The Letter of Metropolitan Cyprian of Fili, Greece, President of the Holy Synod of the Church in Resistance to the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia
Received March 10, 2001
To the Synod of Archbishops
of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad,
with attention to Archbishop Laurus
in the city of New York
Fili, Attica, Greece
January 1, 2000 (Church Calendar)
The Circumcision of Our Lord
Holy Basil the Great
Your Holinesses,
Most Reverend Archbishops,
Beloved Brothers and Co-workers in humility,
We greet You in the joy of the Lord!
I. We congratulate all of You at the outset of the new season of the goodness of our Lord, beginning the third millennium after the Birth of Christ, and offer up praise to God in the Highest for this inexpressible gift. Blessed be the name of the Lord!
A.With this fraternal letter, expressing the common opinion of all the members of our Holy Synod in Resistance, I would like to inform Your Holinesses that we read with great attention the Epistle from your Synod of Archbishops to your flock last October, and we thank Our Lord Who protects Your Orthodox Church Abroad in its unity and life, and gives it wisdom for the understanding of His holy will, "blessed, pleasing and perfect", amidst new historical circumstances and demands.
Of course, we know about the trials which part of your God-tended flock experience, obviously on account of a wrong understanding of the spirit of your Epistle. Therefore, we sincerely pray that the Lord inspire peace in the hearts of all, so that love and unity prevail, as well as peace, that much-longed for word and deed ensuring spiritual growth and the uncorrupted accomplishment of the saving act of the Church.
On the occasion of this written communication with You, I consider it appropriate to suggest to the attention of Your Holinesses some thoughts and considerations, "for edification and not for destruction", arising from the consciousness of our responsibility before the entire Church and directed towards the strengthening of the unity of our two Holy Synods.
B. In 1994, our unity was renewed as a natural consequence of our common confession of Orthodoxy and had in view, through the example of such prominent Archhierarchs and symbols of Your Church as the ever-memorable Metropolitan Philaret (+1985) and Archbishop Averky (+1976), the common witness of the Truth before the contemporary Orthodox jurisdictions in ecumenistic apostasy.
For us, this was the first and main meaning or our eucharistic unity with You, with the prospect of fruitful common work, the beginning of which was laid during the first two years after the establishment of our unity, in other words up to 1996.
(1)Since then, notwithstanding our sincere feelings of love and respect toward You, we have observed that You started to keep a certain "distance" from us. Then to our surprise, we had to deal with a certain unpleasant and sometimes unbrotherly position of some Archhierarchs of Your Holy Synod, which forced us with great patience, magnanimity and prayer to respond to some accusations and voluntarily and clearly offer You necessary explanations, as for example our letter No. 244 from 10.1.1997.
(2) Furthermore, some church actions of Your Holy Synod created justified bewilderment in us. The ecclesiastical basis of our Holy Synod, which is openly and firmly anti-ecumenist, never allowed us to have association with the official Orthodox jurisdictions because they actively participate in the ecumenical movement and belong to the World Council of Churches. Your Holy Synod, albeit carefully, all the same acts contrary without concealing this.
(3) Of course, we suppose that this direct or indirect but nonetheless constant association of some of Your clerics with certain official ecumenist jurisdictions originates from a certain strategy of Your Holy Synod, which we partly understand. Nevertheless, we cannot leave this question untouched, because we observe with justifiable alarm that this tactic leads you into two desperate situations:
(a) to a discrepancy between theory and practice, according to which Your consiliar and clearly-stated anti-ecumenist consciousness is abolished in reality because of contact with the ecumenists and those who associate with them.
(b) to the actual abolition of one of the main aims of our existence, namely, the protection of our Orthodox community from the ecumenists; in other words, to a failure constantly and fraternally to remind the ecumenists that they act contrary to God and renounce the consiliar and Patristic Tradition of Orthodoxy.
