The “New Calendar” and their “Feast”. Metropolitan Vitaly (Ustinov)

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“We must ourselves understand, and also declare for all to hear, that since1927, when Metropolitan Sergius signed his lamentable “declaration,” and up to the present day, our Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia has not had and does not have any communion in prayer with the Moscow Patriachate, which is nothing other than the uncanonical creation of the former Soviet regime. By the same token we do not have spiritual communion with a single other autocephalous Orthodox Church which lives its spiritual and liturgical life according to the new calendar. What liturgical communion can we have, when we are still fasting, but they are celebrating the Nativity of Christ by the new calendar? According to our calendar we are praying to one saint, while the new calendarists in their way are praying to a completely different saint. In other words, any kind of communion has been destroyed, both in prayer and also even in the sacraments.

And so I, as First Hierarch, am calling upon all of you to remain forever faithful to our Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia and not to be confused by those appeals which we are all hearing more and more often that we should unite and concelebrate with others in the name of a loudly proclaimed “brotherly love.” Where is our “brotherly love” when we are living, in that which is most important to us – our Divine Services – according to different calendars, and living a different spiritual life? Let us ponder the meaning of that most important phrase “Divine Service,” which is to say, “serving God” and then we will understand that in fact we are serving God Himself in different ways”

Pre-Conciliar Epistle of Metropolitan Vitaly. August 1/14, 2000

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