it's a lot smaller than the baptized number. But there it is.

[Suaidan]

P.S. I should add that while attendant numbers are lower, the whole thing gets mixed up when great feasts and public processions get involved in Orthodox countries. Whenever there are large events in the Church (while involve receiving things, such as Holy Water, the Great Feasts, etc.) the numbers jump higher in both state churches and True Orthodox Churches.

The drop off, however, in state churches, is far worse, despite the funding, which we can blame ecumenism for, but more likely in Orthodox countries is caused by apathy. So, 80-100K people in MP churches on Nativity means that regular weekly services are less attended by several orders of magnitude, despite a substantially higher level of geographic coverage.

On the flip side, our Synod in Greece of the Patristic Calendar-- one of the smaller TOC jurisdictions-- holds annual feasts with up to 10,000 people in attendance. And that's true with almost every TOC group, just like it is with almost every World Orthodox group.

The True Orthodox have a sustained advantage on demographic drop-- because that differential, that of nominals "dropping off", is substantially lower. While I tend to believe we are close to the end, on the off chance God gives us 50 more years, I imagine the number of True Orthodox vs World Orthodox will appear increasingly even.

(It is worth noting that although MP services in the Moscow region were limited to 348 of 900 claimed MP churches, the number went up about 90%-- nearly doubled-- in 2013 from 2012 numbers. Those are numbers that send a signal to old Deacon Joseph's sniffer, and it smells just a little like rat.-- http://www2.stetson.edu/~psteeves/relnews/1301b.html)

[Alexander Kuzmin]

Dear Father Joseph,

In the times of Bishop Gregory (Grabbe) True Orthodox Church was very big and strong in Russia. It was especially large before Bishop Barnaba of Cannes started his destructive activity in our country.

I do not want to discourage you, but at present the situation is different and the current numbers are low. Look at this video. This is one of the main Orthodox Feasts, the First-Hierarch of ROAC is elevating the cross, the biggest event in Church.

http://video.yandex.ru/users/ir-non/view/39/

There are a lot of priests there, but starting from 0:40 you can count the people in the church. Are there at least 20 people at this service?

(I am sorry I am very busy all these days, and then the Lent starts, but I hope to participate the discussions later).

[Jean-Serge]

Yes was this a public holiday or not? People might be at work, very simply...