BUT..... The real ROCOR, Fr. Seraphim's Church, now under Vl. Agafangel, already glorified Fr. Seraphim on St. Michael's Day 2024 in Odessa.
BUT..... Dear ROCOR-MP, You have no business canonizing our St. Seraphim of Platina —
1. Fr. Seraphim never was in your Church. He never recognized the MP as a valid Church.
2. Fr. Seraphim has nothing to do with you. Don't you realize he preached against you?
3. And, finally, your "Mother," the MP, disapproves of you doing this.
It is ironic that objections to ROCOR-MP canonizing St. Seraphim of Platina come from both the MP and the true ROCOR.
The irony did not escape our Chief Hierarch, Vladyka Agafangel. He posted a protest from MP Sergei Chapnin. We can agree with the MP that the ROCOR-MP has no business canonizing Fr. Seraphim Rose. But not for the same reasons.
Sergei Chapnin's protest article reveals that MP is well aware of the now famous censoring that Platina did on p. 220 of ORF.* Notice the contortions and the deliberate lies (ex: "7,000 saved," "ecclesiologcal trap") Sergei Chapnin uses to try to explain away this smoking gun. This crime, this act of censorship, was committed by Platina, but MP was behind it. It was part of the deal Platina had to make to be received into the world-Orthodox Serbian Church. Other censorings in this deal included Russia's Catacomb Saints book, and all back issues of Orthodox Word magazines could neither be made available, and likewise with the Orthodox Survival Course. Anyone who does not have these materials and can not find them online or through a friend, you can contact me and I will help you find it. joannahigginbotham@runbox.com
See Vladyka Agafangel's original INTERNET SOBOR post here:
http://internetsobor.org/index.php/sobytiya/sergianstvo/sergej-chapnin-kanonizatsiya-i-akt-predatelstva
Sergei Chapnin: Canonization and the "Act of Betrayal"
Author: Metropolitan Agathangel. Date of publication:May 14, 2026. Category: Sergianism
Vladyka Agafangel writes his introductory comments to Sergei Chapnin's protest article:
This article is by Sergei Chapnin, former editor of the Moscow Patriarchate Journal, about the canonization of Hieromonk Seraphim Rose (in our language, Venerable Seraphim of Platina), currently being prepared in the ROCOR-MP. Although this is the opinion of an MP representative and expresses the views and position of the MP, the article, in my opinion, is accurate. However, it should be added that these exact views were held by our first four First Hierarchs, all our bishops, and the overwhelming majority of clergy and laity (otherwise they would not have chosen the ROCOR, but would have been in a different jurisdiction). These were the views of the entire ROCOR before its decline (beginning in the 1990s), and to this day, in that part of the ROCOR that has rejected the union with the MP.
+M.A.
____________________________________
Hieromonk Seraphim Rose and his ecclesiological trap for the ROCOR
by Sergey Chapnin (MP)
Preparations for the canonization of Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose, † 1982) became one of the most discussed news items in the Orthodox world in the first ten days of May. Joyful voices are already being heard regarding the upcoming glorification of the "first American by birth"—a formulation that itself raises questions. This is due to the fact that in early May, the Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) https://synod.com/synod/pdf/5poslaniyearhiereiskogosobora2026.pdf in Munich accepted a report by Bishop Jacob of Sonora on the life and veneration of Hieromonk Seraphim. The bishops, recognizing the righteousness of the deceased monk's life, blessed further efforts to glorify him as a saint.
This is not yet an act of canonization per se. However, it is the first public statement that the ROCOR is confidently moving toward canonization. And now the conversation can no longer remain at the level of pious affection or emotional attachment. On the one hand, the ROCOR has every formal right to glorify members of its Church—like any other Orthodox Church. However, on the other hand, serious questions arise, and perhaps some of them may seem strange and even inappropriate. Nevertheless, I believe that first impressions are deceptive: the decision to prepare for the glorification of Fr. Seraphim places the ROCOR in an extremely awkward position—it must confront its internal, implicit, and not always articulated ecclesiology. And it is here that the Synod may already have fallen into a trap. Why this is so, and how just a few lines in one of Fr. Seraphim Rose's most famous books pose an insoluble problem for the ROCOR—read below.
