A
DOGMATIC-CANONICAL ANALYSIS OF THE ROCOR-MP UNIA
May Satan not seize
me, and tear me from Thy hand and fold.
Morning Prayers.
O Lord Who didst
send down Thy Most Holy Spirit at the Third Hour upon Thine Apostles, take not
Him, O Good One, from us…
Prayer of the Third Hour.
St. Gregory the Theologian said: not every ecclesiastical union is
pleasing to God, and an honourable war is preferable to a shameful peace. In
the political sphere this is well understood: the Munich agreement between
Chamberlain and Hitler in 1938 has gone down in the annals of history as an
example of a shameful peace that not only did not remove the threat of war, but
made the war, when it came, much more costly than it would have been if the
courageous and honourable course had been chosen at the beginning. If this is
fully understandable in the political sphere, why is it so difficult to
understand in the spiritual sphere, where so much more is at stake, where a
dishonourable peace with a spiritual enemy leads not to the killing of bodies,
but to the eternal death of thousands of souls? The answer is: because men have
ceased to think spiritually, but instead are ruled by carnal categories, fallen
emotions. And so the Lord says of them: “My Spirit will not always remain with
these men, because they are carnal” (Genesis 6.4).
The proposed unia between ROCOR and the MP is a clear example of an
ecclesiastical union propelled not by spiritual thinking, not by the overcoming
of dogmatic and canonical obstacles through repentance and spiritual love, but
first of all, by political and economic interests – the interests of the KGB
leadership of the Russian Federation, which has been driving this unia from the
beginning, and then by fallen emotions masquerading as spiritual motives – love
of Russia (but which Russia do they love – Holy Rus’ or the neo-Soviet Russia
of Putin?), and fear of isolation from the rest of Orthodoxy (but which
Orthodoxy do they fear to be separated from – the KGB/Masonic/Ecumenist
“Orthodoxy” of the World Council of Churches, or the True Orthodoxy of the Holy
New Martyrs of Russia?).
This article seeks to examine the dogmatic and canonical obstacles that
remain in the path of any honourable Church unia. It should be noted at the
outset that, far from these barriers decreasing with time, they have actually increased since the original break in
communion between ROCOR and Metropolitan Sergius’ MP in 1927. At that time only
Sergianism separated the two. And yet Sergianism alone was enough to create the
biggest schism in the Orthodox Church since 1054. Now there is also Ecumenism,
to mention only the most important and intractable of all the obstacles…
I. Sergianism.
The nature of Sergianism is often misunderstood. In essence it is the sin of Judas. Judas was one of the
closest disciples of Christ, who, having lost faith in the Divinity of His
Teacher and in the ultimate victory of truth over falsehood, chose to betray
Christ in exchange for thirty pieces of silver and immunity from persecution.
Metropolitan Sergius did essentially the same through his Declaration of 1927.
In exchange for some material benefits and immunity from persecution (he died
in his bed), he betrayed Christ by identifying the interests of the Church with
the interests of the God-hating Bolsheviks, whom the Church itself had
anathematized in 1918. He did this not in word only (through his Declaration),
but in deed also, by deposing his fellow-hierarchs who resisted him, and by
labelling them as “counter-revolutionaries” – the equivalent of a
death-sentence in the
It is sometimes argued that Sergius was justified because, as he himself
put it, he was “saving the Church” by his actions. The idea that the Church,
“the pillar and ground of the Truth” (I Timothy 3.15), to which the Lord
has promised that it would “prevail against the gates of hell” (Matthew
16.18), needs to be saved by the lies of sinful men is in itself a fearsome
heresy, a denial, as several Catacomb Hieromartyrs pointed out, of the One,
Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. But in any case, Sergius saved nobody but
himself (and that only in this temporal life). After most of the confessors of
the
Another argument offered in defence of Sergianism is that similar
compromises were made in the past by Orthodox hierarchs – in particular, by the
Greeks under Turkish rule. But this is a slander against the Greek Orthodox.
Were the Greek hierarchs, as a condition of the free functioning of their
church administration, compelled to accept Islam and work for the triumph of
Islam throughout the world? They were not. And yet Sergius and his followers welcomed
the revolution, condemned its enemies and worked tirelessly in the interests of
the world revolution.
Here is a variant on this argument: “Sergianism is supposed to be a
violation of the 30th Apostolic Canon: ‘If a bishop, using secular
authorities, receives through them Episcopal power in the Church: let him be
deposed and excommunicated, and all those who commune with him.’ However, many
Orthodox bishops received their power in this way, including very many in the
pre-revolutionary
This argument ignores the vast difference between the secular
authorities before and after the revolution, and between the ways in which
these authorities worked. Before the revolution, the authorities were Orthodox
and were genuinely interested in the flourishing of the Orthodox Church. While
there were isolated cases in which the authorities imposed their will unjustly
on the Church (for example, in the deposition of St. Arseny of
A
much closer parallel to Sergianism, which the Sergianists do not like to admit,
is with the renovationists who seized power in the Russian Church in 1922 on a
pro-communist platform, and were anathematized by Patriarch Tikhon in 1923. In
1937 St. Cyril, Metropolitan of
The essential identity of renovationism and Sergianism is indicated by
the fact that, after Sergius’ pact with Stalin in 1943, almost the whole of the
renovationist “church” poured, without repentance, into the sergianist church
in order to make up the latter’s depleted ranks.
