The Spirit of the Times, the Orthodox Church and Its Mission in Contemporaneity — An Exposition of c. 2009

T A L M A C H
so much and simple

Translated from Bulgarian

[I apologize for imagining
myself apt to the task...]

Zeitgeist, the Orthodox Church and
Its Mission in Our Modern Times

A Letter by Bishop Photii of Triaditsa
to a Bulgarian Orthodox priest

bishop Photii of Triaditsa [1]

Dear Father N.
May God’s grace be with you!

          First I would like to thank you for the kind words and best wishes in your letter of March 1^st this year, and then I will try and respond to your supplication by sharing views of mine on the Church ‘s mission in our times.

          Let me start with a thought from your letter to me:

I understand that the question of the church calendar is something that seriously concerns you and a field in which you undoubtedly are competent to the possible utmost extent. Such a conversation takes a special attitude within the Church, just as well as a certain level of knowledge. We are still leading a survival fight, and when you chase the overall you miss out on detail. Meanwhile, we must not lose sight of the especially great need for a mission that would face the modern man.

          The question of our survival in the Church is for us not so much a matter of survival in a horizontal dimension, that is physical and social survival of the Church as an institution – and that, at any cost. Such a view, such an emphatically empirical sense of the Church’s survival has intensively been formed in this country during the years of communist dictatorship. In Russia, under a persecution – monstrous in its cruelty – of the faithful, the practical application of this concept for the Church survival was rejected by the majority of new martyrs and confessors of the Orthodox Faith and was called “Sergianism”. According to that kind of perception, according to that view for the survival of the Church of Christ – not only under persecution but also in [the conditions of] spiritually destructive processes within and without her – the primary, solid, tangible reality of the Church is above all the ecclesiastical institution, the visible structure of the Church as a social body [organism/constitution] in terms of its physical and social functioning. An organism with such an understanding of its own essence inevitably begins to struggle for survival primarily in the mainstream of the laws and logic of this world through adapting and compromising, which ultimately can provide its physical and social survival – but at the same time, put it in a deep contradiction with the Church’s essence as a God-man body. From this point of view, the basic reality for the Church survival – the heavenly-earthly Church as the Body of Christ, in which we can only survive as living members in Faith, in spirit and in truth, to which the institutional structure is but an external expression – becomes an “idea”, an “ideal”, something sublime, supposedly desirable in word but abstract and ultimately conditional on the reality of the institution, on the empirical social organism as a massive church body, which, however, loses its authentic church spirit. And so, in our understanding of the survival battle the overall and the detail emerge in a somewhat different light. To us overall, basic, and defining is the spiritual authenticity of the Tradition, of the doctrine, of the customs of the Church. Affiliation with this spiritual authenticity and fullness of Tradition is for us the major condition for our survival as members of the Church, the Body of Christ. In this context, the church calendar, too (or to put it more precisely, the calendar-and-paschal system of the Great indiction), being an expression of the Church’s liturgical unity ever since the sixth century, is to us an integral part of the Church Tradition, and not some immaterial detail liable to mechanical separation from the Tradition fullness. And it is by virtue of this feature exactly of the calendar that it should neither be underestimated, nor [made to] grow into an unlawfully enlarged and self-sufficient criterion of “orthodoxy”. 

          You share:

This: „Go you and learn...” [cf. Matt. 9:13] and its implementation is our greatest concern , as well as the lack of real workers in the field, the lack of a tested and established system of functioning [of making things function] that hinders the mission. It is not that there are no attempts in this direction, but we are definitely out of our [modern days] time and the contemporary needs of people. Since I am [highly] impressed with what you have done so far, I would ask you – if time allows and you are willing to – to share your insights and ideas for the Church mission, not for my sake, but as a vision of a modern church bishop. I see that I cannot avoid the word “modern” but that’s how it is – God has placed us to live in this time and to serve Him in it.

          As the topic of the Church mission in our days is much too broad and complex [multi-layered], I will try to focus on its different aspects, moments of our experience in this regard – proportionate to our small powers – included, thereby naturally I assume the risk to offer a sparse, thesis [-like] exposition, which could miss out exactly on those sides or problems of the mission, which are of particular interest to you. But I think such gaps could be filled up [to the full] later, if you deem necessary for us to continue our dialogue on this topic.

