Vladimir Moss
© Vladimir Moss
CONTENTS
Foreword…………………………………………………………………..…..…...………4
1. Where is the Moscow
Patriarchate Going?…………………………………………5
2. The Significance of the Catacomb
Church in Contemporary Russia……….…15
3. The Free Russian Orthodox
Church: A Short History (1982-1998)……………..28
4. The Sergianist Conquest of
Jerusalem………………………………………..…...69
5. The Right Way to Resist
Apostasy……………………………………….….……..82
6. The Church that Stalin
Built………………………………………………………...87
7. The MP’s Canonisation of the
New Martyrs of Russia…………………...……..91
8. When did the MP
Apostasise?…………………………………………………….106
9. Empire or Antichrist? Or: On
Ecclesiastical Stalinism…………………………118
10. Two Robber Councils: A Short
Analysis……………………………………….129
11. The Tragedy of the Russian
Orthodox Church Abroad…...….………………140
12. Orthodoxy, the State and
Russian Statehood…………………………………..150
13. In Search of Never-Lost
Russia…………………………………………………..188
14. Can the Leopard Change his
Spots?……………………………………….…….215
15. Lazarus Saturday, the Chicago Diocese
and the Moscow Patriarchate……..227
APPENDICES
2. Comrade Drozdov – the Thief of
Hebron (Eugene Sokolov)……………….241
3. Patriarch Alexis II as a Church Figure (Hierodeacon
Theophan)…………..245
4. The Angel of the Philadelphian Church (Tatiana
Senina)…………………255
5. Open Letter to the Holy Synod of the
Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church (Vladimir Moss)……………………………………………………………….……..286
FOREWORD
This book is a
collection of articles written during the last fifteen years on the crisis
enveloping the Russian Orthodox Church.
As the Soviet Union began to collapse in
1989-1990, its faithful ecclesiastical slave, the Sovietised Moscow
Patriarchate, also began to break up. The Catacomb or True Orthodox Church,
which had always refused to recognise Soviet power or its “Soviet church”,
emerged from the underground, and the Russian Church Abroad created parishes on
Russian soil into which both “catacombniks” and former members of the
patriarchate entered. It was a time of great hope for the resurrection of
Russian Orthodoxy.
Tragically, those hopes have not been
fulfilled. From the mid-1990s, and especially since KGB colonel Putin’s rise to
power in 2000, the MP has recovered its position in society while its opponents
have warred amongst themselves and fragmented. Most recently, the Russian
Church Abroad led by Metropolitan Lavr has started negotiations for entering
into union with the MP, thereby reversing the ecclesiastical course of his
predecessors, Metropolitans Philaret and Vitaly. These essays reflect that
process by one who participated in it both inside and outside Russia.
Since writing these essays, I have changed
my attitude towards some of the church figures mentioned in them. However, I
have decided to make only minor editorial changes to the texts, insofar as I
believe the arguments set out in them remain valid.
Although the picture here drawn may be
depressing, the purpose of this book is constructive. It is hoped and believed
that by studying the history of the last 15 years, we, the True Orthodox
Christians of Russia may repent of our sins and learn from our mistakes and
unite again on a firm basis of faith and love. Then, through the prayers of the
Holy New Martyrs and Confessors, Holy Russia will rise again from the ashes of
the present neo-Soviet catastrophe, to the glory of Christ and the salvation of
very many throughout the world!
East
House, Beech Hill, Mayford, Woking, Surrey, England.
May
31 / June 13, 2004.
Sunday
of All Saints of Russia.
1.
WHERE IS THE MOSCOW PATRIARCHATE GOING?
Can
two walk together if they are not in agreement with each other?
Amos
3.3.
Forty years ago, the well-known scientist
and theologian, Professor Ivan Andreyev, who had been a confessor of the faith
in the Solovki camps, posed the question: does the Moscow Patriarchate have
grace – that is, the grace of true and valid sacraments? After a thorough
examination of the question from a dogmatical and canonical point of view, he
gave a clear and categorical reply: no.[1] It
goes without saying that the majority of Russian Orthodox Christians today do
not agree with this judgement. However, many believers, especially from the
intelligentsia, now agree that during the Stalin period the Moscow Patriarchate
underwent a very serious fall, a sickness close to death, from which it must
recover if the Russian Church is destined to survive. The aim of this article is to pose the
question: has anything changed in the last 40 years that would force us to
return again to the question of the status of the Moscow Patriarchate. In other
words: has the Moscow Patriarchate recovered from its fall, is it beginning to
get better, or is this sickness incurable?
Let us look at Andreyev’s main
argument. In 1927 the Moscow
Patriarchate under the leadership of Metropolitan Sergius declared that the
joys of the Soviet government are the joys of the Church, and its failures –
the failures of the Church, and entered into a pact with the government,
condemning and persecuting all those who refused to recognize Sergius and his
declaration. In the opinion of Andreyev, this was the sin of Judas who betrayed
Christ, in the given instance the betrayal of His Body on earth, the Church,
into the hands of His worst enemies. This sin, in the words of Hieromartyr
Victor, Bishop of Glazo, was “worse than heresy”; it was complete apostasy.
Moreover, sin his Holiness Patriarch Tikhon had anathematised the Soviet
government in 1918, the Moscow Patriarchate was now bound by this anathema; for
the text of the anathema clearly forbade the children of the Church from having
anything to do with the condemned government.
It
is necessary to emphasise that this opinion was shared by almost all the
leaders of the Russian Church who rejected the declaration of Metropolitan
Sergius. Thus on July 22, 1928 (Old Calendar), Metropolitan Anthony
(Khrapovitsky) of Kiev declared that the hierarchs of the Moscow Patriarchate
were apostates and had to be submitted to the same canonical punishments as the
apostates of ancient times, the libellatici – that is, fifteen years’
deprivation of communion after their repentance and return to the Church.
Within Russia, one of the leaders of the Catacomb Church who admitted that the
sergianist church might still have grace was Metropolitan Cyril of Kazan: “The
sacraments performed by the sergianists who have been correctly ordained are
undoubtedly saving sacraments for those who receive them with faith and
simplicity, without reasonings and doubts about their validity, and who even do
not suspect anything wrong in the sergianist organization of the Church.” But
at the same time Cyril pointed out that “they serve for the condemnation of
those who perform them and of those who approach them well understanding the
unrighteousness existing in sergianism and who by their non-resistance to it
reveal a criminal indifference to the mocking of the Church. That is why it is
necessary for an Orthodox bishop or priest to refrain from communion with the
sergianists in prayer. The same
necessity exists for those laymen who have a conscious attitude towards all the
details of Church life.”[2]
Four main changes have taken place since
that time. First, the attitude of most of the foreign Orthodox Churches has
changed towards the Moscow Patriarchate. This was noticeable already in 1945,
when representatives of other foreign Churches were present at the enthronement
of Patriarch Alexis.
The question is: did these foreign
hierarchs sanctify the hierarchs of the Moscow Patriarchate by their presence,
or, on the contrary, were they defiled by it? The Apostle Paul says: “Do not
become a participant in the sins of others; keep yourself in purity” (I
Timothy 5.22). In 1945 the other foreign Churches became participants in
the sins of the Moscow Patriarchate. One should not forget that in 1923 the
Constantinopolitan Patriarchate entered into communion with the “Living
Church”, which had been anathematised by Patriarch Tikhon. This communion did
not sanctify the “Living Church”, but only condemned the Constantinopolitan
Patriarchate.
One must also not forget how Stalin
rewarded the patriarchs who supported the Moscow Patriarchate in 1945. As V.
Alexeyev informs us on the pages of the journal of the Central Committee of the
CPSS, Agitator (¹
10, 1989): ”The order was given to hand over 42 objects from the vaults of the
Moscow museums and 28 from the Zagorsk state museum, mainly objects of Orthodox
worship, which were used as gifts to the Eastern Patriarchs… Thus, for example,
Patriarch Christopher of Alexandria was given a golden panagia with
precious stones, a gold cross with precious stones, a full set of hierarchical
vestments of gold brocade, a mitre with precious stones… Naturally, a response
was expected from the patriarchs, and they did not tarry to express the main
thing – eulogies… Patriarch Christopher of Alexandria said: ‘Marshall Stalin…
under whose leadership military operations are being conducted on an
unprecedented scale, is aided in his task by an abundance of Divine grace and
blessing…’
Secondly,
the Catacomb Church, which was flourishing during the 1930s and during the war,
has suffered serious losses. Catacomb bishops in the camps had to choose:
either accept Patriarch Alexis or be executed. Unfortunately, some of them
chose the easier path. Since then, although the Catacomb Church has continued
to exist[3],
her influence on the broad masses of people has been limited.
Of course,
this is does not justify the Moscow Patriarchate. Even if every single true
bishop in the Soviet Union with to die or be killed, this would not make
apostates into Orthodox. St. Seraphim of Sarov prophesied that the bishops of
the Russian Church would depart from the true faith; he said that he had prayed
fervently for them for several days, but the Lord had refused to have mercy on
them. This prophecy is printed in the Divine service books of the Moscow
Patriarchate like the writing on the wall of the palace o the Babylonian King
Balthasar (Daniel 5). Before the revolution St. John of Kronstadt said
that it was quite possible that the whole of the Russian Church would fall away
from the truth. This had happened to such famous Churches as the Roman and
Carthaginian, and it could happen again in Russia. The Lord said that the gates
of hell would not prevail against the Church (Matt. 16.18). But He did
not say where, or in what country. “The Spirit breathes were It wants, and you
hear Its voice, and do not know where it is coming from or where it is going” (John
3.8). Grace can leave us easily and very quickly. In the early Church a bishop
was thought to lose grace if he simply handed over the books of the Church to
the persecutors of the Church. And in the Greek Church under the Turkish yoke
many Christians sought martyrdom in order to wipe out the sin of their youth,
when they had been forced to accept Islam and thereby fell away from the faith.
Thirdly,
since 1960 the Moscow Patriarchate has joined the ecumenical movement and now de
facto recognizes the mysteries of all the heretical churches that are
living parts of the ecumenical movement and the World Council of Churches: that
is, the Monophysite churches in the East, and the Roman Catholic and Protestant
churches. True, the Moscow Patriarchate sometimes criticizes the Protestant formulations
of the WCC; but this does not prevent her representatives from praying with
Protestants, and the Protestant Pastor Billy Graham was invited to preach in an
Orthodox cathedral in Moscow. The Moscow Patriarchate has deliberately not
followed the recent decision of the Jerusalem Patriarchate to stop these
ecumenical activities.[4]
Recently
the ecumenical movement entered a new phase of “super-ecumenism”, in which it
seeks closer links with non-Christian religions. And the Moscow Patriarchate
had accepted this form of ecumenism also. Thus Metropolitan Philaret of Kiev
was present at the “prayers for peace” in Assisi, Italy in 1986 at which were
present not only the Pope of Rome and the Anglican Primate, but also the Dalai
Lama (who considers himself a god) and North American worshippers of the snake.
Again, Metropolitan Pitirim of Volokolamsk, the head of the publications
department of the Moscow Patriarchate, has recently made the following
sensational declaration on Soviet television: “When I shall have my own
publishing press, I shall publish the Koran according to the most ancient
manuscripts belonging to the disciples of the Prophet Mohammed, and I shall
give it to the Soviet Muslims.” One should note that the publications
department of the Moscow Patriarchate has not published a single Orthodox
catechism or theological textbook for mass consumption in the whole history of
its existence.[5]
The
apostolic canons threaten a bishop or priest who prays with heretics or who
recognizes their sacraments (not to speak of the ‘sacred writings’ of the
non-Christian religions) with defrockment. Moreover, ecumenism has been
condemned by the Fathers of Holy Athos, the True Orthodox Church of Greece and
the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. This means that if until 1960 the Moscow
Patriarchate was a schismatic and apostate organization, now it is also
heretical.
Fourthly,
the Soviet government has changed its position of open hatred for the Church
for a neutral position – although, in the opinion of many, this change is
temporary and superficial. However, the question arises: how can a political
change influence the status of a Church in the eyes of God? If the Moscow
Patriarchate before Gorbachev was an apostate and heretical organization, then
the coming to power of such a liberal as Gorbachev has changed the situation
only in one respect: for the apostate organization it has become easier and
less dangerous to repent. If, however, repentance is not forthcoming, this
deprives the Moscow Patriarchate of its last possible excuse. For in essence
political changes have nothing to do with Church matters; they only change the
external framework within which the living, internal battle between truth and
falsehood, righteousness and sin, is carried on.
But the
patriarchate, someone may object, is not made up only of hierarchs. There are
also the priests and laity, who are against the cowardly politics of the
bishops, who have expressed themselves against the subjection of the Church to
the God-fighting state, and who have been imprisoned for their faith – for
example, Fr. Gleb Yakunin and the philosopher Boris Talantov, who called the
patriarchate “an agent of worldwide antichristianity”. Can one condemn the
patriarchate as a whole if amongst its members there are such undoubtedly
courageous people?
It is not
our business to condemn persons. Our business is only to determine where the
True Church is. And in order to answer this question, we have to ask: can a
priest or layman be Orthodox while his bishop is a heretic? The unambiguous
reply of Church consciousness is: no. We Christians are rational sheep, and our
duty is to use our reason in order to determine whether our pastor is a true
pastor or a hireling, or something still worse – a wolf in a shepherd’s
clothing. In the words of the Lord, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them,
and they follow after Me” (John 10.37). But those who follow after
apostates will be devoured by wolves.
The Church
is the Body of Christ, and the eyes of the body, according to St. Gregory the
Theologian, are the bishops. If the eyes are in darkness, as the Lord says,
“then the whole body will be in darkness” (Matt. 6.23; Luke
11.34). Therefore if, in the words of the Lord, “thine eye offends thee”, -
that is, if your bishop is a heretic, “pull it out and cast it away” (Matt.
18.9).
St. Basil
the Great says that it is better not to have a bishop than to have a false one.
Why? Because, as St. John Chrysostom says, he who communes with one who has
been excommunicated from the Church is himself excommunicated; and as Saints
John of Damascus and Theodore the Studite say, those in communion with heretics
are themselves heretics, even they personally do not agree with their heretical
leaders. This follows from the integral character of the Church in which we all
– bishops, priests and laity – have the right and duty to check out the
genuineness of our bishops’ confession of faith.
This was
the teaching of the Eastern Patriarchs in their Epistle of 1848, which was
directly mainly against the Roman Catholic teaching. For according to
Catholicism, all power and responsibility rests only on the Pope, who must
therefore be infallible, otherwise the whole Church would fall together with
him. But in Orthodoxy there are no infallible bishops, just as there are no
irresponsible priests or laity.
It follows
that Zoya Krakhmalnikova is wrong when she writes: “We are not responsible for
Sergius’ declaration, for there is no collective guarantee in the Church”.[6]
There is a collective guarantee in the Church, which is called love.
Love is the blood of the Body of Christ which circulates throughout the body
“that there should be no divisions in the body, but that all the members of it
should have the same care for each other. Therefore if one members suffers, all
the members suffer with him: if one member is glorified, all the members
rejoice with him. And you are the Body of Christ and members in particular” (I
Cor. 12.25-27).
Therefore
if a bishop is a heretic, the priest who represents him during the Divine
Liturgy confesses heresy, and the laity who commune enter into communion with
heresy. In such a situation the Canons of the Church say that every Christian
can break communion with the heretic even before a Synod of bishops has
condemned him (15th Canon of the First-and-Second Council of
Constantinople, 861). For the Lord says: “If the blind lead the blind, they
both fall into a pit” (Matt. 15.14). And St. John the Apostle writes in
his second Epistle (2.20): “You have an anointing from the Holy One and you all
have knowledge.” If we all have knowledge, we all bear responsibility, and will
answer for how we have used that knowledge at the Terrible Judgement.
But the Moscow Patriarchate has replaced
this teaching on the Church with a purely Roman Catholic teaching. As Sergius
Ventsel writes: “If
Metropolitan Sergius was ruled, not by personal avarice, but by a mistaken
understanding of what was for the benefit of the Church, then it was evident
that the theological foundation of such an understanding was mistaken, and even
constituted a heresy concerning the Church herself and her activity in the
world. We may suppose that these ideas were very close to the idea of the Filioque:
since the Spirit proceeds not only from the Father, but also from the Son, that
means that the vicar of the Son… can dispose of the Spirit, so that the Spirit
acts through Him ex opere operato.. It follows necessarily that he who
performs the sacraments of the Church, ‘the minister of the sacrament’, must
automatically be ‘infallible’, for it is the infallible Spirit of God Who works
through him and is inseparable from him… However, this Latin schema of the
Church is significantly inferior to the schema and structure created by
Metropolitan Sergius. In his schema there is no Council, or it is replaced by a
formal assembly for the confirmation of decisions that have already been taken
– on the model of the congresses of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
“The place of the Council in his structure
of the Church is taken by something lacking in the Latins’ scheme – Soviet
power, loyalty to which becomes in the nature of a dogma… This scheme became
possible because it was prepared by Russian history. But if the Orthodox tsar
and the Orthodox procurator to some extent constituted a ‘small Council’, which
in its general direction did not contradict… the mind-set of the majority of
believers, with the change in world-view of those came to the helm of Soviet
power this scheme acquired a heretical character, since the decisions of the
central ecclesiastical authorities, which were associated in the minds of the
people with the will of the Spirit of God, came to be determined neither by a
large nor by a small Council, but by the will of those who wanted to annihilate
the very idea of God (the official aim of the second ‘godless’ five-year-plan
was to make the people forget even the word ‘God’). Thus at the source of the
Truth, instead of the revelation of the will of the Holy Spirit, a deadly poison
was substituted… The Moscow Patriarchate, in entrusting itself to the evil,
God-fighting will of the Bolsheviks instead of the conciliar will of the
Spirit, showed itself to be an image of the terrible deception of unbelief in
the omnipotence and Divinity of Christ, Who alone can save and preserve the
Church and Who gave the unlying promise that ‘the gates of hell will not
overcome her’… The substitution of this faith by vain hope in one’s own human
powers as being able to save the Church in that the Spirit works through them,
is not in accord with the canons and Tradition of the Church, but ex opere
operato proceeds from the ‘infallible’ top of the hierarchical structure.”[7]
One can often hear another argument. Let
us concede that our hierarchs are apostates. Nevertheless, we must not break
communion with them for the sake of the unity of the Church and the unity of
the Russian land. But we must remember that the unity of the Russian Church was
destroyed already in 1927 by Metropolitan Sergius and his Moscow Patriarchate,
which strengthened this satanic deed by betrayal and the shedding of the blood
of the best representatives of the Russian land. For, as Sergius Ventsel
writes, “by the hands of the same Metropolitan Sergius the truly free and
canonical Catacomb Church, which was close to victory over the beast, was
almost destroyed and deprived of the possibility of witnessing.”[8]
Therefore we have to ask ourselves the question: is it possible to preserve the
unity of the Church through unity with the destroyers of that unity? What kind
of unity would that be?
Not any kind of unity, says St. Gregory
the Theologian, is a good unity. There is the unity of thieves and murderers.
And the Synod of the Russian Church Abroad recently declared that the strength
of the Church does not consist in it’s the integrity of its external
organization, but in the unity in faith and love of her devoted children.
So what does the unity of the Moscow
Patriarchate mean, and on what is it based? This false unity is based on a lie
– the most terrible lie about the good of communism, on the non-existence of
persecutions, on the so-called political crimes of the martyrs of Christ, and
on fear – that is, the fear to remain alone, in the desert, without support
from the authorities of this world. But the Apostle says: “God has not given us
a spirit of fear” (II Tim. 1.7). And now in the Ukraine, the former
bastion of the Moscow Patriarchate, this false unity, strengthened not be the
grace of God but by the weapons of the antichristian government, is falling
apart with amazing swiftness. For, as the Lord says, “every city or house that
is divided within itself will not stand” (Matt. 12.25).
Let us return to the words of the Apostle:
God gave us “the spirit not of fear, but of strength, of love and of chastity”.
In fact, the strength of one man in the truth is very great. St. Maximus the
Confessor was a simple monk, but he said: “Even if the whole world enters into
communion with the heretical patriarch, I will never do so.” And several years
later, the Orthodox world, which almost completely fallen into the heresy of
Monothelitism, recognized that St. Maximus had been right. One more example: in
1439 all the Orthodox hierarchs signed a unia with Rome at the false council of
Florence – except for one, St. Mark, Metropolitan of Ephesus. When the Pope
heard that St. Mark had not signed the unia, he said: “In that case we have
achieved nothing.” And indeed, when the apostate hierarchs returned home, the
people rejected them, so great was the authority of St. Mark. The Russian
people also rejected the leader of their Church and their representative at the
false council, Metropolitan Isidore, who later became a cardinal in Rome. For
“there is no insufficiency in the guard of the Lord, and with it there is no
need to seek help” (Sirach 40.27).
God has given us “the spirit of love”. But
what does true love mean? Love, according to the word of God, signifies the
keeping and carrying out of the commandments of Christ (Wisdom 6.17; John
14.23; II John 6). St. Photius the Great says that the greatest act of
love is the confession of the truth. Only he loves who is in the truth.
But love which consists in hiding the
truth from each other is not love, but in the best case sentimentality, and in
the worst – cowardice and cruelty. St. Paul says that even if we give all our
property to the poor and our bodies to be burned, but do not have true love,
then all our efforts are in vain (I Cor. 13). For an external act of
self-sacrifice and heroism can conceal an inner lie. St. John Chrysostom says
that even the blood of martyrdom cannot wash out the sin of schism from the
True Church, which is the sin against love.[9]
The Moscow Patriarchate is in schism. Her hierarchs have broken all ties of
love with their brothers who departed into the catacombs, with their brothers
who were forced to emigrate, with Saints Vladimir and Olga and Sergius of
Radonezh, who created the unity of the Russian land, with Saints Alexander
Nevsky, Jonah and Hermogen, who defended the Russian land against heresy, and
with Saints Seraphim of Sarov, John of Kronstadt and Tikhon of Moscow, who
clearly called the Soviet government antichristian.
The Holy Scriptures teach us that we are
saved through faith, but that “faith without works is dead” (James
2.17). What is the first, most basic work of faith? Let Abraham, “the father of
the faithful”, show us: “And the Lord said to Abraham: Depart from thy land,
and thy kindred and the house of thy father, and to the land which I will show
thee… And Abraham went, as the Lord told him” (Gen. 12.1, 4). In other
words, the first work of faith is obedience to the command of God to leave
one’s country, Babylon, the community of the apostates. Abraham was not shown
where he had to go. But God had prepared for him not only the promised land,
but also a priest, Melchizedek, who was higher than all the priests of the Old
Testament, and descendants who would number Christ Himself, the incarnate Son
of God.
God calls us, too, to leave the “spiritual
Babylon”, the community of the apostates, leave the whore, that is, the false
church, who sits on the red beast, that is, communism, drinking “the blood of
the saints and the blood of the witnesses of Jesus” (Rev. 17.6). Then
God will receive us. For “come out from among them and be separate, says the
Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you” (II Cor.
6.17). And again: “Come out from her, My people, that ye be not partakers of
her sins” (Rev. 18.4). “Let us go forth therefore unto Him outside the
camp, bearing His reproach. For here we have no continuing city, but seek one
to come” (Heb. 13.13, 14).
Moscow.
January
22 / February 4, 1990.
Sunday
of the Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.
(First
published in Russian in Vestnik Khristianskago Informatsionnago Tsentra,
¹ 19, March 6, 1990, pp.
9-14, and reprinted in Pravoslavnaia Rus’, ¹ 8, 1990, pp. 9-12)
2. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CATACOMB CHURCH IN
CONTEMPORARY RUSSIA
Elder
Ambrose of Optina once wrote that when the Russian Empire fell the world would
enter the last period of human history, the period described in symbolic form
in the Apocalypse (Revelation) of St. John the Theologian. This
was the period when the Church, like the woman clothed in the sun in the
twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse, would flee into the wilderness, away
from public view, and when the faithful Christians would pray in caves and dens
of the earth, like the Catacomb Christians of Ancient Rome. This picture came
true after the revolution of 1917.
As the Russian Church in Exile said in its
Second Pan-Diaspora Council in Karlovtsy in 1938: “Since the epoch we have lived through was
without doubt an epoch of apostasy, it goes without saying that for the true
Church of Christ a period of life in the wilderness, of which the twelfth
chapter of the Revelation of St. John speaks, is not, as some may
believe, an episode connected exclusively with the last period in the history
of mankind. History show us that the Orthodox Church has withdrawn into the
wilderness repeatedly, from whence the will of God called her back to the stage
of history, where she once again assumed her role under more favourable
circumstances. At the end of history the Church of God will go into the
wilderness for the last time to receive Him, Who comes to judge the quick and
the dead. Thus the twelfth chapter of Revelation must be understood not only in
an eschatological sense, but in a historical and educational sense as well: it
shows up the general and typical forms of Church life. If the Church of God is
destined to live in the wilderness through the Providence of the Almighty
Creator, the judgement of history, and the legislation of the proletarian
state, it follows clearly that she must forego all attempts to reach a
legalization, for every attempt to arrive at a legalization during the epoch of
apostasy inescapably turns the Church into the great Babylonian whore of
blasphemous atheism. The near future will confirm our opinion and prove that
the time has come in which the welfare of the Church demands giving up all
legalizations, even those of the parishes. We must follow the example of the
Church prior to the Council of Nicaea, when the Christian communities were
united not on the basis of the administrative institutions of the State, but
through the Holy Spirit alone.”[10]
Today, in 1996, we might be tempted to think that the catacomb phase of
Church history is over. The Soviet Union has fallen, freedom and democracy
reign, and the Catacomb Church herself is a small, divided remnant that must
soon be swallowed up – so human wisdom tells us – in one or another
above-ground jurisdiction. I believe that this judgement is wrong for two main
reasons, one obvious and the other more profound.
The obvious reason is that militant anti-theism may return at any
moment. It may come as a sudden, savage onslaught similar to that of 1917. Or
it may come like the creeping bureaucratism of the European Union.[11] But in
any case, as long as atheist, western modes of thought continue to dominate the
world, the tendency for a secular state to take control of an ever-increasing
proportion of our lives will remain. And for that reason the model of catacomb,
anti-state Church life will remain relevant.
But there is another, still more important reason why we must study the
experience and confession of the Catacomb Church, not as an historical relic,
nor even as a mode of life which we may be forced to undertake again in the
future, but as a matter of the greatest contemporary significance. And
that is that the whole tragedy of Russian Church life since the Civil War
has consisted either in the tardy and reluctant acceptance of the necessity for
a descent into the catacombs, or in the outright refusal to contemplate such a
path. It follows that if Russia is ever to recover from her present
terrible spiritual and moral humiliation, the nature of this tragedy must be
thoroughly understood and repented of.
The necessity for the Russian Church to enter into a totally uncompromising
struggle with the new state order (more precisely: anarchy), and
therefore to descend into the catacombs if that state order did not yield its
position, was proclaimed and commanded at the very highest level, by the
Local Council of the Russian Church held in Moscow in 1917-18.