Thus on
Since Karpov wanted the renovationists to join the state church, the
rules for their reception were relaxed. Thus in 1944 Metropolitan Alexis
(Simansky), the future patriarch, severely upbraided Bishop Manuel (Lemeshevsky)
for forcing “venerable” renovationist protopriests to “turn somersaults”, i.e.
repent, before the people, in accordance with Patriarch Tikhon’s rules.[3]
As Roslof writes: “The relaxation of rules by the patriarchate reflected
the needs of both church and state. The patriarchal synod had full backing from
the government and expected to emerge as the sole central authority for the
Orthodox Church. So it could afford to show mercy. At the same time, the
patriarchate faced a scarcity of clergy to staff reopened parishes and to run
the dioceses. Sergii’s bishops had problems finding priests for churches that
had never closed. This shortage of clergy was compounded by the age and poor
education of the candidates who were available. The patriarchate saw properly
supervised red priests as part of the solution to the problem of filling vacant
posts.”[4]
Another argument put forward in defence of the Sergianists is that this
was a passing phenomenon dependent on the existence of Soviet power, which
passed into history with the fall of the
“But the patriarch has
repented!” the Sergianists declare - or rather, this is not said by the MP
Sergianists, who see nothing to repent of in “Sergianism”, but by those
defenders of the MP in ROCOR who are desperate to justify themselves. They
point to an interview given in September, 1991 to 30 Dias, in which the
patriarch said: “A church that has millions of faithful cannot go into the
catacombs. The hierarchy of the church has taken the sin on their souls: the
sin of silence and of lying for the good of the people in order that they not
be completely removed from real life. In the government of the diocese and as
head of the negotiations for the patriarchate of
This is closer to self-justification than repentance. It is similar to
the statement of Metropolitan Nicholas (Corneanu) of Banat of the Romanian
Patriarchate, who confessed that he had collaborated with the Securitate,
the Romanian equivalent of the KGB, and had defrocked the priest Fr. Calciu for
false political reasons, but nevertheless declared that if he had not made such
compromises he would have been forced to abandon his post, “which in the
conditions of the time would not have been good for the Church”. In other
words, as Vladimir Kozyrev writes: “It means: ‘I dishonoured the Church and my
Episcopal responsibility, I betrayed those whom I had to protect, I scandalized
my flock. But all this I had to do for the good of the Church!’”[6]
In another interview in 1997 Patriarch Alexis said, referring to the
Church in the time of Patriarch Tikhon: “The Church could not, did not have the
right, to go into the catacombs. She remained together with the people and
drank to the dregs the cup of sufferings that fell to its lot.”[7] Patriarch Alexis here forgot to mention that
Patriarch Tikhon specifically blessed Michael Zhizhilenko, the future
Hieromartyr Maximus of
In its “Jubilee” Council of August, 2000 the MP approved a “social
document” which, among other things, recognised that “the Church must refuse to
obey the State” “if the authorities force the Orthodox believers to renounce
Christ and His Church”. This was immediately seized on by supporters of the
unia as “proof” that Sergianism had been repented of. However, on the very same
page we find: “But even the persecuted Church is called to bear the
persecutions patiently, not refusing loyalty to the State that persecutes it”.[8] We may
infer from this that the MP still considers that its loyalty to the
This is consistent with the fact that the MP has never in its entire
history since 1943 shown anything other than a determination to serve whatever
appears to be the strongest forces in the contemporary world. Until the fall of
communism, that meant the communists. With the fall of communism, the MP was
not at first sure whom she had to obey, but gradually assumed the character of
a “populist” church, trying to satisfy the various factions within it
(including nominally Orthodox political leaders) while preserving an appearance
of unity.
In this connection Fathers Vladimir Savitsky, Valentine (Salomakh) and
Nicholas Savchenko write: “The politics of ‘populism’ which the MP is
conducting today is a new distortion of true Christianity. Today this politics
(and the ideology standing behind it) is a continuation and development of
‘sergianism’, a metamorphosis of the very same disease. Today it seems to us
that we have to speak about this at the top of our voices. Other problems, such
as the heresy of ecumenism and ‘sergianism’ in the strict sense, while
undoubtedly important, are of secondary importance by comparison with the main
aim of the MP, which is to be an ‘all-people’ Church, In fact, in the ‘people’
(understood in a broad sense, including unbelievers and ‘eclectics’) there
always have been those who are for ecumenism and those who are against.
Therefore we see that the MP is ready at the same time to participate in the
disgusting sin of ecumenism and to renounce it and even condemn it. It is
exactly the same with ‘sergianism’ (understood as the dependence of the Church on
the secular authorities). The MP will at the same time in words affirm its
independence (insofar as there are those who are for this independence) and
listen to every word of the authorities and follow them (not only because that
is convenient, but also because it thus accepted in the ‘people’, and the
authorities are ‘elected by the people’). In a word, it is necessary to condemn
the very practice and ideology of the transformation of the MP into a Church
‘of all the people’.”[9]
This analysis has been confirmed by events since the former KGB Colonel
Putin came to power in January, 2000. The MP has adopted a submissive role in
relation to the neo-Soviet power, not protesting against the restoration of the
red flag to the armed forces and approving the retention of the music of the
Soviet national anthem. Nor does it discipline its priests who praise Stalin.