In one of my previous articles https://wheeljournal.com/what-are-we-canonizing-on-the-rocor-synods-decision-to-open-the-path-to-father-seraphim-roses-glorification/ in The Wheel magazine, I suggested that the ROCOR is opening the way to political canonization, and this seems to be a response to a clearly articulated demand of recent times—the demand for an ideologically driven Orthodoxy in the contemporary American context. But how serious is this emerging problem? At first glance, it's simply a matter of textual criticism: a small but radically inconvenient passage from "Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future." Inconvenient because it places unexpected demands on the current self-awareness of the ROCOR, especially its episcopate.
Thus, in the fourth edition of "Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future," published by the Brotherhood of St. Herman of Alaska in Platina in 1979—that is, during Fr. Seraphim's lifetime, three years before his death—he speaks of "an unknown number of truly Orthodox Christians" who have not bowed their knees to the spirit of apostasy. Many of them, he says, follow the bishops of those few Orthodox Churches that "have taken a firm stand, denouncing the apostasy of the modern world: the Catacomb Church of Russia, the Russian Church Abroad, the True Orthodox Christians (Old Calendarists) of Greece." Others remain in other jurisdictions, grieving over the obvious apostasy of their hierarchs, but still striving to preserve the fullness of Orthodoxy in their own lives and teachings. These "seven thousand," united by the grace of God, as Fr. Seraphim, "will undoubtedly subsequently be united [by the same grace of God] to the true Holy Orthodoxy." They are "the foundation of the future united Orthodoxy of the last times," while "outside of the true Holy Orthodoxy, only darkness thickens."
From a textual perspective, the significance of this fragment cannot be underestimated. In the fourth edition, prepared in the monastery founded by the author by his closest associates and disciples, it is unlikely that any significant distortions could have appeared in such a theologically rich paragraph without the author's personal consent. And this is the last edition of the book published during his lifetime.
In analyzing the contents, it's important to consider one circumstance that Fr. Seraphim takes for granted, yet never elaborates on. None of the three Churches he names above was in Eucharistic communion with the majority of the world's local Orthodox Churches at the time: the Patriarchates of Constantinople and Moscow, as well as the other local Orthodox Churches, belonged, in his view, to the opposing camp. And the dividing line lay not over particular issues, but over fundamental ones—where Fr. Seraphim saw the most formidable danger to Orthodoxy in the 20th century: above all, ecumenism, which in the book he cited he calls the "heresy of heresies." His "genuinely Holy Orthodoxy," therefore, is not simply a faithful segment of the Orthodox world. It is a sacred remnant, whose self-definition is tied not so much to what it professes, but to a radically different criterion—with whom it refuses to associate.
The internal logic of the list of "true churches" deserves special attention. Two of the three—the ROCOR and the Greek Old Calendarists—held an unambiguous and openly anti-ecumenical position at the time; their refusal to communicate with the rest of the Orthodox world was conscious, doctrinal, and public. The third member of the list, the Catacomb Church, did not participate in the ecumenical movement at all, but for an entirely different reason. Driven underground in the Soviet Union, with bishops and priests imprisoned, executed, or in hiding, it simply had no opportunity to do so. In other words, the Catacomb Church occupies a place on Fr. Seraphim's list not because of a clearly formulated theological position, but because of historical circumstances—its impossibility of participating in the ecumenical movement. And that's precisely why the list is so telling: its unifying criterion is not a positive confession, but a single negative attribute—that is, non-affiliation with the ecumenical movement, whether by conviction or circumstance. For Fr. Seraphim, this alone was enough to delineate the boundaries of "genuine Holy Orthodoxy."
