NOTES
note1
“All” here does not
refer to “churches”. In Greek panton is a
masculine adjective and therefore refers to “all the
faithful”. If the reference were to all
“churches”, then the proper adjective would have been pason,
instead of panton. The context evidently indicates that
“all” refers to all the faithful, since the immediately
preceding prayer is for the “good estate of the holy
churches of God”, i.e., the local, regional Orthodox
churches (parishes) wherever they may be, which comprise the One,
Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. “Churches” here
does not mean, as many wrongly say, the different denominations
outside Orthodoxy. It is natural then that there should follow in
the same petition a prayer for the union in Christ of all the
faithful who comprise the local Orthodox churches. Those outside
the Church (the non-Orthodox) are prayed for by the priest in the
secret prayers after the Epiclesis. The whole petition therefore
prays “For the good estate of the holy (local Orthodox)
churches of God and for the union of all the faithful (though the
Eucharist in Christ), let us pray to the Lord”. Fr. Michael
Gelsinger has rightly translated the phrase from Greek to read
“all the faithful”. (Editors’ note)
note2
See A Great Sign by Photios Kontoglou, published in Greek by
“Astir”, which describes the amazing events in
Mytilene, when in these last days the Saints Raphael, Nicholas,
and many others have revealed their lives and relics five hundred
years after their martyrdoms.
note3
Actually, if we believe the Papists,
we must either accept that all the Popes were saints and were
enlightened because of their sanctity, or we must accept that God
speaks through their mouth in a mechanical way, as He spoke
though the mouth of Balaam’s ass.
The first hypothesis is refuted when the life and works of most of the Popes who sat on the throne of Rome are examined.
The second hypothesis means that the mouth of a sinful Pope is moved by God and dogmatizes correctly, but he himself does not experience the truths that his mouth pronounces.
It is a basic truth of Christianity that God does not enter into communion with sin. He does not dwell in unclean hearts, and He does not enlighten proud intellects.
Sin is precisely the lack of light. It is darkness, the condition of men who wilfully remain in darkness because they “hate the light and neither come to the light”. God, of course, could constrain them to come towards the light; He could make them saints by force, but His love towards His rational creatures does not permit Him to do violence to the freedom with which He has endowed them. Such a thing would be a refutation of Himself.
It is therefore equivalent to blasphemy for us to accept that God would forcibly enlighten the sinful Popes. If God had given the promise that the Popes would, in any case, teach His word correctly regardless of who they were, that would mean that He would speak with their mouth the way He spoke with the mouth of Balaam’s ass. But just as the ass did not have any consciousness of what its mouth was saying, similarly, the sinful Pope would not have any consciousness of the truths which he was pronouncing.
You can give the entire Holy Scripture to an atheist to read. That atheist may be an able philologist and a theologian with a degree. But will he really understand anything from all that he has read? Give a miser the parable of the rich man and poor Lazarus, or an unjust man the Beatitudes to read, and then observe to see if they have understood anything from what they’ve read. As much will be understood by a sinful, proud, opportunist, and perhaps even an atheist Pope, of what God would put in his mouth.
But is that the way in which God promised to lead the Church to the fulness of thuth? Do the Catholics believe such a thing? Let those who are not fanatical examine carefully how foreign such a mentality is to the Church of Christ, foreign to the thought and practice of the first centuries of the Church of Rome.
If they see this, perhaps they might not even need to search the Scriptures in order to find there the condemnation of every such teaching of Infallibility and of every form of Papism
note4
Since this book was written, this
group has declared itself autonomous. Its counterpart in the
United States is the Metropolia. (Editors’ note)
note5
These three groups have
no formal or external communion with each other or concelebration
because of various canonical differences, and, of late, doctrinal
differences as well. So long as each group professed the full
Orthodox Faith in both word and life, they were true Orthodox
Churches of Christ. However, since the author wrote the above in
1963, a number of decrees have been synodically enacted by both
the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and the Soviet Church, which place
them Anathemas of 1054 on the part of the Ecumenical Patriarchate
and the Papal see, and (2) the decision of the Soviet Church to
administer Holy Communion to Roman Catholics. Both of these acts
contravene the commandment of love and the principle of faithful
adherence to the truth which has been enjoined us by Our Saviour,
the Apostles and the Fathers of the Church. Furthermore, the
incorporation of these jurisdictions into the WCC as
“organic members” belies their professed membership in
the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, Orthodoxy in faith
and life, and not jurisdictional dependence or adherence to a
so-called “World Orthodoxy”, is the criterion used to
recognize an Orthodox Church. (Editors’ note).
A good example is the schism of the Church of Bulgaria. For nearly two generations they were in schism with the Church of Constantinople for administrative and nationalistic reasons. Thus no Greek-speaking church had any communion with the Church of Bulgaria, but the Slavic-speaking churches continued their relations with them and with the Greek churches. The Greek churches, however, did not refuse communion to the Slavic churches because the latter recognized the Bulgarian Church. When the schism was healed, there were no reordinations or repetition of Mysteries performed during the schism since the Bulgarians had adhered to the Faith.
The Russian situation is a little more complicated. The existence of an official church (Moscow Patriarchate) and an unofficial church (the Catacomb church) poses a problem, even if one leaves aside the question of collaboration of the Soviet Church with the atheist state, which has been undisputedly demonstrated on many occasions. See the Encyclical of Metropolitan Philaret entitled “The Catacomb Church” (Orthodox Word, April-May-June 1966), and the letters of the priests Nicholas Eshliman and Gleb Yakunin to the Soviet Government and Patriarch Alexei (Religion in Communist Dominated Areas, vol. V, nos. 9-10, 10-11), and the shameful Encyclical of Patriarch Alexei in “answer” to the facts stated in the letters (idid. nos. 15-16, and also A History of the Russian Church Abroad, 1917-1971, published by Holy Transfiguration Monastery).