On
There followed an official justification of Sergianism. Thus on
However, as we have pointed out, Soviet
power was very different from the Tatars or Ottomans, and “bilateral relations”
with it, unlike with those powers, involved the betrayal of the Orthodox Faith
and falling under the anathema of the Church. Moreover, if the Church at first
refused to recognise Soviet power, but then (in 1927) began to recognise it,
the question arises: which position was the correct one? There can be no
question but that the position endorsed by the Russian Council of 1917-18 was
the correct one, and that the Sergianist Moscow Patriarchate, by renouncing
that position, betrayed the truth – and continues to betray it to the present day
through its symbiotic relationship with a government that openly declares
itself to be the heir of the Soviet State.
As recently as January 24, 2005 Metropolitan Cyril (Gundiaev) of
In other words: “There is a wide path, the path of Sergianism; and there
is a narrow path, the path of the
II. The New Martyrs
The problem of the New Martyrs is considered non-existent by many in the
present debate. After all, has not the MP canonized the New Martyrs as ROCOR
has? And if there are some differences in who they count as martyrs, what does
that matter? They accept (almost) all our martyrs, so they think the same way
we do. In any case, is this a dogmatic issue?
It is in the first place a canonical
issue, but one that directly touches on dogmatic
issues. The 20th canon of
the Council of Gangra declares: “If anyone shall, from a presumptuous
disposition, condemn and abhor the assembly [in honour of] the martyrs, or the
services performed there, and the commemoration of them, let them be
anathema….” For many years the MP fell under this anathema, ignoring the decree
of the Council of 1917-18 on the commemoration of the holy new martyrs, rejecting
and viciously slandering them as “political criminals” and denying the very
existence of a persecution against Orthodoxy in the
The major problems here from the MP's point of view were the questions
of the Royal Martyrs, on the one hand, and of the martyrs of the
After nearly a decade of temporising, the MP finally, under pressure
from its flock, glorified the Royal New Martyrs and many other martyrs of the
Soviet yoke. The glorification of the Royal New Martyrs was a compromise
decision, reflecting the very different attitudes towards them in the patriarchate.
The Royal Martyrs were called “passion-bearers” rather than “martyrs”, and it
was made clear that they were being glorified, not for the way in which they
lived their lives, but for the meekness with which they faced their deaths.
This allowed the anti-monarchists to feel that Nicholas was still the “bloody
Nicholas” of Soviet mythology, and that it was “Citizen Romanov” rather than
“Tsar Nicholas” who had been glorified - the man rather than the monarchical
principle for which he stood.
This point will become clearer if we now
turn to ROCOR’s canonisation of the Tsar in 1981, in which the Tsar’s feat is
linked closely and explicitly with the position he occupied in the
Again: “The Tsar-Martyr, and his family as
well, suffered for Christian piety. He was opposed to the amorality and
godlessness of the communists, both on principle and by virtue of his position
- on principle, because he was a deeply believing Orthodox Christian; by virtue
of his position, because he was a staunch Orthodox Monarch. For this he was
killed. To ask him anything concerning the faith was unnecessary, because
he gave witness before the tormentors to his steadfastness in Christian
principles by his entire previous life and works, and especially by his
profoundly Christian endurance of the moral torments of his imprisonment. He
was a staunch defender and protector of the Christian faith, preventing the
God-haters from beginning a vicious persecution against believers in Christ and
against the whole Orthodox Church. For this reason he was removed and
slain...
"It is also known… that prior to the
Revolution it was proposed that the Tsar repeal the strictures against
anti-Christian secret societies, and it was threatened that if he refused he
would lose his throne and his life. The sovereign firmly refused this proposal.
Therefore, they deprived him of his throne and killed him. Thus, he suffered precisely
for the faith."[15]
Protopriest Michael Ardov has examined
another part of Metropolitan Juvenal’s report: “’In its approach to this
subject, the Commission has striven that the glorification of the Royal Martyrs
should be free from every political and other kind of time-serving. In
connection with this it is necessary to stress that the canonisation of the
Monarch can in no way be linked with monarchical ideology, and, moreover, does
not signify the ‘canonisation’ of the monarchical form of government, in
relation to which people’s attitudes may, of course, differ.’…
“Naïve supporters of the Moscow
Patriarchate are in no way able to understand why the long-awaited
glorification of his Majesty was carried out in such an unintelligible manner.
I can suggest to those who are perplexed a completely satisfying explanation.
In 1993, the superior of church ‘Nikola v Pyzhakh’, Protopriest Alexander
Shargunov, placed a large icon of the Tsar Martyr in his church. Two days later
he was phoned from the patriarchate and told to remove it, while the superior
himself had to go to Chisty Pereulok [the headquarters of the MP] to sort out
the question. There the secretary of the so-called Patriarch, the so-called
Bishop Arsenius, had a talk with Shargunov. In a burst of sincerity the former
declared: ‘We all, including the Patriarch, venerate Tsar Nicholas as a saint.
