About ROCOR-MP Canonizing St. Seraphim of Platina

Editorial Commentary and Analysis
by Fr Anders Åkerström  
GOC in Switzerland
https://www.ortodoxakyrkan.se/post/den-obekväme-heligel-seraphim-rose
 

Den "obekväme" Helige Seraphim Rose

Several news sites reported in May 2026 that the part of the Russian Church Abroad (ROCOR-MP) that merged with the Moscow Patriarchate in 2007 intends to canonize, glorify, Father Seraphim Rose (1934-1982). He was an American monk and founder of the St. Herman Monastery in Platina (California) and is very well known for his books on the faith of the Orthodox Church, especially in the West. The fact that he has already been canonized in 2024 by the part of the Russian Church Abroad that did not merge with the Moscow Patriarchate has not been mentioned in the news summaries I have seen.

It is really interesting to see some strong reactions to the news that have appeared, for example on the website Public Orthodoxy, which is a digital debate and article platform run by the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University in the USA. The site serves as a forum where scholars, priests, and laypeople discuss Orthodox Christianity in relation to contemporary, political, and academic issues. But it is equally interesting to see how other more conservative, often converts, are outraged that anyone would question this canonization, likely because St. Seraphim Rose's texts were the reason they became interested in the Orthodox Church and eventually converted.

So we have on the one hand those who are outraged that someone wants to canonize Father Seraphim Rose based on his criticism of the contemporary Orthodox Church and on the other hand those who are outraged that they do not want to see and understand his holiness and that his message is still relevant today.

Another very interesting detail is that St. Herman's Monastery in Platina, which owns the rights to Seraphim Rose's books, began to re-edit his texts in 2003 to tone down what was clearly problematic in its new church context.

After Father Seraphim Rose fell asleep in 1982, the monastery in Platina left the Russian Church Abroad, so that the abbot Father Herman Podmoshensky himself would avoid punishment in a canonical court for what he was accused of. At first the monastery went to a wandering bishop, but when Father Herman was no longer abbot, they were accepted into the Serbian Orthodox Church in the United States, to which they still belong today.

Since their "new context", the Serbian Orthodox Church, would not appreciate the criticism that Father Seraphim presented in his books, they chose to rewrite parts of his texts to tone down the criticism.

In other contexts this is called historical revisionism. Changing someone's opinion in books for ideological reasons is nothing new. An extreme and harmful example where ideological forces tried to deny or distort historical facts is the Holocaust, where against all scientific and historical evidence they tried to downplay its significance. In the same way, then, Father Seraphim Rose's texts have been treated because his bitter message does not fit their own narrative.

Of particular interest is the fact that conservative Orthodox Christians today have managed to reinterpret Father Seraphim’s talk about the “Royal Path” within Orthodox faith and claim that it is the path they themselves follow, not going too far to the left (to modernism and ecumenism) or too far to the right (which would be fanaticism and Old Calendarism).

 (See The Royal Path - True Orthodoxy in an Age of Apostasy in The Orthodox Word, Vol. XII, No. 5 (70), pp. 143-149.)

https://startingontheroyalpath.blogspot.com/2009/08/royal-path.html
A correct concept of the Royal Path is important.  The right-wing is world-Orthodoxy, official Orthodoxy.  The left-wing is like RTOC, ROAC, Matthewites.  Not all groups fit neatly into one category — Milan synod, for example, is a hybrid.  ROCANA schism is caused by "lust for power" and not caused by a heresy.  World Orthodox don't always start out as heretics, but they will drift into heresy (see what happened to OCA, and see the exact thing is happening now to ROCOR-MP.  `jh

But that is not exactly how Father Seraphim himself used the term. During his active years as a writer in the Russian Church Abroad – from January 1965 until his death in 1982 – and not least in his perhaps most famous book Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future from 1975, he used the expression in a different way, at least when it came to what he meant by “fanaticism to the right.”

For Seraphim Rose, the “Royal Path” does indeed mean the Orthodox path between two spiritual extremes: neither liberal indulgence nor fanatical exaggeration. He takes the expression from the Desert Fathers, especially John Cassian and Dorotheos of Gaza, but he does not name them directly, as today’s conservatives like to do. However, who he is referring to is fairly clear when you read his letters or talk to those who were actually there at the time.

