There are today some Christians — priests, monks, and laypeople — who have broken the ordinary liturgical communion with their hierarch: some priests have ceased to commemorate him at the services, and some laypeople have begun to attend only where this commemoration is no longer made. They do this in protest against the Council of Crete, of the year 2016, which they consider to have slipped into error. They have not done so as the result of a synodal decision condemning their hierarch, but of their own resolve, judging that they are thereby walling themselves off from a danger to the faith.
Many devout people look toward these and do not know what to think. On the one hand, they seem to be people zealous for the right faith. On the other, something seems not to be in order. And when you ask them, they answer with arguments that sound very convincing, grounded in the canons of the Church and in the Holy Fathers.
This article seeks to clarify matters step by step — without haste, without difficult words — so that anyone, however unfamiliar with church language, may understand clearly where the truth lies. And it does so with one confession from the very start: this is not about foolish or wicked people who “refuse to understand.” Things are genuinely tangled, because, as we shall see, the canon on which they rely can indeed be read in more than one way. For this very reason it must be examined with great care.
What It Means, First, “Not to Commemorate Your Bishop”
Let us begin with the simplest thing, for without it nothing can be understood.
At each Liturgy, the priest at a certain point pronounces the name of the bishop under whom he stands. This is not a mere custom. This commemoration is the visible sign that the priest — and through him, the whole parish — is in connection, in union, with that bishop, and through the bishop with the whole Church. It is, so to speak, the thread that shows you are part of the body of the Church.
To cease pronouncing this name — that is, “to stop the commemoration,” “to wall oneself off” — therefore means to cut that thread publicly. It means to say, through one’s very service: “I separate myself from this bishop.” This is no small gesture. It is a rupture, shown before all.
From here all the questions arise. For the Church does not permit anyone, at any time, to cut this thread. But it does permit it sometimes. The question is: when exactly?
The Canon on Which the Non-Commemorators Rely
The canon most often invoked by the non-commemorators — and the most important for this discussion — is the second part of an ancient canon: Canon 15 of a council held at Constantinople, called the “First-Second Council.”
What does this canon say, briefly and plainly? It says roughly this: if a priest separates himself from his bishop before a synod has judged and condemned that bishop, he usually errs and becomes guilty of division. But there is one single circumstance in which he does not err — indeed, he is worthy of praise: when his bishop preaches openly a heresy that the Church has already condemned.
The canon here uses an old expression: the bishop who preaches the heresy “with bared head.” Let us pause a moment, for the expression may confuse. “With bared head” has nothing to do with hats or coverings. It is an old way of saying openly, in the open, without hiding. That is, the bishop does not merely think something wrong in secret, nor merely let slip an unfitting word — but teaches the error openly, plainly, before all, as though it were the true teaching of the Church.
This is the canon. And here the real difficulties begin.
Why the Canon Can Be Read in Two Ways
Here is the heart of all that follows, so let us go slowly.
In today’s discussion, this canon is read in two ways. And not because people are necessarily of bad faith, but because the emphasis falls, for some, on the part about stopping division, and for others, on the exception of walling-off from heresy. Let us put both on the table, honestly.
The first way says this: this canon cannot be torn from the canons before it (the 13th and 14th), which, read together, condemn precisely those who make division before the judgment of a synod. In this reading, the canon permits walling-off only as a narrow door, but does not command it, and counsels that in all cases one should await the Church, gathered in synod, to pronounce. Those who read it so say: non-commemoration in haste, before a synod speaks, is itself a division.
The second way rests on the interpretation of Saint Nikodemos the Hagiorite — and it must be said emphatically that Saint Nikodemos is no ordinary author, but a great authority whom no one can pass over. He shows that, when a bishop is truly a heretic and preaches his heresy with boldness, the faithful may separate from him even before a synod has judged him — and they do well, for they separate not from a true bishop, but from a false one.
Here, then, is the tangle. The non-commemorators rest on the second reading — and they hold in hand a great saint, Saint Nikodemos. For this reason you cannot simply tell them: “non-commemoration is always schism.” It is not true, and they will at once show you the text of Saint Nikodemos.
And so, how do we get out of this tangle? The answer is surprisingly simple, and it changes everything.
