tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73042886598650075.post255778403636224126..comments2024-03-22T11:37:52.668-05:00Comments on Byzantine, Texas: Traditional Orthodoxy in Latin AmericaByzantine, TXhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17845681957622343484noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73042886598650075.post-25504365596335966122015-11-24T08:58:11.118-06:002015-11-24T08:58:11.118-06:00I likely won't get any amens but I see these G...I likely won't get any amens but I see these GOCers as brethren and I look forward to the day when the stumblingblocks that separate us are removed. <br /><br />Elder Joseph the Hesychast: While I was praying, I saw a brilliant, beautiful church. It had a small exit on the side, and everyone was coming out of the church. In the courtyard, they were arguing. One person shouted, ‘I am right!’ Another person shouted, ‘I am more right!’ And a third person, ‘I am the true church!’ This reveals that although they were arguing, they all belonged to a single church. They have dogmas in common, and they have grace, but they were arguing because they don’t have an open mind and haven’t achieved sainthood. (My Elder Joseph the Hesychast by Elder Ephraim pp. 502. The Calendar Issue)<br /><br />Also see the link posted below for an excerpt from an outstanding book: <br /><br />http://www.ctosonline.org/sample/TM.pdf<br /><br />Photios Kontoglou’s sympathetic views of the Old Calendar movement can be found in succinct form in the following two letters, which were both quoted in an article that appeared in one of Greece’s more important conservative religious periodicals, Ὀρθόδοξος Τύπος (Or- thodox press).1 In the first, dated March 1957, he writes to a friend:<br /><br />I saw what struggles you are going through, and with justification, over Church matters. But do not fear. There is faith among our people. The Old Calendarists truly are the most genuine Orthodox. However, I think that there is no schism; simply a division. May the Lord make ‘the rough ways smooth.’<br /><br />In the second, dated 28 April 1965, he writes the same friend:<br /><br />As for the Old Calendarists, you are right about everything. But they are also split into countless parties and, as you say, all you have to do in order to be reckoned an Or- thodox Christian, if not a Confessor [of the Faith], is state that you are on the Old Calendar. But be that as it may, on account of the mess that the New Calendarists have created, our stand leans toward the former<br />maximushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01086218903799586114noreply@blogger.com