Letter to my People

People of the Church,

I am writing you to inform you of all the decisions we made during our Council at Nicaea, before i make the long trip back home.

I believe that the council overall was a success. We were all able to voice our opinions and then discussed all issues in order to come up with a compromise or a final decision. We kept the future of church in mind with all these discussions. We also paid particular attention to the language of all the proposed canons and the creed in order to satisfy all sides. We wanted to make sure that future generations were clear with what we wrote, but also we did not want to be too specific.

For starters, I would like to reiterate that the whole point of this council will achieve unity, and after many debates I am delighted to say that we have achieved that since we created a Creed that everyone decided to sign. The creed included language that was acceptable to both the Arians and the Alexandrians — something we deemed impossible in the beginning. I believe this was the best creed we could come up with.

Furthermore, we wrote eight canons. Some of these will disappoint you, however I would like you to know that I tried by best to fight for these but was unable to do so. For starters, I was unable to decrease the authority of Metropolitan bishops. They will continue to have full authority to resolve issues. However, in order to instill a ‘checks and balances’ system we also established a primary bishop — a ‘pope’ — to settle disputes between the Metropolitan bishops. This will take place of the future role of councils. On the bright side, I am delighted to announce that my followers and myself will not have to be re-ordained; however future Bishops who have not had the consent of the Metropolitan Bishop will have to be re-ordained for readmission into the church. The current members will be “grandfathered” in. I was delighted to have the help of several members of the clergy with this, except for Alexander and Athaneous.  However, the followers of Paul of Samosata will need to be re-baptized into the church because the clergy was illegitimate that baptized them, this was proposed by Eusibeus of Caesarea, and was supported by many of the clergy members, I would like to say that Theclus and myself did not agree to this.

I am sadden to announce that I was unable to pass a fixed date for the celebration of the Resurrection. Theclus and myself fought hard for this, but the council agreed to a  date which is consistent with the Jewish calendar of Passover — the first Sunday. Constantine and Ossius were also disappointed with this decision. However, I was able to establish a rigid code of celibacy. Again, current clergymen who are already married can remain married, but when their wife dies they shall practice celibacy for the remainder of their service. They will also be grandfathered in. On top of this, only unmarried, baptized men can become members of the clergy. Theclus fought hard for this, but was unable to do so against the whole council. These members should not have a waiting period for membership in the clergy.

Finally, I am disappointed to announce that the council agreed to allow unfaithful Christians back into the church without any type of punishment or waiting period. They argued that we should not have the authority to judge these people and that only God has that power. I was the only individual to vote against this.

Ultimately, I came into this council wanting to satisfy all of you and I am sorry if I have disappointed you in any way. I hope that

Yours Truly,

Meletius