The RTOC was founded by Abp Lazar Zhurbenko, after he left the FROC (Free Russian Orthodox Church) which became ROAC. Abp Lazar gave an interview with ROCOR's Fr Viktor Potapov, in the newspaper Orthodox America, I believe, in which he said that the MP was a Grace-filled church. He claimed that many New Martyrs also believed this. He even left the Katakombniki and got himself ordained a priest in the MP, before returning to the Katakombniki, who, according to Vladmir Moss, never trusted him again. So why should anyone look to him as a model for resisting the MP? How can Abp Tikhon of Russia ask his flock to look to the witness of their founder? Fr Epiphany Chernov wrote an article about his experience of Fr Lazar while they were in a concentration camp: to call Abp Lazar unsavory is to complement him.
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The Kiousite synod is a schism from the Auxentians who came into existence as the result of the 1960 uncanonical, anti GOC, ROCOR "consecration" of a renegade "Matthewite", Akakios Pappas (who was succeeded by Auxentios): one of the consecrators was a new calendarist: this demonstrates that even in 1960 ROCOR did not have the mind of the GOC on the ecclesial staus of new calendarists, who most certainly cannot make bishops for the GOC, whose ecclesiology declares new calendarists to be outside the Church.
It is a fact that the Kiousite bishop in New York called the heretical Ecumenical Patriarch his spiritual father and the spiritual father of his flock: for this his synod made him repent, but this shows that the Kiousite synod could not have vetted their candidate for the episcopacy. A supposed GOC synod makes a bishop who declares a new calendarist heresiarch to be his spiritual father? This is equivalent to Joe Suaiden's saying that his Milan synod is against Kyprianism, even though they consecrate a Kyprianite bishop, with M Kyprian present. Doublemindedness destroyed ROCOR, and it will not save the RTOC or the Kiouistes, even if they "observe" each other, even if they enter into communion with each other: there will be just a bigger faction of liars.
There has been underway for many years now a movement that seeks to extirpate all true ("fanatical, unloving , bigoted") members of the GOC (meaning they actually believe the GOC declarations which pronounce the state church of Greece Graceless and ecumenism a heresy and ecumenists heretics), and force them into some kind of rapprochement with World Orthodoxy. The late new calendarist Abp Spyridon of Athens told the "Matthewites" that if they commemorated him and accepted that their Episcopal orders derive from ROCOR, then they could unite with the Maximosites-Kiousites-Makarians who all ultimately derive from ROCOR, and be what M Chrysostomos of Florina always wanted the GOC to be : an old calendarist sentinel within the new calendarist-ecumenist state church of Greece, through which the GOC would be in communion with Word Orthodoxy and cease their "hateful fanaticism." Members of the state church are now attempting to bribe the "Matthewites" with offers of salaried positions, just like the new calendarist "priests" enjoy. The Nicholaitan synod apparently is amenable to these blandishments: M Kyrikos is resisting, since unions based on compromise of ecclesiological Truth will wither and die, not blessed by God, Who does not care for merely external administrative unity, but unity which has its source in an Orthodox phronema.
Nicholas Candela