He uses the expression especially about the situation of the Orthodox Church during the 20th century crisis of ecumenism and church compromise, and especially what he experienced in Orthodox jurisdictions during his lifetime. According to him, the “royal path” goes:

on the one hand, not into modernism, ecumenism and adaptation to the world (like the representatives of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the USA and Constantinople), but on the other hand, not into a self-righteous, harsh and sectarian “zealot” thinking where correctness and canonicity become a kind of spiritual arrogance (like the group around the Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Boston, which the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad had taken up and with which Father Seraphim had countless conflicts).

Who then is he talking about who follows the “royal path”, or is “on the right” or “on the left”?

This is where the book “Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future” and Father Seraphim’s views in general become too difficult to “digest” for the writers of “Public Orthodoxy.”

Father Seraphim points out who follows the royal path and are the true Orthodox Christians today: “[it is they who] have taken strong stands against the apostasy of our times: the Catacomb Church of Russia, the Russian Church Outside of Russia, the True Orthodox Christians (Old Calendarists) of Greece.”  Even those who are “on the left” are clearly pointed out in the book and mentioned by name.

When the monastery in Platina came to belong to the Serbian Orthodox Church, it became extremely difficult to explain how the “own church” did not follow the “royal path,” so the text had to be rewritten and from 2004 there is no longer any list. His views on the Moscow Patriarchate naturally created great difficulties for the Serbian Orthodox Church and had to be toned down or removed. Of course, this became extremely problematic in the Russian Church Abroad from 2007 when it was accepted into the Moscow Patriarchate.

The same theological problem naturally exists with Saint John (Maximovitch), Archbishop of Shanghai and San Francisco, who was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad in 1993 and has become extremely popular in many Orthodox jurisdictions, where his criticism of the Moscow Patriarchate is simply ignored and his church views are simply not discussed. Forgotten, for example, is that in 1993 the Bulgarian Orthodox Church officially called him a schismatic and denied his sainthood.

An article of particular interest on “Public Orthodoxy” is “Canonization and the Act of Betrayal: Fr. Seraphim Rose and ROCOR’s Ecclesiological Trap” by Sergei Chapnin,
 https://publicorthodoxy.org/2026/05/11/canonization-and-the-act-of-betrayal/

 [link not activated on purpose]
which is essentially a critique of the decision to begin the glorification of Father Seraphim Rose as a saint.

Our Vladyka Agafangel has posted this article on Internet Sobor with his own commentary ~jh:
http://internetsobor.org/index.php/sobytiya/sergianstvo/sergej-chapnin-kanonizatsiya-i-akt-predatelstva 

Sergei Chapnin argues along four main lines in his article:

1. He believes that Father Seraphim Rose was a symbol of an anti-ecumenical and isolationist church thinking that does not correspond to how the majority of Orthodox churches think today.
     He believes that Father Seraphim Rose represented a harsh “zealot” stance in which modernity, Western culture, and dialogue with other Christians were seen as spiritual decay. Chapnin therefore believes that canonization would legitimize an extreme and polarizing direction within today’s Orthodoxy, something he cannot accept and wants to warn against.

2. The Russian Church Abroad, [ROCOR-MP} he believes, risks returning to its former “schismatic” self-consciousness, which he does not want to see.  
     A central point for Chapnin is that during the lifetime of Father Seraphim Rose, the Russian Church Abroad was outside full communion with large parts of world Orthodoxy. Chapnin therefore believes that glorifying him implies a kind of rehabilitation of the Russian Church Abroad's former anti-ecumenical and separatist identity, and this is deeply problematic for him.

3. The canonization becomes an ecclesiastical political stance.
     The article argues that it is not just about personal holiness but about the direction the church wants to take. According to Chapnin, the process signals support for militant traditionalism and a distancing from more “open” and “liberal” Orthodox voices, and Public Orthodoxy does not like that.

4. Finally, he has moral and historical objections to the circle around the Platina Monastery.
     The author also touches on controversies surrounding people close to Father Seraphim Rose, especially allegations linked to the abbot Father Herman Podmoshensky and the leadership of the St. Herman Monastery.


