I believe it is self-evident, given the enormous and incontestable witness of the Church, that there is no Grace with a heretic bishop, priest, or deacon. I have posted many instances where the Holy Fathers have said this, through council or their own epistle and actions. And I have only scratched the surface. The Holy Fathers have also made it clear that there is no Grace with schismatics.
I don’t recall anyone disputing this spiritual fact. Therefore, it seems the great difficulty lay in the question: Do the new-calendarists have Grace? In other words, is the body of the new-calendarists dead, or is it still dying? Who decides, a council? Time? Can Grace exists among some groups within a communion filled with heretical “bishops” and “priests”? And what of the Monophysite communion?
I am generally not as much of a hardliner as most people may think on this.
“Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son” (II John 1:9). So the presupposition for people to have the grace of God is for them to have the truth, because, as Saint Symeon the New Theologian says: “Truth is nothing else than the Grace of Christ.”
The separation of the heretic from the Church, therefore, has no relation with the decisions of a council of the hierarchy. The Orthodox Council is the surgeon which amputates the rotten member from the Body of the Church. It is not the Council, however, that put the member to death. The member was dead before the Council decided to amputate it.
The introduction of the new calendar is a heresy because it is the first act of Ecumenism, and no rational person can doubt that Ecumenism is a heresy. And this heresy if just one symptom of a greater disease. By itself, however, entering into communion with heretics is not sufficient to make one equally responsible with them. One must also be aware that they are heretics. When they deceive you and represent themselves as Orthodox, when they provoke confusion and agitation in the Church, then your responsibility is mitigated. Can we possibly say that everyone in 1924, who continued to commemorate their bishops even after the calendar change, were equally responsible with the innovating ecumenists? The new-calendarists of today know that they are in communion with syncretism. Earlier, however, many priests had not comprehended this. Certainly, not all of the priests of the Church of Greece were unaware; there were many who were very crafty; they knew what goal was being pursued and they gladly approved of it. We would perpetrate a great injustice, however, if we were to say that all of them were heretics, and that all of them were aware. One might say that an evil is always an evil, regardless if one knows it or not. This is true. We should not forget, however, what is recorded by the Evangelist Luke: “He that knoweth shall be beaten with many stripes and he that knoweth not shall be beaten with few stripes” (Luke 12:47-48). There were also those who used to worship in a church of the Arians, but, because he was simple, he had not comprehended that they were heretics. God did not become disturbed because of him, but toward the end of his life He helped him to learn the truth and to come to the Orthodox. By what right, therefore, do we become more kingly than the King, and condemn those whom God does not condemn?
It is, therefore, very rationalistic for us to say that “world orthodoxy” was instantaneously deprived of grace with the change of the calendar in 1924. These are categorizations that satisfy the narrow human mind and give simplistic, but untrue, solutions to our problems. If God operated just as the rationalists think, the Church would have been deprived of grace even from the first centuries. We encounter so many upheavals in the Church’s history that it is impossible for anyone with the limited human mind to find a beginning or an end, or a clear answer.
Let them say what they will. And just as well, Metropolitan Chrysostom of Florina had not been deprived of grace, and because he had never essentially concurred with the heresy, he had no need of anyone to restore to him the grace of hierarchical office, which he had supposedly lost. As soon as he discovered with certainty what the modernists had done to the Church of Greece, he ceased from every communion with them. The ones who need to have their priesthood restored are they who today are in communion with the heresy of Ecumenism, with full knowledge of what that heresy is. They are the ones who are essentially, truly, and consciously in communion with syncretism. God sees the essence of matters and not the letter of the law.
But as it was said in the beginning, the Church, has never and does not now recognize the Grace of heretics and those who are in communion with them. They are devoid of Grace. If the heretics of the new-calendarist system were isolated to a few, as they were in the very beginning, perhaps it would be possible to distinguish their ordinations and baptisms from others, as one would isolate a cancer in the body. But today, the heretics and schismatics have spread to every acre, and to every corner, and with the passage of so much time and the exchange of information like never before, by so much more there is little excuse left. And these heretic syncretists are now a part of every member and in every corner of the new-calendarist system.
How can we, the Church, refuse to baptize someone who, if they didn’t come directly from the hands of someone professing heresy, communing Monophysites, confessing the Branch theory in one of its many forms, recognizing the baptism of other heretics…, they certainly came from the communion of such people, and who could no longer forward any excuse of ignorance, and whose communion as said by the Holy Fathers is without Grace…how irresponsible would it be for us not to give this person Holy Baptism? How can we consider such a shipwreck the Church of Christ, in which case we would be depriving Christ’s flock the Holy Mysteries and in essence then, also be in acceptance of their communion? Such a thing would be profane.
EDIT: So we are doing exactly what the Church has always done with regard to "Grace" among heretics and schismatics - they are outside the Church and therefore we understand it doesn't exist. This is not a punishment as one might think when they are excommunicated for a period of time for a sin. This is for the health and welfare of the flock! I will also add that Christ would not hold us responsible for following the Faith given to us; if he protects certain individuals within the new-calendar churches with His Grace it is His to do so, but as for us, His expectations are clear enough.
“For if simply saying “Hail” (II John, 10-11) is the same as partaking of another’s evil deeds, how much more so is the blatant commemoration in the very presence of the divine and dread Mysteries? For if He that is present before us is the Truth Himself, how is it reasonable to suppose that He will accept this great lie, that is, that this man should be esteemed as an Orthodox patriarch among the other Orthodox patriarchs? At the time when the dread Mysteries are being celebrated, shall we play the part of an actor on the stage? And how shall the soul of an Orthodox Christian endure these things and not straightway refrain from communion with the commemorators, and esteem them to be men that make sordid gain of divine things? For from the beginning, the Orthodox Church of God has accepted that the mention of the hierarch’s name within the sanctuary meant complete communion with him. For it is written in the exposition of the Divine Liturgy that the celebrant commemorates the name of the bishop, thereby demonstrating submission to a superior, and that he is a communicant with him, and his follower in the Faith and in the divine Mysteries….And God signified this very thing, saying, ‘the priests have violated My law and have profaned My holy things’ (Ezekiel 22:26). How? Because ‘they have put no difference between the holy and the profane,’ but have esteemed all things as common. However, should we do this by way of ‘economia’? But how can such an ‘economia,’ which profanes things divine and drives the Holy Spirit from them, be acceptable according to what God has said, since it causes the faithful to lose their adoption [as children of God] and cuts them off from the forgiveness of their sins? Can there, indeed, be any economia more harmful than this?” From the Letter of the Athonite Fathers to Emperor Michael Paleologus, against John Beccos, who was "Patriarch" of Constantinople at that time, and who had not yet been deposed by a Council.
These Holy Fathers wrote this letter with their blood, because not long afterwards they were slaughtered, blinded, and burned alive - because they would not accept commemorating a "Patriarch" who commemorated Latins. Reminds us of today.
