Author: orthodoxaustralia

(Handwriting transcribed)

Dear Fr. A— [Alexey Young],

Christ is —!

Gleb will be in Redding Sunday to go with you to Chico, as he says you agreed on with him.

I hope you will have some serious talks with him on his future, both this week and later this summer. From me or Fr. Herman, of course, he takes everything with a grain of salt, since we are so close and he is at the “rebel” stage (mildly, but still clearly).

Just a few days ago he decided that he wants to go to Jordanville this fall. I saw right away that this is no seriously thought-through decision, but is simply a way to keep from staying with us, where he is “bored;” and it was inspired not by any desire for real benefit to be gained in Jordanville, but simply “to see how things are there,” brought about by seeing the worldly attitude of Basil Anderson (who is “successful” in Jordanville because he is the only one who can run their big offset machine, and will be graduated solely on that basis and not on course work, or so he says).

Of course, I am glad that he did take seriously my warning that he has to get a seminary education if he wants to be a priest; but seeing his light-minded attitude to the whole matter, I gave him a heavy going-over and told him I could never bless him to go to Jordanville so immature and light- minded (all the American boys we’ve sent there in recent years have had disasters in the first year, and they were more mature than Gleb). He responded with rebellious insistence that he would go even without our blessing, even if it meant not being admitted to the seminary and just “auditing” or floating around.

In one sense, it was good that he got all this out, because he usually hides his deeper feelings, and I was even glad to see him becoming a “man” and sticking to his opinion. The next day (after a sleepless night for me) we were reconciled; I told him I respected his freedom, that no matter what (even if he went wild or became a Jordanville weirdo, which I told him were the 2 alternatives in front of him) he should always consider our monastery as his home, etc.—which caused him to weep (a rare thing with him). But I asked him, whatever he does, let it make sense, let it be part of a plan for his whole future, and not some whim of the moment, which is what his Jordanville thoughts are right now (in fact, the day before our fight, he had told me, very self-confidently, that I was “duped” if I thought anything good could come out of Jordanville graduates!)

As things stand now, he is still fixed on the idea of going in the fall, without even asking what courses are offered in Jordanville to 1st-year students, or what courses I had planned to give him here. Today I told him he’d better get started with application requirements; he was surprised that he had to make a formal application, have a medical exam, affix photos, highschool transcript (or equivalent(?), and even more surprised that he had to do something about it, not me. He did understand that the money for all this should come from his summer earnings, which is something positive (so please don’t tell him where the money comes from—there won’t be much of it in any case).

At the present time my main effort is to get him to see certain things as they really are and not as his emotions color them. For example: last week he was speaking eloquently to several of us about how easy it is to survive as a Orthodox Christian today even with all the temptations around us: you just have the guts to take a humbling “due” that Fr. Herman gives you and trust your spiritual father, and you will survive. I reminded him that when I absolutely forbade him to go to Jordanville so young, and that it was “spiritual suicide” for him, he rebelled and absolutely refused to obey; but until I pointed it out to him, it hadn’t even occurred to him that he had shown lack of trust in me, thereby removing from himself the very thing which he had recently boasted would save him! When the contradiction was brought home to him, he smiled in recognition and promised to write it down; but it still hasn’t sunk in. Likewise, he recognizes that his reasons for going to Jordanville are worldly, and that there is in fact a danger of his losing the churchly attitude of his boyhood and becoming worldly (Basil Anderson is bad in that respect—one senses the influence of Fr. Peter and other floaters, not the pious spirit of the old monks); but all this is seen through the filter of his youthful passions, which now are headed very strongly towards “worldly experience.”

In the end I see all this as a necessary part of his growth and an unavoidable temptation. My main hope is that he will put some sense into what he does and not operate solely on his passions. Any input you can give him in this direction will be good, and will probably have more weight now than what we say. (Unfortunately, Bobby Arden and other “counsellors” like that may have more weight that any of us.)