1) You point out that in our attempt to fulfill the command of the Saviour “go you and learn...” we are far from our time and the contemporary needs of people. I understand you. Actually you pose the vital – I think – issue of the difficult, unsafe, but inevitable meeting of the truthful [authentic] spiritual Church Tradition with the intellectual-and-cultural facts of today. As a matter of fact, what content do we put into the concepts of “time”, “contemporary” [modernity], “Zeitgeist” and hence – into wordings as “modern man”, “needs of the contemporary man”, etc.?

          I would try and talk briefly about the concept of “zeitgeist”. Let me start with a thought of the late Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose): “The more one knows about the spirit of the time, the easier one can remain a true Orthodox Christian in a time like today.” What do we understand by “spirit of the time”?

          In the whole range of philosophical and culturological definitions the contents of this metaphor or of this term (depends on the point of view) boils down, in general, to a system of factors that to one degree or another condition, determine our knowledge, our value attitudes and behavior, while [at the same time] they themselves are influenced by the current human activities. These factors are perceived as a background set of world-view and individual-scientific understandings and assumptions about the world, and also as value orientations; they all function as a matrix of perceptions, evaluations and actions.

          According to Hegel the “spirit of time” (Zeitgeist) is the objective spirit unfolding in history, which is manifested in all individual phenomena for a given epoch; the set of ideas typical for a certain period. Goethe considered zeitgeist as a predominant spiritual side of the epoch, i.e. as its intellectual-and-value dominant: “If any side stands out strongly, conquers the masses and triumphs over them in a way that the opposite side is shifted to the background and is shaded, then such preponderance is called zeitgeist that defines the essence of a given interval of time.” And here is one modern understanding of the “spirit of the times” in a popular wording: “zeitgeist is ... a real phenomenon that anyway determines the thinking and behavior of the people living in a given time. This encompasses all the people and becomes the norm for their thinking and behavior. Of course, it is expressed in a different measure and in different ways.” And still another definition with pronounced theoretical-and-cognitive orientation, in which “the spirit of the times” is understood as “matrix schemes for theoretical constructs, invariant with respect to a certain range of theories; a set of specific world-view structures [constructs], intellectual motifs and conceptual tools for staging the problems and their solving.” But how far from the cabinet-sterile, from the classically abstract or from the “super-conceptual” understanding of “Zeitgeist” is the existential, spiritual-and-intellectual insight of Archim. Justin (Popovich):

In our chaotic modern times one deity suppresses increasingly the other deities, ever more compelling shows itself for [to be] the only god, ever more mercilessly torments its devotees. That deity is the spirit of the times. Before it, worshiping day and night, are the jaded inhabitants of Europe, offering it in sacrifice their consciences, their souls, their lives, their hearts... Their god – the spirit of the time – is too complex, it is composed of most heterogeneous elements. It contains within itself all contradictions of modern life – [both] culture and civilization, philosophy and science, Catholicism and Protestantism. It contains within itself the whole tragedy and all the comic side of life – just as it is. And living in accordance with the spirit of the times, one wanders unmerciful and unwanted through the gorges of all these irreconcilable contradictions. And the most terrible part in this is the systematically organized rebellion against the human person. Zeitgeist hampers personhood by its autocratic tyranny, it mechanizes it [the latter]: [stating] you're a screw in the noisy machine of contemporaneity – [then] live like a screw; you are a key in the distraught keyboard of nowness, with the zeitgeist rattling on its keys – [then] live like a key. Determinism, winding into fatalism, is the main vehicle through which zeitgeist reigns as god: everything depends on the environment, on the surroundings, rather than on personal exploit [PODVIG]; whatever you do, it’s not you who does it, but the environment through you; if you do evil... you’re not the wrong [one], but the environment is, where you thrive. — But all of this – translated into the language of Slavic sincerity, comes to say: “Everything is permissible — all the vices, all the evil-doings, all the crimes, all sins are permissible, because everything that happens, takes place by the irrevocable laws of necessity.“

          And in our times, on the verge between two millennia, the zeitgeist is already not mechanizing but wells up to destroy the human personality for the sake of its freedom, today the anti-principle “anything goes” [all is permissible] is justified not by the need, but rather by the freedom and rights of the human personality; today the zeitgeist contains not only the tragedy and the comedy of life, but represents its very contents as depleted and it frantically rushes in search of life’s element in absurdity and decay. Modern humanitarians share the perception of crisis condition of human existence itself after the hurricane of postmodernism, reckoned to be the most vivid expression of the spirit of the times [zeigeist] in the late twentieth century.

