Fr. Steven Allen: ROCOR, Met. Agathangel & SiR

[Suaidan]

Dear Jonathan, I really wish I had time to answer everyone, but I don't, so I am going to become more and more brief in my responses.

If the Papists can't even do Latin anymore, then they really have come to the end.

Sadly, there was an anti-Latin faction till 1988 or so that affected a whole generation of priests.

I think the point is not that 1994 represented a kind of about-turn in ROCOR ecclesiology. There had always, as you note, been two (or more?) opinions on the presence of grace in the MP,

Always at least three was my point. It was NEVER two. Important distinction.

and in World Orthodoxy in general, and throughout Met Philaret's presidency you see official synodal statements seemingly swerving back and forth between strict and lax positions, without ever really coming down on one side or the other.

No world Orthodox would see either the SiR or the "no grace" position as lax, since both put their practices into question.

So in communications with the Greek Old Calendarists, ROCOR appeared strict, but the resolutions of the 1974 Sobor were lax.

Yet not all the Greek Old Calendarists were on board either: the people Metr Cyprian would represent weren't, and neither was Bp Petros of Astoria (your current hierarch's predecessor.) So to imply that there was uniformity among "the Greek Old Calendarists" is really a misrepresentation. The question becomes: which Greek Old Calendarists?

The 1983 anathema suggested that ROCOR was finally going to adopt the strict position, but this suggestion was eventually neutralized by Met Vitaly's Nativity Epistle in 1986.

I view that as HOCNA propaganda magically becoming fact in 2007. Nobody saw "union coming" as a fact in '86 except for the followers of HTM because they were going to be placed on trial. In fact, the 1986 Epistle stated something that no True Orthodox Christian can avoid in their ecclesiology: Bishops cannot overstep bounds out of their jurisdiction. Putting aside V. Moss' argument about the spiritual efficacy of an anathema, the simple fact is that neither an anathema-- nor any other Church act-- can be enacted outside the Church's boundaries.

The point is that the 1994 union with the SiR represented the final victory for the pro-WO side, by which I don't mean the side that wanted communion with WO, but the side that believed WO still had grace, and therefore that communion with WO was not quite the disaster that it would be for those, like Met Philaret or Bp Gregory, who believed WO had no grace.

Both sides you are describing sound like "communion with World Orthodoxy is ok" (the stricter of the two sides still doesn't believe union with "World Orthodoxy was a disaster...") and that is a historical misrepresentation. There were many who believed that there was grace in World Orthodoxy (such as in Jerusalem) but wanted no official communion with World Orthodoxy. Admitting this fact would, however, make the argument that 1994 union made a definitive directional shift in the ROCOR invalid. The only way to demonstrate that 1994 made a real change is to claim that ROCOR required active assent to the SiR's positions, and to do that, we must stretch the union documents beyond the bounds of mutual agreement within the diversity of views to some sort of dogmatic re-catechesis of the ROCOR which never really occurred.

So a better characterization is that ROCOR was hesitating between two paths: one being the recognition that WO, including the MP, had fallen under anathema and hence were outside the Church and hence devoid of grace; the other being the refusal to recognize the force of the anathemas (against the New Calendar, against Ecumenism, against Sergianism), and therefore allowing for WO to still be in the Church and possessing sacramental grace.

I believe I've now clarified why it cannot be two positions, as well as why it is necessary for the argument to claim there are only two. Admitting the third position (which, in the above, would be the unionists themselves, who have mysteriously disappeared) would necessitate a proof that the second position of the three (which is a mischaracterization itself) invariably leads to union with World Orthodoxy.

With the 1994 union with Met Cyprian, ROCOR had finally come down on the second, lax position. After that, any turn to a strict position WOULD have been an about-turn, rather than simply choosing one of two possible paths. Fr Steven is suggesting that this was the idea: now it was that much harder for ROCOR ever to adopt a strict position towards the MP or WO in general, but much EASIER for them to start seriously contemplating union with them.