The strongest thing going to preserve him right now is his desire for priesthood, which he still sees as a calling from God and not a paying job. The more we can remind him of that and of the necessity to act in a way consistent with it, the better. It may be that his 1st year in Jordanville (if he goes as planned) will be a big testing of this desire.

This weekend he will be boating on Shasta Lake with Bobby; he will be conducting vigil and Typica in the Redding church (already a test for him!) After his week with you, I told him I expect him to be at Liturgy, whether in Etna (where I will be) or Platina—another test, because he wants to go boating again, and would have to get Bobby to take him to Liturgy.

I will be in Etna, God willing, on Sat. June 26, and hope to have an “evolution” conference with you (I hope to have my Genesis commentary typed by then).

Pray for us.

Dear Brother in Christ, Vladimir,

IN TRUTH CHRIST IS RISEN!

May the blessing of the Lord be with you!

In answer to your letter, I had better say first of all that you probably have a mistaken view as to the nature and extent of our theological courses. We have nothing at all like a “seminary,” and the few courses we do have arose solely in answer to our local need to expand the theological awareness of the brothers in our monastery. (We do have summer courses in conjunction with our Sr. Herman Pilgrimage, but that is only for a week.)

Therefore, if you are looking for a regular seminary course, with officially recognized courses and a BTh degree at the end of it, you would do better to apply to the Holy Trinity Seminary at Jordanville. It is true that the orientation there is very Russian, and the upper-division courses are still mostly in the Russian language, but the first two years are now chiefly in English and with some effort at studying Russian you could get through the whole course.

Having said this, I will add that we have had some non-monastic brothers participate in our courses, and it is conceivable that you might want to join them. However, our approach in these courses is less directed to formal education than to forming an Orthodox mentality—putting off some of the wrong attitudes that are picked up from the air of our contemporary society, developing a sound attitude to culture, art, literature, music, etc., which will enable one to approach theology not in a vacuum, as is so often the case. Our non-monastic brothers participate fully in the daily round of monastic life and are under strict discipline (no “weekends off to go to the city”). Our courses for next fall are not definite yet, and will depend on who will be here to take them.

If you are interested in something like this, we might be able to help you, but the only way to tell for sure is to come and visit us for a while, when it would become evident whether you could fit in with our life and benefit from it. You are quite welcome to visit us this summer. (I should add that our living conditions are a little primitive, with little in the way of modern conveniences like plumbing, electricity, etc.)

Please feel free to write anything further about your hopes, plans, etc.

With love in Christ,
Unworthy Hieromonk Seraphim

Dear Father Vladimir,

Christ is in our midst!

Archbishop Laurus has written Father Herman, enclosing Nina Berchier’s letter to you requesting you to perform her marriage with Andrew Kencis, and asking Father Herman to discuss with Archbishop Anthony her freedom for marriage (since she was for a time a ryassophore nun). Father Herman has not yet talked with Vladika Anthony about this, but in the meantime I would like to tell you our view of the matter, since Father Herman and myself have had Nina and Andrew as our spiritual children for some time—in fact, ever since I baptized them both (Nina in 1978, and Andrew in 1981).

The main problem, as I see it, is not that Nina was a ryassophore nun. She did not take vows and so could be free to marry. We are very disappointed that she allowed herself to be tempted away from the monastic life, but that is something she has to decide for herself.

The main problem, however, is this (which she did not mention in her letter to you): In her younger years, when she was living a rather loose life, she had an operation performed on her (I forget what it’s called) to make her sterile. She therefore wishes to enter into marriage with no possibility of bearing children. For her to marry Andrew, who is just at the age to begin raising a family, would be a sin and a mockery of the very rite and meaning of marriage. This is all the more true in that Andrew is so young and immature (at least seven years younger than she, and immature for his age). We can only see that she is taking advantage of his immaturity to draw him into a fruitless union that cannot have God’s blessing and will not bring them happiness—certainly not Andrew, who needs precisely the responsibilities and difficulties of raising children for his own salvation.