The Key: The True Question Is Not the One They Ask
Here lies the whole clarification, so we say it slowly and clearly.
The non-commemorators believe the dispute is about whether you are allowed to wall yourself off before a synod. They say: “the second reading proves us right, we may wall ourselves off before a synod.” And they stop here, content.
But this is not the true question. For — pay the closest attention — both readings of the canon, the first and the second, require the same thing in order for you to stop the commemoration. They require a threshold, a condition below which nothing can be done. And that threshold is the same in both readings.
What is the threshold? Two things, which must both be present, not just one:
First: that there be a heresy, and that it be preached openly — in the open, asserted, as the teaching of the Church. Not a word let slip. Not an unclear formulation in a document. Not a suspicion. A heresy spoken openly.
Second: that this heresy be already condemned by the Church — whether by the Synods of old, or by the Holy Fathers with one voice. Mark well here, for this is the point most often passed over: the canon does not say “a heresy that you consider a heresy.” It says “a heresy condemned.” That is, you do not decide, all on your own, what is heresy. The Church has decided already, beforehand, and you merely wall yourself off from the one who holds it.
Do you see now why their question was wrong? It does not matter how much we argue over whether you may wall yourself off “before a synod” or “after a synod.” Even the second reading, the most permissive, that of Saint Nikodemos the Hagiorite, requires that the heresy be already condemned. So the true question is not “before or after a synod?” but: has the threshold been reached? Is this a heresy preached openly and already condemned by the Church?
If the threshold is not reached, it no longer matters which reading you choose — neither gives you the right to wall yourself off. Here, and not in the quarrel of interpretations, everything is decided.
So it is not enough to say: “it seems to me that here is a heresy.” The canon requires more — it requires three things you must be able to show clearly: which is the heresy, where exactly it was condemned by the Church, and how the hierarch preaches it openly, as the teaching of the Church. Lacking even one of these, the stopping of commemoration no longer rests on the foundation of Canon 15, but on the private judgment of the one who separates. And private judgment, however zealous, is not a ground for separation — it is, on the contrary, precisely what the canon means to stop.
What the Saints Actually Did
To see that this is indeed the threshold, let us look at the Saints. For the non-commemorators invoke them often — “Saint So-and-so also walled himself off!” — but when you look closely at what they did, you see that they kept this very threshold every time.
Consider a pattern that appears in the classic examples the Tradition itself sets forth: first the Church condemned the heresy, and only afterward did the Saints separate from those who held it. They did not make their own private judgment the measure of the whole Church, but defended a faith the Church had already confessed and established.
Those who walled themselves off in the days of Saint Athanasius did so against Arianism — but Arianism had been condemned beforehand, at the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea, in the year 325. The heresy was already condemned; they merely separated from those fallen into it.
Saint Theodore the Studite, whom the non-commemorators invoke most often, struggled against those who destroyed the holy icons. But here too: the destruction of the icons had already been condemned by a Council of the whole Church, the one of the year 787. Saint Theodore did not invent a new condemnation on his own — he defended a decision the Church had already taken. And, a matter of great importance, he did not make a church of his own, cut off from all; he remained in the Church, separating only from the fallen bishops.
And more telling still are the examples of patience and conciliar labor. Saint Sophronius of Jerusalem did not answer the turmoil by a separation of his own, but by confessing the right faith and by a synodal letter, awaiting the word of the Church. Saint Maximus the Confessor, likewise, did not make his own private judgment the final measure of the Church, but labored for a conciliar condemnation of the error: in the year 649, at Rome, the Lateran Synod condemned Monothelitism, and the Tradition sees Saint Maximus among the greatest fighters who prepared this confession.
Do you understand the pattern? The Saints did not hasten. They confessed the truth with strength, yes — but they did not break the thread of communion before the Church had spoken. And the walling-off of today differs precisely here: it comes before the conciliar word of the Church, resting only on each person’s conviction that what troubles him is heresy — that is, on the very step the Saints avoided with the greatest care.
Why Today’s Disquiet Does Not Reach the Threshold
Now we can put everything together, simply.
For walling-off to be permitted, we have seen, two things are needed together: a heresy preached openly and already condemned by the Church.
