To answer this question one has to know recent history. The Orthodox Church suffered its greatest attack with the emergence of the heresy of Ecumenism. This started officially, and bareheadedly, in 1965 when Patriarch Athenagoras, incited by the devil, “lifted” the anathema against the heresies of the Papal Church. Then the onslaught of this tsunami heresy swept away practically all the local Orthodox churches. A church becomes a man-made organization when bishops disregard the Orthodox Faith and holy canons and espouse man’s false ideas rather than Christ’s doctrines.
When this happens to any church, we are commanded by the holy canons to flee and have no communion with the apostate bishops. This is what happened in 1965 when the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad (ROCA), and we who joined it because of its right Faith, fled and remained the only confessing Church left, along with a small group of Greek bishops the ROCA ordained. During this time the ROCA (ROCOR) issued its anathema against the heresy of Ecumenism (1983). With the fall of Communism in 1990, the Russian Church Abroad ordained bishops for Russia, since all of the bishops of the Moscow Patriarchate had apostasized.
Unfortunately, after 29 years of resisting the plague of Ecumenism, in 1994 the ROCA bishops, incited by the devil, foolishly entered into full communion with the Cyprianite ecumenists and fell under their own anathema! The ROCA therefore ceased being part of the Orthodox Church, but became a heretical sect. Four years before this catastrophe, as we said, the ROCA ordained bishops for Russia who did not follow their church’s decision to enter into communion with ecumenist heretics and, later, even with the Moscow Patriarchate. That church became known as the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church (ROAC). We, after leaving the ROCA following its apostasy, were ordained priests and bishops in the ROAC and we remained faithful to Orthodoxy.
As often happens, the Church is never left in peace, and temptations always assail it. So, in 2004, the ROAC bishops, incited by the devil and led astray by their passions, decided to disregard canonical law and like its predecessor, fell away from Christ, this time by causing a schism, which the holy fathers say is even worse than heresy. Thus the ROAC of today is simply a man-made organization, rather than the Church. Archbishop Gregory and those with him, however, although betrayed and abandoned by the ROAC, remained faithful to the holy canons and preserved a pure confession of faith, unpolluted by the heresies of our time.
Today we call ourselves the Genuine Orthodox Church of America (GOCA). We have isolated ourselves, as is proper in the sight of God, from all heresies. We have isolated ourselves from all schismatics. We have isolated ourselves from all uncanonical, heretical, Masonic, and immoral groups that call themselves the Orthodox Church. To speak more truly, it is the heretics who have isolated and separated themselves from God’s Church by their evil deeds and doctrines. They wish us to be silenced or eliminated so as not to be reproved for their reprehensible actions that have hurt the Church and the faithful. As it stands today, to be found in the Orthodox Church that Christ started on earth, without the heresies, schisms, innovations, modernisms, and immorality that exist in so-called World Orthodoxy as well as those who call themselves Old Calendarists, if one wishes to remain aloof from these ungodly religions, one must join the GOCA, the Genuine Orthodox Church of America.