A further consideration is the fact that they wish to be married so soon, when before January of this year they knew each other only from a few meetings after Ninas return from Chile last summer (and at that, the romance developed while Nina was still wearing the ryassa and klobuk!). This only confirms the fact that their attachment for each other is a result of a “rebound” from Nina’s disappointment over her monastic failure, and not something which has been deeply felt and thought through.

I sympathize with Nina’s search for happiness after her failure at monasticism—but this isn’t the way! It’s a passing temptation, and although they undoubtedly see it all as God’s plan for them, to us it has been too clearly a typical trick of the devil, working on human feelings, to get two people out of monasteries (Andrew was no more than a monastery laborer, but he did return to us last fall with the idea of monasticism in mind, and during his stay with us he was noticeably maturing; if he had stayed longer he would have been better prepared for a fruitful life in the world).

I hope things are going well for you in the parish there. Please pray for our struggling communities and missions—there are many trials, but also many joys. GOD IS WITH US!

Wishing you a joyous Pascha,

With love in Christ,

[OW 187-188, p. 117; written “towards the end of his life”, possibly a hand-written letter to Fr. Damascene]

…It so happens that Ren; Gu;non was the chief influence in the formation of my own intellectual outlook (quite apart from the question of Orthodox Christianity). I read and studied with eagerness all his books that I could get ahold of; through his influence I studied the ancient Chinese language and resolved to do for the Chinese tradition what he had done for the Hindu; I was even able to meet and study with a genuine representative of the Chinese tradition and understood full well what he means by the difference between such authentic teachers and the mere “professors” who teach in the universities.

It was Ren; Gu;non who taught me to seek and love Truth above all else, and to be unsatisfied with anything else; this is what finally brought me to the Orthodox Church. Perhaps a word of my experience will be of help for you to know.

For years in my studies I was satisfied with being “above all traditions” but somehow faithful to them; I only went deeper into the Chinese tradition because no one had presented it in the West from a fully traditional point of view. When I visited an Orthodox Church, it was only in order to view another “tradition”—knowing that Gu;non (and one of his disciples) had described Orthodoxy as the most authentic of the Christian traditions.

However, when I entered an Orthodox Church for the first time (a Russian Church in San Francisco), something happened to me that I had not experienced in any Buddhist or other Eastern temple; something in my heart said that this is “home,” that all my search was over. I didn’t really know what this meant, because the service was quite strange to me, and in a foreign language. I began to attend Orthodox services more frequently, gradually learning its language and customs, but still keeping all my basic Gu;nonian ideas about all the authentic spiritual traditions.

With my exposure to Orthodoxy and to Orthodox people, however, a new idea began to enter my awareness: that truth was not just an abstract idea, sought and known by the mind, but was something personal—-even a Person—sought and loved by the heart. And that is how I met Christ. I am now grateful that my approach to Orthodoxy took several years and had nothing of emotional excitement about it—that was Gu;non’ѕ influence again, and it helped me to go deeper into Orthodoxy without the ups and downs that some converts encounter when they are not too ready for something as deep as Orthodoxy. My entrance into the Orthodox Church occurred at the very time I left the academic world and gave up the attempt to communicate the Chinese tradition to the Western world. My Chinese teacher also left San Francisco shortly before this—my only real contact with the Chinese tradition—and in Gu;nonіап fashion he disappeared utterly, leaving no address. I remember him fondly, but after becoming Orthodox I saw how limited was his teaching: the Chinese spiritual teaching, he said, would disappear entirely from the world if Communism endures another ten or twenty years in China. So fragile was this tradition—but the Orthodox Christianity I had found would survive everything and endure to the end of the world—because it was not merely handed down from generation to generation, as all traditions are; but was at the same time given from God to man.