But we cannot glorify him – both the communists and the democrats will rise up
against us…’
“This phrase explains all the following events. Being in fear of the communists
and the democrats, the ‘sergianists’ have for years dragged out the matter of
the glorification of the Royal Martyrs. And the canonisation took place only
now, in the year 2000, after the election of President Putin, when the chances
of the communists returning to power have become zero – it is finally possible
to stop fearing them. But the Patriarchate’s fear of the ‘democrats’ has
remained, and has perhaps got even stronger. That is why, in the ‘Acts of the
Jubilee Council’, they speak about the crime that took place in Ekaterinburg in
1918, but there is not a word about what took place in March, 1917. But we
know: the Tsar-Martyr was forced to abdicate from the Throne, not by the
Bolsheviks, not by Lenin and Sverdlov, but by the traitor-generals Alexeyev and
Rutsky, by the conspirator-parliamentarians Rodzyanko and Guchkov - that is, by
the ‘democrats’ of that time. And for fear of their last-born children, not a
word was spoken about the ‘February revolution’ at the ‘Jubilee Council’…
“In his report, the ‘president of the
synodal commission for the canonisation of the saints’, the so-called Metropolitan
Juvenal said: ‘We have striven also to take into account the fact of the
canonisation of the Royal Family by the Russian Church Abroad in 1981, which
elicited a not unambiguous reaction both in the midst of the Russian
emigration, some representatives of which did not see sufficient bases for it
at that time, and in Russia herself…’…
“Again a hiatus. In fact in the
Patriarchate itself the glorification of the Royal Martyrs and the whole host
of Russian New Martyrs and Confessors elicited a reaction that was completely
unambiguous: they decisively condemned the act of the Council of the Church
Abroad and declared it to be a purely political act…”[16]
As regards the other martyrs, Sergius Kanaev writes: “In the report of
the President of the Synodal Commission for the canonisation of the saints,
Metropolitan Juvenal (Poiarkov), the criterion of holiness adopted… for
Orthodox Christians who had suffered during the savage persecutions was clearly
and unambiguously declared to be submission ‘to the lawful leadership of the
Church’, which was Metropolitan Sergius and his hierarchy. With such an
approach, the holiness of the ‘Sergianist martyrs’ was incontestable. The
others were glorified or not glorified depending on the degree to which they ‘were
in separation from the lawful leadership of the Church’. Concerning those who
were not in agreement with the politics of Metropolitan Sergius, the following
was said in the report: ‘In the actions of the “right” oppositionists, who are
often called the “non-commemorators”, one cannot find evil-intentioned,
exclusively personal motives. Their actions were conditioned by their
understanding of what was for the good of the Church’. In my view, this is
nothing other than blasphemy against the New Martyrs and a straight apology for
Sergianism. With such an approach the consciously Sergianist Metropolitan
Seraphim (Chichagov), for example, becomes a ‘saint’, while his ideological
opponent Metropolitan Joseph of Petrograd, who was canonized by our Church, is not
glorified. For us another fact is also important, that Metropolitan Seraphim
was appointed by Sergius (Stragorodsky) in the place of Metropolitan Joseph,
who had been ‘banned’ by him.”[17]
Other Catacomb martyrs were “glorified” by the MP because their holiness
was impossible to hide. Thus the relics of Archbishop Victor of
Some, seeing the glorification of the Catacomb martyrs by their
opponents, remembered the Lord’s words: “Ye build the tombs of the prophets and
adorn the sepulchres of the righteous, and say, ‘If we had been in the days of
our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the
prophets’. Therefore ye bear witness against yourselves that ye are sons of
those who murdered the prophets. Fill up the measure of your fathers!” (Matthew
23.29-32).
This blasphemous canonisation of both the true and the
false martyrs, thereby downgrading the exploit of the true martyrs, had been
predicted by the ROCOR priest Fr. Oleg Oreshkin: “I think that some of those
glorified will be from the sergianists so as to deceive the believers. ‘Look,’
they will say, ‘he is a saint, a martyr, in the
The main thing from the MP’s point of view was that their founder, Metropolitan
Sergius, should be given equal status with the catacomb martyrs whom he
persecuted. Thus in 1993 the patriarch said: “Through the host of martyrs the
The patriarch's lack of ecclesiastical principle and ecclesiological
consistency in this question was pointed out by Fr. Peter Perekrestov: “In the
introduction to one article (“In the Catacombs”, Sovershenno Sekretno, ¹ 7, 1991) Patriarch Alexis wrote
the following: ‘I believe that our martyrs and righteous ones, regardless of
whether they followed Metropolitan Sergius or did not agree with his position,
pray together for us.’ At the same time, in the weekly, Nedelya, ¹ 2, 1/92, the same Patriarch
Alexis states that the Russian Church Abroad is a schismatic church, and adds:
‘Equally uncanonical is the so-called “Catacomb” Church.’ In other words, he
recognizes the martyrs of the
For in the last resort, as Fr. Peter (now a leading supporter of the
ROCOR-MP unia) pointed out, for the MP this whole matter was not one of truth
or falsehood, but of power: “It is
not important to them whether a priest is involved in shady business dealings
or purely church activities; whether he is a democrat or a monarchist; whether
an ecumenist or a zealot; whether he wants to serve Vigil for six hours or one;
whether the priest serves a panikhida for the victims who defended the White
House or a moleben for those who sided with Yeltsin; whether the priest wants
to baptize by immersion or by sprinkling; whether he serves in the catacombs or
openly; whether he venerates the Royal Martyrs or not; whether he serves
according to the New or Orthodox Calendar - it
really doesn't matter. The main thing is to commemorate Patriarch Alexis.
