The following is an e-message sent to my by Archbishop Chrysostomos, which I posted on the Orthodox list with his permission here, and here.

July 18, 1995 (old Style)

Deacon Father John Whiteford

Dear Deacon Father John:

        Evlogia Kyriou!

        Thank you for your "e-mail" to Bishop Auxentios about the 1991 encyclical of the Patriarch of Antioch, Ignatios VI, to the members of his Church regarding relations with the Monophysitic Church of Syria (the Holy Syrian Church). You note that many who belong to the Antiochian Exarchate in this country deny that this encyclical is a statement of Church union, yet wonder if, in fact, the document does not cross the line into heresy by accepting the validity of a Monophysite body. You also ask if we should accept those coming from the Antiochian Church as heretics and otherwise refuse to commune them. His Grace has asked me to answer these questions for him. I do so with trepidation, since I must, in responding to your questions, make some very subtle points. Subtlety, the very core of our faith, is, unfortunately, somehow lost on Christians today. And, therefore, we have debates over things that should not be debated. Moreover, layers and layers of personal opinion passing as theology have become part of the "canon" of ecclesiology, so that when we speak the obvious truth about the Church, couching it in simple terms that seem almost catechetical (if only because they are), it pales before the complexity of far-flung opinion. Since contemporary man has largely forgotten that the essence of subtlety is simplicity, what is so straight forward seems to violate the very subtlety for which most of us moderate traditionalists call. So, extremists, having by their very nature deviated from the "Royal Path," which generates circumspection and ethical uprightness, in their self-serving way dismiss what we say as lacking that element which we have invoked in opposition to their hyperbole, subtlety, wrongly judging us by the very criterion which convicts them. And as though to add absurdity to irony, they, who are ardent champions of their own personal views, accuse us of expressing, not the teachings of Orthodoxy, but personal opinion!

        I must also say that, in this world of political correctness, we Orthodox have succumbed to the hypocrisy of "personless" criticism. I am not here speaking about ad hominem attacks or about the condemnation of a specific individual. Nor, indeed, am I speaking about the popular tactic in certain ecclesiastical circles of assassinating another's character in order to silence a threatening truth that he might reveal about us. These things are reprehensible and un-Christian. Rather, I refer to the necessity of speaking about the sins that are visited upon those who distort the Truth. Heresy is a deeply personal thing, since theology is ultimately an expression of how we receive Christ into our lives, into our persons, into our personalities, and ultimately into the blood and flesh of our very bodies. Just as truth transforms our very flesh (look at the relics of the righteous), so heresy distorts our minds and our psyches, making us servants of the father of heresy, the Evil One. One cannot ignore these things. Short of Donatism, a very specific heresy which, however badly misunderstood, relates directly to the efficacy of the Mysteries, we can indeed see the effects of righteous belief in the behavior and morals of a right-believing man and the effects of heresy on the demeanor and character of a heretic. The Fathers make this very clear in their portrayals of heretics and in their caricatures of true Christians.

        First, then, the theological issues involved in the apostasy of virtually every Orthodox Patriarchate to ecumenism and the denial of the primacy of Orthodoxy. We have known for years that Orthodox Bishops from these jurisdictions often turn a blind eye to concelebration by their clergy with the heterodox, since they have fallen to the heresy of ecumenism, believing that all Christians are equal. They may, for the sake of show, qualify these things, limiting "Christians" to Papists, Anglicans, Orthodox, and sometimes Lutherans, or define Christianity by its "Trinitarian" dimensions, as though any real Trinitarianism existed outside Orthodoxy (apply the criterion of the filioque alone, to demonstrate this point). In the end, however, they have abandoned the idea that the Orthodox Church is the true Church, since this makes them a peculiar people, disenfranchises them in terms of the politics of world religion, and disallows their open association with the heterodox, by which they gain notoriety. That it separates them from Christ does not seem to concern them.