However justified the disquiet of some toward the Council of Crete may be, it is precisely the second condition that is lacking. And here a distinction must be made that many skip over. It is not necessary to say that all the formulations of Crete are felicitous, nor that they cannot be better clarified. The Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church itself indicated, in the autumn of 2016, that the texts of that council can be made explicit, nuanced, or developed by a future Holy and Great Synod — a sign that the Church herself still regards them as open to clarification.1 But one thing is to say that a text may be unclear, debatable, or perfectible; and quite another to say that we already have a condemned heresy, preached openly by hierarchs as a dogma of the Church. Only the second case falls under the narrow door of Canon 15. And until now there exists no pan-Orthodox, conciliar condemnation, binding upon the whole Church, by which the matters of Crete have been condemned as heresy in the strict sense the canon requires. There have been criticisms, reservations, and local rejections — but these are not the same thing as a dogmatic condemnation by the whole Church, as the condemnation of Arianism or of the destruction of the icons was. The things that cause disquiet are still under the Church’s weighing.
And there is something more. A bishop who, in someone’s opinion, has not distanced himself enough from a contested council — that one is not “preaching openly a condemned heresy.” One thing is to keep silent or to be undecided on a matter not yet examined; another is to preach openly an error the Church has already condemned. Only the second opens the door of the canon. The first does not.
So — and this is the whole clarification, said once more — it is not for us to judge whether the matters of Crete are or are not error. This the Church will say, conciliarly, in its own time. We say only this: until that hour, walling-off on each person’s own initiative does not have the foundation it claims — not even in the Saints and the canons the non-commemorators themselves invoke.
How a Mere “Separating” Becomes Division
Something more must be said, with sorrow, for the facts show it.
Walling-off seems at first a small thing: “I am only separating from one bishop.” But it does not stay there. Once a man has allowed himself to decide alone, without a synod, who is in the Church and who is not, the separation grows of itself.
Here is the road, step by step. It begins with no longer commemorating one bishop. Then it comes to having no fellowship with all who commemorate that bishop. Then it comes to believing that the Mysteries — Baptism, Marriage, the Holy Communion — celebrated by the priests who remain in the Church are without grace, empty, void. Then, in some places, it goes so far that to Communion are called only those confessed to walling-off priests — that is, they separate openly even from the other Christians. And from here the road descends further still: the walled-off begin to separate even among themselves, each considering himself purer than the other, until the zeal of the beginning turns into an endless fragmenting.
This is no imagining. It is a temptation that recurs grievously often in the history of groups broken from the communion of the Church. And so non-commemoration — which wished to be confession — becomes precisely what the Saints named with the heaviest word: schism, that is, the rupture from the Church. And of this sin Saint John Chrysostom spoke with a fearful severity. Condemning a division of his own time, he said that to tear the Church asunder is no lesser evil than to fall into heresy; and in the same homily he confirmed also a fearful word, placed upon the lips of a holy man: that not even the blood of martyrdom can wash out this sin.2 Why so grave? Because the one who tears the Church wounds the very body of Christ. He wished to defend her, and he tore her apart.
The Example Nearest to Us: The Change of the Calendar
We need not go far back in the centuries to see how the Saints labored in a turmoil just like ours. We have an example from the last century itself.
In the year 1924 the church calendar was changed, and many were troubled — and rightly, for the change had been made in haste and without the people being made to understand. On the Holy Mountain, some monks, calling themselves zealots, cut their bond with the Patriarchate and with the other Athonite fathers, believing that only thus did they remain in the right faith. And many God-fearing people found themselves then in the same dilemma in which those troubled by Crete find themselves today: to remain, or to break away?
But behold the difference — and it is a difference that says everything. These people did not give themselves the answer, out of their own heads. They asked it of God, through prayer. And let us mark what answer they received.
