Anastasios Hudson

Month: July 2014

  • Excerpt from Upcoming Book on Metropolitan Petros

    My book, Metropolitan Petros: A Microcosm of the Old Calendar Church in America will be released as an ebook and in print-on-demand format this week, God-willing. I am putting together the final edits and formatting to meet the various publishers’ requirements. In the meantime, here is an excerpt of the work, the Preface to the Published Edition. Please stay tuned, and plan to purchase your copy, which will help raise awareness of this monumental figure, and help support my writing career and family!

    Preface to the Published Edition

    Metropolitan Petros Book CoverThe first time that I visited the Cathedral of Saint Markella was during Lent of 2004, after I dropped someone off at nearby La Guardia airport. On my way back, on a whim, I decided to stop in, after having read about this Church and its people—the Greek Old Calendarist Orthodox Christians—for several years. Tucked away on a sleepy Astoria street sits this modest-sized cathedral, which was founded in 1954 by Metropolitan Petros of blessed memory, who came to America after suffering through the persecutions directed against the Old Calendarists in Greece from 1924 on, after they had refused to go along with the change in the Orthodox festal calendar introduced that year.

    I was a seminarian at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in nearby Yonkers, New York, having arrived there in the summer of 2002. I was not Orthodox at the time, but rather an Eastern-Rite Catholic, and part of the reason I had enrolled in the seminary was to learn as much as I could about the Orthodox Church, in order to discern whether to remain Catholic or become Orthodox. It was not long before I decided to become Orthodox, but I noticed differences between the modern presentation of Orthodoxy and what was being described in the ancient texts we were studying. I also grew concerned with how Orthodox participation in the Ecumenical Movement might be negatively impacting the missionary activity of the Orthodox Church.

    I was always aware of and appreciated the small but vocal traditionalist element in the Orthodox Church, which I had become familiar with as early on as I had discovered Orthodox Christianity itself, but I doubted whether the issues I was having were serious enough to lead me to join an Old Calendarist Church, or whether I should just join one of the “mainstream” jurisdictions in America and be an advocate for traditionalism “from within,” as many were encouraging me to do. This is what I was wrestling with that April evening ten years ago when I decided to pay a visit to St. Markella’s.

    Stepping into the cathedral, I was struck with a peaceful feeling. The hymn “God is with us” from Great Compline was being chanted by a monk and a nun alternatively while a priest served, and there were a few people in attendance, but not a crowd. Still, the fact that there was a church that was open all day every day where people could just stop in and pray, with services that had been going on daily since 1954, made a strong impact on me. I left at the conclusion of the service, without having spoken to anyone, but feeling convicted of a need to take these people and their claims seriously.

    A few months later, I returned to the cathedral to speak first with Bishop Christodoulos and later with Metropolitan Pavlos, the grandnephew of Metropolitan Petros; and after an afternoon spent with them, I felt called to join the Church of the Genuine Orthodox Christians, but I took the process slowly. I was still enrolled in the Seminary, and didn’t want to cause any unnecessary conflict. There were also personal and family concerns. In August 2006, a year after I graduated, I was baptized at the cathedral by Bishop Christodoulos with the assistance of Fr. Theodore Giannakopoulos.

    While in seminary, we were required to write a thesis for our Master’s program, and with all the research I had invested in the Old Calendarist Orthodox Christians, I decided to write my thesis on Metropolitan Petros and his work to establish and support the Old Calendar church in America. I enjoyed researching and writing the thesis greatly, and was given access to important documents that many had never had the chance to see. The present work was originally submitted as a thesis to the faculty of St. Vladimir’s Seminary on April 20, 2005, and has now been revised for publication.

    I would like to thank all those who have supported me over the years and I pray that my publication of this work on the life of Metropolitan Petros will help to further raise awareness of the Church of the Genuine Orthodox Christians of America.

    Anastasios Hudson
    July 3, 2014 (o.s.)
    Martyr Hyacinth of Caesarea in Cappadocia

    Related posts:

    1. New Book: Metropolitan Petros of Astoria
    2. Excerpt from Upcoming Book: Finding the True Orthodox Church
    3. Metropolitan Demetrius’s Enthronement Weekend
    4. Excerpt from “The Elder Ieronymos of Aegina” on How the Elder Returned to the Old Calendar in August, 1942

  • New Calendarist Elders

    Part of my ongoing Correspondence series, featuring replies to people who contacted me and asked questions, mostly when I served as a priest (2008-2013).

    Dear Chris,

    I’m not surprised that you are struggling with the issue of how to view the New Calendarist elders. Almost everyone who comes down this path has to confront this issue.  I also had to consider it, of course.  As you know from my article I sent you[1], I do not believe that struggling from within makes any sense or is good for the soul, and I think that “elderphilia” is a cancer in modern Orthodoxy.  To me, the idea that one would not follow ecclesiological principles to their logical conclusion because there is someone who is holy on the “other side” seems to be a subversion of the proper order of theology.