          Very briefly, postmodernism can be described as a cast of mind, as an intellectual style, as a type of philosophical thinking, as a kind of a super-reflective” concept of the cultural facts in the second half of last century. And these facts are [distinctly] characterized by rapid blurring of boundaries between forms of cultural activities, by the trends of syncretic uniting of art and science, philosophy and religion on a new worldview level, by the rejection of the classical and the non-classical traditions in philosophical thinking, by a nihilistic revolt against ideological concepts and against traditional values; these facts are also distinguished with a pervasive relativism and with a radical value pluralism [of values]. As a type of mindset and intellectual style, as an intellectual-and-creative charge postmodernism unlocks to the highest level possible the intellectual-and-playful, reflexive, destructive inventions, seeking to push out the sense-forming, religious, moral, aesthetic, constructive beginnings from the thought-and-value motivation of the creative process. In this sense, postmodernism theorists perceived quite positively the loss of stable value orientations. The “eternal values” have been declared totalitarian and paranoid fix-ideas, which hampered the implementation of creative design.

          The postmodernists’ ideal is chaos, referred to by Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) as chaosmos and understood as inherent [of the beginning] absence of [any] order, as a state of the non-suppressed opportunities. Postmodernists see in the world two main principles – the schizoid beginning of the creative formation and development, and the paranoid beginning of the choking freezing order (from the standpoint of postmodernism any semblance of order needs immediate deconstruction, i.e. it should be relieved [freed] of meaning [sense] through disassembly of the underlying ideologemical concepts, that the entire culture is permeated with). Hence the image of the chaotic and very sophisticated world is a starting point in contemporary art. Postmodernism’s ontological (or rather de-ontological) dimension can most briefly be designated as crisis of the metaphysical thinking, as decay of the whole picture of the world. Postmodernism’s epistemological-and-value paradigm includes fundamental concepts such as Super-reflection, Agnosticism, Nihilism (cynicism), Total relativism, Game [playing], Laughter (ironic sarcasm). Perhaps the following thought of Jean Bordiyar (born 1929) captures the hidden slippery nature of the pathologically complex post-modernistic ethos: “the immanent force of seduction to pick up, to deflect everything and everyone from the truth and to bring them back into the game, into the pure game of visibilities (my bold – b. F.).” This Mephistophelean “immanent power of seduction” is actually a desire to turn the very human existence into a surreal nightmare, by bringing it down to the element of unconditional freedom to be whatever you [may] want to; [down] to the element that gives birth to “freedom” from the truth, gives birth to “freedom” from the very humanity of man, gives birth to the “freedom” to sink into the abyss of sub-man with his unleashed desires and drives, euphemistically called “opportunities”; that same element of “absolute freedom” call to an unlimited consumption of newer and newer “goods” and delights here and now... This is what kind of zeitgeist manifestations – described with the brevity of a dictionary entry – we are called to be true Orthodox Christians amidst, to be living members of the God-human body of the Church of Christ.

          Zeitgeist is particularly aggressive towards the Church because the Church is eternally-temporal [eternal-[in]-time], it is the only visible ontological carrier of eternity in time; through the Church eternity is present in time – and again, only the Church transforms time and enters it into eternity. And the spirit of our times in its core activities frantically hates eternity, it hates the truth, it derides it, sprays the seduction that everything and everyone get separated, that they depart from it [truth]. Which is exactly why the Church should not subject to time.

          In fact, in its life as the Body of Christ, as a God-man organism, the Church is not subordinate to the deterministic laws of the spirit of the time – these can only strongly suppress it, but they cannot subject it. In this sense, the Church can be harrowed, stretched apart, tortured, replaced, but it cannot be defeated and destroyed. Of crucial significance for each and everyone of us, however, is our place, our share in the cross-and-resurrection exploit [PODVIG] of the Church. And the cross-and-resurrection PODVIG of the Church includes both its mission, its gospel of Christ, of the fullness of the truth and grace it carries in its bosom. To me this mission should not subject to a seemingly effective, but all too vague horizontal dimension, let’s say as some common front with traditionalistically thinking people of secular and religious backgrounds with different ideological and religious orientation [in order] to counterstand postmodernism intellectually. The power of the church mission, of the church testimony today depends – I think – on our willingness, on our determination to be part with – spiritually-and-morally, as well as intellectually – the living Tradition of the Church; to become – proportionately to our strength – its trustworthy [authentic] carriers and to be able to bring it [the living Tradition] to the mind, the heart and the conscience of those willing to hear.