In our own country, the abbot of the Sihăstria Skete, Father Ioanichie Moroi — who would later be the spiritual guide of Father Cleopa — was in great anguish: to receive the new calendar or not? He shut himself in his cell and began to fast and to pray, asking God for a sign. After nearly twenty days of harsh fasting, the brothers, seeing that he gave no sign of life and fearing he had died, took the door off its hinges and found him fallen to the ground, drained of strength, with the Psalter beside him. After he had recovered a little, he told them what had been revealed to him: he had seen three saints in hierarchical vestments, like the Three Holy Hierarchs, and the one in the midst spoke to him with a mighty voice: “Ioanichie, why do you doubt and not make obedience? Do you not know that obedience is greater than sacrifice? Obey those greater than you, for you will not answer for the correction of the calendar.” From that day, the elder doubted no more.3
Stop at the last words, for they are a treasure: you will not answer for the correction of the calendar. That is — and this is a comfort for any fearful soul — the responsibility for a decision of the Church does not rest on the shoulders of the one who obeys in humility, but on those who took it. The one who submits does not become a partaker in any error of his superiors; he is saved precisely through obedience. And it must be said clearly, so there be no misunderstanding: this obedience does not mean to receive sin, to confess heresy, or to break the commandment of God — no one is bound to obedience unto evil. But when you are not asked to deny the faith, and the thing that troubles you has not been condemned conciliarly by the Church, humble obedience guards the soul from the temptation of rupture.
Likewise, on the Holy Mountain, Saint Joseph the Hesychast — one of the greatest teachers of prayer of the last century — passed through this very temptation himself. For a time he was on the side of those who had walled themselves off, convinced that this was the right path. But, praying over this matter, he heard a voice telling him to remain in obedience to the Patriarchate, and not on the side of the zealots. And here is a detail that ought to give pause to anyone certain of his own rightness: Saint Joseph did not believe that voice at once. He suspected it to be delusion, because it went against what he had believed until then. Only after a second sign from God did he return, with his whole brotherhood, into full union with the Church. And of those who had been with him in the walling-off, some did not follow him, but remained in their separation.4
Think well on these two examples. They are not canons and do not take the place of synodal judgment — no one asks that a matter of the Church be decided on the basis of a vision. But they show the spirit in which holy men passed through turmoils like that of today: not with haste, not with self-assurance, not with rupture, but with prayer, with examination, and with the fear of tearing the Church. Here are holy men, of a life of prayer rarely seen — by no means indifferent, by no means lukewarm — who found themselves in the same doubt as those of today. And precisely because they asked God, instead of trusting their own mind, they received the same answer: remain, obey, do not break the Church. Moreover: not even Saint Joseph the Hesychast trusted his own inner voice at once — he examined it, suspected it, awaited the assurance from God. How much more ought he to examine himself who, without such measure and without such holiness, hastens today to break the Church, sure that he sees clearly what the whole Church does not see?
Some Objections That Deserve a Response
Until now we have spoken of the principle. But those who defend today’s walling-off have well-weighed arguments, which it is fitting to set out honestly — not in a weakened form, but as they themselves voice them — and then to answer. For if their disquiet deserves to be heard, then their arguments too deserve a true response.
They say, first: “We grant that no synod has condemned ecumenism as a heresy. But the canon requires a heresy condemned by the Synods or by the Holy Fathers. Now, the Holy Fathers have already condemned, with their voice, this error — so the threshold is reached, even without a synod.”
This is perhaps their strongest argument, and it has a kernel of truth: the canon does mention condemnation by the Fathers, not only by the Synods. But here something must be distinguished. What does it mean that “the Fathers have condemned” a teaching? It means a consensus of theirs — a common, steadfast voice of the whole Tradition. And who establishes that such a consensus truly exists, and that it fits exactly upon a new matter? The Church again, gathered conciliarly — not a theologian, not a group that has read a few texts and decided on its own that they constitute a consensus. In new and disputed matters, the public and binding establishing of the voice of the Fathers cannot be left to a single faction; otherwise each will gather its own quotations, call them “the voice of the Fathers,” and break communion in their name. To say “the Fathers have already condemned, so I no longer need the Church” means to arrogate to yourself the right to speak in the name of all the Fathers — that is, the very self-assurance the Saints avoided.
They say, second — and here is the deepest disquiet: “But this synod will never condemn ecumenism, because the hierarchs are themselves partakers in it. To await a synod means to wait in vain, endlessly.”
It must be said openly: behind this argument stands a real pain, not a cunning — the man fears that, by waiting, evil will triumph unhindered. And yet, precisely here the subtlest snare is hidden. If I break from the Church because I do not believe the Church will ever do its duty, then unbelief has taken the place of faith — of that faith we confess: “I believe in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.” Saint Joseph the Hesychast passed through exactly this temptation: he awaited the very thing the non-commemorator of today says it is vain to await, and he received from God to remain. To take upon yourself the burden that the Church alone can bear, out of fear that the Church will never bear it, is not confession — it is a subtle unbelief in the promise that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against her.”
They say, third: “We make no schism. We do not break the Church, we do not judge those who remain in communion. The stopping of commemoration is not an end in itself, but only an alarm signal — we are like a nerve of the Church sounding the bell so that a synod may gather.”
This sounds fine, and many of those who begin so are truly of good faith. But the question is not what they intend, but what happens in fact. We have seen the road: the separating from one bishop becomes separating from all who commemorate him; the alarm signal becomes, within a few years, a community apart, cut off from the rest; and the nerve that wished to waken the body ends by cutting itself from the body. To open the door of rupture “only as a signal,” convinced you will stop it in time, means to trust that you will master a thing which, in all of history, has not let itself be mastered.
And there is an inner inconsistency here as well. Those who voice this argument say they judge no one — and yet they stop the commemoration of a bishop precisely because they have judged him fallen into heresy. But to stop the commemoration is a judgment: the decision that this hierarch is no longer in the truth. And this judgment — that a bishop has fallen from the faith — is exactly what the canons entrust to a synod, not to each person individually. You may wall yourself off from a heresy the Church has condemned; but to decide yourself that your bishop is a heretic, before the Church has said so, means to make the very judgment you say you do not make.
What, Then, Is the Right Path
What, then, should the one do who is truly disquieted for the faith? For his disquiet must not be mocked — care for the right faith is a good and holy thing. A Church in which no one cared any longer for the faith would be a Church asleep.
The path is neither cowardly silence nor indifference. The Saints never kept silent when the faith was in danger. But neither did they break the Church. Their path was the narrow way between two precipices: on one side stands indifference, which swallows everything and is no longer troubled by anything; on the other, blind zeal, which, for the sake of purity, tears the Church apart. The Saints walked in the middle — they confessed the truth with strength, remaining within the Church.
It means to voice your disquiet by the appointed ways. To bring it before your pastors. To pray. To await the word of the Church gathered together — assured that the truth is not defended by breaking the Church, but by remaining faithful within her. Saint Sophronius showed us that one can confess with all one’s strength without cutting the commemoration. Saint Maximus showed us that one first gathers the Church, rather than dividing it.
The one who is disquieted ought, therefore, to endure and to remain. Not to cross alone beyond the boundary that only the Church, gathered in synod, can cross. Not to make himself, all at once, synod and judge and bishop together. And to remember always one troubling thing: the most dreadful divisions in the history of the Church did not begin from indifference, but precisely from zeal — from a zeal which, not being joined to humility and obedience, became convinced that it alone had seen the truth that all the rest had lost.
Here, at the last, is everything gathered into a single word: not every disquiet is schism, not every rebuke is disobedience, not every question is rebellion. But when disquiet turns into rupture from the Church, when my own judgment takes the place of the judgment of the whole Church, and the Mysteries of those who remain in the Church are despised as though they were empty — then we are no longer on the path of the Holy Fathers, but on the perilous road of schism. And that road, however beautifully it begins, leads not to the defense of the Church, but to her tearing.
1. Conclusions of the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church concerning the Holy and Great Council of Crete, session of 29 October 2016.
2. Saint John Chrysostom, Homily XI on the Epistle to the Ephesians. The saying that not even the blood of martyrdom washes out the sin of schism is placed by Saint John upon the lips of “a holy man”; it is commonly attributed to Saint Cyprian of Carthage (On the Unity of the Church).
3. The episode is recorded by Archimandrite Ioanichie Bălan in the Romanian Patericon, after the testimony of Father Cleopa Ilie, disciple of Father Ioanichie Moroi.
4. The testimony is preserved by his disciple, the Monk Joseph of Vatopedi, in Elder Joseph the Hesychast, Evanghelismos Publishing, Bucharest, 2009.