Disturbing and Once Again, Another Grave Error Via the GOC Archbishop

ArmyMatt said:

St Tikhon’s from professors who were from St Vlad’s and Holy Cross. this is also what I heard from every priest since becoming Orthodox. we also talk to each other a lot and nerd out at OISM events.

primarily what St Cyril of Alexandria taught against Nestorius.

neither are correct. the Church has always taught that Communion is the Body and Blood of the Great Physician and therefore only lack of repentance leads to physical ailments.




Lord have mercy. to that point though, I have given communion to alcoholics with no issues and I know of a SVOTS graduate who was a deacon, consumed an entire chalice, was pulled over at a random traffic stop, and blew a zero on a breathalyzer.

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rusmeister said:

This twists what I said, and I admitted that a priest was better qualified to comment on the issue. I did NOT say that a priest who feels “alcoholic effects” is probably unrepentant. I did say that carelessness was not out of bounds, and referred further comment to a priest.
The real issue comes down to this: do you really believe that what you are receiving is the Body and Blood of Christ, or you believe that it is merely bread and wine? If the latter, then you are certainly going to fear receiving when you have such doubts. If you believe that material concerns trump our belief regarding what Communion is, then you have a materialist assumption undercutting your faith. Faith involves taking risks. It involves stepping out onto the water when Christ invites you. it involves choosing to believe that God will provide when you can’t see any way out, and that is exactly where I have been all the time for the past couple of years, struggling between the temptation to unbelief and despair, and the choice to hold on and believe anyway, in spite of the very real material difficulties and danger surrounding me. if you believe that, God does not have the power to protect you from gluten, or alcohol, when you are doing everything as you have been told in obedience, carefully and in repentance,, then you have a faith issue. You have to consciously do what the father of the sick child in the gospel said, and say, “I believe, Lord, help my unbelief!“ You have to believe, even though everything material tells you it’s dangerous.

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The Liturgist said:

Thank you for bringing this to attention. The unfortunate reality is that this Archbishop is the same man who declared the Ecumenical Patriarch to be primus sine paribus and not primus inter pares, with the power to revoke autocephaly, and its quite likely he will be the next Constantinipolitan Patriarch.

As Metropolitan of Bursa he also failed to prevent the Metropolis from going from an actual diocese with one parish and fifteen members to a titular diocese, as the sole remaining church was closed, perhaps due to Turkish pressure; to be fair we don’t know if it was his fault or not, due to demographic shifts, but it did happen on his watch.

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The Liturgist said:

Which one? Technically there are four Patriarchs of current or historically Greek speaking churches, of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, although at present I think all Antiochians speak either Arabic, Aramaic (in the Syrian village of Maaloula) or various languages of the diaspora such as English.

Additionally the Church of Greece is autocephalous under the Archbishop of Athens, and the Church of Cyprus has always been autocephalous under an Archbishop (the Cypriots being culturally closely related to the Greeks), a status affirmed at the Council of Ephesus if I remember correctly.

Forgive me - I don’t wish to seem trivial; I would assume you are talking about the Patriarch of Constantinople. But I am not sure that will happen at least in such a disastrous way. Remember, Constantinople includes Mount Athos, and GoArch includes the monasteries of Elder Ephraim, and the ability of these Hagioritic institutions to exercise Athonite common sense to mitigate episcopal error should not be underestimated.

Also, there was an interesting article posted on Mystagogy, doubtless written elsewhere, about the most isolated Athonite hermits, who some believe will celebrate the last divine liturgy before the Eschaton.

What we should do is pray for the Archbishop of North America and pray for the Ecumenical Patriarchate and for Patriarch Bartholomew, based on our concerns, in confidence that the God-protected Eastern Orthodox Communion will withstand the current confusion in the Phanar (home the sole surviving Greek neighborhood in Constantinople and also home to many of the bishops of the EP) and the many pious priests, monks and laymen of GoArch and the EP as a whole will keep it on track.

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