Thus on January 19, 1918, his Holiness Patriarch Tikhon issued his
famous anathema against the Bolsheviks, in which he said: “I adjure all of you
who are faithful children of the Orthodox Church of Christ not to commune
with such outcasts of the human race in any way whatsoever; ‘cast out the
wicked from among you’ (I Cor. 5.13).”
There has been much argument over the true significance of this
anathema. Thus it has been argued that this decree did not anathematise Soviet
power as such, but only those people who were creating disturbances and
committing sacrilege against the Church in various parts of the country.
However, this argument fails to take into account several facts. First, the
patriarch himself, in his declarations of June 3/16 and June 18 / July 1, 1923,
repented precisely of his “anathematisation of Soviet power”.[12]
Secondly, even if the decree had not formally anathematised Soviet power as
such, since Soviet power sanctioned and initiated the acts of violence and
sacrilege, the faithful were in effect being exhorted to have nothing to do
with it. And thirdly, when the decree came to be read out at the Council three
days later, it was enthusiastically endorsed by it in terms which leave no
doubt but that the Council understood the Patriarch to have anathematised
precisely Soviet power.
This endorsement by the Council had even more authority than the
Patriarch’s anathema, and quite clearly ordered the faithful to take the most
hostile attitude possible to the Bolsheviks: “The Patriarch of Moscow and all
Russia in his epistle to the beloved in the Lord archpastors, pastors and all
faithful children of the Orthodox Church of Christ has drawn the spiritual
sword against the outcasts of the human race – the Bolsheviks, and
anathematised them. The head of the Russian Orthodox Church adjures all her
faithful children not to enter into any communion with these outcasts. For
their satanic deeds they are cursed in this life and in the life to come.
Orthodox! His Holiness the Patriarch has been given the right to bind and to
loose according to the word of the Saviour… Do not destroy your souls, cease
communion with the servants of Satan – the Bolsheviks. Parents, if your
children are Bolsheviks, demand authoritatively that they renounce their
errors, that they bring forth repentance for their eternal sin, and if they do
not obey you, renounce them. Wives, if your husbands are Bolsheviks and
stubbornly continue to serve Satan, leave your husbands, save yourselves and
your children from the soul-destroying infection. An Orthodox Christian cannot
have communion with the servants of the devil… Repent, and with burning prayer
call for help from the Lord of Hosts and thrust away from yourselves ‘the hand
of strangers’ – the age-old enemies of the Christian faith, who have declared
themselves in self-appointed fashion ‘the people’s power’… If you do not obey
the Church, you will not be her sons, but participants in the cruel and satanic
deeds wrought by the open and secret enemies of Christian truth… Dare! Do not
delay! Do not destroy your soul and hand it over to the devil and his stooges.”[13]
Now although it was unprecedented for a Local Church to anathematise and
in effect declare war against a government in this way, there have been
occasions in the history of the Church when individual hierarchs have not only
refused to obey or pray for a political leader, but have actually prayed against
him. Thus in the fourth century St. Basil the Great prayed for the defeat of
Julian the Apostate, and it was through his prayers that the apostate was
killed, as was revealed by God to the holy hermit Julian of Mesopotamia. This
and other examples show that, while the principle of authority as such is
from God (Rom. 13.1), individual authorities are sometimes not from God,
but are only allowed by Him, in which case the Church must offer
resistance to them out of loyalty to God Himself.[14]
The Council’s completely uncompromising attitude towards Soviet power
was again revealed on January 20, the day after the patriarch’s anathema, when
the Bolsheviks issued their “Decree on the Freedom of Conscience”. This was the
Bolsheviks’ fiercest attack yet on the integrity of the Church; for it forbade
religious bodies from owning property, from levying dues, from organizing into
hierarchical organizations, and from teaching religion to persons under 18
years of age. Thus, far from being a measure for freedom of conscience,
it was, as the Council said, a decree on freedom from conscience, and an
excuse for large-scale pillaging of churches and murders, often in the most
bestial manner.[15]
Thus “under the guise of taking over the Church’s property,” declared the
Council, the decree “aims to destroy the very possibility of Divine worship and
ministration.” Therefore “all participation, either in the publication of the
law so injurious to the Church, or in attempts to put it into practice, is
not reconcilable with membership of the Orthodox Church.”
Now it is a striking fact that these powerful and authoritative words,
pronounced at the highest level of Church government, were never repeated or
echoed in official Russian Church life again – although, as we all know,
the savagery of the Soviets not only did not decrease but reached unheard-of proportions.
The only significant exception to this statement must be considered the Council
of the Russian Church in Exile in Karlovtsy, Serbia, in 1921, which, following
the defeat of the Whites in the Civil War, called for an armed crusade against
Soviet Russia. The decisions of this Karlovtsy Council have often been reviled
by the Moscow Patriarchate as irresponsible politicising; but it must be
admitted that they were closer to both the letter and the spirit of the
January, 1918 decisions of the Moscow Council than those of any subsequent
above-ground Council in Russia.
For the bitter fact is that, from about the beginning of 1922, the
Church inside Russia began to negotiate with Soviet power, attempting to win
concessions from the anathematised authorities on the basis of precisely that
decree on freedom of conscience whose application the Council of 1917-18 had
declared to be irreconcilable with membership of the Orthodox Church! In
fact, the concessions won by the Church were negligible, while the concessions
she made to the Bolsheviks were, as we shall see, major and very damaging. They
delayed but did not prevent the Church’s eventual descent into the catacombs
after Metropolitan Sergius’ notorious declaration of 1927; and they made that
descent more difficult and more costly than it would otherwise have been.
It is necessary at this point to reject the possible charge that, by
accusing the Church of having made harmful concessions even before 1927, we are
in effect casting stones at the radiant image of his Holiness Patriarch Tikhon,
Metropolitan Peter of Krutitsa and the other Church leaders who supported their
general church policy. However, this is not the case at all. First, whatever
harmful concessions Patriarch Tikhon, for example, may have made, no one has
ever doubted that he made them, not out of motives of personal fear or gain,
but in great torment of spirit and for the sake of what he perceived to be the
interest of the Church as a whole. Moreover, the fact that he had a martyric
end – he was poisoned, according to the witness of his cell-attendant[16] - shows
that the Lord counted him worthy of glory, whatever his mistakes. Secondly,
while all concessions which bring damage to the Church must be condemned, they
are not all of the same order or magnitude. Although Patriarch Tikhon
negotiated with Soviet power and made damaging concessions to it, he never,
unlike Metropolitan Sergius, denounced his fellow Christians as
“counter-revolutionaries”, thereby sending them to certain death; nor did he
commemorate Soviet power at the Divine Liturgy, as Sergius did. And thirdly, we
must take note of the attitude of those members of the Church hierarchy, such
as the future Catacomb Hieromartyrs Archbishop Theodore (Pozdeyevsky) of
Volokolamsk and Bishop Mark (Novoselov) of Sergiev Posad, who, while
criticising and opposing the Patriarch’s concessions, did not break communion
with him – but did break communion with Metropolitan Sergius.
Archbishop Theodore’s position was expressed by the future Archbishop
Leontius of Chile as follows: “The whole Orthodox episcopate and people
venerated him [Vladyka Theodore] for his principled, uncompromising and
straight position in relation to Soviet power. He considered that until the
Orthodox Church received the right to a truly free existence, there could be no
negotiations with the Bolsheviks. The authorities were only deceiving them,
they would fulfil none of their promises, but would, on the contrary, turn
everything to the harm of the Church. Therefore it would be better for his
Holiness Patriarch Tikhon to sit in prison and die there, than to conduct
negotiations with the Bolsheviks, because concessions could lead, eventually,
to the gradual liquidation of the Orthodox Church and would disturb everyone,
both in Russia and, especially, abroad. [He said this] at a time when his
Holiness the Patriarch had been released from prison. Archbishop Theodore
honoured and pities his Holiness, but was in opposition to him. In spite of the
persistent request of his Holiness that he take part in the administration of
the patriarchate, he refused.”[17]
Let us
turn to one very instructive example of how damaging disobedience to the
January, 1918 decisions of the Moscow Council could be – the famous affair of
the requisitioning of church valuables by the Bolsheviks in 1922.
When the Bolsheviks demanded that the Church give up her valuables to a
State commission so that they could be sold and the proceeds given to the
starving in the Volga region, the Patriarch agreed on condition that those
valuable did not include the most sacred vessels used in the celebration of the
Divine Liturgy. Most commentators have interpreted this as a wise compromise on
the part of the Patriarch. However, this was not the opinion of no less an
authority than the holy Elder Nectarius of Optina, who said: “You see now, the
patriarch gave the order to give up all valuables from the churches, but they
belonged to the Church!”[18]
It is easy to see why the elder was right and the patriarch wrong in
this matter. First, the money gained from the sale of the valuables did not go
to feed the poor, but to promote the socialist revolution worldwide.[19]
Secondly, the patriarch’s decision placed the parish priests in the very
difficult situation of having to choose between disobedience to the patriarch
and cooperating in what many of them must have considered to be a
near-sacrilegious stripping of the churches for the benefit of the Antichrist.
And thirdly, the patriarch’s decision did not in any case prevent bloodshed, as
he had hoped. Thus according to one estimate, 2,691 married priests, 1,962
monks, 3,447 nuns and an unknown number of laymen were killed on the pretext of
resistance to the seizure of church valuables in the country as a whole.[20] In fact,
the patriarch’s decision fell between two stools. It neither saved the lives of
the starving, on the one hand, nor protected the churches from attack, on the
other.
Soon after this, the patriarch made another disastrous concession: on
April 22 / May 5, 1922, at the insistence of the Bolsheviks, he convened a
meeting o the Holy Synod and the Higher Church Council, at which he declared
(decree ¹ 342) that “neither the epistle, nor the address of the Karlovtsy Synod
[to the Genoa conference] express the voice of the Russian Church.” He ordered
the dissolution of the Church in Exile’s Higher Church Administration and the
transfer of all power over the Russian refugees in Europe to Metropolitan
Eulogius of Paris.[21]
Although all the émigré hierarchs (including Metropolitan
Eulogius) agreed that the decree was issued under duress and was therefore not
binding[22], it was
later used by pro-Soviet hierarchs to cause serious divisions in the Russian
Church in Exile.
Neither did the Bolsheviks show gratitude
to the patriarch. Only a few days later, he was place under house arrest, which
gave the renovationist heretics the chance to seize control of the
administrative machinery of the Church!
It is difficult to resist the conclusion
that the Russian Church’s annus horribilis of 1922 was the result of the
Church leadership’s decision to abandon the no-compromise position adopted at
the 1917-18 Council and negotiate with the Soviets. Nothing was gained by it,
and a great deal was lost. Moreover, once the renovationist schism came into
being, the patriarch felt compelled to make even more compromises with the
Soviets in order to defeat what he considered to be the more immediate threat
of the Living Church. It all went to show that, as the English proverb puts it,
“when you sup with the devil, you must use a very long spoon…”
So what was the alternative? Outright
rejection of the Bolsheviks’ demands, leading to a descent of the Russian
Church into the catacombs as early as 1922? Was such an alternative practical?
Open opposition, to the extent of war,
against the powers that be is not unheard of in Russian Church history. St.
Sergius of Radonezh blessed a war of liberation against the Tatars in the
fourteenth century, and St. Hermogenes, Patriarch of Moscow, called for another
such war against the Polish occupiers of Moscow in 1611. And it was precisely
to St. Hermogenes’ example that Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky), first
hierarch of the Russian Church in Exile, had appealed at the Karlovtsky Council
of 1921.
However, “Patriarch” Alexis II of Moscow
is not inspired by such examples. As he said in an interview, although
Patriarch Tikhon “did not hide his sharply negative attitude towards the
Bolshevik order,” - unlike Alexis himself, who never hid his glowingly positive
attitude towards it, declaring as late as July 17, 1990 that he was praying
for the preservation of the Communist Party! – “he did not consider it possible
to lead a ‘crusade against communism’. Of the two evils – to declare war
against the ‘reds’ and thereby submit the whole Orthodox flock to unavoidable
devastation, or by the expression of formal loyalty to the State while
preserving the purity of the faith to save that which still could be saved – he
chose the lesser, that is, the second. The Church could not, did not have the
right to, depart into the catacombs. She remained together with the people and
drank the cup of suffering which fell to her lot to the dregs.”[23]
These words astound by their falsehood and
hypocritical self-righteousness. Patriarch Tikhon did indeed choose what he saw
as the lesser of two evils – a wrong choice, as is argued here, but one made
from honourable motives, for the sake of his flock. And out of compassion and
respect for him, who truly “drank the cup of suffering to the dregs”, most of
the people stayed with him – even those who, like Archbishop Theodore,
disagreed with him.
But would the Patriarch have agreed that
“the Church could not, did not have the right to, depart into the catacombs”?
Certainly not! Indeed, in his Life of one of the first catacomb bishops,
Hieromartyr Maximus of Serpukhov, Protopresbyter Michael Polsky writes: “His
Holiness Patriarch Tikhon expressed to Vladyka Maximus (who was at that time
simply a doctor) his tormented doubts about the benefit of further concessions
to Soviet power. In making these concessions, he had with horror become more
and more convinced that the limits of the ‘political’ demands of Soviet power
lay beyond the bounds of faithfulness to Christ and the Church. Not long before
his death, his Holiness the Patriarch expressed the thought that apparently the
only way out for the Russian Orthodox Church to preserve her faithfulness to
Christ would be to depart into the catacombs in the very near future…”[24]
So “Patriarch” Alexis is contradicted by
Patriarch Tikhon himself! Far from not having the “right” to depart into the
catacombs, the patriarch considered that it would one day be the duty of
the Church to do so. The only question was: when?
Moreover, it was precisely to “remain
together with the people” who themselves remained together with Christ, that it
was necessary to depart into the catacombs. For when Metropolitan Sergius
issued his notorious declaration in 1927, the people rejected it in droves.
Thus 90% of the Urals parishes sent it back without an answer; and it is
calculated that more than fifty bishops inside Russia, and thirty bishops
abroad, refused to support Metropolitan Sergius.[25]
And did the Soviet bishops “remain with
the people”? Not at all! In relation to that large part of the people who
remained faithful to the truth they acted as spies and informers. And in
relation even to their own flock, they can hardly be said to have shared their
sorrows to any significant extent – at least in the post-war period. Rather
they lived with all the perks of Soviet functionaries – dachas, limousines,
access to special stores obtained by their secret party cards – in a word, like
those “princes” of which it is written: “Put not your trust in princes, nor in
the sons of men, in whom is no salvation” (Psalm 145.3).
This complete lack not only of solidarity
(solidarnost’), but also of Orthodox Catholic conciliarity (sobornost’)
with the believing people is witnessed even from patriarchal sources. Thus
according to Archimandrite Polycarp (Grishin), all the delegates of the
Orel-Briansk diocese to the 1988 local council were imposed by the local bishop
obedient to a list put forward by the Bolsheviks.[26]
And at the same council Archbishop Chrysostom of Irkutsk said: “We hierarchs
are perhaps the most rightless people in the Russian Orthodox Church. When they
transfer us, no one asks us, Why and what for? But we act in the same way with
our clergy. We are rightless before the Patriarch and the Holy Synod; they take
no notice of us, and we act in the same way.”[27]
Of course,
we can only speculate what would have happened if the Russian Church had chosen
to refuse any compromise with the Bolsheviks in 1922. Undoubtedly there would
have been great suffering and many martyrdoms – which is what happened, in any
case, and has not really ended even now. Quite possibly, a large proportion of
the Church population would have fallen away – which is what happened, in any
case, by falling into the renovationist and sergianist schisms. But it is also
possible that the Bolsheviks, faced with a vast and determined church
population united by a holy zeal behind their lawful patriarch, would have
backed away from direct confrontation – and made concessions themselves,
resulting eventually in the crumbling of their power. And even if the
Bolsheviks had not backed down, we know that by the power of faith the people
of God have often “become mighty in war and put foreign armies to flight” (Heb.
11.34). There is no reason why this could not have happened in the 1920s. And
then how different would have been the history of the twentieth century!
However,
God’s Providence uses even our sins and falls to accomplish His mysterious and
perfect will. “The Lord has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked
for the day of trouble” (Prov. 16.4). Evidently it was pleasing to Him
to humble the Russian people still more for their sinfulness and lack of faith.
And perhaps it was not the Lord’s will, as Catacomb Hieromartyr Bishop
Damascene of Glukhov said in the 1930s, “that the Church should stand as an
intermediary between Himself and the believers,” but that everyone should
“stand directly for himself as it was with the forefathers”![28]
For this is the specific nature of Christian confession in the time of the
Antichrist. And perhaps it is His will that now again, when the Russian Church
and nation is incomparably weaker in human terms that it was in 1927 or 1922, now
is the time to demonstrate that “some trust in chariots, and some in
horses, but we will call upon the name of the Lord our God” (Psalm
19.7). For His strength is made perfect in weakness (II Cor. 12.9).
But
confession must be preceded by understanding; and if we are to make a good
confession now, we must apply our understanding to the very beginning of the
decline of the Russian Church from the glorious martyrdom of the Civil War
years when the Church was united and defiant – that is, to the year 1922. That
this year was indeed critical in the destinies of the Russian Church is
indicated by a vision granted to a pious girl in 1917 and recounted by Elder
Nectarius of Optina. In this vision the Apostle Peter asked the Lord Jesus
Christ: “When will these torments end, O Lord?” And the Lord replied: “I will
give the people until 1922: if they do not repent and come to their sense, then
everyone will perish.”[29]
1922 did not mark the end of the Russian people’s sufferings, but rather of
their intensification, being the year in which the first major schisms arose
and the very name of Russia was swallowed up in that of the Soviet Union. And
now, with a few exceptions, everyone is perishing….
The
beginning of recovery, therefore, must consist in repentance for that failure
to obey the commands of the Moscow Council of 1917-18, that failure to reject
any communion whatsoever with the Soviet Antichrist, which began to show its
disastrous fruits in 1922. For it was not only the Patriarch and the Church
administration that failed then. If the people had resisted the patriarch as
they had resisted his attempt to introduce the new calendar later, the disaster
could have been avoided and the slide
that ended with the sergianist apostasy could have been checked.
For if, as
the True Church always believed, the Soviet regime was established, not by God,
but by the devil (Rev. 13.2), then only outright condemnation of, and
refusal to work with, the satanic regime could draw upon the people the
blessing of God. For “what accord hath Christ with Belial? Or what hath a
believer in common with an unbeliever?” (II Cor. 6.15). Therefore, says
the Apostle, “have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but
rather expose them…” (Eph. 5.11).
Thus the
significance of the Catacomb Church for Russia and the world consists the fact
that she shows to us the normal, and perhaps the only spiritually
safe mode of existence for the Church in our apocalyptic times in which
there are no more God-established Orthodox autocracies. Perhaps, through the
prayers of the new martyrs of Russia, a God-protected Orthodox autocracy may
one day be established again, as the prophecies indicate. But this can only be
an exception to the basic trend, a brief oasis of calm in the swirling
maelstrom of apostasy. In general, in the apocalyptic era we have entered since
1917, the Christian can expect no support from the powers that be, but must
rather expect snares and temptations. And so, learning from the example of
Patriarch Tikhon and the other Church leaders who had to encounter the first
blast of the Antichrist’s assault, we must “flee to the mountains” and “not go
down to take what is in the house” of what used to be our earthly homeland (Matt.
24.16-17). Confessing openly that we are “strangers and pilgrims” on this
earth, we must “go forth to Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach…”
(Heb. 13.13).
March 16/29, 1996.
(First published in Living Orthodoxy, no. 130,
vol. XXII, no. 4, July-August, 2001, pp. 8-15)
3. THE FREE RUSSIAN
ORTHODOX CHURCH:
A SHORT HISTORY
(1982-1998)
Introduction
When the Soviet Union fell in 1991, the
“second administration” of the Soviet government, the Soviet Moscow
Patriarchate, continued to exist virtually unchanged, only changing its
political orientation from pro-communist to pro-democratic. At this time the
leadership of the healthy ecclesiastical forces opposed to the Moscow
Patriarchate (MP) inside Russia was assumed by the Free Russian Orthodox Church
(FROC). This article consists of a short history of the FROC and a canonical
justification of its independent existence.
1.
Origins
The origins of the FROC go back to January
5/18, 1981, when a priest of the Russian Catacomb Church, Fr. Lazarus
(Zhurbenko), was secretly received into the West European diocese of the
Russian Orthodox Church Abroad (ROCA) by Archbishop Anthony of Geneva and
Western Europe (ukaz no. 648/818/2). Shortly after this, in 1982,
another cleric of the West European diocese, Fr. Barnabas (Prokofiev), was
secretly consecrated as Bishop of Cannes and sent to Moscow, where he
consecrated Fr. Lazarus to the episcopate. The candidacy of Fr. Lazarus had
been put forward by the dissident MP priest, Fr. Demetrius Dudko, with whom
Archbishop Anthony had entered into correspondence.[30]
On August 1/14, 1990, the Chancellery of the ROCA decided to throw some
light on this secret consecration by issuing the following statement: “In 1982
his Eminence Anthony, Archbishop of Geneva and Western Europe, together with
his Eminence Mark, Bishop of Berlin and Germany, on the orders of the
Hierarchical Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, secretly performed an
episcopal consecration on Hieromonk Barnabas (Prokofiev), so that through the
cooperation of these archpastors the Church life of the Catacomb Orthodox
Church in Russia might be regulated. Since external circumstances no longer
compel either his Eminence Bishop Lazarus in Russia, or his Eminence Bishop
Barnabas in France to remain as secret Hierarchs of our Russian Church Abroad,
the Hierarchical Synod is now officially declaring this fact.”[31]
This was an ominous phrase: “so that... the Church life of the Catacomb
Orthodox Church in Russia might be regulated”. No indication was given as to
why the life of the Catacomb Church needed regulating from abroad, nor how it
was proposed that this regulation should be accomplished (apart from the
consecration of a hierarch), nor whether the consent of the Catacomb Church to
such a regulation had been sought or received, nor what canonical right the ROCA
had to regulate the life of the Catacomb Church.[32]
In actual fact the consent of the Catacomb Church, was neither asked nor
given.….[33]
Be that as it may, the ROCA now had the beginnings of a secret hierarchy
in the Soviet Union. This hierarchy began to act in the spring of 1990, when
the first substantial signs of the collapse of Communism and a measure of
ecclesiastical freedom were becoming evident. Thus Bishop Lazarus flew to New
York, where his consecration was confirmed by the Synod of the ROCA; and
believers throughout Russia became aware that the ROCA had entered into combat
with the Moscow Patriarchate on Russian soil.
The first parish to leave the Moscow Patriarchate and officially join
the ROCA was that of St. Constantine the Great in Suzdal, Vladimir province,
whose pastor was Archimandrite Valentine (Rusantsov). As Fr. Valentine told the
story: “In the Vladimir diocese I served as dean. I was a member of the
diocesan administration, was for a time diocesan secretary and had responsibility
for receiving guests in this diocese. And then I began to notice that I was
being gradually, quietly removed. Perhaps this happened because I very much
disliked prayers with people of other faiths. It’s one thing to drink tea with
guests, and quite another.. to pray together with them, while the guests, it
has to be said, were of all kinds: both Buddhists, and Muslims, and Satanists.
I did not like these ecumenical prayers, and I did not hide this dislike of
mine.
“And so at first they removed me from working with the guests, and then
deprived me of the post of secretary, and then excluded me from the diocesan
council. Once after my return from a trip abroad, the local hierarch Valentine
(Mishchuk) summoned me and said: ‘Sit down and write a report for the whole
year about what foreigners were with you, what you talked about with them, what
questions they asked you and what answers you gave them.’ ‘Why is this
necessary?’ ‘It’s just necessary,’ replied the bishop. ‘I don’t understand
where I am, Vladyko – in the study of a hierarch or in the study of a KGB
operative? No, I’ve never done this and never will do it. And remember that I
am a priest and not a “stooge”.’ ‘Well if you’re not going to do it, I will
transfer you to another parish.’
“And so the next day came the ukaz
concerning my transfer to the out-of-the-way place Pokrov. I was upset, but
after all I had to obey, it was a hierarch’s ukaz. But suddenly
something unexpected happened – my parishioners rebelled against this decision,
people began to send letters to the representatives of the authorities
expressing their dissatisfaction with my transfer: our parishioners even hired
buses to go to the capital and protest.
“The patriarchate began to admonish them, suggested ‘a good batyushka’,
Demetrius Nyetsvetayev, who was constantly on trips abroad, in exchange. ‘We
don’t need your batyushka,’ said the parishioners, ‘we know this kind, today
he’ll spy on foreigners, tomorrow on the unbelievers of Suzdal, and then he’ll
begin to reveal the secret of parishioners’ confessions.’ In general, our
parishioners just didn’t accept Nyetsvetayev. They didn’t even let him into the
church. The whole town was aroused, and the parishioners came to me: ‘Fr.
Valentine, what shall we do?’ At that point I told them that I had passed my
childhood among the ‘Tikhonites’ [Catacomb Christians], and that there is a
‘Tikhonite Church’ existing in exile. If we write to their first-hierarch,
Metropolitan Vitaly, and he accepts us – will you agree to be under his
omophorion? The church people declared their agreement. However, this attempt
to remove me did not pass without a trace, I was in hospital as a result of an
attack of nerves. And so, at the Annunciation, I receive the news that our
parish had been received into the ROCA.”[34]
On June 8/21, 1990, the feast of St. Theodore, the enlightener of
Suzdal, the ROCA hierarchs Mark of Berlin, Hilarion of Manhattan and Lazarus of
Tambov celebrated the first hierarchical liturgy in the St. Constantine parish.[35] Then,
in February, 1991 Archimandrite Valentine was consecrated as Bishop of Suzdal
and Vladimir in Brussels by hierarchs of the ROCA. There now began a rapid
growth in the number of parishes joining the ROCA on Russian soil, including
many communities of the Catacomb Church. Most of these joined the Suzdal
diocese under Bishop Valentine, but many also joined the Tambov diocese of
Bishop Lazarus and the Kuban diocese of Bishop Benjamin. The ROCA inside Russia
was now called the Free Russian Orthodox Church (FROC).
2. First Signs of Division
Now where truth and Christian piety flourishes the devil is sure to
interfere. And at this point he inspired certain hierarchs of the ROCA to
hinder the work of the FROC hierarchs by a series of anti-canonical actions.
