WHY WE EXIST:
Our ROCA under our Beloved Vladyka Metropolitan Agafangel:
A very concise Exposition:
First of all, this short exposition, is meant to simply clarify and enlighten all, not as an attempt to 'argue' with anyone, or to unnecessarily offend anyone, etc.
Our Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, led by our First Hierarch, Metropolitan Agafangel, is the sole canonical and genuine continuation of the old, pre-2007 MP-union ROCOR; and when the pro-union group within it, led by Met. Laurus Shkurla, apostatized to the MP, two ROCOR bishops, Daniel and Agafangel, formed a CONTINUED-ROCOR church administration.
The pro-union betrayers, uncanonically, LEFT US! We did not 'leave them'. ROCOR/MP is thus, from their signing of that tomos in Moscow in 2007, part of Stalin's uncanonical and bogus MP, and no longer ROCOR, at all.
Our ROCA is thus, THE one and only continuation of the old free ROCOR.
As regarding other claimants, such as ROCiE (the 3 or more divisions), RTOC or ROAC, all of them have zero sound canonical/historical claims to legitimacy or canonical foundation. They are all schisms, and thus graceless, just as is the MP. They have lost Apostolic Succession, just as has the MP, which was founded by Joseph Stalin in 1943.
Their episcopates are without canonical basis, and thus, bogus. However! as anyone can easily read, who bothers to read what our ROCA puts out (but mainly in Russian), they can see that our Met. Agafangel has endlessly reached out his sincere hand of friendship to all of these, to sit down, and talk with us, which he is more than willing to do (though, he will NOT violate canons, but he is open to economia, when it can be applied)...
All of them, to even make the outrageous claims they do, HAVE violated many many canons.
All of them consistently rebuff his friendly offers, (nor do any of them, sit down with each other and unite with each other!. WHY NOT?), and yet they continue their malicious unfounded attacks on us...and against our sister churches, and on each other as well.... all to the joy of the MP and the KGB.
As to our current ROCA's relations/intercommunion with the Greek SIR Synod, the Romanian Old Calendarists and the Bulgarian Old Calendarists, (all of which are our full and Sister churches) – we MAINTAIN the same warm intercommunion with them now, that the old free ROCOR did years ago. Nothing in that regards, has changed, nothing at all.
ROCOR/MP under orders from Moscow, they did break with them all. *When they helped us, by co-consecrating another bishop for us, they were SIMPLY RETURNING to us, (whom they recognized as THE legitimate continuation of the old ROCOR), what the old ROCOR originally gave them, (in fact, gave to all the Greek Old Calendarists!), a legitimate & canonical episcopate. With two functioning bishops, our ROCA could canonically consecrate more bishops, and CONTINUE, which it has and is now doing.
*But, ROCiE, (all infighting divisions of them), RTOC and ROAC... they have all broken communion with these sister churches.
ROCiE, RTOC and ROAC have invented, for their own power reasons, their private & weird & ignorant-of-Patristics, non-Orthodox accusations against the SIR synod, mis-labeling them (& thus our ROCA too), as in 'heresy'. That ridiculous charge has been disproven, over and over and over. It is pure malicious nonsense.
The Greek Synod in Resistance, and all those sister churches with them, including our ROCA, are fully Orthodox and fully anti-Ecumenist and anti-Serganist. None of us, are 'heretics'!... nor are we schismatics either. (No matter what the great all-knowing, never wrong, Professor Vladimir Moss preaches or Victor Melehoff, etc.).
My final thoughts here: Is it possible, that so many of our so-called 'True Orthodox' brothers and sisters, who are also with us, as anti-Ecumenists and anti-Sergianists, etc., have nevertheless, gotten their canons and church history all wrong/mixed up?... and that they are being deliberately misled, by those whose real motives in attacking our ROCA, have more to do with the old saying:
'Throwing a cat amongst the pigeons', i.e., letting themselves, the victim pigeons, be used & scattered in fright, by the enemies of our faith, in the end, mainly the neo-soviet KGB rulers still in power in the Kremlin and in their MP 'church'?... to divide and scatter all opposition to their world-wide aims for domination?
"Divide and conquer" has long been a tactic of successful warfare, and the KGB/FSB is well versed in it's application, ever since their predecessors took over old Russia.
This is my short exposition of my ROCA, and what it stands for. And, this is to the best of my knowledge and as to what I see as what my ROCA holds to, as its foundational basis. Yet, this exposition is my own, and not an official ukaz of my church.
See some related links below, to our ROCA sites, in both Russian and English.
Rd. Daniel Everiss
Фоторепортаж Престольного праздника Святаго Духа в Гоце Делчев (Болгарская Старостильная Православная Церковь). Богослужения возглавил епископ Фотий.
