Do We Have a Right to Speak Out Against Wicked Bishops?

This article is from chapter 5 of the excellent booklet — Blessed Disobedience or Evil Obedience? — written by Archpriest Theodore Zisis. The full booklet is available via these links:

• Author's Foreword
• Chapter 1 - Immediately After Ecumenism Came Homosexuality 
• Chapter 2 - Blessed Disobedience or Evil Obedience? 
• Chapter 3 - The Holy Scriptures on Obedience 
• Chapter 4 - The Holy Fathers on Obedience
• Chapter 5 - Do We Have the Right to Speak?

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Chapter 5

Do We Have the Right to Speak? 

At present, unfortunately, the state of affairs in the Church is as follows: the hierarchy makes those who firmly adhere to Church Tradition and Orthodox traditions remain silent, so that the arguments of ecumenists and renovationists will triumph completely — that the people remain unenlightened, without any kind of guidance — so that there is no genuine dialogue, exchange of opinions and arguments, thanks to which the truth would immediately be revealed.

Church authorities do not even accept conferences organized by us in the university environment. They believe that they cannot be carried out without a blessing, because they secretly desire for us to show obedience and stop preaching and witnessing the word of truth, which has always irritated and continues to annoy those who do not want to follow it.

But if we are to be guided by such logic, then, probably, in order for Christ to speak with the people, it was necessary for Him to have the permission of Annas and Caiaphas, the scribes and Pharisees? Perhaps he and his disciples should be obedient to the high priests? After all, the bishops forbade the apostles to preach Christ, as today they forbid many to speak of holy Orthodoxy: “They ordered them not to speak or teach in the name of Jesus” (Acts 4:18).

In the history of the Church, heretical patriarchs and hierarchs repeatedly sent confessors of faith to prison and exile, so that only their “theological” opinion could prevail.

So, St. Gregory the Theologian was forced to serve in the small house church of St. Anastasia, while the rest of the churches of Constantinople were in the hands of the Arians - bishops and clergy who preached dishonesty in them. Well, should St. Gregory also have to get permission to pronounce his wonderful theological words and to return Orthodox teaching to Constantinople captured by the Arians?

Don't you think that in our days the Church has been filled with false teachers who watch over everything? That today in churches you rarely hear the Orthodox word — genuine — without any impurities and introductions from the outside? That the ecumenical heretics are now working in the Church?

And yet, it turns out that we must take permission or a blessing from them in order to free the Church from ecumenical captivity?

Orthodoxy is the one true faith that preaches and proclaims the true name of Christ. All other religions, as the holy martyr Cosmas of Aetola said [99], are false teachings, errors and heresies. But they are the ones that are allowed today. All the conditions are created in order to do their dirty work through all kinds of mass media, print media and television - to wage a struggle against the Gospel truth and holy Orthodoxy.

For those who are trying to destroy, forget, and prohibit the Orthodox teaching, we wish to use the words with which the holy apostles once addressed the Jewish bishops, who apparently continue to exist in our days, but in a slightly different guise: “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:27–29)!

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This article is from chapter 5 of the excellent booklet — Blessed Disobedience or Evil Obedience? — written by Archpriest Theodore Zisis. The full booklet is available via these links:

• Author's Foreword
• Chapter 1 - Immediately After Ecumenism Came Homosexuality 
• Chapter 2 - Blessed Disobedience or Evil Obedience? 
• Chapter 3 - The Holy Scriptures on Obedience 
• Chapter 4 - The Holy Fathers on Obedience
• Chapter 5 - Do We Have the Right to Speak?

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