In 1991 the Hierarchical Synod of the ROCA decided to organize church
life in Russia on the principle of non-territoriality. As Archbishop Lazarus
explained: “The Hierarchical Synod decreed equal rights for us three Russian
hierarchs. If someone from the patriarchate wants to join Vladyka Valentine –
please. If he wants to join Vladyka Benjamin or me – please. So far the
division [of dioceses] is only conditional – more exactly, Russia is in the
position of a missionary region. Each of us can receive parishes in any part of
the country. For the time being it is difficult to define the boundaries of
dioceses.”[36]
This decision led to some conflicts between the FROC bishops, but not
serious ones. However, it was a different matter when bishops from abroad began
to interfere. As early as July, 1990 Archbishop Lazarus told the present writer
that if Archbishop Mark of Germany continued to interfere in Russia he might be
compelled to form an autonomous Church. And in the same month Archbishop Mark
wrote a letter to Metropolitan Vitaly full of innuendos against Archimandrite
Valentine Nor did not stop there. He
ordained a priest for St. Petersburg, a “Special German deanery” under the Monk
Ambrose (von Sievers), who later founded his own Synod, and in general acted as
if Russia were an extension of the German diocese.
In
November, 1991 a correspondent of a church bulletin asked Bishop Valentine
about Archbishop Mark’s role. The reply was carefully weighed: “When the
situation in Russia was still in an embryonic stage, Archbishop Mark with the
agreement of the first-hierarch of the ROCA made various attempts to build
church life in Russia. One of Archbishop Mark’s experiments was the ‘special
German deanery’ headed by Fr. Ambrose (Sievers). Now this is changing, insofar as the situation in the FROC has been
sufficiently normalized. From now on
not one hierarch will interfere in Russian affairs – except, it goes
without saying, the three hierarchs of the FROC.”[37]
In 1992, however, Archbishop Mark’s interference did not only not cease,
but became more intense, and was now directed particularly against the most
successful and prominent of the FROC hierarchs, Bishop Valentine. Thus while
calling for official negotiations with the Moscow Patriarchate[38], Mark
called on believers in a publicly distributed letter “to distance yourselves
from Bishop Valentine of the Suzdal and Vladimir diocese of the Free Russian
Orthodox Church”, described the clergy in obedience to Bishop Valentine as
“wolves in sheep’s clothing”, and told them to turn instead to Fr. Sergius
Perekrestov (a priest who was later defrocked for adultery before leaving the
FROC). A priest of the Moscow Patriarchate interpreted this letter to mean that
the ROCA had “turned its back on the Suzdal diocese of the FROC”.[39]
In a letter to Metropolitan Vitaly dated December 25, 1992, Bishop
Valentine complained that Archbishop Mark’s attacks against him had been
distributed, not only to members of the Synod, but also to laypeople and even
in churches of the Moscow Patriarchate. And he went on: “On the basis of the
above positions I have the right to confirm that after my consecration to the
episcopate his Eminence Vladyka Mark did everything to cause a quarrel between
me and their Eminences Archbishop Lazarus and Bishop Benjamin…
“It is
interesting that when their Eminences Archbishop Lazarus and Bishop Benjamin,
by virtue of the Apostolic canons and their pastoral conscience, adopted, with
me, a principled position on the question of his Eminence Archbishop Mark’s
claims to administer Russian parishes, the latter simply dismissed the two
hierarchs as being incapable of administration… Then Archbishop Mark began to
accuse me of ‘lifting everything under myself like a bulldozer’. Therefore his
Eminence Mark chose a different tactic. He wrote a letter to Kaliningrad,
calling me ‘a wolf in sheep’s clothing’, and this letter was read out from the
ambon in the churches of the Moscow patriarchate.
“Yesterday I was told that his Eminence Archbishop Mark sent a fax to
the Synod insistently recommending that his Eminence Barnabas not be recalled
from Moscow until a church trial had been carried out on Valentine. What trial,
for what? For everything that I have done, for all my labours? Does not putting
me on trial mean they want to put you, too, on trial? Does this not mean that
it striking me with their fist they get at you with their elbow?”[40]
The reference to Bishop Barnabas is explained as follows. In February,
1992 he had been sent to Moscow as superior of the community of SS. Martha and
Mary in Moscow, which was designated the Synodal podvorye. Then, on
August 3, he organized “a conference of the clergy with the aim of organizing
the Moscow diocesan organization of our Church. The conference was attended by
more than ten clergy from Moscow and other parts of Russia. In his speech
before the participants Vladyka pointed out the necessity of creating a
diocesan administration which would unite all the parishes of the FROC in
Moscow and Moscow region, and also those parishes in other regions of Russia
which wanted to unite with this diocesan administration.”[41] “At the
diocesan conference… a diocesan council was elected, containing three members
of the National Patriotic Front, Pamyat’, as representatives of the
laity.”[42]
This was a double blow to the FROC. First, the appointment of a foreign
bishop with almost unlimited powers in Russia was a direct affront to the
attempts of the Russian bishops to prevent foreign interference in their dioceses.
The encroachment of the foreign bishops on the canonical rights of the Russian
bishops was becoming increasingly scandalous. (According to the holy canons (8th
of the 3rd Ecumenical Council, 9th of Antioch, 64th
and 67th of Carthage) no bishop can encroach on the territory of
another bishop or perform any sacramental action in it without his permission.)
Secondly, Bishop Barnabas’ open endorsement of the fascist organization Pamyat’,
which organized provocative demonstrations and even an attack on the offices of
Moskovskij Komsomolets, scandalized church opinion both in Russia and
outside.
On October 25 / November 7, 1992, Metropolitan Vitaly and the Synod of
the ROCA acted to distance themselves from the activities of Bishop Barnabas,
sending Bishop Hilarion and Fr. Victor Potapov to Moscow to express the
official position of the ROCA at a press conference; which duly took place on
November 13. However, in February, 1993, at a meeting of the Synod in New York,
it was decided to reject this press-conference as “provocative” and to praise
one of the pro-fascist priests, Fr. Alexis Averyanov, for his “fruitful work
with Pamyat’”, bestowing on him an award for his “stand for
righteousness”. Moreover, no action was taken against Bishop Barnabas, while
Fr. Victor was forbidden to undertake any ecclesiastical or public activity in
Russia.[43]
The year 1993 brought no relief for the beleagured FROC bishops from
their foreign brothers. Thus when the large and prosperous parish of the MP in
Naginsk under its very popular pastor, Archimandrite Adrian, applied to come
under the omophorion of Bishop Valentine, and was accepted by him on
January 18, Bishop Barnabas interfered and suggested they come under his omophorion – which offer was
politely but firmly turned down. At the same time the MP circulated an
accusation - signed by a woman but with no other indication of time, place or
names of witnesses of the supposed crime - that Archimandrite Adrian had raped
one altar boy and had had improper relations with another. This accusation
turned out to be completely fabricated – the “raped” altar boy wrote a letter
of apology to Fr. Adrian and the letter was accepted by the prosecutor in the
criminal court. Both youngsters were then sued for stealing icons…
In spite of this, Bishop Barnabas, without
any kind of investigation or trial, suspended the archimandrite and wanted to
depose Bishop Valentine for accepting such a pervert into his diocese. The
Russian newspapers pointed out that Bishop Barnabas seemed to be partially
supporting the patriarchate in the struggle for this parish – in which, as
Bishop Gregory (Grabbe) pointed out, the KGB appeared also to be operating.[44]
Nevertheless, several ROCA bishops wanted to proceed with defrocking Bishop
Valentine; but the decision was made to retire him instead on grounds of his
ill-health – a completely uncanonical decision since neither had Bishop
Valentine petitioned for his retirement nor had the ROCA bishops investigated
his state of health.
But worse was to come. Bishop Barnabas wrote to Metropolitan Vladimir
(Romanyuk) of the uncanonical Ukrainian Autocephalous Church seeking to enter
into communion with him, and followed this up by visiting him in Kiev. The
Moscow Patriarchate gleefully displayed this letter as proof of the ROCA’s
incompetence, and it was only with the greatest difficulty (and delay) that the
Synod, spurred on by Fr. Victor and Bishop Gregory (Grabbe) outside Russia, and
by Bishop Valentine inside Russia, began to extricate themselves from this
scandal.
A recent publication summed up Bishop Barnabas’ contribution to Russian
Church life in this year: “In the shortest time [he] introduced the completest
chaos[45] into
the life of the Free Church, which was beginning to be reborn. This representative
of the Synod began, above the heads of the Diocesan Bishops of the Free Church
in Russia, and in violation of the basic canonical rules, to receive into his
jurisdiction clerics who had been banned from serving by them, to carry out
ordinations in their dioceses without their knowledge, and finally was not
ashamed to demand, at the Council in 1993, that he should be given rights to
administer all the parishes of the Free
Church in Russia![46]
This request was not granted by the Council, the more so in that it learned
that ‘the empowered representative of the Synod of the Russian Church Abroad in
Moscow’, on writing-paper of the Hierarchical Synod, wrote a petition to ‘the Locum
Tenens of the Kievan Patriarchal Throne’, Metropolitan Vladimir (Romanyuk),
in which it said that ‘the traitrous Muscovite scribblers hired by the Moscow
Patriarchate are trying to trample into the mud the authority of the Russian
Church Abroad. In this connection: we beseech you, Your Eminence, through the
Kievan Patriarchate headed by you, to give our ecclesiastical activity a
juridical base and receive us into brotherly communion.’ Extraordinary as it
may seem, the Council did not consider it necessary to defrock its
representative, and it was put to him that he should set off for the Holy Land
for a mere three months without right of serving – which, however, he did not
carry out. This shameful letter was widely distributed by the Moscow
Patriarchate, while the ‘Patriarchal Locum Tenens’, delighted by this
prospect, invited the First-Hierarch of the Church Abroad to visit Kiev in
written form. This letter was also widely distributed.”[47]
This was clear evidence, if further evidence were needed, that the
interference of foreign bishops in the affairs of the Free Russian Orthodox
Church had to be drastically curbed, and that the canonical rights of the FROC
bishops to rule their own dioceses without inteference from the “centre”
(several thousand miles away from Russia!) had to be unequivocally strengthened
and protected.
However, a letter dated October 2, 1992 from Archbishop Mark to
Protopriest Michael Artsumovich of Meudon gave equally clear evidence, if
further evidence was needed, that this ROCA hierarch at any rate neither intended
to protect the rights of the Russian bishops nor in any way respected either
them or their flock: “We are receiving [from the MP] by no means the best
representatives of the Russian Church. Basically, these are people who know
little or nothing about the Church Abroad. And in those cases in which someone
possesses some information, it must be doubtful that he is in general in a
condition to understand it in view of his own mendacity and the mendacity of
his own situation. In receiving priests from the Patriarchate, we receive with
them a whole series of inadequacies and vices of the MP itself… The real
Catacomb Church no longer exists. It in fact disappeared in the 1940s or the
beginning of the 1950s… Only individual people have been preserved from it, and
in essence everything that has arisen since is only pitiful reflections, and
people take their desires for reality. Those who poured into this stream in the
1950s and later were themselves infected with Soviet falsehood, and they partly
– and involuntarily - participate in it themselves, that is, they enter the
category of what we call ‘homo sovieticus’… In Russia, consequently, there
cannot be a Russian Church because it is all based on Soviet man… I think it is
more expedient to seek allies for ourselves among those elements that are pure
or striving for canonical purity both in the depths of the Moscow Patriarchate
and in the other Local Churches – especially in Serbia or even Greece…We will
yet be able to deliver ourselves from that impurity
which we have now received from the Moscow Patriarchate, and again start on the
path of pure Orthodoxy… It is evident that we must… try and undertake the russification of Soviet man and the
Soviet church…”[48]
Archbishop Mark gave himself away in this shocking and insulting letter:
disdain for the “pitiful” and supposedly long-dead Catacomb Church, disgust
with the “impure”, “Soviet” Free Russian Church, admiration for the “purity” of
the apostate churches of “World Orthodoxy” with their Masonic and KGB-agent
“hierarchs”. As for the remark – by an ethnic German - about the
“russification” of the Russian Church, the reaction in the heart of Holy Russia
was one of understandable dismay...
3. The First Separation
Archbishop Mark wanted to rid himself of the “impurity” of the Free
Russian Church; he was soon to achieve his aim. On April 14/27, 1993 Archbishop
Lazarus sent an “explanatory report” to the Synod detailed the many serious
canonical violations committed against the Russian bishops, and in particular
against himself, to which the leadership of the ROCA had not reacted in spite
of many appeals. He then declared his “temporary administrative separation”
from the Synod until the Synod restored canonical order. But, he insisted, he
was not breaking communion with the ROCA.
As a result of this, without consulting either him or his diocese, the
ROCA meeting in Cleveland, Ohio retired him, and the administration of his
parishes was transferred to Metropolitan Vitaly.
In May, during its Council in Lesna, the Synod effectively retired Bishop
Valentine also – it goes without saying, against his will and without canonical
justification. As Metropolitan Vitaly wrote to him: “The Hierarchical Council
has become acquainted with your administrative successes. However, your health
in such a difficult situation makes it necessary for us to retire you because
of illness until your full recovery. This means that if you are physically
able, you can serve, since you are in now way banned from church serving, but
you are simply freed from administrative cares”.
At this point the first signs of serious dissent with the ROCA’s
politics in Russia in the ranks of the ROCA’s episcopate appeared in the person
of Bishop Gregory (Grabbe), the foremost canonist of the ROCA and a man of
enormous experience in church matters, having been at the very heart of the
ROCA’s administration from 1931 until his forced retirement by Metropolitan
Vitaly in 1986. In an emergency report to the Synod dated May 16/29, after
sharply criticizing the unjust and uncanonical actions of the Synod, he said:
“Our responsibility before God demands from us the annulment of this conciliar
resolution, and if there are accusers who have material which has not yet been
shown us in documentary form, then Bishop Valentine must be returned to his see
and the affair must be either cut short or again reviewed by the Council, but
now in agreement with the canons that we have in the Church. For this would
clearly be necessary to convene a Council, and for a start a judgement must be
made about it in the Synod…
“As a consequence of this Archbishop Lazarus has already left us. And
Bishop Valentine’s patience is already being tried. If he, too, will not bear
the temptation, what will we be left with? Will his flock in such a situation
want to leave with him? Will not it also rebel?
“For clarity’s sake I must begin with an examination of certain matters
brought up at the expanded session of the Synod which took place in Munich.
“A certain tension was noticeable there in spite of the external
calmness. It turned out that behind the scenes a suspicious attitude towards
Bishop Valentine had arisen. Already after the closing of the Synod I learned
that several members of the Synod had been shown a document containing
accusations of transgressions of the laws of morality against Bishop Valentine.
The President of the Synod did not have this document during the sessions but
only at the end. It was then that I, too, received a copy of the denunciation
from Archbishop Mark, who was given it by Bishop Barnabas, who evidently did
not know how to deal with such objects according to the Church canons. I
involuntarily ascribed the unexpected appearance of such a document amidst the
members of the Synod to the action of some communist secret agents and to the
inexperience of Bishop Barnabas in such matters.
“The caution of the Church authorities in relation to similar
accusations in the time of troubles after the persecutions was ascribed to the
74th Apostolic canon, the 2nd canon of the 1st
Ecumenical Council and especially to the 6th canon of the 2nd
Ecumenical Council. At that time the heretics were multiplying their intrigues
against the Orthodox hierarchs. The above-mentioned canons indicate that
accusations hurled by less than two or three witnesses – who were, besides,
faithful children of the Church and accusers worthy of trust – were in no way
to be accepted…
“Did they apply such justice and caution when they judged Bishop
Valentine, and were ready without any investigation to ... defrock him for
receiving Archimandrite Adrian? And were the accusations hurled at the latter
really seriously examined?
“Beginning with the processing, contrary to the canons, of the
accusations against Bishop Valentine on the basis of the single complaint of a
person known to none of us[49], the
Sobor was already planning to defrock him without any kind of due process,
until the argument of his illness turned up. But here, too, they failed to
consider that this required his own petition and a check to ascertain the
seriousness of his illness. The intention was very simple: just get rid of a
too active Bishop. They didn’t think of the fate of his parishes, which exist
on his registration. Without him they would lose it.
“While we, in the absence of the accused and, contrary to the canons,
without his knowledge, were deciding the fate of the Suzdal diocese, Vladyka
Valentine received three more parishes. Now he has 63. Taking into account
Archimandrite Adrian with his almost 10,000 people, we are talking about
approximately twenty thousand souls.
“The question arises: in whose interests is
it to destroy what the papers there call the centre of the Church Abroad in
Russia?
“The success of Bishop Valentine’s mission has brought thousands of
those being saved into our Church, but now this flock is condemned to widowhood
and the temptation of having no head only because he turned out not to be
suitable to some of our Bishops…”[50]
It was in this highly charged atmosphere, with their bishop forcibly and
uncanonically retired and the registration of all their parishes hanging by a
thread, that the annual diocesan conference of the Suzdal diocese took place
from June 9/22 to 11/24. It was also attended by priests representing
Archbishop Lazarus and Bishop Benjamin. Hieromonk Agathangelus read out a
letter from Archbishop Lazarus in which he declared that although he had
considered the actions of the ROCA in Russia to be uncanonical, he had
tolerated them out of brotherly love, but was now forced to speak out against
them, for they were inflicting harm on the Church. First, the ROCA did not have
the right to form its own parishes in Russia insofar as the Catacomb Church,
which had preserved the succession of grace of the Mother Church, continued to
exist on her territory. Therefore it was necessary only to strengthen the
catacomb communities and expand them through an influx of new believers.
Secondly, the hierarchs of the ROCA had been acting in a spirit far from
brotherly love, for they had been treating their brothers, the hierarchs of the
FROC, as second-class Vladykas: they received clergy who had been banned by the
Russian Vladykas, brought clergy of other dioceses to trial, removed bans
placed by the Russian hierarchs without their knowledge or agreement, and
annulled other decisions of theirs (for example, Metropolitan Vitaly forbade an
inspection to be carried out in the parish of Fr. Sergius Perekrestov of St.
Petersburg). Thirdly, the ROCA hierarchs were far from Russia and did not understand
the situation, so they could not rightly administer the Russian parishes. Thus
the Synod removed the title ‘Administering the affairs of the FROC’ from all
the hierarchs except Bishop Barnabas, which forced the dioceses to re-register
with the authorities - although, while a new registration was being carried
out, the parishes could lose their right to ownership of the churches and other
property. Moreover re-registration was almost impossible, insofar as it
required the agreement of an expert consultative committee attached to the
Supreme Soviet, which contained hierarchs of the Moscow Patriarchate. Fourthly,
the ROCA hierarchs had been inconsistent in their actions, which aroused the
suspicion that their actions were directed, not by the Holy Spirit, but by
forces foreign to the Church.[51]
Archbishop Lazarus concluded by calling for the formation of a True Orthodox
Catacomb Church that was administratively separate from, but in communion with,
the ROCA, on the basis of Patriarch Tikhon’s ukaz no. 362, which had
never been annulled.
At the end of the conference it was decided that the Suzdal diocese
would follow Archbishop Lazarus’ example in separating administratively from
the ROCA while retaining communion in prayer with it. Bishop Valentine expressed
the hope that this would be only a temporary measure, and he called on
Metropolitan Vitaly to convene an extraordinary Council to remove the
anticanonical resolutions of the Council in Lesna and the Synod meeting in
Cleveland…[52]
A
meeting of the clergy Archbishop Lazarus’ diocese in Odessa on July 4/17
confirmed that their separation from the ROCA was conditional, “on the verge of
a break”. They reiterated their belief that the bans on Archbishop Lazarus were
uncanonical and called on the hierarchs of the ROCA to review them
in a spirit of brotherly love and mutual understanding”.
Some FROC priests – notably Protopriest Lev Lebedev of Kursk – while
fully agreeing that the ROCA bishops had committed uncanonical acts on Russian
soil, nevertheless began to express the view that the actions of the FROC
bishops had been hasty and were justified only in the case that the ROCA had
fallen away from Orthodoxy, which, as everyone agreed, had not yet taken place.
However, Bishop Gregory (Grabbe) adopted a quite different position. He pointed
out that the claims of the ROCA to rule
as opposed to help the Church in
Russia contradicted the ROCA’s own fundamental Statute:-
“For decades we living abroad have commemorated ‘the Orthodox Episcopate
of the Persecuted Church of Russia’. But in our last Sobor we removed from the
litanies and the prayer for the salvation of Russia the word ‘persecuted’,
witnessing thereby that we already officially consider that the persecutions on
the Russian Church have ceased.
“And indeed, our parishes in Russia are now harried in places, but
basically they have complete freedom of action, in particular if they do not
lay claim to receive any old church, which the Moscow Patriarchate then tries
to snatch. However it does not always succeed in this. Thus the huge Theophany
cathedral in Noginsk (with all the buildings attached to it) according to the
court’s decision remain with our diocese…
“In other words, we can say that if there is willingness on our side we
now have every opportunity of setting in order the complete regeneration of the
Russian Orthodox Church in our Fatherland.
“The very first paragraph of the ‘Statute on the Russian Church Abroad’
says:
“’The Russian Orthodox Church Abroad is an indivisible part of the Russian Local Church temporarily self-governing on conciliar
principles until the removal of the atheist power in Russia in
accordance with the resolution of the holy Patriarch Tikhon, the Holy Synod and
the Higher Ecclesiastical Council of the Russian Church of November 7/20, 1920 ¹ 362 (emphasis mine, B. G.).
“If we now lead the Russian Hierarch to want to break their
administrative links with the Church Abroad, then will not our flock abroad
finally ask us: what ‘Episcopate of the Russian Church’ are we still praying
for in our churches? But if we took these words out of the litanies, them we
would only be officially declaring that we are no longer a part of the Russian
Church.
“Will we not then enter upon a very dubious canonical path of autonomous
existence, but now without a Patriarchal blessing and outside the Russian
Church, a part of which we have always confessed ourselves to be? Will not such
a step lead us to a condition of schism in the Church Abroad itself, and, God
forbid, to the danger of becoming a sect?..
“It is necessary for us to pay very careful attention to and get to know
the mood revealed in our clergy in the Suzdal diocese, so as on our part to
evaluate the mood in which our decisions about the Church in Russia could be
received by them.
“But
will we not see then that it is one thing when the Church Abroad gives help to the Russian Church through
the restoration in it of a canonical hierarchy, but something else entirely when we lay claims to rule the WHOLE of
Russia from abroad, which was in no way envisaged by even one paragraph of the
‘Statute of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad’, nor by one of our later
resolutions?”[53]
On October 20 / November 2 (i.e. over eighteen months since the scandals
erupted), the Synod decided to withdraw Bishop Barnabas from Russia and to
place all his parishes in the jurisdiction of Metropolitan Vitaly (who,
throughout the 1990s, has not set foot once on Russian soil, in spite of
numerous invitations).[54] All the
parishes of the ROCA in Siberia, Ukraine and Belarus were to be entrusted to
Bishop Benjamin.[55]
By the beginning of 1994 the Russian
bishops had received no reaction whatsoever from the Synod to any of their
letters and requests. On March 8/21, 1994, in a conference taking place in
Suzdal, Bishop Valentine said: “On June 10/23, 1993 in Suzdal there took place
a diocesan congress in which resolutions were taken and an Address was sent to
the Synod indicating the transgressions, by the above-mentioned Hierarchs, of
the Apostolic Canons and decrees of the Fathers of the Church, of the
Ecumenical and Local Councils. At the same time they asked that his Grace
Bishop Barnabas be recalled, and that Archbishop Mark should ask forgiveness of
the clergy and the Russian people for his humiliation of their honour and
dignity. If our request were ignored, the whole weight of responsibility would
lie on the transgressors of the Church canons. But so far there has been no
reply.
“We sent the Resolution of the clergy, monastics and laypeople warning
that if there continued to be transgressions of the Apostolic Canons and
Conciliar Resolutions on the part of the Hierarchs, with the connivance of the
Hierarchical Synod, the whole responsibility would lie as a heavy burden on the
transgressors. The Synod did not reply.
“Together with his Eminence Archbishop Lazarus and the members of the
Diocesan Councils I sent an address to the Synod in which their attention was
drawn to the wily intrigues on the part of those who wished us ill, and asked
that the situation be somehow corrected, placing our hopes on Christian love
and unity of mind, which help to overcome human infirmities. But in the same
address we laid out in very clear fashion our determination that if the
Hierarchical Synod did not put an end to the deliberate transgressions, we
would be forced to exist independently, in accordance with the holy Patriarch
Tikhon’s ukaz no. 362 of November 7/20, 1920, in the interests of the
purity of Orthodoxy and the salvation of our Russian flock. The reply consisted
in Vladyka Metropolitan threatening a ban.
“I sent a letter to Metropolitan Vitaly in which I besought him
earnestly to confirm my status before the Ministry of Justice of the Russian
Federation, so that the Suzdal Diocesan Administration should not lose its
registration. This time the reply was swift, only not to the Diocesan
Administration, but to the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation under
the signature of Bishop Barnabas, saying that the Russian Hierarchs were no
longer Administering the affairs of the FROC, and that this duty was laid upon
him. As a result I and the member of my Diocesan Council began visiting office
after office, a process that lasted many months.
“It is difficult for you to imagine how much labour we had to expend,
how many written bureaucratic demands we had to fulfil, in order to get our
Regulations re-registered. If I had not undertaken this, all the churches would
automatically have been taken out of registration and then, believe me, the
Moscow Patriarchate would not have let go such a ‘juicy morsel’.”[56]
After hearing more speeches in the same vein, including one from
Archbishop Lazarus, the Congress made the following decisions: 1. To form a
Temporary Higher Church Administration (THCA) of the Russian Orthodox Church,
which, without claiming to be the highest Church authority in Russia, would
have as its final aim the convening of a Free All-Russian Local Council that
would have such authority. 2. To elect and consecrate new bishops. 3. To declare
their gratitude to the ROCA and Metropolitan Vitaly, whose name would continue
to be commemorated in Divine services, since they wished to remain in communion
of prayer with them. 4. To express the hope that the Hierarchical Synod would
recognize the THCA and the consecrations performed by it.
One of the members of the Congress, Elena Fateyevna Shipunova, declared:
“It is now completely obvious that the subjection of the Russian dioceses to
the Synod Abroad contradicts the second point of Ukaz no. 362. The
Russian Church is faced directly with the necessity of moving to independent
administration in accordance with this Ukaz. After the sergianist schism
Metropolitan Cyril of Kazan called for such a move, considering Ukaz no.
362 as the only possible basis of Church organization. Incidentally,
Metropolitan Cyril also indicated to Metropolitan Sergius Stragorodsky that he
had to follow Ukaz no. 362 instead of usurping ecclesiastical power.
Metropolitan Cyril and the other bishop-confessors tried to organize the
administration of the Russian Church on the basis of this Ukaz, but they
couldn’t do this openly. Now for the first time the Russian Church has the
opportunity to do this. We could say that this is an historical moment. The
Temporary Higher Church Administration that has been created is the first legal
one in Russia since the time of the sergianist schism. The Centre of Church power ceased its
existence after the death of Metropolitan Peter more than half a century ago,
but we have not yet arrived at the Second All-Russian Council which has the
power to re-establish Central Church power.”[57]
On March 9/22 the THCA, which now contained three new bishops: Theodore
of Borisovsk, Seraphim of Sukhumi and Agathangelus of Simferopol, together with
many clergy, monastics and laity, informed Metropolitan Vitaly and the Synod of
the ROCA of their decision.