I look back fondly on Ren; Gu;non as my first real instructor in Truth, and I only pray that you will take what is good from him and not let his limitations chain you. Even psychologically, “Eastern wisdom” is not for us who are flesh and blood of the West; Orthodox Christianity is clearly the tradition that was given us—and it can be clearly seen in the Western Europe of the first ten centuries, before the falling away of Rome from Orthodoxy. But it also happens that Orthodoxy is not merely a “tradition” like any other, a “handing down” of spiritual wisdom from the past; it is Gods Truth here and now—it gives us immediate contact with God such as no other tradition can do. There are many truths in the other traditions, both those handed down from a past when men were closer to God, and those discovered by gifted men in the reaches of the mind; but the full Truth is only in Christianity, God s revelation of Himself to mankind. I will take only one example: there are teachings on spiritual deception in other traditions, but none so thoroughly refined as those taught by the Orthodox Holy Fathers; and more importantly, these deceptions of the evil one and our fallen nature are so omnipresent and so thorough that no one could escape them unless the loving God revealed by Christianity were close at hand to deliver us from them. Similarly: Hindu tradition teaches many true things about the end of the Kali Yuga; but one who merely knows these truths in the mind will be helpless to resist the temptations of those times, and many who recognize the Antichrist (Chalmakubi) when he comes will nonetheless worship him—only the power of Christ given to the heart will have strength to resist him.

It is my prayer for you that God will open your heart, and you yourself will do what you can do to meet Him. You will find there happiness you never dreamed possible before; your heart will join your head in recognizing the true God, and no real truth you have ever known will be lost. May God grant it!

Feel free to write whatever is in your mind or heart.

With love,
Fr. Seraphim

Dear Father George [Maoris],

CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST! I trust you had a good Christmas season. Ours was very festive and joyous, with tremendous Christmas weather—two feet of snow and crystal-cold weather.

This is an attempt to reply briefly to your letter of Nov. 10/Oct. 29 and keep open our correspondence.

Perhaps our new Orthodox Word (no. 98), together with the “Decision” of the Synod there printed, have made clear enough our position. Personally, I continue to regard the article on Archimandrite Tavrion as beneficial and especially needed and timely today. The increase of defections of priests from our Synod who think they are “more Orthodox” than our bishops points up the need more than ever to make known our bishops’ sober and moderate stand towards the Moscow Patriarchate and some other jurisdictions; Fr. Gleb and others are leaving because they were misinformed about our bishops’ stand in the first place, and because they lack precisely that Orthodox spirit and heart which Elder Tavrion exemplifies.

I think a basic problem is that some, perhaps you also, are reading into our bishops’ statements positions which simply aren’t there—dotting the I’s, so to speak, which our bishops haven’t dotted. The statement against Moscow’s giving communion to Roman Catholics, for example, despite its mention of “heresy,” is by no means a statement that the Moscow Patriarchate is now a heretical organization, without grace, etc. (ask our bishops, they should tell you). Nor is the recent statement of the Sobor that the Moscow Patriarchate with all its acts is “uncanonical and null and void” a statement that goes any further than Metr. Cyril’s statement years ago (see OW, p. 126)—yes, we accept no acts of the Moscow Patriarchate as binding on us (leaving a final decision on them to the future free All- Russian Council); but that says nothing against the grace which (I think you will find our bishops agreeing, though not officially) believers receive in the Sacraments in Russia, nor against the continued support which we show for the “dissident” priests in Russia (see our own Archbishop Anthony’s Christmas Epistle this year).

The very fact that the church situation in Russia is not final and awaits a final definition only in a free Russia (which let us pray for) renders the quoting of canons about “schism” and “heresy” unconvincing to us and many others. If and when our bishops themselves quote these canons and make the final proclamation about the Moscow Patriarchate which up to now they have deliberately avoided—then we will be convinced. Until then, this quoting of canons will only encourage more of our “super-correct” people to go into schism. The fact that you are so certain about some of these issues, while others of us think there is much matter for opinion and interpretation in them, is probably one of the chief causes of our disagreement.

It was Fr. Herman’s turn to go to Oregon last weekend, and my next trip is still some time off, but I do hope to meet you. Asking your prayers,

With love in Christ,
Unworthy Hieromonk Seraphim

Dear Father Demetrios,

CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST!