And my argument is that unless we historically include at least a third position-- that of the unionists-- we are not being historically honest in our assessments, because implicit in the argument is that the unionists and those who believed in even the possibility of grace in the MP and World Orthodoxy are in fact the same people. Do you think the Tikhonites of the 1974 essay did not recognize the anathemas? And to switch the question to today can you honestly state the the SiR does not believe in the anathemas? Sure, Vladimir Moss claims that the SiR doesn't believe in the anathema against ecumenism, even though they themselves have repeatedly cited it in their writings, so I don't think he's being honest with what they are actually saying.

When we can admit this distinction-- which I'd be glad to demonstrate further was historical fact-- we will be able to progress in our respective positions, because we will be dealing with them honestly.

[Suaidan]

Christ is in our midst!

Fr. Mark: Yes, the important thing is to move on, to establish a formula and a mechanism of union among the True Orthodox.

Leonidas Pittos (of Chicago, not his cousin in Greece who works on Ekklisiastikos) suggested to me recently that there should be a pan-True Orthodox council whose purpose should be the acceptance by all parties of the 1983 Anathema, AND the fact that it does indeed apply to WO - that they are in fact outside the Church. The SiR needs to stop insisting on this "unifying council" business with the ecumenists physically present, which will never occur. The real unifying council will be this one, among the True Orthodox, who will invite the ecumenists, who will disdain to show up. The GOC-Kiousis synod (my jurisdiction) and other "hardliners" should not "guilt load" the "Resisters" for failing to get on board sooner. But they must get on board. The time for dilly-dallying is over.

I would LOVE to see that happen! I pray for the souls of those who would undertake the task of organizing such an event, and those who would put up the money to make such a thin feasible. THIS NEEDS TO HAPPEN!

I hope no one gets me wrong on this tread, I don't want to "beat up" on SiR or ROCOR-A. The few of their people I have had contact with seem very pious and nice to me. Such a Pan-True Orthodox meeting would be an opportunity to air out all this stuff and let everyone have a say. This would allow each hierarch to hear things directly from "the horse's mouth" so to speak; no more hearsay (which I hate).

Well, let's stop talking about it and get started! Where would the best place be to hold such a meeting? Who is available to accurately translate Greek to Russian to English? Who's got some money to front for the travel? How many folks from each jurisdiction should come?

I can't speak officially for ROAC, but I'm 99.9% sure we would come. I'm serious let's get the wheels turning on this thing today!

Sigh. I've seen this sort of thing happen before.

It starts as an official announcement, moves to private discussions as more and more people balk at the terms, and finally leads to more confusion and hardening of positions. The simply reality is the ONLY people who in fact officially apply the 1983 Anathema ARE the ROCOR and Russian groups and the SiR. Almost everyone else has their own, "superior" anathema .

I will believe it when the Bishops get together and discuss things, as the Russian Bishops have been doing, much to everyone else's annoyance. That is the only way it will work, because only the Bishops can make such decisions. Everything else, at least from what I have seen, is gamemanship and conspiracy against the local Bishops of the clergy involved (Trullo can. xxxiv)

[Mark Templet]

I think it would be helpful if everyone involved in this discussion gave their definition of "having Grace"

[GOCPriestMark]

"If we look at the article 'The Catacomb Tikhonite Church 1974' that was put out by the Orthodox Word that year, back when it was an organ of the ROCOR, we find again this same thinking."

It comes as no surprise that ROCOR had such ideas and published them prior to 1974. It had already been in communion with new-calendarists and world-orthodoxy for many decades.

Those who are

"hesitating between two paths"

are lukewarm and are spewed out.

"Let's move forward from the past!"

Well, the past is very important to Orthodoxy; If it is indeed a fact that an olive branch has been removed from the tree, it must be re-grafted in, once it repents and confesses the true faith. So, it is not

"irrelevant now"

how we came to this point, if 'we' have never been in the Church to begin with.

"I still maintain the 1994 union was a critical, and negative, event, because it rendered a definitive synodal decision positively proclaiming that grace was present in WO."

I would say that their remaining in communion with WO for their entire existence was already enough of a "definitive synodal decision".

