Why is ROCOR not in communion with World Orthodoxy?

Are They fostering division in the Church?

The Russian Orthodox Church Abroad is in communion with the Old Calendar Bulgarians, Romanians, and the Synod of Archbishop Kiprianos of Fili, Greece. ROCOR is also in communion with the Church of Jerusalem. By the way, the overwhelming majority of the Church -- the Orthodox of Russia and Serbia, 1,000,000 Romanians, tens of thousands of Bulgarians, over a million Greeks, the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, Mt. Athos, and Mt. Sinai -- follows the Old Calendar, sanctified by centuries of liturgical use.

Our Church has made it clear that we consider canonical resistance to the present course of innovation, modernization, and even apostasy in many Orthodox Church a matter of conscience.

We are opposed to political ecumenism, which the eminent and righteous Serbian theologian Archimandrite Justin Popovich has described as a *Pan-Heresy.: Fr. Justin exhaustively explains the Orthodox point of view on the problem of ecumenism in his book Orthodoxy and Ecumenism (Salonica, 1974).

Ecumenism has also been described with extreme clarity by the First Hierarchs of the Russian Church Abroad, Metropolitan Philaret (in his two *Sorrowful Epistles:) and Metropolitan Vitaly, and by Archbishop Averky (Taushev) in his many articles and sermons. See also the book by the American Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose) Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future (Platina, California, 1979).

We have separated ourselves from those who have deviated from the teachings of the fathers with regard to the nature and witness of Orthodoxy.

We Old Calendarists have changed nothing. Since the New Calendarists have added to their calendar innovation a departure from traditional clerical dress, pews, organs, and, in many cases, the Faith-compromising excesses of ecumenism, would it not be more appropriate for us to ask our New Calendarist brothers whether or not they are responsible for a division in the Church?

Fr. Victor S. Potapov
St John the Baptist Cathedral, Washington DC

Date: Fri, 26 Aug 1994 16:31:29 LCL Mailing list: Orthodox Christianity http://listserv.indiana.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9408d&L=orthodox&F=&S=&P=17351