St.

Chrysostomos the New Confessor

on Resistance to the Calendar Innovation

A Letter of Metropolitan Chrysostomos (Kavourides), formerly of Florina,

To the Board of Directions of the Pan-Hellenic Religious National Orthodox Society
(P.T.E.O.K.) on the newly formed Matthewite schism.

Mr. President,

We have received your letter dated the 14th of this month [October 1937] just now. In response,
we declare the following to you:

We are perplexed as to why you did not receive the responses from the Office to your
correspondence. The Office has been instructed to respond to all your letters, and we wonder why
you have not received the replies.

You should ignore the encyclicals of the bishops of Bresthena [Matthew] and the Cyclades
[Germanos] who have fallen away, insofar as they have condemned us for reasons of avarice, since
they cannot abide our criticism of their unlawful ordinations and other crimes and have taken the
side of the old Community of Manesis and Gounaris, whom until yesterday they were calling
profiteers and usurpers. As an excuse for condemning us they have found the reason that we have
refused to allow a repeat chrismation of children baptized by new-calendarist priests, following
the ban by the divine and sacred canons, and that we have refused to declare the new-calendarist
Church heretical and schismatic, and their Mysteries invalid. But the main reason for their
condemnation for the holy one of Bresthena is the fact that we have hindered him from using our
Holy Struggle for his own enrichment, while for the holy one of the Cyclades it is the fact that we
have forbidden him from carrying out unlawful ordinations of priests and deacons, not for the sake
of serving our Holy Struggle, but for the sake of creating his own party and seizing the leadership
of our struggle. Both of them, casting off every restraint of conscience and fear of God, have
proceeded to publish an encyclical to the Genuine Orthodox Christians and are trying by means of
lies and disgusting slanders to present us as deserters and traitors to the struggle because we did
not want to despise the divine and sacred canons and proclaim the Greek Church to be schismatic
and its Mysteries invalid, and to condemn to spiritual death five million Greek brothers who in
purity of heart follow the new calendar, and to enter into contradiction with the remaining
Orthodox Churches of Jerusalem, Antioch, Russia, Serbia, etc., which not only have not broken
communion with the new-calendarist churches, but even serve together with their clergy. And this
because the new-calendarist Churches have not been proclaimed to be schismatic by a Pan-
Orthodox Synod, which alone has the right according to the sacred canons to condemn and declare
them schismatic if they do not depart from the error of the new calendar. The divine and God-
bearing Fathers of the Ecumenical Synods gave the right to proclaim individual people and
churches schismatic neither to individual people nor to local churches, but [only] to an Ecumenical
Synod, which represents the entire Orthodox Church and whose decisions are made through the
inspiration of the All-Holy Spirit. For this reason, we, honoring the canons and decisions of the
Ecumenical Synods, have refused to proclaim the Greek Church schismatic, and have confined
ourselves only to breaking ecclesiastical communion with the Archbishop of Athens and the
hierarchs who think like him, so as not to be participants in the calendar innovation. And we have
done this in accordance with the 15th canon of the First-and-Second Ecumenical Synod, which
gives the right only to break ecclesiastical communion with him who violates tradition until a
synodal decision, by which alone individual people and churches are [definitively] declared
schismatic and their Mysteries invalid.

The above-mentioned bishops have taken this refusal of ours, based on the canons and apostolic
decrees, as an excuse, and unfortunately, they have fallen morally to such a degree that they place
the authority of the Community of the Genuine Orthodox Christians under the presidency of
Manesis and Gounaris above our authority – we who in the course of 35 years have done nothing
other than declare the dogmas of Orthodoxy and rightly divide the word of divine truth. But the
main motive inciting them to condemn us is a striving to be free from any control on our part, and
freely and ignorantly to use our Holy Struggle on the excuse of feigned piety. A proof of the fact
that they are employing demagogy and fishing for glory and honors at the expense of the struggle
is the fact that they have both accepted the titles of metropolitans, although we at their consecration
gave them the title of bishops, which only adventurers and intellectually and morally unstable
people could do without shame. It is also a shameless lie that, as they say, the protosyncellus beat
up the bishop of the Cyclades at one session of the Synod, which has not assembled already for
two months because of the obstruction of the bishops.

The matter of the priest of Naoussa will be settled in accordance with justice, taking into account
your recommendations and the information from the local administrative council. Finally, we
encourage you and the Society to have full confidence in us, who have sacrificed everything for
our Holy Struggle.

Nevertheless, may all members and Christians accept our greetings and blessings.

Athens, Kypseli Terminal, Krissis 24.

17 October 1937

+ Chrysostomos, formerly of Florina