The so called "New Calendar" is the Papal Calendar instituted by Pope Gregory XIII in the 16th century, only a few years after another pope ordered the reversal of the way in which the Sign of the Cross was made. Like purple buttons and shaven faces, there is a clear choice between the Sacred Tradition of the Orthodox Church, which is the Life of the Holy Spirit within the Church, and its rejection in favor of what is done by heretics: Modernists, Papists, Masons, Ecumenists, Humanists, etc. Why would anyone wish to be united with such errors, and separated from the Tradition of the Church? This is what it is all about.

But enough about the standard and its design. There are errors of the most essential kind about Purity and Chastity, without which no one can be saved These are spread abroad among those that throng together under the standard of the Pope’s calendar. Specifically, those instructed at St. Vladimir’s and Holy Cross Theological Seminary in the United States, and in the State Church of Greece. In these places it has been openly taught that what the Apostle calls "uncleanness." that is fornication, is not a sin to be confessed. In fact, as everybody knows, confession itself is disappearing.

These are not hostile allegations of one jurisdiction about another. Far from it! Nor do we allege that every single clergyman associated with these well known institutions propagates this supremely evil anti-Christian teaching, but it common knowledge that this has been taught frequently by professors to students, by confessors to penitents, and to my personal knowledge, by a bishop to other clergy. When this has been challenged in print , as I am doing openly now, no bishop or seminary official has repudiated this heresy, or denied that it was commonly held among them.

I challenge them to do so now. God grant that they will deny this and affirm the true teaching of the Church of Christ now before anymore souls are lost because of this evil teaching! This is the real reason that serious souls are drawn more and more to the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, and those churches with which it is in Eucharistic Communion. This is why our monasteries thrive and theirs wither.

To return to the calendar question, we ask again, why would anyone wish to be united in any way with heretics of so many kinds, rather than with Jerusalem, Sinai, Athos, Russia Serbia and the usage of antiquity? As to Papism and Protestantism, even rats will not climb aboard a sinking ship. It is a pious belief not to be lightly denied that Heaven and Hell, and all the departed reverberate when the Holy Church celebrates Pascha. Why would anyone want to be united with those who are outside the Church in the celebration of our Holy Days, which we celebrate with the angels and saints who from the beginning of time have been well pleasing unto God. It is not without significance that many Orthodox Synods have repudiated any attempt to change the calendar, and to remark who it was that introduced this disharmony into the Church, and that simultaneously it was decreed by the innovators that Pascha be changed, fasts be abolished and married bishops elected. (Even as I write this it is reported that fully one half of all Americans are over weight. As to married bishops, never before has there been greater need for the example of Virginity and bodily continence.)

Is there a need to dispute with the shameless scholars of St. Vladimir’s Seminary and the other liberals who are misleading souls about Purity and Chastity? When the Apostle spoke of uncleanness, he most certainly did not refer to that which is affected by bathing. When we say, "dirty magazine" or "dirty joke" everyone understands that this has nothing to do with germs and microbes. We all know what the Apostle meant by uncleanness. Whoever does not understand does not want to understand, and is damned for willful error. The Holy Apostle begins his Epistle to the Romans discussing these vices in the very first chapter, which the Bride of Christ sets at the very beginning of all the Epistles, because whoever does not preserve their bodies in continence can understand nothing else that is written. The Apostle is explicit about "those who abuse themselves...etc. If we set aside the explicit teaching of the Divinely
inspired Apostle in a universally accepted Book of the Bible, then we have no Faith in Him who say, "He who hears you, hears me", and we must be reckoned among the unbelievers, to whom it is said, "Depart from me ye workers of iniquity...!"

What does this have to do with the calendar again? For some time past, the Papists have followed ever more liberal and bizarre interpretations of Sacred Scripture, using pasta for eucharistic bread, never anointing the sick until they are either dead or dying, now by papal decree, calling heretics, "separated brethren", and setting asides the Apostle’s rule for women to cover their heads. usurping for the pope, power to correct Divinely Inspired Sacred Scripture, which the Apostle Peter never had or imagined. Now followers of the pope’s calendar are reading the pope’s theological quarterlies in their papal friendly seminaries. It is precisely from these that soul-destroying ideas
of moral laxity have come.

The fact that many among them are of papist origin and have many relatives who are papist clergymen seems to have its effect. Among the Greeks, it often happens that they do not want non-Greeks in the Greek Orthodox denomination, and having been drenched in Western Culture since the establishment of German kings, they see no harm in Western scientific study of Divinity (which we Orthodox know is idle at best) The Divine is only apprehended by prayer and fasting. Rightly did St. Seraphim of Sarov say, "Those who do not fast are not Christians, no matter what they call themselves." O erudite Greeks, and Slavic scholars, if the shoe fits, wear it!

And so dear brother in Christ, the calendar is like a small piece of cloth, of no consequence in itself, but when it becomes the flag or banner of the people, they will die for it, for is the symbol of something great. The papal calendar is like the papal flag. What Orthodox in his right mind would be caught in that throng, at any time, but as the diseases plaguing them have already brought them to disorder and dismay, so that many predict eminent collapse, now more than ever, flee papal contagion, calendar, casuistry and caviling like the spiritual death it brings.