        Since 1920 and the fall of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to ecumenism, we have seen sign after sign of the betrayal of Orthodoxy by the "official" Churches, which have redefined Orthodoxy, making us believe that communion with a Patriarchate or national Church – mere historical constructs – defines Orthodoxy. In fact, Orthodoxy is defined by Apostolic Succession and correct belief, even Apostolic Succession meaning nothing without correct confession (if such a "Succession" is in fact possible). Yet, these same Orthodox have declared that one can be Orthodox and embrace false belief. After all, the Pope is a heretic, yet is commemorated in Constantinople, as everyone knows. This is not a secret. The anathemas against Rome were lifted by Athenagoras, though these anathemas centuries ago entered into the conscience of the Church, which no Bishop – and Athenagoras was simply the first among the Bishops – has the authority to contradict. Recently, the Balamand "Union" confirmed that Rome and Orthodoxy are Sister Churches. And as you can see in the statement of the Patriarch of Antioch, Monophysites, heretics condemned by repeated Ecumenical Synods, are now considered Orthodox by his Church, talk about common celebrations abounding and the acceptance by the Orthodoxy of the heretical "fathers" of the Monophysites a fait accompli.

        Seeing all of this, we must be very careful. The Church is not dedicated to finding ways to condemn people, but has as its chief concern the return of sinners and apostates back from wrong belief. We should not be quick to condemn millions of people to Hell by convicting them of heresy, when many of these believers have been simply misled by Shepherds who should be teaching them the Truth. After all, Rome began to wander already in the early Christian centuries. Yet it was only after years of patience that the Church finally disavowed this ancient Church, and this in an instance which superficial observers have called a political spat between Church leaders. There are, among a few true Bishops and Teachers, false Bishops and false Teachers in the official Churches, to be sure; this does not mean, however, that the whole of their Churches are without Grace and that the bacterium of heresy has destroyed them completely. This is the thinking of the extremist traditionalists, who would say, with their simple-minded, black-and-white mentality, "Can a Church have false Shepherds who preach heresy and still have Grace?" If it also has remnants of right-believers, of course. A local, earthly Church can indeed become sick, as St. John Chrysostomos says, and fall to wrong belief. Was there a betrayer among the Apostles? Yes. Did the Apostles cease being Apostles when he was among them? Did not the betrayer himself take part in the Mystical Supper? At what point something sick within a Healthy Body (whether that of Christ – the Church – or the body of the Apostles) is cast out, we do not know. This is a natural process subject to certain subtleties and Divine Providence. To forget this is to wish for a sick man to die before he is moribund. Only when a body succumbs fully to an evil wrong is it manifestly cut off from Grace: when Judas hanged himself and when a local Church is cut off by the whole body of the Church meeting in a universal synod.

        We must not forget, in capturing the subtlety of this issue, that St. Basil the Great, in his first Canon, suggests that Grace lingers for some time where there is error, and this not because, as simple-minded critics would object, the Spotless Church is defiled, but because God, in His mercy, protects the Church at the same time that he labors in love for the salvation of those who are spiritually ill. If we cannot grasp this two-pronged mission of the Church, then we fail to be Christians. It is also the case that a local Church can fall into error and that, for a limited time, until it comes into correct order, other Churches will break communion with it, yet without condemning it as being without Grace. Such unusual circumstances cannot be understood with human logic assuming the face of spiritual wisdom, nor are they subject to the dicta of local Churches or individual discretion. They are matters that must be adjudicated by the Church at large, and are therefore subject to the forces of social, political, and historical reality. They are not matters for armchair theologians and amateur Church historians, however sophisticated or knowledgeable they may consider themselves to be.

        The Russian Orthodox Church Abroad has officially condemned ecumenism, the "branch theory" of the Church, and those who embrace this heresy. So has our Church. But a universal synod of the Church – a thing hard to imagine in our days, when the so-called "official" Churches themselves are ill – has not met to declare specific Church bodies to have lost Grace. We must, therefore, exercise patience and follow the course of resistance, which the Church allows us and, in fact, appoints in such circumstances: We must break away from those who are ailing, in order not to be infected ourselves, and work from without their illness to cure them. And here, again, we encounter a Christian imperative: "Work to cure them." Our resistance is undertaken to protect ourselves, of course, but also to help those ailing in the Faith. Only after they have joined with Rome or other heretics openly and officially and without equivocation – and this not according to each person's opinion – can we finally know exactly what to do. In the meantime, we must, just as St. Basil suggests in his first Canon, treat each case individually.