On March 23 / April 5 the Synod of the ROCA rejected this declaration
and the new consecrations, and decided to break communion in prayer with the
newly formed Autonomous Church, but without imposing any bans.[58] In this
decision the ROCA Synod called itself the “Central Church authority” of the
Russian Church, which contradicted both its own Fundamental Statute and the
simple historical fact that, as the FROC bishops pointed out, since the death
of Metropolitan Peter in 1937 the Russian Church has had no “Central Church
authority”.[59]
Then, in order to strengthen the ROCA’s hand in the coming struggle with
the FROC, Archimandrite Eutyches (Kurochkin) was consecrated Bishop of Ishim
and Siberia on July 11/24.[60]
Bishop Gregory (Grabbe), however, who had not been admitted to the
sessions of the ROCA Synod, fully approved of the actions of the Russian
Hierarchs in a letter to Bishop Valentine dated March 24 / April 6. And on the
same day he wrote the following to Metropolitan Vitaly: “We have brought the
goal of the possible regeneration of the Church in Russia to the most
undesirable possible end. Tormented by envy and malice, certain of our bishops
have influenced the whole course of our church politics in Russia. As a
consequence of this, our Synod has not understood the meaning of the mission of
our existence abroad.
“As I warned the Synod in my last report, we have done absolutely everything
possible to force the Russian bishops to separate from us administratively.
They have had to proceed from Resolution no. 362 of Patriarch Tikhon of
November 7/20, 1920 in order to avoid the final destruction of the just-begun
regeneration of our Church in our Fatherland. But our Synod, having nothing
before its eyes except punitive tactics, proceeds only on the basis of a
normalized church life. Whereas the Patriarch’s Resolution had in mind the
preservation of the Church’s structure in completely unprecedented historical
and ecclesiastical circumstances.
“The ukaz was composed for various cases, including means for the
re-establishment of the Church’s Administration even in conditions of its
abolition (see article 9) and ‘the extreme disorganization of Church life’.
This task is placed before every surviving hierarch, on condition that he is
truly Orthodox.
“The Russian Hierarchs felt themselves to be in this position when, for
two years running, their inquiries and requests to provide support against the
oppression of the Moscow Patriarchate were met with complete silence on the
part of our Synod.
“Seeing the canonical chaos produced in their dioceses by Bishop
Barnabas, and the Synod’s silent collusion with him, the Russian Hierarchs came
to the conclusion that there was no other way of avoiding the complete
destruction of the whole enterprise but their being led by the Patriarch’s
Resolution no. 362.
“Our Synod unlawfully retired Bishop Valentine for his reception of a
huge parish in Noginsk,.. but did not react to the fact that Bishop Barnabas
had in a treacherous manner disgraced the Synod, in whose name he petitioned to
be received into communion with the Ukrainian self-consecrators!
“I don’t know whether the full text of Resolution no. 362 has been read
at the Synod. I myself formerly paid little attention to it, but now, having
read it, I see that the Russian Hierarchs have every right to cite it, and this
fact will come to the surface in the polemic that will inevitably take place
now. I fear that by its decisions the Synod has already opened the path to this
undesirable polemic, and it threatens to create a schism not only in Russia,
but also with us here…
“There are things which it is impossible to stop, and it is also
impossible to escape the accomplished fact. If our Synod does not now correctly
evaluate the historical moment that has taken place, then its already
profoundly undermined prestige (especially in Russia) will be finally and
ingloriously destroyed.
“All the years of the existence of the Church Abroad we have enjoyed
respect for nothing else than our uncompromising faithfulness to the canons.
They hated us, but they did not dare not to respect us. But now we have shown
the whole Orthodox world that the canons are for us an empty sound, and we have
become a laughing-stock in the eyes of all those who have even the least
relationship to Church affairs.
“You yourself, at the Synod in Lesna, allowed yourself to say that for
us, the participants in it, it was now not the time to examine the canons, but
we had to act quickly. You, who are at the helm of the ship of the Church,
triumphantly, before the whole Sobor, declared to us that we should now hasten
to sail without a rudder and without sails. At that time your words greatly
disturbed me, but I, knowing your irritability with me for insisting on the
necessity of living according to the canons, nevertheless hoped that all was
not lost yet and that our Bishops would somehow shake off the whole of this
nightmare of recent years.
“Think, Vladyko, of the tens of thousands of Orthodox people both abroad
and in Russia who have been deceived by us. Do not calm yourself with the
thought that if guilt lies somewhere, then it lies equally on all of our
hierarchs. The main guilt will lie on you as the leader of our Sobor…”[61]
Unfortunately, however, Metropolitan Vitaly was beginning to show the
same kind of condescending and contemptuous attitude to the Russian flock which
had suffered so much in its struggle for the faith, as Archbishop Mark had been
demonstrating for some time. Thus in one letter to Bishop Valentine, after
rebuking him for receiving the supposedly homosexual Archimandrite Adrian, he
wrote: “We understand that, living in the Soviet Union for these 70 years of
atheist rule, such a deep seal of Sovietism and of departure from right
thinking has penetrated into the world-view of the Russian people that you,
too, were involuntarily caught up by the spirit of this wave…”[62] Perhaps
this was the reason why he and his Synod now proceeded to dispense with the
Russian bishops without even the semblance of canonical order as if they were
so much “Soviet filth”, and attempted to rule the flock they so distrusted in
the most “hands off” manner possible - from several thousand miles away,
declaring that the Centre of Ecclesiastical Administration for the whole of the
vast Russian Church resided in an old man in New York who had never set foot on
Russian soil!
4. The Second Separation.
In spite of receiving no reply to their
repeated requests that the ROCA Synod re-establish canonical order in Russia,
Archbishop Lazarus and Bishop Valentine accepted an invitation from Abbess
Macrina of Lesna monastery – not, significantly, from the Synod or any
individual hierarch – to go to the Lesna Sobor of the ROCA in November, 1994.
Here, on November 10/23, in spite of a very cold reception, - “both of us,” as
Bishop Valentine later wrote, “were in fact isolated from the Hierarchical
Sobor and its acts” - they asked forgiveness and were again received into
communion, according to the official minutes of the ROCA.[63]
It should be noted, however, that in the “Act” later signed by all the bishops
but not published in the official minutes, the forgiveness was asked
from both sides.
On the same day the Sobor resolved: “1.
The Council of Bishops considers the normalization of interrelations with the
Most Reverend Archbishop Lazarus and Bishop Valentine to be possible on the
condition that the THEA be abolished without measures of interdiction against
its organizers. 2. It is possible to recognize the three hierarchical
ordinations performed by Archbishop Lazarus and Bishop Valentine as lawful if,
permeated by a feeling of repentance and humility, the newly-ordained hierarchs
will renounce the text previously signed by them and will take an oath in
accordance with the text established by our higher ecclesiastical authority,
which will be issued to them from the Chancery of the Synod of Bishops. 3. The
Most Reverend Russian [hierarchs] are responsible for organizing a hierarchical
conference to make decisions on local questions. Moreover, one of the Most
Reverend Russian [hierarchs] [this was later decreed to be Archbishop Lazarus]
will be a member of the Synod of Bishops.”[64]
None of the outstanding issues dividing
the two sides were discussed at that time, but the Russian bishops did manage
to ask Bishop Hilarion for explanations of two things that worried them: the
ROCA’s entering into communion with the Greek Old Calendarist Metropolitan
Cyprian of Fili (which Bishop Gregory (Grabbe) had strongly protested against),
and its forthcoming negotiations (at Archbishop Mark’s insistence) with members
of the Moscow Patriarchate.
Then they were invited to join the Sobor.
However, as they crossed the threshold of the monastery church where the Sobor
was in session, the Russian bishops were handed an “Act” – Bishop Valentine
later called it an “Act of capitulation” – which had already been signed by all
the ROCA bishops and which the two Russian bishops were now told to sign.[65]
“When we had cursorily looked through this Act,” writes Bishop Valentine, “I
began to protest, to which Archbishop Mark said that if we didn’t want peace
and did not want to sign, we could leave the hall.” Vladyka Valentine said that
both sides had to participate in drawing up such an act, after which Bishop
Hilarion, deputy secretary of the Synod, promised “that they would edit the
act, taking into account our remarks and suggestions”. Then Archbishop Lazarus
agreed to sign. Bishop Valentine, though unwilling to sign, did not want to
create a schism from Archbishop Lazarus. So he, too, signed. Two hours later,
overcome by the extreme tension of the occasion, Bishop Valentine suffered a
heart attack and was rushed to a hospital in Paris, where he was placed in
intensive care.
While Vladyka Valentine was still in
hospital and in a very weak condition, two ROCA bishops came to him, gave him
communion and asked him to sign two more documents (he does not remember what
was in those documents). On returning to Lesna, Vladyka offered a second
variant of the Act to Vladyka Lazarus. Lazarus did not want to sign this second
variant, but he suggested to Vladyka Valentine that he sign in the capacity of
his deputy. So Valentine signed his own variant of the Act and gave copies of
it to both Vladyka Lazarus and the ROCA Synod.[66]
Bishop Eutyches later witnessed that Bishop Valentine’s proposed changes to the
original Act were not accepted by the other bishops at the Sobor.[67]
It is not know precisely on which day
these events took place. However, we do know that on November 17/30 it was
resolved: “1. To survey all the Most Reverend members of the Council after
receipt by the Synodal Chancery of all data on he bishops ordained in Russia:
Theodore, Seraphim and Agathangel. 2. To invite these three bishops to the city
of Munich (if possible, for the altar feast of the Holy New-martyrs), for
carrying out the nomination and confession of faith and concelebrations with
the Most Reverend members of the Council. 3. To approve the proposed borders of
the Russian dioceses.”[68]
This latter decision, which involved the
division of the parishes of the ROCA-FROC in Russia into six dioceses with
newly-defined boundaries was to elicit, as we shall see, was to elicit serious
discontent among the Russian clergy because of the threat it posed to the
registration of their churches. Bishop Valentine did not sign it – probably
because he was already in hospital.
On the same day, still more seriously, the
Synod published an epistle declaring that “the time has come to seek living
communion with all the parts of the One Russian Orthodox Church, scattered by
dint of historical circumstances”. This serious compromise in the confessing
stance of the ROCA vis-à-vis the Moscow Patriarchate, with which it
quite clearly said that it wanted “better relations”[69],
was signed by Archbishop Lazarus – but, again, not by Bishop Valentine. It was
later to be used by Archbishop Mark as an excuse for his treacherous relations
with the patriarchate.
The next day, in two special ukazes,
the ROCA confirmed Bishop Valentine as ruling hierarch of the Suzdal diocese
and recognized that the accusations of immorality which had been hurled at him
two years before, and which Archbishop Mark had insisted on bringing before the
Synod, although the canons forbade it, were completely unfounded.[70]
On November 22 / December 5, having
returned from hospital in Paris to the Lesna monastery, Bishop Valentine wrote
a letter to the Sobor once again explaining the serious problems caused to the
FROC by the canonical transgressions of the ROCA. And he appealed to the ROCA
bishops to relate to the FROC bishops in the same way that the famous ROCA theologian
Archbishop Averky had once (in 1971) recommended that they relate to the Old
Calendarist Greeks: “Our interference must be limited to giving the Greeks
grace-filled bishops, and then we must leave them to live independently.”[71]
It was evident that, in spite of the restoration of communion with the ROCA,
Vladyka was still deeply worried by the intentions of the ROCA with regard to
the Russian dioceses – a fear that was to prove to be more than justified…
On January 12/25, 1995 there was a meeting
of the bishops and clergy of the FROC in Suzdal to discuss the results of the
Lesna Sobor. Besides the Act, of particular concern to many of the clergy was
the fact that the redefining of the diocesan boundaries proposed at the Sobor
would involve the necessity of re-registration for very many parishes. Since
they had achieved registration only with the greatest difficulty in the first
place, they did not of course welcome this prospect. But more importantly, it
would very probably mean that they would be refused any registration, since the
Moscow Patriarchate representatives would insist that changing names and
diocesan boundaries was unacceptable. This in turn would very likely mean that
their churches would be handed over to the patriarchate.
Thus the Moscow Protopriest Michael Ardov
said: “Concerning the church building which I occupy, I must say that if I
transfer to Vladyka Eutyches [to whom the ROCA had given the Moscow and St.
Petersburg dioceses], what will happen? The building is registered with the
Suzdal diocese. They tell us that we are in this building unlawfully, and that
we still have to secure its transfer to us. It is well know that [Moscow Mayor]
Luzhkov is categorically against our parish. They forced us to change our
parish rules sixteen times before registering it. Of course, I submit to the Ukaz
of the Hierarchical Synod, but I have a request for our bishops: they must take
into account that this is not Canada and not America, but a different state,
and we have different perspectives.”[72]
Several other priests spoke against
re-registration for similar reasons.
Towards the end of the meeting,
Protopriest Andrew Osetrov posed the following question to Bishop Eutyches:
“Which do you consider preferable for Russian believers – the Resolutions of
the Hierarchical Synod and Sobor of the ROCA and its First-Hierarch, or the
Resolutions of the All-Russian Sobor of 1917-18 and the holy Patriarch Tikhon?”
Bishop Eutyches replied: “Preferable are
the Resolutions of living hierarchs, and not dead ones. Even if the Resolutions
of the Synod of the ROCA will be uncanonical, for me this has no significance,
I must fulfil them.”[73]
This summed up the difference between the
two sides. For the ROCA (and the Russian Bishops Benjamin and Eutyches)
obedience to the Synod was the ultimate value, more important even than the
holy canons which every bishops swears to uphold at his consecration. For the
FROC bishops, on the other hand, the authority of the ROCA could not be placed
higher than the objective good of their own flock, which could be preserved
only by faithfulness to the canons of the Seven Ecumenical Councils and the
highest authorities in the post-revolutionary Russian Church – the decisions of
Patriarch Tikhon and the 1917-18 Council.
The next day, January 13/26, the seven
FROC bishops met and decided to put off a final decision on the thorny question
of the territorial division of dioceses. When discussion passed to the Act,
Bishop Eutyches said that the Act had not been fulfilled by the Russian bishops
and refused to take any further part in the Conference. Later, in a letter to
Metropolitan Vitaly dated January 17/30, he wrote that “Bishop Benjamin,
convinced that the meeting completely supported Bishop Valentine and was
hostile to the Church Abroad and himself personally, left the meeting [on
January 12/25]. I participated in the meeting to the end and was struck by the
general anti-ROCA mood of the hierarchs, priests, nuns and laymen.”[74]
On January 14/27 the Hierarchical
Conference (excluding Bishops Eutyches and Benjamin) approved a letter to the
ROCA Synod, in which they wrote that the Act approved by the Lesna Sobor “was
in extreme need of a series of substantial changes to the points, and
additions”. Below we quote the Act, together with the comments of the FROC
bishops (in italics):
“‘We, the Hierarchical Synod of the ROCA,
under the presidency of the First-Hierarch, His Eminence Metropolitan Vitaly of
Eastern America and New York, and the Most Reverend Hierarchs: Archbishop
Lazarus of Odessa and Tambov and Bishop Valentine of Suzdal and Vladimir,
taking upon ourselves full responsibility before God and the All-Russian flock,
and following the commandments of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church,
in the name of peace and love, for the sake of the salvation of our souls and
the souls of our flock, declare the following:
‘1. We recognize our mutual responsibility
for the disturbances that have arisen in the Russian [Rossijskoj]
Church, but we consider that certain hasty actions of the Hierarchical Synod
cannot serve as justification for a schism in the Russian Church and the
establishment of the Temporary Higher Church Administration.’
Comment
by the FROC bishops:
We definitely do not agree with the
definition of the actions of the Russian hierarchs as a schism, for these
actions were a forced measure aimed at guarding the canonical rights of the
Bishop in his diocese, and the created Temporary Higher Church Administration
was formed, not in spite of, but in accordance with the will and ukaz
no. 362 of the holy Patriarch Tikhon, at a time when the Hierarchical Synod of
the ROCA left the Russian hierarchs without any communications, directives,
holy Antimins or holy Chrismation.
If we recognize our mutual responsibility for the disturbances that have
arisen in the Russian Church, then it is our right to recognize certain hasty
actions of the Hierarchical Sobor and Synod as uncanonical and as inflicting
direct harm on the work of restoring true Orthodoxy in Russia, which has served
as the terminus a quo for [our] conditional administrative separation
and the formation of the Temporary Higher Church Administration.
The concrete intra-ecclesiastical situation has dictated such a course
of action on our part, but at the same time we have admitted that
administrative independence must in no
way automatically lead to canonical and eucharistic independence.
Such communion has not been broken by us, in
spite of the one-sided decision of the Hierarchical Synod of the ROCA.
‘2. We ask each other’s forgiveness, so
that from now on we should not reproach anybody for the actions which lead to
the division and the founding of the THCA.’
Comment
of the FROC bishops: It is not a matter of reproaches but of the essence of
the actions of both sides, which have led to administrative division and the
founding of the THCA. By examining each concrete action, we would be able
mutually to understand the depth of the causes, and proceeding from that, calmly
and without detriment, remove their consequences in the present.
‘3. We consider the organization of the
THCA to be an unlawful act and abolish it.’
Comment
of the FROC bishops: The very formulation of this point seems to us to be
faulty in view of the final aim of our joint efforts.
‘4. We consider the consecration of the
three hierarchs: Theodore, Seraphim and Agathangelus, which was carried out by
their Graces Lazarus and Valentine, to be unlawful. Their candidacies should be
presented in the order that is obligatory for all candidates for hierarchical
rank accepted in the ROCA, and, if they turn out to be worthy, then, after
their confession of faith and acceptance of the hierarchical oath, they will be
confirmed in the hierarchical rank.’
Comment
of the FROC bishops: We do not agree at all that the episcopal
consecrations performed by us were not lawful. The obligatory order for all
candidates for hierarchical rank accepted in the ROCA could not be a guide for
us in our actions since at that time we were administratively independent of
the ROCA. If we approach this demand from a strictly formal point of view, then
the Hierarchical Synod should have asked us concerning our agreement or
disagreement with the new consecrations, especially the consecration of his
Grace Bishop Eutyches – which was not done. In spite of your limitation of our
rights, we have recognized these consecrations and are far from the thought of
demanding a confession of faith and acceptance of the hierarchical oath a
second time, specially for us.
‘5. In the same way, all the
other actions carried out by Archbishop Lazarus and Bishop Valentine and the
THCA organized by them which exceeded the authority of the diocesan bishops,
but belonged only to the province of the Hierarchical Sobor and Hierarchical
Synod of the ROCA, are to be considered to be invalid.’
Comment
of the FROC bishops: Until the moment that we ceased to be members of the
ROCA, and the THCA was formed, all our actions and suggestions were presented
for discussion and confirmation by these higher church instances. Having
conditionally separated from the ROCA in administrative matters, we were
entitled to carry out these actions.
‘6. Archbishop Lazarus is reinstated in
the rights of a ruling hierarch with the title “Archbishop of Odessa and
Tambov”.’
Comment
of the FROC bishops: The formulation of this point admits of an ambiguous
interpretation and is therefore on principle unacceptable for us. Judging
objectively, his Grace Archbishop Lazarus did not lose his rights as a ruling
bishop, in spite of the ukaz of the Hierarchical Synod concerning his
retirement. The ukaz seems to us to be canonically ill-founded, and
therefore lacking force and unrealized. We suggest the formulation: ‘In view of
the erroneous actions of the Hierarchical Synod of the ROCA, Archbishop Lazarus
is not to be considered as having been retired and is recognized as having the
rights of the ruling hierarch of his diocese with the title (Archbishop of Tambov
and Odessa).
‘7. Bishop Valentine will be
restored to his rights as the ruling hierarch of Suzdal and Vladimir after the
removal of the accusations against him on the basis of an investigation by a
Spiritual Court appointed by the present Hierarchical Sobor.’
Comment
of the FROC bishops: The given point is excluded, in agreement with the Ukaz
of the Hierarchical Synod.[75]
‘8. To bring order into ecclesiastical
matters on the territory of Russia a Hierarchical Conference of the Russian
Hierarchs is to be organized which does not encroach on the fullness of
ecclesiastical power, but which is in unquestioning submission to the
Hierarchical Sobor and the Hierarchical Synod of the ROCA. One of the member of
the Hierarchical Conference will be a member of the Synod, in accordance with
the decision of the Hierarchical Sobor.’
Comment
of the FROC bishops: It is suggested that this formulation be changed, and
consequently also the meaning of the eighth point: ‘The THCA does not encroach
on the fullness of ecclesiastical power. In certain exceptional situations it
recognizes its spiritual and administrative submission to the Hierarchical
Sobor of the ROCA. One of the members of the Hierarchical Conference will be a
temporary, regular member of the Synod, in accordance with the decision of the
Hierarchical Sobor of the ROCA and the Hierarchical Conference of the Russian
Bishops.
‘9. After the signing of the Act
it will be published in all the organs of the church press, and in particular
in those publications in which their Graces Lazarus and Valentine published
material against the Hierarchical Sobor and Hierarchical Synod of the ROCA.’
Comment
of the FROC bishops: The formulation should be changed as follows: After
the signing of the Act it will be published in all the organs of the church
press, and in particular in those publications in which their Graces Lazarus
and Valentine published material explaining certain hasty actions of the
Hierarchical Synod and Sobor of the ROCA.”[76]
Now on January 3, Bishop Hilarion on
behalf of the ROCA Synod had sent a respectfully worded invitation to Bishops
Theodore, Agathangelus and Seraphim to come to New York for the February 9/22
session of the Synod and “for the formalities of re-establishing concelebration”.[77]
It is significant that the Synod had also invited Bishop Eutyches, who was not a member of the Synod – but not
Archbishop Lazarus, who was a member
of the Synod, as agreed at the Lesna Sobor.
When Bishops Theodore and Agathangelus arrived
in New York, they were listened to and on the next day, in Bishop Agathangelus’
words, “we were handed a ‘Decree of the Hierarchical Synod of the Synod of the
ROCA’, in which their Graces Lazarus and Valentine, and also Bishops Theodore,
Seraphim and I, were declared to be banned from serving.[78]
For Vladyka Theodore and me this was like a bolt from the blue… We were told
that the reason for this decision was our supposed non-fulfilment of the
conciliar Act, which had been signed by, among the other Hierarchs, their
Graces Lazarus and Valentine. The point was that the conference of Russian
Bishops which had been formed in agreement with this same Act had asked for
several formulations in the Act to be changed, so as not to introduce
disturbance into the ranks of the believers by the categorical nature of
certain points. This was a request, not a demand. But, however hard we tried,
we could not convince the Synod that none of the Russian Bishops was insisting
and that we were all ready to accept the Act in the form in which it had been
composed. We met with no understanding on the part of the members of the Synod.
Vladyka Theodore and I affirmed in writing that we accepted the text of the Act
in the form in which it had been composed and asked for a postponement in the
carrying out of the ‘Decree’ until the position of all the absent Russian
Bishops on this question could be clarified. In general we agreed to make any
compromises if only the ‘Decree’ were not put into effect, because in essence
it meant only one thing – the final break between the Russian parishes and the
ROCA.
“We gradually came to understand that it
was not any canonical transgression of the Russian Bishops (there was none),
nor any disagreement with the text of the conciliar Act, nor, still less, any
mythical ‘avaricious aims’ that was the reason for the composition of this
document, which, without any trial or investigation, banned the five Hierarchs
from serving. It was the Hierarchical Conference of the Russian Bishops, which
had been established by the Council that took place in Lesna monastery, that
was the real reason giving birth to the ‘Decree’. The Sobor of Hierarchs, moved
in those days by ‘Paschal joy’ (as Metropolitan Vitaly repeated several times),
finally came to create an organ of administration in Russia which, if not
independent, but subject to the Synod, was nevertheless an organ of
administration. When the ‘Paschal joy’ had passed, the Synodal Bishops suddenly
realized: they had themselves reduced their own power, insofar as, with their
agreement, Hierarchs could meet in vast Russia and discuss vital problems.
Before that, the Church Abroad had not allowed itself to behave like that. And
it was this, unfortunately, that the foreign Archpastors could not bear. On
receiving for confirmation the protocols of the first session of the
Hierarchical Conference with concrete proposals to improve Church life in
Russia, the foreign Bishops were completely nonplussed. Therefore a reason that
did not in fact exist was thought up – the supposed non-fulfilment of the Act.
“The members of the Synod, exceeding their
authority, since such decisions are in the competence of the Sobor, decided, by
means of canonical bans, to confirm their sole authority over the whole of
Russia – both historical Russia and Russia abroad. The very foundations of the
Church Abroad as a part of the Russian Church living abroad were trampled on,
and the Synod on its own initiative ascribed to itself the rights and
prerogatives of the Local Russian Church.
“It did not even ponder the fact that, in
banning at one time five Hierarchs, it was depriving more than 150 parishes –
that is many thousands of Orthodox people – of archpastoral care. Cancelling
the labour of many years of Hierarchs, priests and conscious, pious laymen in
our Fatherland.
“In Russia a very real war is now being
waged for human souls; every day is full of work. Depriving Orthodox Christians
of their pastors without any objective reason witnesses to the haughtiness and
lack of love towards our country and its people on the part of the members of
the Synod Abroad. We, the Orthodox from Russia, are called ‘common people’ by
Metropolitan Vitaly (thank you, Vladyko Metropolitan!).
“Vladyka Theodore and I were promised
that, in exchange for our treachery, we would be confirmed in our hierarchical
rank. And it was even proclaimed that we would be appointed to foreign sees.
For us personally, who were born and brought up in Russia, this was very
painful to hear…”[79]
This act of blackmail – we recognize you
if you accept a foreign see, but do not recognize you if you stay in Russia –
exposed the complete lack of canonical justification in the acts of the ROCA
Synod. Let us recall that: (a) Bishops Theodore and Agathangelus had just been
formally recognized as canonical bishops, (b) they had agreed in writing to
fulfil all of the ROCA Synod’s conditions, including the signing of the Act
without any alterations, (c) they had not been accused of any canonical
transgressions, and (d) they had not been subjected to any investigation or
trial, as the canons demanded. Their only crime, it would appear, was that they
lived in Russia – a novel charge against a bishop of the Russian Church!
On February 11/24 the ROCA Synod issued an
epistle which for the first time contained a semblance of canonical
justification in the form of a list of canons supposedly transgressed by the
five Russian bishops. Unfortunately, they clearly had no relevance to the
matter in hand. Thus what relevance could the 57th Canon of the
Council of Carthage – “On the Donatists and the children baptized by the
Donatists” – have to the bishops of the Free Russian Orthodox Church?![80]
On February 15/28, Bishop Gregory (Grabbe)
wrote to Bishop Valentine: “I cannot fail to express my great sorrow with
regard to the recent Church events. Moreover, I wish to say to you that I was
glad to get to know Vladykas Theodore and Agathangelus better. They think well
and in an Orthodox manner. It is amazing that our foreign Bishops should not
have valued them and should have treated them so crudely in spite of all the
acts and the whole unifying tendency which was just expressed by Metropolitan
Vitaly at the last Sobor. The whole tragedy lies in the fact that even the
latter wanted to construct everything solely on foreign forces that do not have
the information necessary to decide problems which are strange and unfamiliar
to them. Therefore they do not want to offer this [task] to the new forces that
have arisen in Russia.