Let the Church Abroad have its autonomy, let it even speak out, express itself
as in the past, but only under one condition: commemorate Patriarch Alexis. This is a form of Papism - let the priests be married,
let them serve according to the Eastern rite - it makes no difference, what is
important is that they commemorate the Pope of Rome.”[21]
The MP’s act of canonising both the true and the false martyrs has several
serious consequences. First, it means that, if any one was still tempted to
consider that the official acts of the MP had any validity at all, he can now
be assured that even the MP itself does not believe in them. For consider:
Archbishop Victor, Metropolitan Cyril and the whole host of Catacomb confessors
were defrocked, excommunicated and cast out of the community of the “faithful”
by official acts of Metropolitan Sergius and his Synod. But if these
“defrocked” and “excommunicated” people are now saints in the Heavenly Kingdom,
this only goes to show, as the MP now implicitly admits, that the actions
of Metropolitan Sergius and his Synod were completely uncanonical and invalid! And
yet in spite of all that, the patriarch can still assert that “among the
confessors of Christ we can in full measure name… his Holiness Patriarch
Sergius…”
Secondly, it also shows that the MP does not know what martyrdom is,
and looks upon it in an essentially ecumenist spirit which deprives it of all
meaning. Some years ago, a writer for the Anglican “Church Times” was
reviewing a book on the “martyrs” of the Anglican Reformation. In the spirit of
that ecumenism that has been at the root of Anglicanism for centuries, this
reviewer claimed that both the Catholics who died for their faith at the hands
of the Anglicans and the Anglicans who died for their faith died at the hands
of the Catholics died for the truth as they saw it and so were martyrs! For it
was not important, wrote the reviewer, who was right in this conflict:
the only thing that matters is that they were sincere in their beliefs.
And he went on to deny that heresy in general even exists: the only real
heresy, he said, is the belief that there is such a thing as heresy!!
The present act of the MP presupposes a very similar philosophy. It
presupposes that you can be a martyr whether you oppose the Antichrist or
submit to him, whether you confess the truth or lie through your teeth, whether
you imitate the love of Christ or the avarice of Judas. The perfect philosophy
for our lukewarm times, which have no zeal, either for or against the truth!
Now
lukewarmness is achieved when hot and cold are mixed together, so that that
which is “hot”, zeal for the faith, is deprived of its essential quality, while
that which is “cold”, hatred for the faith, is masked by an appearance of
tolerance. But the Lord abominates this attitude even more than the “cold”
hatred of the truth: “Because thou art
lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of My mouth” (Revelation
3.16).
This lukewarmness is identified, by
Archbishop Theophanes of
If the Lord Himself spews such lukewarmness out of His mouth, then so
should we. And this is what the Kaliningrad parish of ROCOR commendably does in
its epistle to the ROCOR hierarchs of November 1/14, 2000: “What throng of new
martyrs was canonized by the Moscow Patriarchate if, in that multitude, there
are ‘saints’ who fought against the Church, and who later suffered at the hands
of their masters - but not for Christ, having become, rather, victims who were
offered up upon the altar of the revolution, just as were thousands of other Bolsheviks
and liberal dreamers? A throng of new martyrs where victims and executioners,
holy martyrs and ‘Christians’ (at whose orders these new martyrs were shot and
sent to prisons and labour-camps), find themselves side by side?”
It
has been asserted by ROCOR that the glorification of the royal new martyrs by
the MP “is an initial act of repentance; hence, one of the reasons for the
division [between ROCOR and the MP] has been eliminated, for the most part.”
The problem is: an act of repentance must employ at least a few words
expressing repentance – and there is not one such word in the MP’s statements.
As Hieromonk (now Bishop) Vladimir and Protopriest (now Archbishop) Sergius write:
“Has such a thing ever been seen, that the bishops of God would anticipate and
justify heretics and schismatics in that of which the latter do not only not
think to repent, but which they even exalt to the rank and honour of ‘saving
the Church’? Throughout all history, the
Church has not known examples of impenitent behaviour being covered over by ‘love’. On the contrary, the Holy Church has always
condemned any acts of ‘glorification’ by heretics - especially those in which
true martyrs for Christ are commingled into a single whole with pseudo-martyrs
(e.g. Canons 9 and 34 of the Council of Laodicea; Canon 63 of the VIth
Ecumenical Council). At the same time,
there is no doubt of the legitimacy of the question: do heretics have a moral
and legal right, without bringing forth repentance in the
In conclusion, the MP has not only not
delivered itself from the burden of its past apostasy by its decision on the
new martyrs: it has significantly increased that burden. The early sergianists
renounced the path of confession and martyrdom and condemned those who embarked
upon it – but at least they did not change the concept of martyrdom itself. The
later sergianists, while continuing to confess heresy and persecute the
Orthodox, have added a further sin: by placing, in the spirit of ecumenism, an
equality sign between martyrdom and apostasy, they have degraded the exploits
of the true saints and presented false models for emulation.
And so they fall under the anathema of
Canon 34 of the Council of Laodicea: “No Christian shall forsake the martyrs of
Christ, and turn to false martyrs, that is, to those of the heretics, or those
who formerly were heretics; for they are aliens from God. Let those, therefore,
who go after them, be anathema.”
