The January 28 episltle of the ROAC synod is the most significant document issued by a traditionalist synod since ROCOR's 1983 anathema against the ecumenists. It is rooted in nepsis, sobriety, seeing things how they really are in this age of apostasy. Its condemnations of Sergianism, the new calendar, ecumenism, World Orthodoxy (particularly the Moscow Patriarchate), and Kyprianism is the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ speaking in His Orthodox Church.
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In the Old Testament God showed His love for His people by protecting them from the false teachers among those who were not His people. But God's love is not a candy valentine: God is a consuming fire (HEBREWS 12:29). He commanded HIs people Israel to wipe out entire nations. Christ the true God is always separating clean from unclean. And He does the same in the New Testament: how does He say He will deal with the "prophetess" Jezebel who "misleads My servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols" (REVELATION 2:20)?: "I will strike her children dead" (REVELATION 2:23).
In the New Testament the servants of God protected their flocks by applying to heretics the anathema. Saint Paul (+ 67): "If anyone does not love the Lord---let him be anathema"
(1 CORINTHIANS 16:22). In the words of the Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council: "...Anathema is nothing less than complete separation from God" (THE SEVEN ECUMENICAL COUNCILS, 1979,
p. 573). Bishop Theophan the Recluse (+ 1894): "If some immoral person were to gain access to your family and begin tempting your daughter or your son---would you be able to regard their actions and their speech wth indifference? Fearing to gain a reputation for being inhumane and old-fashioned, would you tie your own hands? Would you not push such a person out the door and close it against him forever? You should view the holy actions of the Church in the same way. She sees that individuals of corrupt mind appear, and they corrupt others---and she rises up against them, drives them away, and calls out to all those who are her own: 'Beware: so and so and such people wish to destroy your souls. Do not listen to them, flee from them.' Thus she fulfills the duty of motherly love and therefore acts lovingly..." (ORTHODOX RUSSIA, # 4, 1974). Saint Maximos the Confessor (+ 662) teaches us that "love cannot be divorced from Truth." The Fathers of the Seven Ecumenical Councils dealt with heretics precisely in the way described by Bishop Theophan---with LOVE: and so they declared that the Arians, the Nestorians, the Monophysites, the Monothelites, the Ikonoklasts had no place in the Church, unless they repented. This is the way of the Lord, Who may not be separated from His Church. In other words, there is no true full relationship with the loving Jesus outide the Church He established. To pit a "loving Jesus" against a true hierarchy is to falsely believe a House not only divided against itself but against the Lord Who builds the House can continue to stand.
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Anathemas are TRUE love in action: they protect the flock from the soul-destroying madness of heresy, and they proclaim to the heretics that the have left the Church. This shows the heretics true love, for by the anathema the Church is saying to them, "Return to the Truth. Accept salvation." To say, as does LMP, that this shows "so much hate" and does not "follow Jesus' teaching of love and peace" amounts to idolatry, for this introduces a false Christ, a "Christ" who tolerates doctrinal impurity in His Church---as if He Himiself were indifferent to the Truth, as if He Himself were NOT the Truth. But there IS no such Christ. Saint Ambrose (+ 397) writes that on Judgment Day the Lord will say to the Arians, "I do not recgonze My Name (for the heretical Arians called themselves Christians) where I do not recognize My doctrine" (ON THE HOLY SPIRIT, chapter 17). Saint John the Thelogian (+ 101) teaches us that "anyone who...does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not love God. ..If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not take him into your house or greet him" (2 JOHN 9-10). And Saint John is the disciple who writes, "God is love" (1 JOHN 4:16). In the mind of Christ's Saints there is no contradiction between God's love for man and the Church's declaration that one has placed himself outside her. Saint John Maximovitch (+ 1966) writes that "those given over to anathema were completely torn away from (the Church), until their repentance. Realizing that, in view of their stubbornness and hardness of heart she is unable to do anything for their salvation, the earthly Church lifts them up to the judgment of God. That judgment is merciful unto repentant sinners, but fearsome for the sutbborn enemies of God. 'It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God' (HEBREWS 10:31). Anathema is not , (however), final damnation: until death repentance is possible" ( ORTHODOX LIFE, 1977, p. 18 ).
As for LMP's contention that in the ROAC condemnations there is "not even a sign of hesychasm and spiriutality"---heed the words of Elder Joseph the Hesychast (+ 1959): "Careful, my child: be very wary of heretics. You are amidst foreign races and languages. Do not speak with them at all, because your pure tender soul will be defiled by their blasphemous words. Our Orthodox Church has cut them off" (MONASTIC WISDOM, 1998).
Only in the age to come will there no longer be any anathemas (REVELATION 22:3). While the Church struggles in this present age against the world, the flesh, and the devil, the One True God, the Most Holy Trinity, has charged her with the duty to protect her flock and declare heretics to be outside her.
Glory be to God for all things.
Nicholas Candela