Just a note to remind you that we haven’t yet received the display concerning our monastery, and also the unsold books—we really need the latter, as we are running short of almost all of our books now and won’t be able to reprint them for a while.

The impression I got from your last letter was that we should have refused to print the material Metropolitan Philaret sent us on Archimandrite Tavrion. I disagree—if we go that way we will begin to separate ourselves from our own bishops, our fathers and guides in the faith. I truly believe that they know what they are talking about and that we should listen to them. I have heard several of our priests speaking as though the recent “Decision” of the Synod on the Elder Tavrion controversy can be simply ignored (just as the earlier decision on Deacon Lev’s errors on life after death can be ignored)—and this seems to me the beginning of the spiritual suicide of some of our clergy.

Now Fr. Lev is gone (and to a jurisdiction that is really considered graceless by our bishops!), and Fr. Gleb Jensen too—already fighting each other in different jurisdictions. The schism of which many of us have been warning is already real, and where will it stop? How tragic and unnecessary! Fr. Gleb accuses our bishops of changing their position and betraying the faith—but if he would have been in closer contact with the real heart of our Church in past years, he would know that none of us have changed in our attitude towards Moscow or other basic church issues. He and others read statements of our bishops, and statements in The Orthodox Word, in past years and read into them their own extreme opinions; and now when it becomes clear that none of us ever held these extreme opinions, we are accused of betrayal. This is “Alice in Wonderland” Orthodoxy! How tragic that some are now leading their flocks (albeit still very small flocks) out of communion with the only people who can still teach them what Orthodoxy is and help them to wake up from their fantasies of a “super-correct” Orthodoxy that exists nowhere in the world.

Please pray for these people, and where possible let them know that they are “off.” Try to save those who will try to make the leap next. I am in contact with Fr. George Macris and still hope he can see the way things really are.

Please pray for us all.

With love in Christ,
Unworthy Hieromonk Seraphim

Dear Father George [Macris],

Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

Thank you for your letter and your proposal to meet me on my next visit to the Portland area. I would be glad to arrange a meeting with you, although my next visit will not be too soon. Father Herman visits the Russian parish there more often than I, and since I made the last two visits the next one will undoubtedly be his. I won’t be there until after the first of the year.

I’m sorry you found The Orthodox Word no. 96 disturbing, but I can assure you there was nothing in it “implied” about any change in our attitude towards the Moscow Patriarchate. The recent “Decision” of the Synod of Bishops says it very well, I think, and I agree with it wholeheartedly.

I think perhaps a part of the disturbance comes from the fact that the attitude of our Church Outside of Russia to the Moscow Patriarchate has never been “defined” in so many words, and some people have read into the strictness of our attitude an ecclesiological statement about the Patriarchate that simply isn’t there. Among most of the Russian clergy articles on Archimandrite Tavrion (which have appeared in Orthodox Russia over the past several years), as well as others like Fr. Dimitry Dudko, Boris Talantov, etc., cause no problem because, while their position is recognized as one of “compromise” to some degree, the church situation in Russia is recognized as not yet “final” and therefore as not yet requiring any absolute judgment on our part. Therefore, our non-communion with Moscow is strict, but it is in no way compromised or threatened by our sympathy and support for courageous priests and laymen of the Patriarchate. This is not at all a “new” attitude in our Russian Church Abroad; it has always been like this, but only recently have there appeared any very public instances in which it has been expressed.

If you want a theological statement on this whole question, I think the closest you will get to it is in the writings of Metropolitan Cyril of Kazan {The Orthodox Word, 1977, no. 75).

Given the non-finality of the Russian church situation, I myself find no problem in co-existing in the same Church with people who have different approaches and even different opinions on this situation, as long as they do not try to force their opinions upon the whole Church. Some seem to want to proclaim the Moscow Patriarchate as without grace and no better than Roman Catholicism; others (among the clergy) allow their spiritual children to receive communion (when travelling in Russia) from clergy of the Moscow Patriarchate. These are both matters of private opinion which can co-exist in the Church as long as no attempt is made to make them the Church’s official position; I myself think the correct position is somewhere between these two extremes. If you have any difficulty accepting such “broadness,” I think your difficulty is not with any of us who have expressed various opinions, but with our bishops who for fifty years have not taken any more definite position.