(4) In what we have stated above, we chiefly mean Your well-known and supposedly unofficial and sporadic association with the Serbian Church which, it must not be forgotten, fully participates in the modern syncretic inter-Christian and inter-religious ecumenical movement, notwithstanding the reassuring alarm and resistance within its depths of both clergy and laity.
(5) It is necessary to note that the ever-increasing number of these joint celebrations of some of Your Archhierarchs with certain jurisdictions participating in ecumenism openly took place right up to the beginning of Your Council of Archbishops last October. This put us into an uncomfortable situation before our flock, who were justifiably alarmed by this, and so it was hard for us to reassure them, especially after one of our clerics broke association with us because of the ambiguity of Your position on the question of relations with the ecumenists.
(6) In connection with this, we can assert that some actions of Your last Council of Archbishops have increased our anxiety about the future and so compel us to diligent and prolonged prayer. What we have in mind is the advancement and appointment to highly responsible positions in Your Hierarchy of individuals that are hostile not only towards us but in general to our anti-ecumenist stance, such as His Holiness Bishop Amvrosy.
Moreover, we have in mind the official declaration concerning Your relations with the Serbian Church and with other local Churches, such as the Georgian and Czechoslovakian Churches. All of this indicates that we understand differently what position to take towards the official jurisdictions participating in ecumenism.
(7) More concretely, Your recent declaration that You are officially associated with the Serbian Patriarchate, together with your request to it not to interrupt this association, and Your favourable disposition towards certain local Churches which at first glance appear more conservative than others, strengthen our feeling that You are steadily on a course, essentially, of gradual deviation from the bright anti-ecumenist tradition of Your Holy Church, a tradition which took shape during the last thirty years and which was expressed with perfect theological clarity.
(8) This gradual abandonment of your former anti-ecumenist tradition reduces to a dead letter the statement in Your Epistle of Your last Archepiscopal Council that You are continuing to preserve intact both the purity of the faith and anti-ecumenism, because this preservation imposes on You the duty of fulfilling the demands of Orthodox Resistance and Walling-off according to the centuries-old patristic rule:
"Nothing is preferred to the truth and preserving yourself blamelessly in it." (Saint Basil the Great, PG, vol. 32, p.925)
(9) We hope that this short exposition clearly conveys our "justified bewilderment" (sec. B2), which only grows with remembrance of our common podvig (feat) of faith and confession, which in just the past century was adorned with holy and heroic personages in Russia, Greece, Romania and Bulgaria who considered martyrdom and suffering and "Christlike abasement" as the only lawful and saving way, rejecting to the point of condemnation contact with the official Orthodox jurisdictions which participate in ecumenism.
(10) We cannot in any case ignore the martyrs and confessors of the Faith preceding us and refuse "to commemorate our teachers" at the very moment when the so-called official Orthodox, as You probably know, recently published a general "Declaration" (26.12. 2000) after the general service and joint celebration of the feast of the Nativity under the new calendar in the Phanar and Nicea, in which they together affirm their participation with others in the contemporary ecumenical movement, representing this as a necessary aspiration towards the restoration of Christian unity through the dialogue of truth and love, as if the ecumenical movement is simply some innocent "dialogue of truth and love." Moreover, they emphasized the following:
"It is necessary to consider as unacceptable and deserving of condemnation the violation of the unity of the Church under the pretext of preserving the customs and traditions or of allegedly defending true Orthodoxy. As the entire life of the Orthodox Church bears witness, a difference in customs by no means prevents intercommunion between the Orthodox Churches, and the preservation of true Orthodox faith is ensured by the consiliar principle, which from time immemorial has been the supreme court in the Church regarding questions of faith" (Point 10).
(11) Clearly, our position and Yours is called "unacceptable and deserving of condemnation". However, we by no means "violate the unity of the Church" for the sake of secondary questions. To the contrary, we estrange ourselves lawfully and canonically from those Orthodox ecumenists who since 1920 have been corrupted to such a degree by their syncretic collaboration and common prayers with the heterodox as well as by their ecumenistic theology and theological dialogues that your Archiepiscopal Council justly declared in 1971 (Montreal, 14 - 28.09. 1971) that "ecumenism is a heresy against the dogma of the Church".
