ANSWER:
In the case of the Old Calendarist communities in Greece, we have a tragic case of a schism away from the local Church, for the unity of the regional structure (the Archdiocese of Athens and all Greece) and from the worldwide communion. The issue is not so much the Orthodox faith as the implications of the Orthodox faith which includes teachings on Ecclesiology. In this case, three bishops broke away from the communion and were only followed in their schism by a few clergy and people. These bishops were later deposed by the neighboring bishops of Greece and effectively ceased being bishops of the 'catholic Church' in their place. Hence, these groups forgot the ecclesiogical implication of the Orthodox faith and quickly (as history revealed) ceased to exist as Orthodox (and assured manifestations of the Church) in any sense.
In this question, "an Orthodox Church" seems to refer to a national or patriarchal structure. If so, assuming that all the local bishops and Churches agree on a particular error, we would have an area of the world were the Churches/Bishops may be in error and in a sense less than Orthodox. This, however, does not mean that these bishops (and their historic and apostolic Eucharistic communities) do not manifest the Church ("the catholic Church" to quote Saint Ignatius). Often, such schisms in the universal Orthodox communion (as the case of the Bulgarian Patriarchate in the 1800s) are eventually resolved. On the other hand, an area of the world sick with heresy (or corruption) may eventually need to be "surgically removed" by the universal communion. |
