There is a book "Precious Vessels of the Holy Spirit, The Lives & Counsels of Contemporary Elders of Greece", translated and partly written by H. Middleton.
One of the eight Elders included in the book was Blessed Elder Philotheos
Zervakos of Paros. Elder Philotheos was greatly grieved over the calendar change, and the divisions it caused in the Church, but he did not seperate from his bishop. According to Middleton's book, Elder Philotheos believed that the only path to unity was the restoration of the traditional calendar. But Elder Philotheos believed that neither side in the calendar controversy was free of fault, and he said both sides fell under different anathemas.
In a letter the elder wrote to Papa Demetri Gagastathis in 1960, quoted in
Middleton's book, Elder Philotheos wrote: the"new calendar was neither
introduced into the Orthodox Church by an Oecumenical Council nor by a local Synod.
Rather, the Oecumenical Patriarch Meletios(Metaxakis), who was a thirty-three degree Mason, together with six anti-Orthodox minded hierarchs, introduced it anti-canonically and illegally, thus showing contempt for the Orthodox Church and the traditions of the Holy Apostles and Holy Fathers." With regard to the Old Calendarist groups, on the other hand, who had seperated from the official Church, the elder wrote that they had likewise erred and fallen under anathema, in that they "are transgressors and scorners of the first tradition of the Great commandment of Love. The commandment of love-they disdain it, violate it, cast it out, hating one another, biting at one another, beating up on one
another." He was especially upset that"certain zealot old caledarists believe and are of the mindset that the Mysteries without the calendar are invalid and that without the calendar there is no salvation. A greater heresy than this does not exist."
