Russian Old Believers

[kingstowngalway]

If I may ask you, kingstownalway, from your study of Old Believers, do they even accept converts?  Do they even associate with those who aren't Old Believers that much?  I've always been curious.

Thanks.

Dear drewmeister2,
I did not ask the woman I spoke to about conversion. However, there is actually quite a bit about it in David Scheffel's book "In the Shadow of Anti-Christ." THe book, which was researched in an Old Believer parish in Northern Alberta, states that when Mr. Scheffel was researching among them the Old BElievers, after deciding that he wasn't a KGB spy, grudgingly offered to accept him as a convert. They even offered to find him a wife from their community. After carefully considering their offer, he decided to decline it. Although Mr. Scheffel spent several years dressing like an Old Believer, growing out his beard, attending their church and speaking only Russian to them, he was never really accepted by them. THe book was written several decades ago. I learned from my interview and other sources that American Old Believers have begun to acculturate themselves to varying extents.

[spasiisochrani]

A pretty thorough article about the Old Believers can be found here:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Believers

 

In answer to the question about the worship practices of the priestless sect:  I believe that there is an iconostas in their churches, but it's against the back wall rather than in front of the altar.  There's no altar or sanctuary, because they believe the Sacrifice of the Altar has ceased.

[kingstowngalway]

I know that the largest group of Old believers with an organized priesthood dates from the 19th century, when Metropolitan Ambrosios of Bosnia converted to the Old Belief. Although he later went back to mailine Orthodoxy, the hierarchy that he created still exists. The Bela Krinitsa Heirachy, which survived the Soviet era by the skin of it's teeth, is based in Moscow. Some priestless groups refuse to accept them, because they view the Nikonian Rites, and therefore Metropolitan Ambrosios original consecration as Archbishop, as invalid.

[annatar]

I think that the priestless  Old Believers do view the mainline Orthodox Churches as having invalid orders. I asked the woman I spoke to about the Bela Krinitsa Hierarchy, which is based at the Rogozhskoye Cemetery in Moscow. THe BKH traces its orders from Ambrosios, the former Greek Orthodox Metropolitan of Bosnia, who embraced the Old Believer Faith in the 19th century. She got very angry and said that her community is searching for an organised priesthood, but is holding out for a hierarchy connected directly to the Russian Orthodox Church as it was before the reforms of 1666. kingstowngalway

 

Interesting. I know just a bit about the 'Old Believers', and I am struck by the similarity between them and tendancies among some traditional Roman Catholics....Not to be uncharitable, because i'm sure that many would view my thinking on the crisis within the Catholic Church as either too 'extreme' or many as too 'liberal'.

 

 It is a terrible burden to come out of the Novus Ordo and have to face that.

[HMiS]

Interesting. I know just a bit about the 'Old Believers', and I am struck by the similarity between them and tendancies among some traditional Roman Catholics....Not to be uncharitable, because i'm sure that many would view my thinking on the crisis within the Catholic Church as either too 'extreme' or many as too 'liberal'.

 

 It is a terrible burden to come out of the Novus Ordo and have to face that.

 

This is not a justified comparison. It would only be, if traditionalist Roman Catholics would have rejected the 1962 Mass and totally abandoned the priesthood and the episcopacy and became a more or less Stevenist sect, just because of the rubrics altered a bit. This is not the case at all.

 

Traditionalist Catholics are not into such minor details. No traditionalist will attack the Syriac Maronite liturgy, or the Syro-Malankarese rite, or the Coptic rite, or the Byzantine rite!

 

The problems with Eastern "Orthodox" is, that they think only théir nation has the true "national Church of Orthodoxy" and that all other churches have invalid Sacraments (since 1054 most of Constantinople, including the Ki'iv-Moscow jurisdiction, holds to the Cyprianic view of sacramental validity).

 

Traditional Roman Catholics' criticism is inspired mainly by doctrinal issues, by the infiltration of heresy, but virtually all of them, probably would accept even the 1965 minor revisions of the Tridentine Mass. The question of liturgy is secondary in essence. While ecclesial 'traditionalism' might seem something constricted to the Latin rite, there are Byzantine Ukrainian rite Catholic priests and laymen tied to the SSPX, some Coptic Catholics, Maronite Catholics, Syro-Malabarese Catholics and even Melkite Byzantine rite Catholics who say the same.

 

But there is no split-off because of an alteration in a minor rite of Holy Week or an omission of a sign of the cross, or the statues of saints being remade in a more modern 1930s style. Not at all.

[kingstowngalway]

Dear HMiS,
Actually, I did ponder some of the similarities during my interview with the Old Believer woman. For one thing, the whole priestless thing is what a lot of Trad Catholics might have been reduced to had it not been for those like Archbishop Lefebvre, of Blessed Memory. Another similarity, at least in my mind, is the way that Old Believers tend to argue among themselves and anathemize eachother. In Saint Cloud, Minnesota, where I live and attend the Traditional Mass, there are three Traditional Chapels. One is exxectively priestless, another is run by the Sedevacantist CMRI, and the third, where I attend, is operated by the SSPX. On the other hand, unlike Trad Catholics, Russian Old Believers have had 400 years of practice at fighting among themselves, therefore they are split apart to a much greater extent. kingstowngalway

[HMiS]

You may compare them to the Home-Aloners, but not to the Traditionalist Roman Catholics.

 

Like the Home-Aloners, Russian "Orthodox" Old Believers have a legalistically absolutistic view without exception.

 

But there are merely some superficial similarities, found everywhere. The bickering, the mutual excommunications etc. are things to be found throughout the history of the universal Catholic Church. Think of the Photius case, of the case of Jansenism, of Gallicanism, of liberal catholicism.

 

In fact, only universalist, syncretistic and/or Masonic associations called "churches" have not known the bickering and the schisms, as they say all is truth, no matter what.

 

But to have some disagreements is merely a healthy indication that the Faith is taken seriously, while no disagreements at all point to unhuman and unhealthy Faith, a "Faith" of relativism, which is what Modernism basically is and what Freemasonry has silently propagated long before.

 

So, no, there is still no real large similarity to Russian Old Believers and Trad Roman Catholics. Not at all, except for the basic features of a Christian community. In the early Church there was much division and disagreement, like Saint Paul himself complains. There are those who say they are of Kephas (the Rock: St. Peter), of Paul, of Apollinus etc. etc. You know the verse.

[CampeadorShin]

Schisms of schisms, eh?

[annatar]

Interesting. I know just a bit about the 'Old Believers', and I am struck by the similarity between them and tendancies among some traditional Roman Catholics....Not to be uncharitable, because i'm sure that many would view my thinking on the crisis within the Catholic Church as either too 'extreme' or many as too 'liberal'.

 

 It is a terrible burden to come out of the Novus Ordo and have to face that.

 

This is not a justified comparison. It would only be, if traditionalist Roman Catholics would have rejected the 1962 Mass and totally abandoned the priesthood and the episcopacy and became a more or less Stevenist sect, just because of the rubrics altered a bit. This is not the case at all.

 

Traditionalist Catholics are not into such minor details. No traditionalist will attack the Syriac Maronite liturgy, or the Syro-Malankarese rite, or the Coptic rite, or the Byzantine rite!

 

The problems with Eastern "Orthodox" is, that they think only théir nation has the true "national Church of Orthodoxy" and that all other churches have invalid Sacraments (since 10

[kingstowngalway]

Dear FishEaters,

I have been planning on paying a visit to the Old BEliever community in Ersrkine, MN sometime this summer. I am rather curious about what I have been told about how the churches of priestless Old Believers have the iconostasis against the wall. I am also curious to see what the inside would look like. While HMiS has told me that it is sometimes okay to enter a mainline Orthodox Church, would the same thing apply to an Old Believer Church? kingstowngalway