III. Ecumenism
Since the MP, led by KGB General Metropolitan Nikodim of
Chambésy was followed by the Seventh General Assembly of the WCC
in
On
The patriarch called on the Jews to work together with the Christians to
build “the new world order”…[24]
In March, 1992, the heads of the Local Orthodox Churches, including
Patriarch Alexis, met in Constantinople and issued a communiqué in which
they officially renounced proselytism in the Christian countries of the West
(point 4), thereby demonstrating the main consequence of ecumenism for the
heretics: a ban on their entry into the Orthodox Church even if they repent! …
Fr. Nicholas Savchenko has summed up the
nature of the MP’s immersion in ecumenism as follows: “In an inter-confessional
undertaking there are two degrees of participation. One case is participation
with the authority of a simple observer, that is, of one who does not enter
into the composition, but is only an observer from the side. It is another case
when we are talking about fully-entitled membership in an ecumenical
organization.
“Unfortunately, at the present time the
ROC MP takes part in the activity of the WCC precisely as a fully-entitled
member of the Council. It is precisely on this problem that I consider it
important to concentrate attention. After all, it is the membership of the ROC
MP in the WCC which most of all, willingly or unwillingly, encroaches upon the
teaching of the faith itself and therefore continues to remain an obstacle to
our [ROCOR’s] communion [with the MP]. It is possible to list a series of
reasons why membership in the WCC is becoming such an obstacle.
“1. The first important reason consists in
the fact that the ROC MP today remains in the composition of the highest
leadership of the WCC and takes part in the leadership, planning and financing
of the whole of the work of the WCC.
“Official representatives of the ROC MP
enter into the Central Committee of the WCC. The Central Committee is the organ
of the Council’s administration. It defines the politics of the WCC, make
official declarations relating to the teaching of the faith and gives moral evaluations
of various phenomena of contemporary life within those limites given to it by
the church-members. The composition of the last CC of the WCC was elected at
the WCC assembly in
“Besides participating in the CC, the
representatives of the MP go into the make-up of the Executive Committee of the
WCC, one of whose tasks is the direct leadership of the whole apparatus of the
Council and the organization of all its undertakings. There are 24 people in
the official list of the members of the Executive Committee of the WCC,
including the MP’s representative Bishop Hilarion (Alfeyev). Besides him, there
are representatives of the Constantinopolitan Patriarchate, the Romanian
Patriarchate and the American Autocephaly in the Executive Committee of the
WCC. The last session of the Executive Committee with the participation of
representatives of the MP took place at the end of August, 2003. At this last
session a new ‘Committee for Prayer’ was formed. It was to occupy itself with
the preparation of the text and rite of ecumenical prayers. There are 10 people
in all in this committee, including a representative of the MP, Fr. Andrew
Eliseev. Besides, the deputy president of the ‘Committee for Prayer’ is a
Protestant woman priest. Because of this participation the ROC MP is inevitably
responsible for all the decisions of the WCC that contradict the dogmatic and
moral teaching of the Orthodox Church.
“2. The second reason for the
incompatibility of membership of the WCC with the canons of the Church consists
in the fact that the regulations of the Council presuppose the membership in it
not of individual person-representatives, but precisely of the whole
“In correspondence with the Basis of the
WCC, it is a ‘
“Such an understanding of membership in
the WCC as the membership of the whole Orthodox Church is contained in the
documents on the part of the Local Churches. For example, we can cite the
following quotation from the document ‘The Orthodox Church and the World
Council of Churches’. This document was accepted at the session of the
inter-Orthodoxy Consultation in 1991 in Chambésy. It says in point 4:
‘The Orthodox Churches participate in the life and activity of the WCC only on
condition that the WCC is understood as a ‘Council of Churches’, and not as a
council of separate people, groups, movements or religious organizations drawn
into the aims and tasks of the WCC…’ (Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate,
1992, ¹ 1, p. 62).
“Such an
understanding of the membership of the whole of the Orthodox Church in the WCC
was earlier officially confirmed by the Pan-Orthodox Conferences. Thus the
Pan-Orthodox Conference of 1968 formulated its relationship with the WCC in the
following words: ‘To express the common consciousness of the Orthodox Church
that it is an organic member of the WCC and her firm decision to bring her
contribution to the progress of the whole work of the WCC through all the means
at her disposal, theological and other.’ (Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate,
1968, ¹ 7, p. 51). The following, Third Pre-Conciliar Pan-Orthodox Conference
confirmed this formulation in the same sense in the Russian translation. ‘The
Orthodox Church is a complete and fully-entitled member of the WCC and by all
the means at her disposal will aid the development and success of the whole
work of the WCC’ (Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, 1987, ¹ 7, p. 53).
Although these formulations elicited disturbances at the time, nevertheless
they have not been changed to the present day, insofar as only the
“From what
has been said it turns out that membership in the WCC is not simply observation
of the activity of the Council. Membership is precisely becoming a part of the
ecumenical commonwealth. The ROC MP must not be a member of the WCC since this
signifies becoming a member of the ecumenical movement.