“As
a result, we are presented with the complete liquidation of these healthy
forces. This is a great victory of the dark forces of our Soviet enemies of
Orthodoxy in the persons of the Moscow Patriarchate.
“I am glad that you will not give in to them,
and I pray God that He help you to carry on the Orthodox cause, apparently
without the apostate forces of Orthodox Abroad…”[81]
The next month Archbishop Valentine
recounted these events in a Lenten letter to his flock, and continued: “This second instance of administrative
pressure on the Russian Hierarchs, and, moreover, in such an undisguisedly cunning form, when flattering mentions
and assurances of friendship and invitations came in the name of the Synod of
the ROCA, while in fact another attempt to usurp
power over the Russian flock was taking place, forces me to make certain
clarifications.
“On November 7/20, 1920 the holy Patriarch
Tikhon together with the Sacred Synod and the Higher Ecclesiastical Council of
the Russian Church passed the exceptionally important Resolution no. 362
concerning the self-governing of Dioceses in the case of the absence of a
canonical Higher Church Administration or the impossibility of communicating
with it. On the basis of this Ukaz, Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky)
organized the Hierarchical Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. In
Russia on the basis of this Ukaz there was organized the Catacomb or
“Tikhonite” Church under the leadership of its inspirer, the holy New Martyr
Metropolitan Joseph of Petrograd. In its time the Russian Orthodox Church
Abroad helped in the establishment of a lawful hierarchy in Russia,
consecrating to the Episcopate their Graces Lazarus, Valentine and Benjamin.
Instead of expanding the Church in the Homeland, there appeared the temptation
of ruling it from abroad, declaring itself the ‘Central Church Authority’,
which is what the Hierarchical Synod of the ROCA did in practice in April, 1994
(cf. Suzdal’skij Palomnik, special issue, ¹¹ 18,19,20). But then a
declaration was made concerning the supposedly ‘unlawful’ creation by the
Russian Hierarchs, on the basis of Ukaz no. 362, of a Temporary Higher
Church Administration, whereas the Ukaz no. 362 of Patriarch Tikhon of
November 7/20 said directly: ‘The care for the organization of a Higher Church
authority… is the unfailing duty of the eldest according to rank of the
Hierarchs in the indicated group.’
“Intra-ecclesiastical freedom and the
dignities of the Bishops based on the Holy Canons do not permit administrative
arbitrariness and do not give the Hierarchical Synod of the ROCA the right to
the supreme administration of the Church. And our following of the Canons and Ukaz
no. 362, which was specially written for the Russian Dioceses existing in
identical conditions, cannot give an excuse to whoever it may be to declare the
Russian Hierarchs to be in some kind of ‘schism’. Having neither reasons, nor
lawful authority or canonical rights to ‘ban’ the Russian Hierarchs, the
Chancellery of the Synod of the ROCA is only witnessing, in the latest
incident, to a deep crisis in the
administration of the ROCA itself, when the President of the Hierarchical Synod
Metropolitan Vitaly is not able to control the resolutions and ukazes
issuing from the Chancellery of the Synod. It is impossible to take the
documents signed by Vladyka Metropolitan Vitaly seriously when in the course of
less than a year their meaning has several times changed to the complete
opposite.[82]
It is impossible to believe that in the ‘punitive actions’ of the Russian
Hierarchs that have now become quite usual there is contained love for Russia,
about which the hierarchs of the ROCA speak so eloquently. It is impossible to
look on with indifference as, instead of building up the Church in the
much-suffering Homeland, they incessantly ‘divide territory’, as a result of
which churches of the FROC fall into the hands of the Moscow Patriarchate.”[83]
On February 27 / March 12, 1995
Archbishops Lazarus and Valentine and Bishops Theodore, Seraphim and
Agathangelus met in Suzdal and re-established the THCA which had been created
on March 5/18, 1994. Then they decided: “To qualify the Decree of the
Hierarchical Sobor [sic – Synod would have been more accurate] of the
ROCA of February 9/22 and the claims contained in it to leadership of the whole
Russian Church by the Hierarchical Synod and the First-Hierarch of the ROCA as
exceeding their authority and a transgression of the Holy Canons and the
Statute of the ROCA. In particular, the 8th Canon of the Third
Ecumenical Council has been transgressed, which declares: ‘May the haughtiness
of secular power not creep in under the guise of sacred acts; and may we not
lose, little by little and without it being noticed, the freedom which our Lord
Jesus Christ, the Liberator of all men, has given us through His Blood. And so
it is pleasing to the Holy and Ecumenical Council that every Diocese should
preserve in purity and without oppression the rights that belonged to it from the
beginning… And if anyone should propose any resolution contrary to this, let it
be invalid.’”[84]
It is significant that it was precisely
this Canon that was quoted by Hieromartyr Joseph, Metropolitan of Petrograd,
when he laid the foundations for the Catacomb Church in January, 1928. And
indeed, the arguments between the ROCA and the FROC increasingly came to
resemble the arguments between Metropolitan Sergius and the Catacomb Church, on
the one hand, and Sergius and the foreign bishops who separated from him, on
the other. The issue in 1928-30, as in 1995, was the question: who, if anyone,
had the power to create a central organ of Church administration having full
patriarchal power to rule over all the bishops of the Russian Church?
Metropolitan Sergius then, like Metropolitan Vitaly today, claimed that he had
such power, and proceeded to act with greater fierceness and disregard for the
canons than any real pope or patriarch. But the Catacomb bishops then, like the
FROC bishops today, claimed that since the death of the last canonical
Patriarch and the imprisonment of his locum tenens, Metropolitan Peter,
there was no alternative but to return to the decentralized form of Church
administration prescribed by the never-repealed Patriarchal ukaz no. 362.
According to the ukaz, neighbouring
bishops in identical circumstances
could voluntarily unite into TCHAs
and govern themselves as autonomous Churches until the convening of the next
canonical Sobor of the whole Russian Church. But (a) bishops living in
different States and separated by thousands of miles of ocean obviously do not
live in identical circumstances, and (b) no group of bishops or TCHA has power
over any other TCHA, nor can it claim to have rule over the whole Russian
Church, so that (c) full patriarchal power can belong only to the future Local
Council of the All-Russian Church and the organs elected by it. To these
restrictions must be added, for hierarchs of the ROCA, those detailed in its
still-unrepealed Statute, that is: (a) the ROCA is only a part of the Russian Church, like any other TCHA or autonomous group
of bishops, and certainly not its real centre,
as it has recently claimed; (b) its administrative powers extend only over the
Church Abroad, outside Russia; (c) it
must continue to commemorate “the Episcopate of the Russian Church” – that is,
of the Church inside Russia; and (d)
even its powers over the Church Abroad are valid only until the fall of the
atheist power, when power returns to the Church inside Russia…[85]
Conclusion
Today, three and a half years since the
second schism between the ROCA and the FROC, the situation has not changed in
essence. Almost immediately after the events of February, 1995, frightened by
the threat of defrocking by the ROCA Synod, Archbishop Lazarus and his vicar,
Bishop Agathangelus, left the FROC and returned, “repenting”, to the ROCA.[86]
But what has always, since 1990, been the core of the ROCA-FROC inside Russia,
the Suzdal diocese, has remained firm, and has in fact increased in strength.
In accordance with a resolution of the
Hierarchical Synod of the ROCA in 1996, the Hierarchical Conference of the
Russian Bishops was stripped of what little power it had: its representation in
the ROCA was annulled, and not one of the Russian bishops entered into the ROCA
Synod. At the same Council meeting Bishop Valentine was defrocked. The FROC,
naturally, refused to recognize this decision.[87]
The desertion of Archbishop Lazarus requires some comment. The secret
consecration of Fr. Lazarus (Zhurbenko) was the first major mistake of the ROCA
inside Russia. It was surprising in that the ROCA might have been expected to
consecrate, not the newly appeared Lazarus, but one of the fourteen hieromonks
who had been received under the omophorion of Metropolitan Philaret on
November 26 / December 7, 1977, after the death of their Catacomb archpastor,
Archbishop Anthony Galynsky-Mikhailovsky, in 1976.[88]
Moreover, there were other distinguished Catacomb pastors with links to the
ROCA, such as Fr. Michael Rozhdestvensky (+1988), who would have been eminently
suitable candidates for the episcopate.
Besides, the career of Fr. Lazarus himself had not been without
controversy. Although he had been reared in the Catacomb Church, and had been
in the camps, he had been refused ordination to the priesthood by three
Catacomb hierarchs, including Archbishop Anthony Galynsky-Mikhailovsky – all of
whom he later accused, by a strange coincidence, of being uncanonical. He then
joined the Moscow Patriarchate and received ordination there from a certain
Bishop Benjamin of Irkutsk. Only a year later, he returned to the Catacomb
Church in Siberia, and was instrumental, according to some catacomb sources, in
sowing such suspicion against the Catacomb Bishop Theodosius Bahmetev (+1986)
that almost the whole of his flock deserted him.[89] Some
even accuse him of having betrayed Catacomb Christians to the KGB. Be that as
it may – and such accusations are easily made, but much less easily proved –
there can be no doubt that a large part of the Catacomb Church distrusted
Lazarus and refused to have anything to do with him. This was true both of the
“moderates” and the “extremists” in the Catacomb Church, both of the
“Seraphimo-Gennadiite” branch, led by Metropolitan Epiphany (Kaminsky)[90], of the
“Matthewites” led by Schema-Monk Epiphany (Chernov)[91], and of
the “passportless” branch represented by the Catacomb Archimandrite Gury
(Pavlov), who, when about to be consecrated to the episcopate in New York in
1990 by the ROCA, categorically refused when he heard that Lazarus was going to
be a co-consecrator.[92]
It was true also of Fr. Michael Rozhdestvensky. He was “the initiator of
the complete rejection of the then priest Lazarus Zhurbenko because of the
latter’s departing to the MP for his ordination. At a meeting of catacomb
clergy in the city of Tambov in 1978, in the presence of the still-flourishing
Abbot P, Fr. Vissarion and others, Fr. Michael confirmed this position. This
decision was supported in those years by all without exception of the catacomb
clergy. But later, when Vladyka Barnabas was searching for a worthy candidate
for consecration to the rank of Bishop of the Catacomb Church, Fr. Lazarus
(then already a hieromonk) craftily suggested the widowed Fr. Michael and himself
was called to invite him to be consecrated to the episcopate. On receiving the
invitation with the signature of Hieromonk Lazarus (Zhurbenko), Fr. Michael
Rozhdestvensky, naturally, did not go. Vladyka Barnabas was left with neither a
choice nor time, and he was forced to consecrate Hieromonk Lazarus to the
episcopate. Fr. Michael’s position in relation to Vladyka Lazarus remained
unchanging to the very end of his life [in 1988].”[93]
But not only did the ROCA consecrate Fr. Lazarus instead of eminently
more suitable candidates such as Fr. Michael: they used his testimony as their
sole guide to the canonicity or otherwise of the other Catacomb bishops in
Russia. Thus on May 5/18, 1990 the ROCA Synod reversed the previous decision of
the Synod under Metropolitan Philaret to recognize Archbishop
Anthony-Mikhailovsky and his ordinations, and told the priests ordained by him
“to regulate their canonical position by turning towards his Grace Bishop
Lazarus of Tambov and Morshansk”. Again, on August 2/15, 1990 another Ukaz
was distributed (but not published in the Church press) which rejected the
canonicity both of the “Seraphimo-Gennadiite” and the “Galynskyite” branches of
the Catacomb Church, causing widespread havoc in both. Thus one
“Seraphimo-Gennadiite” priest from Moscow took off his cross, saying that he
was not a priest according to the ROCA and went to Bishop Lazarus to be
reordained. His flock, suddenly abandoned, scattered in different directions.[94]
The main accusation against the hierarchs of these branches was that
they could not prove their apostolic succession by producing ordination
certificates, as required by the 33rd Apostolic Canon. This was, of
course, a serious deficiency; but in view of both groups’ favourable attitude
towards the ROCA, it would seem to have been more reasonable and charitable to
have talked with them directly, learned their history and their point of view
on the problem, and discussed with them some way of correcting this deficiency
without resorting to the punitive measures of a papal curia. And such a
charitable, unifying attitude to the various Catacomb groups had been urged –
alas, without success - by Bishop Gregory (Grabbe).
As Archbishop Hilarion has recently admitted to the present writer: “The
statement which I signed as Deputy Secretary of the Synod was based entirely on
the information given to us by Archbishop Lazarus. He reported to the Synod on
the different groups of the Catacombs and convinced the members of the Synod
(or the Council – I don’t recall offhand which) that their canonicity was
questionable and in some instances – their purity of doctrine as well (e.g.
imyabozhniki). The Synod members hoped (naively) that this would convince the
catacomb groups to rethink their position and seek from the Russian Church
Abroad correction of their orders to guarantee apostolic succession. We now see
that it was a mistake to issue the statement and to have based our
understanding of the catacomb situation wholly on the information provided by
Vl. Lazarus. I personally regret this whole matter very much and seek to have a
better understanding of and a sincere openness towards the long-suffering
confessors of the Russian Catacombs.”[95]
So Bishop Lazarus used the authority of the ROCA to take his revenge on
Catacomb bishops who had displeased him and to have himself exalted above the
Russian flock in their place.[96] He was
therefore the first instrument - and the first beneficiary - of the ROCA’s
policy of “divide and rule” towards the Catacomb Church. As such, he could not
afford to break his links with the Synod that had promoted him, and ran back to
it with his tail between his legs.
But his return to the ROCA has not meant better times for his flock in
the Ukraine. Thus Hieromonk Hilarion (Goncharenko), in a petition for transfer
from the ROCA to the FROC, wrote: “Vladyka Lazarus together with the Synod
Abroad has cunningly and finally destroyed the whole Church in the Ukraine. My
former friends and brothers in the Lord have.. turned to me with tearful sobs
and the painful question: 'What are we to do now in the stormy and destructive
situation that has been created?’”[97]
Similar disturbances have taken place in other dioceses of the ROCA
inside Russia. Thus Bishop Eutyches has been accused of serious dogmatical
errors related to ecumenism.[98]
Thus the
ROCA, which had a golden opportunity to gather all the anti-MP Catacomb Church
forces under its wing in the early 1990s, only succeeded in creating further
divisions and weakening the witness of the True Church. The good it did by
consecrating such good pastors as Bishop Valentine was almost outweighed by the
harm it did by undermining Bishop Valentine and the Suzdal diocese, by
consecrating hirelings and wolves who only brought division to the flock of
Christ, and by in general acting like foreign dictators reminiscent of the MP
hierarchs. Experienced Catacomb Christians soon discerned the signs, and fled
from the spirit of sergianism (and ecumenism) in the ROCA as they had fled from
it in the MP.
It has been left to the FROC to take up the burden which the ROCA has
failed to carry. Thus it is she, rather than the ROCA, which is now gathering
the Catacomb Christians under her wing - but without issuing bans against those
groups which do not recognize her authority. In accordance with the Patriarchal
Ukaz, she has sought friendly relations with, but not administrative
rule over, the other truly Orthodox groups in Russia in the spirit of love that
must characterize all relationships within the Church. She claims neither to be
the one and only Russian Church, nor to be the administrative centre of the
Russian Church. But she has pledged to work towards the convening of that
future canonical Local Council of the Russian Church which she, like the ROCA
in previous decades, recognizes to be the highest authority in the Church and
the only competent judge of the actions of all her constituent parts.
What are the prospects of reunion between the FROC and the ROCA? In the
present writer’s opinion, this can only take place under one or other of two
possible conditions:-
1.
A complete change of heart in the ROCA Synod towards the FROC and repentance
for its past canonical transgressions, involving: (a) fitting
punishment of those who have wrought such havoc in Russia in recent years,
especially Archbishop Mark of Berlin; (b) the removal of all bans on the FROC
bishops; (c) the recognition of the FROC’s autonomy in accordance with the
Patriarchal Ukaz.
Such a change of heart looks unlikely in view of the events of recent
years, when the ascendancy of Archbishop Mark over the ROCA Synod has become
more and more marked. His shameful negotiations with KGB Agent “Drozdov”, i.e.
“Patriarch” Alexis Ridiger, in December, 1996, and his part in forcing
Metropolitan Vitaly to expel the confessors of Hebron and Jerusalem and
apologize before the PLO President Arafat in July, 1997, have shocked the
Orthodox world. In the Sobor of May, 1998, after Mark had been removed from the
Synod by the First-Hierarch, a golden opportunity presented itself to have this
evil genius of the Russian Church finally removed from power; but the
opportunity was lost.
And so the ROCA’s drift towards unity with the MP continues unabated;
having rid itself of the “Soviet filth” of the FROC, the majority of its
bishops are now hypocritically ready to unite with the “Mother Church” of the
Soviet MP. Indeed, having renounced the great majority of the truly confessing
Christians in Russia, it is only logical that the ROCA should seek an alliance
with the other side, perhaps on the basis of an autonomous status for the ROCA
within the Moscow Patriarchate. After all, Church life does not stand still,
but continually moves between the poles of good and evil, life and death; so
that a movement away from one pole inevitably involves a movement closer to the
other pole…
In view of this there remains the other
possibility: 2. A schism in the ROCA
allowing the right-thinking Christians in it both inside Russia and abroad, to
separate from their Sovietizing hierarchs and be reunited with the confessing
Christians of other Russian Church jurisdictions. Already there are
many members of the ROCA inside Russia who sympathize with, and by no means
reject, their brothers in the FROC. Both they and the FROC are suffering
persecution from the MP; both they and the FROC have suffered the effects of
the ROCA’s maladministration and (in the case of certain hierarchs) outright
treachery. It is only logical, therefore, that these two groups, having an
identical faith and being “in identical conditions” (to use the language of the
Patriarchal Ukaz), should reunite when the time is right – that is, when the
complete failure of the ROCA’s mission inside Russia becomes evident to all.
But there must be no forcing, no exertion
of power at the expense of love. That is the primary lesson of these tragic
years since the fall of Soviet power. “Lest little by little and without it
being noticed, we lose the freedom which our Lord Jesus Christ, the Liberator
of all men, has given us through His Blood…”
September 26 /
October 9, 1998.
Repose of St. John
the Theologian.
(First published
in Russian in Suzdal'skie Eparkhial'nie Vedomosti, ¹ 8, June-September, 1999, pp.
7-18 (in Russian). And in English in Vertograd, ¹¹ 16-17, February-March, 2000, pp.
12-37).
4.
THE SERGIANIST CONQUEST OF JERUSALEM
The Moscow Patriarchate’s forcible seizure of the Hebron monastery in
July this year, and its winning de facto, if not yet de jure
control of the convents of the Russian Church Abroad in Jerusalem, has
delivered a serious blow to the forces of True Orthodoxy. The seriousness of
the blow resides not so much in the material loss of the monasteries, important
thought that is, as in the spiritual humiliation of the Russian Church Abroad,
and in her perceived weakness in the face of external pressure. Those
confessors of the truth who resisted that pressure - Bishop Barnabas,
Archimandrite Bartholomew, Abbess Juliana - have been publicly humiliated and
banished by their own first-hierarch, Metropolitan Vitaly. The main traitor and
appeaser - Archbishop Mark - has been placed in charge of the ROCA’s Mission to
the Holy Land only months after the first-hierarch severely rebuked him for his
treacherous fraternization with Alexis of Moscow (alias KGB agent “Drozdov”),
saying that he had “lost the gift of discernment”. As a result of the abject
apology of the first-hierarch of the ROCA to the Muslim Arafat and Patriarch
Diodorus of Jerusalem on July 13, and the expulsion of the confessors on July
29-30, the last remnants of True Orthodoxy must be deemed to have surrendered
to an unholy alliance of “World Orthodoxy”, Islam and Communism in the land of
the God-Man’s Death and Resurrection - and even the tacit support of the Jews
has not encouraged the ROCA to undertake a more determined defence of her
heritage.
How did this shameful surrender take place? And what are the lessons for
the rest of the ROCA that still remains in freedom?
1. On Obedience to the ROCA Synod.
The main argument of the appeasers in their shameless attack on Abbess
Juliana has been “obedience”. How often has this argument been used in the
history of twentieth-century Orthodoxy as a pious-seeming cloak to justify
precisely disobedience to the sacred canons of the Church and surrender
to the enemies of Holy Orthodoxy! Was this not the main weapon used by
Metropolitan Sergius to crush the opposition of the Catacomb Church? We shall
return to the comparison with Metropolitan Sergius later. In the meantime let
us enquire whether Abbess Juliana was really disobedient.
It must be emphasized, first, that abbots, abbesses and elders have
considerable authority in the Orthodox Church to decide what is permitted and
what is not permitted in their monasteries and in relation to their own
spiritual children. As Sister Marina (Chertkova), Abbess Juliana’s assistant,
rightly says: “Abbesses are the mistresses in their communities.” It is known,
for example, that St. Ambrose of Optina defied his local bishop with regard to
the Shamordino nuns whose spiritual father he was, saying: “There is a Vladyka
higher than all vladykas”. Bishops can overrule abbots and abbesses in the
running of their monasteries only in extreme cases, when the abbot or abbess is
clearly sinning against the dogmatic or moral tradition of the Church. It is
obvious that Abbess Juliana was defending, rather than sinning against, the
tradition of the Church.
In fact, when the Synod of Bishops ordered, in its meeting in New York
on May 13, that the chief heresiarch of modern times should be allowed into the
holy places under the ROCA’s jurisdiction and treated “with honour and
respect”, it was clearly they who were disobeying both the canons of the
Church and a whole series of earlier unrepealed orders and testaments of the
ROCA’s Synod and first hierarchs. The canons do not permit heretics to perform
services in the churches of the Orthodox (“Patriarch” Alexis wanted to serve at
the tomb of Archimandrite Antonin). And the ROCA Synod’s ukaz of April
19, 1994 was clearly in accordance with the canons when it declared: “The
clergy of the Moscow Patriarchate are not allowed to carry out any kind of
Divine services (that is: put on an epitrachelion, perform a litiya or prayer
service, etc.) on the territory of our monasteries.”
So Abbess Juliana was clearly acting in obedience both to the
canons and to the whole tradition of the ROCA in the Holy Land, as well as in
complete agreement with the ROCA’s own highest authorities in the Holy Land at
the time (Bishop Barnabas and Archimandrite Bartholomew), when she refused
admittance to KGB Agent Drozdov and his suite. The Synod’s ukaz of May
13, 1997 contradicted both the sacred canons, which every clergyman swears to
uphold, and the tradition of their own Church. Therefore Abbess Juliana was
quite justified in refusing to obey disobedience.
2. On Free Access to the Holy Places.
The critics of Abbess Juliana point to the fact that access to the Holy
Places is guaranteed by law for all pilgrims. Actually, while the Oak of
Abraham, situated on the grounds of the Hebron monastery, is clearly a Holy
Place, the Eleon and Gethsemane monasteries are situated close to, but not
precisely on, the sites of the Lord’s Ascension, Agony in the Garden and
Betrayal by Judas. However, assuming that the monasteries were situated on a
Holy Place, let us consider the force of this argument.
Protopriest Benjamin Zhukov writes: “Such a law exists in Israel. But
nobody can say with certainty that such a law is also in force on the territory
of the Palestinian Autonomy. And even if it is, in view of the special military
situation there (as far as Hebron is concerned, the conflicts between the
Palestinians and the Jews have led, in the last two months, to tens of deaths
and hundreds of people wounded), one can say that the functioning of the law is
not the norm in the Palestinian Autonomy. The best proof of this is the fact
that there are differences between the various Palestinian levels of authority
in evaluating the lawless actions of the Palestinian police in Hebron...
“If such a law exists in the Palestinian Autonomy, then in Hebron, in
the given instance, it became quite inapplicable for us. Arafat considers that
we occupy the territory unlawfully. How can we act in accordance with the law
concerning the reception of visitors if we are not considered to be the owners
of this place? Thus Arafat himself removes from us the basis for fulfilling the
law. But we become still less responsible before this law (I repeat, if this
law is in force) if the visitor who is planning to come is in the eyes of the
authorities the lawful owner. Consequently, the first violators of the law are
the authorities themselves, who are placing us in a position outside the law.
But what fulfilment of the law is required of us here? The concept of
hospitality has very little to do with this...
“As regards the attitude of the Jews to this law in the given case, it
is known that, not long before the projected visit to the Holy Land of Alexis
II, one of the important officials of the Israeli Ministry of Religious
Affairs, Uri Mor, visited our monastery on Eleon with the aim of finding out
what the attitude to the visit of the Moscow Patriarch was there. Our nuns
replied that the arrival of the Patriarch, supposedly for the 150th anniversary
of the Mission, was nothing other than a Soviet show; the 150th anniversary was
an excuse, since the 100th anniversary of the Mission was celebrated
triumphantly in Jerusalem in 1958 under the leadership of Archbishop Alexander
of Berlin, in the presence of officials of the Jordanian state and, of course,
of representatives of the Greek Patriarchate (officially the Mission goes back
to its establishment by the Turkish government in 1858). To this Uri Mor
replied: ‘You can protest as you like.’ And then he said: ‘I see that your
approach is difference from that in Gethsemane... If you don’t want to
receive him, that is your business!’ And he added: ‘Israel will never
change the status quo on its territories.’
“Patriarch Diodorus’ attitude to this question is also characteristic.
When his emissary accompanying Alexis II was rejected, Patriarch Diodorus
received the nuns of the Eleon monastery and expressed to them his principled
censure. And, demonstrating his power, he said that he could enter Eleon, if he
wanted, with the help of the Jewish police, but he would not do this. And he
dismissed them in peace, after asking: ‘Whose side is Hebron on?’
“Let us add that the Catholic monastery of the Carmelites admits nobody,
and nobody has laid claims against it. As S. Chertok, a journalist living in
Jerusalem, has clearly written (Russkaia Mysl’, ¹ 4179, 19-25 June,
1997): ‘In Israel access to the holy places is truly free. However, in closed
institutions this is done at established or agreed hours, and, of course,
without resorting to force. This rule particularly applies to monasteries where
order is defined by a strict rule.’” (Letter of July 19, 1997 to Alexander
Ivanovich Musatov).
Even if the law concerning the free access of pilgrims to the holy
places were clearer and more strictly applied, it could still not apply to
Patriarch Alexis for the simple reason that he was not a pilgrim. Having
announced publicly before his visit that he was going to the Holy Land to take
possession of the properties of the ROCA, he took the Hebron monastery by force
in an operation that was reminiscent of the similar operations carried out by
him with the aid of OMON troops in Vladivostok, Ryazan and other places. In
other words, he acted like a thief - and no law, secular or sacred, can compel
one to accept a self-declared thief onto one’s property.
