By the Right Reverend Photios, Bishop of Triaditza

BISHOP PHOTIOS received his theological education at the Academy of Theology in Sofia and his training in classical philology at the University of Sofia, where he was an assistant professor of ancient Greek. A spiritual son of the renowned Archimandrite Seraphim (Alexiev) and an erudite scholar, His Grace serves as the sole shepherd of the Old Calendar Orthodox Church of Bulgaria, a Sister Church of our Church in Greece.

One year has passed since the date (15 March 1992) that representatives of the local Orthodox Churches, meeting in Constantinople, signed a joint communiqué which purports to constitute an expression of “the unity of all Orthodox.” [1] This communiqué was signed on the Sunday of Orthodoxy. By bitter irony, the same day that the Church celebrates the Triumph of Orthodoxy, the Primates of the “official” Orthodox Churches signed a document, the basic prescriptions of which it would be difficult to call Orthodox. In the present article, we propose to examine the fundamental notion, indeed the most debatable point, of this communiqué: its concept of Orthodox unity and of the unity of Orthodox Christians today.

A talk delivered by Fr. Maximus (Marretta) to the Inter-Orthodox Conference “Orthodoxy and Modern Ecumenism,” University of Chicago, March 5/18, 2007.

Your Grace, Fathers and Brethren, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I would like to speak to you today about the problem of conservative New Calendarism. By conservative New Calendarists I mean those who consider the institution of the Gregorian calendar and involvement in the ecumenical movement to be misguided, unfortunate, or even to some degree heretical, but nevertheless remain in churches which follow the New Calendar and foster Ecumenism. While conservative New Calendarists rightly consider Orthodoxy to be the one and only true Church of Christ and adhere to Orthodox doctrines and practices with admirable zeal, they find themselves under bishops who deny those doctrines and shun traditional piety. Although this situation is certainly uncomfortable for them, they are obligated to justify it, and to this end employ the following argument: the participation of our bishops in the ecumenical movement is wrong, but it is only an abuse, not a heresy; and if it even descends to the level of heresy, it occurs only on a personal, not an official, level. Thus the church as a whole is not implicated in the heresy, and one may in good conscience continue in communion with the bishops in question. This line of reasoning underlies virtually all serious attempts to justify remaining in the New Calendarist, or Ecumenist church, and not returning to the Old Calendarist, or traditional Orthodox Church.

Iconographic representation of the appearance of the Cross over the Church of St. John the Theologian on Mt. Hymettos outside Athens on September 14, 1925 according to the Patristic Calendar. Police were dispatched to stop the “Old Calendarists” from serving the feast of the Cross, but when the Cross appeared in the sky, the police officers and many hundreds of people returned to the Old Calendar on the spot.

a Because based on it, the First Ecumenical Council established the Paschal Canon and appointed that the feast of Holy Pascha may fall anywhere from March 22nd until April 25th, while with the New (Papal) Calendar it can fall as late at May 8th.

b The Gregorian (Papal) Calendar has been condemned by three Pan-Orthodox Councils under Patriarch Jeremiah Tranos (1583, 1587, 1589)

c Through Synodal Patriarchal Encyclicals in 1593 Patriarchs Jeremiah of Constantinople, Sophronios of Alexandria, and in 1848 Patriarchs Anthimos of Constantinople, Hierotheos of Alexandria, Methodios of Antioch and Cyril of Jerusalem placed under serious penances whomever accepts the reform of the Orthodox Ecclesiastical Calendar.

d The change of the old calendar was prepared and imposed upon the Greek people by the certified Freemasons Chrysostom Papadopoulos (Metropolitan of Athens) and Meletios Metaxakis (Patriarch of Constantinople) in cooperation with the military coup of Plastiras-Gonatas without the assent of the other Orthodox Churches.

e It was suggested in the Encyclical of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1920 that the acceptance of a common calendar would aid the common celebration of all Churches. What it conceived of as “Churches” were all the heretical parasynagogues (Monophysites, Latins, Anglicans, Protestants and the rest of the cacodox) who, based on this encyclical are considered branches of the common body of the “divided Church”, thus paving the road for today’s syncretistic pan-heresy of Ecumenism.

What is Ecumenism?

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Bishop Petros of Astoria (TOC) with St. John (Maximovitch) and other ROCOR bishops at the Cathedral of St. Markella in the 1960’s.

This is when St. John visited St. Markella’s Cathedral in the 1960s. Saint John supported the Old Calendarists and proposed that ROCOR ordain bishops for us all the way back in the late 1950s.

Saint Vladika John Maximovitch, pray to Christ God for us miserable sinners!