Asking your prayers, and assuring yours [stet] of mine,

With love in Christ,
Unworthy Hieromonk Seraphim

Dear Father Ioannikios,

CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST!

Enclosed is a Social Security form which Basil Voytans father gave to us to fill out, and which is required by the Social Security authorities in order to give money for Basils education. Can you simply fill out the bottom part (Section С)? If so, please do so and send it in the enclosed envelope before November 1, or his family will have complications in receiving the money.

Vladika Laurus sent his blessing for Basil to stay here this year, but we still have no information on how he is to be tested, and also as to whether there are any specific textbooks for his second year classes. We have him reading Smirnov’s Church History (in Russian, with translation exercises from it), a lot of Russian literature in translation (in preparation for the third-year course), Andreyev’s Apologetics (in English), practice in Slavonic (both on kliros and outside). If there is no set textbook for Russian history, we will give him one of our English-language texts that covers the period from Peter I for the second year course. He also writes one composition a week (on literature, apologetics, etc.) and attends a class for all our brothers in world history from the Orthodox perspective, Is there anything else he will need this year? His knowledge of Russian is not yet at the advanced textbook level, but he is spending several hours daily at reading and translation, and is advancing steadily.

Mrs. Voytan asked where to send the tuition money, and we told her to send it to you at the seminary. Is anything else required for him to be enrolled at the seminary? Basil spends about 10 hours per week in formal classes, the rest in homework; if necessary, we could give him 20 hours per week in supervised attendance.

Please let us know what else we need to do. So far Basil is flourishing in his studies, is very interested and self-motivated, with no serious problems. He is especially interested in Russian literature and thinks that part of his problem last year was trying to plunge too much into “dukhovnost” without a better preparation in “dushevnost’”.

Please pray for us. We have a good group for the winter (ten of us right now), and it should be a fruitful season.

With love in Christ,
Unworthy Hieromonk Seraphim

Dear Father Demetrios,

CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST!

I send you greetings on the feast of St. Sergius. We had Liturgy today and a procession outdoors to bless two new crosses erected in our wilderness. Glory be to God that we still have such freedom!

I presume by now you’ve received the decree of the Synod on the “Elder Tavrion” dispute. We agree 100% with it and only rejoice that the bishops have finally made clear some things which our Church has always believed, but because they weren’t necessarily written down somewhere a few people have disputed them. Please note that it is the Metropolitan and bishops themselves who raise the question of the danger of “schism” with regard to those who are criticizing their Metropolitan. This is by no means a product of imagination on our part, but indeed a very real danger that faces us, and now that the bishops have dared use the word I hope there will be an awakening and sobering up on the part of those who are overly critical.

In general, I think you underestimate the gravity of what is happening: it is by ;; means a matter of jealousy between priests or monasteries (such things, it is true, exist, but they are secondary). The first question is one of a difference in the whole approach to the Orthodox Church, our witness today, our compassion for those striving to regain a lost or damaged Orthodoxy, etc. One group in our Church (mostly Greeks and converts) wants to define this question so narrowly that our Orthodoxy becomes almost a sect, and “we are the only pure ones left”; the other group, led by our Metropolitan and bishops, wants to keep the same open and loving approach we have had for sixty years and does not want to change it. This is why there are such bitter reactions on the part of those who do want to change and narrow our conception of Orthodoxy.

You think that our Orthodox Word has become more “controversial” in recent years? But really, try to look objectively (leaving aside the opinions of some people on the East Coast) at our issues of past years and our issues of today: don’t you see that our tone has in fact become more rather than less meek than it used to be? This is the only difference, and it is a difference that has come about because our bishops have told us that they prefer this approach.

