orthodoxinfo.com

Orthodox Christian Information Center

Self-description:

     Articles for and about the Orthodox Church. Intended primarily for the Orthodox, but includes information for Western Christian inquirers.

     OCIC Web site, one of the largest and oldest sites on Orthodox Christianity. Think of the OCIC as a vast online article repository, with over 700 articles and 6,000 printed pages. This site has been online since 1996 and receives over 36,000 unique visitors per month, according to Google Analytics.

I have been asked why the Orthodox Christian Information Center is not included in my list of safe websites, especially since it has many wonderful articles against renovationism.  The answer is because the OCIC has a doubleness about it - like one foot on each side.  A newcomer could be confused.  Certainly don't avoid the site altogether, but I'm not going to say it is completely safe, either.  One of my concerns is that there are some good articles by renovationists [Schmemann, Hopko, St. Vladimir's Seminary,] and a newcomer could learn to trust those authors and be led astray.

This site seems, as a whole, to lean a little more to the left every year.  With such a large collection of articles, and the many links, unavoidably "rewritten" materials have crept in.  One example of a "rewrite," in the form of a censure, is in a link to the OrthodoxPhotos site.  Below I have copied back in the censured material and highlighted it in bold red:

-From the concluding chapter of Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future:

-"Little Children, It is the last Hour" [John 2:18]

Unknown to the fevered Orthodox "revivalists," the Lord has reserved in the world, even as in the days of Elijah the Prophet, seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal [Rom. 11:4] -- an unknown number of true Orthodox Christians who are neither spiritually dead, as the Orthodox "charismatics" complain that their flocks have been, nor the pompously "spirit-filled," as these same flocks become under "charismatic" suggestion. They are not carried away by the movement of apostasy nor by any false "awakening," but continue rooted in the holy and saving Faith of Holy Orthodoxy in the tradition the Holy Fathers have handed down to them, watching the signs of the times and traveling the narrow path to salvation. Many of them follow the bishops of the few Orthodox jurisdicitions that have 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. But there are some left in other jurisdictions also, grieving over the ever more evident apostasy of their hierarchs and striving somehow to keep their own Orthodoxy intact; and there are still others outside of the Orthodox Church who by God's grace, their hearts being open to His call, will undoubtedly yet be joined to genuine Holy Orthodoxy. These "seven thousand "are the foundation of the future and only Orthodoxy of the latter times.

-Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future

1983 edition, page 220

√ The above paragraph is the first paragraph in the last section [E. "Little Children, It is the last Hour"] of the concluding chapter. This paragraph is entirely omitted in the online version [http://www.orthodoxphotos.com/readings/sign/children.shtml].

Why was this paragraph censured? 

...Many of them follow the bishops of the few Orthodox jurisdicitions that have 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. But there are some left in other jurisdictions also, grieving over the ever more evident apostasy of their hierarchs and striving somehow to keep their own Orthodoxy intact...

Because this paragraph shows how Fr. Seraphim really felt about world Orthodoxy, and the world Orthodox want to believe differently, and they want us to believe differently, too. Don't believe it!

*[The Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia that Fr. Seraphim refers to is the royal path ROCOR of Met. Philaret which today is continued by Met. Agafangel. The part of ROCOR that is under Met. Hilarion went with world Orthodoxy.]

Fr. Seraphim Rose In World Orthodoxy?

No. 

Fr. Seraphim Rose was not headed towards World Orthodoxy 

before he died, as World Orthodoxy would like us to believe.