The region of Anatolia, Cappadocia in Asia Minor, where he lived his childhood years, where he came to know the first spiritual stirrings, where he tasted the springing waters of Orthodoxy from the holy elders who lived there, and where he matured spiritually remained unforgettable for him. He frequently referred to his homeland and waved nostalgic for all the things he had experienced there. He never forgot the solitary chapels in the rocks, where one could go and pray in utter stillness, nor those simple people, those first-rate artisans, who, whatever they put their hand to, did it perfectly, with ardor, and with good taste.

Being a great lover of the life of stillness and prayer, he often recollected the beautiful days full of spiritual ascents and exaltations that he had passed in the chapels and abandoned monasteries of his homeland.

“Here in Greece you cannot find a quiet place to pray,” he was wont to say. “In Anatolia there were many places where you could pass the whole day in prayer, without anybody seeing you.”

This insatiable and never-silent desire for quietude and prayer, for undisturbed communion with God, never abandoned him. He never lost an opportunity to draw apart and give himself to prayer. Usually, even when he was speaking to his visitors, he would stop for a little and say, “Now let’s chant something.”

And he would begin with his imposing, deeply resounding, and melodious voice to chant “Let us worship the Word,” or “It is truly meet…” or some other hymn, these intermissions of prayer were indispensable for him, they were his life-breath, his spiritual supply-Iine. And at the same time, it was an excellent example for those who conversed with him, that they might form the habit of conjoining their every occupation with prayer.

This text (which consists of excerpts from the book “Charalambis for Christ fool” ,edition of the Holy Monastery “Panagoulakis” of Old Calendar Orthodox Church in Kalamata 1993) “is a tribute to our Saint of the last days Charalambis for Christ fool. Saint Charalambis reposed to Lord on October 10, 1974. He lived, like many Saints of the Church as “vacuous” for the love of Christ. He confessed that “God wants people to call me crazy and a fool.” “God told me to wear old clothes, not costumes… A keen confessor of Orthodoxy preached “Come back to the old calendar, fast, atheists, prodigal.», ¨ Turn the old, the Orthodox church’s calendar, leave the rottenness of the world.” and “Come by and never leave the path of God.” While he said the usual incomprehensible words “Behold gar and said “gar, gar, gar…. Life, then, was a constant humiliation, a “imitation of Christ” the charity and control people.” But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty…”! (1^st Epistle to Corinthians 1,27) The messages of Saint is topical today!

Are there currently Saints? Every orthodox pious soul wonders secretly of. A crucial and difficult question to really answer, since the dark spiritual era where increasing amount of lawlessness, the error and the disrespect shown to both missed and long forms of the old holy time, those fiery poles of Divine Grace, the Saints fans, who were sacred vessels and vessels of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Trinity’s residence sources wonderland, and live after death, pro-active, the hot, the humble, the ascetic, all those grateful and miraculous. Today It seems to be missing the lights of the people, the hope and solace for pious Christians, the saints, their prayers kept the world. Symptom and this feature of the precursor of the Antichrist our time, indeed this is prophesied since centuries or millennia precisely by the Holy Spirit for us today who live in “eighth century” before the end of times when all signs indicate that we go slowly: In one of the first only psalms of David, the eleventh, as we document the eschatological legend ¨ With the end in favor of the Eighth “and immediately begins the psalm with a prayer-prophecy:” Save Lord, that saints lost. It’s so clear for the reference to recent times (at the end), the eighth and last century (for the Eighth) and then absence of the Saints (saints lost), every comment is superfluous.

A Major Step on the Path Towards Apostasy
by Bishop Photius of Triaditsa
Introduction: The author of this article, Bishop Photius of Triaditsa, was consecrated to the episcopacy on January 4/17, 1993 by Metropolitan Cyprian of Fili, Abbot of the Monastery of Saints Cyprian and Justina. Bishop Photius is the sole hierarch of the Old Calendarists in Bulgaria.

Professor T. Sibiff’s work, The Church Calendar Question, which appeared a quarter of a century ago with the goal of establishing a theological basis for the Church Calendar reform instituted in Bulgaria in 1968, frequently cites the so-called “Pan-Orthodox” Congress which took place from May 10th through June 8th, 1923 in Constantinople.[1] The author cites the decisions of this congress concerning the revision of the Julian calendar,[2] which entailed replacing the Julian calendar with the so-called “New Julian calendar,” which in fact corresponds to the Western Gregorian calendar until the year 2800. Professor Sibiff refers to the Congress in Constantinople, unashamedly preferring to call it an “Orthodox Gathering.” For him, as for all supporters of the calendar reform, that Congress has unquestionable authority as a Church forum. At the same time, ignoring the facts cannot cover the serious canonical discrepancies of the Congress at Constantinople. According to the words of Professor C. Troitsky, “There is no doubt that future historians of the Orthodox Church will be forced to admit that the Congress of 1923 was the saddest event of Church life in the 20th century.”[3] By calling itself “Pan-Orthodox” without any basis for doing so, the Congress in Constantinople opened the way to changing the Patristic Church Calendar and began the Orthodox Church’s rush into modernism. In spite of the fact that, from the beginning, the decisions of the Congress were rejected by almost all local Orthodox Churches, the Congress at Constantinople succeeded in destroying the liturgical and festal unity of the Orthodox Church. The reformed calendar was gradually introduced into many local Churches. Consequently, a tragic division in the liturgical practice occurred not only among individual local Churches, but also within the local Churches themselves which had officially accepted this uncanonical innovation.

