July 27, 2023

On Reception into the Orthodox Church - Elder Aimilianos Receives Roman Catholic Fr. Placide

18 minutes

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After years as the abbot of a Trappist Roman Catholic Monastery and well-known scholar, Fr. Placide Deseille and his brotherhood realized they could no longer be Roman Catholic and needed to come to the Orthodox Church. They had previously visited Athos before they realized they should become Orthodox, and later went back to Athos to be received by their new spiritual guide, Elder Aimilianos of Simona Petra Monastery. This is a portion of the complete account of Fr. Placide's journey to Orthodoxy.

Learn more about Fr. Placide here: https://orthochristian.com/109855.html

This account is found in "The Living Witness of the Holy Mountain: Contemporary Voices from Mount Athos", Translated, with Introduction and Notes by Hieromonk (now Archbishop) Alexander (Golitzin), pp.63-93.

Photo in the middle of the thumbnail is Fr. Placide and his brotherhood on the day of their baptism at the hands of Elder Aimilianos.

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Fr. Placide writes:

On determining when to formally convert to Orthodoxy: "But how could we remain loyal members of the Catholic Church, and so continue to profess outwardly all her dogmas, when inwardly we were convinced that certain of these dogmas had departed from the Tradition of the Church? How could we continue to share in the same Eucharist while aware of our differences regarding the Faith? How could we remain outside the Orthodox Church, outside of which there could be no salvation and life in the Spirit for those who, having recognized her as the Church of Christ, refused to join her for human motives? To give in to considerations of ecumenical diplomacy, opportunity, and personal convenience would, in our case, have been to seek to please men rather than God, and to lie both to men and to God. Nothing could have justified such duplicity."

"The monks of Mount Athos are often criticized for their opposition to ecumenism, and are quite happily accused of sacrificing love for truth. We readily saw, from the time of our first visit when we were still Roman Catholics with no thought whatever of becoming Orthodox, how well the monks knew how to combine a gracious and attentive love towards other people, whatever their religious convictions and allegiance, with doctrinal intransigence. As they see it, moreover, total respect for the truth is one of the first duties that love for the other requires of them.... Christian unity, which is as dear to their hearts as anyone’s, can only be brought to pass by the agreement of the non-Orthodox to the integrity and fullness of the Apostolic Faith. It could never be the fruit of compromise or of efforts born of a natural and human aspiration for unity among men. This would be to cheapen the deposit of faith entrusted to the Church. In ecumenism, as in the spiritual life, the Athonite position is one of sobriety and discernment. If one wants to please God and enter into His Kingdom, one must know how to assess the movements of one’s feelings as well as the rationalizings of one’ mind. Above all, one must give up being 'pleasing to men.'"

"We asked freely to be received by baptism, in complete agreement with our abbot [Elder Aimilianos], because this procedure seemed to us both right and necessary for Athos, both theologically sound and canonically correct."

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