CANON XV OF THE FIRST-SECOND COUNCIL
According to the Holy and Scared canons of the Orthodox
Church, the monks are obligated to cease commemoration of a Bishop or Patriarch
when his teachings are in direct conflict with what the Orthodox Church teaches.
After seeing many documented instances, in writing, of the Patriarch
acting and teaching in direct conflict with the teachings of the Orthodox
church, the monks ceased commemoration of the Patriarch of Constantinople as
they were obligated to do.
The proper procedure within the church is to call for an
ecumenical synod for clarification of the dispute, not a local synod controlled
by the bishop in dispute. It
is not the procedure of the church to call the police to enforce a
blockade of food, water and medicine to the monks with whom you disagree.
Here is what the canons of the Church say on this: "... So that if any
presbyter or bishop or metropolitan dares to secede from communion with his own
patriarch and does not mention his name as is ordered and appointed in the
divine mystagogy, but before a synodical arraignment and his [the patriarch's]
full condemnation, he creates a schism, the Holy Synod has decreed that this
person be alienated from every priestly function, if only he be proven to have
transgressed in this. These rules, therefore, have been sealed and ordered
concerning those who on the pretext of some accusations against their own
presidents stand apart, creating a schism and severing the unity of the Church. But
as for those who on account of some heresy condemned by Holy Synods or Fathers
sever themselves from communion with their president, that is, because he
publicly preaches heresy and with bared head teaches it in the Church, such
persons as these not only are not subject to canonical penalty for walling
themselves off from communion with the so-called bishop before synodical
clarification, but they shall be deemed worthy of due honor among the Orthodox.
For not bishops, but false bishops and false teachers have they condemned, and
they have not fragmented the Church's unity with schism, but from schisms and
divisions have they earnestly sought to deliver the Church" (Canon
XV of the so-called First-Second Council).