A Major Step on the Path Towards Apostasy
by Bishop Photius of Triaditsa
Introduction: The author of this article, Bishop Photius of Triaditsa, was consecrated to the episcopacy on January 4/17, 1993 by Metropolitan Cyprian of Fili, Abbot of the Monastery of Saints Cyprian and Justina. Bishop Photius is the sole hierarch of the Old Calendarists in Bulgaria.

Professor T. Sibiff’s work, The Church Calendar Question, which appeared a quarter of a century ago with the goal of establishing a theological basis for the Church Calendar reform instituted in Bulgaria in 1968, frequently cites the so-called “Pan-Orthodox” Congress which took place from May 10th through June 8th, 1923 in Constantinople.[1] The author cites the decisions of this congress concerning the revision of the Julian calendar,[2] which entailed replacing the Julian calendar with the so-called “New Julian calendar,” which in fact corresponds to the Western Gregorian calendar until the year 2800. Professor Sibiff refers to the Congress in Constantinople, unashamedly preferring to call it an “Orthodox Gathering.” For him, as for all supporters of the calendar reform, that Congress has unquestionable authority as a Church forum. At the same time, ignoring the facts cannot cover the serious canonical discrepancies of the Congress at Constantinople. According to the words of Professor C. Troitsky, “There is no doubt that future historians of the Orthodox Church will be forced to admit that the Congress of 1923 was the saddest event of Church life in the 20th century.”[3] By calling itself “Pan-Orthodox” without any basis for doing so, the Congress in Constantinople opened the way to changing the Patristic Church Calendar and began the Orthodox Church’s rush into modernism. In spite of the fact that, from the beginning, the decisions of the Congress were rejected by almost all local Orthodox Churches, the Congress at Constantinople succeeded in destroying the liturgical and festal unity of the Orthodox Church. The reformed calendar was gradually introduced into many local Churches. Consequently, a tragic division in the liturgical practice occurred not only among individual local Churches, but also within the local Churches themselves which had officially accepted this uncanonical innovation.

by Archbishop Averky of Blessed Memory
Few people today know that the Orthodox Church is nothing less than that Church which has preserved untainted the genuine teachings of Jesus Christ, the very teachings delivered to every subsequent generation of believers. These teachings came down the centuries. from the Holy Apostles, explicated and carefully interpreted by their legitimate successors (their disciples and the holy Fathers), traditioned and conserved unaltered by our Eastern Church which is alone able to prove her right to be called “the Orthodox Church.”

The divine Founder of the Church, our Lord Jesus Christ, said clearly, “I will build my Church and the gates of Hell will not prevail against Her” (St. Matt xvi, 18). To the Church, He sent the Holy Spirit. The Spirit descended upon the Apostles, the Spirit of Truth (St. John xv, 16f) Who “manifests all things” to Her and guides Her (St. John xvi, 13), protecting Her from error. Indeed, it was to declare this Truth to men that the Lord came into the cosmos, according to His own words (St. John xviii, 31). And Saint Paul confirms this fact in his letter to his pupil, the bishop Timothy, saying that, “the Church of the living God is the ground and pillar of the Truth” (I Tim iii, 15).

PRESIDENT
OF THE SYNOD OF BISHOPS
OF THE RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH
OUTSIDE OF RUSSIA

75 EAST 93rd STREET, NEW YORK, N.Y. 10028
Telephone: LEhigh 4-1601

A SECOND SORROWFUL EPISTLE

TO THEIR HOLINESSES AND THEIR BEATITUDES,
THE PRIMATES OF THE HOLY ORTHODOX CHURCHES,
THE MOST REVEREND METROPOLITANS, ARCHBISHOPS AND BISHOPS.

The People of the Lord residing in his Diocese are entrusted to the Bishop, and he will be required to give account of their souls according to the 39th Apostolic Canon. The 34th Apostolic Canon orders that a Bishop may do “those things only which concern his own Diocese and the territories belonging to it.”

There are, however, occasions when events are of such a nature that their influence extends beyond the limits of one Diocese, or indeed those of one or more of the local Churches. Events of such a general, global nature can not be ignored by any Orthodox Bishop, who, as a successor of the Apostles, is charged with the protection of his flock from various temptations. The lightening-like speed with which ideas may be spread in our times make such care all the more imperative now.