"...that there should be a pan-True Orthodox council whose purpose should be the acceptance by all parties of the 1983 Anathema, AND the fact that it does indeed apply to WO - that they are in fact outside the Church."

This might happen, except the word we have is that these groups are more likely to go with the earlier understanding of Met. Chrysostomos of Florina and be the old-calendar guard within the State Church, a sort of keepers-of-the-old-ways, like the Athonites, within the State Church.

You all are doing a very good job of showing us how and why ROCOR had departed from Orthodoxy long before 2001-2007. Very few of those who left it in the last decade or two are willing to admit that it might have been graceless even before they were ordained there, yet this is what you are all showing us; they had no clear ecclesiology because they had already made excuses for too long for their remaining in communion with world-orthodoxy, (Those who commune with the uncommunicable become themselves uncommunicable). Yes, some like Metropolitan Philaret tried to change it, but even he was unwilling to pay the price for his 'personal faith' by separating from his fellow hierarchs who were pro-MP/WO. This all creates a dilemma for continuing Rocorites and Florinites; since they all count their apostolic lineage from ROCOR, they assume and are bound to try to prove that ROCOR had the grace of God in its mysteries at least up until they left it. What I see are many people striving to have the same faith that the GOC of Abp. Matthew, and now Met. Kirykos and the Pan-Orthodox Synod with him, have always had, yet trying to do it within groups who have long held that there is grace in the State Church/world orthodoxy/MP and/or that they are only 'potentially in schism'.

[Suaidan]

This might happen, except the word we have is that these groups are more likely to go with the earlier understanding of Met. Chrysostomos of Florina and be the old-calendar guard within the State Church, a sort of keepers-of-the-old-ways, like the Athonites, within the State Church.

You all are doing a very good job of showing us how and why ROCOR had departed from Orthodoxy long before 2001-2007. Very few of those who left it in the last decade or two are willing to admit that it might have been graceless even before they were ordained there, yet this is what you are all showing us; they had no clear ecclesiology because they had already made excuses for too long for their remaining in communion with world-orthodoxy, (Those who commune with the uncommunicable become themselves uncommunicable). Yes, some like Metropolitan Philaret tried to change it, but even he was unwilling to pay the price for his 'personal faith' by separating from his fellow hierarchs who were pro-MP/WO. This all creates a dilemma for continuing Rocorites and Florinites; since they all count their apostolic lineage from ROCOR, they assume and are bound to try to prove that ROCOR had the grace of God in its mysteries at least up until they left it. What I see are many people striving to have the same faith that the GOC of Abp. Matthew, and now Met. Kirykos and the Pan-Orthodox Synod with him, have always had, yet trying to do it within groups who have long held that there is grace in the State Church/world orthodoxy/MP and/or that they are only 'potentially in schism'.

Dear Father Mark,

Evlogite: You know I have the utmost respect for your actions of conscience and consider you one of the straightest shooters among those I consider friends in True Orthodoxy: but since I have inadvertently, in what has become a complex argument, ended up as the "bad guy" for pointing out why everyone's house is a mess (we all have our opinions on Milan, and I am shocked no one has brought them up yet) I may as well keep it going. Since there seems to be an overarching claim of consistency where rightly there should be none, because no one has been totally consistent. Ideologically, I would say that the Matthewites are the most internally consistent but even they have not been totally so.

We cannot in fairness claim that the GOC-Kirykos has been wholly consistent either, on top of the inconsistencies in the historical analysis of the Matthewites. I will only deal with the first by noting that Stavros Markou claims that he has seen documentation that Abp Matthew believed in grace in the Patriarchate of Jerusalem. Assuming, however, he does not have this text or never plans to produce it, we must also note that attempts were made to find a second consecrator outside Greece: something that would have been logically inconsistent if the TOC-Matthew had really considered all of World Orthodoxy without grace. That said, we must also assume a breaking point: a point where World Orthodoxy had no grace left of which to speak.