    For instance, we of course have our elders (such as Elder Ieronymos of Aegina)…does that mean that Elder Ieronymos, who left the New Calendarist Church in 1942, is a fraud?  Or does it mean that there are true elders on both sides, and it really doesn’t matter which side one is on?  Or perhaps it does matter, but God blessed people who made the wrong choice anyway, but who were sincere?  These are all possibilities.  However, seeing that one would have to consider all these possibilities, I do not see how any of them would supersede wanting to be under bishops who are Orthodox, because the Church is where the bishop is, not where the elder is. Look at Church history, and try to find how many times a charismatic figure ultimately won out against the episcopacy? Whenever there is a dispute between bishops and monastics, the bishops almost always win.

    So how do I and other Old Calendarists deal with the people you listed?  We could discuss each one individually, but I will instead just give you the highlights, and we can follow up if you wish.  Fr. Paisios was in delusion, I believe, owing to the many false prophecies that he gave.  Of course none of these are mentioned by his supporters, especially not in English translation.  However, in Greek we have published some of the most notorious ones, such as his prophecy that he would die on Athos (which didn’t happen) or my favorite, his telling a Greek colonel that he would be the one to liberate Constantinople from the Turks (the colonel retired without having ever received even a promotion).  We have thought about translating these things into English, but that is a double-edged sword.  If we do, then we might be accused of being evil, mean-spirited, spiteful, partisan, etc.  If we don’t, then we let misconceptions remain and are accused of not having an answer.[2]

    In regards to Fr. Joseph the Hesychast, Bishop Petros knew him on Mount Athos, and in fact, thought he was in plani (delusion) for returning to commemoration.  Fr. Joseph’s sister remained a non-commemorator/Old Calendarist.[3]

    Fr Justin Popovich was a great author, and in fact, he broke communion with the ecumenist Serbian patriarchate, although not all of the Serbian bishops.[4]

    While it would have been best for him to completely leave, the fact that he recognized that communion with a blatant communist and ecumenist was impossible and that he therefore broke communion with him speaks volumes of his character.

    I know little about Elder Cleopa.

    In regards to Met. Chrysostomos of Florina, two points should be considered.  The first is, that while he was reticent to deny that New Calendarists had grace (although he eventually did, publicly) he still did not think it was possible to have communion with them.  Secondly, he viewed the situation which was still at play in the Church of Greece; there were hierarchs telling him that they wanted to return to the Old Calendar. He softened his position from 1937 to 1950 because he second-guessed whether a hardliner position was right, seeing that there was still “some hope” in the state Church, a struggle for Orthodoxy…that failed, ultimately.  That was in the 1940’s, also—things have gotten qualitatively worse since then, I think we can all admit.

    As for the idea that we haven’t entered into “blatant” concelebrations or heresy, can you honestly watch this video and say that?

    “Orthodox Unilateral Ecumenism”     Part 1   Part 2

    My “favorite” part is where Met. Christodoulos admits they rejected a large number of Uniates in Italy who had applied en masse to the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the 1960’s, because they didn’t want to set back ecumenical dialogue with the Vatican.  That isn’t heretical?

    As for the question of feeling peace or not, I am not sure what to tell you.  I felt peaceful when I joined the Catholic Church, I felt peaceful the first time I went into a New Calendar Church, and I felt peaceful when I went to the Old Calendar Church the first time…I don’t make much out of feelings.  For the record, when I was baptized at St. Markella’s, I experienced something different than “peace,” namely illumination of the nous, which lasted about 10 minutes.  During that time, reality changed.  It was like I could see beyond what was in the room, and I experienced other realities.  When my thoughts went back to worldly things, I lost the feeling.  When I was ordained, I felt fire reign down on my head.  When I have prayed for people, I have felt “electricity” go from my hand to them, and they likewise have felt it.  What to make of all these experiences?  I suggest you see experiences as secondary to proper ecclesiological concerns.

    I hope it gives you something to think about. You are in my prayers.

    In Christ,
    Fr. Anastasios

     

    [1] An as-of-yet unpublished manuscript titled Resisting from Within: A Personal Testimony, in which I draw on my experience as a Eastern-Rite Catholic trying to be more Orthodox in practice and use this to argue against the idea of resisting the heresy of Ecumenism, Modernism, and the New Calendar from within the New Calendarist Church.

    [2] We subsequently did translate the incident with the colonel into English here.

    [3] After I wrote this letter, we received a large group of clergy and faithful from HOCNA, and some of them brought with them a personal devotion to Fr. Joseph. The argument that HOCNA put forth was that Fr. Joseph reacted to extremism, but if he had been alive in 1965 when the anathemas were lifted, he would have stopped commemorating again. I do not believe that this is a proper line of argumentation, since the Church of the GOC of Greece had already ruled the commemorators as schismatic, but I do not wish to quarrel needlessly with other bretheren.

    [4] Vladimir Moss, “The Fall of The Serbian Church.” I do not generally recommend the writings of Vladimir Moss, due to their polemical and political nature, but occasionally he does write some great material. Please use caution with other links on that site.

    Related posts:

    1. Answering a Sincere New Calendarist Inquirer
    2. Uncanonical