But even if such an impious law existed, it would be necessary to ignore
it for the sake of piety, of the Law of God. Would the great confessors of the
faith in the Holy Land - Saints Theodosius the Great, Euthymius the Great and
Sabbas the Sanctified - have allowed the heresiarchs of their time to carry out
services in their monasteries? It is inconceivable. The heresy that preaches
that one must sacrifice the Law of God in favour of obedience to unbelieving
secular authorities is known as Sergianism from the name of “Patriarch”
Alexis’ predecessor in impiety, “Patriarch” Sergius of Moscow. And it is surely
no coincidence that the ROCA Synod’s punishment of those who so bravely
struggled to defend her interests was meted out 70 years to the day from
Sergius’s notorious declaration of July 16/29, 1927...
3. On Obedience to Patriarch Diodorus.
What at first sight appears to be the strongest argument advanced by the
critics of Abbess Juliana is the fact that the ROCA in the Holy Land
commemorates Patriarch Diodorus of Jerusalem, and was therefore bound to
receive his friends and guests. Thus according to Protopriest George Larin, who
is now Archbishop Mark’s deputy in the Holy Land, “we do not even have the
right to perform Divine services in our churches in the Holy Land without the
blessing of his Beatitude Diodorus, Patriarch of Jerusalem, and.. we perform
the Divine Liturgy on antimens sanctified by his Beatitude, .. we pray for him
and commemorate him in the litanies before our First-Hierarch... When hierarchs
and priests and deacons arrive on pilgrimage in the Holy Land, they do not have
the right (according to the canons of the Orthodox Church) to perform Divine
services even in our churches without the Patriarch of Jerusalem’s special
permission, which is why we go from the airport first to his Beatitude for a
blessing!” (Letter of August 18/31, 1997 to Fr. Stefan Krasovitsky).
At the same time Fr. George admits that Patriarch Diodorus
“concelebrates with the Patriarch of Moscow and does not wish to concelebrate
with our hierarchs”. A strange and clearly uncanonical situation, in which the
ROCA monastics in the Holy Land already have their own first-hierarch, but are
forced to have another one - who serves with their chief enemy but not with
them! Who was it Who said that one cannot serve two masters?...
Now Patriarch Diodorus of Jerusalem is not a heretic in the way Alexis
of Moscow is. He has criticized the ecumenical movement, and in 1989 left the
World Council of Churches, although it appears that he has not broken off all
contact with the ecumenical organizations. But his opposition to ecumenism
lacks the principled character of that of the ROCA; for he remains in full
communion with all the ecumenist Orthodox. In so doing he places himself in an
uncanonical situation and compels all true zealots of Orthodoxy to break communion
with him. For, as St. John Chrysostom says, “he who communicates with an
excommunicate is himself excommunicated”.
Some people - notably, Archbishop Mark - think we should continue to
have close relations with the Jerusalem Patriarchate because, like the Serbian
Patriarchate, it was in communion with the ROCA in earlier decades of this
century and offered it hospitality. In answer to this argument we may quote the
words of the ROCA Hieromonk Joseph of Moscow in a letter to Metropolitan Vitaly
about the Serbian Patriarchate which could apply, without major changes, to the
Jerusalem Patriarchate:
“Now I would like to return to the last telephone conversation I had
with you. This concerns Vladyka Mark's serving with the Serbs. At that time you
said that some hierarchs of the ROCA, such as Archbishop John (Maximovich) and
Archbishop Nicon (Rklitsky) allowed this. That is understandable. You know,
they were raised and looked after by pastors of the Serbian Church. We, too,
love the Serbian Church and the Serbian people - the Serbian Church in the
person of Patriarch Barnabas once sheltered the persecuted Russian emigre
hierarchs. But times change and life does not stand still. It is already 30
years since Vladyka John died, and almost 20 since Vladyka Nicon. The Serbian
Patriarch Barnabas and those Serbian hierarchs who feared nobody and offered
hospitality to the persecuted Russian Church died a long time ago. The
contemporary Serbian episcopate is very far from what it was in the 1930s. You
know, almost the same thing has happened with the Serbian Church as happened
with the Russian Church. Their episcopate has also been appointed by communist
authorities, and they have also gradually departed from the purity of
Orthodoxy. This is what the well-known Serbian theologian, Archimandrite Justin
(Popovich), who could in no way be accused of not loving his own Serbian Church
or of not being Orthodox, wrote about this: ‘... The atheist dictatorship has
so far elected two patriarchs... And in this way it has cynically trampled on
the holy rights of the Church, and thereby also on the holy dogmas.’ I think
that Fr. Justin had a better view of the negative processes taking place in the
Serbian Church than Vladyka Mark. The first-hierarchs of the Serbian Church
take an active part in the WCC; they pray with all kinds of heretics and people
of other religions; they support the anti-Orthodox initiatives of the Patriarch
of Constantinople. And must we close our eyes to all this just because in the
1930s Patriarch Barnabas helped our Russian hierarchs - or because Vladyka Mark
studied in the Serbian Theological University? This is simply not serious. If
we're going to reason like that, and take our memories of the past as our
guiding principle in our present actions, without taking into account present
realities, then we can come to sheer absurdity and will not avoid serious
mistakes. In that case we must have eucharistic communion with the Patriarch of
Constantinople because ten centuries ago Rus' received Orthodoxy from
Byzantium.
“If our relationship to the Serbian Church and people is one of
unhypocritical love and gratitude, then especially now, in this difficult time
for Serbia, we must help them to come to understand and see those departures
from Orthodoxy which are being carried out by the Serbian hierarchy, and for
which, perhaps, the Right Hand of God is sending them these horrific military
trials which are taking place there. This will be the gratitude of the Russian
Church to the Serbian people for the hospitality they received from it in the
1930s.”[99]
The present writer remembers how, in the 1970s, the superior of the
Hebron monastery, Igumen Ignaty, neither allowed members of the Moscow
Patriarchate on the territory of the monastery (he drove them away with a
stick!) nor commemorated the Patriarch of Jerusalem (although he had friendly
relations with some members of that patriarchate). A former member of the
Catacomb Church and a close friend of St. John Maximovich, Fr. Ignaty had the
gifts of tears and prophecy and was revered as a saint even by the Muslims. He
feared God alone, and therefore even the enemies of the faith, sensing his
spiritual power, sought to kiss the hem of his garment as he walked the streets
of Jerusalem. His example shows how the ROCA could have acted, relying
on the power of faith alone.
The whole tone of Fr. George Larin’s letter, quoted above, is that of
course the ROCA should even now remain in communion with the
Patriarch of Jerusalem. It doesn’t seem to disturb him that that the Patriarch
is in communion with the whole of ecumenist “World Orthodoxy”, including Alexis
of Moscow, that in a recent confrontation with Constantinople over its parishes
in Australia Jerusalem was forced to submit to the uniate Patriarch
Bartholomew, and that the secretary-general of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem,
Metropolitan Timothy of Lydda, has declared: “The Russian monastery of Hebron
has been returned to its legal owner [i.e. Alexis of Moscow]”, emphasizing that
“the time has come to overcome the divisions now that the Church in Russia is
free. There is only one Russian Orthodox Church and one cannot recognize as
such the tiny grouping which separated from it a long time ago for whatever
reasons” (Service Orthodoxe de Presse, 221, September-October, 1997, p.
16).
True, Patriarch Diodorus is reported to have distanced himself from that
remark. Nevertheless, it is quite clear that the ROCA has gained precious
little by its fawning apology to the Patriarch, and that it is quite possible
that she will lose even the limited recognition she now has from the
patriarchate.
So what is the point of the ROCA’s presence in Jerusalem? To have a
quiet life undisturbed by any conflicts with her neighbours? In that case, she
would do best to give up her ineffectual pose of pseudo-independence and join
either the Patriarchate of Jerusalem or the Moscow Patriarchate’s Mission in
Jerusalem. Or to inherit the Kingdom of heaven through a good confession of
faith, even to the shedding of blood if necessary? In that case, she should
break communion with the Patriarch of Jerusalem and firmly resist all attempts
of KGB agents in cassocks to “have cups of tea” and “serve Divine services” in
her monasteries.
This would undoubtedly lead to confrontation, but with God’s help she
would undoubtedly succeed - and encourage many other covert opponents of
ecumenism in the Holy Land and elsewhere. After all, “the Truth plus one is a
majority”. Or, as the Apostle Paul put it: “If God is with us, who can be
against us?” (Rom.
8.31).
One bishop critical of Abbess Juliana has written: “Obviously, it was a
question of drawing a line at some point: Alexey evidently could not be
received as though he were a patriarch, but the other extreme, closing the
gates in the face of the delegation is another extreme, which, elsewhere might
indeed be appropriate, but in the context was provocative to the local
authorities, both civil and ecclesiastical. Diplomacy has little place in
matters of principle, but neither, I feel, does provocation...”
These comments betray a lack of understanding of the situation
in which Abbess Juliana and her fellow zealots were placed.
First, she had been ordered to receive him “with honour and
respect”, which precluded treating him as though he were not a patriarch. True,
the synod had given her a speech to the patriarch in which it was written: “We
welcome you not as the Patriarch of all Russia, but as a guest of Patriarch
Diodorus of Jerusalem”. But, as Abbess Juliana has written, “standing in front
of the television cameras I would have been shamed in front of the whole
world!!!... This seemed to me absurd. Every welcome is already a welcome, and
holding in my hands the paper, the reporters could have put into my mouth
completely different words. And in essence I would have had to go up to receive
his blessing.”
Again, a highly respected protopriest from Russia, while criticizing the
Synod for going too far in one direction, criticizes Abbess Juliana for going
too far in the other, saying that she should have let Alexis in, but “drily,
officially”. However, even if she had received him “drily” and “officially”,
could she, a frail woman who did not have the support even of all her nuns,
have prevented him from serving at the tomb of Archimandrite Antonin once he
and his vast entourage had crossed the threshold of the convent? If she had
tried to do so, the scandal may have been even greater, and she might well have
been simply pushed aside, just as she was pushed aside at Hebron.
In any case, if the KGB Agent “Patriarch” had been allowed into the
citadel of the ROCA in Jerusalem, the real relationship of the ROCA to him and
his patriarchate would have been completely misrepresented and the whole world
would have known who the real master, not only on Eleon, but in the Russian
Church as a whole, was.
The fact is that the provocation was not on the part of Abbess Juliana,
but of KGB Agent Drozdov supported by the Patriarch of Jerusalem. And since
this was a matter of principle - a matter of presenting a true confession of
faith before the world’s media and the world’s chief “Orthodox” heresiarch -
there could be no
place for diplomacy here. For if diplomacy involves giving the impression of a
false confession of faith for the sake of property or the friendship of the
world, a true Christian can come to no other conclusion than that it is from
the evil one. As the Apostle James says: “Do you not know that friendship with
the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the
world makes himself an enemy of God” (4.4).
4. Quo Vadis, Russian Church Abroad?
Let us turn now from the defence of Abbess Juliana to the truly most
shocking aspect of this whole affair - the letter of apology to the Muslims.
There can be no doubt that Metropolitan Vitaly was forced to do this by
the same man who has already defied his authority in so many ways - Archbishop
Mark. In fact, Mark himself admitted to Sister Marina that he had to shout at
the metropolitan to make him write the letter. This is the same Archbishop Mark
who, in December of last year, without the blessing of the metropolitan, met
the false patriarch in Moscow, and was severely rebuked for that. Nor was he
sent to the Holy Land in July at the bidding of the Synod - he came of his own
will, having supposedly heard about the events “from the newspapers”. Many
suspect - and there is certainly much evidence pointing in that direction -
that the events in Hebron and Jerusalem were actually planned by the Moscow
Patriarch with Archbishop Mark at that December meeting.
Archbishop Mark’s position in relation to Moscow is set out in a recent
article in Vestnik Germanskoj Eparkhii (no. 4, 1997). He begins by
affirming that the events in the Holy Land should not stop attempts to overcome
the schism with the Moscow Patriarchate - which, however, he says is a
“division”, not a “schism”. Then he reviews the main obstacles to union in a
perfunctory and misleading way. Finally, he calls for an All-Emigration Council
to review relations with the patriarchate and to consider the question: “Is
eucharistic communion possible with complete autonomy?” This shows where his
thought is moving - towards making the ROCA a “completely autonomous” Church in
communion with the patriarchate, like the Orthodox Church of America!
The
failure to be accepted at Eleon was a setback for the patriarchate, as was the
initial failure to take over the Hebron monastery. The fact that the Hebron
monastery was eventually taken over only by naked force was more that a setback
- it was a public relations disaster, which threatened to become an
international crisis as American senators, who included several Jews, prepared
to berate the Russians for their collaboration with Arafat in the forcible
seizure of property belonging to an American-registered Church. However, the
Moscow Patriarch’s potentially disastrous defeat was deftly turned into a
stunning victory through the good services of Archbishop Mark, who forced the metropolitan
to apologize, and put the blame for the loss of the Hebron monastery, not on
the communists or Muslims, but on - Abbess Juliana, without whose vigilance the
monastery would almost certainly have been taken over long before, and who shed
her blood in the defence of it!
Protopriest Benjamin makes some illuminating comments on the diplomatic
significance of the metropolitan’s letter to Arafat: “In the letter to
Arafat there is not a word about the unlawful seizure of property, about the
inhumane beating of the monastics, about the crying violation of
international law, as was expressed by Archbishop Laurus in his protest.
Nothing of the kind! In this address, eight days after the lawless actions of
the Moscow Patriarchate with the help of the Palestinian OMON, under the guise
of a ‘diplomatic note’ with the aim of receiving Hebron back again, there
took place a complete ‘whitewash’ and ‘justification’ of all the criminals in
the affair of the seizure of Hebron. Perhaps, in fact, in such circumstances
Hebron will be returned to our Church: the Moscow Patriarchate would make off,
as Khrushchev once made off in Cuba, having got a long way in ! Perhaps... but
would it not be better to sacrifice Hebron (we may even say that we do not have
the strength to keep it), rather than to sacrifice our faithful monks, whose
exploit we did not defend in this lamentable letter. We have similarly
failed to value the exploit of those who trusted us and who have been beaten up
by the OMON in our homeland... This was a diplomatic failure for the whole
world to see!”
Actually, there is no hope of the ROCA getting Hebron back
again. This is clear from the following report (Church News, August,
1997, pp. 1-2): “When two monks from the Holy Trinity Monastery in Hebron
(Fathers Elias and Vladislav) expressed a desire to accompany Abbess Juliana to
Chile, Archbishop Mark permitted them only to help with transporting her
luggage, and then with a definite order that they return within no more than
three weeks because he had assigned them to Hebron as soon as the monastery is
returned to the Church Abroad! He threatened them that the responsibility for
the Church Abroad not receiving back the monastery would be upon their
consciences [!!!] precisely because he has no one else to send there. Both of
these monks have only Russian passports and Abbess Juliana became very
concerned that they might be deported from Israel by force. Therefore she
applied to the Director of the Department of the Minstry for Christian
Denominations, Mr. Uri Mor, asking him to suggest to Archbishop Mark that he
not send those monks to Hebron. he promised this and at the same time expressed
his astonishment that the Church Abroad would believe in the highly improbably
possibility of Abraham’s Oak being returned to her. Mor was also astonished
that Archbishop Mark would appoint two monks with only Russian passports and
who, therefore, might be very easily deported to Russia due to her friendly
relations with the Palestinians.
“Archbishop Mark is not ashamed to be cunning: on the one hand, he
fosters among the trusting members of the Church Abroad the unrealizable hope
of the return of Abraham’s Oak seized by the Moscow Patriarchate and, on the
other, he is not afraid to send off to the punishment of the Moscow
Patriarchate two monks who happened to oppose it. It seems that he ‘falls
between two stools’, having the intention of delivering to the Moscow
Patriarchate all the properties of the Church Abroad, and at the same time he
is trying to avoid being called simply a traitor!”
If the idea that Archbishop Mark might actually be planning to hand over
the remaining properties of the Church Abroad to the Moscow Patriarchate seems
far-fetched, the following remark by his close assistant in this affair,
Protopriest Victor Potapov, should convince people that such a betrayal is by
no means out of the question. “We declare outright,” he said in an interview
with Nezavisimaia Gazeta - Religii, July 24, 1997), “that we consider
the Church Abroad to be an inalienable part of Russian Orthodoxy and that we
would like to give over to Russia everything that we have available, and in
particular also here in the Holy Land.”[100]
Further confirmation of this very
real possibility is provided by the news that highly compromised and/or Soviet
personnel are being moved into Jerusalem to take the place of the confessors
Archimandrite Bartholomew and Abbess Juliana. Thus Archimandrite Bartholomew’s
position as Head of the Mission is to be taken by Archimandrite Alexis
(Rosenthal), of whom Sister Marina (Chertkova) has written (with Abbess
Juliana’s approval) that he is “a most crude and insolent man.. who is no worse
at administering hidings than the Palestinian police”. And Abbess Juliana’s
place as abbess of the Eleon monastery is to be taken, according to unconfirmed
reports, by Mother Moisea, of whom a former Head of the Jerusalem Mission has
written: “She was often in the USSR on secular business. On leaving France she
settled in Gethsemane. In his time Archimandrite Anthony (Grabbe) was warned by
the Israeli police that Sister Nonna [now Mother Moisea] was known to them as a
Soviet agent...” (Church News, June, 1997, p. 1)
Where, then, is the Russian Church Abroad going? On the evidence of the
events in Hebron and Jerusalem, the answer must be: straight into the coils of
the Soviet Moscow Patriarchate. Last December, when Metropolitan Vitaly
vigorously rebuked Archbishop Mark for his betrayal, saying that he had “lost
the gift of discernment” and that the Moscow Patriarchate was “the Church of
the Antichrist”, the zealots of True Orthodoxy took heart, thinking that in the
person of the first-hierarch of the ROCA, at any rate, there was a man who
would withstand the antichristian onslaught coming from the KGB- and
Mafia-controlled Moscow Patriarchate. However, the situation has now been
entirely reversed, the metropolitan has publicly disgraced his most faithful
followers, and Archbishop Mark has become the de facto ruler of the
ROCA, giving him a very powerful position from which to negotiate his openly
declared desire to enter into communion with the false patriarchate while
retaining “complete autonomy” for the Russian Church Abroad.
In July, 1927, a physical earthquake shook Jerusalem, as if heralding the
spiritual earthquakes that were to come in the Heavenly Jerusalem, the Church
of Christ, through the notorious declaration of Metropolitan Sergius, which
placed the Russian Church in de facto submission to the communists. 70
years later, the contemporary leader of the sergianist heresy has come to
Jerusalem, and by a naked display of brute violence has obtained from the
contemporary leaders of the anti-Sergianists, the Synod of the Russian Church
Abroad, another submission to the antitheist powers, another sergianist
declaration (on the precise day that the first sergianist declaration was
made!) - and another condemnation of the confessors of the truth. The fact that
the confessors have not suffered imprisonment or torture, but “only” a physical
beating, public humiliation and exile, should not hide from us the fact that
the sergianist heresy has now occupied the last bastions of the truly Orthodox
Church in her heartland, Jerusalem.
Of course, with God all things are possible, and a resurrection of the
ROCA is possible even now. But it will be possible only if the ROCA, on her
part, outrightly rejects Archbishop Mark and his Judas-like, neosergianist
betrayal of the Church into the hands of her worst enemies. It will be possible
only when a return is made to obedience to the testaments of the first three
first-hierarchs of the ROCA, Metropolitan Anthony, Anastasy and Philaret, to
the apostolic canons of the Church which forbid praying with heretics or
recognizing their sacraments, and to the command of the Apostle of truth and
love, who said: “If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine,
receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed; for he that biddeth
him God speed is a partaker of his evil deeds” (II John
10,11).
October 2/15, 1997.
Saints Cyprian and Justina.
5. THE RIGHT WAY OF RESISTING APOSTASY: A
REPLY
In the August, 1999 issue of Uspenskij
Listok, Hieromonk Dionysius (Alferov) offers a tribute to St. John
Maximovich with most of which the venerators of St. John can be in full
agreement. St. John was indeed one of the miracles of twentieth-century
Orthodoxy, a saint and wonderworker to be compared with the greatest hierarchs
of antiquity. However, after a few paragraphs it becomes clear that the main
reason why Fr. Dionysius wrote this article was not to glorify St. John, but to
use St. John as a weapon with which to beat what he calls the “ultra-rightists”
in the contemporary Russian Church – that is, those who consider the Moscow
Patriarchate to be a graceless organisation. The purpose of this article is to
consider what relationship the supposed views of St. John have to the
contemporary debate on the status of the MP.
First, what do we know about St. John’s views on the MP? The answer,
surprisingly, is: very little. As far as the present writer knows, he never
expressed himself in public on the presence or absence of grace in the MP. What
we do know is that once, in Shanghai shortly after the last war, St. John
commemorated Metropolitan Anastasy of the ROCA together with Patriarch Alexis
of the MP. What we also know is that in a letter to Metropolitan Anastasy St.
John later very humbly repented of this act (the letter was seen by
Anastasia Georgievna Shatilova in the archives of the ROCA Synod).
Some have pointed to a certain “liberalism” practised by St. John in
relation to “World Orthodoxy” in general. There seems to be some foundation for
believing that St. John was a “liberal”, not so much in his evaluation of the
errors of “World Orthodoxy” (in relation to which he could be strict, - cf. his
article on the decline of the Ecumenical Patriarchate), as in the method of his
reception of people from World Orthodoxy. Thus it is known that he admitted the
fledgling Dutch Orthodox Church into communion from the MP without insisting
that they immediately change from the new to the old calendar – although he was
so attached to the Old Calendar that even in civil letters he always used only
the Old Calendar date. Again, Metropolitan Philaret of Blessed Memory recounts
in one of his letters that he was forced to rebuke St. John once for making
hardly any distinction, in the matter of eucharistic communion, between the
flock of the ROCA and that of the Evlogians in Paris – although St. John had
strongly condemned the Eulogian heresy of Sophianism.
What conclusion are we to draw from this “liberalism”? I believe that we
cannot draw any clear conclusion about St. John’s views on the ecclesiological
status of the MP or “World Orthodoxy” in his time. The most we can conclude, it
seems to me, is that: (a) he once made a serious error in commemorating the
Soviet patriarch, of which he immediately and sincerely repented, and (b) in
regard to the laypeople of other jurisdictions he practised the maximum degree
of “economy” or condescension, judging that in our extremely difficult and
confusing times such loving condescension was indeed the most appropriate way
of building up the Church of Christ.
But let us suppose for a moment that Fr. Dionysius is right, and that
St. John was a “liberal”, not only in his method of receiving people from the
jurisdictions of “World Orthodoxy”, but also in his estimate of those
jurisdictions’ ecclesiastical status. What follows from this in regard to the
contemporary debate on the status of the MP?
Again the answer is: very little.
First, let us bear in mind that St. John died in 1966, a full generation
ago, when the pan-heresy of ecumenism was only just beginning to penetrate the
Slavic Churches (the MP joined the World Council of Churches in 1961, and the
Serbian Patriarch became president of the WCC in 1965). It was still some years
to the ROCA’s definitive condemnation of ecumenism in 1983. Even if St. John
had been a “liberal” in his lifetime, there is no reason at all to believe that
he would have dissociated himself from his Synod’s anathema against ecumenism
if he had lived to 1983, still less if he had lived to 1999. The heresy and
apostasy of the MP, like all apostatical movements in history, developed and deepened
over time. What reason can there be for believing that the thinking of such a
holy man as St. John would not also have developed in response to the changing
situation?
Secondly, the infallible voice of the Church is not to be identified
with the voice of any individual father of the Church, however holy, but only
with the consensus of the Fathers. There are many cases of individual
fathers making pronouncements which have not been accepted by the Church as a
whole. As Fr. Basil Lurye writes, commenting on the 15th canon of
the First-and-Second Council of Constantinople: ‘“The fathers” are accepted
only as the consensus patrum (“the agreement of the fathers”, “the council of
the fathers”), that is, those patristic judgements which were not contested in
council by other fathers.’[101]
If we make the mistake of identifying the opinion of this or that
individual father or saint on this question with the infallible voice of the
Church, we may find ourselves labelling undoubted saints of the Church as either
“ultra-rightists” or “ultra-leftists”, to use Fr. Dionysius’ terminology. For
example, let us take the case of holy Hieroconfessor Victor, Bishop of Vyatka,
who was recently recommended for canonisation by a commission of the MP on the
basis of the incorruption of his relics and the many miracles that have been
wrought at his shrine.[102] He was
perhaps the very first hierarch to separate from Metropoltian Sergius in 1927,
and his condemnation of Sergius was about as “extreme” as it was possible to
be. Thus he called Sergianism “worse than heresy”, and in his last known
letter, of unknown date, he wrote: "In his destructive and treacherous
actions against the Church, Metropolitan Sergius has also committed a terrible
blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which according to the unlying word of
Christ will never be forgiven him, neither in this life, nor in the life to
come.
"'He who does not gather with Me,' says the Lord, 'scatters.'
'Either recognize the tree (the Church) as good and its fruit as good, or
recognize the tree as bad and its fruit as bad' (Matt. 12.33). 'Therefore I say unto
you, every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto me, but the blasphemy
against the Spirit shall not be forgiven unto me' (Matt. 12.31).
'Fulfilling the measure of his sin,' Metropolitan Sergius together with his
Synod,, by his ukaz of October 8/21, 1927, is introducing a new formula
of commemoration.
"Mixing together into one, despite the word of God, the 'faithful
with the unfaithful' (II Cor. 6.14-18), the Holy Church and those
fighting to the death against her, in the great and most holy sacrament of the
Eucharist, the metropolitan by this blasphemy of his destroys the prayerful
meaning of the great sacrament and its grace-filled significance for the eternal
salvation of the souls of Orthodox believers. Hence the service becomes not
only graceless because of the gracelessness of the celebrant, but an
abomination in the eyes of God, and for that reason both the celebrant and he
who participates in it subject themselves to severe condemnation.
"Being in all his activity an anti-church heretic, as transforming
the Holy Orthodox Church from the house of the grace-filled salvation of
believers into a graceless, carnal organization deprived of the spirit of life,
Metropolitan Sergius has at the same time, through his conscious renunciation
of the truth and in his mindless betrayal of Christ, become an open apostate
from God the Truth.
"Without a formal external trial by the Church (which cannot be
carried out on him), he 'is self-condemned' (Titus 3.10-11); he has
ceased to be what he was - a 'server of the truth', according to the word: 'Let
his habitation be desolate, and let no one live in it; and his office let
another take' (Acts 1.20).”[103]
Now according to Fr. Dionysius’ criterion, St. Victor must surely be
considered an “ultra-rightist”, because, in spite of his living right at the
beginning of the Sergianist schism and a full generation before the MP’s
acceptance of the heresy of ecumenism., he nevertheless has the audacity to
call the MP “graceless”. But Fr. Dionysius does not call St. Victor an
“ultra-rightist”, nor the very many new Russian martyrs and confessors who
shared his opinion, nor Metropolitan Philaret of Blessed Memory who likewise declared
the MP to be graceless. And yet if he is not prepared to call these holy
fathers “ultra-rightist”, he should withdraw that label from the contemporary
zealots of Orthodoxy who assert the same thing, but on even stronger and more
extensive evidence than was available to St. Victor or Metropolitan Philaret!
