An Open Letter, 1

December, 2006
To the Holy Abbots and the Holy Representatives of the Sacred Twenty Monasteries in the Sacred Community of the Holy Mount Athos

Holy Abbots and Holy Fathers, bless!

We desire at the present time to express our deepest concern and sadness for all that is taking place for years now, in our Holy Orthodoxy, the deconstruction of the teaching of the Holy Apostles and of the Holy Fathers and the antithesis to all the sacred canons enacted by the OEcumenical and Local Synods. We wonder if some OEcumenical Synod has been assembled and abolished the canons which forbid the joint prayer with heretics, or if the Pope repented and renounced the heresies of the Filioque, of primacy, of infallibility, of unleavened bread, of the purifying fire [purgatory], of created grace, of the immaculate conception of the Most Holy Theotokos, and so many others, for most of which he has been condemned and anathematised numerous times by Orthodox Synods and by the entirety of the Holy Fathers.

Heaven was angered and the Holy Fathers exceedingly saddened by the spectacle and by hearing about all that took place at the Phanar (neighbourhood in which the OEcumenical Patriarch resides in Istanbul- Ed. note) during the feast of the Holy Apostle Andrew on the 30th November of the current year.

Unprecedented and unheard of things in the two thousand year history of the Church. “The scornful marginalization of the dogmas of the Fathers, the annihilation of the Apostolic traditions, the introduction of novelties into the churches by contemporary personalities,” as St. Basil the Great says, regarding comparable events during his own time.

Everything happened literally upside-down.

Instead of the heretical Pope being cast down, as we see the heretics depicted in the Icons of the Holy Synods, and being ejected from the Divine Liturgy, as required by the liturgical command, “The doors, the doors, in wisdom let us attend,” we placed him on a high throne, where he sat and along with others, he too, wore an omophorion, the Orthodox deacons censed him, the Patriarch exchanged the Liturgical Kiss with him at the “Let us love one another,” and he recited as though being the one in charge, the proestos, the “Our Father…,” and the chorus of the sacred cantors chanted to him the “Many Years,” and a specially composed hymn from an Athonite hymnographer – Lord, have mercy! – if, of course, the journalistic communications are true.

And he was permitted to give the congregation his blessing, rather, his madness according to the sacred canons.

We allowed the Church militant on earth to be divided from the Church triumphant of the Saints in heaven and to be united to churches and assemblies of evil heretics.

We insulted all of the holy martyrs and confessors who struggled to the point of blood against the heresies, because we present their struggles, their martyrdoms and their confessions as unbeneficial and useless.

Will not the blessed Holy Mountain Fathers who were martyred by [OEcumenical Patriarch John - Ed. note] Bekkos because they refused to receive him and to commemorate the Pope, be sorry, seeing us not only to reject their example with our silence, but to do the opposite?

Why then did all of the previous martyrs undergo martyrdom and why did the confessors stand fast in their profession of the Faith?