Metropolitan Philaret of New York
Introduction by the Editors of The Orthodox Word to His "Thyateira Confession"
Among the Primates of the Orthodox Churches today, there is
only one from whom is always expectedand not only by
members of his own Church, but by very many in a number of other
Orthodox Churches as wellthe clear voice of Orthodox
righteousness and truth and conscience, untainted by political
considerations or calculations of any kind. The voice of
Metropolitan Philaret of New York, Chief Hierarch of the Russian
Church Outside of Russia, is the only fully Orthodox voice
among all the Orthodox primates. In this he is like to the Holy
Fathers of ancient times, who placed purity of Orthodoxy above
all else, and he stands in the midst of today's confused
religious world as a solitary champion of Orthodoxy in the spirit
of the Ecumenical Councils.
The chief heresy of our age, ecumenism, against which the
voice of Metr. Philaret has been directed, is by no means an easy
one to define or combat. In its "pure" formthe
declaration that the Church of Christ does not exist in fact but
is only now being formedit is preached by very few among
those who call themselves Orthodox. Most often it is manifested
by anti-canonical acts, especially of communion in prayer with
heretics, which reveal the absence of an awareness of what the
Church of Christ is and what it means to belong to her. But no
one anti-canonical act in itself is sufficient to define a
heresy; and therefore it is the greatness of Metr. Philaret at
this critical hour of the Church's history that, without
insisting pharisaically on any one letter of the Church's law,
and without twisting to the slightest degree the words of any
ecumenist hierarch in order to "prove he's a
heretic, he has grasped the heretical, anti-Orthodox spirit
behind all the ecumenist acts and pronouncements of our day
and boldly warned the Orthodox hierarchs and flock about the
present danger of them and their future ruinous outcome. It is
most unfortunate that too few Orthodox Christians today have as
yet grasped the full import of his message to the Orthodox
Churchesa lack of understanding that has come both from the
"left" side and from the "right."
On the "left" side Metr. Philaret is senselessly
regarded as a "fanatic" and is accused of a number of
extreme views which he has never expressed or held. His voice of
true Orthodox moderation and sobriety is reviled and slandered by
thoseone must strongly suspectwhose conscience,
weakened by compromise and openness to modernist renovationism,
is not clean. To such ones the bold voice of Metr. Philaret ruins
the harmony and accord; by which most of the other Orthodox
Churches are proceeding to their dreamed-of "Eighth
Ecumenical Council," at which renovationism will become the
"canonical" norm and the Unia with Rome and the other
Western heresies will become the official "Orthodox"
position.
But no less on the "right" side is the position of
Metr. Philaret misunderstood and even condemned. There are those
who, in their "zeal not according to knowledge" (Rom.
10:2), wish to make everything absolutely "simple" and
"black or white." They would wish him and his Synod to
declare invalid the Mysteries of new calendarists or
Communist-dominated Churches, not realizing that it is not the
business of the Synod to make decrees on such a sensitive and
complex question, and that the church disturbances of our time
are far too deep and complicated to be solved solely by breaking
communion or applying anathemas, whichsave in the few
specific instances where they might be applicableonly make
the church disturbances worse. Some few even think to solve the
tragic situation of Orthodoxy today with the declaration,
"We are the only pure ones left," and then abuse those
who take a stand of true Orthodox moderation with a most
un-Orthodox mechanistic logic ("If they have grace, why
don't you join them or receive communion from them?") At
various times the Russian Church Outside of Russia has avoided or
discouraged communion with several other Orthodox bodies, and
with one in particular (the Moscow Patriarchate) it has no
communion at all, on grounds of principle; and separate hierarchs
have warned against contact with the "modernist"
bodies; but this is not because of any legalistic definition of
the lack of grace-giving Sacraments in such bodies, but because
of pastoral considerations which are respected and obeyed by all
true sons of the Church without any need for a merely
"logical" justification.
The Orthodox stand of Metropolitan Philaret is rooted in his
experience from childhood of the age-old Orthodox way of life.
His family was devout; his father (Archbishop Dimitry) knew St.
John of Kronstadt and in the Diaspora was a hierarch in the Far
East. In his formative years in the Far East, Metr. Philaret was
in contact with holy men: Bishop Jonah, a wonderworker and
disciple of Optina Elder Barsanuphius; the clairvoyant elders of
the Kazan Monastery in Harbin, Michael and Ignatius (the latter
of whom he buried); Abbess Rufina, whose convent was transformed
by its numerous miraculously-renewed icons; and he had clearly
before him the example of a number of holy hierarchs, including
Metropolitan Innocent of Peking, champion of the Old Calendar,
the wonderworking bishops of Shanghai, Simon and John
(Maximovitch), and Metropolitan Meletius of Harbin. His love for
holy men and champions of Orthodoxy in the past is evident in the
fact that he took a leading part in the publication of the Lives
of "Standers for Orthodox Faith" such as Elders Ambrose
and Macarius of Optina, writing in addition an excellent
introduction to the Life of Elder Ambrose. In all this, and in
his uncompromising stand for true Orthodoxy, he is very like his
namesake in 19th-century Russia, Metropolitan Philaret
of Moscow, the champion of Patristic Orthodoxy against the
anti-Orthodox influences coming from the West, and the protector
of Optina Monastery and its elders.
For over ten years now the voice of Metropolitan Philaret has
resounded unwearyingly in a succession of letters of protest and
warning to Orthodox hierarchs, particularly of the Patriarchate
of Constantinople, and in two "Sorrowful Epistles"
addressed to the world-wide Orthodox episcopate. The present
letter ["The Thyateira Confession"] is a kind of third
sorrowful epistle to all the Orthodox bishops, occasioned by the
first Orthodox-ecumenist "confession," which makes much
more definite the errors which had been perhaps only
"tendencies" up to now. It should be noted that,
despite the shocking lack of response by Orthodox hierarchs to
his earlier "Sorrowful Epistles," the present epistle
is still addressed to "the Orthodox hierarchs,"
"the hierarchs of God," letting them know that it is
the least of their brothers who is addressing them, not in order
to call them names or make a public spectacle of them, but in
order to call them back to Orthodoxy before they have
departed from it entirely, without any hope of return. It should
also be noted that there is no trace whatever of the
lightmindedness and mockery which mar some of the otherwise
welcome anti-ecumenist writings of our day, especially in the
English language. This is a document of the utmost seriousness, a
humble yet firm entreaty to abandon a ruinous path of error, a
document whose solemn tone exactly matches the gravity of its
content, proceeding from the age-old wisdom and experience of
Patristic Orthodoxy in standing in the truth and opposing error.
May it be read and its message heeded!
From The Orthodox Word, Vol. 12, no. 1 (66), 1976.
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