And yet our aim is not to establish the opinion of St. Victor or
Metropolitan Philaret as expressing the infallible voice of the Church in
opposition to the supposed opinion of St. John Maximovich. The essential point
is that it is not the opinion of this or that father that must be accepted by
all Orthodox Christians, but only the consensus of the fathers.
Fr. Dionysius offers no compelling reason to believe that the consensus of the
fathers is to be identified with his “moderate” opinion on the status of the
MP, even if he could convincingly enlist St. John in his support.
So what is the consensus of the fathers on this matter? That is another
question which is too large to be broached within the limits of this small
article. What we can assert, however, is that God has both accepted and
glorified men and women holding different opinions on the status of the MP but
having in common their refusal to have any communion with the traitors who have
rent apart the seamless coat of the Russian Church. There may come a time – it
may have come already – when such diversity of opinion is no longer
permissible. One thing is certain: labelling as “ultra rightists” the zealots
of Orthodoxy in a cause for which thousands if not millions of True Orthodox
Christians have already given their lives is not the right way to resist
apostasy.
October 25 / November 7, 1999.
(First published
in Russian in Vertograd-Inform, ¹ 1(58), January, 2000, pp. 40-42 )
6. THE CHURCH THAT STALIN BUILT
The Church of the living God is founded upon a most solid Rock – and
that Rock is Christ (Matt. 16.18; I Cor. 10.4). The churches of
dead gods – that is, of mortals who have been raised to the status of gods by
their deluded followers – are founded upon less solid and attractive materials.
Thus the Roman Catholic church is founded upon the pride of the
eleventh-century Pope Gregory VII, who declared that he could judge all bishops
and kings, that he himself was above all judgement, and that all popes were
saints by the virtue of St. Peter. The Lutheran church is founded upon the
folly of the German monk Martin Luther, who married a nun and declared (very
conveniently in his particular case) that good works are not necessary for
salvation. The Anglican church is founded upon the lust of the English King
Henry VIII, who created his own church in order to grant himself a divorce from
his first wife (he married five more and killed several of them). The
contemporary Ecumenical Patriarchate is founded upon the ambition of the Greek
patriarch Meletius Metaxakis, a Freemason who introduced the new calendar,
“deposed” Patriarch Tikhon and died, screaming that he had destroyed Orthodoxy.
The contemporary Moscow Patriarchate is founded upon the cruelty and the
cunning of Joseph Stalin, “the most wise generalissimo and leader of all the
peoples”, but also the greatest persecutor of the Church in the history of
Christianity….
Just as the True Church is created in the image and likeness of its
Founder, and displays His virtues in its members, so false churches are made in
the image and the likeness of those who created them, and display the
characteristic vices of their founders. Thus the Moscow Patriarchate is
particularly distinguished by its cruelty and its cunning. It cruelty was
particularly evident in the first decades of its existence, when the deaths of
many True Orthodox Christians were caused by the denunciations of their
pseudo-Orthodox “fathers” and “brothers”. Its cunning has been particularly
evident in recent, post-Soviet times, when, not being able to rely on the power
of the State to eliminate its rivals as “counter-revolutionaries”, it has come
to rely more on clever admixtures of truth and falsehood in order to deceive
the believing population. A good example of such cunning is to be found in the
article, “A Church for Valentine (Rusantsov)”, by MP Priest Alexander Bragar.[104]
Bragar’s
target is, of course, Archbishop Valentine of Suzdal and Vladimir,
first-hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church (ROAC) and the leader
of the True Orthodox, anti-patriarchal forces in Russia. However, rather than
attempting to answer any of the very serious and weighty accusations that the
ROAC has made against the MP, or draw a comparison between Archbishop Valentine
and his main ideological opponent, Patriarch Alexis (Ridiger), which could only
turn out to the disadvantage of Ridiger and the “church of the evil-doers”,
Bragar adopts the indirect route and methods of the serpent.
One of these methods is the misleading association of names. For
example, Bragar at one point links Archbishop Valentine with “odious
personalities like Michael Ardov and Gleb Yakunin”. The highly-respected Moscow
Protopriest Michael Ardov is indeed under the omophorion of Archbishop
Valentine, and his frequent and impressive appearances on television and radio
have evidently been a thorn in the side of the MP’s propaganda bosses. But what
has he to do with Gleb Yakunin? Nothing at all. Not only does Fr. Gleb not
belong to the ROAC, but rather to the schismatic “Kievan Patriarchate” of
Philaret Denisenko, which the ROAC does not recognize: his views are quite
different from Fr. Michael’s. Yakunin is a democrat: Ardov is a monarchist.
Yakunin is an ecumenist: Ardov is an anti-ecumenist. So what is the purpose of
linking two such different men, and both with Archbishop Valentine? To smear
Archbishop Valentine by association with the unpopular democrat and ecumenist
Yakunin. Both are opponents of the patriarchate: but there the resemblance
ends. One opposes the patriarchate for one set of reasons: the other for a
different set of reasons. But only a few readers will be expected to know these
differences. The association has been planted in the readers’ minds, and there,
it is hoped, it will fester and bring forth evil fruit...
Another well-tried method of the evil one is: divide and conquer. Thus
the recent (1995) schism between the ROAC and the Russian Orthodox Church
Abroad (ROCA) is exploited for all its worth by Bragar. His history of the
schism is confused and confusing – whether deliberately or not, it is difficult
to tell. However, his purpose is clear: to represent Archbishop Valentine as a
power-loving schismatic, whose ambition is to prevent the reunion of the ROCA
with the “mother church” of the Moscow Patriarchate. As he writes: “His purpose
is by all means to hinder this rapprochement, to deepen the schism in
the relations between the two parts of the one Russian Orthodox Church” (p. 9).
What a revealing admission! So Archbishop Valentine and the ROAC are
seen by the Moscow Patriarchate as the main stumbling-block to the final
apostasy of the ROCA through its union with the false church! So Archbishop
Valentine stands like a contemporary St. Mark of Ephesus, whose decisive “nyet”
to the unia with the contemporary eastern pope of sergianist-ecumenist papism,
Alexis Ridiger, is so worrying to the latter that he must first, through his
fifth columnists in the ROCA such as Archbishop Mark of Germany and Great
Britain (Bragar’s praise of Mark is embarrassingly oleaginous), engineer his
expulsion from the ROCA, and then, when the ROCA has been effectively
neutralized and the remaining opponents of the unia have regrouped under the
banner of the ROAC, portray him as a traitor to the glorious traditions of the
ROCA!
There are many ironies here. The ROCA, which once was “bad”, is now
“good” – because its foreign hierarchs have now all adopted positions of
greater or lesser compromise in relation to the MP[105], and,
above all, because they have fulfilled the task given them by Moscow of
expelling Moscow’s most dangerous enemy from their midst. The ROCA is now
“good” for another important reason: in the person of Archbishop Mark it has
renounced the Catacomb Church, loyalty to which was the ROCA’s raison
d’être for so many years. Thus he quotes with approval Mark’s
unbelievable slander: “The real Catacomb Church no longer exists. It in effect
disappeared in the 1940s and the beginning of the 1950s… Only individuals have
been preserved from it, and in essence everything that arose after it is only
pitiful reflections, and people who take what they desire for what is real.”
Even while trying to “whiten” the ROCA and “blacken” the ROAC,
Bragar makes some very important admissions. Thus he admits that Archbishop
Mark, though a foreign bishop, created two deaneries on the territory of
Russian bishops inside Russia, and that “the Hierarchical Synod of the ROCA did
not object” to this flagrantly uncanonical action (p. 8). Again, he admits that
Bishop Barnabas of Cannes, another foreign bishop with no right to interfere in
the dioceses of the Russian bishops, “considered himself the first arrival on
the Russian land and decided that he had the complete right to subject to his
administration all the catacombniks and the newly formed parishes on the
territory of the former USSR” (p. 8). Archbishop Mark and Bishop Barnabas were
Archbishop Valentine’s chief enemies and slanderers….
Again, Bragar admits that Archbishop Valentine “smelt a rat” in the
“Act” that the Lesna Sobor forced him to sign in December, 1994 – and he
explains why there was indeed a rat at the bottom of that barrel: “It was
proposed that the parishes of the ROCA on the territory of Russia be divided
into 6 dioceses, and that at the head of three of them should be placed [the
newly ordained] Bishop Eutyches” (p. 9) – which meant a further invasion
into the dioceses of the existing Russian bishops and the threat that all the parishes would be forced to re-register
with the authorities, which in turn meant that the MP would be able to stop the
re-registration and even demand that the parish churches be handed over to it!
An intelligent person, even one not well acquainted with the history of
these events, might well draw the conclusion – the correct conclusion - from
Bragar’s account that Archbishop Valentine was under concerted attack from the
foreign bishops, that this attack was orchestrated by Archbishop Mark, and that
his expulsion from the ROCA was perfectly in the interests of the MP. So thank
you, Fr. Alexander! Unwittingly and unwillingly, you have been a witness to the
truth!
And indeed the truth is more powerful than any slander or cunning. Even
while under fierce attack from both the MP and the ROCA, the ROAC under
Archbishop Valentine continues to grow in strength. A steady stream of catacomb
and former ROCA parishes continues to join it. Many now see that the ROAC is the
true heir of the traditions both of the Catacomb Church inside Russia and of
the true ROCA – the ROCA of Metropolitans Anthony, Anastasy and Philaret –
outside Russia. The church built by Stalin can never prevail against the Church
built by God Himself, Whose “strength is made perfect in weakness” (II Cor. 12.9).
June 30 / July 13, 2000.
Holy Twelve Apostles.
7. THE MP’S CANONISATION OF THE HOLY NEW
MARTYRS OF RUSSIA
The 20th canon of the Local 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 Moscow
Patriarchate 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 Soviet Union. Now, in the “Jubilee” Hierarchical
Sobor that took place in August, 2000, it has have attempted, it would seem, to
rectify this disastrous error. To what extent has it succeeded?
1.
The Royal Martyrs.
The Sobor canonised 860 people. Undoubtedly the most significant of
these were the Royal Martyrs, Tsar-Martyr Nicholas II and his family. Let us
now look more closely at the MP’s text glorifying the Royal New Martyrs, and
compare it with that of the ROCA’s glorification in 1981.
One major difference is that in his report to the Sobor, Metropolitan
Juvenal of Krutitsa and Kolomna, President of the Synodal Commission for the
Canonisation of the Saints, calls the Royal New Martyrs, not “martyrs”, but
“passion-bearers”. He justifies the use of the latter title on the following grounds:
“One of the main reasons put forward by the opponents of the canonisation of
the Royal Family is the assertion that the death of Emperor Nicholas II and the
members of the Royal Family cannot be recognised as martyrdom for Christ. The
Commission, on the basis of a careful examination of the circumstances of the
death of the Royal Family, suggests that they be canonised in the rank of the
holy passion-bearers. In the liturgical literature and the lives of the saints
of the Russian Orthodox Church, the word ‘passion-bearer’ began to be used in
relation to those Russian saints who, imitating Christ, patiently bore physical
and moral sufferings and death from the hands of political opponents…”
This is not crystal clear, but further evidence for the MP’s real
motivation is provided by another passage in the report: “Evaluations of
Nicholas II as a statesman have been extremely contradictory. When speaking
about this, we should never forget that, in conceptualising state actions from
a Christian point of view, we must evaluate, not this or that form of state
construction, but the place which the concrete person occupies in the state
mechanism…
“In summarising its study of the state and church activity of the last
Russian Emperor, the Commission did not find in this activity alone sufficient
grounds for his canonisation…
“Their true greatness proceeded, not from their royal dignity, but from
the wonderful moral height to which they gradually ascended…”
Of course, there is some truth in these words. The Royal Family did not
become saints simply because of their royal blood; and no saint is a saint
purely by virtue of his position in the Church, independently of his moral
qualities. But the attempt by the MP to emphasise that the royal martyrs’
exploit had nothing to do with their royal dignity, goes too far, and
betrays an attempt to downgrade, if not the Tsar, at any rate the Tsardom
and Tsarism.
This point will become clearer if we now
turn to the ROCA’s canonisation of the Tsar, in which the Tsar’s feat is linked
closely and explicitly with the position he occupied in the Christian State: “…
The criminal murder of the Imperial Family was not merely an act of malice and
falsehood, not merely an act of political reprisal directed against enemies,
but was precisely an act principally of the spiritual annihilation of Russian
Orthodoxy… The last tsar was murdered with his family precisely because he
was a crowned ruler, the upholder of the splendid concept of the Orthodox state;
he was murdered simply because he was an Orthodox tsar; he was murdered for his
Orthodoxy!”[106]
Again, as Archbishop Anthony of Los
Angeles wrote in 1979: "We will speak to the point, in a way that befits
an honest, believing Christian. 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 from witnesses still
alive 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."[107]
Protopriest Michael Ardov, superior of the
Parish of the Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia in Moscow (Russian
Orthodox Autonomous Church) has further illuminated this difference, citing
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.’
“These are the kind of evasive passages we
find – so as not to call things by their own names. It is shameful to read
that, I quote, the Tsar-Martyr ‘continued to be the Anointed of God in the
people’s consciousness.’ He was the Anointed of God not only ‘in the people’s
consciousness’ but in actual fact! And the sacrament of Holy Anointing was
carried out on his Majesty in the Dormition cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin, in
the main church of that very same Russian Orthodox Church in the name of which
the ‘sergianists’ dare to speak. And how was it possible to be silent about the
fact that on March 2, 1917, at the moment of the abdication of the Tsar, the
many-centuries period of universal history that began with the
Equal-to-the-Apostles Emperor Constantine the Great, came to an end? From that
day the Orthodox Empire ceased to exist on earth, that is, ‘he that restrains’
was taken from the midst (II Thess. 2.7).
“After all, it is well-known that the
‘ideology’ of the Bolsheviks anti-theists was satanic, and therefore, in doing
away with the Orthodox Tsar, they not only destroyed a certain symbol, but
killed him who was called, besides other titles, ‘the Preserver of the Faith’.
“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, but the ‘democrats’
of that time. And for fear of their last-born children, not at 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 completely unambiguous reaction: they
decisively condemned the act of the Council of the Church Abroad and declared
it to be a purely political act.”[108]
2. The Non-Royal Martyrs.
Many of these were undoubtedly true martyrs and confessors, including
many of the great figures of the Catacomb Church, such as Metropolitan Cyril of
Kazan, Archbishop Victor of Vyatka, and others. However, many of them were
committed sergianists – that is, they supported the traitrous church policy of
Metropolitan Sergius and remained in communion with him or his successors in
the Moscow Patriarchate to the end of their days. As the ROCA Bishop
Agathangelus has pointed out, there is a manifest contradiction here.[109]
How does the MP attempt to get round this
contradiction? Metropolitan Juvenal rejects the possibility that
renovationists, Grigorians or Ukrainian “autocephalists” who died at the hands
of the Bolsheviks can be counted as martyrs. But he makes an exception for what
he calls “the rightist opposition” – that is, the Catacomb Church martyrs and
confessors: “It is wrong to place in one row the renovationist schism, which
acquired the character of an open schism in 1922, on the one hand, and “the
rightist opposition”, that is, those who for one or another reason did not
agree with the ecclesiastical politics of Metropolitan Sergius, on the other…
“In its
disciplinary practice the Orthodox Church has adopted a different attitude to
those being united [with the MP] from the so-called “rightist” schisms and to
the renovationists, the Grigorians and the autocephalists: they [the
“rightists”] were received by repentance in their existing rank – in that rank
which they may have received during their separation from the lawful Hierarchy.
“In the actions of the “rightist” oppositionists, who are often called
“non-commemorators”, one cannot find malicious, exclusively personal motives.
Their actions were conditioned by their idiosyncratically understood care for
the good of the Church. As is well known, the “rightist” groups consisted of
those bishops and their supporters amidst the clergy and laity who, not
agreeing with the ecclesiastical-political line laid down by Metropolitan Peter
and Metropolitan (later Patriarch) Sergius, the deputy of the patriarchal locum
tenens, ceased to commemorate the name of the deputy in the Divine services
and thereby broke canonical communion with him. But in breaking with the deputy
of the locum tenens, they, like Metropolitan Sergius himself, recognised
Metropolitan Peter, the locum tenens of the Patriarchal Throne, as the
head of the Church.
“Therefore “rightist” opponents, such as Metropolitan Cyril (Smirnov) of
Kazan (1863-1937) and Bishop Victor (Ostrovidov) of Glazov (1875-1934) have
been added to the list of those canonised.”
There is much deception in these apparently conciliatory words. First,
the MP has by no means always received former members of the “rightist”
opposition – that is, the True Orthodox Christians of the Catacomb Church – “in
their existing rank”. Metropolitan Sergius, for example, treated the ROCA,
which was at one with the Catacomb Church, more strictly than the Catholics,
and decreed that they should be received by chrismation. Again, the MP has by
no means always received renovationists strictly. In the years 1943-45, the
depleted ranks of the MP’s hierarchy was filled up almost entirely by
renovationists, who were received with an absolute minimum of formality.
Thus the Catacomb Bishop “A.” (probably Anthony Galynsky-Mikhailovsky)
wrote: “Very little time passed between September, 1943 and January, 1945.
Therefore it is difficult to understand where 41 bishops came from instead of
19. In this respect our curiosity is satisfied by the Journal of the Moscow
Patriarchate for 1944. Looking through it, we see that the 19 bishops who
existed in 1943, in 1944 rapidly gave birth to the rest, who became the members
of the 1945 council.
“From the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate we learn that these
hasty consecrations were carried out, in the overwhelming majority of cases, on
renovationist protopriests.
“From September, 1943 to January, 1945, with a wave of a magic wand, all
the renovationists suddenly repented before Metropolitan Sergius. The penitence
was simplified, without the imposition of any demands on those who caused so
much evil to the Holy Church. And in the shortest time the ‘penitent
renovationists’ received a lofty dignity, places and ranks, in spite of the
church canons and the decree about the reception of renovationists imposed [by
Patriarch Tikhon] in 1925…
“As the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate informs us, the
‘episcopal’ consecrations before the ‘council’ of 1945 took place thus: the
protopriest who had been recommended (undoubtedly by the civil authorities),
and who was almost always from the ‘reunited’ renovationists or Grigorians, was
immediately tonsured into monasticism with a change in name and then, two or
three days later, made a ‘hierarch of the Russian Church’.”[110]
Metropolitan Juvenal also overlooks the fact that Metropolitan Sergius’
calling the Catacomb confessors “political criminals” was like a death-warrant:
armed with this quasi-ecclesiastical justification, the authorities could send
the confessors to the camps and to execution “with the blessing of Metropolitan
Sergius”. Some of the martyrs, such as Hieromartyr Sergius Mechev of Moscow,
were sent to their deaths on the denunciation of MP hierarchs in court. And
many have been the instances when MP priests posing as confessors have
infiltrated True Orthodox communities, and then betrayed them to the
authorities. For as the prophet says of the Christians in the last times: “Many
shall join them by intrigue” (Dan. 11.34).
Metropolitan Juvenal points out that the sergianists and the Catacomb
confessors were linked by the fact that they both commemorated the lawful head
of the Church, Metropolitan Peter. However, this link lasted only until 1936,
when Metropolitan Sergius, falsely asserting that Metropolitan Peter had died,
uncanonically assumed his title of Metropolitan of Krutitsa and Kolomna and
Patriarchal locum tenens. So from that time there was not even this
formal link between the True Church and “the church of the evil doers”.
In any case, what benefit did the sergianists gain from commemorating
Metropolitan Peter if he himself did not recognise them? Metropolitan Peter was
in prison throughout the critical period 1927-37, so reliable reports of his
attitude to Sergius were hard to attain – a fact which Sergius made great use
of. Nevertheless, this much is known.
First, Hieromartyr Bishop Damascene (Tsedrik) claimed to have made
contact with him through his cell-attendant, who reported that Metropolitan
Peter expressed disapproval of Sergius’ policies. Secondly, on September 17,
1929, the priest Gregory Seletsky wrote to Metropolitan Joseph of Petrograd on
behalf of Archbishop Demetrius (Lyubimov): “I am fulfilling the request of his
Eminence Archbishop Demetrius and set out before you in written form that
information which the exiled Bishop Damascene has communicated to me. He
succeeded in making contact with Metropolitan Peter, and in sending him, via a
trusted person, full information about everything that has been taking place in
the Russian Church. Through this emissary Metropolitan Peter orally conveyed
the following: ’1. You Bishops must yourselves remove Metropolitan Sergius. 2.
I do not bless you to commemorate Metropolitan Sergius during Divine
services…’”[111]
Again, in December, 1929 Metropolitan Peter wrote to Metropolitan
Sergius accusing him of “going beyond the limits of the ecclesiastical authority
entrusted to you” and reminding him that “I did not give you any institutional
rights”. He accused him of removing, rather than deputizing for, the central
office of Church administration, the locum tenancy, and said that “Church
consciousness cannot, of course, approve of such big changes [in Church
administration]”. He said that it was hard for him to number “all the details
of the negative attitude expressed towards your administration” by hierarchs
and laity. The picture of Church life he had received was “shocking”. Finally
he asked him to correct the mistakes he had made, which had caused such damage
to the Church. Two months later, the metropolitan repeated his plea in still
stronger language.[112]
Moreover, Protopresbyter Michael Polsky reported that Metropolitan Peter
had written to Sergius: “If you yourself do not have the strength to protect
the Church, you should step down and hand over your office to a stronger
person.”[113]
There can be little doubt that if Metropolitan Peter had been released
from prison, he would immediately have renounced Metropolitan Sergius – which
is precisely why he was kept in prison, in almost complete isolation, until the
very day of his martyric death.
The fact is that, contrary to Metropolitan Juvenal’s assertions, the
gulf between the sergianists and the Catacomb confessors was much greater than
that between the sergianists, the renovationists and the Grigorians. The
renovationists, the Grigorians and the sergianists were three attempts of the
authorities to create a “Soviet Orthodox Church”. When the first, renovationist
attempt failed, they tried a second, more subtle one – that of the Grigorians.
But then they switched their allegiance to Sergius, whose organisation became
“The Soviet Orthodox Church, Mark III”, sealed with the approval and
legalisation of the authorities, the seal of the collective Antichrist . Since
all three movements were united in their main aim – to make a pact with the
authorities that guaranteed their material security – it is not surprising that
the great majority of them ended up, after the Second World War, in the same
organisation – the MP. The Catacomb Church, on the other hand, rejected in
principle the idea of making peace with the God-hating power; for “what accord
has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? And
what agreement has the temple of God with idols?” (II Cor. 6.16). For
“do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? “(James
4.4).
Why, then, does Metropolitan Juvenal and the MP cover up this vast chasm
separating the True Church of the Catacombs from the false church of the
sergianists – a chasm that was made wider, not only by the profound differences
in principle and in theology between the two sides, but also by the active
persecution waged against the one by the other?
One reason is undoubtedly that the holiness of the Catacomb martyrs and
confessors cannot be hidden. Recently, the incorrupt and wonderworking relics
of Archbishop Victor of Glazov and Vyatka were discovered. What was the MP to
do but accept this, the very first and fiercest of the Catacomb confessors, as
one of their own? But of course history had to be rewritten. So Protopriest
Vladislav Tsypin was entrusted with the task of telling the educated church
people the shameless lie that Hieroconfessor Victor had “been reconciled with
the deputy of the locum tenens” before his death.[114]
The MP
has become quite skilled in this rewriting of history in recent years:
Hieroconfessor Basil of Kineshma (+1945), Hieroconfessor Theodosius of Minvody
(+1948) and Blessed Matrona of Moscow are only a few of the faithful Catacomb
Christians who have been “reinterpreted” – more precisely: slandered - as
belonging to the sergianist false church. In a sense, of course, this
represents a great victory for the True Church. If they recognise our saints,
then in their hearts they recognise the rightness of our cause. But here we
come up against the conscious hypocrisy of the sergianists: they know we are right,
but will not admit it, rather stealing our clothes – the exploits of our
martyrs - and dressing up in them so as to hide their own nakedness.
And yet their nakedness cannot be concealed. And it is most clearly
revealed in the fact that, together with the true martyrs, they canonise the
false ones, too. That the patriarchate would canonise both the true
martyrs of the Catacomb Church and the false martyrs of the sergianist
church, thereby subtly downgrading the exploit of the Catacomb Church without
denying it completely, was predicted several years ago by 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 Heavenly Kingdom, and he recognized the declaration of Metropolitan
Sergius, so you must be reconciled with it and its fruits.' This will be done
not in order to glorify martyrdom for Christ's sake, but in order to confirm
the sergianist politics."[115]
The patriarch's lack of principle 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, Nedelia, 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
Catacomb Church, many of whom were betrayed to the godless authorities by
Metropolitan Sergius' church organization.., and at the same time declares that
these martyrs are schismatic and uncanonical!"[116]
This act of canonising both the true and the false martyrs has further
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!
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”
(Rev. 3.16). This lukewarmness is identified, by Archbishop Theophanes
of Poltava, with “the religious-moral fall of bishops, [which is] ….. one of
the most characteristic signs of the last times. Especially terrible is the
fall of bishops when they fall away from the dogmas of the faith, or, as the
apostle puts it, they want to pervert the Gospel of Christ (Gal. 1.7).
To such the apostle orders that we say anathema: Whoever will preach to you a
Gospel other than that which we preached to you, he writes, let him be anathema
(Gal. 1.9). And one must not linger here, he says: A heretic after the
first and second admonition reject, knowing that such a one is perverted,
condemning himself (Titus 3.10-11). Otherwise, that is, for indifference
to apostasy from the truth, you may be struck by the wrath of God: because thou
art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of My mouth."[117]
If the
Lord Himself spews such lukewarmness out of His mouth, then so should we. And
this is what the Kaliningrad parish of the ROCA commendably does in its epistle
to the ROCA 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?”
3.
The MP’s Canonisation and the ROCA
Apart from its own lukewarmness, and its desire to sweep the whole issue
of martyrdom and confession of the faith under the carpet, there is another
reason why the MP has canonised both the true and the false martyrs: its desire
to smooth the way for its union with the ROCA. That this is indeed a, perhaps the
major motive for this act is indicated by the omission, from the MP’s list
of true and false martyrs and confessors, of the leading protagonists on both
sides: on the side of the True Church – Hieromartyr Metropolitan Joseph of
Petrograd, and on the side of the false church – Metropolitan Sergius himself.
Let us look carefully at these significant omissions.