2) Undoubtedly, the Church mission from its very beginning leads to an inevitable and – I would say – unsafe meeting of the spiritual tradition and the intellectual-and-cultural facts and trends of a given epoch. This – on the one hand. On the other, by far not unconflicting are the relationships between the spiritual Tradition and the intellectual tradition (this is what I would call the theological and philosophical reflection) within the Church itself. In clarification of this last thought I would dare cite part of my address after the consecration of the library with our cathedral church (Assumption of the Most Pure Theotokos, Sofia - ed. note) (2000):

“Upon the meeting of the intellectual and the spiritual tradition of the Church there exists one very serious danger that has accompanied the Christian thought development ever since [deep] Antiquity. This is the danger of unduly intellectualization of the spiritual tradition. This phenomenon we see for the first time in Origen. In his effort to express the truths of Christianity in the language of the Hellenic categorial thinking Origen reached un–Orthodox thinking and ultimately – heresy; this is an ingenious and at the same time tragic example of spiritual tradition intellectualization into the direction of pagan thinking, of pagan culture. The opposite example, one of spiritualization of the Hellenic intellectual heritage, we find in the Cappadocian Fathers – St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory the Theologian and St. Gregory of Nyssa. They managed to make a really titanic exploit by radiantly transforming the whole system of Hellenic categorial thinking with the grace, strength, and spirit of the spiritual tradition of the Church. This the Church has been doing throughout its already two-thousand year long period of its history. This is a fight [struggle]. A fight for spiritualization of human thought, for making it filled with grace. In fact, in order to commune with the intellectual tradition of the Church, one has to have the simplicity of St. Paul the Most Simple and of St. Spyridon. Why is this necessary? Because reading patristic literature is an exploit, a kind of ascesis. It is by no accident that monks have to pray, to work, and to read; therefore reading is a kind of spiritual labour and ascesis. It is very important for us to realize that. And I must say that this is an extremely difficult kind of ascesis. Why? Because when man reads patristic texts, when one communes with the grace-filled experience of the [Holy] Fathers, with their fertile mind, when one communicates via the text with their Christ-faced personality, one must exercise continuous austerity in denying [pushich away] one’s own thoughts, judgments, opinions, perceptions of the text, which thrive from all one’s previous life outside the Church, outside of Christ. This is crucial in order for us to commune genuinely, essentially with the thought, the spirit, and the ethos of the Holy Fathers. In fact, hence the many distortions in our personal spiritual lives, in our views and understandings – from the fact that we – from time to time – even unconsciously layer up, embed into the texts we perceive perceptions [ideas], habits of thought, habits of evaluation that are in fact foreign to the spiritual and intellectual tradition of the Church.”

3) Undoubted is the difficulty to carefully walk down the narrow royal path paved by the Holy Fathers, which avoids the pits and chasms both on the right and on the left. This involves both the life within the Church and its mission as one of its manifestations [of life]. There are countless examples both of a finite, totally passive, fanatically guarded conservatism that may well lead to degeneration of the Orthodox ecclesiastical consciousness towards sectarianism, and the diverse liberal breadth that – under the pretext of an adequate dialogue with modernity – secularizes, blurs up, and ultimately re-codes all the ecclesiastical consciousness into some kind of its contrast. On the other hand, our Bulgarian [easy-going] carelessness, rough pragmatism, worn out church-and-patriotic rhetorics, dabbing in church politics, our [national] Bulgarian-and-oriental servility to those who are strong of the day, the daily rounds, the semi-primitive and quite often semi-pagan rituals in the Church life are a sad phenomenon that – it seems – calls for a special place [attention] in each attempt at [making a] classification of phenomena in the life of the Orthodox Church (I make this summary assessment in pain and aware that it is by far not absolute, but it, alas, reflects dominant trends in the overall church life in this country). To me, preserving spiritual chastity, strife after abiding in purity and the fullness of the Tradition in spirit and in truth, coupled with a sincere, open, benevolent, holy-evangelical attitude towards people should be our starting spiritual-and-intellectual position in our activities as church missionaries today.

