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Old Believer's avatar

So,I made the comment on the "curses" with the added comment about their being no possibility of repentance and applying it even to those already departed not because I have an exaggerated view of an anathema, but because that was the actual language used in the 1666/1667 council. To my knowledge, it is the only time such an extreme punishment has ever been used. I am aware of course of the anathemas and their corrective purpose, but that is not what was used against the Old Believers.

Your questions are wonderful! They are never a bother, even when they challenge. The position of the Old Believers is, as you know, that the faith and piety it received is both Apostolic and without corruption (broadly speaking). Having the only consistently Orthodox political environment since the Crusades and Islam, this stands to reason. So, when dealing with other Orthodox Churches, yes, it is true that the same issues that separate us from the MP would also separate us from them as well.

It is illustrative to look at the history of the Roman Cathoic church, whose footprint was similar to the Orthodox, historically. Those items that ultimately caused division and divergent liturgical practices (like the Filioque, etc), started off locally, but soon spread throughout the west so that now, you would be hard pressed to find a Catholic who thinks there was ever a time when their practices or beliefs were different. My point is that beliefs and practices spread and things tend to homogenize over time. Russia, politcally, was intentionally self-isolated until the Old Believer Schism and viewed all Greeks with deep suspicion since the time of Florence, which caused the Greeks to be seen as betrayers of the faith long before the Old Believer issue.

I think the issue is that, like the Roman Church in the West, the Orthodox Church comprises, statistically, essentially all believers in the Christian East. So, like the absurdity of claiming all Western Christians fell away from the Church, so too do Old Believers fall into the absurdity of thinking the same way of the East, but nevertheless it is the reality of the worldview wherein these churches, dependant upon Italian printers, under Islamic rule, etc, found their faiths corrupted in ways unacceptable to Old Believers. This of course is not a nice thing to say or think, but it is an Old Believer reality. When you believe your faith and its practices are Apostolic, they must be defended and preserved.

There is a nice book by an OCA scholar/priest, Meyendorff, called Russia, Ritual, and Reform, which looks in detail at the liturgical changes made to the Old Rite. His finding, which mirrors all the modern Russian scholarship, is that the "corrections" were in fact innovations from Venetian printing presses, and did not correspond to any ancient Greek texts. But this is another topic altogether. Likewise, I hope you are not offended in what I hope is as straightforward and honest an answer as I can give!

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Aaron Isaac saxon's avatar

May I ask for some clarification on the comment regarding ROCOR? Is he saying that the New Rite church offered repentance to ROCOR, and thus should do the same to the Old Believers? Or is he saying that ROCOR has offered repentance to the Old Believers?

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