But let's turn to later editions. In them, this paragraph has been significantly rewritten. The specific list of "true churches" disappears; the assertion that people in other Churches will be "united" to genuine Holy Orthodoxy has been subjected to obvious ideological editing. In its place remains a much more general and neutral formula: God Himself preserves the sacred remnant, the "seven thousand" constitute the foundation of the future unity of Orthodoxy, and darkness deepens outside of genuine Orthodoxy. The overall tone remains anti-syncretic and apocalyptic, but at the same time, the previously extremely specific system of ecclesiological coordinates has become blurred.
A thoughtful reader will agree that the two versions described above represent two different ecclesiologies. The later version essentially replaces the earlier, radical ecclesiology with a more inclusive one—one that easily embraces the "Orthodox majority" rather than excluding it.
The problem is that the fundamental textual questions raised by this discrepancy remain unclear: which version truly belongs to Father Seraphim himself, who decided to edit the text, and who approved and ratified this editing? Perhaps future work in the Platina monastery archives will shed light on the history of this fragment. But today, there is no clarity. Under these circumstances, an honest approach to the text obliges us to accept the most recent version, the more rigorous one, as the one that most fully and adequately conveys the author's worldview.
This early version is mercilessly uncompromising. It draws a dividing line not only between Orthodoxy and the "religion of the future," but also within the Orthodox world itself—and it draws it with extreme severity: only a few of those outside the three Churches he named will be saved; the rest remain, at best, only partially in darkness, awaiting future accession to the "genuine Holy Orthodoxy." The "seven thousand" exist in other Churches, and even beyond them, only to be gathered into the same narrow circle at the end of time. In other words, the ecclesiology of "Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future" already anticipates the "ideologized Orthodoxy" described in my previous article: a tightly knit sacred remnant, completely separated from the apostasy of the modern world.
And it is precisely here that the current ROCOR Synod as a whole has fallen into a trap. Having announced the canonization of Seraphim Rose, the bishops implicitly assume that they themselves still belong to the same "genuine Holy Orthodoxy" to which Fr. Seraphim believed he belonged. However, if the early text is taken seriously, this assumption of the bishops is erroneous. Fr. Seraphim's position is perfectly clear: the ROCOR remains part of "true Orthodoxy" only insofar as it firmly opposes the two heresies he considered most dangerous: ecumenism as the blurring of ecclesiastical boundaries through dialogue and shared prayer with the heterodox; and Sergianism as complete capitulation to the atheistic regime that persecuted Orthodox believers. The true identity of "true Orthodoxy," in his view, required defending itself on two fronts.
However, today's ROCOR is no longer the ROCOR that existed in Fr. Seraphim's ecclesiological imagination. In 2007, the ROCOR entered into canonical unity with the Moscow Patriarchate. With this canonical act, it became directly involved in the ecumenical movement that Fr. Seraphim called the "heresy of heresies"—and simultaneously accepted the "reunification of the Churches" with the Patriarchate, which had never subjected Sergianism to serious theological reflection or resolved the profound moral questions of its Soviet past. From Fr. Seraphim Rose's perspective, this was not a healing of a tragic division, but a direct rejection of the very criteria by which the ROCOR could consider itself part of the sacred remnant.
If this conclusion is correct, then the situation is far more serious and tragic than the dispute over the discrepancies in Rose's books. The ROCOR, as an ecclesiastical community, having rejected the ecclesiological vision within which Fr. Seraphim understood truth, apostasy, and faithfulness, cannot quietly erase the most striking features of his worldview from the Life it is compiling and then glorify him as if no contradictions exist. In his own eyes, the current ROCOR clearly does not belong to that "genuine Holy Orthodoxy" about which he wrote so passionately. And if the church community has lost its own living connection with what he considered true Orthodoxy, it has simultaneously lost the spiritual right to pass any judgment on his holiness. In this light, a canonization carried out by the current ROCOR would appear—from within Fr. Seraphim's own ecclesiological vision—to be a canonization of the Holy Orthodox Church. Seraphim is not a celebration of holiness, but a cheap performance.
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