4) Let me honestly state that for me – generally speaking – contemporary “reformatting” of Orthodoxy into the neo-renovationist point of view for the mission of the Orthodox Church today is unacceptable – a point of view defended by such otherwise talented personalities as Arch-priest Alexander Men, priest Georgy Chistyakov, priest George Kotchetkov, Archimandrite Sergius (Ribkò) in Russia and by other bishops, clergy and theologians in the Orthodox world. However, the time since 1965 has proved the sterility of the famous Roman-Catholic “aggiornamento” – the principle adopted by the Second Vatican Council on updating church life and church mission. For the past more than 40 years Rome has statistically lost and continues to lose a significant number of its followers despite its attempt at adapting a number of forms of church life and the Church mission to the spirit and tastes of contemporaneity. I had an occasion to personally see for myself, during my visit to the capital of Bavaria – Munich, just in the days of the Western Christmas in 1994. Festivities were on the street, and not in temples. It is another issue that from the decrepit shack of church life in our much-suffered Fatherland a number of church-and-public, missionary, charitable, and pastoral aspects of the Roman-Catholic Church life is seen as a prestigious model for modern church building.

5) What is the expression of the missionary work (if we could ever call so our humble efforts in this field) of our little Church? I need hardly explain that these activities are determined by our very small capacities. We do not have the spiritual-and-intellectual and material resource for larger-scale missionary activities, we do not even have training courses for priests, but as far as we can we do work in the following field:

• Work with the congregation: Regular, good-faith performance of worship services [liturgies], reading (instead of the so-called “spiritual concert” after the post-communion [zaprichastniya]) and a sermon at the end of the holy liturgy. We try to pay particular attention to the living bond of the priest with parishioners. The aim is for the parish to be raised up as a spiritual family, as far as this is possible in our conditions. The priests (with very few exceptions) do maintain a pro-active communication with me, they take advise, share problems, almost all of them confess with me, the same as I have one of them a my cleric [confessor]. Our fellowship is fraternal, open, constructive, for which I am grateful to the Lord.

• Catechetic activities: with us the Mysteries of Baptism and Matrimony are performed after preliminary catechism (if the one baptized is an infant, the catechetic talk is held with the parents or the godfather [adopter in faith]), which takes quite some efforts and time of the priests. With the cathedral church in Sofia, as you know well, we have classes for children (Group I) and for juniors (Group II).

• With the help of the “Shroud of the Holy Theotokos” convent, Knyazhevo, nuns we implement publishing activities, which however, over the last couple of years has encountered difficulties of various nature and has began to flag. We publish the “Orthodox Word” magazine [Православно Слово], the works of the late Fr. Archimandrite Seraphim [Alexiev], as well as other books of spiritual-and-moral contents. One of the monks residing at the bishopric [house], does all the maintenance work for our official web page ( http://bulgarian-orthodox-church.org ), which promises to become the major forum for our missionary activities.

• Another direction in our attempts at missionary activities is the compiling [drafting] of liturgical texts (services, akathists); translation of biblical and liturgical texts into Bulgarian literary language (an exceptionally responsible activity whose systematic performance calls for a team of collaborators; for the time being two of us are currently working on the translation of the Psalter (after the text of the 70 interpreters) (from Church Slavonic language - ed. note), of the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete, etc.); the liturgical glorification of saints: the holy Chinese new-martyrs (their liturgical veneration was renewed by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad in 1997 after a service compiled by us), St. Vissarion of Smolyan (1999), St. Seraphim, Archbishop of Boguchar, [and] Sofia wonder-worker (2002), the holy martyrs of Batak (2006).

With this I would finish my exposition. If you have any clarification or any other questions on the subject, please share them, I will try and answer as best I can.

May the Lord strengthen you!

