The Sunday of Orthodoxy and the Moscow Patriarchate

[尼古拉前执事]

"The Soviet and Catacomb Churches are incompatible!"

Code: Select all

      "The secret, desert, catacomb (cave) Church has anathematized the "sergianists and those with them"!

(Protopresbyter Michael Polski. The New-martyrs of Russia. vol. 2, p. 30).

The All-Russian Catacomb Church, which appeared in the first days of the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, exists now as She has always existed. On Her is the blessing of his Holiness Patriarch TIkhon, the locum tenenses of the Patriarchal Throne Metropolitans Peter, Kyril and Joseph, Archbishop Seraphim of Uglich, Archbishop Dmitri of Gdov, Bishop Maxim of Serpukhov, Bishop Damascene of Glukhov and all the other hierarch martyrs of the All-Russian Church. One must understand that if She gave millions of holy passion-bearers in such a short period of time, then one can be sure that, by the Grace of God, She has not been annihilated. She rests on two confessions of the Faith of Christ, two denials. The Catacomb Church rejects both the Soviet State and the Soviet "church" created by it. In the given case the Catacomb Church is obedient to the anathema hurled by Patriarch Tikhon and the Local All-Russian Council of 1918 and the secret Councils of the Catacomb Church.

[Kollyvas]

Evlogeite Pater.

Fr. Michael Polsky's works clearly reflect the truth of the era and are valuable as testaments of the theomachist pogrom. I would likewise include the work of Prof. Andreev(-sky) & Fr. konstantine (Zaitsev) of Jordanville. However, these works end their chronicle with the late 1930s, before the rehabilitation of the MP under the regime, where it indeed begins to enjoy the status of an "unofficial state church" prior to renewed persecution under khruschev and then hostile indifference/manipulation under the brezhnev and succeeding regimes. I indicated some of that history as well on a post here. The bulk of the Katakombniki joined the MP during and after the war, although minority groups do exist to this day.
In the LOVE of Christ,
Rostislav
How would a "Katakombnik" address the Moscow Council of 1948 which the bulk of local churches, and the bulk of Katakombniki, attended and recognized, some of with which ROCOR was still in Communion, viz. Antioch & Serbia? The role luminaries such as V. Lossky and St. Seraphim of Bulgaria (a former prominent ROCOR hierarch & thoroughly Patristic Traditionalist--the St. Nektarios of the Bulgarian Old Calendarists) played in presenting a canonical, theologically sound and spiritually edifying framework for Orthodox witness to the world?