        For example, we do not in our Church, despite the lie spread about us, indiscriminately commune New Calendarists. There are specific instances, however, in which some traditionalists receive more traditional believers from the "official" Churches at the Chalice, reckoning that this might help them in their course towards resistance. In other cases, when such believers embrace and preach ecumenism, they are denied Holy Communion. By the same token, when someone who was a complete ecumenist sees the light, and especially when he comes from a Church like Antioch, perhaps it is wise to Chrismate him, recognizing that he has embraced heresy. Some traditionalist Churches do this. On the other hand, a worried believer who suddenly sees the error in his Church, who has never embraced the heresy of ecumenism and its innovative corollaries, and seeks refuge with us – can one in good conscience call such a man a heretic outside the Church and receive him as such? Prudence rules, here. Each case here, is individual, and we must be guided by pastoral love. Black-and-white answers simply do not apply, since the very state of the Church is, as we noted before, subject to social, political, and historical forces, guided by Divine Providence, that we cannot yet clearly grasp, if we will humbly forego omniscience.

Orthodox in the "official" jurisdictions have not yet, like Papists, been required to dedicate themselves formally and in public to a creed separate from that of Orthodoxy. However heretical the statements of their Shepherds, there are still among them some clergy and Faithful who have simply not understood that ecumenism is not about the toleration of others (something everyone, including Orthodox, would do well to embrace), but is about the dishonest betrayal of our Faith by those who have adopted a set of beliefs antithetical to Orthodoxy and more amenable to those ideologies which strive for a single world religion and a single world political system. We must make provisions for the salvation of our Orthodox brethren, since, should we make a mistake and think that the end is near and the whole of the Church will not revive, when this is not true (even though it seems to be in our day, more than any other), it is we, not the innovators, who will merit damnation. We must be patient, exercise caution, accept apparent ambiguity, place ourselves in the hands of God, and be ruled, not by a desire to destroy others, but by love. When the Great

Fathers speak strongly against those who defile the Faith, they are speaking against condemned heretics. They are also speaking with spiritual vision. We must imitate, rather than the fruits of their spiritual vision – which we lack – , their love, a love which warns us that we must never harm even a heretic, let alone a poor Christian who is misled by false Teachers in a local Church which is ill with heresy, but yet uncondemned by the whole Church.

        Now, second, the personal issue. We must understand, unless we wish to be prosecuting attorneys and not the spiritual nurses of the Church, that the false Shepherds and false Teachers in the official Churches, today, are spiritually and morally ill. They have "caught" heresy, which clouds the mind and conscience. Thus one of the allegedly more traditional of Archbishop Iakovos' Bishops, outraged by our Church's recent exposé of the Balamand "Union" last year, objected that, despite his support for that agreement, he staunchly confesses the Orthodox Church as the True Church and that he does not believe that there are Mysteries outside her boundaries. More recently, however, he argued that only ill-intentioned people would deny that "Trinitarian" Christians have valid Baptisms and that Roman Catholics have valid ordinations and "sacraments." Yet he would re-Baptize Greek Old Calendarists. And while in private this same Bishop told Metropolitan Cyprian and me that he knows that we are correct, that our ordinations are valid, and that we represent the truth, in other circumstances he has condemned us as schismatics and fanatics. Which is it? Do we just say what is convenient for the moment? Yes.

        Look, too, at the union documents of the last few decades. All of them equivocate. When they are issued, the heterodox ecumenists receive them as capitulation. When the Orthodox ecumenists, who framed these documents, are asked to address this allegation of betrayal, they tell us that the documents are simply polite words, techniques to promote dialogue, and actual victories for Orthodoxy. Which are they? Another example. The Late Metropolitan Nikodim of Leningrad has been exposed as a secret Catholic Bishop, working within Orthodoxy to convert our Faithful. Yet he was an ecumenist who supposedly believed in the equality of all religions, making conversion unnecessary. Which was he? Patriarch Bartholomew, to cite yet another example of the contradiction posed by ecumenism, sheds tears, when in Rome, in speaking of the heritage of the Papal Church, a school of which adorned him with a doctorate in canon law. Yet to the Orthodox world, he speaks as a protector of our Church against the incursions of Papist missionaries into Eastern Europe. Is he a Latin-minded or Orthodox? What we see in all these things are ill men and ill bodies suffering from a strange ecumenical schizophrenia.

