Dear Alexey,<\/p>\n
Just a note to go with Daniel tonight. He seems to be in the best state we\u2019ve seen him in two years. We discussed the \u201cFr. Panteleimon situation\u201d with him, and he had already decided, when he just heard of the breaking of communion, that he himself would not even think of leaving the Synod if Fr. P., should. The \u201cwhole mess\u201d which is supposedly cleared up now is, of coursed, 90% a \u201cFr. Panteleimon mess,\u201d and far from being cleared up, it bodes very ill for the future. About that we shall have to wait and see, remembering that Fr. P. is no authority in our Church and that his next \u201cdramatic move\u201d must be regarded with extreme suspicion. There is a strong smell of politics behind him, and one day he is going to make the fatal political mistake. Let us be sober and prepared.<\/p>\n
About the Hudanish-Old Believer visit. Yes, you are blowing it up too much. It is not possible to have a \u201cdialogue\u201d with them. They are sectarians, and their spirit, not just their externals, separates them from Orthodoxy. If God can somehow draw one or many of them to Orthodoxy, very good, but the measures of \u201cpenitence\u201d which John Hudanish describes would be simply a flattering of their sectarian pride. Blessed Paisius Velichkovsky was against receiving Old Believers even if they asked nothing but to keep the two-fingered cross\u2014not because of the small act, but because this revealed they still had the sectarian mentality. Of course, since then the Russian Church has allowed Old Believers to retain the two-fingered Cross and their service books, but as a gesture of economy rather than an admission that Patriarch Nikon was wrong. For an Old Believer to become Orthodox there must be an awareness that the externals they preserve are not of the essence of Orthodoxy. Fr. Dimitry Alexandrov, by the way, has visited them, or at least some O.B.\u2019s in Oregon, and saw no hope for \u201cdialogue.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for the visit, let it be just a visit. Talk about what interests you and them, but don\u2019t be defensive about not living according to \u201crules\u201d like theirs. If they want to dispute anything, have an answer, as the Apostle Peter says, to the best of your ability.<\/p>\n
John Hudanish, from his letter, is an \u201cidealistic\u201d American full of unrealistic hopes. His talk of repentance and of learning from you does not seem to strike true. Be as simple and unpretentious as possible, and don\u2019t even think of being the representative of a \u201cdialogue.\u201d<\/p>\n
Our green truck runs fine. How should we arrange to get it to you for a weekend or more?<\/p>\n
With love in Christ,<\/p>\n
Seraphim, monk<\/p>\n
P.s. The Old Believer Pimen Sofronov (the iconographer), under the persuasion of Fr. Dimitry Alexandrov, received Holy Communion some months before he died, in one of our churches in the Holy Land. But, of course, he was not at all a \u201cstrict\u201d Old Believer as the real sectarians are. I don\u2019t know if he was \u201cin communion\u201d with the Oregon \u201cO.B.\u2019s\u201d or not, but if so, they would never believe that he had done such a thing!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dear Alexey, Just a note to go with Daniel tonight. He seems to be in the best state we\u2019ve seen him in two years. We discussed the \u201cFr. Panteleimon situation\u201d with him, and he had already decided, when he just heard of the breaking of communion, that he himself would not even think of leaving […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1349\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}