Hieromonk Vladimir and Protopriest Sergius Petrov of the Holy
Transfiguration Skete, Mansonville, Canada (ROCA) have written: “It is
impossible (both by virtue of the canons, and by virtue of a lack of desire to
do so on the part of the Patriarchate) for the MP to glorify New Martyr Joseph,
the Metropolitan of Petrograd, who excommunicated the ‘sergianists’ from the
Church, and who considered them to be devoid of grace.” But is it? Archbishop
Victor (and many other hierarch-confessors) also excommunicated the sergianists
from the Church, and declared them to be void of grace. But the MP has
condescended to “glorify” even these completely intransigeant warriors for the
truth. So why make an exception in the case of Metropolitan Joseph?
Before answering this question, let us consider the other, still more
surprising omission: that of Metropolitan Sergius. If so many leading
sergianists were “glorified”, why not their leader, who suffered so much, as
the sergianists are constantly telling us, in his efforts to “save the Church”?
Let us recall that the leading sergianist of today, “Patriarch” Alexis, has not
hidden his belief that Sergius is indeed a confessor. Thus in 1997, on the eightieth
anniversary of the restoration of the Patriarchate, the patriarch said:
“Through the host of martyrs of the Church of Russia bore witness to her faith
and sowed the seed of her future rebirth. Among the confessors of Christ we can
in full measure name… his Holiness Patriarch Sergius.”[118]
We believe that there is in fact no fundamental reason, from the point
of view of the MP’s contemporary ideology, why either Metropolitan Joseph’s or
Metropolitan Sergius’ names should have been withheld from the list, and that
the real reason for their non-appearance lies in the realm of Church politics
rather than in any question of principle. The point is that in every diplomatic
marriage gifts are exchanged by the two parties in order to seal their bargain.
The “gift” that the MP can offer the ROCA is the glorification of Metropolitan
Joseph, who was glorified by the ROCA in 1981 and cannot, as the MP perfectly
well understands, be omitted from any list of the new martyrs. But the MP,
being a political organisation in origin and in essence, never bestows gifts
without demanding something in return. And the gift that it is demanding in
return is the recognition that Metropolitan Sergius, too, was, in his own way,
a “martyr” (his sufferings being, presumably, the torments of his uneasy
conscience, although neither the torments nor the conscience were clearly
visible).
But at this stage, of course, the ROCA would never accept Sergius as a
martyr. Such a humiliating, utterly
shameful concession could only be made at the very end, when the rings are
being exchanged and the marriage is already “in the bag”. For it would not only
be an admission that sergianism is not apostasy: it would be an assertion that
sergianism is right and proper, that it is a possible path to glory, to
holiness, fully equal to the traditional path – that of confessing the truth.
And yet there are indications that the ROCA is preparing the way for
such a concession. For in its Epistle of October 14/27, 2000, the ROCA Bishops
claim to see significant progress on the part of the MP in at least two of the
three issues that separate the parties: sergianism, the canonisation of the new
martyrs and ecumenism. Thus with regard to sergianism, the ROCA Bishops claim
that the social document accepted by the MP at its August Sobor “blots out… the
essence” of Metropolitan Sergius’ 1927 declaration: “For the first time ever,
the MP has attempted to defend the independence of the Church”.
However, since our theme is not sergianism as such, we shall overlook
this astounding statement, and pass to the second issue on which the ROCA
Bishops claim to see progress: that of the new martyrs, and in particular the
canonisation of the royal new martyrs. Thus it is asserted by the ROCA 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 the 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 Vladimir and Protopriest 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 True Church, to
glorify those very ones whom they had betrayed?
If a murderer glorifies his victim; a robber and thief of what is sacred
-- the one robbed; and a blasphemer -- God, without repenting of the
given sin, then this act of ‘glorification’ is not simply an ‘atonement’ and a
setting-forth upon the way of the Lord, but an even greater blasphemy, a more
refined sacrilege. For ‘the virtue of
heretics,’ says St. John Chrysostom, ‘is worse than any debauchery.’ ‘Not to
confess one's transgressions means to increase them... Sin places upon us a blot which it is
impossible to wash away with a thousand well-springs; only by tears and
repentance can this be done,’ says that selfsame Bishop. ‘None is so good, and none so merciful of
heart, as the Lord; but even He does not forgive those who do not repent.’ (St.
Mark the Ascetic). Hence, is not this
‘glorification’ by the MP comparable to that when the Roman soldiers, having
put a scarlet robe upon Christ, ‘glorified’ Him, saying: ‘Hail, King of the
Jew!’?! Here we have in view not the
entire Russian nation, but the very system of the MP.”
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. Thus 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.”
November 8/21, 2000.
Synaxis of the Holy Archangels
and Angels and all the Bodily Hosts.
8. WHEN DID THE MP APOSTASISE?
(A Report prepared at the Request of the
First-Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church for the Church Sobor
scheduled for October, 2001 in Suzdal)
Your
Eminence, Your Graces, President and Members of the Holy Council of the Russian
Orthodox Church!
Give the blessing!
With your permission, I would like to
express my opinion with regard to the question of the gracelessness of the
Moscow Patriarchate, and on the closely related question of how people seeking
to join our Church from the MP should be received.
I have no doubt that the Holy Synod will
declare that the MP is graceless, because to say otherwise would be to
contradict the anathema against the Sergianists proclaimed by our own Church in
1999, and would mean to step on that broad path which is leading the Church
Abroad into the abyss of Church’s condemnation. But to raise the question: is
the MP graceless?, and to reply simply: yes – is of course insufficient. If we
reply to the one question, we must immediately reply to another: When
approximately did the MP fall away from the True Church? I would like to
discuss three possible answers to this latter question: 1. The period 1938-45,
corresponding to the triumph of sergianism and the organisation of the
sergianist Moscow Patriarchate, 2. The period 1961-71, corresponding to the
fall of the MP into the heresy of ecumenism, and 3. the period 1990-2000,
corresponding to the fall of Soviet power until the anathematisation of the
sergianist ecumenists by our Church.
In my view, if our Church seriously considers herself to be the
successor of the Catacomb Church, the largest and most authoritative branch of
which was the Josephite, then we must accept this Josephite anathema as valid
and as expressing the authentic tradition of the One, Holy, Catholic and
Apostolic Church. It follows that from the date of this anathema we must
consider the schismatic and heretical MP to have been graceless. But since we
do not know the exact date of this anathema, we must content ourselves with
saying: not later than 1943. Why? Because the anathema refers to the three
bishops Sergius, Nicholas and Alexis, who from the beginning of the Second
World War and until 1943 constituted three quarters of the episcopate of the MP
that was in freedom. However, in September, 1943 these three bishops entered
into a pact with Stalin, as a result of which Sergius was made “patriarch” and
the ranks of the MP’s episcopate was filled up with new bishops, mainly
ex-renovationists, who transformed the character of the MP in a radical way. It
is therefore almost certain that the Èîñèôëÿíñêàÿ anathema dates to the period
before September, 1943.
In any case, there are other reasons for considering the year 1943 to
have been a fateful watershed in the history of the Russian Church. Before 1943
the MP could consider itself to possess at least formal, external succession
from the Church of Patriarch Tikhon and hence the pre-revolutionary Church of
Russia. However, from 1943 the MP recreated itself on a new foundation, that
foundation being, not Ñhrist
and the traditions of the pre-revolutionary Church, but Stalin and the
traditions of the communist áîãîáîð÷åñêîé revolution. For it was in this very year that the MP received
a new, official status from Stalin himself within the God-fighting state of the
USSR. Hence in 1943 the MP became not simply the official church in the
Soviet Union, but the official church of the Soviet Union – “the
Soviet church”, in a precise sense.
The new status of the Soviet church manifested itself in many ways. Â 1944 it received a
“patriarch”. In 1945 it stepped onto the international arena, persecuting the
True Christians everywhere. For example, during the civil war between the
Orthodox and the communists in Greece, “Patriarch” Alexis publicly, on Greek
radio, call on the Greeks to fight on the side of the communists – that is,
kill True Christians in the name of the communist revolution. As regards the
situation inside Russia, the Josephite theologian and confessor I.M.
Andreyevsky wrote: “The Underground or Catacomb Church in Soviet Russia
suffered its heaviest tribulations after February 4, 1945, that is, after the
enthronement of the Soviet patriarch Alexis. Those who did not recognise him
were condemned to new terms of imprisonment and were sometimes shot. Those who
did recognise him and gave their signatures to that effect were often released
before the end of their terms, and were given appointments. All the secret
priests discovered in the Soviet zone of Germany, and who did not recognise
Patriarch Alexis, were also shot...”[120]
Can we really admit that this completely schismatical and heretical,
openly pro-communist and bloodily anti-Orthodox organism was a part of the One,
Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church even in the post-war period?
Before considering other possible dates for the fall of the MP, I should
like to consider some common objections to the above-expressed position.
The first relates to the fact that not all the holy new hieromartyrs and
confessors of Russia expressed themselves categorically with regard to the
gracelessness of the MP. In this connection particular attention is paid,
especially by such pro-patriarchal hierarchs as Archbishop Mark of Germany, to
the position of Hieromartyr Metropolitan Cyril of Kazan, who in the early 1930s
expressed the view that the sergianist sacraments were valid, but that those
who received them knowing of the sin of Sergius received them to their
condemnation. However, this is what Hieromartyr Cyril wrote in a letter dated
February 23 / March 8, 1937: «...“With regard to your perplexities concerning
Sergianism, I can say that the very same questions in almost the same form were
addressed to me from Kazan ten years ago, and then I replied affirmatively to
them, because I considered everything that Metropolitan Sergius had done as a
mistake which he himself was conscious of and wished to correct. Moreover,
among our ordinary flock there were many people who had not investigated what
had happened, and it was impossible to demand from them a decisive and active
condemnation of the events. Since then much water has flowed under the bridge.
The expectations that Metropolitan Sergius would correct himself have not been
justified, but there has been enough time
for the formerly ignorant members of the Church, enough incentive and enough
opportunity to investigate what has happened; and very many have both
investigated and understood that Metropolitan Sergius is departing from that
Orthodox Church which the Holy Patriarch Tikhon entrusted to us to guard, and
consequently there can be no part or lot with him for the Orthodox. The recent
events have finally made clear the renovationist nature of Sergianism. We
cannot know whether those believers who remain in Sergianism will be saved,
because the work of eternal Salvation is a work of the mercy and grace of God.
But for those who see and feel the unrighteousness of Sergianism (those are
your questions) it would be unforgiveable craftiness to close one’s eyes to
this unrighteousness and seek there for the satisfaction of one’s spiritual
needs when one’s conscience doubts in the possibility of receiving such
satisfaction. Everything which is not of faith is sin…”[121]
Several points need to be emphasised here. First, St. Cyril rejects “the
argument from ignorance” as an excuse for remaining a sergianist, considering
that by the time of writing, 1937, “much water has flowed under the bridge”,
“there has been enough time for the formerly ignorant members of the Church,
enough incentive and enough opportunity to investigate what has happened”.
Secondly, he considers Sergianism to have have been renovationist in nature.
Now renovationism was an already condemned heresy; Patriarch Tikhon declared in
1923 that the renovationists were outside the Church and deprived of the grace
of sacraments. So if Sergianism is a form of renovationism, it, too, is outside
the Church and deprived of the grace of sacraments. And thirdly, St. Cyril
unites himself unreservedly with St. Joseph, the leader of the Catacomb Church,
whose rejection of grace among the sergianists is well-known. Therefore it
seems clear that by the end of his life St. Cyril had united himself to the
opinion of the Josephites and the consensus of the hieromartyrs of the Catacomb
Church, which consensus must represent for us the criterion of Orthodoxy.
A
second argument sometimes produced in favour of the present of grace in the MP
is the fact that the Russian Church Abroad, from which our Church derives her
hierarchy and apostolic succession, has never made a formal, unambiguous and
universally binding statement concerning the gracelessness of the MP. This is
true, but cannot be considered a powerful argument for several reasons.
First, three out of the four first-hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox
Church Abroad (ROCA) – Metropolitans Anthony, Philaret and Vitaly – have at
different times expressed the opinion that the MP is graceless. Especially
authoritative in this respect is the encyclical of Metropolitan Anthony dated
22 July, 1928, which declared that the sergianist Moscow Synod was not
recognised as having any ecclesiastical authority whatsoever because it had
entered into union with the enemies of God, and called it an unlawful
organisation of apostates from the faith, similar to the ancient libellatici,
who, while refusing openly to blaspheme against Christ or perform sacrifices to
the idols, nevertheless obtained certificates from the pagan priests witnessing
to their full agreement with them.”[122] This encyclical is especially
significant in view of the fact that it expressed, not simply the personal
opinion of Metropolitan Anthony, but also “the completely definitive
declaration of our Hierarchical Synod”.
Other distinguished hierarchs of the ROCA echoed this judgement. Thus in
1955 Archbishop Vitaly (Maximenko) of Jordanville, who had already been in
prison for the faith in Bolshevik Russia, declared: “The patriarchate has
violated the essential dogma of the Church of Christ and rejected its essential
mission – to serve the regeneration of men, putting in its place the service of
the atheist ends of communism, which is unnatural for the Church. This apostasy
is bitterer than all the previous Arianisms, Nestorianisms, Iconoclasms, etc.
And this is not the personal sin of one or another hierarch, but the root sin
of the Moscow patriarchate, confirmed, proclaimed and sealed by an oath in
front of the whole world. It is, so to speak, dogmatised apostasy...”[123]
Secondly, if the ROCA later showed some hesitation in relation to the
gracelessness of the MP, it never showed hesitation about the unlawfulness of
the MP, declaring the elections of all four Soviet “patriarchs” – Sergius,
Alexis I, Pimen and Alexis II – to be uncanonical. It is very doubtful whether
a Church organisation that is uncanonical over such a long period, and makes no
attempt to return to canonicity, but on the contrary plunges ever deeper into
sin, can be said to have the grace of sacraments.
Thirdly, it is precisely the hesitation that the ROCA showed, and the
compromises it made with its pro-patriarchal members, that has led to its
present catastrophic situation, in which it is not only the grace-filled nature
of the MP that is being recognised, but its canonicity and the necessity of
joining it! This should warn us that what seem like small compromises at the
beginning can, in a comparatively short period of time, lead to spiritual death
if not corrected. There can be little doubt that if we, the Russian Orthodox
Autonomous Church (ROAC), make such compromises, the punishment will be no less
and probably much quicker in coming.
Let us turn now to the other dates that have been proposed:-
Some believe that the falling away of the MP must be dated from this
time, when its official confession of the ecumenist heresy was confirmed by
ever-increasing numbers of concelebrations and inter-communion with Roman
Catholics and Protestants. Certainly, there can be no question that the MP
cannot be considered a true Church from the time it began to confess «the
heresy of heresies». Òhus Archbishop
Averky (Taushev) of Jordanville commented as follows on the 1969 decision of
the MP to allow Orthodox clergy to give the sacramånts to Roman Catholics: «If anyone had any doubts about
how we should relate to the contemporary Moscow patriarchate, whether it was
possible to consider her as Orthodox in consequence of her close union with the
God-fighters and persecutors of the faith and Church of Christ, these doubts
must finally fall away now that they have entered into communion with the
papists. The Moscow patriarchate has hereby fallen away from Orthodoxy, and
can no longer be considered to be Orthodox...»[125]
However, ecumenism was imposed on the MP by the head of the Council for
religious affairs of the Soviet Union.[126] According to the words of Metropolitan
Vladimir (Kotlyarov) of St. Petersburg, who was present at the Assembly in New
Delhi, all the representatives of the Russian clergy who came there “were
agents of the KGB”[127]. Thus
the MP’s ecumenism was simply the most terrible fruit of the earlier illness of
sergianism. For apostates do not have their own will. Having given their will
into the hands of the antichrist, they will say and do everything that is
demanded of them, up to and including the most disgusting blasphemy. So the
real fall of the MP must be dated, not to the date of its entrance into the
WCC, but to the time when it lost its free will and became a slave of atheism.
At this point, the argument that the MP was not truly apostate, only
weak, and that with the fall of Soviet power it would naturally reveal again
its true, Orthodox self collapsed completely. It became clear that the MP was
not only apostate “for fear of the Jews” (although this, of course, is still
apostasy), but even when it had nothing to fear from the Jews. From this is
evident the power of the lie, which is first accepted against one’s will but
then becomes natural for the liar. Having convinced himself that it is right to
lie for the sake of saving his life, the liar then begins to believe his own
lie, even to love it. It becomes a “holy lie”, even more noble than the truth,
and elicited by the purest, most self-sacrificing of all possible motives.
And yet there are many, especially in the contemporary Russian Church
Abroad, who believe that the MP miraculously recovered grace immediately Soviet
power fell, as if the truth and grace of a confession depends, not on the faith
and works of the members of the confession, but on external political events.
As if the sin of Judas could be removed simply with the death of Annas and
Caiaphas and without the necessity of any repentance on the part of Judas
himself! Moreover, it must be remembered that Judas did repent, but not before
Christ, not before Him Whom he had betrayed – and so his “repentance” proved to
be empty and fruitless.
There can be no question, alas, that in the decade since the fall of
communism in Russia, the MP has not only not repented of its sins, but has
plunged ever deeper into apostasy and corruption of all kinds. Ecumenism, in
particular, has taken giant strides forward. In 1990 there was the Chambesy
accord, whereby the anathemas on the so-called “Oriental Orthodox” – that is,
the Monophysite heretics – were removed. Then in 1991 came the “patriarch’s”
shameful speech to the Jewish rabbis of New York. Then, in 1992, in
Constantinople, the MP, together with all the Local Orthodox Churches,
officially renounced missionary work among the Western heretics. Then, in 1994,
came the Balamand agreement, whereby the Orthodox and the Catholics recognised
each other to be the “two lungs” of the single Body of Christ. Ecumenism has
also continued with the Protestants, with the Muslims, and even with the
Buddhists…
However, let us remind ourselves once again, that however terrible the
ecumenist excesses of the MP, its root sin, the sin which tore it away from
unity with the True Church, was sergianism. And in this connection we must
examine the claims made by certain pro-patriarchal members of the ROCA that the
MP, in its Sobor in August, 2000, somehow repented of sergianism through its
acceptance of the document entitled “The bases of the social doctrine of the
Russian Orthodox Church”.
Attention has been drawn in particular to the following passages in the
document: «The Christian must openly speak out in a lawful manner against an
undoubted violation, by society or the state, of the decrees and commandments
of God, ànd if this lawful speaking out is
impossible or illegal or ineffective, take up the position of civil
disobedience». And again: «The Church must point to the inadmissibility of
spreading convictions or actions that lead to the establishment of complete
control over the life of a person, his convictions and relationships with other
people».
Fine words! But has the MP ever in her existence carried them out? And
if not, do not such statements merely deepen her guilt and hypocrisy? Moreover,
while the statements may be correct, there is not a hint of repentance for the
sergianism of the past. On the contrary, the same Council canonised several
sergianist pseudo-martyrs, together with some true martyrs of the Catacomb
Church, thereby expressing her incapacity to discern between good and evil,
truth and heresy, martyrs and apostates. Even Sergius himself has been proposed
for canonisation. Thus in 1993, on the eightieth anniversary of the
“restoration” of the Patriarchate, when the “patriarch” said: “Through the host
of martyrs of the Church of Russia bore witness to her faith and sowed the seed
of her future rebirth. Among the confessors of Christ we can in full measure
name… his Holiness Patriarch Sergius.”[128]
My conclusion, therefore, is that the MP fell away from the True Church
of Christ and lost the grace of sacraments in the period 1938-45, when its root
heresy of sergianism reached its mature and fixed form.
One or two qualifications should be made this conclusion. First,
although, as I have stated, I believe that we have the full canonical right to
declare the MP graceless since 1945, this does not mean that God in His mercy
may not have preserved some “islands of Orthodoxy” in the prevailing sea of
apostasy for some time after that. However, if there were such islands, they
are known to God alone; and the Church on earth, in the absence of a Divine
revelation, must draw the conclusion which follows inexorably from the holy
canons. God, as the Supreme Lawgiver, can make exceptions to His own laws. But
we, as fully subject to His Law, cannot presume to know what those exceptions,
if they exist, are. We will not be condemned for following the Law of God: we
may well be condemned for having the pride to think that we know better than
the Law.
Secondly,
the judgement that the MP has been graceless for this last half-century is not
the same as the judgement that everyone who died in the MP in that period is
lost for eternity. Certainly, we cannot be confident of the salvation of
someone who has died outside the True Church. But neither can we categorically
deny the possibility, but must content ourselves with the words of the Apostle
Peter: “It is time for the judgement to begin from the house of God; but if
first from us, what shall be the end of those who disobey the Gospel of God.
And if the righteous one scarcely is saved, where shall the ungodly one and
sinner appear?” (1 Peter 4.17-18). As Hieromartyr Cyril of Kazan wrote:
“We cannot know whether those believers who remain in Sergianism will be saved,
because the work of eternal Salvation is a work of the mercy and grace of God.
But for those who see and feel the unrighteousness of Sergianism (those are
your questions) it would be unforgiveable craftiness to close one’s eyes to
this unrighteousness and seek there for the satisfaction of one’s spiritual
needs when one’s conscience doubts in the possibility of receiving such
satisfaction. Everything which is not of faith is sin…”
Let us now turn to the question of how people coming to our Church from
the MP should be received. The normal way of accepting heretics and schismatics
into the Church is by baptism (if they have not received even the correct
external form of baptism) or chrismation (if they have received the correct
external form of baptism). The Third Rite, reception by repentance only, is
also sometimes used.
Up to now, if I am not mistaken, our Church has followed the practice of
the ROCA in receiving people in most cases by the Third Rite. This has
facilitated the reception of larger numbers of people into our Church. However,
it has some serious disadvantages, which I should like to outline now, basing
my observations mainly on my experience in the ROCA:-
First, many of those received into the Church from the MP do not fully
realise that they are coming from darkness into light, from heresy into truth,
from the world that lies under the condemnation of God into the Church that is
the only Ark of salvation. They think they are coming from a “worse” Church
into a “better” Church, no more. Some of them later come to realise the real
nature of what they have been rescued from; others never come to realise this,
but instead become propagandists for the view that the MP is “the Mother
Church”, that it has grace, that we should return to it, etc. In my view, one
of the major reasons for this is the relative ease with which they can enter
the True Church. In the ROCA the almost universal application of the Third
Rite, and the reception of clergy with the minimum of formality and
examination, has led over the years to a dilution of its witness and nothing
less than the corruption of its confession of faith. A somewhat stricter
approach, with the use of the Second Rite as the norm rather than the
exception, would help to correct such a tendency from developing in our Church.
Secondly, in other True Orthodox Churches, a stricter practice has
prevailed in the reception of heretics for a long time now. Thus the Romanian
Old Calendarists – by far the largest jurisdiction of the True Orthodox in the
world – and all the major branches of the Greek Old Calendarist Church except
the Cyprianites receive new calendarists by chrismation. Or, if they have not
received a proper immersion baptism in the new calendarist church, by baptism.
Now it may be argued that the Russian Church is not obliged to follow the
practice of the Greek and Romanian Churches, and that is true. Nevertheless,
there can be no doubt that uniformity of practice among the True Orthodox would
greatly strengthen our witness to the world. As it is, the Greek Old
Calendarists often do not fully trust us because we receive people from the MP
in a way which they think is illegitimate. “Why do you not receive them by
chrismation?” they ask. “Does this not mean that you accept the heretics as
Orthodox?”
Thirdly, many people have not received even the correct external form of
baptism in the MP. Such people, if they have been received into the True Church
by the Second or Third Rite, often begin to have doubts about the validity of
their reception, or simply long for a proper baptism. The former head of the
Seraphimo-Gennadiite branch of the Catacomb Church, Metropolitan Epiphany
(Kaminsky), regularly baptised converts from the MP who had not received an
immersion baptism in the MP. In this he claimed that he was following the
practice of his spiritual father, the great confessor Archbishop Anthony
Galynsky-Mikhailovsky. Again, St. Philaret of New York regularly blessed
baptisms of people who had already been received into the ROCA, but then asked
for baptism because they had never received an immersion baptism. Again, four
members of our own parish, including myself, were received into the MP by the
Second Rite. We were then received into the ROCA by the Third Rite. However, when
we petitioned to be baptised, since we had never had an Orthodox baptism,
Archbishop Nikodim of Great Britain agreed – as did St. Philaret.
To summarise: I believe that all those who entered the MP since 1945 and
now seek to be joined to our Church should be treated as entering the True
Church for the first time, and therefore should either be baptised (if they
have not received even the correct form of threefold immersion in the MP) or
chrismated (if they have received immersion baptism). Of course, such a
practice should in no way be seen as casting doubt on the validity of those
many people who have already been received into our Church by the Third Rite.
Nor does it impair the right of bishops to use economy (i.e. the Third Rite) in
individual cases if they think fit. But in my opinion these cases of economy
should become the exception rather than the rule. For it is right and proper
that, as the apostates body of the MP falls ever further away from True
Orthodoxy, the practice of the True Church should become stricter in order to
reflect this fact, in order to raise the ecclesiological consciousness of her
members, and in order to prevent the infiltration of spies and covert heretics
into our midst.
September 9/22, 2001.
9. EMPIRE OR ANTICHRIST?
1. The Soviet Antichrist
According to the Holy Fathers, the
Orthodox Christian Empire is a weapon of God defending the people of God from
the Antichrist. The fall of the Christian Empire inevitably leads to the
appearance of the anti-empire of the Antichrist. And so the fall of the Russian
Empire and the enthronement of Soviet power in 1917 was seen by the believing
Russian people as the beginning of the end of history, the enthronement of
precisely – the Antichrist.
However, the renovationists and sergianists had a different
point of view. The renovationists welcomed Soviet power as rescuing them from
the “curse” of Tsarism and enthusiastically offered their services to it in
building the “brave new world” of the socialist paradise. Consequently, they
quickly fell away from the paradise of the Church and under the Church’s
anathema of January, 1918 condemning all those who cooperated with Soviet
power.
The sergianists did not so enthusiastically welcome Soviet power.
However, they did not refuse to cooperate with it, and emphatically refused to
see it as the Antichrist. This is clear from the famous interview between
Metropolitan Sergius and the delegation from Petrograd led by Hieromartyr
Demetrius, Archbishop of Gdov in December, 1927:
Àrchbishop
Demetrius. Soviet power is in its basis antichristian. Is it
then possible for the Orthodox Church to be in union with an antichristian
state power, and pray for its successes and participate in its joys?
Ìetropolitan Sergius. But where do you
see the Antichrist here?
Many of the more “moderate” sergianists agreed that Soviet
power was an evil regime, but they refused to see in this evil anything deeper
or different in principle from the evil of so many other tyrannical regimes in
history. According to them, Soviet power was established by God, for “all power
is from God” (Rom. 13.1); it was Caesar, and the Lord said: “give to
Caesar the things that are Caesar’s”. And so the suffering that came from it
was to be endured patiently as a purification from sin.