ROCOR-A Synod Responds to GOC-K Letter
December 08, 2014 (Source: http://internetsobor.org)
(warning: machine translation)
Our Council of Bishops carefully read the letter from the Synod CPI Greece Metropolitan Agafangel of 18 / 10.31.2014, as well as the response of the Metropolitan Agafangel to your letter dated 27 October / November 9, 2014.
First of all, we thank our Greek fellow bishops for prayer and fraternal empathy in the not so easy time for the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. All the bishops of the ROCOR actually perceive a miracle and a gift from God blessed unity between us and cherish them.
To announce that all the bishops present at the council unanimously testified that, because Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia does not have a prayer and Eucharistic communion with the ecumenical Eastern Churches (including Jerusalem and Moscow), we do not remember the members of these jurisdictions, no prayer, no during mass. At reception of these churches, depending on the individual case – if it is found that the baptism was not committed, or committed wrong, crosses or is renewable wrong committed by triple immersion baptism. In some cases, at the discretion of the bishop, when receiving the clergy (especially if the bishop to ordain openly professes heresy of ecumenism, or, in the words of the Apostle Paul, “called a brother be a fornicator,” and with it, for this reason, it is forbidden to Christians to fellowship (1 Cor 5.11 ) – committed hirotesiya.
Two questions:
1.) How can it be “a requirement of civil law” to commemorate Irenaios, who was officially deposed from the position of Patriarch? Wouldn’t the law require one to commemorate the legal Patriarch of Jerusalem, that is, Patriarch Theophilos?
2.) Even if it were a requirement of civil law, can that justify the commemoration of a man who still considers himself a member of World Orthodoxy?