“3. The
third reason why membership in the WCC contradicts Orthodoxy is that membership
inevitably signifies agreement with the constitutional principles of the WCC
and its rules. For example, it says in the Constitution of the WCC (chapter 3)
that the Council is created by the church-members to serve the ecumenical
movement. Does this mean that the church-members must, or obliged in their
fullness, to serve the ecumenical movement? It appears so. Further the
Constitution of the WCC (chapter 3) describes the obligations of those entering
the Council of churches in the following words: ‘In the search for communion in
faith and life, preaching and service, the churches through the Council will…
facilitate common service in every place and everywhere and… cultivate
ecumenical consciousness’. From these words it follows directly that common
preaching with the Protestants is becoming a constitutional obligation of the
Orthodox Church. Obligations still more foreign to Orthodoxy are contained in
the Rules of the WCC – a separate document that directly regulates the
obligations of those entering into the Council of churches. Chapter 2 of the
Rules of the WCC is called ‘Responsibilities of membership’. The following
lines are found in it. ‘Membership in the WCC means… devotion to the ecumenical
movement as a constitutive element of the mission of the Church. It is
presupposed that the church-members of the WCC… encourage ecumenical links and
actions at all levels of their ecclesiastical life’. These words of the Rules
of the WCC oblige the Orthodox Church to perceive the contemporary ecumenical
movement with all its gross heresies and moral vices as a part of the life of
the Orthodox Church.
“One more
important constitutional document is the declaration ‘Towards a common
understanding and vision of the WCC’. This document was accepted by the Central
Committee of the WCC in 1997 with the participation of representatives of the
Local Churches. It also contains views which are incompatible with the Orthodox
teaching on the Church. In the first place this concerns how we are to
understanding the term that is the cornerstone of the Basis of the WCC, that
the Council is a ‘
“The most
important document of the WCC having a constitutional significance continues to
remain the
“From what
has been said we can draw the conclusion that membership in the WCC presupposes
agreement with its constitutional principles, which contradict Orthodoxy. The
ROC MP should not be a member of an organization whose constitutional
principles contradict Orthodoxy… “[25]
However, from the 1990s the anti-ecumenist teaching of ROCOR was
beginning to make inroads into
Proponents of the ROCOR-MP unia have attempted to make much of the
Jubilee 2000 Council’s document on relations with the heterodox, which was
composed by a small group of bishops and presented to the Council for approval
on the first day. In this document a few concessions were made to the opponents
of ecumenism, such as: “the Orthodox Church is the true
However, wrote Protopriest Michael Ardov, “the ‘patriarchal liberals’
will also not be upset, insofar as the heretics in the cited document are
called ‘heterodox’, while the Monophysite communities are called the ‘Eastern
Orthodox Churches’. And the ‘dialogues with the heterodox’ will be continued,
and it is suggested that the World Council of Churches be not abandoned, but
reformed…”[27]
Although there has been much talk about anti-ecumenism in the MP, as in
the Serbian Church, it is significant that only one bishop, Barsanuphius of
Vladivostok, voted against the document on relations with the heterodox (six
Ukrainian bishops abstained).
The MP’s Fr. (now Bishop) Hilarion
(Alfeyev) explained the origins of the document on ecumenism: “The subject of
inter-Christian relations has been used by various groups (within the Church)
as a bogey in partisan wars. In particular, it has been used to criticise
Church leaders who, as is well known, have taken part in ecumenical activities
over many years.” In Alfeyev’s opinion, “ecumenism has also been used by
breakaway groups, such as the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad and the Old
Calendarists, to undermine people’s trust in the Church.” Therefore there was a
need “for a clear document outlining the theological basis of the Russian
Orthodox Church’s attitude towards heterodoxy, i.e. the question of why we need
and whether we need dialogue with the non-Orthodox confessions, and if so which
form this dialogue should take.” Alfeyev refused to answer the question whether
the Council would discuss the matter of the participation of the MP in the WCC,
but said that the patriarchate felt obliged to continue negotiations with
Protestant and Catholic representatives in the WCC and to be a part of the
ecumenical committee.[28]
After the Council, there was no let-up in
the MP’s ecumenical activities. Thus on
All this heretical activity falls directly under the anathema against
ecumenism hurled by the ROCOR in 1983 and confirmed by it in 1998; and there is
no doubt that if it were to join the MP now, ROCOR would not only fall under
the anathemas of the Ecumenical and Pan-Orthodox Councils against a whole
series of heresies, but also under its own 1983 anathema…
Conclusion
We can see from the above that not only have the main conditions posed
by ROCOR for union with the MP at the beginning of the 1990s – rejection of
Sergianism, glorification of the Holy New Martyrs and rejection of Ecumenism –
not been met: they are nowhere near to being met. Even the MP’s supposed
glorification of the New Martyrs amounts more to their degradation than their
glorification, and involves an understanding of martyrdom and the confession of
the faith that amounts to a new heresy! By the criteria ROCOR has set herself,
and leaving aside other important issues not discussed here (e.g. relations
with other True Orthodox Churches, the betrayal of ROCOR members inside Russia
who fled to ROCOR from the MP, the extreme moral corruption of the MP
hierarchy, the political demands that will be imposed on ROCOR once inside the
MP, etc.), ROCOR should not join the
MP.
“Can two walk together unless they be agreed?” asks the Prophet Amos
(3.3). The answer is clearly: no; for
unity, for the Orthodox Christian, must be founded on unity in the truth and on no other basis. If,
on the other hand, we mould our understanding of the truth in accordance with
our need for some emotional or national or political unity, then we fall into
that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit of Truth, union with Whom is the whole
aim of the Christian life.
