the holy new martyrs of eastern russia - Coptic Orthodox teaching

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retain its validity only as long as it is a true reflection of the hierarchical
conscience of the Conciliar [Sobornoj] Church; discipline can never take the
place of this conscience”. Sergius violated the hierarchical, conciliar
conscience of the Church by his disregard of the views of bishops equal to
him in rank.
The second is that a hierarch is justified in breaking communion with a
fellow hierarch, not only for heresy, but also in order not to partake in his
brother’s sin. Thus while Metropolitan Cyril did not consider Sergius to have
sinned in matters of faith, he was forced to bread communion with him
because “I have no other means of rebuking my sinning brother”. If clergy
have mutually opposing opinions within the Church, then their
concelebration is for both “to judgement and condemnation”.
Thus in November, 1929, Metropolitan Cyril refused to condemn
Metropolitan Joseph and his supporters, who had broken communion with
Sergius; and he did not agree with the bishops in exile in Tashkent – Arsenius
(Stadnitsky), Nicodemus (Krotkov), Nicander (Fenomenov) and others – who
condemned Joseph, considering their hopes of convening a canonical Council
to be “naivety or cunning”.
A third point made by Metropolitan Cyril was that even when such a break
in communion occurs between two parties, both sides remain in the Church
so long as dogmatic unanimity is preserved. But this immediately raised the
question: had Sergius only sinned “administratively”, by transgressing
against the canons, as Metropolitan Cyril claimed (until 1934, at any rate), or
had he sinned also “dogmatically”, by transgressing against the dogma of the
One Church, as Archbishop Demetrius of Gdov, among others, claimed?
On August 19, 1933 Metropolitan Cyril was released and went to live in the
town of Gzhatsk, from where he continued secretly to lead the opposition to
Metropolitan Sergius. During this period, while refraining from saying that
the sacraments of the sergianists were graceless, Metropolitan Cyril
nevertheless considered that those who partook of them knowing the
unrighteousness of Sergius’ position partook of them to their condemnation.
Thus he wrote to an unknown hierarch: “It seems to me that both you
yourself and your correspondent do not distinguish those actions of
Metropolitan Sergius and his partisans, which are performed by them in
proper order by power of those grace-given rights received through the
mystery of the priesthood, from those other activities which are performed
with an exceeding of their sacramental rights and according to human
cunning, as a means of protecting and supporting their self-invented rights in
the Church. Such are the actions of Bishop Zacharius and Priest Patapov of
which you speak. These are sacramental acts only in form, while in essence
they are a usurpation of sacramental activity, and therefore are blasphemous,
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