In actual fact, our articles on Elder Tavrion were not in themselves controversial at all—we simply presented the material which Metropolitan Philaret deliberately sent us with instructions to translate and print it. Our own editorial comments were intended to show how it is possible to have a strict attitude towards the Soviet Church and still be sympathetic to a real struggler like Elder Tavrion. The “controversy” erupted only when some people insisted on imposing their legalistic definitions of the church situation upon this phenomenon. Bishop Gregory has just written us and told how tired he is trying to combat the very Western idea of the Church which the critics of the Metropolitan are expressing—this is our problem.

And do you really think that we have changed in recent years over The Orthodox Word of old? Except for the meekening of our tone, at the request of our bishops, we have not changed at all. Read The Orthodox Word for 1971: we called Boris Talantov an “Orthodox Confessor” (a name we have not applied to Fr. Dimitry Dudko or Elder Tavrion), despite the fact that Talantov called the Catacomb Church a “sect”—we saw that the latter was a secondary aspect of his teaching, and the primary one was his oneness with our Church in his anti-Sergianism. And all those who are now calling us names welcomed this article on Talantov; Fr. Neketas in Seattle even reprinted part of it. Read our Orthodox Word even in 1965: there we presented the monks of Pochaev and various other members of the Soviet Church in the most sympathetic light, and no one protested.

Do you want to know where the difference actually is, in my opinion? Those who are now criticizing us so strongly have themselves changed: now they wish to declare the Moscow Patriarchate as without grace (the recent articles by Fr. Michael Azkoul and Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Orthodox Christian Witness are the first that I know of in the past 13 years where this position is set forth so clearly), and they wish to cut off all active sympathy for the Moscow Patriarchate priests and laymen, thus contradicting their own position of ten years ago.

I pray that you will be able to look at this whole situation objectively, and resist the pressures which the “pressure group” on the East Coast is trying to apply. Our bishops need the active support of us priests in defending their wise and sober approach. The only “crime” of our Brotherhood is that we have openly defended this approach. Read the Synods decree (it is in the new issue of Orthodox America, is supposed to be printed in all of our periodicals) and I think you will agree.

If you do have influence with Holy Transfiguration Monastery, tell them we would like to send them (as before) 30 or more copies of Orthodox Word, which should be freely given to all brothers who want it—we are being censured there!

With love in Christ,
Unworthy Hieromonk Seraphim

Dear Father Michael [Azkoul],

Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

Thank you for your letter. May God forgive you—and please forgive me if I have offended you in any way.

With you personally I have never felt any animosity on either side; some disagreements, perhaps, but not ill will. I do think your sermon printed recently in Orthodox Christian Witness went too far in its inferences about those who sympathize with certain priests in the Moscow Patriarchate— none of us condone the Patriarchate itself, but we share the position so well set out by our Synod in its recent decree on the “Elder Tavrion” uproar.

But his same decree does indeed use the word “schism” to refer to those over-quick to criticize others, even their own Metropolitan, and I think the danger, now becoming more obvious, has indeed long been present in our midst. I really think that this problem is now so deep that no personal forgiveness can uproot it. What is really required, I think, is the total eradication of the clique in our Church, centered around the person of Fr. Panteleimon in Boston, that thinks it knows better than our bishops and our whole Church tradition what the teaching of the Church is. Every major disturbance in our Church in recent years has come from the clash between the opinions of Fr. Panteleimon and the teaching of the Church, which are often two different things. We and many others are quite willing to live in peace with those who have different opinions on various church matters; but if they insist that the opinions are the teaching of the Church, a clash and eventual schism is inevitable. (By “eradication,” of course, I don’t mean that its members should be “executed,” but only that they cease to operate as a “pressure group” in the Church and learn to humble themselves before the teaching of the bishops and the Russian Church in general.)

I sincerely hope the recent statement of our bishops on the “Elder Tavrion” article will serve to meeken the critics of our Church teachings and policies. If so, there is hope for peace.

With love in Christ,
Unworthy Hieromonk Seraphim