Incognito1583 wrote:DREMEISTER STATED: Pavlos not Paul) has not communed New Calendarists for quite a while.
MY RESPONSE: They are communing new calendarists to this day in the church of Saint Markella.
DREMEISTER STATED: I think it should be made clear that Met. Pavlos communed New Calendarists as a way to bring the New Calendarists into the GOC; he was using his pastoralness. He did not do it because he believed the New Calendarists to be perfectly fine where they were.
MY RESPONSE: Then why doesn't he commune Roman Catholics as a way to bring them into the GOC?
Question to Pavlos: Can I go to a new calendar church or not? If not, why?
Have you even been to St. Markella's lately (if at all)? If not, how in the world would you know what is going on?
Met. Pavlos would never commune Catholics as a way to bring them into the GOC, they are too far into their heresy. The NC's are much closer to Orthodoxy than Catholic, Protestants, etc. The problem is that many NC's don't even know what the True Orthodox are and therefore don't know the difference between going to an NC parish and St. Markella's, so rather than scare them off right away by refusing them communion, Met. Pavlos decided to use a little economia in easing their entrance into the GOC. This isn't the case with Catholics who would clearly know the difference between an Orthodox and Catholic church. Ultimately, the Synod ruled that this practice was wrong and told him he had to stop, and so he did. While the practice may have been wrong, he was NOT communing NC's as if to say they were perfectly fine in remaining in the New Calendar church.
No, Met. Pavlos would never bless any GOC person to commune in a New Calendar church. If you had read that encyclical I provided you earlier (http://www.ecclesiagoc.gr/pegeng/h005/p ... 011.peg|17) you would have seen that: "In the face of this great danger, as your Bishop and Shepherd of the Orthodox Church of the Genuine Orthodox Christians of America, who is charged by God to protect His flock from the heretics and schismatics who have placed themselves outside the Church, I call upon the faithful children of our Church not to enter the churches of schismatics and heretics to take communion. You should communicate only in temples that belong to our Church, which here in America are only the Sacred Temples of the Holy Metropolis (GOC) of America. You should have the permission of your spiritual father, who himself should be a clergyman of our Holy Metropolis, and should have confessed and fasted correctly prior to Communion. Those who do not have an Orthodox faith and confession, that is heretics, ecumenists, false old calendarists, etc., will not be permitted to be imparted the Holy Mysteries in our Holy Temples, even as the Holy Synod of our Church has directed."
When Met. Pavlos read this aloud in St. Markella's, many new calendarists walked out of the church, realizing they could no longer commune there.