Our Metropolia
A Struggle for the Faith: What We Fight For And What We Oppose
In the 20th century, Orthodox Christianity began to experience many profound assaults upon its very nature. We can often label these assaults into three general, distinct, though, connected, categories: 1) Ecumenism, 2) Modernism, and 3) Sergianism.
Orthodox Christianity teaches that the Orthodox Christian Church is the One and only True Church Founded by Our Lord God and Saviour, Jesus Christ. As such, we seek to propagate the Gospel and Apostolic teachings to all men, so that all might come to the truth and be saved; noting that, as Our Lord Jesus Christ taught, “He who endures to the end will be saved.” The Orthodox Christian life is a continual working out of our salvation with fear and trembling, until we come to, through repentance and struggle, to the place of the Blessed, Paradise with Christ, and, after, to the Heavenly City, the New Jerusalem, after the Resurrection and Last Judgment.
For these reasons, the Holy Church, the Body of Christ, gives us the Holy Mysteries of Baptism, Chrismation, and the Eucharist, and, when Her members fail, we have the Mystery of Confession and the Mystery of Unction; we have also the Mystery of Holy Orders for continuation of the Sacramental life, as well as many other sacred rites, such as Monasticism, Blessing of Water, etc. By the Grace of God in the Holy Mysteries, and the prayers of Our Sovereign Lady, the Holy Blessed Theotokos and Glorious Ever-Virgin Mary, with all the Saints, and in conformity with the Holy Scriptures, Councils, Fathers, Saints, Sacred Services, we live the Orthodox Christian life.
Because the Church wishes to safeguard Her Holy Apostolic Tradition, since sound doctrine provides salvation, keeping safe those within Her Bosom, Guarding the Apostolic Deposit, keeping the Dogmas of the Faith pure, not only for those within, but also for the sake of those outside, so that they may find a place of refuge in the Church, the Ark of Salvation, the Church thus continually battles the great enemy of mankind, the evil one, the devil and his hosts of fallen angels, as well as teaching Her members to resists the sins of the flesh and the world. The devil goes about, as St. Peter said, as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. The devil and the demons attack man, but, with God’s Grace, if we resist them, they will flee.
For all these reasons, the Church rejects the heresies of Ecumenism, Modernism, and Sergianism.
Ecumenism teaches that the Orthodox Christian Church is not the one and only True Church; it proclaims that the ‘union of the churches’ is ‘not impeded by dogmatic’ differences, in contravention to the teachings of the Holy Scriptures and Fathers. It further says that joint-prayers and services with the non-Orthodox, and sharing of the Sacraments with them is acceptable. All of these statements are incompatible with Orthodox Christianity; because we seek to preserve the Faith, and to teach men to follow Christ in truth, we cannot abide by a false love which does not seek to explain that men must be part of the Lord’s Church. It is not out of hatred to the non-Orthodox that we refuse joint-prayers and services with them, but, as the Apostles, Fathers, and Saints taught, out of a desire to safeguard our ownselves from corruption of doctrine and practice, and, to serve as a testimony to all who will listen or observe, that the Church is One in Faith, and all must accept the Truth of Christ’s Orthodox Church for salvation. For this reason, the Orthodox Church condemns the heresy of Ecumenism in all its forms, and the Holy Synod of our Metropolia resists this heresy, and our Bishops will not abide it.
The heresy of Modernism is also condemned as detrimental to the Orthodox Christian Faith. Modernism teaches that the books of the Holy Scriptures are full of the most base errors and deviations, lies, fables, fictions, mixed with some truth. Modernism teaches that the Traditions of the Church are not to be trusted, even though approved by the Holy Ecumenical Councils and universally approved Local Councils; Modernism also casts doubt on the authority of the united consensus of the Fathers and the liturgical books of the Church. Modernism is a spirit that teaches that ‘modern man’ knows better than the countless Saints in terms of the Truths of the Orthodox Christian Faith. Thus, while there may be minor scribal errors in copying manuscripts, the Fathers have never taken such mere human mistakes as reasons to deny the veracity of the Scriptures. The same approach of the Saints must be taken as to the other parts of the Tradition of the Church; although we may find mistakes of copyists here or there, in terms of the works of the Fathers, etc., this does not deny the veracity of their teachings. Modernism has also been called “Renovationism”.
Sergianism is the evil teaching that the Church can be subject to atheist God-hating authority, and that the Church can proclaim that the ‘joys’ of such so-called authorities are the ‘joy’s of the Church; a proposition which stands in open conflict with all basic premises of moral and doctrinal order. This is most famously represented in the soi-disant Patriarch of Moscow, Sergius.
Standing Up For Orthodoxy and Resistance to the Destruction of Tradition
It was amidst the assaults of all these heresies and their infiltration into the Orthodox Church in various stages (led by Freemasons, often), that a great revival and movement of the Orthodox Christians transpired, in Greece, Russia, and Romania. Eventually this movement spread to the Americas, Western Europe, and beyond. In Greece, the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the State Church of Greece, forgetting the old Tradition of the Fathers, sought for reasons of Ecumenism and Modernism, to impose the Gregorian New Calendar upon the Orthodox Christian Church. This change was opposed by the faithful laity, monastics, clergy, and some Bishops. This ‘reform’ of the Calendar had previous been condemned by the Church for centuries. In the 1920 Encyclical of Constantinople, entitled “To the Churches of Christ Everywhere”, the modernist-ecumenists proclaimed that the New Calendar was to be forced upon the Orthodox Church in order to unite with the heterodox.
By the 1930s, Orthodox Christian Bishops in Greece, along with multitudes of clergy, laity, and monastics, had, after years of pleading with the innovating hierarchs, been forced by necessity to separate and wall-themselves off from the offending hierarchs. However, by the 1950s and 1960s, due to persecution and internal conflicts, the True Orthodox Christians of Greece were in danger, since the majority no longer had Bishops. It was at this time that Bishops of the Russian Church Abroad decided to aid them. They consecrated additional Bishops for the True Orthodox (Old Calendar) Greek Church in 1962, the first of which was the well-known Archbishop Akakios, who became the first hierarch of the Greek Church. By 1969 the Russian Church Abroad and the True Orthodox Christian (Old Calendar) Church of Greece had entered into formal, full, and open communion, during the tenure of the successor to Archbishop Akakios, the Archbishop Auxentios. The communion was based upon their common opposition to Ecumenism, Modernism, and Sergianism.
Our Sacred Mission of our Metropolia is to preserve unadulterated the Sacred Tradition of the
For the complete essay of the above excerpt read HERE
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