I personally agree with that idea. I don't believe grace left World Orthodoxy in 1935 or 1950 or 1965. I believe, personally, grace left each jurisdiction piecemeal, pseudo-Bishop by pseudo-Bishop, which to me makes the most sense. I digress.

In the midst of this, when the 1971 union occurred, it is impossible to pretend that for four years the Matthewites just didn't know who the Florinites were. That was their argument after separating from the Church Abroad. But it's disingenuous to say this was the case with the Florinites in Greece. Therefore, they fall into the same problem as the Florinites: a lack of explanation for the departure of half of the reunited Greek Synod.

I will leave off the 1995 schism for now where a slim majority of the Bishops left and formed the Gregorian-Matthewites, but finally we get to the schism between Abp Nicholas and Metropolitan Kirykos. Now, I could point out that both sides are in some ways at fault. But one of the things that simply gets me about the TOC-Kirykos is that the co-consecrator for the Bishops was a spiritual son of Bp Victor (Leu), who most famously attempted to enlist the help of the Ecumenical Patriarch and others, rejecting them only after they rejected him and afterwards causing a split within the previously united TOC of Romania (over ecumenism, no less!!)

So that's where we find ourselves with the Kirykites. You have the inconsistency of the Matthewites in the 40's, the 70's, and finally with the consecration of new Bishops who are supposedly the restoration of the Orthodox Episcopate on earth using Bishops who appealed to the EP among others, something Abp Matthew would to my knowledge have never done. In any case, the claim that "everyone else departed True Orthodoxy except us" is still unbelievable.

Again, this is an overview. I believe all these points can and should be examined in detail. I just don't believe in the sum total that the Kirykites make a particularly good case for being better than any other True Orthodox jurisdictions.

[Joanna Higginbotham]

We, who have found refuge under Vladyka Agafangel, need to cling dearly to our so-called "cyprianism" with all our might. It appears from this discussion that it is the only thing protecting us from the super-correct disease.

[Suaidan]

We, who have found refuge under Vladyka Agafangel, need to cling dearly to our so-called "cyprianism" with all our might. It appears from this discussion that it is the only thing protecting us from the super-correct disease.

Well, I can't agree with that either for a lot of reasons. I don't think ROCOR-A has to-- or should-- cling to "resistance ecclesiology" as its own because the nature of the schisms in Greece and Russia were very different with different results. Nor do I see expressing a different opinion-- or many as it once was-- as a justification for breaking communion. My point in this discussion was that I don't believe there is any justifiable reason to call resistance ecclesiology heretical, not that I personally believe it: my point was that if a person believes it they are still Orthodox because it deals with the question of grace, practically, among those outside the Church anyway.

However, I find it offensive (and have for a long time) to call what is usually considered basic Orthodox theology a "disease". If these excesses were to continue another 200 years it would certainly be justifiable for everyone to call the World Orthodox heretics.

Father Seraphim is one of the great, misquoted authors of our days. He coined the term "super-correctness" that would be bastardized these days to be applied to everyone who disagrees with resistance ecclesiology (I will note, however, that the SiR leadership does not use these terms as often) while Fr Seraphim himself was dealing with the Boston monastery, while it and its associates were inside ROCOR). I am sure that if he read what was being written now-- I would venture to say if you asked while Fr Seraphim was still with us, he'd probably regret, long-term that he used the term since it does not say what he makes clear throughout his correspondence: that under the guise of being correct, the Boston monastery and other right-wing renovationists are quite wrong.

He certainly wouldn't have applied it to everyone in True Orthodoxy outside ROCOR and those in communion with her! (Remember, he died when ROCOR was still dealing with factions in the TOCs and therefore had no position on any of them.) Father Seraphim had a great respect for Metr Kallistos of Corinth, so I imagine he'd be horrified to see the term "super-correct" to those who hold his ecclesiology. And I am guessing he never would have forseen its misuse as I have seen over the past couple of years.

These terms, "the royal path", "super-correctness", that had a great deal of nuanced understanding when they were stated by such a luminary as Fr Seraphim, have been reduced to slogans like those on car bumpers.

Allow me to express my regret at such a development.