If ROCOR does join the MP, she will fall under a whole series of
fearsome anathemas: the anathemas against the heretics of the World Council
Churches, including ROCOR’s own anathema of 1983; the anathemas against
Bolshevism and those who cooperate with it (for there can be no doubt now that
Putin’s Russia is the successor of the Soviet Union); the anathema against
renovationism (of which Sergianism is the heir); the anathemas of the Catacomb
Church against the Sergianists; and the anathema against those who “forsake the
martyrs of Christ, and turn to false martyrs” (whose crown, undoubtedly, will
be the Russian Judas Metropolitan Sergius himself). Nor should the vainglorious
thought that ROCOR within the MP can influence it to the better be taken
seriously: ROCOR could influence the MP only when she was outside it and criticising it from a position of real independence.
Once inside, she will simply be the salt that has lost its savour, of which the
Lord of the Church said that “it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be
cast out, and to be trodden under the foot of men” (Matthew 5.13).
Vladimir Moss.
March 18/31, 2006.
St. Edward the
Martyr, King of
[1] Letter of Metropolitan Cyril to
Hieromonk Leonid, February 23 / March 8, 1937, Pravoslavnaia Rus’, ¹ 16, August 15/28, 1997, p. 7 ®.
[2] Karpov, in Edward E. Roslof, Red
Priests: Renovationism, Russian Orthodoxy, and Revolution, 1905-1946,
[3] See Metropolitan John (Snychev)
of
[4] Roslof, op. cit., p. 196.
[5] 30 Dias (Thirty Days), Rome/Sao
Paolo, August-September, 1991, p. 23.
[6] Kozyrev, “[orthodox-synod] Re:
The Orthodox Episcopate of the Russian persecuted Church”, orthodox-synod@yahoogroups.com.
[7] Quoted by Anatoly Krasikov,
"'Tretij Rim' i bolsheviki (bez grifa 'sovershenno sekretno')" (The
Third Rome and the Bolsheviks), in Filatov, S.B. (ed.), Religia i prava
cheloveka (Religion and Human Rights),
[8] Iubilejnij Arkhierejskij
Sobor Russkoj pravoslavnoj tserkvi. Moskva 13-16 avgusta 2000 goda (The Jubilee
Hierarchical Council of the Russian Orthodox Church,
[9] Protopriest Vladimir Savitsky,
Hieromonk Valentine (Salomakh) and Deacon Nicholas Savchenko, “Pis’mo iz
Sankt-Peterburga” (Letter from
[10]
http://www.ripnet.org/besieged/rparocora.htm?
[11] Moskovskij Tserkovnij Vestnik
(
[12] Gundiaev, in Vertograd-Inform,
¹ 504, February 2, 2005 ®.
[13] Pravoslavie ili
Smert’ (Orthodoxy or Death), ¹ 8, 1998 ®.
[14] Quoted in Fr. Alexey Young, The Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia,
[15] Archbishop Anthony of
[16] Ardov, “The ‘Jubilee Council’
has confirmed it: the Moscow Patriarchate has finally fallen away from
Orthodoxy” (Report read at the 8th Congress of the clergy, monastics
and laity of the Suzdal diocese of the Russian Orthodox [Autonomous] Church,
November, 2000) ®.
[17] Kanaev,
“Obraschenie k pervoierarkhu RPTsZ” (Address to the First Hierarch of ROCOR),
in Otkliki, op. cit., part 2, Paris, 2001, pp. 3-4 ; Iubilejnij
Arkhierejskij Sobor (Jubilee Hierarchical Council), op. cit., pp.
43, 44. ®.
[18] "Ierei o.
Oleg otvechaet na voprosy redaktsiii" (The Priest Fr. Oleg Replies to the
Questions of the Editors), Pravoslavnaia Rus' (Orthodox Russia), ¹ 23
(1452), December 1/14, 1991, p. 7 ®.
[19] Quoted by Fr. Peter Perekrestov,
“The Schism in the Heart of
[20] Perekrestov, "Why Now?"
Orthodox Life, vol. 44, ¹
6, November-December, 1994, p. 44. It is open to question whether the
patriarchate's canonisation of even the true martyrs is pleasing to God. Thus
when 50 patriarchal bishops uncovered the relics of Patriarch Tikhon in the Donskoj
cemetery on
[21] Perekrestov, “Why Now?” op.
cit., p. 43.
[22] Pis’ma Arkhiepiskopa Feofana Poltavskogo i Pereyaslavskogo (The Letters
of Archbishop Theophanes of
[23] Christian News, April 1
and 8, 1991; reprinted in "Ecumenism down under", Orthodox
Christian Witness, vol. XXIV, ¹ 45 (1149), August 5/18, 1991, p. 3; Keston
News Service, ¹ 370, March 7, 1991, p. 2.
[24] Rech’ Patriarkha Aleksea II k
rabbinam g. Nyu Yorka (S.Sh.A.) i Eres’ Zhidovstvuyushchikh, (The Speech of
Patriarch Alexis II to the Rabbis of
[25] Savchenko, “Tserkov’ v Rossii i
‘Vsemirnij Soviet Tserkvej” (The Church in
[26] Igumen Gregory Lourié, “O
natsionalizatsii prekrasnogo. Mysli po povodu IX General’noj Assemblei VSTs (On
the Nationalization of the Beautiful. Thought on the 9th General
Assembly of the WCC), http://portal-credo.ru/site/print.php?act=comment&id=924
®.
[27] Ardov, op. cit.
[28] Church News, vol. 12, ¹ 6
(88), July-August, 2000, p. 8. Alfeyev had already shown his ecumenist colours
in his book, The Mystery of Faith (first published in
[29] Associated Press,