From our perspective, as conservative Greek Orthodox Christians who follow the old calendar, the article appears quite clearly to be written from a modernist and pro-ecumenical church perspective and we have four main objections:

1. The article assumes that anti-ecumenism is something negative, while ecumenism is the only right thing.
     For Old Calendarists, this is the very fundamental problem. What Chapnin describes as “extremism” we see instead as fidelity to the patristic tradition. We do not perceive Father Seraphim Rose as radical but as a defender of the classical Orthodox self-understanding: that the Church is unique, true, and not just a branch among other branches on the “Christian tree”.
     From this perspective, his criticism of Father Seraphim Rose becomes an indirect criticism of:
Saint Justin Popović, the Serbian saint, who is respected by so many, Archimandrite Philotheos Zervakos, whom many in Greece see as a saint, many Athonite fathers and the older tradition of the Russian Church Abroad before the reunification with Moscow, which was represented by Saint Philaret (the third First Hierarch of the Russian Church Abroad), who, incidentally, is also proposed for canonization by ROCOR (MP).

2. The isolation of the Russian Church Abroad from other Orthodox churches during the 1960s is clearly not seen as a schism, but as a righteous protest against developments, just like what happened in Greece after 1924 when the Greek State Church introduced the so-called New Calendar.
     Chapnin seems to assume that the previously broken communion of the Russian Church Abroad was a problem in itself. Our Old Calendar analysis would rather ask: “why” did the separation arise and who is responsible for it?
     We answer that the Russian Church Abroad was only reacting to:

• Soviet control of the Moscow Patriarchate,
• ecumenism, where the Orthodox Church is no longer unique but just one church among many,
• modernist reforms,
• compromises with secular power (so-called “Sergianism”).

     In that light, Father Seraphim Rose becomes a witness of resistance to apostasy rather than an expression of sectarianism, as Chapnin claims.

3. Holiness is not primarily defined by “acceptability” or “acceptability”.
     Our Old Calendarist stance instead argues that modern Orthodox academic circles – especially those affiliated with the Fordham University Orthodox Christian Studies Center or Sankt Ignatios College here in Sweden – tend to judge saints based on academic and cultural acceptability or acceptability rather than ascetic life, repentance and spiritual fruit.
     For those of us who see the holiness of Father Seraphim Rose, the central things instead become:

• his asceticism,
• his conversion from nihilism,
• his mission among Westerners,
• his defense of patristic Orthodoxy,
• the strong popular veneration surrounding him.

4. The article reflects the deeper conflict in modern Orthodoxy.
     From our Old Calendar perspective, this is not really just about Father Seraphim Rose but about two competing visions of Orthodoxy:
     On the one hand, those who believe that the Church must protect its borders clearly and on the other hand, those who believe that the Church should be dialogical and open to current trends and therefore must be modernized.
     On the one hand, those who believe that ecumenism opens the door to relativism and on the other hand, those who believe that ecumenism is a pastoral necessity in a fragmented world.
On the one hand, those who believe that patristic continuity must be emphasized and on the other hand, those who believe that contemporary relevance in a pluralistic world must be sought.
On the one hand, those who believe that asceticism and confession must be central to the life of the Orthodox Church and on the other hand, those who believe that academic and social legitimacy is the most important thing to establish.

For us Old Calendarists,• Sergei Chapnin's article therefore becomes almost an indirect argument for the importance of Father Seraphim Rose: if he provokes modernist circles so much, it shows that his message still challenges the spirit of the times and is just as relevant today as when it was written in 1975.

In conclusion, if one considers Father Seraphim Rose to be a holy person and that his message to the Church is important, then it is not possible to "tone down", ignore or erase the context to which he belonged and which groups within the Orthodox Church he points out that we should seek out if we want to be truly Orthodox Christians.

Today in 2026, there are groups that belong to the community of Saint Seraphim and they are the Russian Church Abroad under Metropolitan Agathangel, the Greek Orthodox Church following the patristic calendar (Old Calendarists) under Archbishop Kallinikos and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church under Metropolitan Photii.

Other churches that now find holiness in Father Seraphim's example and want to canonize him may therefore consider his words about where the true church is and why they are not included.

Father Anders Åkerström, Sunday of the 318 Fathers [2026]

 

• "Old Calendarists" here refers specifically to the Sister Churches who use the Church Calendar.  St. John Maximovitch always called it the Church Calendar, not the "old calendar."   There is the New Calendar, and there is the Church Calendar.   Repeat that to yourself...