Your humble supplicator in Christ

† Bishop Photii

  

1] Bishop Photii of Triaditsa (in the world, Rosen Dimitrov Siromahov) was born on July 13^th, 1956. He graduated from the “St. Kliment of Ohrida” Seminary in 1981. Till the summer of 1982 he worked as a lecturer in classic languages at the “St. Ivan of Rila” Sofia Seminary. His strong desire to get acquainted with the works of the Holy Fathers in original moved him to further his studies at the “St. Kliment of Ohrida” University – in the specialty classic philology, which he graduated from in 1989. Since December that same year until the adoption of the bishop rank he worked as Assistant Professor in Ancient Greek Literature with the Department of Classical Philology at the Sofia University.

Bishop Photii’s spiritual development ran under the care of Archimandrite Seraphim (Alexiev) - spiritual son of Saint Seraphim, Sofia Wonderworker. His meeting with Fr. Seraphim was crucial in the life of the young man, then eighteen. At the same time he became also acquainted with the works of the great Russian saint Theophan the Recluse. These two spiritual mentors – the one with his living word and example, and the other – with his grace-filled works, built up in him the decision to dedicate his life to the Holy Orthodoxy ministry. Among the many-faced treacherous waves of apostasy and degradation rushing against the Holy Church of Christ, Mr. Rosen Siromahov received during the Communist regime a secret priesthood ordination and started nurturing under catacomb conditions a little flock.

After being tonsured for a monk with the name Photii, fulfilling an obedience to his spiritual father and most of all – to the suffering Orthodox Church of Christ, on January 17^th (New Style) 1993, he accepted Episcopal ordination at the “Sts. Cyprian and Justina” Monastery, Philly – Greece (i). Thus the monk Photii took upon his shoulders the especially hard nowadays bishop’s cross, becoming the primate of the Bulgarian Old-Calendar Orthodox Church.

Only nine days after the ordination of Bishop Photii his beloved spiritual father, Archimandrite Seraphim reposed in the Lord. The first worship service, which the Vladyka did on home soil, was his burial service. Thus his first step in bearing the cross is associated with the pain of separation. But it was in this way exactly that the living tradition of the Holy Orthodox Faith has been handed over from father to son, from generation to generation and from age to age in the history of the Holy Orthodox Church. On the day of the funeral of Archimandrite Seraphim Bishop Photii said these portentous words: “Our dearest Abba offered his health and himself as a living sacrifice on the altar of love of God and of the neighbor. With his affection and patience he constantly followed the example of Christ the Shepherd-Head: “him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out” (John 6:37 ).” These words can actually relate also to Bishop Photii’s ministry over the past ten years. We have witnessed what patience, what spiritual devotion to the Holy Fathers’ covenants of Saint Seraphim – adopted by Bishop Photii through the spiritual children of the saint: [namely] Archimandrite Seraphim and the now deceased Abbess Matuschka Seraphima († 2004), our pastor has performed and is performing this ministry of his with.

The period 1993-2004 was for His Grace a time of intense spiritual sowing. Unfortunately, daily concerns and trials distracted him from his ministry with pen [feather], but at the expense of this his profound spiritual word continues pouring out from the church pulpit with increasing depth and strength. A number of significant events of our modern times and of our history – both religious and civil – find reflection and spiritual response in his living and active word.

In 1995 the Queen of Heaven Herself blessed the deed of the Bulgarian Old-Calendar Orthodox Church through the visit of the grace-filled Iberon-Montreal miracle-working icon and its humble guardian, later martyred, brother Joseph Muñoz-Cortes. In 1999, His Grace performed liturgical glorification of the Rhodope Hieromartyr, Bishop Vissarion of Smolyan, and three years later – the glorification of saint Seraphim, Sofia Wonderworker, the heavenly helper and protector of our Church community.

The new millennium proved a turning point in human history: the ever craftier apostasy from the truth tightens its hoops with unprecedented comprehensiveness both around the individual and around the whole human society... Sorrows, burdens, hysterical tension of modern times, ubiquitous lie, our ongoing sins – all this burden crushing our souls weighs on him – our loving and good shepherd. He continues his works, his cross-bearing. With our love and devotion we can – at least a little – ease his burden. So that we may be able to enjoy longer the spiritual fruits of this cross-bearing: born in pen and word, in prayer and act. 

(i). The Bishop’s ordination was performed by bishops from the Holy Synod in Resistance (Greek True Orthodox Church), whose apostolic succession ascends to the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. Taking part in Bishop Photii’s hirotoniya was also a bishop of the Romanian Old-Calendar Orthodox Church, which since 1992 is in full canonical communion with the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad.