PATRIARCHS BEGIN A GREAT WAR
Will the granting of autocephaly to the Ukrainian church lead to schism of the Orthodox world?
by Alexander Soldatov
Novaia Gazeta, 10 September 2018
The consequences of the diplomatic catastrophe that Patriarch Kirill suffered in Istanbul on 31 August did not force themselves to wait for long. The Constantinople patriarch made the latest step on the path toward tearing the Kiev metropolitanate from Moscow: he appointed his own exarchs to Kiev, who will assemble a constituent council of an autocephalous Ukrainian church. The Moscow synod threatened a response of a global schism of the Christian world, which actually will turn out to be only the isolation of the Moscow patriarchate from this world.
What are exarchs?
Constantinople (Ecumenical) Patriarch Bartholomew appointed 46-year-old Ukrainian bishops as his exarchs in Kiev. The pertinent decision, made back on 31 August as soon as the high-ranking Moscow guest with his innumerable security left the patriarch's residence on the Phanar, was published in the evening of 7 September. The exarchs are Archbishop of Pamphilon Daniel, the ruling bishop of the western diocese of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the U.S.A. of the Constantinople patriarchate, and Bishop of Edmonton Ilarion, also the ruling bishop of the western diocese, but of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada, which is a part of the Constantinople patriarchate. Both hierarchs were born in western Ukraine and Bishop Ilarion was also a Greek Catholic. The churches of Ukrainian emigrants, which they represent, were accepted into the Constantinople patriarchate in the mid-1990s and had previously been considered to be "schismatic." At the time, more than 20 years ago, the Moscow patriarchate expressed a restrained protest against the action of the Constantinople patriarchate, which, as has now been shown, was done with a long-range aim on Kiev.
The word "exarch" is understood differently in Moscow and in Constantinople. The Belorussian exarchate is a constituent part of the Russian Orthodox Church (RPTs) and it is an association of dioceses on the territory of the republic of Belarus led by the first bishop of this country with the rank of metropolitan, who has the title "patriarchal exarch." At one time, before 1990, such an exarchate of the RPTs existed also in Ukraine. That is, it is an administrative, managerial office. However in Constantinople, personal representatives and emissaries of the patriarch are called exarchs, and they are sent to one country or another or a diocese with special orders.
In our case, the task of the exarchs is the preparation of a constituent council of an autocephalous Ukrainian church which will open in Kiev under their chairmanship in early October. At the council (sobor) there will occur a "reunification" with the Constantinople patriarchate of two ecclesiastical jurisdictions that are now considered to be "schismatic": the UPTsKP (more than 5,000 parishes) and the UAPTs (more than 1,000 parishes). Bishops of the UPTs of the Moscow Patriarchate also will participate, those who support the idea of Ukrainian autocephaly, that is, full ecclesiastical independence (we recall that more than 12,000 parishes in Ukraine belong to the UPTsMP). The chairmanship of the exarchs will give to the council canonical legitimacy, after which the Ukrainian Church that is newly assembled from the three parts will receive a tomos concerning autocephaly from the Constantinople patriarchate.
Firm historical grounds
Patriarch Bartholomew honestly described this scenario for Patriarch Kirill at their face-to-face meeting on 31 August. On his part, Kirill threatened global schism of the Orthodox world and various "countersanctions" (which in Russian political jargon are called "bombardment of Voronezh"), after which he withdrew. His press secretary, Father Alexander Volkov, even announced on the morning of 7 September that the Moscow patriarchate was "taking a break" and would undertake nothing against Constantinople. Evidently they believed that the threats had an effect on Bartholomew.
But they did not have an effect, and the solemnly declared "break" lasted all of a few hours. As soon as the appointment of the exarchs became known, the Department for External Church Relations of the UPTsMP, controlled by Moscow, unleashed an angry statement about "canonical aggression" on the inviolable "canonical territory" of the Moscow patriarchate.
The point is that both patriarchates—Moscow and Constantinople—consider Ukraine, that is, the ancient Kiev metropolitanate, to be their own. Moscow habitually refers to the act of Ecumenical Patriarch Dionysius IV of 1686, which permitted the Moscow patriarch to appoint the metropolitans of Kiev to their see. Moscow thinks that Constantinople thereby renounced the Kiev metropolitanate and transferred it to Moscow.
But Constantinople did not renounce anything: it temporarily, for reasons of a military and political nature, delegated to its Moscow brother only one of its rights with respect to the Kiev metropolitanate, but it did not surrender the metropolitanate to the jurisdiction of Moscow. During the 18th and 19th centuries there was no point in mentioning this; the Russian empire tightly controlled the territory, which it then called Little Russia, and the church in that empire was a state institution.
But as soon as the Russian empire fell, in the early 1920s Constantinople resumed its jurisdiction over the Kiev metropolitanate, or more precisely over that part of it that remained in the free world. This was the western dioceses of the Kiev metropolitanate (Volyn, Belostok, Kholm, and others) that were on Polish territory. In 1924 they received autocephaly from the Constantinople church and are now known as the Polish Orthodox Church.
In 1941-1942, commensurate with the advance of the Germans to the east, the jurisdiction of this church was extended to all of Ukraine and thus there arose the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAPTs), which has been in the emigration since 1944. It was this church that Constantinople took under its omophorion in the 1990s.
Now, after four years of war in the east of Ukraine, Moscow has again completely lost control over Ukraine and therefore Constantinople is forced to act in accordance with the same logic as it invariably demonstrated in the 1920s, 1940s, and 1990s. One should not reproach it for some kind of inconsistency or "treacherous aggression;" the Kiev metropolitanate never was completely surrendered to the Moscow church.
Holy war
In the morning of 8 September there appeared a statement of the RPTs Holy Synod—and this actually was a declaration of war in the Orthodox world. The war may be moderate—"civil"—if the RPTs will, in the future, recognize the Constantinople patriarchate as Orthodox and not break canonical fellowship with it but merely condemn its "intrusion" into Ukraine.
But it also may be radical—interconfessional—if the RPTs declares Constantinople and all the other local Orthodox churches as having fallen into heresy, "traitors," and "enemies of Orthodoxy."
Hotheads in the RPTs are seeking the immediate realization of the second scenario. After fleeing from Ukraine, Archpriest Andrei Novikov, a member of the synod's biblical and theological commission of the RPTs, issued on 7 September an accusation against Constantinople of "the heresy of eastern papism;" the former head of the OVTsOMP, Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, called Patriarch Bartholomew and his synod "hypocrites, deceivers, and heretics;" and the leader of the Association of Orthodox Experts, Kirill Frolov, called for the convening in Moscow of a Pan-Orthodox council and condemning Patriarch Bartholomew with at least an anathema. Frolov was also the author of a meme that flooded the Russian Orthodox blogosphere: 7 September 2018 is 22 June 1941 for the Russian church. Even the chairman of OVTsSMP, Metropolitan Ilarion, who is considered liberal, has been tireless for several months now in threatening Constantinople with such a new schism of the Christian world that will surpass in its scale the schism of 1054 (between Orthodox and Catholics).
The morning statement of the RPTs synod on 8 September has still not declared this schism, but it clearly proclaims that just one step remains before it. "These actions [appointing exarchs] drive relations between the Russian and Constantinople churches into a dead-end and they create a real threat to the unity of the entirety of world Orthodoxy," the synod writes. "The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church declares that the entirety of the responsibility for these uncanonical actions lies on Patriarch Bartholomew." It is obvious that the step that remains before the complete rupture and the global inter-confessional war is precisely the proclamation of autocephaly in early October.
Of course, there are many moderate people in the RPTs, including bishops who oppose the intended international collapse of their church, but, first, in the current conditions none of them is deciding to speak out against the patriarch and, second, the most important ecclesiastical and political decisions are not even being made by the patriarch but by the Kremlin. Its relations with the western world, of which the Constantinople patriarchate is a projection within Orthodoxy, do not portend for inter-Orthodox unity anything good.
Government propaganda within the Russian Federation has already presented Ukrainian autocephaly as a "purely American Russo-phobic project," and demonized Bartholomew's image, and even is preparing some Russians who are wavering in their patriotism for the idea that the proclamation of autocephaly will provoke a real Russian-Ukrainian war and not the shameful "hybrid-ism" that we observe in the Donbass.
Hasty change of ideology
If the leadership of the RPTs decides for a split with "world Orthodoxy," then it immediately will have to lay beneath it an ideological basis, including a theological one. All global schisms in the history of Christianity (Orthodox-Catholic, Catholic-protestant, etc.) had serious dogmatic differences beneath them.
In modern circumstances the RPTs has at its disposal only one "alternative" ideology, known in narrow circles of religious studies scholars and zealots for the faith as "true Orthodox."
This ideology presupposes a strict, canonical conservatism, the condemnation of the "heresy of ecumenism, and severing of contacts with all western non-Orthodox Christians.
To be sure, Russian true Orthodoxy arose in the 1920s-1930s in circumstances of total persecution for faith, one of the manifestations of which was the creation by the Bolsheviks of a kept "Red church," from which in 1943, as the result of the stalinist concordat, arose the modern Moscow patriarchate. Therefore the moral nerve of true Orthodoxy is the condemnation of the slavish submission of the church to atheist authority, known among the true Orthodox by the name "heresy of Sergianism."
The RPTs will hardly be able to attack its founding fathers—Stalin and Metropolitan Sergius Stragorodsky—and therefore its "true Orthodoxy" ideology will be a mix of some ultraconservative theological ideas and pride in its soviet past: "red-white patriotism." After all, such a mix ideally corresponds with Putinist ideology, where there also is a mix of antiwestern, autarchic notes with great power chauvinism, based more on the soviet rather than the prerevolutionary past.
At the same time, Patriarch Kirill will have to again step on the throat of his own song. After all he was formed as a church leader precisely in the ecumenical movement, at sessions of the World Council of Churches in Geneva (where he worked after 1971) and in the reception rooms of the Roman pope, where Kirill's mentor, Metropolitan Nikodim, was a frequent guest and even ended his earthly journey. Back last year and the year before, Kirill was very proud of his meeting with the Roman pope (the first in history!) and he constructed broad plans for a rapprochement and even unification with Catholics. A forced transition to ultraconservative positions will force renunciation of all these plans and a complete exit from the international arena.
If this betrayal of the memory of his spiritual father and the pathway of his entire life turns out to be beyond the patriarchal powers, then it is already being rumored that a substitution of Kirill by the much more Putinist and xenophobic Metropolitan Tikhon, who has the reputation of the "tsar's confessor," is possible. This would be a genuine "symphony of the powers." And indeed the people of the church respect Tikhon much more than Kirill: the filling of the churches will begin to expand again.
In any case, now the process of the proclamation of Kievan autocephaly has reached the stage where it is much more interesting to observe the processes in Moscow than in Kiev. Supporters of autocephaly in the Ukrainian church are already celebrating victory and what will become of the Moscow church after this autocephaly, only God knows for now. (tr. by PDS, posted 10 September 2018)
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