(12) It is also necessary to note that the above-mentioned "condemnation" of both You and us was signed not only by the chief ecumenist Patriarch Bartholomew, the ecumenist first hierarchs Petros of Alexandria, Ignatios of Antioch, Teoctist of Romania, Anastasios of Albania, the representatives of the Finish Church Archbishop Ambrosius of Oulu, the representative of the Georgian Church Metropolitan Abraham, Archbishop Nicholas of the Czechoslovakian Church, Bishop Christodoulus of Athens and Patriarch Maxim of Bulgaria along with other new calendarists, but also by the old-calendarist Patriarch Pavle of Serbia, who participates in ecumenism and in the World Council of Churches and is in agreement with those above. Patriarch Alexy of Moscow was absent because of the known question about Estonia, and not because of his discord with the agreement indicated above.
Most Reverend and Holy Archishops,
C. The more and more bitter attitude towards us on the part of those in innovation and in ecumenism, reaching to the point of reordination of our clerics going over to them, compels us through this letter to apply our efforts towards on the one hand more deeply realizing the ecclesiological foundations of our Orthodox communities, and on the other hand towards renewing our decision to continue our Orthodox and God-pleasing Resistance in order to stir up church consciousness to condemn the heresy of ecumenism and everything connected with it at an All-Orthodox or Universal Council, so that by this means the presently divided Church would be united in the Orthodox Faith.
(1) Our Holy Synod, by the mercy of God, is firmly determined to respond to the trustful expectation of its righteous and struggling flock not to have any direct or indirect contact, henceforth as in the past, with the ecumenists among the Orthodox.
(2) In accordance with the conciliar and patristic tradition of Orthodoxy, this position rejects the relativization of the Truth, sets limits on unbridled interconfessionary and interreligious syncretism, and saves the church from dogmatic, moral and canonical "minimalism".
(3) Clearly, this wide spectrum of Orthodox and God-pleasing Resistance is the hope of righteous Orthodox Christians everywhere who look with deep alarm at the participation of the official jurisdictions in the above-indicated process of decomposition - the unavoidable consequence of participation in the ecumenical movement and in the World Council of Churches.
(4) Our Holy Synod, being attentive to this alarm of righteous Orthodox Christians and also conscious of its calling, is ready to give help to all those turning to it in the aspiration of remaining in the saving protection of an Orthodoxy immobile to innovation. For this, we will spare neither labour nor sacrifice, as with God's help it was from the very beginning.
(5) We are deeply convinced that the constant growth of walled-off anti-ecumenist communities inside the local churches is our historical calling, and fulfilling this with God's grace we shall protect our Orthodoxy and keep incorrupt the apostolic and patristic pledge, in the hope of the miracle of unification by means of a consiliar condemnation of the heresy of ecumenism.
(6) The sensitivity of our Holy Synod with respect to this vision convinced us from the very beginning to renew intercommunion with You. Now we diligently pray that the Divine Founder of the Church will enlighten, strengthen and instruct You to continue Your anti-ecumenist tradition according to the commandments of our common teachers and in full consciousness of the high demands of our extremely troubled epoch.
(7) A brotherly answer on Your behalf to our humble letter would bring us great joy, so that between us would be manifested "unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace" (Ephesians 4, 3).
To conclude, I kiss Your Holinesses with a brotherly kiss in the Lord, entreating the Divine Founder of the Church that Your years be abundant, healthy and joyous.
With love in Christ and with perfect respect for Your Holinesses, your loving co-brother,
- Cyprian, Metropolitan of Oropos and Fili
President of the Holy Synod of the Church in Resistance
). I also have some more objective, factual concerns, though, and these concerns make me wonder how much I should trust anything on the site. It's not that I think something is intentionally put there to mislead (though I know some people who believe they do that); but rather, there information seems so slanted that they don't even realise exactly how slanted some of it is. Here's an example of what I'm talking about: