The First Public Information in the West Concerning
The Catacomb Tikhonite Church 1974
by Metropolitan Theodosius, Chief Hierarch of the True Orthodox Church of Russia
MANY TRUE ORTHODOX CHRISTIANS in the free world were shocked and disturbed when the world-renowned Russian writer, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, now living in exile in Switzerland, wrote in his Letter to the Third All-Diaspora Council of the Russian Church Outside of Russia, meeting at Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville, New York, in September of this year, that one should not substitute in imaginary fashion a catacomb church for the real Russian Orthodox people," denied the very existence of a "secret church organization," and warned the hierarchs of the Church Outside of Russia that they should not "show solidarity with a mysterious, sinless, but also bodiless catacomb." The enemies of True Orthodoxy and defenders of the Sergianist Moscow Patriarchate were quick to take advantage of these phrases for their own propagandistic purposes, reporting them under such headlines as No "Catacomb" Church. [1] It would indeed benefit greatly the progress of renovationist "Orthodoxy" if it could be "proved"— or at least shouted loudly enough—that there is no "Catacomb Church" in Russia, that the only Orthodoxy in the USSR is the renovated, Sergianist version of it presented to the world by the Moscow Patriarchate, which indeed, Solzhenitsyn believes, is not at all "fallen" but is the real Orthodox Church of Russia. These statements of Solzhenitsyn raise important questions of two kinds: of fact, and of theology.
To be sure, at the beginning of his Letter Solzhenitsyn writes: "Realizing my unpreparedness for stepping out on an ecclesiastical question before a gathering of priests and hierarchs who have devoted their whole life to the service of the Church... I only beg condescension for my possible mistakes in terminology or in the very essence of my judgments"; and at the end he again apologizes: "I do not fancy myself called to decide ecclesiastical questions." It would therefore surely be no offense to Solzhenitsyn, who speaks so convincingly and truthfully on other questions, to point out, for those who wish to hear the truth, his mistakes both in fact and theology regarding the True-Orthodox Church of Russia.
These mistakes of Solzhenitsyn, as it turns out, have had one fortunate consequence: they have caused several persons who have more accurate information than he about church life in the Soviet Union to speak out and directly refute his claim that there is no ' secret church organization" there:
One revealing glimpse of the continuing life of Russia's Catacomb Church is contained in the brief biography of the young Vladimir Osipov, editor for four years of the now-defunct Samizdat periodical Veche, which was noted for its strong nationalist and Orthodox intent, expressing the "Slavophile" position in contemporary Russia. According to an article of Alexei Kiselev, based on an interview with Anatoly Levitin (Krasnov), [2] when Osipov was in a concentration camp in the 1960's "he met a strange old man whom all the prisoners called 'Vladika.' This was Michael, a bishop of the True-Orthodox Church. He made a powerful impression on Osipov and this encounter, it may be, is what turned him to religion." This very mention of a True-Orthodox (Catacomb) Bishop in the contemporary Soviet Union, and of his influence on the young generation of religious seekers, is already an important sign for those thirsting for every scrap of information on True Orthodoxy in Russia; but fortunately, from the same Krasnov and other sources, we now have a much better idea than this of the existence of Catacomb Bishops in the Soviet Union today.
The monthly bulletin Religion and Atheism in the USSR (in Russian), published in Munich by N. Theodorovich, has printed portions of three letters it has received from persons of German origin who recently emigrated from the Soviet Union and who, independently of each other, have reacted to Solzhenitsyn's statements on the Catacomb Church. One of them writes:
"A. I. Solzhenitsyn has not happened to meet any members of this Church. I was with them in prison and worked together with them in a corrective-labor colony. They are deeply believing people and very firm in faith. They are persecuted for belonging to this prohibited Church."
The second writes: "'Catacomb' or 'Secret' Church is the named used here (outside of Russia). In the USSR it is called the 'True-Orthodox' or 'Tikhonite' Church. To it belong deeply-believing Orthodox people who do not recognize the ocial church. For this the regime persecutes them. I know many of them who are now free, but I will not give their names or places of residence."
The third writer gives a more complete description of the life of the True-Orthodox Church, whose services are sometimes conducted by monks, nuns, and laymen: "The True-Orthodox Church has a hierarchy, but the majority of it is in prison or in corrective colonies. Members of the True-Orthodox Church conduct their services according to the rituals of the Orthodox Church. If they have no priest, the services are conducted by someone who knows most about them. I know of some who have not married and have dedicated themselves to God from childhood; they also conduct services. These are, as a rule, absolutely honest people who lead a morally pure life. In the USSR members of the True-Orthodox Church are cut off from the influences of the world on their life and are absolutely dedicated to God. The greater part of the believers of the True-Orthodox Church conduct their services under ordained priests Your suppositions that the members of the True-Orthodox Church are only old people who remain from the time of the schism of 1927 brought a smile to my lips. Those whom I personally knew were born after 1927. Of course, there are also those who remember 1927. They also have non-liturgical gatherings for prayer, when they read the Holy Scripture and spiritual books. Their prayer, for the most part, amounts to petitions for the awakening of faith in the Russian people. They sometimes allow young people at their Divine services if they know that they will not betray them to the militia or the KGB. The less publicity there is about them, the better for them. But it should be known that they need books of Holy Scripture and spiritual literature." [3]
- The most striking information about the True-Orthodox Church of Russia to be given in recent months comes from the well-known fighter for "civil rights" in the Soviet Union, Anatoly Livitin (Krasnov), who left the USSR for exile in Switzerland in September of this year. In his youth he took an active part as a Deacon in the "Living Church" schism, and even today, long after repenting and returning to the Orthodox Church, his views can only be described as extremely "liberal" and "ecumenical." His testimony of the True-Orthodox Church is all the more valuable in that he cannot be accused of any preconceived sympathy for it; for him it is a "sect," and therefore it is as deserving of as much respect and freedom as any other "sect" in the contemporary Soviet Union.
The first statement of Krasnov's that we shall quote comes from his Samizdat declaration to the Committee on Human Rights in Moscow, made on September 5, just before his departure from the Soviet Union. Here, together with his protests against the persecution of Uniats, Baptists, Adventists, Pentecostalists, and Jehovah's Witnesses, there is a section on "Persecutions Against the True-Orthodox Church (TOC)." Here he writes: "This Church has been subjected to persecutions for the course of 47 years." He continues with an historical account of the Declaration of Metropolitan Sergius in 1927 and the protests of a number of bishops against it; of how all the bishops who took part in the "Schism of 1927" perished in the 1930's in the concentration camps; and of how they managed to ordain a number of bishops in the camps as their successors, from whom the present secret hierarchy of the True-Orthodox Church derives its existence. He continues: "The number of members of the TOC is not subject to reckoning. However, according to information received from members of this Church, it has from eight to ten bishops, about 200 priests, and several thousand laymen. The activity of the TOC is strictly persecuted. The regime fears its spread." [4]
- Yet more detailed information on the True-Orthodox Church was given by Krasnov after his arrival in the West, where he discovered that, once again, a part of the Russian "liberal" intelligentsia was rejoicing over the "non-existence of the Catacomb Church," which this time had been "proved" by Solzhenitsyn. This is what Krasnov said in an interview with the Paris Russian weekly, La Pensee Russe (December 5, 1974, p. 5):
"As for the Catacomb Church—it exists, it is not an invention. According to my information, it has about ten bishops. These bishops have their hierarchical succession from the Josephites, the bishops who separated from Metropolitan Sergius in 1927... At the present time there are, as far as I know, perhaps twelve, perhaps eight bishops. They were all ordained in the camps by the hierarchs who were there, and all of them are developing their own activity. There are also priests. But all the same, this is a very small layer of the population. In the first place, all of this is so profoundly secret that it is very difficult to find out anything for sure. I know one nun who came to an Orthodox archimandrite in order to persuade him to go over to the 'True-Orthodox Church.' When he began to ask her more details, she replied to him: 'When you come over to us, they will tell you everything.' l know that there is an underground Metropolitan Theodosius—he is their head, and in connection with the election of Patriarch Pimen he published [in Samizdat] his own proclamation, which went about Moscow, Peter, [5] and Kiev, under the signature of 'Metropolitan Theodosius,' where in the name of the 'True-Orthodox Church' a negative attitude was declared toward the Patriarchate. In private conversations they usually say that they consider the closest current to themselves to be the Orthodox Synodal Church, the so-called 'Karlovitz' Church [the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia]. They usually say: strictly speaking we are not against the regime; we are monarchists, but we are not against the regime, inasmuch as every authority is from God. [6] They only cannot accept the hierarchy, inasmuch as it is in dependence on the atheists. Well, they consider Patriarch Tikhon their last head [i e., patriarch], which is why usually in the camps they are called 'Tikhonites.' It should be said that their adherents are usually old people, or those released from the camps. Their Divine services usually occur in private apartments,and at these secret Liturgies three or four people are present.... The True-Orthodox Church hides itself too much in the underground; it has the character of something so secret, so mysterious, that literally no one can find it; although, to be sure, one cannot refuse to respect these people who are very firm, very sincere."
EVEN BEFORE THIS it was not possible to deny at least the existence of Catacomb True-Orthodox Christians in Russia, about whom even the Soviet press speaks; and now no objective observer can well deny the existence of their "secret church organization," either. Solzhenitsyn's "facts" in the matter are clearly mistaken; his very position in the Soviet Union as a world-famous writer constantly under the close watch of the Secret Police has effectively insulated him against contact with the secret life of the True-Orthodox Church.
Even when his mistaken facts have been corrected, however, the main contention of Solzhenitsyn remains: Orthodox Christians of the West, he believes, should not show solidarity with perhaps some thousands (or tens of thousands) of Catacomb Christians, but rather with the "many millions" of the "real Russian Orthodox people." To justify this position he hazards a bold ecclesiological statement (of whose full implications he is doubtless unaware): "The sins of submission and betrayal allowed by the hierarchs have lain as an earthly and heavenly responsibility upon these leaders, but they do not extend to the church body, to the numerous conscientious priests, to the mass of those who pray in the churches—and they can never be transmitted to the church people; the whole history of Christianity persuades us of this. If the sins of the hierarchs were relayed to the faithful, the Church of Christ would not be eternal and invincible, but would depend entirely on the accidents of character and conduct."
Here Solzhenitsyn doubtless speaks for all those who defend and justify the Moscow Patriarchate, and if he were speaking only of the personal sins of hierarchs, he would be speaking the truth. But the Catacomb hierarchs and faithful have not in the least separated from the Moscow Patriarchate because of the personal sins of its hierarchs—but rather because of their apostasy from Christ, which does indeed involve not merely the hierarchs, but also the whole of the Church's faithful.
Let us here make clear several points, because the proponents of a "liberal" Orthodox theology and ecclesiology have so clouded the issue with their emotional arguments that it has become very difficult to see things clearly and calmly as they actually are.
Let it be said first of all that those, whether in Russia or outside, who accuse the hierarchs of the Moscow Patriarchate not of any personal sins, but of apostasy, do not in the least "curse" or condemn the simple people who go to the open churches in the Soviet Union, nor the conscientious priests who serve as well as they can under the inhuman pressures exerted by the Communist Government, nor even the betraying hierarchs themselves; people who say this are, purely and simply, slandering the position of the True-Orthodox Christians. While considering the clergy and faithful of the Moscow Patriarchate as participants in apostasy and schism, True-Orthodox Christians view them with sympathy and love, but also speak the truth about them and refuse to participate in their deeds or have communion in prayer and sacraments with them, leaving their judgment to the future free All-Russian Council, when and if God should grant that it might be convened. In previous Councils like this in the history of the Church, those most guilty for schism have been punished, while the innocent followers of schism have been forgiven and restored to communion with the Church (as indicated in the Epistle of St. Athanasius the Great to Rufinianus).
Secondly, True-Orthodox Christians do not at all regard the Moscow Patriarchate simply as "fallen" and its followers as equal to heretics or pagans. There are degrees of schism and apostasy, and the fresher is the break with the true Church of Christ, and the more it has been caused by outward rather than inward causes—the greater is the possibility for the eventual restoration of the fallen-away body to the Church. True-Orthodox Christians, for the sake of the purity of Christ's Church, must remain separate from the schismatic body and thereby show it the way of return to the True Church of Christ.
Solzhenitsyn speaks, not with the voice of Christian truth, but only with the voice of human common sense, when he writes in his Letter: "The majority of people are not saints, but ordinary men. Both faith and the Divine services are called to accompany their usual life, and not to demand every time a super-heroic act." Yes, it is true: True-Orthodox Christians today are the heroes of Orthodoxy in Russia, and the whole history of Christ's Church is the history of the triumph of Christ's heroes. "Ordinary" people follow the heroes, not vice versa. The standard is heroism, not "ordinary life." The confession of the True-Orthodox Church is absolutely indispensable for the "ordinary" Orthodox Christians of Russia today, if they hope to remain Orthodox and not go further on the path of apostasy.
Finally, the True-Orthodox Church of Russia, as far as we know, has made no official proclamation as to the Grace, or lack of it, of the Sacraments of the Moscow Patriarchate. Individual hierarchs of the Catacomb Church in the past have expressed different opinions on this subject, some actually allowing the reception of Holy Communion from a Sergianist priest when in danger of death, and others insisting on the new Baptism of those baptized by Sergianist clergy. This question could be decided only by a Council of Bishops. If the schism of the Moscow Patriarchate is only temporary, and if it will eventually be restored to communion with the True-Orthodox Church in a free Russia, then this question may never need to be officially decided at all. Individual cases of True-Orthodox Christians in Russia receiving or not receiving Holy Communion in Sergianist churches do not, of course, establish any general rule or decide the question. The strict rule of the Russian Church Outside of Russia forbidding her members from receiving Sacraments from clergy of the Moscow Patriarchate is not founded on any statement that these Sacraments lack Grace, but rather on the sacred testament of Metropolitan Anastassy and other great hierarchs of the Diaspora forbidding any kind of communion with the Patriarchate as long as its leaders betray the Faith and are in submission to atheists.
Solzhenitsyn speaks, not with the voice of Christian truth, but only with the voice of human common sense, when he writes in his Letter: "The majority of people are not saints, but ordinary men. Both faith and the Divine services are called to accompany their usual life, and not to demand every time a super-heroic act." Yes, it is true: True-Orthodox Christians today are the heroes of Orthodoxy in Russia, and the whole history of Christ's Church is the history of the triumph of Christ's heroes. "Ordinary" people follow the heroes, not vice versa. The standard is heroism, not "ordinary life." The confession of the True-Orthodox Church is absolutely indispensable for the "ordinary" Orthodox Christians of Russia today, if they hope to remain Orthodox and not go further on the path of apostasy.
Finally, the True-Orthodox Church of Russia, as far as we know, has made no official proclamation as to the Grace, or lack of it, of the Sacraments of the Moscow Patriarchate. Individual hierarchs of the Catacomb Church in the past have expressed different opinions on this subject, some actually allowing the reception of Holy Communion from a Sergianist priest when in danger of death, and others insisting on the new Baptism of those baptized by Sergianist clergy. This question could be decided only by a Council of Bishops. If the schism of the Moscow Patriarchate is only temporary, and if it will eventually be restored to communion with the True-Orthodox Church in a free Russia, then this question may never need to be officially decided at all. Individual cases of True-Orthodox Christians in Russia receiving or not receiving Holy Communion in Sergianist churches do not, of course, establish any general rule or decide the question. The strict rule of the Russian Church Outside of Russia forbidding her members from receiving Sacraments from clergy of the Moscow Patriarchate is not founded on any statement that these Sacraments lack Grace, but rather on the sacred testament of Metropolitan Anastassy and other great hierarchs of the Diaspora forbidding any kind of communion with the Patriarchate as long as its leaders betray the Faith and are in submission to atheists.
Now that these points have been made clear, let us return to the belief of Solzhenitsyn and all the defenders of the Moscow Patriarchate that the betrayal of her hierarchs does not affect the Church's faithful. This view is based on an entirely false view of the nature of the Church which artificially separates the hierarchs from the believing people and allows "church life as normal" to go on no matter what happens to the Church leaders. On the contrary, the whole history of the Church of Christ persuades us of the exact opposite. Who else was it but the Bishops of Rome who led the Church of the West into apostasy and schism and heresy? Is it the fault of ordinary believing Roman Catholics that they, the largest group of "Christians" in the world, are today outside the Church of Christ, and that in order to return to the true Church they must not only reject the false doctrines of Rome, but also completely reform their religious mentality and unlearn the false piety which has been transmitted to them precisely by their bishops? Today, it is true, the Moscow Patriarchate allows Roman Catholics to receive its Sacraments and implicitly already teaches the ecumenist doctrine that these Catholics too are "part of the Church." But this fact only shows how far the Moscow Patriarchate has departed from the universal Orthodox tradition of the Church into an erroneous ecclesiology, and how correct the True-Orthodox Church is in refusing to have communion with an ecclesiastical body which not only allows its policies to be dictated by atheists, but openly preaches the modern heresies of ecumenism and chiliasm. If normal Orthodox Church life is not restored to Russia, the Moscow Patriarchate will follow the path of Roman Catholicism and eventually wither and die in apostasy, and the innocent people who follow it will find themselves beyond any doubt outside the Church of Christ. And then it will only be those who are one with the True-Orthodox Christians of Russia who will still be in the Church's saving enclosure.
Solzhenitsyn and the Russian intelligentsia in general, whether inside or outside Russia, are obviously quite unaware of the real crisis of Orthodoxy today. It is, of course, in itself a good thing to boldly challenge the inhuman Soviet tyranny, to speak up for the oppressed, to call for "moral renewal" and preach "not living by lies": but this is not yet Orthodox Christianity, this is not what the Christian martyrs died for and the Orthodox confessors suffered for. Baptists are doing this much today in the Soviet Union, as also are well-meaning agnostics and atheists; but this does not make them belong to the Church of Christ. In general one may say that the unparalleled sufferings of contemporary Russia have caused many of us to be rather too loose with our use of the words "martyr" and "confessor". These words have a specific meaning for Orthodox Christians: they refer to those who consciously suffer and die for Christ and His True Church, not for "humanity" or "Christianity in general" or even for "Orthodoxy" if it is not true Orthodoxy.
The real crisis of Orthodoxy today—not only in Russia but throughout the world—has not been caused by submission to orders from atheists, and it will not be overcome by refusing to accept these orders. The crisis of Orthodoxy lies in the loss of the savor of True Christianity. This savor has been largely lost not only by the Moscow hierarchs, but by most of the Russian "dissidents" as well, as likewise by the "Paris" school of émigré theologians, by the apostate Patriarch of Constantinople and all who follow him, by new calendarists and renovationists and modernists of every sort, and by the simple people everywhere who imagine they are Orthodox because their fathers were or because they belong to a "canonical church organization." Against this loss of the savor of Orthodoxy there has arisen one great movement of protest in the 20th-century: that of the True-Orthodox Christians whether of Russia, Greece, Mount Athos, or the Orthodox Diaspora. Among these True-Orthodox Christians are to be found the authentic Orthodox confessors and martyrs of our times.
A veritable "unity-fever" has gripped migr circles in recent months, partly under the influence of Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn himself wants to be "one" with the millions of ordinary Orthodox believers in Russia, and with all Russian Orthodox believers abroad. May God grant that he be one with them in the Truth. But if it be not in the Truth, but by means of some compromise in the Truth—such unity is abhorrent to God and His Holy Church; better for Russia to perish than to be "one" not in the Truth. The great confessors of Orthodox history have been precisely those who rose up against false unity, preferring, if necessary, to be alone against the world if only they might be with Christ and His Truth. Let us take only one example.
The Church of Christ knows no greater champion than St. Maximus the Confessor, to whom the partisans of "church unity" offered all the same arguments that are offered today to the True-Orthodox Christians who refuse to be in communion with those "Orthodox" who have left the path of piety and truth. Of St. Maximus only two things were asked: that he accept a compromise statement of faith (the "Typos") and receive communion with the Patriarchs and bishops who accepted it. The emissaries of the Byzantine Emperor explained to St. Maximus that "the Typos does not deny the two wills in Christ, but only obliges one to be silent about them for the sake of the peace of the Church"; they told him "have in your heart whatever faith you want, no one forbids you this"; they accused him of causing disturbance in the Church out of his stubbornness: "You alone are grieving everyone, for it is precisely because of you that many wish not to have communion with the local Church"; they threw in his face the favorite argument of "Christian liberals" of all times: "You mean that you alone are being saved and everyone else is damned?" and they culminated their argument with the appeal so powerful today: you will be left behind, for not only have all the Eastern Patriarchs accepted the Typos, even the emissaries of the Pope of Rome, the last Orthodox Patriarch then in the world—"tomorrow, Sunday, will receive communion of the Holy Mysteries with the Patriarch of Constantinople." And to this St. Maximus, a simple monk who for all he knew might be the only Christian left to believe as he did, replied in words that should be written in gold for every True-Orthodox Christian today to read: "Even if the whole world should receive communion with the Patriarch, I will not." All of this is stated quite clearly in the Life of St. Maximus (Lives of Saints, Jan. 21); but those who have lost the savor of Orthodoxy seldom read the lives of Saints, and if they do they most certainly do not base their lives on this primary source of true Orthodox Christianity.
A typical result of the anti-Orthodox mentality which St. Maximus combated may be seen in the newest attempt of the Russian Metropolia in America to destroy the confessing stand of the Russian Church Outside of Russia. Solzhenitsyn in this same Letter to the Third All-Diaspora Sobor had expressed his discouragement at finding church disunity in the Russian Diaspora, and the Bishops of the Sobor expressed their willingness once more to seek unity with the American Metropolia and the Paris Exarchate—it being understood that this unity must be in the Truth and not by means of any compromise. With regard to the Metropolia, a chief obstacle to unity lies, of course, in the "autocephaly" it received in 1970 from the Moscow Patriarchate at the price of acknowledging to the world the complete "canonicity" and "Orthodoxy" of the Sergianist church organization. In an exchange of letters with the Metropolia, Metr. Philaret took due note of this obstacle, to which Metr. Ireney of the Metropolia replied: "In the Church there have always been disagreements, disputes, and searchings.... Let it be that we think differently about the path and aim of the Church in America, that we think differently about our participation in the battle for Christ's righteousness in the world and in the suffering Russian land. Is all this really capable of violating our unity in Christ?... We offer nothing impossible... we offer only a renunciation of the prohibition from visiting each other's churches, praying together, and receiving the Holy Mysteries together."
Indeed, such a small step! Just as in the days of St. Maximus the Confessor, let us "have in our heart whatever faith we want," but "be silent about our differences for the sake of the peace of the Church." We can each interpret "Christ's righteousness" as we please—a privilege we share with Baptists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and many others! With what "mercy" and "love" this offer of "eucharistic communion" is made, in the interest of bringing back the Russian Church Outside of Russia into communion with "world Orthodoxy" —that apostate "Orthodoxy" which has lost the savor of Christianity—and deprive it precisely of solidarity with the True-Orthodox Church of Russia. The devil himself could not have devised a slyer, more "innocent" temptation, which plays so strongly on the emotions and on humanitarian motives.
It is therefore undoubtedly a great mercy of God that, just at the hour of this temptation, we should receive reliable information, not only about the "secret church organization" of the True-Orthodox Church in Russia, but even about her chief hierarch, Metropolitan Theodosius. To be sure, the "Orthodox" wolves in sheep's clothing will continue to take cruel advantage of the fact that those who do know more about the Catacomb Church, whether in Russia or abroad, will of course not reveal it so as not to betray the True-Orthodox Christians in any way. Even if the Catacomb Church did not exist at all, the Moscow Patriarchate would still be guilty of schism and apostasy, even as Roman Catholicism did not become Orthodox once the last Orthodox communities were finally wiped out in the West. But it is now surely beyond any doubt that the Catacomb Church does exist and is even to some degree organized; and so we Orthodox Christians in the free world are without any excuse if we fail to show precisely our solidarity with her and her fearless confession of God's Truth and righteousness. The True-Orthodox Church is the standard of Orthodoxy in Russia today, and it requires no "imagination" or secret information for us to know that standard and measure ourselves by it. The standard of Holy Orthodoxy does not change; if we ourselves are struggling to be True-Orthodox Christians we are living by the same standard as the True-Orthodox Church of Russia. The True-Orthodox Christians of Greece already know this quite well, for their struggle is very similar to that in Russia; it is only we of the Orthodox Diaspora who are so slow to follow their confessing path, because we have not learned from suffering as they have.
Is it not time at last, then, for the True-Orthodox Christians of the free world to raise their voices in defense of the trampled-down Truth? Is it only the persecuted Orthodox in Russia who have the courage to speak boldly against the lies and hypocrisies of the Church leaders and proclaim their separateness, on grounds of Truth and Orthodox principle, from the apostate hierarchs? As a matter of Church principle, the question is in reality the same here as there; the only difference is that in the Soviet Union the hierarchs participate in apostasy ostensibly under the dictatorship of atheists, whereas in the free world the hierarchs do the same thing freely. And if any naively hold that the Paris and American "jurisdictions" abroad are still "conservative" and are largely unaffected by the ecumenical madness of "Greek Orthodoxy," let him read the account in the Russian émigré newspaper La Pensee Rasse (Feb. 20, 1975), under the headline "Ecumenism in the Cathedral of the Paris Mother of God" (Notre-Dame de Paris), of the "grandiose ecumenical prayer-service of Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants, headed by the Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Marty, the Exarch of the Ecumenical Patriarch, Metropolitan Meletios, and the representative of the Protestant Federation, Monsieur Courvoisier." Here the choir and clergy of the Paris Russian (Eulogian) Cathedral took full part in the "grandiose ecumenical prayer-service" together with the heretics (for which sin, according to the sacred canons, they must be excommunicated), and the Protodeacon "thunderously, with a mighty bass voice," read the Gospel, fully vested, after bowing to the three presiding dignitaries of the assembly, as if to Orthodox bishops. As a result, "hardly in the eight centuries of its existence has Notre-Dame Cathedral heard such a reading of the Word of God, and it is understandable that those present were shaken"—shaken by a dramatically effective voice which helped to close off salvation for those present by not daring to tell them that they are outside the Church of Christ.
The same "ecumenical" message is proclaimed by Archbishop John Shahovskoy of the American Metropolia when he begs "forgiveness" of "our Catholic and Protestant brethren" because the Russian Church Outside of Russia continues to declare the Orthodox teaching that they are unbaptized. [7]
True Orthodoxy is one and the same whether in outward freedom or outward slavery; it is free internally to preach the unchanging Truth of Christ's Church, and the questions before it are one and the same here and there: Can we be with Christ and still be one with those who disdain the ecclesiastical calendar, renovate theology and piety, legitimize the Sergianist schism, pray with heretics, and by word and act proclaim that "nothing separates us" from those most miserable and unfortunate "Christians" of the West who for centuries have not known the grace of God? Metropolitan Philaret, Chief Hierarch of the Russian Church Outside of Russia, in his first "Sorrowful Epistle" to all Orthodox bishops in the world (1969) has already given the battle-cry for all True-Orthodox Christians against those who participate by word or act in the soul-destroying heresy of ecumenism: "We have already protested against the unorthodox ecumenical actions of Patriarch Athenagoras and Archbishop Iakovos.... But now the time has come to make our protest heard more loudly still, and then even yet more loudly, so as to stop the action of this poison before it has become as potent as the ancient heresies of Arianism, Nestorianism, or Eutychianism, which in their time so shook the whole body of the Church as to make it seem that heresy was apt to overcome Orthodoxy."
We must obey God, not men; we must remain in the unchanging Orthodox Faith, which is Divine, and not listen to the rationalistic arguments of worldly men who only wish to please each other and conform the Faith to the humanitarian spirit of the age. Let all True-Orthodox Christians in the world remain unbending in the confession of Russia's Catacomb Church, a confession whose very words the divine St. Maximus has given us:
Even if the whole world should receive communion with the apostate hierarchs, we will not. Amen.
Endnotes
So The Orthodox Church, official organ of the American Metropolia [now the OCA], November, 1974, p. 2.
Russian text in Novoye Russkaye Slovo, about Feb. 1, 1975, p. 3.
Religion and Atheism in the USSR, December, 1974, p. 9.
Religion and Atheism in the USSR, December, 1974, p 2
A pre-Revolutionary nickname for St. Petersburg (now "Leningrad").
This is probably not an accurate statement about the position of the True-Orthodox Church in Russia on this point. See the Samizdat Catacomb document "Church and Authority" (The Orthodox Word, 1972, no. 3 pp. 133-135), where the Soviet regime is called an "anti-authority."
Novoye Russkaye Slovo, Feb. 18, 1975, p. 2.
From The Orthodox Word, Nov.-Dec., 1974 (59), 235-246.