        The moral life in the Patriarchates, by which a number of Orthodox converts in this country – mostly individuals Orthodox by virtue of smoking a cigar with their chief Hierarchy – measure their Orthodoxy, is unspeakable. If an old-line Protestant were to see what happens in all of these Patriarchates, he would not only wonder what Orthodoxy is, but he would wonder what manner of God they worship. It would never occur to him that they were Christian. This proves, of course, that Truth is not dependent on human virtue; but it also points out to us that false belief among those who are entrusted to uphold the truth leads to moral collapse. And this collapse is not just that of ex-KGB operatives serving as Patriarchs and Bishops, but encompasses perversion in the highest possible places – perversion of a kind that only spiritual illness could produce. This is well known. It is equaled only by the spectacle of one Patriarch bullying another or Bishops standing by as zealots on the Holy Mountain are removed by armed guards in their very presence. All of these things invite anything but condemnation. They invite counsel, prayerful intervention, sympathy, pity, and spiritual resistance. One must separate from such sick individuals, of course. But he must do so with charity and with the goal of helping them, even if, in the end, this should prove impossible.

        With regard to extremist traditionalism, here too we see the effects that a lack of love and a penchant for condemnation, lies, and slander produce. St. John Chrysostomos tells us that a spirit of condemnation leads to immorality. Indeed, we see that extremism is also a heresy, since where God is there can be only love. Where there is no love, there is no God. For years, as you know, a faction of self-righteous individuals, no doubt well-intentioned at the beginning, held forth in the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, condemning everyone, including moderate traditionalists, as heretics. They wallowed in their condemnation of others, removing anyone who disagreed with them by spreading lies and rumors about him (I am one of the victims, so I can speak boldly), and creating a clique of believers who believed that only the Church Abroad, if not exclusively their own group within it, had Grace. These individuals were eventually charged with sexual perversion and, before coming to final judgment by a Church court, left the Church Abroad, joining eventually a Church which they had earlier condemned as uncanonical. They have now declared themselves innocent of the charges which they would not answer and have condemned the Church Abroad as an ecumenical jurisdiction. Here, too, we have the sickness of heresy, an illness occasioned by the abandonment of love, the worst heresy and the worst betrayal of God. But once more, extremism, too, invites the same patience that we must show towards many ecumenists. We must pray for these people and do all that we can to return them to the path of love and Christian uprightness, assuring them of forgiveness and the great dignity deserved and earned by those who repent.

        Now finally, with regard to those Antiochians who do not wish to see the fall of their Church to a serious illness, they are not unlike members of the other "official" Churches. Some, on the one hand, are simply ignorant of the game that is being played and swallow the rationalizations and excuses for sin that their false Shepherds and false Teachers spew forth. These we must court and enlighten rather, again, than condemn. Others, quite frankly, know that they are being fed a lie, but do not want to give up their "Church jobs," salaries, and benefits. They know that, should they enter into resistance, they will be deposed by the modernists for "Old Calendarism" (a telling thing, indeed) or “disobedience" (i.e., spiritual "obedience"). They will also have to work at secular jobs. They will be required to have long hair and beards and to wear clerical dress (a cassock) at all times. They will have to celebrate a full cycle of services. Their wives will have to abandon pants, shorts, short hair, and cute names like "Sissy" and "Babs." These latter clergymen, who have put Mammon before God, will undoubtedly fall short of the mercy of God, since they deny the fullness and unity of Holy Tradition. But let God act in such cases. It is He alone Who knows the heart of man. Let us simply pray and exercise patience. The time will come when God will reveal to us the ultimate course that all of us must follow; and then He will give us signs to guide us, that we not fall to the sins of extremism, condemnation, and the glorification of personal opinion in the name of theology.

        I ask forgiveness for all that I have said, which you may use in any way that you like. I would only warn that every word which I have written here is essential. I have not spoken with hyperbole, even though it may seem so, and I have not written against anyone. My necessarily blunt words about certain ethical and moral issues are meant not to condemn anyone, but to warn everyone of the consequences of playing God out of a foolish conviction that we know His Will.

        I am

The Least Among Monks,

Bishop Chrysostomos